What's the score, again?

Living large at River Oaks tennis tourney: Make way Beyonce, there's a man-bun

Once upon an afternoon, I found myself gifted with two tickets to the ATP Men's Clay Court Championships at the River Oaks Country Club. And not just any tickets — VIP, baby.

So I tooled down River Oaks Boulevard in my bird-poo-covered ride, passing all the luxury cars and the pedicabs parked along the way as I zoomed past the country club gates to the stadium-side lot.

I found my way to the Lexus Pavilion and up the stairs to an indoor/outdoor area of tables, bars and a sizable buffet at the top of the eastern bleachers. Showing up in the middle of the afternoon, the stands were somewhat deserted as I had just missed last year's winner, the much-maligned Aussie Lleyton Hewitt, make a comeback victory over Somdev Devvarmen. (And I also missed Beyoncé, dammit!)

Grabbing a bevvie in a giant plastic Lexus cup, I nabbed a seat in the traditional top row in front of the tent, and watched as super-hot American ace Sam Querrey manhandled Blaz Kavcic with 135 mph serves, winning in straight sets.

By the evening matches, the crowd had arrived in full force, and it was quite an accomplishment to nab a proper table in the tent (the outdoors by then being too chilly for my seersucker-heavy tennis viewing ensemble). Far from the sparse but focused crowd earlier in the day, this is when I realized I was attending a social event as much as a sporting event. Hellos and air kisses were exchanged, gossip was spread, and the de facto opening line for flirtation was "So, what's the score?"

Of course, nobody knew the score. Even if we wanted to know (which I did) the line judge spent half the match blocking the scoreboard, and the speaker announcements were too quiet to hear over the din.

Which is quite a shame, because the game in front of us between Xavier Malisse and John Isher was tight and hard fought from beginning to end, with all three sets going to a tie-break. We debated whether Malisse's BEL country signifier meant Belgium or Belize, after ruling out Belarus, Belgrade, Belfast and Bel Air. When in doubt, I always try to root for the American (in this case, Isher), but I kept being drawn to shorter, sexier Malisse, at least until my friend described his short ponytail as a man-bun.

Even the cutest tennis player cannot overcome such a description.

I spent enough time outdoors to hear the cheering section for top-seeded Chilean Fernando Gonzalez, in a game that didn't begin until after 9 p.m. While Gonzalez successfully faced off against up-and-coming South African Kevin Andersen, many migrated over to the pool area, where the world's No. 1 men's doubles team, Bob and Mike Bryan, used their night off to entertain as the Bryan Bros. Band.

While the guys were pretty good (they just released an album), the rum punch served might have had something to do with the crowd as well.

But the best part of the day was spying the tennis pros out and about. I actually had to look away from them to avoid a mad case of the schoolgirl giggles, but the women milling around them didn't seem to have the same problem. For a professional sporting event, I was amazed at how up close and personal all the action was.

Am I coming back next year? Hell to the yes.

The ATP Championships at River Oaks continues this afternoon with the men's semifinal matches at 1 p.m. (Tennis Channel starts its coverage at 3). The final takes place Sunday.

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Movie Review

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya face pre-marriage jitters in The Drama

Photo courtesy of A24

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in The Drama.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will be seen together a lot at the movies in 2026, with mega-films like The Odyssey and Dune: Part Three coming out later in the year. But fans can get a much more intimate look at the two stars in a film that offers a unique take on relationship struggles, The Drama.

Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are a New York couple who are engaged to be married. After a quick-but-effective montage of their courtship, the story joins them as they are just days away from their wedding. As they get all the details like music, flowers, and food finalized, a visit to the caterer with married friends Rachel (Alana Haim) and Mike (Mamoudou Athie) proves fateful.

A few too many drinks leads to each member of the group deciding to divulge the worst thing they’ve ever done. While each story is slightly shocking, Emma’s takes the cake, so much so that Charlie starts to question their relationship. As they get closer to the wedding date, Charlie finds it increasingly difficult to get beyond Emma’s revelation, with each real or imagined conversation threatening to derail their previously tight bond.

Written and directed by Kristoffer Borgli, the film is provocative, funny, and cringey as it tries to get to the center of human dynamics. Charlie, Rachel, and Mike have starkly different reactions to Emma’s story, and the way those play out over the course of the film provides, well, the drama. The harder Charlie tries to justify Emma’s past, the more his underlying feelings start to eat at him, causing friction not just between him and Emma, but in other parts of his life, as well.

Strangely, especially for a character played by Zendaya, Emma recedes more than expected. Her explanations for her previous actions are timid at best, and she mostly seems to be waiting for Charlie to forgive her instead of questioning why she needs forgiveness. Borgli favors the male side of the equation, and in so doing he doesn’t dig as deep into the root of the issue as he could have.

Still, the downward spiral at the center of the story has a propulsive nature to it, and each successive step proves to be both hard to watch and impossible to turn away from. It also helps that Borgli manages the tone well, keeping interactions between characters relatively light so that the film doesn’t turn into one like Marriage Story.

Pattinson, who gets to use his own British accent for once, put on an interesting performance that is much better than his last two roles in Mickey 17 and Die My Love. He has good chemistry with Zendaya, who manages to shine despite being laden with a role that doesn’t play entirely to her strengths. Haim and Athie do good work in small roles, while Hailey Grace and Hannah Gross make an impact in brief appearances.

The situation in which Emma and Charlie find themselves in The Drama is not one to be wished on anyone, but it’s presented well by Borgli, keeping tensions high for the bulk of the film. Despite the two main characters not given completely equal footing, the story finds a way to get to a satisfactory ending.

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The Drama opens in theaters on April 3.

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