Summertime Serenade

One of my greatest weaknesses is an inability to remain calm; even when silent, my hands are shaking, or my feet are bouncing, or my eyes are darting. Because of the prolonged, unnecessary chaos happening in previously functional communities here and abroad, this is now my default state.

When the going gets tough, sometimes the going has to come to a complete stop. In a summer sponsored by atrocity, brought to you by the same people who convinced your bosses to lay you off or, better, yet, convinced you to get a STEM degree a decade ago before eliminating the sciences in favor of the bomb, it’s been a little difficult to focus on any one thing and even more so for the good.

Acknowledging all of that, though, means acknowledging the rest, the aforementioned good. The candle of joy, wherever and however possible, is now the daily pursuit of millions of us. Maybe we even shared in one of these instances.

How do you follow up an instant candidate for greatest men’s tennis match of all time? Well, the antecedent is technically plural, so the question requires an audience: if you’re Carlos Alcaraz, you take the toughest Grand Slam final of the five you’ve won already at age 22 and add a third at Wimbledon, sixth overall. You begin an earnest climb toward the year-end number 1 ranking. Your smile powers yachts and lights cities across Murcia and Andalusia.

On the other side of the net, if you’re Jannik Sinner (congratulations, by the way), you absolutely must claim your place in the rivalry that is already defining the post-Big 3 generation[1]. To go down 2-0 in Slam finals to an undefeated Alcaraz, particularly after how you had lost at Roland Garros, would become the subhead to every Alcaraz victory.

The two-time defending champion at the All-England Club, Alcaraz opened with an ace, but Sinner would go up a break. Many of the rallies went long and featured a similar brand of mind-bending shot-taking to that which we’d seen three weeks prior on clay. Sinner lost the handle on his serve in the first, sometimes stumbling at oft-employed drops and counters, and the Spaniard was able to close out the first, 6-4.

I’m tempted here to say something like, “It felt like another inevitable Alcaraz victory was in store,” but in watching that final, it did not feel that way after one. Sinner’s nervy serve aside, he was hitting shots wherever he wanted them to go. So long as he could figure out a way to break Alcaraz’s rhythm and maintain control from there, he could fight back.

Fight back he did, traipsing on the court just enough to wrangle control of the ball and whip it in the direction of his discretion. Employing drops and re-drops against the living boy-king of the drop shot, Jannik Sinner grabbed hold of the Wimbledon final in the second set and never let go, capturing his first there and fourth overall.

Both of Sinner and women’s champion Iga Świątek have served suspensions for banned substances in the past year; dubious though the circumstances for both may be, they nevertheless re-entered the tour with raw feelings and, often, fan skepticism.

None of that followed Sinner to Centre Court. The last gasps of Carlos Alcaraz in the fourth set, crowd-pleasing as ever, brought the Italian into its tide, and both found themselves crowd favorites. The tony Wimbledon crowd met each off-kilter poke with applause; the celebrity gallery would politely yet appropriately open its collective eyes wider at the especially uncanny ones.

For many of his All-England finals, Novak Djokovic has been combative, mockingly inviting, and endearing only in ways he doesn’t intend. Sinner-Alcaraz bore a closer resemblance to Federer-Nadal by the end, in that particular sense.

Game, set, match. Rivalry on.

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Until the moment when Tyrese Haliburton crumpled to the floor, slapping his hand in the acknowledged rage that comes with a season-ending injury but with the extra spice of it having been during Game 7 of the NBA Finals, it looked like the Indiana Pacers might actually be able to slay this dragon and prevent destiny.

Instead, the 25-year-old two-time all-NBA selection and avatar of the Pacers’ current iteration tore his Achilles and will be out for most of next season as well. Myles Turner is gone, the beneficiary of the Milwaukee Bucks opening enough salary cap space by having applied the stretch provision to waive Damian Lillard, who can now rehab his own torn Achilles back in Portland. By the time Haliburton returns, Indiana will look differently, and he will have to adjust. Excellent: this is perhaps THE core strength of his game as a basketball player.

In Oklahoma City, and especially for longtime general manager Sam Presti, a promise fulfilled. Regular season and Finals MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 30.3 points, 5.6 assists and 4.6 rebounds; he also co-led the series in blocks per game (1.6) with teammate Chet Holmgren, the former #2 pick who was, along with every other member of the team aside from Alex Caruso, playing in his first NBA Finals.

Presti’s methodical, precise approach to draft scouting and, especially, to asset-collecting in the form of draft picks is already legendary, but the pudding remained without proof until it turned into results. One lost Finals and only one other conference finals appearance would not set any trends in the medium-term.

Still, to pivot from an era that produced three MVP-caliber picks and no titles to a group of precocious youths without ever really tanking in the traditional connotation of the word[2] is a remarkable accomplishment. Even at their worst, in the 22- and 24-win seasons of just a few years past, there was a framework, and there would be plenty of talent. Swap out the scoundrel Josh Giddey for the former champion Alex Caruso, and 68 wins seems almost disappointing, despite the West.

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After much speculation that Adam Silver would announce two new teams in Seattle and Las Vegas this summer, expansion talks have instead landed in the “expansion analysis” stage. Seattle just had to watch its former franchise win a title, and its wait for better news continues.

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This is the kind of thing you absolutely love hate to see on the walk to see the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, which is coincidentally happening on the day you’re told you’re likely being laid off. The company’s AI initiatives are going to change the paradigms of many industries, that said.

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Normally, the easiest way to get to Forest Hills Stadium is to take the B/D to 7^th Ave and then switch to the E. Stepping up out of the subway places one on Queens Boulevard, across six lanes and, depending on where you come up, a few blocks from the entrance to the former home of the US Open.

The West Side Tennis Club hosts the stadium, all of it situated within the Tudor-filled residential neighborhood that is Forest Hills. Each summer, for a handful of weekend engagements, the stadium hosts a concert series, often juxtaposed against club members practicing their serves behind the stage. Over the decade-plus since its reopening as a venue, Forest Hills has become one of the most revered outdoor music spaces in the five boroughs.

For most of those very years, the residents in the surrounding areas have been battling the West Side Tennis Club and its various collaborators over concert volume and length, withholding permits and suing when necessary. Much of this, as you may suspect, goes back to The Replacements[3], but I digress.

Annually this nonsense threatens to disrupt the shows; annually, the suing and countersuing go nowhere because we all know the money involved is too good to lose, even if the nitrous army and their various hangers-on pop a few too many balloons in front of you and your children, who play tennis in loose slacks and sweaters like pre-war Bobby Riggs.

Because the concerts must go on, it was time to once again go looking for joy (but, woof, hopefully not the song). Ahead of this past weekend’s three-night run at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, Phish played Forest Hills for the first time over two nights, making it the penultimate stop on the summer tour calendar.

Despite the complaints of triple-digit heads who yearn for a version of Trey Anastasio that was literally on track to kill himself until he got sober, the shows were great, a peaceful retreat for a few hours on a comfortable July night. Day-turns-night Phish is one of the best personas that band has at the ready. “Divided Sky” is a song for the good weather.

Experiencing Phish, a band proudly built on improvisation, hits just a touch differently than it did before the age of AI Everywhere All At Once. No fucking prompting agent or whatever can iterate enough to have a perfectly-crafted Phish show because that is diametrically opposed to what this band is and does: there is no perfect Phish show, therefore they are all perfect.

Growth being the only mindset, though, and that leading to consolidation and selling for parts via private equity and other interests, eventually some offer will come along to knock down Forest Hills Stadium and build condos, and the tennis club will relent. The land is simply too valuable not to build luxury residences, you understand.

Like everything else, though, all we can do is enjoy it for as long as possible. After a no-complaint two-night stand that nevertheless invited some of the absolute worst that the jam scene has to offer[4], I get the feeling that Phish may not return. The weekends at Forest Hills are slowly dwindling. Summer’s long; it should be sweet enough on its own, without all of this.

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[1] The piece of trivia from this era of men’s tennis that continues to astound me: only two men’s players born in the 1990s, Dominic Thiem and Daniil Medvedev, have won Grand Slam titles. Thiem is already retired.

[2] This is where Mark Daigneault pulled off – or, maybe, was allowed to pull off – what, for instance, Brett Brown could not with the Process Sixers: where the latter had to prioritize showcasing talent at the expense of figuring out what worked for a player or for the team, Daigneault has largely been able to shift tactics and lineups without the spectre of the front office imploring him to sit good players in the hopes of getting a better draft lottery position. That wildly simplifies Brown’s relationship to the Sixers’ front office, for the record, but that piece is not this piece.

[3] In 2014, the Mats played a show that was apparently three times as loud as the noise ordinances required. The Forest Hills Garden Corporation can’t hardly wait to slap the tennis club with litigation, amirite-

[4] Available for purchase outside the gates, both according to the Hell Gate Podcast and mine own eyes: balloons full of nitrous oxide; cannabis in various forms; “ketamine; doses; molly; yogurt; and haircuts.”