Martina Navratilova was pissed.

She stood silently on the service line, fuming, her hands on her hips and her racket lying on the court where she had dropped it a moment before.

The doubles team of Navratilova and Bill Scanlon, a young, scruffy competitor with a hot topspin forehand, had blown a big lead and trailed a pair of unknowns in the deciding set. The DC-9's and the 727's continued to thunder overhead, a loudspeaker bellowed incessantly ("The front exit is the ohnly exit available: please leave immediately"), and now they had run out of tennis balls. It was the end of a long day at U.S. Open. How dare they run out of balls on the two-time defending Wimbledon champion!

Finally, Navratila had had enough. "This tournament is the pits," she shouted. "No food, no balls, planes coming all the time...." She gave an indignant huff and picked up her racket, while Scanlon twirled his nonchalantly. "We're The Match That Bill Talbert (Tournament Director) Forgot," he said with a wry smile.

You can't experience the U. S. Open without being there. TV just doesn't cut it when it comes to covering an event that attracts hundreds of matches and players and thousands of fans and spreads them over 30 courts and two weeks. Sure, when it gets down to the semis and finals or other times deemed convenient by CBS, you can usually count on five cameras and slo-mo and continuous (if sometimes inane) commentary. You get a fine view of the stadium court, and you know who won or lost.

But the ambience just doesn't come across. TV's idea of conveying the atmosphere, the jumble, the ebb-and-flow relaxed panic that permeates the Open (and its home since last year, the National Tennis Center in Queens, N.Y.) and distinguishes it from some taped pseudo-spectacular from the Rio Spectaculo Beach Resort, is a quick pan from the Goodyear blimp, or a quick aside from Tony Trabert.

At home, you don't hear the rumours about what's going on out at Court 17, or get dirty looks from ushers when you run behind the court carrying your $3.50 plastic-enclosed chef's salad. You don't get burned by the sun or soaked by the rain. You don't hear the cheers that drift over from Shea Stadium. And there's always a technician waiting to tune out the noise when a jet from LaGuardia thunders by.

("Those poor guys," a spectator said of Jimmy Connors and Brian Gottfried, who both bring in over a hundred thousand dollars annually on the pro tour, "how do they play with so many distractions?")

Most of all, you're limited by that camera. A day at the Open does not consist of walking to the seat (or number on a bench) listed on your ticket and witnessing every point of every stadium match, unless the match is Connors-Borg or Evert-Navratilova or Nastase-anyone. The real action can be anywhere--the 19,000 seat stadium, the 6,000 seat grandstand or one of the numerous side courts.

And very often, the most memorable moments occur not in big-name headline confrontations, but when chance and circumstance conspire to transform some obscure small-print battle into a struggle of Good and Evil.

Which is what happened to Scanlon and Navratilova. They were minding their own business on a side court, methodically overcoming the less-than-dynamic duo of Van Winitsky and Rayni Fox before a few bored passers-by. Then the crowd started pouring out of the stadium when the final featured match of the day ended. It was time to leave--the night session would start in little more than an hour.

But after seven hours of mind-zapping tennis, were the thousands satisfied? Shit, no! So they descended on this doubles match, rooting for the underdogs so the match could go 3 sets, hoping for an upset, minor as it might be. Winitsky and Fox enjoyed this unexpected support. Was Navratilova amused? No way. A bit unnerved, she and Scanlon did manage to eke out a third-set tiebreaker win.

*

Every year, one player dominates the tournament, not necessarily winning the title, but capturing the attention of the media and fans. Orantes in '75 and Vilas in '77. Evert in '71, Shriver, to an extent, last year.

This year there was no question. Though future stars such as Yannick Noah, Johann Kriek and Pat DuPre all had fine tournaments, and Vitas Gerulaitis did, after all, make the finals, the 1979 U. S. Open belonged, like it or not, to John McEnroe.