By the time a spectator walks through the gates of the Winston-Salem Open, a lot of the work is supposed to have disappeared. The courts are dry. The water is cold. Towels are folded. Players get where they need to go. Someone has figured out parking and credentials and which road sign is sending traffic in the wrong direction. The tournament advertises itself as an intimate way to see professional tennis, closer to the players than spectators might get at a larger event. But intimacy requires constant maintenance.
Chuck Vestal, the tournament’s manager of operations, arrived on the grounds July 28, nearly a month before the first main-draw matches. Work on the courts had begun even earlier. Resurfacing started in March, he told me, after Wake Forest’s collegiate season, with some courts requiring additional repairs before the tournament surface could go down. Once tournament week begins, Vestal’s mornings depend on a court crew arriving around 8:30, sometimes to blow off courts, sometimes to deal with whatever rain left behind overnight.