Field-level camera angles also helped, bringing viewers into the players’ space and avoiding the wider shots that would have made it clear that hardly anyone was watching in person.
It was intimate, at times even meditative, as the two rivals alternated to be brilliant under the pressure of the noises of passing trains and some screams of their entourages.
“Look, it would have been a great vibe to have fans in there – cheering on a guy as he makes this amazing comeback,” said Brad Gilbert, who called the match for ESPN. “But I think the players are starting to get stuck, and it’s just about you and the opponent. I don’t think they even noticed that there was no crowd. “
Call it their bubble within a bubble.
“You could see everything developing clearly because you had no distractions,” Gilbert said. “But listen, I’m so thankful that we have a chance to play tennis and see tennis. Obviously, this crowd-free model is never sustainable for the rest of tennis, but for the moment it’s much better than no tennis. “
The problem in New York during the first week was that not everyone who crossed the Atlantic to play tennis was allowed to do so, and that in the case of Djokovic, the biggest star in the men’s game essentially eliminated himself.
Organizing this tournament was a huge undertaking, and the USTA does not have the same financial means as the NBA with its closed campus at Walt Disney World in Florida. Nor did he have the means to quarantine an international field of players for two full weeks before the first ball was hit.
There were certainly problems. For now, Paire is the only player known to have tested positive for coronavirus in the controlled environment set up for the Western & Southern Open and the US Open. But the devil was in the details of the contact tracing, which forced seven players who had been in close contact with Paire to sign a new, more restrictive deal to keep playing.
