Attending a match live isn’t quite the same as watching it on TV.  I went to the Legg Mason Tennis Classic in DC twice, once during qualifying and a little of the first round, and once for one of the semifinals.

As far as sporting events go, tennis isn’t terribly expensive.  A Sunday ticket at the start of the event was $20, the semifinals was only $45.  Perhaps the best deal was the quarterfinals at $40 where you were likely to see some good players, and you’d see two matches.

Outdoor sporting events haven’t done a great deal to make fans that comfortable.  Any nods to comfort would likely cost a great deal of money, so it’s not done.  Contrast this with a visit to an American mall where, on a hot summer day, the mall expends a great deal of money imitating the Arctic chill.

For example, if you watch a side event, not in the main stadium, the seats are wooden benches.  On a hot day, these seats are very hot.  They aren’t padded.  There’s nothing really done to make these seats cool.  Again, that’s par for the course if you attend, say, a football event.  The goal is to pack people in at a fairly cheap price.

Parking can be interesting.  Legg Mason is held at Rock Creek Tennis Center, which is a kind of public tennis court.  It’s public in that you don’t have to be a member to play, but you do have to pay to reserve courts, though anyone can do that.  The main courts used for the big tournaments are off-limits.  For at least a month, the center shuts down so they can prepare for the tournament.  The Legg Mason Tennis Classic recommends people come in by Metro which is the local subway.  There is no stop near the center, so they bus people in.  You can park there, but depending on how many people show up, they may have you park significantly far from the site, and then bus you in, which is what happened to me on my first visit.

As you enter, there are various shops all over.  Some advertise local tennis clubs, or USTA, some advertise companies that want to have an association with the tennis event, but are not otherwise tennis.  Food, as can be imagined, is expensive.  Think movie theatre prices.  Prices start as little as $5 and work to $20.  Drinks are easily $3 or more.  Alcohol is $6 or more (beer, wine, etc).  You can buy event t-shirts for $20 or more.  Oversized tennis balls cost around $40 are often used by kids to get autographs from pros that practice.

I’ll focus primarily on the semifinal event.  Saturday had two semifinal events.  Usually, the evening match is reserved for the marquee player, which was Andy Roddick.  Ah, Andy Roddick.  Last time he was hitting a tennis ball for money was, um, oh yes, Wimbledon where he barely lost 16-14 in an epic five set match against Roger Federer.  Since then Roddick skipped Davis Cup, then Indianapolis, and Los Angeles.  DC was his first event back.

Although del Potro was defending champ, he was slated for the afternoon match against Fernando Gonzalez.  The Legg Mason Tennis Classic has historically had the uncanny ability to pick the hottest week in DC to host the event.  This year was a little bit of an exception.  Weather was in the 80s or so, but as the weekend approach, the heat went up.

There were two reasons I opted for the evening match.  First, it would be cooler in temperature.  Second, it’s generally the match that has the featured player.  That match was Andy Roddick against surprise semifinalist, John Isner.  Isner’s first really successful tournament was this tournament.  He was a finalist in 2007 where he lost to, guess who?  Andy Roddick.  Since then, his career hasn’t really taken off.

Isner took the college route to professional tennis.  Unlike basketball or football, the college route usually means your game isn’t good enough for the pros.  This is especially true for the women’s game where women mature earlier than the men.  It is somewhat true of the men.  You’d be hard pressed to find a number 1 player who finished four years of college.  Still, some players, even as recent as 10-15 years ago have played college tennis and had a top 10 career (Todd Martin comes to mind).

Isner is one of many tall, tall players playing the game.  The last few years have seen a bunch of really tall players playing successfully.  Andy Roddick is listed at 6’2″ which makes him kinda tall-ish, but in the last 2-3 years, you have players like del Potro, Cilic, Karlovic (who has been around a while, but has had more success lately), Berdych, Querrey, and Isner who are 6’5″ or taller.

Isner’s a pretty shy guy.  He wears his cap, and generally keeps his head down.  While I’ve seen Querrey talk and have a notion of what kind of person he might be, I have on clue about Isner.  I know nearly nothing about him.  He had a very nice tournament surprising Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Tomas Berdych.  Isner is what you’d call a big server.  Like Karlovic, he wins by hitting a lot of aces.

However, to be successful in tennis, you need more than just a big serve.  If you just have a huge serve and nothing else, you’re likely to be mired in the 300s trying to move up.  At a minimum, you need one other weapon.  For most players, that one weapon is a forehand.  Isner has a pretty big forehand.  His backhand is a two-hander.  The goal is not to lose points on that side.  It’s not really a weapon.  Isner takes chances on his forehand using his serve to set it up.  Although Isner played doubles, like many of today’s players, he doesn’t volley well because everyone passes so well.

When you’re at a live match, there are all sorts of details you see that are completely missing in a telecast.  For example, the ballkids have to be quite coordinated.  On the side that is serving, each ballkid holds 3 balls, behind their back.  They must also be ready to hand a towel between every point.  Both Roddick and Isner wanted at least 3 balls, then they would toss back one ball.  On change of serves, they would roll the ball down to the other side of the court.

Despite the relatively cool day, each player was using the towel all the time.  The players would lift a finger up, like juniors do when they want to indicate a ball is out without actually having to say “out” when they wanted a towel.

Isner had some interesting quirks.  Wristbands seem a bit less necessary given how often each player reaches for the towel.  Isner had two.  To call one of them a wristband would be an understatement.  Isner had a forearm band, that covered his entire right forearm.

If you ever watch basketball, a player sometimes dribbles between his legs.  Imagine spreading your legs about shoulder width apart, and bouncing the ball from the front, between your legs, and having a hand behind you to catch the ball, then bouncing it from behind up front.  This is done to prevent other players from easily reaching the basketball.  Isner likes to bounce the ball behind his legs with his left hand, and then bounce it with his racquet once it goes through his legs.  He’s tall, so this poses few problems.

Now I was seated on a top level.  Imagine sitting in front of the net.  The ball would be crossing back and forth.  Well, I was far right of that and lined up with the back wall which is some 20 feet behind the baseline.  That meant I saw tennis at an angle.  It gives you a pretty good sense of the speed of shot than the view from behind.  Key to that is the forehand.  Forehands are hit so much harder than backhands.

The match was scheduled for 7 pm, and I decided to sit down at 6:30.  Surprisingly many people chose to wander the facility until the absolute start of the match (or later).  They decided to hold a ceremony prior to the start of the match.  Shortly after Wimbledon, there is an induction ceremony into the Tennis Hall of Fame.  Donald Dell was inducted.  During that induction he said he was sorry his mother, who is over 100, was unable to make the trip.  He wanted to have her there, so they redid the induction, albeit in only 10 minutes.  His mom showed up.

You might wonder who Donald Dell is.  Indeed many fans who were there to see Andy Roddick probably had no idea.  Dell was an American tennis player that was solid if not spectacular.  He eventually got a degree as a lawyer, helped found the ATP, and was one of the earliest agents.  His organization ProServ not only represented players, but also tournaments (most notably the DC event), and television coverage.  Donald Dell has been doing tennis commentary for over 20 years.  In the 1980s, he and Barry MacKay, another American tennis player from the 1950s, were frequent commentators on the USA network, which gave Mary Carillo her first opportunity.  Dell and MacKay were still doing commentary on Tennis Channel this weekend.

In other words, he is one of the biggest reasons the Legg Mason Tennis Classic exists as well as the ATP.  Even so, few people knew who he was, and were cheering for Andy Roddick.

The match started with the usual warmup, groundstrokes, volleys, overheads, serves.  My friend noticed that these pros often had trouble feeding lobs to their opponents.  I didn’t happen to notice it.

The first set was pretty much both players on serve.  Roddick had just beaten Karlovic in two tiebreaks (but there were breaks of serve, so it wasn’t like that), so he was probably used to the speed of Isner’s serve.  I didn’t think either player was hitting that well.  Roddick tried to play pretty aggressive.  Often, players trade rallies up the middle because hitting to the sidelines often amps the level of the rally.  Roddick didn’t seem as concerned because Isner doesn’t move as well as quicker players.

Several things to notice in live play.  First, players are really accurate.  Time and again, Roddick would hit shots that landed a foot or two from the sideline.  Slice backhands landed 2-3 feet from the baseline.  And lobs?  They go really, really high.  I might hit a lob that’s 20 feet high.  A typical pro will hit a defensive lob 50-60 feet high to buy lots of time.

The first set surprisingly went to Isner.  The second set was not as close.  Due to errors from Isner, Isner lost serve twiee, and Roddick knotted the match one set each.  Roddick showed that his improved speed gave him opportunities to win points where in the past, he’d not even reach the ball.  Isner tried to come to net a lot.  I counted maybe 15-20 approaches, but he won maybe 3-4 points.  I don’t know why he kept coming in, but it seemed to be a poor strategy.

Isner kept the third set close.  He served a lot into Roddick’s backhand on the ad court.  He mixed it up in the deuce court.  Roddick kept his serves more mixed up, often attacking the Isner forehand.  Isner began to chop the forehand return instead of taking the usual swing, which seemed to help him.  At 5-all, Isner had a game that was similar to Roddick’s last game against Federer.  Isner made some errors, and let Roddick break.  Roddick then held to win 7-5.  Isner did not break Roddick the entire match despite hitting quite a few more aces than Roddick.

As I left, one thing that was interesting was the concession stands.  They were left open so people could eat after the match ended, just before 10 pm.  I decided to leave the grounds around 10:20 pm.  Having left football games, I know it can be really crowded getting off a sporting site, but despite what seemed to be a huge crowd leaving, I was able to leave pretty easily.  So I was pretty happy about that.  I had parked on the grass because the facility just doesn’t have parking for that many people, so they organize the grassy areas as makeshift parking lots.

I watched the finals on TV.  I’ll combine that report with this.

I saw a few games of del Potro playing Gonzalez.  I figured, given Roddick’s kinda iffy groundies that del Potro would be able to make it tough for Roddick.  Imagine my surprise when Roddick had a break in the first set and made it hold up.

The final was held on easily the hottest day of 2009.  Temperatures were in the low 90s with court temperatures up in the 120s.  Roddick played tennis in Florida and lives in Texas, so he was used to the heat.  Given how del Potro suffered in the heat in his loss to Murray last year, it seemed the heat would favor Roddick and del Potro would fade.  But that’s not how it happened.  del Potro serves as big as anyone, with serves up in the 130 mph.  But key to his success is his forehand, which he clubs as hard as anyone.  Although his forehand wasn’t in full effect in the first set, it was in the second set.  del Potro had an early break in second set, but Roddick broke back, before del Potro secured another break.

In the third set, Roddick broke early and it seemed like he was on his way to another Legg Mason title, but del Potro had a huge game to break Roddick, and the match headed to a tiebreak.  del Potro got up a minibreak up early and eventually was up 6-3.  Roddick had two solid points and then saw a del Potro forehand go a little long to tie it 6-all.  del Potro served crazy good in the tiebreak, making nearly all his first serves.  He belted another good first serve and was up 7-6.  Then, with a huge forehand that clipped the sideline, del Potro took his second Legg Mason title in a row.

Give credit to del Potro for sticking the heat out, and lifting his play up to give Roddick a lot of trouble.  Both players will now head to Montreal where they will be joined by the big guns: Federer, Nadal (!), Murray, and Djokovic.

If you get a chance to watch a pro event, it’s generally not too pricey (outside of the Grand Slams).  If you have time, you can even volunteer!