Obviously I'm not a tennis fan. I tried to learn how to play it once, and that was enough. Did you know there are tennis courts high in Grand Central Terminal? That's where I started to learn from a Hungarian woman who wore all white. And I finished there. Over 40 years ago.
As for watching it...well that's not a pastime either. It is incredibly repetitive, with swings and grunts and thawacks, then some groans, applause, sweat, towels, and they do it again until the score says the match is over. And that scoring. Each point earned looks like the last point earned. The scoring system is from where I don't know. The Norman invasion? 1066? Any game that starts at zero, adds 15 twice, then ten, then I don't know. Somehow they stop at 6 games per set, needing to win by two games. When I think of tennis I think of Set Theory, pun intended.
Basically, the same thing keeps going on and on in tennis. But people like it. People play it. And obviously there's a good deal of money there for everyone to take a piece of. A good friend of ours works for a garden/landscaping place, Garden World/Keil Brothers in Flushing who supply all the plants and flowers at the tennis center. When tennis comes to Flushing Meadow every year for two weeks, it is a BIG story.
People in Manhattan in particular seem to gravitate toward attending the matches. The crowd looks different than that at a ball game. Half the people seem to have a light sweater tied around their neck, draped down their back, a pose I associate with people who want you to think they have money. And how could you have any money at one of those events if you buy something there? Worse than a ball park.
I was once on on a train going to Washington and it was about the time Mayor Bloomberg was pushing hard for a West Side football stadium to house the Jets. The idea never really went past someone building a model of what the place would look like.
I was talking to the woman next to me and the subject came up for some reason. I told her I thought it was a good idea. The white wine/shrimp set could collide with the bratwurst, ribs and beer set and try to get along. That alone she said should be reason enough to build the stadium.
Of course there is no West Side football stadium, but boy has there been construction in Flushing Meadow for that tennis center! I used to commute to work from my Flushing home on the 7 Train and saw that area of Queens go from the remnants of two World's Fairs to Tennis Central. Stadiums, domes. The place is an industry for two weeks every September.
In yesterday's New York Times, Sarah Lyall, a reporter back from her stint as a London correspondent, did a story on how IBM's artificial software, Watson, is creating highlight video. Video of anything is of course what rules the world these days. And the tennis people do not want to be left out. You've got to believe it, there is a managing director for digital strategy at the United States Tennis Association.
Sponsorship at tennis events is a big deal. And IBM is right in there because the people who are likely to be going to these matches might be software/hardware decision makers. Nothing happens by accident.
Before retiring, my former company had me working with IBM on developing/enhancing their health insurance fraud detection software. Watson was just coming in as I was going out. My former boss now works for IBM and he tells me Watson is a big part of everything IBM does these days along the lines of providing software solutions for business. BIG. It is in all the commercials.
Ms. Lyall's piece tells of how the Watson software assigns excitement numbers to video: cheers, applause, grunts, (I suppose) tossed rackets, aces, match points, screams, moans, chest thumps, fist pumps, struts. Make of it what you will, but I wonder if the boys and girls at IBM are going to start rating movies. Maybe even porno movies. That would be interesting. I think I'd like to read about that too.
There can be as many as 87 matches played in one day at the tennis center. Watson creates an "excitement level" number. The high number of course is 1.0. A recent match scored a .809 for highlights. Like I said, movies (of all types) have to be next. With this number earned, a highlight from the match was posted on the Open's website and app.
There is no limit to what an app can do for your life. And possibly attendance.
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