With the United States Tennis Association’s decision to move the Western & Southern Open (Aug. 15-23) from Mason, Ohio, to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, where it will be followed by the US Open (Aug. 24-Sept. 13), there will be plenty of tennis in New York – not that fans will see it live. The tournaments will be played without spectators.
But we fans often play the inner game anyway. And so it is with this great painting of the “Tennis Courts at Hotel del Coronado,” in which illustrator-reporter Franklin McMahon captures the Coronado Island resort in the 1990s in all its red and green vivacity.
If it looks familiar to those who’ve never been there, that’s because it’s been featured on PBS’ “Antiques Roadshow” and in the great black-and-white comedy “Some Like It Hot” (1958), with the hotel standing in for the “Seminole Ritz Hotel” in Miami, where much of the movie’s action takes place.
Vincent van Gogh said red and green are the colors of passion. McMahon’s rendering makes you want to dive right into the picture for an intense set or two, doesn’t it?
– Georgette Gouveia
