The most critical piece of equipment at the US Open is kept in a windowless room in a cinderblock building, at the end of a corridor down a broad blue carpet, just to the right of a thick brown curtain and a row of white orchids.
Every other day, Carl Gambrell reports there for duty at 8 a.m.. When Gambrell is not there, Kumar Wright is. The two never take the court. They don't meet the players. Neither has touched a racquet in more than a decade.
But their job is “critical,” said their boss, Patrick Dennis, because "nothing happens without tennis balls here."
In lay terms, Gambrell and Wright are the Keepers of the Balls -- all 70,000 of them at this year’s tournament.
Every day, the two men make sure the chair umpires take the right balls and the right number of cans to the courts. Every night, they track how many to order and sort the used ones into the appropriate bins.
Sorting is tricky because the balls are all the same size and pressure. The only difference is the felt. It's more rugged on the balls the men use and labeled “Extra Duty.” The balls used in women's matches are “Regular Duty.”
In the morning, Gambrell and Wright receive a list of matches and chair umpires and, after the umps take their allotment of balls, they check them off with a pink or blue highlighter according to the gender of the players in the match.
Gambrell prefers to pack the bags for the umpires. "I have OCD so I don't like clutter," he said with a laugh. He gives them at least eight cans (for mixed doubles and juniors singles) or 16 for men’s singles. Everyone else gets 10.
Wright, however, lets the umpires pack their own bags. "My system is: I set men's balls on my right, women's on my left. I'll direct them [and] I trust they'll take the right ones,” he said.
Only one mix-up has occurred so far -- in, of all places, Arthur Ashe Stadium.
It’s a relatively easy fix, Wright said. “Another ump will come back running, out of breath, 'Oh, we brought the wrong cans.'”
When the matches are over, the umpires bring back the red cylinder-shaped Wilson bags and the loose balls get tossed into a box called Practice Balls - sorted into women's and men's. Without a can, the telltale sign of a women's ball is a red US Open '17 stamp. Men's have a black stamp. Balls in unopened cans are saved for future matches. Balls in opened cans become “match balls” that are either sold or signed and hit into the stands.
It's not rocket science, but both ball keepers covet their jobs.
In 2015, Gambrell originally applied to be a parking lot attendant. "I didn't get it...and I had a plethora of training." The 30-year-old from Manhattan had previously worked for UPS, Target, Madison Square Garden, and Cold Stone Creamery on 42nd Street. When he was hired for this job, he said "it was a match made in heaven, really. This is the one job where I can actively enjoy myself, get the job done, and be around positive people.”
Wright, a 25-year-old Queens native, was hired in 2014 and still works at his other job three nights a week at a men's and women's fashion warehouse. “I picked this job because the description sounded good," he said. "You get to network with umpires. I've been speaking with a bunch of them. Now I see them on TV and think, ‘Oh, I know him or her.’ That's fun.”
But the Keepers of the Balls never interact with the players – at least at the current location. Under the old Louis Armstrong Stadium, Wright said, “I used to see them in passing. We also used to have a TV so we could watch them play.”
Now the room is something of an isolation booth. “We see [the umpires] come in with wet jackets and know, 'Oh, it's raining,'" he said.
Another quirk of the location, Wright said, is that passersby often ask for tennis balls. “They think we have signed balls. Maintenance workers, or people in the suites who come down to use the bathroom come back here and say, ‘Can I buy a bag of balls?’”
Um, no.
In general, the job is controversy-free. There's little risk of a US Open DeflateGate because the optic yellow Wilsons come in sealed canisters (24 to a case). The biggest complaints, Gambrell and Wright say, is that one male player thought the men's practice balls were too fuzzy and another deemed them too dirty.
Gambrell and Wright may never see the spotlight, but each are secure in one indisputable fact: nothing happens here without tennis balls.
