Hi, I am Erick, a 12 year old in the 7th grade who is just a little bit over five feet tall. I have lots of hobbies including baseball, chess, videogames, and reading. But what I love even more than any of those things is tennis. I just can not stop thinking about tennis. I take lessons once a week at the local racquet club called Sportime. Other than that I play about 3 times a week with my dad.
One brisk morning in early September my dad and I were in our red minivan on our way into New York City to go to the U.S Open. The U.S Open is a major tennis tournament in which famous tennis players from around the globe come to compete. People like Roger Fedderer, Rafeal Nadal, and Andy Roddick. The reason my dad and were going was because for my birthday, last June, I got 2 semifinal tickets to the U.S Open from my grandparents.
After much road rage and bad directions we pulled into the nearest lot. I was wondering how the heck we where going to get to the stadium! But then I saw the tour buses heading for Flushing Meadows (the U.S Open tennis facility). Five minutes later me and my dad were getting off the buses and were heading for Flushing Meadows.
After I got my ticket checked my dad and I walked into the grounds and immediately I was blown away by the smells, the sounds. It was so exiting I could barley keep myself under control! The U.S Open was like a giant state fair, so big that I felt like an ant on a whale’s back. There were stalls everywhere you looked selling stuff from ice cream, to tennis racquets. It was like a mini mall. The stalls formed something that looked almost like a plaza with little alleys leading off to tennis courts behind the stalls. But the two things that stood out the most to me were the two stadiums looming overhead. Arthur Ash stadium and Louis Armstrong stadium. The first one I mentioned, Arthur Ash stadium, is where I was going to be watching the matches.
At two-thirty my dad and I headed to our seats in Arthur Ash stadium to get ready for the three-o-clock match. I was so exited that I could barely keep myself standing. When my dad and I got to our seats I had the worst case of vertigo in my life! We were in the third to top row and when you looked up the clouds looked like they might swallow you. The seats where angled so that everyone could see on the top deck but that meant that the seats had to be angled at a seventy-five degree angle.
About twenty minutes later my dad and I took our seat for the first of the two matches. The first match was Novak Djokovic vs. David Ferrer. The match was pretty even but in the end Djokovic’s power beat Ferrer’s speed. After the match my dad and I took a couple of minutes to stretch our legs. After some nachos and a hot dog it was time for the match we had all been waiting for. The next match was Nikolay Davydeko vs. Roger Fedderer. The match was supposed to be a blowout, and it was! Roger Federer completely dominated. Making the final two in the men’s tournament Novak Djokovic and Roger Fedderer. The match was going to be tomorrow. At the end of the day I was exhausted but I didn’t want to leave. That day I wish I could have stayed on those sacred grounds forever. And that is how I still feel about it.
After going to the U.S Open and seeing all the great tennis players like Fedderer play, it made me fell like a drop of paint on the canvas that is tennis. So I set out to improve both my physical and mental game. Since the Open my power and accuracy on the court have gone up one-hundred-and-fifty percent. The, the other thing that has improved is my mentality efficacy. My ability to keep control on and off the court has gotten a lot better. Now my friends and I can play a peaceful game of tennis. The one thing that you should take away from this is that if you are truly inspired you most probably will improve in anything. For me the U.S Open was diffidently that inspiration I needed. I hope that you to can experience something that great.