A quick programming note for all the new readers: I’ll be back shortly with how Ben Shelton’s win over Carlos Alcaraz—and a potential run to the US Open final—could affect his apparel negotiations, plus some reader-requested intel on Elena Rybakina’s partnership with Yonex. But first, I wanted to put a period on the take-iest tournament yet.
After an especially long three weeks, the US Open is almost, finally, over. “Thank god” seems to be a fairly common refrain after the onslaught of truly insufferable takes that this year’s tournament brought with it. How lucky are we to have so many brilliant minds outlining how to fix tennis? Or, in many cases, simply explaining who’s responsible for breaking it?
The amount of fighting about tennis over the last few weeks is worthy of a page in the history books. May we never forget the moment the sport broke so far into the mainstream that seemingly every minor controversy became a referendum on what was wrong with it. The current grievances go a little something like this: Influencers are solely to blame for the noise level in Arthur Ashe and—details shmetails—the USTA is somehow responsible for every single one of them being there; journalists should apparently request interviews with every single player, but god forbid they get one and fail to ask what fans want; getting rid of best-of-five tennis would fix everything, but if you insist on keeping it, you should at least put a quarterfinal match on Court 17. And the beat goes on…
The annoying part is that there are legitimate complaints buried underneath all of this hysteria. The crowds on Ashe have been disruptive, media access is flawed, and there are fair questions to ask about scheduling and whether the current format is actually working for fans and players. But instead of arguing about any of those things on their merits, everyone is busy trying to figure out who to blame.
