In an age of splintered attention and multi-everything-all-at-once, why should anyone, even a tennis fan, have to limit himself to one distraction at a time? Here was Jake Snorsky, for instance, standing atop his seat far above a cluster of courts at the United States Open the other day, able to watch seven potentially interesting things at once.
If he looked straight down, he could see Rafael Nadal, Martina Hingis and David Ferrer slamming balls around the practice courts (not at one another, annoyingly) in front of him. If he turned around, he could see three women’s doubles matches being played simultaneously on Courts 4, 5 and 6 behind him.