$24 drinks and designer sunglasses: New York’s hottest club is … the US Open
The latest harbinger of doom at the US Open isn’t a bad call or a broken superstition. It’s pumpkin-sized tennis balls.
As the action on court heads towards the finish, hordes of children can be seen crowding the hall monitors to take up a front-row position with these giant balls, a pen and the expectation of an autograph. For a player on the verge of losing, these cherubic autograph hunters are not just a sign that their tournament is over. The autograph collectors, as well as the cocktail addicts and collectors of commemorative towels, show how much the hunger for personal moments and mementos has eclipsed the hunger for real tennis.
The US Open has long established itself as the glamorous slam – the place where fans came to see Anna Kournikova and Anna Wintour, and stayed up late to watch Jimmy Connors or Andre Agassi rally under the spotlight. Now, the vibes are different. Tennis is still the main attraction, that’s for sure. It’s just that it’s become a bit more of a background feature. Twenty-four years ago, former USTA boss Arlen Kantarian took control of the US Open with the idea of transforming the tournament into a cultural celebration to rival the Super Bowl. He cut million dollar winners checkshas thought of AI-based arbitration; and led the transformation of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center from a gritty New York subway station to a chic suburban shopping mall. Little by little, he dragged tennis into the future.
Meanwhile, the Open has become something even more meaningful — a trendy New York City event where everyone clamors for their own exclusive item — usually in the form of a baseball cap with the tournament logo. Even as it suffers from an ongoing contract dispute between satellite provider DirecTV and Disney, which has left more than 10 million customers without not available on ESPNThe tournament has somehow managed to maintain interest on the ground, despite losing players like Roger Federer, Serena Williams and Andy Murray to retirement, and Rafael Nadal to another nasty injury. It has remained interesting, despite a chaotic first week that saw favourites Carlos Alcaraz and Naomi Osaka crash out early, along with reigning champions Novak Djokovic and Coco Gauff.
Kantarian, a flashy promoter who helped turn Radio City Music Hall and the NFL into must-see venues, liked to say that he wasn’t trying to change tennis. “Our job is to combine innovation with tradition,” he told the New York Daily News in 2006, the year Andy Roddick finished runner-up. The resulting grand spectacle is a city monument to conspicuous consumption and aspirational wealth, where tennis has become an afterthought. You go to get the cap.
A week before the tournament, the US Open held its fifth-ever Fan Week, giving the public free access to live music and fine dining on the grounds. More than 200,000 people showed up over the course of the seven days to soak up the atmosphere. The lack of any tennis of note made the scene all the more confusing, the equivalent of a trip to Katz’s Deli just to sit Meg Ryan’s table and leave the pastrami on rye.
The US Open crowds only got bigger once the tournament was underway this year, with record numbers of people lining up to get in; it’s a testament to how eager people are to make up for time lost to Covid restrictions and take advantage of the dramatically cooler weather compared to years past. That’s even as the cost of a day pass at the venue, once the best value in American sports, has soared from around $60 a decade or so ago to well over twice that today (prices are closer to $250 on the secondary market). For the first time ever, the US Open had these crowds flowing in, out and around venues during the day play – like a Jersey dinner. It’s a marked departure from established etiquette that limits fan movement to substitution intervals. And while the stars on the pitch don’t seem to mind this new potential distraction (“I’ve played two tournaments [already] “with this rule,” top-seeded women’s Iga Świątek said earlier this week, “so that’s fine with me”), they still play tennis – a neat country club sport. A comparable degradation in decorum for opera performances at the Met is hard to imagine.
The US Open was once a tournament, a real tournament – moved from the confines of Forest Hills to the open courts of Flushing Meadows. It was its own thing, louder and wilder than Wimbledon and Roland Garros – but mostly because American tennis fans are so passionate. Famously, in 1979, the crowd at Louis Armstrong Stadium almost brought to revolt when Ilie Năstase refused to resume a second-round match against fellow bad boy John McEnroe. By allowing spectators to move freely (within certain seating restrictions), a purist could argue that the US Open has made itself no more special than a late-summer Mets MLB game at nearby Citi Field – a place for casuals to eat and shop while the sports people go about their business in the background.
Given the long periods that fans can spend out of their seats waiting for excruciatingly long matches and sets, it was inevitable that the organizers would eventually wave the white flag. “Does it lead to [spectators] “Will it be completely free?” US Open referee Jake Garner asks me. “I think time will tell. For now, our approach is to find the right balance between fan experience and player experience.”
Sportswriters used to laugh at Open fans who came out onto the court in full tennis attire, as if McEnroe or Martina Navratilova would turn to them for help in times of need. But the Open’s long association with New York Fashion Week has brought tennis couture back into fashion. Today’s fans walk out of the Ralph Lauren store outside Arthur Ashe Stadium dressed like the baseball team on the court. They line up for $30 lobster rolls at I told you so T-shirts, a Challengers easter egg – a watercooler surprise that imbued tennis with a zeitgeist. Tennis has become a full-fledged lifestyle, like F1 did after Drive to Survive, or the NFL since Taylor Swift started showing up at Chiefs games for Travis Kelce.
The synergy between the brands and the big names of the US Open has never been greater. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has advertised his law firm on small sponsor patches worn by American doubles star Taylor Townsend and Czech Tomas Machac. Asked if he had ever heard of Crump, known as “the attorney general of Black America,” Machac said told the AP: “A little bit. Not much.” While Crump attended the Open last Sunday somewhat under the radar, it’s no small feat for him.
All in all, the US Open is aiming to break the million-person mark this year; a fair number of those visitors have probably never heard of Machac or don’t care who else is playing while they’re there. That the tournament has nevertheless produced two American semifinalists in the women’s tournament And men’s teams, and after the domestic desire for a return to tennis’ Golden Age under US leadership was so immense, is an irony no one could have foreseen amid the deluge of selfies and excess. But business has certainly helped propel American tennis back to the top. Last year’s tournament generated nearly 90 percent of the USTA’s $581 million in revenue, money that trickles down to player development. Possibly.
Gone are the days when only wealthy Manhattanites would trudge to Queens over Labor Day weekend with their corporate accounts so they could explicitly say they were rubbing shoulders with Barack Obama or Zendaya. Now, the tournament’s big stars are the Honey Deuce, a $23 vodka lemonade that’s become a must-have Instagram souvenir—and the plastic cup is going home, too. They’re people like Morgan Riddle, the self-proclaimed “tennis Barbie” who’s dating Taylor Fritz; and Paige Lorenze, Tommy Paul’s social media influencer girlfriend. Fritz and Paul both made it to the second week, with Fritz advancing to his first career Grand Slam semifinal. “It was crazy,” Lorenze said. Town & Country Magazine“I think I have somewhere between 15 and 20 brand deals during [the Open]. I’m not kidding; I’ve never been so booked up!”
Lorenze is seen watching Paul coolly from his players’ box, designer sunglasses resting on her face, and she’s not only breaking ranks with enthusiastic supporters like Ayan Broomfield, who played against type earlier this week when he cheered on his boyfriend Frances Tiafoe in a New York Rangers cap. Lorenze seems like someone who would rather be back on her phone, counting likes and followers. “It’s an incredibly old event,” she told T&C, explaining the US Open further. “It’s in Queens every year. The US Open has that aura. You can’t pay for that aura, but you can try to get through it by having people in [your] clothes.”