One Man’s Travels to the US Open Upon the Eve of the Great Tournament
A glimpse into the future of the 2096 US Open
Day 14 of Left Open, Club Leftist Tennis’ daily leftist coverage of the 2022 US Open.
To close out the final day of Left Open, we have used the powers of dialectical materialism to predict what the US Open will be like in the year 2096. Below is a travelogue from humble tennis fan Burgess Yeoman in an America that is quite unrecognizable to our eyes today. We hope this vision from the future will inspire the working class to fight for the tennis the we deserve.
Thank you comrade Kevin Rogan for helping us acquire this historical document.
by Burgess Yeoman
The last American century has seen much change. My thoughts are still troubled with the Extirpation of Manhattan, and the watery graves of millions now moldering silently amid those once-proud spires; and they are perturbed even more by the war-reaved prairie fathoms beneath me as I write these very passages. But then I look up, and my heart thrills to see the sunlight dancing on the surface of our vast inland sea, the mighty Columbia, the heir of the Great Lakes, which saw fit to magnify their prediluvian greatness a thousandfold; and as my sunsteamer carries me out of the port of Dayton like a quinquereme alighting upon an American Tyrrhenian, a bolt of sunlight sustains me as well as our ship; the future carries me on, and the beatific colossus of Amphron, Longshoreman in Victory, towering 125 cubits above the bustling docks, smiles at our departure. To the US Open we go!
Our little ship comfortably carries 300 souls. The day is clear and brisk, the smell of the sea fortifying. From my vantage at the bow, I look sternward; children run about as their parents converse, and the stern patrols of the revolutionary army soldiery, in their brown fatigues, polished boots, and iron armor settles all, the comfortable grip they have upon their shock mauls the best proof against danger. Vendors, their presence far less inspiring but nevertheless welcome, hawk their odds and ends, making a merry turnover of skalers.
A container runner, making the “channel run” to Muncie, departs along with us, and we gaily race neck and neck through the Cincinnati bay for a time before it makes a lazy turn to the north. Cincinnati! That reborn city, newly consolidated as a titan of industry garlanded with a brace of hundreds of sea turbines, lies in glittering repose to port. To starboard, the Cape of Emporia tumbles into the sea. Ahead, nought but open water.
I ruminate upon my destination, as my pen rests still upon these pages. Joplin, Empire City of the Federal Seaway Economic Zone, the majestic Rome of the New West. City of a thousand flags, seat of the Americas from Panama to Pole. What a beautiful prospect to return to it again, after so many years! Upon my first visit, the Empire City had been but a mote in Engineer-Princeps Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes’ eye, the headiness of the dream tempered by the irradiated flatlands and retrograde small towns outside the city walls; the famous sea approach, depicted in many a postcard and travelogue, its existence proof positive of our new American century, was but a dismal tableau of low-slung retail and detached homes. The thought itself impresses upon the mind a glorious sensation of history, especially when its movements and motors are in the hands of a redoubtably socialist nation such as ours.
The Empire City, which decades ago contained not a single tennis court, now contains thousands within the glorious Oronogo Colosseum which dominates the Worldsea Coast, undiminished even as it lies athwart the Wreck of the USS Delaney to one side and the Imperial Narrows Bridge to the other. In its masterworked limestone and steel bulk are housed the entire functions of the US Open, its players and games and the many noble workers besides, all toiling happily to provide the population with athletic spectacles the likes of which the world has never seen. When the games commence, the learned, reserved, and diligent audience lets loose wild cheers, all overseen by the carved likenesses of thousands of proletarian martyrs in the rafters, who themselves watch on from their heaven. Let none say that our nation, founded on work in kind and unified by fire, is above the rousing excitements of sport.
On the last day of Thermidor (August 17th of the old calendar), I arrive at the Empire City at last. The city grows from a glow on the seaborne horizon to a dizzying forest of gleaming white towers and manufactories, all crowned by resplendent beams of light stabbing into the firmament, rendering even the low earth bodies of the satellites trite by comparison. Sleep eludes me, and my humours are tempestuous, excitement whirling them about like my heart has been replaced with a plasma reactor. I content myself on the bow, in what has become my usual seat, occasionally flagging down passing vendors for caffeine-free sugar-free soda as I scribble in my notebook. This year, the Open promises to put American mettle to the test, as foreign athletes have been admitted in the games for the first time since the Revolution. Though I have no fears that our men and women, owing to our nation’s focus on the importance of physical activity in recreation and leisure, will do anything but perform admirably, I, along with other intellectual workers, historians, and layman commentators on the game of tennis know that there is much at stake. Will the Revolutionary Army take kindly to having its Sports Club members suffer the indignity of loss at the hands of, say, a Romanish, or—god forbid!—some boor from the European Conclave or High Brazil? I think not – and for the private doubters and would-be reactionary backsliders, I wonder if defeat on the part of our boys will lead to a more general increase in distrust of this country’s basic principles. I pray not.
But as our sunsteamer pulls alongside the embarkation dock, I see the swarms of workers, and beyond them, those off-shift, bustling to and fro on the great Promenade of MacArthur Sabbatine, and I know that there is naught to fear. As I breathe in the warm, smoky air, I remember: the US Open is our birthright. As I hear the roar of the city, as I embark on the passenger train that carries me to my quarters, I revise this idle thought: tennis is our gift to the world. And finally, as I enter my communal hall and identify my assigned bunk, the familiar scratchy wool of the standard-issue blanket and the murmur of late-night whisperers comforting me, I find solace. Tennis, like socialism, exults the mass by raising the individual. In days, the Open begins. And it is ours for the taking.
Click here to purchase a limited edition commemorative 2096 US Open poster produced by Kevin Rogan in collaboration with Club Leftist Tennis!