by Matt Gajtka
As tennis’ U.S. Open begins in Flushing, N.Y., this week, the American portion of the ATP and WTA tour schedules will come to a close.
Included among the stops during the so-called “U.S. Open Series” are cities like Cincinnati, Atlanta, Washington, Los Angeles and even New Haven, Conn., home of the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
My family has always followed pro tennis with great enthusiasm, and we’ve made the trip to Mason, Ohio, for the Western & Southern Open three times over the past decade. It’s roughly a five-hour drive from Pittsburgh to the northeastern Cincinnati suburb that has hosted the high-level tennis event for several decades.
While the length of the journey isn’t enough to counterbalance our desire to see some of the world’s best athletes give maximum effort in sweltering summertime conditions, if the tournament was more local, the Gajtkas would be in the house for the whole week every year.
Of course, Pittsburgh isn’t the only under-served city in the country or the world when it comes to pro tennis. The fact is that despite a strong base of serious and casual recreational players, there is no facility in western Pennsylvania of the caliber required to host an ATP or WTA event.
Maybe Pittsburghers should be grateful to have two pro tennis host cities (Cincinnati and Washington) within reasonable traveling distance; aficionados in places like Kansas City, Minneapolis and Seattle must hop a plane to witness live high-level tennis.
Perhaps this is a fruitless lament, but Pittsburgh does have a potential X-factor in a talented youngster with some serious credentials already on his resume: 2011 French Open junior champion Bjorn Fratangelo.
Although he and his family recently moved to Naples, Fla., to find more advantageous “tennis weather,” the 17-year-old native of Pittsburgh was the first American junior to win in Paris since John McEnroe in 1977. Named after Swedish tennis legend Bjorn Borg, Fratangelo’s remarkable accomplishment inserted Pittsburgh into the tennis discussion for the first time since World Team Tennis’ Pittsburgh Triangles competed in the 1970s.
(Actually, Sports Illustrated senior writer L. Jon Wertheim improbably name-dropped Pittsburgh in last week’s U.S. Open preview. It was in reference to his claim that if Serbian superstar and world No. 1 Novak Djokovic was “from Chicago or Pittsburgh, we’d be [more] enthralled with his astonishing 2011 record of 55-2.”)
Adding Pittsburgh’s own Bjorn to the mix does raise the region’s tennis profile, but the harsh truth is that even if Fratangelo goes on to a decorated ATP career, the region will need investors and likely a state-of-the-art facility to lure even a lower-level men’s or women’s tournament to within shouting distance of the three rivers.
That reality won’t stop the area’s many passionate tennis players/fans from hoping that one day the world’s best will make their way to Pittsburgh on a regular basis.
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