I have loved USA's coverage of the US Open for the entire time they covered it.  They were truly dedicated to the event and I cannot imagine ESPN doing as good a job.  What worries me is their desire to be everything to all people - a commitment to cover all sports - and their willingness to wait until a kids motocross event, for example, finishes before starting their coverage of a tennis match.  In addition, I fear they will have many matches on ESPN2 with that horrible crawl line taking up space and shrinking the size of the screen.  If anyone at ESPN reads this - PLEASE ELIMINATE THAT CRAWL FOR TENNIS MATCHES, ESPECIALLY THE US OPEN!  THANK YOU.  I have The Tennis Channel and I hope they make up for anything ESPN lacks.

USA was never perfect but I prefer them to ESPN.  Tennis never has been their first priority and never will be.  There is an article in this month's TENNIS magazine that outlines ESPN's coverage next year.  During the fist week, they'll start showing tennis at 1 PM daily  (not 11 AM when play starts) until the end of play.  Then during the second week, they'll come on air at 11 AM and stay on until play ends.  Tennis Channel will re-air the day's matches from midnight to 10AM.  I'm really not looking forward to the change. 

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Vamos Rafa!!

If ESPN uses espn360.com it will be good coverage. You can watch outer court matches without commercials  or announcers.

Most people do not have access to 360.  They will be using it but its reach is very limited.

I will miss USA. They have been great and each year they really worked at being better and to increase the # of broadcast hours.  Behind the scenes they negotiated with CBS, the USTA and their own corporate bosses to extend their coverage so we could watch more matches.  Many times during this tournament, USA was on the air from 11AM EDT (8AM PDT) to the last ball was struck at Arthur Ashe.

So I say a big thank you to USA.  You have been great and I will miss you (Ted and John too!).

I hope that ESPN & TTC will provide selfless coverage and put tennis first.  TTC has done a very good job with the other slams and I hope for the best come August 2009.

For those of us who do not get ESPN360 but have Directv, we can count on a good first week and pray for LIVE tennis the second week w/out getting bumped for fantasy football.

 

 

 

I don't think it will be treated as lovingly which USA has felt about the Open. I wish they were keeping it. ESPN will sandwich it the way they do all matches in a certain format and not involve the crowd or have a view of the grounds. Night matches are such a unique scene, I would hate to have it treated as day matches at night simply. Totally different atmosphere, you have all the corporate drunks with the die-hard tennis drunks and it is a raucous pot that needs to be savored carefully and elegantly. I do think that Ted and John lost their edge with the pizza and lack of attention to some of the matches. They need some entertainers up there, not just Maria, who needed a marketing plug, or Boris, who is advertising his wedding to clean up his rowdy past. The Australian Open showed more groups of people who came to support players from a certain country or were just bad traveling musicians. I know that is more the Aussie experience but there are groups besides the awful J-Block (who else had a block? Not effective either). Michael Barkan was not used enough to find people. He is good schmoozing, just not good at smoothing over a vicious war between players obviously.

I guess we are all stuck with watching some of the best tennis at times on the Internet. I never saw David Ferrer at all, and he was a semifinalist. He really got the shaft.