Rhythm and Serves and Songs and Swings | The American Spectator

The number I like to play in head best when on the tennis court is the Ellington/Armstrong version of “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” a 1931 composition by the Duke with lyrics by Bubber Miley. You may like the more up-tempo, exciting way Ella Fitzgerald sings it. Either way, it is one of those pieces you feel nothing tops it, and while I would not say that about all the matches at the Washington Open last week — fair and accurate, I take a strict stance on grade inflation — I will say they included dizzying displays of athletic genius, marred by shocking errors, and boy did they make for a great sport show. Because what else is sport but triumph and disaster? Is that not, with all it connotes, why it fascinates?
The great Ellington number would have been right at home at any of the finals. There was the gritty, lovely, never-quit dynamo Leylah Fernandez, coming back to win a very tough semifinal match against Elena Rybakina in three sets, all going to tiebreakers. Then she cruised through the final with mastery against Anna Kalinskaya, 6-1, 6-2. Triumph! Happiness! Tennis glory, and home to Canada for a shot at the Rogers Cup without even a week’s rest. It was big win for her, a 500-level title at the end of a hot and humid week that included a tough two-setter against American star Taylor Townsend in the quarters.
Though Taylor Townsend lost in singles, she won in doubles, teaming with the steady, comforting, quick and calm, and kind and faultlessly polite Shuai Zhang, which earned her the No. 1 ranking in the world, a triumph for a good-natured and articulate American young lady and proud mother, Chicago-born, at the top of her game after more than 10 years of hard work and discouraging moments from which she always rose stronger. The all-American team of Sofia Kenin and Caroline Dolehide, good as they are, simply could not handle the adroit and relentless shots to the corners off Shuai’s racquet, nor Taylor’s bombardment — as well as soft hands — at the net.
The Wa…