The tryout at the USTA for the upcoming US Open was held on June 25, more than 400 showed up. It just reinforced my believe that people who run the tennis events are less capable. The event’s scheduled at 3pm:
The registration begins at 3 p.m. and tryouts start at 4 p.m. at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
We arrived at 3pm. Immediately saw a friend of ours.
Go wait on line, out side of Court 7.
The line was huge.
Weather was extremely nice, bright sunshine and the sky was actually blue.
The line didn’t move a bit for the next hour except grow longer.
All I could think was …
‘Darn, we’re missing out on a dry day to play …’
Because New York has been raining a lot lately.
Global warming?
People watching?
At about 4pm, the skipper who ran the show walked briskly by. I tried to ask her if the birth certificate is needed (Charlie told me so but I forgot …).
She was very abrupt.
“I can’t stop [walking].” She said and continued her walk.
I shout my question if birth certificate was needed.
She yelled abck:
“No, you don’t need anything to registier, today.”
The registration finally began.
Someone passed a single page of flyer to the waiting crowds that indicating the requirement. 14 years old and up are eligible to work there. Good.
Then why didn’t they pass the registration forms as well?
What they did was … every one passed by the first table to pick up a numbered card and was given a form to fill, then proceed to another row of tables, hunch over it to fill. All those could have been accomplished while they waited on line.
A huge sum of time was wasted.
They were like newbies, as if it was their first time to do so.
There were swamps of media on hands too. The girl in the third pic (unaltered) from left is real, and really thin. American Beauty? More like an eyesore in my eyes: malnutrition. She might born that way but lord don’t send her to a sport event or have her legs covered. She doesn’t project a healthy image. Well, unless you compare to the obsess .. ..
Ok, I knew tennis is popular and there are huge populace stands at attention to be associated with it. But do they really have to (or want to) abuse fans’ good will?
We were in the middle of the line up. But Pumpkin got a card numbered 425. Clearly it’s a screw up. The twin sisters were there too, and more than 20 spots behind us. One of them had #418.
Many parents were complaining too.
They had few pro ball boys/girls demonstrated their crafts. This dream girl did the Center Court – not centerfold. She has the speed which the net ballperson needs. With a strong throwing arms, one could do the baseline.
We ran into many acquaintance aside from the twins.
Peter’s daughter was there.
Franklin was there with 3 of his buddies.
The two adults evaluator or recruiters took their time with each candidates (about 5 minutes), mostly kids, the very end. 
Pumpkin was second to the last, 2nd of the twins. They explained the tasks and conferred with them. The two adults were patient. There were youngsters feeding the balls to the net and the tryouts try to copy what they saw earlier, or what they saw on TV since most of them are also tennis bums.
Having said the above, I wondered if it’s fair for all when the candidate is clearly not going to make it. (So so American, bending backward to be fair ..) I have no intention to embarrass anyone but do we have to watch her trying?
It was a very long day. We didn’t leave USTA till 7:20pm.
Ok, I’m overkilling this post with pictures.
SO … allows me here one more, just 1 more …
The Kodak moment came at the end: capturing my kids in the USTA is priceless ..
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