→ Escude:還蠻好笑的:p 推 210.203.50.32 09/03
Oh, the Games they Play (That is, When They're Not Playing Tennis)
by Elizabeth Schatz
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
With the courts under water and the schedule of play consistently up in
the air, players wandering the halls under Arthur Ashe Stadium have to
find something else to do.
Poker, anyone?
Top-seeded players like Kim Clijsters and Juan Carlos Ferrero, who have
matches scheduled today and must be ready at a moment’s notice should
the clouds part, are keeping their competitive juices flowing with
different sorts of contests. The thrill of victory and the agony of
defeat are present, only now it’s mostly about card games and something
called Spoons.
No. 1 Clijsters and a group of friends set up camp at a large round table
in the player dining room and began an impromptu game involving quarters
that, from the casual observer, had absolutely no point. They flicked
them between other quarter “borders,” then occasionally slapped them
down on the wooden tabletop with a squeal. Maybe a break from mental
challenge was what she was looking for.
“We were doing nothing, just playing around,” Clijsters said, giggling,
as she sat next to boyfriend Lleyton Hewitt. “We’re bored!” Any Euros
on the table from the Belgian? “No, no, just quarters.”
Jonas Bjorkman, the Swede who is scheduled to play No. 5 Guillermo Coria
today, wasn’t risking his quarters, instead using Scrabble letters as
currency in a nearby poker game with several friends, including Wayne
Black from Zimbabwe.
“We are playing – how do you say it? – a friendly game of poker,”
said Pancho Segura, the 82-year-old Hall-of-Fame player and coach of
Jimmy Connors, who was showing fine form against his much younger
opponents.
“The Swedes are winning, but they always win. They cheat,” said Carl
Neufeld, head coach at Southern Methodist University. When asked the
official poker-playing language of the international crew, Neufeld said,
“Mostly profanity. That’s the common language.”
No. 3 Juan Carlos Ferrero, awaiting his fourth-round match against
American Todd Martin that was supposed to take place yesterday, had tired
of foosball last night and was now tucked into a corner playing cards
with his coach and girlfriend. He kept a steely gaze as he flipped cards
into the middle of the table.
What are you playing?
“It’s a Spanish card game.”
Who’s winning?
“Not me.”
When asked if he was as good at cards as he was at tennis, the French
Open champion looked bewildered, unable to understand the question in
English. His girlfriend came to the rescue, wagging her finger back and
forth and whispering, “Noooooo.”
Junior player Katarina Zoricic, scheduled to meet American Nehi Uberoi
in the first round, could have been honing her hand quickness as she
dominated a game of spoons. The game involves players furiously passing
cards around a table until someone gets four of a kind. He or she then
grabs a spoon from the middle of the table, and others follow suit. But
there is one fewer spoon than players, meaning one slow poke loses each
round. The end of each heated round left players whooping and screaming
louder than the pants Bud Collins, standing next to them in the players’
lounge, was wearing.
Zoricic, who is from Canada, said, “The loser has to do something crazy.
We haven’t decided what it will be yet.” Possible suggestions: taking
on Kim Clijsters in “quarters.”
The most popular of the games in the players’ lounge cum fun house had
to be chess. The USTA brought in Dmitry Schneider, the No. 1 player in
the United States aged 18 and under, to entertain those brave enough to
take him on. Schneider, a tall, thin brunette who, coincidentally, was
a high school tennis player before his chess obligations became too time
consuming, cruised back and forth a long table, playing seven games at
once against players and their friends who tried in vain to outsmart him.
“All the games, I’ve won pretty easily. But a few were interesting,
and I had to think, so there wouldn’t be an accident,” Schneider says,
alluding to an upset. “If I lost, it would be a big deal. I want to
avoid that.”
What better crowd to appreciate that frame of mind than a room full of
the world’s best tennis players?
“Max Mirnyi played Roger Federer,” said Schneider. “Roger won.”
So yes, players could be using the rain delay to work on their game
strategy or view tapes of their opponent’s play, but coaches really
can’t complain. If there’s one good thing that chess, obscure Spanish
card games and flying spoons and quarters have in common, it’s this:
at least there’s no chance of getting injured.
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