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.
In my ongoing effort to find good shows to stream that nobody’s talking about, I stumbled upon A Storm for Christmas. It’s a six-part Norwegian series on Netflix that takes place at the Oslo airport on a day when all flights are cancelled because of bad weather. It follows the stories of about a dozen characters – a pop star, a bartender, a female pastor, a luggage handler, an aging pianist, a man heading for vacation in Malaga – and it is charming without being cloying. You watch it and wish you were stranded at the Oslo airport. My one quibble is that almost everybody – passengers and airport personnel – is attractive, which seems a bit of a stretch. Though it is in Scandinavia.
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.