Rain Delays Force Tennis Officials to Mull Retractable Roofs -- Again

FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y., Aug. 31, 2006 — -- A full day-night washout of the US Open this week -- with more rain expected for the weekend -- has tennis officials revisiting the question of creating a roofed stadium for the venerable tennis facility.

The biggest drawback is the immense cost -- probably in the ballpark of several hundred million dollars or more -- of retrofitting the gigantic Arthur Ashe Stadium.

The biggest incentive is the continuous flow of revenue from uninterrupted TV coverage.

The US Open is one of the most prosperous of all the major tennis championships.

Australia led the way nearly 20 years ago by creating the firstof two retractable roofed stadiums.

Teams of U.S., British, and French architects have visited Melbourne to inspect the Rod Laverand Vodafone Arenas.

Only the All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of Wimbledon, has committed to modernization.

Last year, the club announced it had raised $83.7 million for the roof project.

Wimbledon will inaugurate the roofed Centre Court sometime in 2009.

In Paris, Roland Garros proposed a similar stadium as part ofa failed French bid for the 2012 Olympic Games.

The plans are on ashelf.

The U.S. Tennis Association has made no decision, butofficials have repeatedly said they cannot ignore the difficultiesposed by rain, especially after severe weather interruptionsbedeviled the 2003 US Open.

Now, with the 2006 US Open facing gloomy weather forecastsfor several days, the issue has resurfaced as something thatprobably should be done.

In Melbourne, the 2006 Australian Open played out without interruptions -- from the rain or blistering sun.

Most of its matcheswere played outdoors on 19 outdoor courts. Featured matches wereheld in the two covered arenas.

The Rod Laver Arena covers 47 acres and seats about 15,000 spectators; the nearby Vodafone Arena covers 25 acres and seats about 10,000.

The impetus for building Melbourne's original roofed stadium came,ironically, not from the threat of bad weather, but the threatof extinction.

In the 1980s, mired in politics and saddled with agingfacilities at Kooyong, a hallowed suburban tennis club, thetournament faced possible elimination from the world's tennisschedule.

"I'm not sure he knows it, but John McEnroe was the catalyst,"said Peter Brook, the stadium's architect.

"He played here in the1980s and complained that it [Kooyong] was a cow paddock."

McEnroe's comments alarmed Melbourne natives and became apolitical issue within the province of Victoria.

Worried that thetournament might be shifted to archrival Sydney, Melbourneofficials relocated the Open to public parkland near thecenter of the city, which hosted the Olympic Games in 1956.

Convinced that they needed a state-of-the-art revolution, Open officialsturned to local firm Peddle Thorp Architects.

Brook was a35-year-old Harvard-trained member of the team assigned to design thefacility.

"We had to deal with a complex problem that had never beensolved before," he said, recalling that until then, the world'smajor tennis facilities had featured only open-air stadiums or indoorfixed-roof arenas.

"It's incredibly simple," he said, describing his team'ssolution: two giant roof panels that roll on railway tracks toexpose or protect the courts.

Three years ago, Brook stepped into a small, windowed room atone corner of the Laver Arena and pointed to a panel that controlspowerful electric motors.

At an operator's touch, the motors canbegin separating the panels, which measure 90 feet by 159 feeteach, and weigh a total of 180 tons apiece.

It takes at least 25minutes to open or close them, averaging only about three feet perminute.

In the nearby Vodafone Arena, constructed 11 years later, thewarp speed is about 18 feet per minute and the two panels,measuring about 80 feet by 88 feet and weighing 250 tons, move fastenough to close or open in about 10 minutes.

This stadium is alsoused for concerts and large conventions.

Total roof cost: $2.7 million, part of the $53 millionAustralia spent in the 1980s to construct Rod Laver Arena.

Today,Brook estimates, the same stadium would cost about $100 million,with the roof costing no more than about $10 million. Could his concept be used to retrofit the US Open's Arthur Ashe Stadium, which seats upward of 20,000 people, or thesmaller Louis Armstrong Stadium?

"Yes, absolutely, " Brook said.

Wimbledon's decision to build a roof was made last year, on a rain-swept day during the tournament, while most of the world's top tennis players sat inside lounges and spectators squirmed underumbrellas, waiting for a break in the showers.

By selling 2,300 subscriptions, priced at 23,150 British pounds each -- about $42,144 -- the club promised each purchaser a reserved seat at Centre Court for five years, beginning in 2006.

The new Wimbledon roof will be fashioned from fabric that clubofficials described as a "translucent folding concertina."

This willallow sunlight to reach the grass, officials said, and create afeeling of watching play in an open-air setting.

"The fabric to be used is a special waterproof structuralmaterial that is very strong and highly flexible," according to aclub statement released last year.

The club said tournament officials would be able to close thenew roof in less than 10 minutes.

Club members pledged to resume play 10 minutes to30 minutes after the closing process had started and planned to continuecovering the court with tarpaulins while they operated theretractable roof.