In Which I Take A Brief Moment To Become A Tennis Commentator

A good Brit friend of mine has been visiting and last night we went to Madison Square Garden to witness the New York leg of the Pete Sampras V. Roger Federer money-spinning world tour.

The usual movers and shakers of the tennis world were carted out to remind everyone just how privileged they were to be there, watching these masters of the game etc etc, and there was more than enough use of the word 'winningest.' There was a lot of backslapping about how great 'we' New Yorkers are and, in particular, how wonderful 'we' are for bringing tennis back to Madison Square Garden (the last time tennis was played there was apparently 1996). There was also a fair amount of flag waving, audience participation, and some random warm-up entertainment acts (see below), all par for the course for a trip to the Garden, but generally it was quite restrained compared to the basketball and hockey games I've seen there and it made for a really good night out.

If you're interested in the tennis I'm sure you can read about it elsewhere. I just thought I'd share a few of my observations of the general event.

--Melissa Errico, married to Patrick McEnroe, sung quite probably the best rendition of the U.S. anthem that I've ever heard. And if you've attended even only one American sports event, you'll know how nerve-wracking the whole 'will they/won't they make the top note' thing can be.

--Two 15-year-old future tennis stars, Dennis Kuddla and Junior Ore, played a tie-break set to warm up the crowd. Once I'd got over making the usual snide Brit jokes about American names, the MSG screens stumped me by flashing up a snippet of information about one of the kids, who, for his age, "Is the 2nd highest-ranked American in the world." I know what they were getting at, but 'in the world'? As one of my editors would no doubt scream if he saw this sentence, "He's either the 2nd highest-ranked American or he's not. What's the world got to do with it?"

--There were 19,690 people at the Garden. That's probably double the number that have been there for the basketball/hockey matches I've attended and I have to hand it to you Americans - you certainly know how to throw a good sports-related party. Apart from a bit of a crush to get into the place, it's well organized, well sign posted (the only problem was my inability to read the signs) and I don't think I ever had to queue more than five minutes for a beer or the loo. I doubt even the new GBP750 million Wembley could boast those kind of achievements (but now that Pompey is going to Wembley (que sera, sera) I'll keep my fingers crossed for anyone lucky enough to get those tickets.)

--Hillside School's Drums Of Thunder were awesome and for once I didn't roll my eyes at the non-main-event type of entertainment you usually get shoved in your face at ever 30-second TV break at Madison Square Garden. Especially impressive was the only adult in the group, who conducted the kids entirely by dancing around them in a suit with painfully white trainers. It takes talent, people.
I found this clip of them from a basketball game a while back.


--Sampras has mellowed with age and was even moderately amusing (particularly impressive given that during the interviews he was generally standing next to Federer, who was as usual BRIMMING OVER with charisma). He's also lost a bit of hair. I took this as a good thing. He looks much less like a terrifying contender for a sketch of the missing link in human evolution.