The Deuce Club, 8.16

Cuteness alert! This is Fedexfan’s little niece, who just a couple of weeks ago visited one of the wonders of the modern world. I thought it might be odd to make you guess whose niece this was, but the game will return next week. Keep the photos coming!

US Open gatherings are coming together. Please email me if you are interested in a West Coast get-together, tentatively planned for Super Saturday, which is being organized by Beth and Jenn. Ideas are being kicked around for NYC meet-ups on Monday and/or Wednesday of the first week, and don’t forget all the Talk About Tennis events:

Monday, August 27- Day one- Say Hello gathering at the BJKNTC

Wednesday, August 29th- Day Three Say Hello gathering at the BJKNTC

Friday, August 31st- Dinner/drinks at a special location in Manhattan

Saturday, September 1st- Tailgate before the Day Session (details here)

Friday. September 7th- Dinner/drinks at a special location in Manhattan

If people are coming to the tailgate or one of the gatherings, please emailGV Girl. Over this coming weekend those who have RSVPed for any of the gatherings will get her contact number in case it rains on tailgate and the location is changed. She also needs to know what people will be bringing.

Also, GV Girl’s immensely helpful US Open tips can be found here at the TAT forums.

Lastly, as promised/threatened, here’s Part II of my Broadway excursions. Terrence McNally’s play Deuce finishes its limited run on August 19 and stars the great Angela Lansbury in what people hope won’t be her last stage performance. This isn’t a review as such—after all, this is a tennis blog—but Lansbury and her co-star, Marian Seldes, were delightful from start to finish.

Deuce takes place at the (present) US Open, at which a Kournikova-like youngster with big endorsements and no Slam titles is playing against a hard-hitting uncharismatic opponent. (You hear the ball hitting the racket, the cheers and the score announcements, and you see the actors reacting to the match, but you never see the players – a nice bit of staging here.) The most famous and most decorated wooden-racket era women’s doubles team sits in the stands, watching and talking, waiting to be honored at the end of the match. Other than the occasional interpolations from the egotistical commentators and a lifelong fan, the spotlight is literally and figuratively on the two retired athletes.

The play was typical McNally, and by that I mean that it had plenty of fairly funny lines and so many flashes of heartfelt insight into so many philosophical issues as to be completely schizophrenic. These issues included but were decidedly not limited to the following: 1) What happens when we die? 2) Can we ever really know another person? 3) How do you go on after the death of your one true love? 4) Is fame a) meaningful b) fleeting c) motivating d) fulfilling?

I encourage you to discuss these worthy questions in the comments, but there was also the other thread—the what’s-become-of-this-sport musing from two former champions, including their own career regrets (they never won the Australian. Federer KADs, let’s all be glad that this play closes before he’ll come to town) and reminiscences. The tennis wasn’t creatively enough linked to the Big Issues for my taste, though it was easy to see the parallels. To endorse or not to endorse, that is the question.

One tennis issue that the play certainly raised in my mind, though, I really would like to see thoughts on: can seemingly incompatible personalities become a great doubles team? Has there been such a team? When I think about recent media discussions of doubles teams, including the ones here, they all seem to have been paeans to compatibility. Mike and Bob Bryan: housemates, partners, and oh right, twins. Clement and Llodra: boys just want to have fun. Jankovic and Murray: hello cute, please meet sexy (and bring it back). The Williams sisters, enough said.

In this play, Midge (played by Seldes) was a Park Avenue debutante, with a desire to please everyone and a tennis philosophy like Roger Federer’s: respect the history of the sport, play my best tennis, strive for perfection. Leona (Lansbury), the potty-mouthed daughter of a Pittsburgh streetcar conductor (a terrible ‘tennis dad’), was the fiercely competitive net-charging demon who now teaches tennis to underprivileged youth. Midge had the beautiful serve; Leona was the genius at net. Opposite styles are one thing. But can opposite personalities who don’t even have the same overarching goal work together for thirty years?

All right, maybe winning is winning, and it doesn’t really matter whether you win because you’re trying to play perfectly or because you want to win, and maybe it’s impossible ever to separate the two anyway... And, as oft debated here, perhaps we never truly know the personalities behind the caricatures. That’s part of McNally’s gradual reveal. Say what you will, he is a master of structure. As the play stretches on, Leona reveals a catalogic knowledge of the previous generation, and Midge lets quite a few profanities fly herself, albeit with Grace Kelly-like diction and properly crossed ankles.

I leave you with a beautiful McNallian line of snark about modern tennis:

“Helen Keller could have played with a racket that size.”

-Heidi

P.S. Evonne Goolagong had a mocking mention in this play as well, when the ladies were discussing who added their married names professionally.

Midge: Evonne Goolagong Cawley.

Leona: As if Evonne Goolagong wasn’t enough of a mouthful already.