Dying for a Date?

The team at ASAP Sports, the outfit that provides the court stenographers who record the post-match interviews and other important press briefings at many sporting events (including all the Grand Slams), perform an invaluable service.

I don't know how we ever managed without them, although I miss the good old days when you could misquote a player with impunity and, just for the heck of it, ruin his or her life. I guess you have to take the bad with the good, and I sure don't miss the cramps I used to get in my writing hand when, say, Monica Seles finished. One sentence.

Anyway, the ASAP staffers have also become friends, too, going all the way back to the days when ASAP’s founder, Peter Balestieri, first hit on the idea of developing his wildly successful business.

What’s really amazing is that, given the long hours and intense pressures of the job, the ASAP team still manages to be really nice. So, many thanks to the ASAP team here at the Open: Jamie Morrocco, Tracy Neilson, and Pam Leja-Romjue.

Some reporters or readers would be surprised to know that Pam works for ASAP as a sideline of sorts—her real job is with her family’s date farm, in the Coachella Valley (Palm Springs, Indio, Indian Wells). If you like tennis and/or dates, click here.

Yesterday, Pam told me that this is going to be a great year for dates.

Pam, an attractive woman (reporters aren't supposed to throw around words like "hottie"—especially around stenographers!), remembers working at one of the many drive-up date shops in the sleepy valley long before it boomed as a golf-and-tennis destination. She would have to tote around a sample tray and go up to potential customers with the sales pitch: “Hi! Would you like a date?”

“It was always the same with the men,” Pam said, with a world weary sigh. “They would say, ‘Sure! What time do you get off?'”