Travel Blog

One of the many things I love about Miami is that it’s the rare American city where I can actually feel tall. Though not when I go to the Miami Open. Entering Crandon Park on Friday morning I nearly ran into Martina Hingis coming from a practice session. My mind sailed back to 1997 when I had watched her on a practice court going through fitness drills with a smile on her face. She had not sprouted up in the ensuing two decades, but her 30-something hitting partner had.

Farther in, I passed a few other sweat-glistened players. Julia Goerges of Germany kindly stopped to have her picture taken with a fan, while her towering team waited off to the side. These tall, tanned, square-jawed entourages speed through the grounds and remind me of comedian Aparna Nancherla’s term for the models she sees on the streets of New York: self-esteem pickpockets.

The spectators themselves, if not always tall, were generally fit. You don’t find the overweight folks at a tennis match that you do at a baseball game, probably because a good number of them play the sport they have come to watch. While most baseball fans haven’t touched a bat in decades.

Rain started falling so I headed to the stadium and up to the media center, passing with reverence the first row of computers where Bud Collins used to sit with his wife Anita – the Royal Couple of the press room, both dearly missed after Bud’s passing last year.

After lunch – a delicious smoked salmon crepe out in the food court – I found Agnieszka Radwanska hitting with a young African-American I had never seen.

“She’s 13,” said her grandmother, sitting in the last row of the bleachers. Down on the court, the rallies turned into points, a good number of which the freshly-minted teenager won. And the Krakovian wasn’t going easy on her. I asked the grandmother – who told me the girl’s name was Coco Gauff (you heard it here first) – how she had arranged a practice with Radwanska.

“Her agent set it up,” the grandmother said. Of course – the 13-year-old’s agent.

Nearby, the once-wunderkind Hingis was signing autographs after her doubles match. “Linda,” the woman standing next to me whispered, gazing at Hingis’s now chiseled visage. I mused on the competitive spirit that can make a former #1 happy after an early round doubles victory in Miami.

“Do you know why she split with Mirza?” another woman asked me. I didn’t know, nor did I know what to make of the fact that I looked like someone who might.

Later, watching a women’s doubles match, a man from Wisconsin told me he had just played for the first time “Florida rules tennis.” In 28 years of playing tennis in Florida, I had never heard the term. “It’s when nobody serves into the sun,” he explained.

The sun was long gone when I found Goerges again, practicing on Court 9 under the lights. She is my favorite German player after Andrea Petkovic. (Petkovic cites Goethe and Wilde as her favorite writers.) Watching her Friday, my affection for her grew. Her coach – or at least the man watching her hit – was wearing glasses, I now noticed, and her hitting partner had a bald spot. It was nearing 9 o’clock; I had first spotted her well before noon. Still, she continued pounding balls, sometimes sharing a laugh with her team. When she finally finished, the coach picked up the balls and, noticing me standing alone in the stands, held one up to throw to me. I gave a why-not shrug and the ball came floating up to my outstretched hand. It was a Penn 1 with the words "miami open" printed in black on the other side. I put it in my bookbag and headed for the exit.