This is a tough time of year for tennis fans. There are no big tournaments, or even small ones, as players take a well-deserved break from competition. Accustomed as we are to turning on the TV and finding live tennis (on the Tennis Channel, of course), we find ourselves in a kind of involuntary withdrawal.
But this year, for those of us fortunate enough to live in Fort Lauderdale, there is high-quality tennis we can watch in person, and for free. The famous Orange Bowl International Tennis Championships have moved, hopefully permanently, from their long-time home in Miami to the newly renovated Jimmy Evert Tennis Center in Holiday Park. They bring together the world’s most talented juniors, and you can stand literally inches from the court and watch the players who in a few years will be interviewed by Brett Haber and Mary Jo Fernandez. I’m off to watch them now.
Hundreds of people gathered yesterday for the dedication of the Chris Evert Stadium Court at the Jimmy Evert Tennis Center in Holiday Park. Evert - introduced by Chris Fowler as "the greatest champion ever to come out of South Florida" - said in her speech that in the early '70s six juniors from Holiday Park made it to Wimbledon.
She recalled that, when she was #1, she asked her father why he had taught all of his kids to play tennis. She expected him to say something like, "So you could see the world." Instead he replied: "To keep you off the streets." She didn't understand that, she said, until she had her own children. She added that he worked ten-hour days, every day of the year. He never took a vacation; never traveled to watch her play. (He got too nervous.)
Jimmy Evert was still teaching when we moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1989. For years I would see him and his wife Colette hitting in the evening - "the ball sailing smoothly over the middle of the net before its clean, untroublesome return - in a session that was as much a conversation, and the semblance of a marriage, as it was an exercise ritual" (from my essay "Florida Man" in the Winter 2024 issue of The American Scholar).
Saturday morning we headed out around 9 and arrived in Miami about 40 minutes later. The parking lot at Trinity Cathedral, next door to ArtMiami, was practically empty. (Doors opened at 11.) As predicted, I eagerly paid the $50 fee, happy that it was going to the church I’ve been attending (sporadically) for twenty odd years. Then we walked to the Marriott for breakfast on the terrace. One needs sustenance before a day of art.
I had thought we’d beat the traffic tomorrow and take Brightline down to ArtMiami. Then I checked the fares. To travel round-trip from Fort Lauderdale, at a reasonable hour, would cost the two of us about $140. At first I was enraged. Then I thought: We’ll drive and, thanks to Brightline, whatever we pay for parking will seem a bargain.
At Christmas on Las Olas yesterday evening I saw two familiar faces (not counting those of Santa Claus, and the waitstaff at Ann’s). I often say that the longer I live in Fort Lauderdale the fewer people I know, as friends move away and newcomers stream in. So I was delighted to run into my friend Shawn, a native whose law office is on Las Olas, and Annalee, a woman from South Africa.
Yesterday we drove down to the University of Miami to hear the head of mission at the Polish embassy speak about Polish-American cooperation. The talk was held in the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science on a part of the campus I had never been to before. I had never been a fan of the UM campus; it always seemed a modern and uninteresting hodgepodge, with none of the stately beauty of northern colleges, or even UF and FSU. But I was charmed yesterday when I found, on the lawn in front of the institute, a collection of hammocks strung between palm trees. Some were green, others were orange, and a number were occupied by students, their bags resting on the grass below them. The hammock is a symbol of languid relaxation, and to find it in rows – like al fresco carrels – on a university green was as endearing as it was surprising. Of course, it’s exactly what one needs after a lecture on molecular science.