“You gotta be ready,” said Roger Federer chuckling after he nearly hit a ball boy with a headlong behind-the-back shot at the 2009 Australian Open.
The remark wasn’t a scolding, but rather a bit of friendly advice, as the great Federer was once a humble ball boy in his native Basel, Switzerland, where he served legendary players like Stefan Edberg and Michael Stitch.
Now entitled to his own ballpersons, Federer has fun testing their skills with the occasional intentional misfire. “Every now and then I’ll notice that he’ll take a ball, he’ll wail it at one of the corner ball people and he’ll gaze at them to see if they’ll catch it,” Zach Rosenblatt, a ballperson for the U.S. Open, told TIME magazine.
For Rosenblatt and other U.S. Open ballpersons, who duck, dart, crouch and throw with immense speed and agility, the interaction with Federer is a welcome one in a setting where they are largely invisible to the crowd who comes to watch the Swiss superstar.
What does it take to gain a coveted spot on the court with Fed? At the U.S. Open, apparently a lot.
As many as 500 people try out each year for one of 80 available ballperson positions. Drills test their ability to run, toss and even throw a ball across the full length of the court, a skill unique to the U.S. Open as in all other majors ballpersons roll instead of throw.
And the tryouts are more complicated that that. Candidates can compete for a spot as a back, net or swing ballperson, each which specializes in a particular skill. Backs are strong throwers. Nets are quick and agile. Swings must be able to do it all.
Thanks to a special media tryout hosted by the tournament, countless reporters have had the chance to vie for a ballperson position and live to tell the tale. Most write about how they failed.
After attending this year’s media tryout in mid-June, Freddie Champion of GQ wrote about accidentally hitting his evaluator with his best effort at a full-court toss. Likewise, Laken Litman of USA TODAY, who tried out in 2013, pegged a photographer with her throwing attempt. Neither made the cut.
Rembert Browne of Grantland, took his ball boy investigation a step further, and in addition to attending the media tryout, went to the public tryout, where he found that “everyone was so young. Troublingly young.” But after waiting hours for 397 teens to try out ahead of him, Browne’s adrenaline kicked in and he gave the performance of a lifetime. “I now know what Kobe felt like when he scored 81,” he writes in his article. “Just untouchable. Out of body. Ball Boy Baryshnikov.”
We at MyTennisLessons didn’t know about the media tryouts until after the fact, but we’re certain that anyone from our team could have passed the test. Well, maybe. At the very least, we’re always ready to catch a ball flying off Fed’s strings.
