$24 drinks and designer sunglasses: New York’s hottest club is … the US Open | US Open Tennis 2024

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, staying up late to watch Jimmy Connors or Andre Agassi rally under the spotlight. Now, the vibes are different. Tennis is still the main attraction, sure. It’s just that it’s become a bit 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 jamboree to rival the Super Bowl. He’s written millions of dollars in winner’s checks, invented AI-based arbitration, and spearheaded the transformation of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center from a seedy New York subway station into a posh suburban mall. Little by little, he’s dragged tennis into the future.

Meanwhile, the Open has become something even more significant – a trendy event in New York City where everyone clamors for their own exclusive copy – usually in the form of a baseball cap emblazoned with the tournament’s logo. Even now, as it grapples with an ongoing contract dispute between satellite provider DirecTV and Disney, which has left more than 10 million customers without ESPN to watch, the 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’s remained compelling despite a chaotic first week that saw favorites 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 seven days to soak up the atmosphere. The lack of any tennis to speak of made the scene even more confusing, the equivalent of going to Katz’s Deli just to sit at Meg Ryan’s table and forgo 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 with this rule (already),” top female Iga Świątek said earlier this week, “so it’s fine with me”), they still play tennis – a neat country club sport. A similar degradation in decorum for opera performances at the Met is hard to imagine.

The US Open used to be 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 or Roland Garros—but mostly because American tennis fans are so passionate. Famously, in 1979, the crowd at Louis Armstrong Stadium nearly rioted when Ilie Năstase refused to restart a second-round match against fellow bad boy John McEnroe. By allowing spectators to move freely (within some 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 athletes go about their business in the background.

Given the long periods fans can spend without their seats as they wait for agonizingly long games and sets, it was inevitable that organizers would eventually wave the white flag. “Does this mean (spectators) are 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 took to the court in full tennis gear, 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 in I TOLD YA T-shirts, a Challengers Easter egg—a watercooler surprise that imbued tennis with a zeitgeist. Tennis has become a full-fledged lifestyle, as F1 did after Drive to Survive, and the NFL since Taylor Swift started showing up at Chiefs games for Travis Kelce.

The synergy between the brands and the big shots at the US Open has never been greater. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump advertises 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 told the AP: “A little. Not much.” That’s no small feat for Crump, despite the fact that he attended Sunday’s Open somewhat under the radar.

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 hunger for a return to America’s golden age of tennis was so immense, it’s ironic that no one could have anticipated it amid the flood 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 ultimately trickles down to player development.

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’d met Barack Obama or Zendaya. Now, the tournament’s big stars are the Honey Deuce, a $23 vodka-infused soda that’s become an essential 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 insane,” Lorenze told Town & Country magazine. “I think I got somewhere between 15 and 20 brand deals going into (the Open). I’m not kidding; I’ve never been booked like this before!”

As she watches her coolly observe Paul from his box, designer sunglasses resting on her face, Lorenze isn’t just breaking with the likes of Ayan Broomfield, who played against type earlier this week as she cheered on her boyfriend Frances Tiafoe in a New York Rangers cap. Lorenze seems like someone who’d rather be back on her phone, counting likes and followers. “It’s an incredibly old event,” she told T&C, further explaining the US Open. “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 sending people in[your]clothes.”