Tennis is just a sideshow

Food is the main attraction at Flushing Meadows, the modern venue dubbed Animal Farm by Jimmy Connors.

If Wimbledon is Virginia creeper and tradition, Roland Garros all French style and sophistication, and Melbourne Park Aussie informality and fun in the sun, then Flushing Meadows is a teeming Bangkok street with tennis nets. The Billie Jean King National Tennis Centre which serves as home to the US Open is a claustrophobic mix of noise, heat, smells and jostling crowds. There are those who will tell you that they ruined a nice swamp when they built the place.

To be fair, the ill-named Meadows has been a tad less uncomfortable of late since the air traffic controllers at nearby LaGuardia airport agreed to change the flight path of departing planes, the wheels of which used to clear the grandstands by a matter of metres. None of which bothers the locals one jot. Although the average New Yorker would rather watch tractor pulling than anything as refined as tennis, any ticket in the Big Apple that can attract an audience of A-list celebrities exerts a "must see" appeal; thus does a boisterous horde board the subway to make the daily trek from Manhattan across the East River to the borough of Queens to eat, drink and even, well, watch the action.

The tennis, it has to be said, has always been a mere sideshow to the main attraction of Flushing Meadows - food. Through the concrete walls of the Arthur Ashe Court where Roger Federer or Andy Murray might be weaving their magic, the open air picnic court is a vast concourse of food counters launching a full nasal assault. Curiously, given their often prodigious appetites, tradition calls for spectators to drape themselves in the latest designer tennis gear which is why it is not uncommon to happen upon a gluttonous New York taxi driver (imagine Homer Simpson gone to seed and you will get the picture) squeezed into Rafael Nadal's pirate costume.

A few miles away from this mayhem lie the rolling lawns, Tudor clubhouse, terrace bar and the junior Olympic pool of Forest Hills which staged the US Open until 1978 when the USTA - in its infinite wisdom - decided they required a more modern setting for their showpiece event. To enter the genteel surroundings of the West Side Country Club is to return to the world of The Great Gatsby; it was here that Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks would engage in highly competitive sets of tennis whenever they were working in New York.

Ilie Nastase, champion in 1972 when he defeated Arthur Ashe in five sets, described walking into the West Side Club like, "...stepping back 100 years. You felt you always had to talk in whispers. Just as the All-England Club is known as Wimbledon, I still talk of having won Forest Hills, not the US Open." At Flushing Meadows, they screech, they holler, they engage in violent arguments over their mobile phones. Quiet please? Forget it. Take your seats, please? Forget it. "It's an animal farm and I love it," says Jimmy Connors.

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