Dear USTA and U.S. Open Sponsors

I’m not going to gripe about the price of tickets or the price of concessions or the exclusive Heineken sponsorship that forced me to drink, well Heineken, or even the weather, as you had no control over that.

But a few questions:

1. Upon arriving at the stadium bag-free as per your security notes, I was told that e-readers were not allowed in the stadium. E-READERS! iPhones, BlackBerries, video cameras, real cameras, these things are all allowed. On these things one can take pictures, video, talk, blog, surf the web. On an e-reader, one can … read. Why does the USTA hate literacy? By the way, I went to another entrance and snuck mine in, so take THAT!

2. Why don’t you take a tougher stance against guidos and goombas there to socialize rather than watch tennis? (Granted, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish these from Eurotrash, but I think Eurotrash typically wears better shoes.)

3. As folks were standing around in the rain on Sunday, going into the fourth hour of delay for the men’s final, CBS was broadcasting the previous day’s match. The minute they went to a live shot of the empty stadium and put up a graphic saying something about the match being postponed until Monday, you cut the transmission. And then didn’t make an announcement for another ten to fifteen minutes. WTF? No. Seriously. WTF?

4. Sure there are contracts and TV rights to consider but you do realize there is a difference between Sunday at 4 p.m. and Monday at 4 p.m.? Right? Then again, I imagine you might be a bunch of slack-jawed suburbanites or rich and out of touch. Here’s a hint. Monday is a weekday. Sunday is a weekend. Besides it’s not like anyone needed to see CBS Monday-night lineup. Then again you already had the money from ticket-goers so what did you care?

5. After one day of rain delay, rain moved again on Monday and the entire stadium seem unprepared. Concessions were closed. I assumed that was done because of lightning. But on our level (the prole level), they simply weren’t reopened. It was hard to get a straight answer from anyone whether they were out of food or simply didn’t feel like opening. I did see one long line of people have the screen pulled down in their faces. People were forced to eat $5 ice cream bars for dinner. (And by people I mean me.) And you ran out of beer on an entire level. YOU RAN OUT OF BEER!?!?!

6. No. Seriously. You ran out of beer?