US Open

Hey sports fans, tomorrow for Tim's b-day, I'm taking my guy to the US Open. He is a tennis fiend, always has been, and he has always wanted to go to this. We have tickets to the Arthur Ashe Stadium match at 11am - hope it's someone good playing. You never know. We plan on spending all day there, though. When you have tickets to a main event, you can get into any of the other smaller matches free.

So, I've been studying up on tennis terminology lately. Basically, I've always hated tennis. It has never made a lick of sense to me. So I figured, if I am going to this thing, I am freakin' gonna enjoy myself. I checked out a book called The Children's Illustrated Guide to Tennis Rules (or something along those lines) and I learned so much! I know what all the court places are called, what is up with the freaky scoring, who gets to serve and how, and all that good stuff you need to know just to make viewing tennis tolerable.

And, get this, I even learned about tennis history. The thing that bothered me most about tennis is the way the scores jump from 0 to 15 to 30 and then to 40. That has always pissed me off. And nobody could tell me why it did that - not even Tim who has played for years! And now, dear reader, you are going to know the answer. (Has it been plaguing your dreams too?!?)
Tennis has its' roots in medieval England and also France. The term "deuce" comes from the French "deux", where an advantage of two points has to be gained to win the game. "Love" may come from the French word "l'oeuf", which means, egg, the shape of a zero. Also, there is a theory that people had clocks on tennis courts and the scoring went in quarters, according to clock faces. So that explains the 15 and 30. But the 40? That actually USED to be 45 but tennis players are lazy, so they just say 40 (just like sometimes they say 5 instead of 15). So knowing that there at least used to be some order to this crazy sport makes it seem a whole lot more sensible to me.

Okay, so I'm ready. Sunglasses, check. Sunscreen, check. Binoculars, check. Camera, check. Sense of what this game is all about, double check. Pictures to follow.