Early off days create Monday Open finals

Yet another rain-delayed U.S. Open again raised the roof issue at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Four straight years of a Monday's men's championship final will do that, yet when the top players aired their grumbles about matches tailgating each other going into the tournament's final weekend, their emphasis was on an old, old complaint:

Super Saturday.

It is at the behest of CBS that the Open has the men play semifinals on the second Saturday and finals on Sunday -- if Mother Nature doesn't demand otherwise. All of the other three Grand Slam events put the semis on Friday, to provide a day off before the title match. (The women, too, are asked to play back-to-back Open semis and finals, on Friday and Saturday, but are not faced with the men's grinding best-of-five-sets format.)

"It's not the roof that's the problem," said Andy Murray, who was eliminated by Rafael Nadal in Saturday's semifinals. "I don't think a roof is necessary." Instead, he and other players keep saying the Open should no longer stretch the first round of men's play over three days and, more to the point, should build in an off day between the semis and finals.

"This is the fourth year in a row we're playing a Monday final," said Roger Federer, also a semifinal loser. "Might as well just make it a Monday final, right? Without the roof, I just don't think Saturday-Sunday is feasible any longer. It shouldn't happen anymore. I don't think TV should dictate . . . "

But the reality hasn't changed: CBS recently extended its contract, through 2013, to carry the Open's championship weekend, and wants no part of losing the lucrative Saturday-Sunday programs.

"If you paid me as a lawyer," Andy Roddick said, "I could definitely argue both sides of it. The way any business works, if you provide the money, you get to make the decisions most of the time. From a pure quality-of-tennis-player standpoint, it's obviously not the way to go. You just pretty much have to make up your mind which side of the fence you stand on."

Studies for erecting a roof over monstrous Arthur Ashe Stadium, meanwhile, were abandoned by the U.S. Tennis Association when CEO Arlan Kantarian left the organization after the 2008 Open. "Of course I'd love to have a roof," tournament director Jim Curley said. "But a roof for Arthur Ashe Stadium is technologically a challenge and financially cost-prohibitive."

The topic of elite players adjusting to tennis' fairly unique scheduling quirks comes up repeatedly and, by and large, the players say what Maria Sharapova said last week: "A big part of our sport is adjusting to whatever comes our way, whether it's the time or a match or opponents or conditions."

They are, after all, fabulously paid ($1.8 million for winning the Open title). So the bottom line continues to be the bottom line. And if it doesn't rain next year . . .