I spent last week at a women's tennis event in Allentown. For all the time I spent in Pennsylvania as a child, I had never been there. I went there from Raleigh, traveling through the traffic bottleneck approaching Washington, and then up around Baltimore and into south-central Pennsylvania, approaching Allentown from the west and passing through some small parts of Amish country. It was a calm, quiet, and pretty drive - much nicer than the natural utilitarianism I would experience in New Jersey at the end of the week.
When I arrive at the hotel late Saturday night, there was a Jewish wedding party, a band in the bar, and a youth softball tournament that had quite literally overrun the hotel. Consequently, the front desk could not find my room, and I had to put down my own credit card for the night. As I waited, the desk clerk was on the phone with our chief umpire, telling him that there had been an error in reservations, that the hotel was overbooked, and that their company policy for overbooking was that whoever arrived first got the remaining rooms. Thankfully, I got a room, albeit a smoking one.
While I never found out who owned the hotel, it was the most patriotic place I have ever stayed. Seals with eagles adorned doors, carpets, and directional signs. The restaurant was called "America". The walls were adorned with all sorts of patriotic photographic art. Even the cigar lounge was prominently sponsored by Samuel Adams beer. (Although, I admit some trepidation in including this last fact, given that I do not know the provenance of that line of beers. I just know from the advertising that it seems colonial and patriotic.) And each morning at 8 a.m., they salute America with a flag raising. Employees and guests gather at the flag poles and honor hotel guests' family and friends who have served in the armed forces. The flag is raised to the National Anthem, followed by the much-overplayed "God Bless the U.S.A." by - you guessed it - Lee Greenwood. [Right next door to the hotel was the Liber-tee mini-golf. I went over there a few times for ice cream, as well as to play a round of golf by myself one cool night.]
The facility for tennis was decent, the staff was good, and the week was fairly normal. We had a few rain delays, one that moved our matches to the adjoining indoor courts. Imagine, if you will, Noah's Ark. Now, turn it upside down and place it over four tennis courts. That is what the indoor facility looked like. It was constructed of rich, dark wood planks around four inches wide, and it was built quite securely. The arc of the roof gently curved back in the opposite direction before reaching a point at the top. While the entire place smelled like your grandmother's damp attic, it did not leak a drop of water.
On Friday evening after work, I stopped by the supervisor's desk to chat before returning to the hotel. The order of play for the next day was on the table - two singles semifinals and the doubles final. As I looked at it, I said to her, "Well, I bet I know which match I am doing tomorrow." I had already had one of the singles semifinalists that day in her quarterfinal match, and back-to-back matches for chair umpires are avoided. And I've never done a final, so...
"You are doing the doubles final," she said. I told her that I was pretty certain this would be my first professional final. "Don't you think it's about time, then?" she said.
I wound up doing the opposite singles semifinal first, and then the doubles final third the next day. Other than a few extra duties for the final, it was mostly like any other match. I hadn't felt nerves on court in a long time, so it was an interesting feeling. But once we all got a few games under our belts, it was just like any other day at the office. And the match went pretty smoothly.
One note from the singles semifinal. The player to my left came to the next for an overhead smash. She succeeded in putting the ball into play against her opponent, but I heard something hit the ground as I watched the ball speed to the other side. The opponent got her racquet on the ball, but it sailed far outside. That's when I noticed the sound again, and saw the first player's racquet bouncing in her opponent's court. Apparently during the smash, the racquet slipped from her hand, bounced on her side of the court and then over the net. After the ball went out, the first player said to me, "Do I still win the point?" "No," I replied, to laughter from the player and the crowd.
And on other note - in another match, a tall player came racing into the net to play a short ball from her opponent. She got the return over, but her foot touched the base of the net in the process, so I called "touch". She looked at me and said, "Touch? What touch? Who touch?" So I told her that her foot had touched the net. As she walked back to the baseline, she shrugged and said, "Eh, my big feet."
Sunday morning I left for Albany for World TeamTennis, a pleasant drive of a couple hundred miles. Since I wasn't in a hurry, I drove mostly 55 mph on this trip. When I arrived, I discovered my gas mileage was 62.5 mpg for the trip. That's when I decided that I needed a bumper sticker reading, "I Drive This Way To Save Money". It amazed me at all the SUVs racing past me, sometimes more than 20 mph faster than me. Before you complain about the high price of gas, how about adjusting your driving habits?
I've also been playing the license plate game with some friends - the hard version, where you have to find all 50 state plates in alphabetical order. I have been stuck on Colorado for a couple of months now, which annoyed me since I was going to be up in New England these two weeks to get Connecticut and Delaware. And despite seeing Washington, California, Wyoming, Florida (lots of Florida), North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Quebec, New Brunswick, and even Mexico (D.F.), I still haven't seen Colorado. I'll have more to say about this in a future entry about bumper-sticker politics.
I was in Albany for World TeamTennis, a unique format of professional tennis that uses a box umpire in place of a chair umpire. In other words, you do the same job, but just standing the entire time on a box at the net. WTT has different formats, scoring systems, procedures, verbiage, and mechanics. And while I have been a line umpire at WTT events before - a job exactly the same as line umpiring on the pro circuit - I had never been a box umpire before.
I studied the rules carefully, but some of them are arcane and hard to get unless you see them in action. I don't get the cable channel that shows WTT, so I asked a lot of questions in the last couple of weeks. I knew the basics, but I did not know what the actual product looked like, so I was winging it. Players can tell by the little things if you know what you are doing. If you can't get simple announcements and verbiage correct, they'll mark you as a rookie and eat you alive, even if you aren't. So I tried to master the little things that would instill confidence.
WTT has noisy crowds, even during play; it has coaches and players that come from the bench to argue calls with you; it has instant replay and challenges (in some cities); it has a headset microphone and a Palm Pilot for live scoring and a wide range of line umpire skills, varying from city to city. In essence, it is a challenge even for experience officials. And it was one of the few things left on my list of things I hadn't yet done in tennis.
The night seems like a blur, even though I was sweating, my legs hurt, and I was on the box for three hours, as the match went into overtime. But overall I survived it, and I even enjoyed it a little bit. I'll be more prepared for tonight's match at the DuPont Country Club in Wilmington, and then I will be done with WTT for the far forseeable future. (In case you are wondering, I am next off to see family in the Washington area and then have a vacation with Dave, and then I go to Lexington for a week and St. Joseph, MO (north of Kansas City) for a week.)
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