New York: Day 3

We are now into Day 3 of our New York Adventure and this is also the main reason that we came to New York in the first place.

The majority of the group got up pretty early in order to make the first match in Queens at 11 a.m. We had to take a couple of subway trains to get there and only 40 minutes as well.

This was a pretty fun/alcohol free day. Although i do not know much about the sport, it was pretty entertaining to watch because some people will just go crazy about.

The first match i saw was an Aussie vs a guy from Brazil. This game was intense mainly because of the fans. People were dressed up for their favorite player and making up cheers, chants, and boos for whatever the occasion called for.

I saw some damn good matches throughout the day but I do not know much about the plays, stats, or ranks enough to give you a full update about what happened throughout the day so that is why I am just going to skip to the night match because that was the highlight of the evening anyway.

The Arthur Ash Stadium, where the night matches were being held, opened at 6 for people with the night passes. As we trek our way to our seats, which were the very last row of the entire stadium, the four of us were getting pumped about the nights events.

Since this was the opening night of the US Open, there was going to be an opening ceremony with some famous people. The O'Jays were they to sing "Love Train" as a video of kids stopped playing tennis in order to get on a train the is headed towards the US Open. When there was about a minute in the song left, the video ended and all of the kids who were in the video ran onto the court with their tennis rackets and just stood there and waved at the crowd.

Once that was over, Robin Givens, she is an anchor on either the Today show or Good Morning America, came out and made a speech about athletes who have charities that help children. She then introduced a video about Mia, Hamm, Doug Flutie, David Robinson, and Andre Agassai and the work each person has done with their particular charity.

Since it was the US Open, Andre Agassi was the last one to make a speech about his charity and he did a pretty damn good job at it as well. Then once the speeches ended, it was time for Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty to come out and sing "America the Beautiful". Then the matches started.

The first match to be played that night was Venus Williams vs Vera Dushevina of Russia. Good Lord this was one long match. It started around 8 p.m. and it had to be the longest match that I have ever seen. It lasted almost 3 hours of play time. That does not even include the time outs or anything like that at all. It was a good match but it was just too damn long for me.

Another thing that was a little weird about that match was that we were on the very top of the stadium and some people were a little too serious about watching tennis. The 4 of us were talking(never above a whisper though) during play which is generally not allowed because you do not want to do anything to distract the players at all, but since we were so high and far away from the players, it didn't really matter if we followed that rule or not.

The people in front of us thought we were speaking way too loud because they asked us to keep our conversation down to almost nothing. The family just seemed so cold about it, but we just continued to act the same as we did not to be rude but because all of the other people who either sat right in front or to the side of them were talking the same as we were and they said nothing.

After Venus Williams won the match, it was time to see Andy Roddick play. Roddick was up against an unranked German named Bjorn Phau. Now this was one hell of a match. Roddick and Phau had a serve that would average at 130 miles an hour. Even though we were not that close to the court, we could still hear each grunt the players did because it was so quiet.

One thing that we did notice was that due to the women's match taking so long, a lot of people started to leave and go home. As this was going on, we slowly made our way down to get closer and closer to the court. Eventually, we got as close as we could while still being on our tier. We decided to see if we could sneak down just to the second tier for a better view since so many seats became available.

In between the second and third set, a spokesman for the US Open was offering tickets upgrades to anyone who wanted to seat in the first tier of the stadium because it was being televised and they wanted as many seats that were going to be shown on TV to be filled. This was great news to us because we just went from the last row of the stadium to row 10.

On our way to get our new seats, we saw the always lovely looking Christie Brinkley. She was their with two friends and her mother. We asked her if we could take a picture with her and she was happy to do so. She was probably one of the nicest celebrities that I have met.

Once we got to our seats, the game seemed to be completely different. There was just a different vibe that became very exciting with everyone that moved from the top tier all the way down to the first 10 rows.

Again, the women's match took almost 3 hours to complete. I am glade that I was not the only one who felt that 3 hours for one match was just too damn long. The men's match was nearly half the time. Everything seemed to move a lot quicker and smoother. In the end, Roddick won, which was no surprise since he is ranked third.

As we were leaving the stadium, we saw David Robinson and gave him a high five before a crowd started to mob him for pictures. He was gone pretty quickly because he had some press that he had to do. We finally got on the subway for a 40 minute ride back to hotel. Once we got there, everyone went to sleep due to being outdoors and in the heat for an entire day.

Day 4: Coming Soon