When I went to the US Open last week, I was still a live tennis virgin. Like anyone who is a fan of tennis and writing, I am repeatedly stunned by David Foster Wallace’s Roger Federer essay, and it convinced me that taking a trip to see the sport at one of the most legendary arenas in the game would be worthwhile in some nebulous, obligatory way.

What I would get out of going to see a US Open session was an unknown variable. Frankly, I am of that new generation of sports fans who not only don’t need to attend a game or match to satisfy their viewing desires, but who often don’t need watch the game on TV feel as though they experienced it. Talking about the shift away from watching sports in person to watching them in the comfort of a home with a 52-inch plasma screen TV, cheap beer, the internet and clean bathrooms has become trite. It’s a given. The various professional sports leagues have in different ways attempted to mitigate the factors that pull fans away from stadiums. The NFL prevents you from watching your hometown’s team on TV if the game doesn’t sell out. The NBA essentially gives tickets away, especially if the team is awful (see: Washington Wizards). The MLB has a complex blackout system, and so on and so forth.

The US Open, however, does not fall into the same category as the other sports leagues. It happens once a year, and it’s an event. More than that, it’s an event for New Yorkers, which of course all New Yorkers love thanks to the ego that begins to grow in every resident whether he’s a native or a transplant. It’s nice to confirm your suspicion that yes, you do live in the greatest city in the world, which is why you deserve to see the most dominant athletes in tennis. If you get to mingle with some celebrities along the way, so be it.

But the US Open can no longer trade on prestige alone. Or rather, prestige means different things now. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are nice, but seared scallops and lounges filled with hi-def TVs are give you that distinct bourgeois touch that cannot be replicated in your sh*tty apartment. OK, in MY sh*tty apartment. Beyond the food and the TVs are the champagne stands and the bookstore where you can buy a little bit of US Open history or familiarize yourself with the inner world of Nadal thanks to his book, Rafa. For the truly elite there’s the Chase Lounge, which requires a special badge for entrance. Who can tell what goes on in there? The hi-def TVs in there must be especially sharp, the champagne of a much higher quality than the swill they feed the commoners outside.

All of this is speculation, obviously, but I found myself wandering around aimlessly for over an hour, my eyes slightly glassy and my shoulders constantly bumping into passers-by. What should I buy? If a line’s length was unacceptable, I could simply hop on my smartphone, purchase what I wanted and pick it up later. For those who didn’t want to whip out their wallets, someone with a microphone was inevitably standing nearby, telling you to check out the Mercedes tent (plastered with pictures of a smiling and elegant Roger Federer) or to listen to a live radio broadcast on all of the US Open action. Why even go into Arthur Ashe?

Eventually I did make it in, and finally I felt as though I were at a regular sporting event… except not exactly. There were plenty of empty seats, and I wasn’t accustomed to the silence of a tennis match. The Smashing Pumpkins were playing when I arrived; Andy Murray had his headphones in. More music, this time The Who. Feliciano Lopez caused a collective sigh throughout the crowd thanks to his hot body (I assume), and I settled in for the evening.

Except I didn’t. The guy next to me left and came back about 300 times, and his bags came and went with him. The post-point susurrus and pre-point silence, which I imagined to be the embodiment of tennis’ classiness, was often overshadowed by the contests and giveaways during TV timeouts. During one, men and women dressed in the distinctive navy, orange and neon green Polo gear of the ball boys and girls gave away giant tennis balls to fans who jumped hysterically and waved their hands in the air as they screamed. How you can take one of them on the Subway with a serious face still evades me, but not as much as how you can temporarily surrender self-respect for a chance to win a giant ball. 

While my eyes mostly strayed to the fans and the atmosphere around me, Feliciano Lopez was getting reamed by Andy Murray. He looked disinterested during most points, and his focus was as scattered as my own. Moments when Lopez seemed to have captured the momentum from Murray were immediately negated by a series of lackadaisical points. He was frequently spurred on by the crowd, but to no avail.

Lopez lost in three sets, and he never got into the sort of rhythm that allowed Andy Murray to win point after point. So much of being a professional athlete is the ability to focus; hours and hours of each day are spent in repetitive motion to prepare the athlete for a competition that can last hours. That’s why everyone was so shocked when this past Saturday Roger Federer double-faulted away a game in which he served for match point. Focus has always been one of the highlights of Federer’s game.

But what was almost as surprising to me watching that game at home was the number of empty seats in Arthur Ashe. This was a semifinal between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic! Butts should be superglued to these seats, right?

Television, the increased comforts of home and the cost of tickets may pull away fans from the stadium, but perhaps there’s a more philosophical reason fans attend live events less frequently now. Are fans gradually losing the focus which is essential to athletes' success or failure? We may feel as though we’re closer and have more access to athletes now thanks to the miracles the internet creates daily, but maybe the average fan is less like a professional athlete now than he was in the days when athletes were deified. That’s a pretty big leap to make, but focus in the average job is much less of an asset than it is in professional sports. Do you really want to spend your weekend trapped in a seat for almost four hours watching only one event? Federer and Djokovic be damned, smartphones can only go so far to keep me entertained when I’m watching an event live.

In spite of my pseudo-philosophizing, I enjoyed my distracted first experience at the US Open. Ultimately, my lack of attention was my own fault. Still, I can see how the US Open’s efforts to create an exciting and engaging atmosphere could encourage the distraction that fans watching live must ignore. There’s no changing it, but maybe we’ll never see a packed house for a US Open semifinal again. Let’s just hope the fans tonight can hone their attention for long enough to enjoy what should be an epic final between the world’s two best players. Those empty seats look so sad.

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