Time of my life at MSG

If not for the fact that we had already booked our tickets several months in advance, I doubt we would've travelled from Boston to New York for the BNP Paribas Showdown for the Billie Jean King Cup!

The northeast had recorded one of it's heaviest snowfall on 01-Mar, there were weather alerts and travel advisories in place. Worse still, Peter Pan cancelled all buses to NYC (and some other routes) so out pre-booked non-refundable tickets were a waste of some much needed good money :-( None of the other operators were plying either and spending $300.00 for a one-way train ticket seemed too extravagant, even for die hard tennis fans like us.

Luckily Megabus had their last bus leaving, and we managed to get the last two tickets. I believe it was a do-good-get-get thing, when hubby helped out a young man who needed $15.00 in cash to buy a ticket to Springfield. Despite there being almost 20 people who heard his entreaty nobody offered even $1.00 to help him out. A Chinese contributed $5.00, and hubby (Indian) offered $10.00. I found it helplessly disturbing to realise that either everyone else did not have cash to spare (very disturbing) or did not feel the need to help out (even more disturbing). Anyway, we were soon on our way.

Reaching NYC always feels like entering fairy land, what with all the glitter and shimmer of the lights; even the reds of the car brake lights added to the scene. Our apprehension of being late cleared when we managed to reach the Madison Square Garden around 07:05 PM.

This was my first live tennis experience and though not new to live events, catching the first glimpse of the blue court was definitely exciting. I was surprised to see the crowd turnout, especially given the existing financial doldrums. Lot of the people were decked rather formally which made me wonder whether they had come directly from work. Black, gray, red and blue were the main colors. I seemed to be the only purple there :-)

What do I say about the tennis; Venus v/s Jelena was as expected a fighting match. Characteristically, Jelena lost her groove for that critical game and Venus pounced to take the break, and served next for the set. No much ado about anything there. Tying Ana and Serena was, IMO, unfair. I expected Serena to devour Ana and that's exactly what happened.

Sitting here at Madison Square Garden, in the heart of New York city, one of the most powerful financial hubs of the world, in one of the most powerful nations of the world, it was very strange to hear ille Jean King talk about gender equality, Just goes to reinforce that people problems are quite the same everywhere. Bill Clinton's talk about "having the heart of a champion" was quite touching, especially when the overhead screens showed Bille Jean clasping her hands pensively and nodding modestly to the encouraging words. Several past and future champions were present at the ceremony. Seeing these past winners of multiple Grand slams and Olympic gold medals appearing so normal only reinforced the earlier words that champions are just like you and me, normal people who decided to win and become great people.

Seeing and hearing BJK and Bill Clinton was one among the few moments of life where you are in complete awe of the present.

Extracting from my notes made during the matches

1. Venus and Jelena are both TALL ; Jelena especially is much taller than she appears on TV, and both look prettier than on TV
2. Venus had a rather low ball toss; it's strange I noticed this, but I haven't especially observed her ball toss before- Both players play wonderfully well, despite what the TV appears to show about Jelena's game
3. Serena and Ana both seem bit shorter, especially when coming after Venus and Jelena. Ana entered the court first and she seemed almost petite, Serena didn't loom as large as she does on TV
4. Ana keeps her ball way low on her returns; she tended to hit the ball almost below the net on the returns. Again, I haven't noticed this while watching TV, but will surely observe in the future
5. Ana Ivanovic is absolutely b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l
6. All four ladies wore make-up; I guess appearing on a tennis court is as much worthy of looking good as appearing on stage for any live event
7. If the ball happened to whiz past Jelena or Ana they always looked behind, apologetically, as if to ensure nobody had been hit by the ball they missed. Serena and Venus didn't show as much concern
8. In fact when Serena fell twice in the final, the 2nd fall looking rather nasty, Venus simply stood with her own thought possibly concentrating and trying not to worry about her own sister
9. Ana _definitely_ has a problem with her toss; on TV it may not be as obvious, but here in person she tossed the ball all over, and at times even had to lunge at the toss getting all off balance when trying to make contact for the serve. Venus, on the other hand took as much time and as many attempts it needed her to steady herself enough to consistently blast those 129+ mphs!
10. Serena's little-blue-dress doesn't look good at all; rather it looks quite odd, common and few sizes too small
    
11. Neither does Venus' little-yellow-dress; it is shorter than it appears on TV
    
12. At 4-1 in the 2nd semi-final Serena was, as expected, devouring Ana Ivanovic
13. The ball boys rarely miss any overhead ball coming towards them, thwarting all hopes the audience have of catching a ball and keeping it
14. Up close, the 2nd serve is almost as low-quality as the 1st serves we hit when friends play
    
15. The Williams' sisters definitely have the crowd on their side, being the local gals. But Serene was the uncontested darling of the audience
16. Both of them tend to run around their backhand quite often; again, this hasn't been as apparent on TV
17. Serena isextremely nimble and light on her feet; her feet appear to skim over the surface of the court when she moves
    
18. In the 2nd set of the final match, at 1-4 down, Venus had won only 1 of the last 7 games. In effect losing a set 1-6 .. and that was the essence of the last set of the final match

We didn't wait for the award presentations; instead rushed to Port Authority to catch the last bus, but it was cancelled. So, rushed back to Penn Station to get the next bus out, but it was, if any, only at 7:30am.

Wasted some time at MacDonalds outside MSG; Macs have the best french fries among all fast-food, aka, junk-food vendors! Decided we could loiter no more, went into Penn station, booked two tickets on the next Amtrack (used the AAA discount ;-), spent 2 hours in the waiting area then slept all the way back to Boston South Station.

All in all, it would have been a wonderful experience, if only I hadn't had to spend all the extra money for the bus & train tickets... and .. of course.. if Jelena had won :-)