Andy Murray is finally a Grand Slam champion! The crown of "Best Player Never to Win a Major" is officially up for grabs, boys. He beat Novak Djokovic in the fifth straight US Open Monday final. This has angered officials and tennis fans from all over, many of whom have offered their own suggestions about what needs to be done in order to avoid Monday finals in the future. Many of these suggestions are impractical, stupid, or both.
The most common refrain has been, "Why don't they put a roof on the stadium?" Wimbledon famously added a roof to Centre Court a couple years ago, the Australian Open has roofs on both of its main show courts, and the French Open recently announced plans to build a retractable roof in the near future, leaving the US Open as the only Grand Slam tournament without one. This argument only intensified when the USTA announced plans for a massive expansion/renovation of the Tennis Center, but a roof on Arthur Ashe Stadidum was nowhere to be found.
I don't see why this is such a big "problem." If you think about the number of rain delays at the US Open each year, there really aren't that many. The unfortunate timing of those rain delays late in the second week (when it's a lot harder to make up cancelled/postponed matches) is the only reason why the tournament has been extended by a day in each of the last five years. If it rained on Monday or Tuesday of the first week, it would be a non-issue.
Besides, putting a roof on the massive Arthur Ashe Stadium would be impossible. The stadium seats 23,000 people and sits on swampland. The extra weight of the roof would make it sink into the ground. Some argue that it's too big, but they sell all those tickets every year, so I'm not buying that argument. Those who make that argument claim that they could simply remove the top few rows of the upper section to make room for a roof while also removing some of the extra weight. Removing, say, 6,000 seats per session over the course of 22 sessions in 14 days would be a tremendous revenue hit. And an unnecessary one.
I don't like the idea of a roof for another reason, though. It's not the US Open. The US Open is the players feeding off the energy of the crowd during night matches. Something would be lost if those matches were suddenly inside. It's like the difference between watching a baseball game outside (think Yankee Stadium) and watching one in a dome (dark, dingy Tropicana Field, which has absolutely no energy whatsoever). Each of the other Grand Slams needs a roof for very particular reasons. Australia gets unbearably hot in the middle of January. The rain in London is as much a Wimbledon tradition as tennis whites. Roland Garros doesn't have lights, so play at the French Open has to stop when it gets dark. Night tennis was invented at the US Open. The players and fans love it. The mystique of playing under the lights is gone if you put a roof on the stadium.
Another idea that was suggested in Sports Illustrated was switching the surface from hardcourt to clay. This is possibly the stupidest idea I've ever heard. (ST's argument included the fact that the US Open was played on clay for three years in the mid-70s. This is true. However, that was during the final three years at the West Side Tennis Club, which ditched grass courts, before the move to the National Tennis Center was made in 1978.)
Where do I start on how bad that idea is? Well, they already have a Grand Slam played on clay. It's called the French Open. That's the one the Americans suck at. The US Open is the hardcourt Grand Slam. Those blue courts are as much a part of the tournament's identity as grass is a part of Wimbledon's. Second, pretty much every tennis court in North America is a hardcourt. That's the surface Americans know. Why would you not want to play the US Open on the surface that American players are most familiar with and feel most comfortable on? You'd also need to have every tournament in the six-week long US Open Series (which is also know as the "summer hardcourt series") switch over to clay if you did that. That would make about as much sense as creating another clay court tournament (in the United States!) for Rafael Nadal to win every year. Leave the clay to Europe. North America is hardcourts. (Not to mention the fact that the courts at the National Tennis Center are open to the public 11 months a year, so you'd be forcing everybody who pays to use them to now play on clay, which makes you disgusting, instead of hardcourts.)
The biggest reason the roof debate has become such a hot-button issue is because of the five straight Monday finishes. The Monday finishes have been necessary because of the lack of flexibility in the US Open schedule. Due mainly to TV committments, the US Open is the only Grand Slam that doesn't give the players a day off between the semifinals and final. This Saturday-Sunday format for the men (Friday-Saturday for the women) has been the biggest problem, since a postponed semifinal means you automatically have to postpone the final. Come next year, that's not going to be a problem, since the tournament organizers have finally bowed to pressure from the players and will give the men an off day starting next year.
Obviously, this means the US Open schedule is going to change in 2013. The question is how? There are two solutions that seem to make the most sense. The first is having all four semifinals on Friday, with the women's final on Saturday night and the men's final on Sunday afternoon. The other is leaving the semifinals the way they are, moving the women's final from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon and moving the men's final to Monday permanently.
USTA higher-ups aren't enamored with the Monday finals, but I think that's the most sensible soultion (and fans will be a lot more accomodating if the final is actually scheduled for Monday instead of rescheduled from Sunday). CBS isn't going to give up that Sunday afternoon post-football timeslot, so one of the finals has to stay on Sunday. But that Saturday night women's final hasn't been that big of a ratings draw since the Williams sisters led to its creation in the early 00s.
More importantly, if you're going to give the men a day off and keep the final on Sunday, then you're giving up those Saturday afternoon semifinals that draw pretty good ratings and replacing them with what? Doubles finals? Doesn't seem like a smart idea. Ditching Saturday night and putting the women after football probably means you'll get higher ratings for the women's final, as well. And if the men's final is scheduled for Monday right off the bat, it's a lot easier for CBS to determine a time and schedule around it. (Think about how cool a Monday night men's final would be.)
Lastly, CBS isn't going to preempt its regular daytime programming on both Thursday and Friday. That means all four semifinals would be on Friday. This would work (you have three in the afternoon and the second men's match at night), but that night match would likely end up on ESPN2, not CBS, which I'm sure both CBS and the USTA don't want. You'd also then still have the women playing back-to-back. If the whole point of changing the schedule is to give the men a day off between the semis and the final, you have to do the same for the women. It's not fair to them if you don't. (I understand it's harder on the body to play best-of-five than best-of-three, but that doesn't change the fact you can't give one a day off and not the other.)
These five straight Monday finals might've been a blessing in disguise for the US Open. As fans, we've gotten used to, and even accepted, them. Making them permanent seems, to me at least, the easiest, most sensible solution when the USTA changes the schedule next year.
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