From Forest Hills to Flushing, Tennis Is at Pivotal Moment

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Tennis has become unstuck in time, to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut. The game isn't sure where it belongs, where it wants to be.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure where it should be either. I've been wrestling with this idea since last year's U.S. Open. As we move into the 2010 tennis season with the Australian Open starting Sunday evening (ET), I'm struck again with how it seems like the game is at a pivotal point in its history. It is transitioning from a niche sport to a mainstream sport with mainstream problems that are contrary to what this old quiet game used to be about.

For a moment during the Open, I straddled tennis' past and present. I had a chance to take a morning off from the modern mad rush at Flushing Meadows, the National Tennis Center, to go back in time to the stadium at West Side Racquet Club in Forest Hills, where the U.S. Open was played for decades.

From the very first shot, I heard the echoes.

The pop of the ball echoed off the crumbling stands -- all wooden bench seating -- ricocheting around the place. I hoped the vibration wouldn't rattle things a little too much, make anything fall. It can't be rebuilt. I felt the past echoing around me as well.

They played for the Davis Cup here. These stands were packed as Rod Laver won the Grand Slam. Jimmy Connors played here. Bill Tilden, Arthur Ashe, Suzanne Lenglen, Pancho Gonzales, Althea Gibson. They're still here.

I had gone back to a time when everyone wore white and tennis was played in a nice little neighborhood with big trees and everything was about respect, gentlemen and ladies. Tennis was played more quietly then, before the game exploded.

At today's Open, so many people and shapes, smells, sizes, colors and sounds all mix together in a wild, noisy two-week tennis party. But with all that noise comes a cacophony of problems.

Look at the headlines recently, and how many of them have drowned out Roger Federer's grace and records. From the ongoing gambling issues -- another player, Ekaterina Bychkova was suspended last week for not turning in a gambler who had approached her -- to Andre Agassi's crystal meth habit. From doping scares to a tournament that wouldn't let in a player because she's an Israeli. Strategically loud grunting and fake cramping.

Of course, the defining moment of the sport's struggle with time came two days after I played in the Forest Hills stadium: "I swear to God, I'm going to take this (f***ing) ball and shove it down your (f***ing) throat.''

You know. That's what Serena Williams yelled at a tiny line judge on international TV, making threats and waving her racquet over a footfault call.

I was at Ashe Stadium, within shouting distance. Seeing past and present in that 48-hour span made me realize, this is what tennis has to come to terms with: Where do you want the game to be? Which era is best to connect with?

To me, it isn't even close; tennis is way better now, despite the noise. Maybe even because of it. This is the best tennis has ever been.

I'm realizing tennis isn't having growing pains so much as evolutionary pains.

Williams' tantrum didn't prove her to be out of touch with tennis decorum. Instead, she is a reflection of her era, the way John McEnroe reflected his era when he yelled, the way Ken Rosewall reflected his.

Rosewall, for example, would never have behaved the way McEnroe did, but McEnroe built on something, maybe on Ilie Nastase. Still, McEnroe never behaved the way Serena did, but she built on what he had done.

We walk a stepladder through history to get where we are.

But it's not just about manners. Maybe Arthur Ashe sparked something, and maybe Connors and McEnroe, bringing the game to the masses, brought their own message. And somehow, something made Richard Williams take those eras and build on them, thinking he could take a basket of half-dead balls in the tough streets of Compton, Calif. and teach his African-American daughters to be the best tennis players in the world.

He was right. What a beautiful thing.

Today, there is more money than ever in the game. Well, in today's era, that's going to mean gambling issues on the side.

There is more power and athleticism than ever in tennis. Today, that means steroids.

There are more colors and nationalities than ever before, and that's going to lead to togetherness, but also, honestly, to tensions and some distrust.

A recent study showed that 25 percent more Americans played tennis in 2009 than a year earlier. The biggest increase? Hispanics, up 32 percent. Blacks are up 19 percent.

Back at Forest Hills, cicadas were chirping, and I was in a white shirt, white tennis shorts, white socks and shoes, as rules and decorum insisted, starting to hit with one of the club's pros, Thomas Gilliland, who might well be the nicest person alive.

"This is a no lawsuit zone,'' he said.

As he took me on a tour, the agreement was that if something were to fall on me, some plaster or a rock or something, or if, say, a stair crumbled, well, no lawsuits, OK? And watch each step.

He walked me past the rose gardens, down the concourse, near the tiny green ticket sheds, up into the stands to the top row where the still grand-looking stone eagles decorated the very top of the place.

"DON'T LEAN ON THAT!'' he said, a little jumpy, as I put a hand on the back fence and looked over. "The Tennis Gods are keeping this place up. That's why it hasn't just fallen down.''

The entire club sits on just 14 acres, surrounded by a quiet neighborhood, outlined by big trees and vines, with hard courts, clay, grass and, of course, the stadium, which is now a hard court. The place is beautiful. And they used to hold a major sporting event here?

Under the stands of the stadium, you see piles of rubble, remnants of porcelain water fountains.
"They don't know what to do with the place,'' Thomas said. "They could sell it, but you'd hate to see it as a parking lot."

Down the stands to the court, you see wood cracking and chipped on all the bench seats. On the court, Thomas pulls out a wood racquet for me to use.

He loves the place, but points out that 25 years ago, he wouldn't have been here.

He's Japanese-American and wouldn't have been welcome.

And I noticed a funny thing: The seats don't look bad from the court.

Thomas and other pros have painted the front edges of the benches to make them look good from the court.

A weird feeling: A young, Japanese man in all white is a caretaker of a tennis history that would have excluded him.

Why is he doing it? He's unstuck in time, too.

Where should tennis go from here? Is it possible -- or even desirable -- to keep the past from crumbling while moving into the future?

At the Australian Open, a group of players led by Novak Djokovic plans to talk up a new idea: A private investor wants to create a World Cup of tennis, with countries getting together for two weeks every other year. It will mean bigger money.

And it might kill one of tennis' longstanding traditions. The Davis Cup.

An usher named Dave at Flushing Meadows, who worked the site in Forest Hills, talks about the old days, when fans paid $10 to park in driveways near the stadium, "and everyone clapped together and stopped together.''

Bud Collins remembers when Laver won the Grand Slam: "His wife was pregnant. We had one pay phone in the pressbox, and when he won, he came to me and said, 'Give me a dime so I can call my wife (for a collect call.)'

"The Grand Slam was born that day, but not a baby.''

The U.S. Open could not have stayed at Forest Hills. Collins said it was a nice, charming place, and it tells nice, charming stories, but back then this club also denied membership to the son of Ralph Bunche, the first African American to win the Nobel Peace prize.

Tennis grew. But it also became too big, too loud, too modern, too advanced.

Collins said that for years the players weren't allowed to sit during changeovers, that play was continuous. Then TV commercials made the breaks too long to stand for, and players could sit. Was history sold out?

Eventually, the club wanted more money to hold the tournament, and the USTA decided it needed a bigger venue, as tennis was booming in the 1970s.

The U.S. Open now is one big, loud, modern, wild celebration of tennis.

In the courtyard, people pack in and watch on the movie screen. Along the outer courts, strangers just walk up and start talking tennis: "Is Roddick using his brain?" "He never used to."

I like the noise, I guess. In the old days in the old place, Connors' noise was a disgrace. But it was cherished at Flushing.

Connors and then McEnroe brought the game off its perch, down to the masses, who have the game now.

"Before this,'' Guillermo Vilas, who won the last Open at Forest Hills, told me a few minutes after the 2009 U.S. Open, "Forest Hills was the biggest stadium in the world.

"It was an amazing feeling, like a super-big party, like a rock-and-roll concert. For that era, it was huge, 15,000 people. But not for this era.''

Thomas took me out to the grass courts with a can of white tennis balls, and apologized three times as I fell three times during one point.

He drove me through the quiet neighborhood around the club, with one woman and her daughter out on bicycles, stopping him and waving.

But it was time to head back to Flushing Meadows, where my bag would be checked, and I would be frisked before walking through the metal detector and into the Ashe Stadium, the largest tennis stadium in the world.

I had a chance to play on an outer court at Flushing, too, and double-faulted on the first point because I couldn't focus on the toss, seeing that stadium in the corner of my eye and thinking about its size, and about Ashe.

I wish we could pick and choose across time, take the manners of the past and the athleticism and openness of the present.

The game only moves forward as we head to the Australian Open, where tennis is seen as a sport for the common man.

This big party is a thrill, no matter what comes with it. The game is faster and stronger than ever. Still, I have to admit something: Just before leaving Forest Hills' stadium, I picked up a rock from the rubble and stuffed it in my pocket.

Email me at gregcouch09@aol.com