tennis

At the Mercedes-Benz Cup doubles final last Sunday at UCLA, the clumps of Israelis in the grandstands waved their blue-and-white flags between points and yelled out encouragement in Hebrew. They were cheering on the team of Yoni Erlich and Andy Ram, who had reached the finals by defeating the top-seeded team in the world, Americans Bob and Mike Bryan.\n\nAt one point a woman began chanting, \”Yisrael! Yisrael!\” and a few others joined in, but mostly people just clapped and smiled, thrilled that their country could put such a team on center court.