Once you cross the bridge you have to traverse various paths, steps and foot bridges down and around, through a forest of trees, fallen leaves, squirrels hunting for nuts, and other curious sights and scents of nature, eventually after about a 15-minute trek you will find the courts which are situated between the Hudson River and Amtrak train tracks. Then you look up and there’s the grand, towering, silver structure of the George Washington Bridge looking down at you.

The courts have a sign that warns you about needing a permit but there is no person here to do that job. There’s ten courts here, and just one is being used at the moment, by a young female and male who are having some good baseline rallies.

Ryan Arguelles is a USTA Eastern legend. He is so in-demand, especially as a doubles player, that he has competed for ten different USTA teams this year. The “Zen Master” – as he is called – has amassed an overall record of 41-6 this year, playing for teams from Manhattan, Queens, Westchester and Northern Connecticut.

I first played Arguelles three years ago in a USTA money tournament at Cunningham Park and won the SF of a 35s event 75 64 to win the $125 finalist check (I got smoked in the final by the three-time year-end #1 Adrian Chrici). We became friends. I like his game which reminds me of a right-handed Marcelo Rios. I played for his Vaders team earlier this year as a 4.0 and helped win a key playoff match before getting DQed before Sectionals and Nationals. Guess I should have thrown some more games in matches during the season. But all four of my singles matches were tough battles and I don’t play like that. No problem, that’s USTA League Tennis. There are several players better than me, and even more out in Tucson. (I played 4.0 Nationals four years ago and went 1-2 in singles out there, getting crushed twice. I didn’t lose a match all year that year in Eastern.)

So we start playing and I come out firing. Aces. Serve and volleys. Running forehands. Backhand passes. This is about as good as I can play. The court is quick and a little slippery but everything is working today. The Zen Master is about 15-20 pounds overweight and in singles the extra mass hurts his first step quickness and movement to far balls and drop shots. I make a lot of picturesque winners which I wish could have been videotaped, to take the set 6-0.

But the Zen Master is a crafty player with a lot of experience. He changes tactics and plays more patiently. He directs almost every serve to your backhand, deep in the box corner with a weird, knuckleballing spin that slides the ball away from you. Once the point is under way, his backhand is his better wing, he can take the ball on the rise and control it to where he needs to put it. I let off the gas pedal a tad and push my returns back a little too passively. This allows him to take command on the points and move me wide to my one-handed backhand which opens the court for him. He takes advantage of these options and patterns and in a flash, suddenly I’m down 0-3 in the second. Then I go down 15-30 on my serve. But I am able to dig deep and win that game and the next two.

The set becomes a battle. We get to 4-4, and I break him. Then I try to serve it out and we battle through about six deuces with some full speed tennis and excellent shotmaking from all over the court. I finally win it but we are both playing very good tennis.

It’s a really cool place to play here. Just a couple miles from Yankee Stadium, Harlem, The Apollo, midtown, Central Park, The John McEnroe Tennis Academy on Randall’s Island and Bergen County, NJ. Some quality players are next to us, and two more on the next courts north. One guy has an afro bigger than Oscar Gamble and he’s got some game too. All the while, there are joggers and cyclists passing by on the bike path, and few sailboats too. We play one more no-ad set before some Dominican food at the restaurant on 181st and Broadway.

Rice, beans, chicken and yucca with a Coke is as good as it gets after a tennis match. This isn’t tennis-related but I have to mention the tall blond, curly-haired Dominican young lady wearing tight blue jeans and a white shirt, who was working as the bartender at the small bar in the back. She is one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen in my life. Not surprising is that there’s five guys sitting at the bar, apparently enamored with this beauty. They all look bored though and no one is talking much, they all seem helplessly magnetized and frozen by her striking attractiveness. As this article is written, I regret not taking her picture and asking her favorite tennis player just for the hell of it.

There are no symbols of tennis at this sports-oriented restaurant bar, it’s all baseball and football on the TV screens. Unfortunately, they are not showing what’s going on at the Masters Series event in Shanghai on The Tennis Channel. I am curious to see if Dolgopolov can make it to the third round by beating Chardy. But the food is excellent here. Three sets of quality tennis with a good friend, tasty morsels in a nice restaurant – that’s good enough. And, hey, that’s right, I had three aces today, no double faults…

“Even though I won worlds in ‘93, I wasn’t expected to win at the Olympics. We went to the Olympics as a new country, just split from Russia. I didn’t understand what was happening. The story happened with Nancy (Kerrigan) and Tonya (Harding). I just did my job, skated as well as I could. I came out of nowhere like a tornado.”

Baiul became the first female athlete to win the gold medal for Ukraine. Today, she’s just about on par with the Klitschko Brothers – in terms of fame in Ukraine. Naturally, this natural born competitor who overcame long odds in her life, just loves the sport of boxing.

“I like boxing, I love to watch it live, it’s very exciting. It’s a very tough sport,” says the 31-year-old who lives in Cliffside Park, N.J., across the Hudson River from New York City. “I love sitting there enjoying how people fight. It’s a fighter sport. That’s what I love about it. I’m a fighter too. What you learn in your sport helps you in your life. Life knocks you down, you get up. Life knocks you down, you get up again. You have to learn how to fight, fight towards pain and resistance. You see all that in the ring, when you are sitting there watching the match.”

What was her first ringside experience? “I can’t remember the first one. One of them was with Katarina Witt (another Olympic skating champ) in Germany. I skated in her show. She said, Come to the fights with me. So I went to the fights. Katarina, she loves boxing too. We saw English fighters, I don’t remember the names. I remember we talked about how the boxers came out to the ring, how they played the music. It’s really exciting. I remember we were kidding with each other – about the girls going out on the ice and fighting each other [laughs]. Skating is a little like that, but more graceful.”

Baiul compares the pressure before a major skating competition as similar to what the boxers go through before a fight. “In skating there is the tension like boxing. Before the free program there is a six-minute warm-up. It’s a real difficult area to be in, with the other skaters. Pressure is enormous, you’re anxious,” she says. “So you just stand there, shake your legs. So many things go through your mind. Me and Katarina were like, Just go out and fight before the free program, that would make it funny.”

Baiul has been to many live fights and has met many of the modern greats. “I’ve met so many of them. Oscar, I went to his fights. Mike Tyson. Lennox Lewis. Muhammad Ali. The Klitschkos. You meet them, it’s interesting. Then you see them how they fight in the ring and they’re different people. But when you talk to them, they’re like big marshmallows [laughs]. They’re like big bears.”

Her favourites? “I like Oscar De La Hoya, when he was in shape. And Mike Tyson. You cannot deny it – a genius. And the Klitschkos. I feel okay watching them fight. It’s exciting. I see Wladimir at the fashion shows, I’m very friendly with him. He’s very nice.”

She met Iron Mike Tyson. “At the ESPY Awards in 2007. He tried to stay away from people. When you go through the life experience he went through – I think he put the gate up around him.”

Her favourite fight? “Let’s say Vitali is fine. When he got the title (vs. Corrie Sanders). I was at the next fight he had at Madison Square Garden (vs. Kirk Johnson), it wasn’t really a fight. A lot of Ukrainians flew in from all over the world to see it. That place was packed with Ukrainians, they came from Calgary, Canada, Rochester, all over the globe.”

When asked why she thinks Eastern Europeans are dominating heavyweight boxing today, Baiul replies, “My sport is going through the same thing as boxing, like Eastern Europeans dominate heavyweight boxing now, in skating, Asians are dominating the sport. It was never like that, never. Now it’s all Asian people. I think it’s because of the coaching. And you have to be very hungry to do this or that. You really have to be hungry, to love the sport and fight for it.”

Her favourite boxing movies? “Rocky, of course. And Raging Bull. I went to the premiere of the remake with Martin Scorcese. Raging Bull is a pretty great movie.”

Favourite boxing book? “I have the Klitschkos book. I really do. It’s about both of them. It’s a beautiful book, quite a lot of pictures of them through their lives, at home, doing different things.”

Earlier, Baiul commented about how there is a common tension before a boxing match and a skating competition. So I decide to ask her if she has noticed any boxers who have the coordination and potential to make a good figure skater? “It’s interesting to say. In figure skating you have to be graceful. That TV show ‘Dancing With The Stars’ – the football players and boxers do that show and they do well and become popular. Skating is similar,” and with a laugh, she adds. “I think Vitali would be a good figure skater!”