Hot Wet Washington Open
Sebastian Korda won the Washington Open on Sunday, the first American man to do so since Andy Roddick in 2007. Great USA players of yore, Arthur Ashe, Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi among others, brought fame to themselves and to this venue located in bucolic Rock Creek Park in uptown Washington, D.C., as have such contemporary international stars as Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev, Gael Monfils, and Nick Kyrgios.
Redemption indeed, Paula Badosa following a year of anguish with a back injury, Sebastian Korda with the trophy his father Petr won thirty-two years ago. Way to go.
But this has been a good American year, with wins in both men’s (Jackson Withrow and Nathaniel Lammone) and women’s (Taylor Townsend and Asia Muhammad) doubles along with Korda’s triumph.
The men’s final was a fine match for most of two sets, Flavio Cobolli almost flawless in the first with graceful baseline power and unerring placement to the lines up against a Sebastian Korda at the top his own game, which is a mix of baseline pace and well placed shots to either wing and a net game that is deployed with surgical timing to put points away with volleys. It was like a choreographed duet designed to points going as long as the script demanded, until Cobolli made the break at four-all and then served out the set.
The women’s final was no less thrilling. Former no. 2 Paula Badosa, whom you would call the Barcelona Bomber were she not such a lovely and elegant young lady, pounding a very pretty child of Prague — the Prague Prodigy? — Marie Bouzkova, who at times looked like she could scarcely do more than push one of Miss Badosa’s big shots back into the net but began to find her footing and with it her aim, which kept finding the very edge of the lines.
She came back in the second set, as Korda would do later, with improved consistency and resilience against Miss B.’s pace and power. Thus matches went to third sets and there was some fear there would be another storm and a long rain delay — several sessions during the week went past midnight — but apart from a forty minute alert in the ladies’ match, the schedule this time was extended mainly by the players’ tenacity.
The big tennis news last week was Novak Djokovic’s Olympic gold medal in men’s singles, and well it should have been. The all-time leader in majors (twenty-four) outplayed Carlos Alcaraz, who had beaten him without conceding a set at Wimbledon less than a month ago.
It was an excruciatingly close match both of whose sets required overtime (tie-breakers) as neither man was able to break the other’s service. Djokovic out-shot Alcaraz, who at 21 is 16 years his junior and is considered the successor of his great compatriot Rafael Nadal, at crucial moments in the tiebreaks, both times with powerful cross court forehands to the alley that were too much for even the swift footed Carlito.
Two points made the difference and won the gold, proof (if it were needed) of Djokovic’s ability, for over two decades, to “fill the unforgiving minute,” as Kipling taught past generations of English schoolboys, “with sixty seconds worth of distance run … “; well, he sure deserved it and we can thank the Olympics for providing the inspiration such a feat brings. Especially over and against all the rot that has penetrated the movement launched by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, in the 1890s to promote sportsmanship and virtue and international brotherhood.
Actually, the athletes always save the Games that the national sports establishments and their political allies tend to sully. In the sixty seconds worth of distance run department, you could not do better than the fastest man on Earth, Noah Lyles, first American gold medalist in the 100-meter sprint in two decades; or Simone Biles and her fantastic team-mates in the American women’s gymnastics; or the phenomenal French swimmer Leon Marchand (and his American coach Bob Bowman). The young champions make you dream — perchance try harder in whatever you are doing.
As the Games were always meant to do. You can corrupt them all you want as the Nazis sought to do at Berlin in 1936, and a Jesse Owens will show them up.
The modest tennis tournament in Rock Creek Park originated as a fundraiser for a fine Washington organization, the Washington Tennis Foundation, that had been launched somewhat informally by public-spirited Washingtonians to give dead-end, what we now call at-risk or underserved, kids a chance to stay out of court by spending their free time on the courts.
When tennis went Open in 1968, Donald Dell and Arthur Ashe, close friends and former leaders of the American Davis Cup team, agreed to help out and, with a renamed Washington Tennis and Education Foundation (not just stay out of court but get tutoring and tennis instruction), brought the amateur tournament into the men’s tour.
The Washington Open Arrives
As tennis went increasingly big time — even before Djokovic and his contemporaries, tennis champions like John McEnroe and Pete Sampras and Chris Evert and Steffi Graff were as popular, if their names were not quite as well known, as Roger Federer and Serena and Venus Williams — the Washington Open’s quaint modesty, its neighborhood block party atmosphere, was refreshing.
Variously branded Washington Star Invitational, Legg-Mason, Citi, and now Mubadala Citi Open, the competition was reminiscent of a time when you took hot muggy weather in stride and men wore straw fedoras and seer sucker suits and women dressed in cotton or linen dresses and carried parasols and fans. As it happens, the fans and the hats, or some knock off idea of a hat, are distributed on the grounds and you see people in the bleachers fanning themselves in unison, which, it occurred to me during the Badosa-Boukovia match, was what you see in a bullring; bullfighting, however, has been banned in Barcelona.
There are seventy-five hundred seats in the bleachers, which is small by contemporary stadium standards, and the outside courts are always packed. You could argue that the tournament has been a victim of its own success. The stadium, built thanks to the generosity of William H. G. Fitzpatrick in the heyday of the Dell-Ashe partnership, is in need of renovation and repair, the grounds need expansion and, “fan experience” oblige, improvement. Fortunately there are legions of immigrants (as well as natives) in Washington and its wealthy suburbs constantly at work in the construction trades.
Meanwhile, by all evidence players and fans enjoy Washington’s summertime diversion from its usual business. And why should they not? Even the rain, so typical of this time of year in the city on (or in) the swamp, is welcome. I ran out in the patch of woodland still standing between the courts and the street, 16th Street, that leads straight to the Capitol, and let it soak, childish summer fun.
Downtown they ought maybe to listen to James McMurtry’s Childish Things, but this assumes the pols and their grifting hangers-on are not way, way beyond redemption. Better worry, though, because after the flood, the fire. Hank Williams has that one down in a well known gospel.
But I digress. To my own surprise, so well had he been playing, young Flavio faltered in the third set, as Sebastian bageled him with a graceful exactness that kept improving. This contrasted with the young ladies, both showing signs of weariness but holding on till the end. Redemption indeed, Paula Badosa following a year of anguish with a back injury, Sebastian Korda with the trophy his father Petr won thirty-two years ago. Way to go.
And back to work.
READ MORE from Roger Kaplan:
Tennis Spectacle at Rock Creek Park
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