The court-level camera angles helped, too, bringing viewers into the players’ space and avoiding the wider shots that would have made clear that hardly anyone was watching in person.

It was intimate, even meditative at times, as the two rivals took turns being brilliant under pressure to the sounds of the passing trains and a few shouts from their entourages.

“Look, it would have been an amazing atmosphere to have fans in there — cheering a guy on as he makes this amazing comeback,” said Brad Gilbert, who called the match for ESPN. “But I do think that the players start getting locked in, and that it’s just about you and the opponent. I don’t think they even were noticing there was no crowd.”

Call it their own bubble within a bubble.

“You could see everything develop with clarity because you had no distractions,” Gilbert said. “But listen, I’m just so grateful we have a chance to do the tennis and just see the tennis. Obviously, this model without a crowd is not sustainable for the rest of tennis ever, but for the moment, it’s a lot better than no tennis.”

The problem in New York during Week 1 was that not everyone who crossed the Atlantic to play tennis was allowed to do so, and that in Djokovic’s case, the biggest star in the men’s game essentially eliminated himself.

Staging this tournament at all has been an immense undertaking, and the U.S.T.A. does not have the same financial means as the N.B.A. with its locked-down campus at Walt Disney World in Florida. Nor did it have the wherewithal to quarantine an international field of players for two full weeks before the first ball was struck.

There were bound to be issues. For now, Paire is the only player known to have tested positive for the coronavirus in the controlled environment set up for the Western & Southern Open and the U.S. Open. But the devil has been in the details of the contact tracing, which forced seven players who had been in close contact with Paire to sign a new, more restrictive agreement in order to keep playing.

Source: New York Times

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