The new roof was put to good use in its first U.S. Open. It was used for parts of nine matches, starting with the night session match on Aug. 31 between Rafael Nadal and Andreas Seppi.
In truth, the genuine star of the Roger Federer-less U.S. Open was the brand-new, 8,000-seat Grandstand that was greeted with glowing reviews.
The Grandstand, yards from the Grand Central Parkway, is the perfect size, the best place to watch a match in the first week — by far — with many sunny spots and shade in the last few rows. Fans can even walk up a stairway to a standing-room only spot during play.
This Open’s $150 million roof was not needed this year to prevent any massive delays on the all-important final weekend. In fact, when the roof closed (average closing time was 5 minutes 34 seconds, according to the USTA) the rain often stopped soon after and occasionally the sun popped into the sky.
However, under the USTA policy, once the roof is shut during the match, it can not reopen until the next match. It would serve the USTA good to reevaluate that policy next year now that its showcasing of the white top is over.
The Open is an outdoor tournament with a lot of quirks stemming from the late-summer Flushing wind, heat and humidity. Overusing the roof gives it the feel of a winter indoor tournament in Stockholm — way too sanitized. Already the roof’s superstructure has lessened the wind considerably. Players complained about the increased volume under the closed roof, too.
Here are other takeaways from the 2016 Open, which set daytime session attendance records, twice topping 40,000.
The USTA held a press conference to continue to promote the grand opening of its new player-development facility in Orlando, Fla. in January. Let us hope this is the trick to get the American men back on the radar. For the fifth straight year, no U.S. player got to the Open quarterfinals.
The training centers have been split between Flushing’s National Tennis Center and a campus in Boca Raton, Fla. The new place will be 50 percent larger than the NTC, will contain six red-clay courts, a few green clay (Har-Tru) and courts wired for advanced analytics. There will be no more excuses about young Americans unable to develop their groundstrokes properly because of the dearth of clay courts.
“This will have a major footprint in how we are working with our youth,” USTA’s director Katrina Adams said. “We’re going to get those champions.”
Of the Americans now, only Frances Tiafoe, 18, looks to have the upside to be a champion.
Angelique Kerber will leave for Germany and be feted as the new Open champion and world’s No. 1 player. The 6-foot-1 serving machine Karolina Pliskova may have made her career breakthrough at age 24.
Chris Evert said on the women’s finals telecast: “We need new faces’’ instead of speculation about whether Serena Williams can ever top Margaret Court’s record 24 Grand Slam singles titles.
Perhaps Williams, who is still tied with Steffi Graf at 22, would be appreciated more if she was a better loser.
Though there were opportunities, Williams — after losing Thursday night in the semifinals to Pliskova — did not congratulate Kerber in the locker room for supplanting her at No. 1 nor did she in her testy press conference, saying only she wouldn’t talk about losing the computer ranking. Certainly the No. 1 ranking — which she held for 3 ¹/₂ years — does not mean as much to her as winning Grand Slam titles, but she comes off as ungracious.
After her Open semifinals upset loss to Roberta Vinci last year that derailed her bid at a true Grand Slam, Serena was rude in her press conference, then shut it down the rest of the year. It was surprising Sports Illustrated named her 2015 Sportsperson of the Year over Stephen Curry.
Federer’s absence — first time since 1999 — definitely hurt the Open’s buzz, especially because Nadal lost in the third round and Andy Murray in the fourth. There were more Open fans walking around in the “RF’’ hats than any other symbol. A reevaluation of moniker “Big 4’’ is needed. The phrase no longer applies — and that is not good for the sport.