Ben Shelton Leads a Home-Grown Revival That Outshines the U.S. Open’s Spectacle

The celebrated expression “Anyone for tennis?” derives from a line in George Bernard Shaw’s 1910 play “Misalliance.” But in recent years the quaint phrase has taken on new meaning at the U.S. Open, the final Grand Slam tennis tournament of the season, held at the USTA Billie Jean Tennis Center at Flushing, Queens.The cherished end-of-summer sporting event has become a three-week extravaganza, with the mixed doubles tournament now held during the pre-tournament “Fan Week,” influencers aplenty, $100 caviar-topped chicken nuggets, and its signature Honey Deuce cocktail comprising Grey Goose vodka, lemonade, raspberry liqueur, and honeydew melon balls. As our correspondent George Willis wrote recently, the U.S. Open has “evolved into a high-stakes fashion parade where fans flock to Flushing to see what the athletes are wearing just as much as how they perform.”Anyone for tennis? Of course, while the tournament might have long been nicknamed “the people’s slam,” in 1993 the late author Martin Amis, covering the U.S. Open for The New Yorker, wrote, “Whatever the phase of the game, the crowd, when it isn’t shouting, spend its time talking and strolling and, above all, eating. Or, above all, drinking.” The people are increasingly getting priced out. Even Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager, recently objected on social media after seeing a U.S. Open grounds pass listed for $363. In response Mayor Zohran Mamdani made 1,000 tickets available for New York residents.Frequent player objections added to the controversy. Naomi Osaka, the Japanese tennis star and two-time US Open champion, had her first-round match against Russia’s Anastasia Zakharova disrupted by social-media content creators staging a photo shoot, complete with portable lights, from a luxury suite, prompting the chair umpire to intervene. “I think obviously, if you come to a sporting event, you have to respect the sport,” Ms. Osaka said after the match. “And I feel like it’s common courtesy to read up on the sport, especially the etiquette.Frenchman Adrian Mannarino said the tournament was “becoming a bit of a zoo,” while Belarus’s top women’s seed, Aryna Sabalenka, who would ultimately fall to Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina in the final, complained of a strong smell of cannabis after her third-round victory. Ms. Sabalenka’s post-match press conference, in which she pleaded with reporters to stop asking her inane questions about marijuana is instructive in showing the media’s complicity in allowing such sideshows to distract from the main event.The U.S. Open’s lifestyle takeover is likely to accelerate under the new chief executive of the United States Tennis Association, Craig Tiley. Mr. Tiley, who transformed the Australian Open into a commercial and entertainment powerhouse, has said that the U.S. Open will “become tennis Disneyland,” implying that when it comes to the overpriced cocktails and superannuated influencers, we haven’t seen anything yet.Purists have had enough of the background noise getting in the way of the tennis ball. In what he described as his “swan song” to the sport, Peter Bodo, a veteran tennis journalist, most recently at ESPN.com and Tennis Magazine, wrote on his Substack: “I immersed myself in the orgy of ostentation and consumerism for a few hours and left the site thinking, ‘People pay good money to do this shit?’ Of course, diehard fans of the game — a diminishing minority, it seems — have no choice but to deal with the ambience, For the others, the ‘creators’ and influencers and scenemakers hunting that perfect post for the ‘Gram or to create a TikTok, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is now their largest canvas.”However, in the course of his cri de coeur, Mr. Bodo saluted Ben Shelton’s “rousing win” over Carlos Alcaraz in this year’s U.S. Open quarterfinal, which concluded at 3.33 a.m. It confirmed that one Flushing Meadows tradition — late-night matches — endures. Mr. Shelton, 23, reached the final, where he lost in four sets to Germany’s Alexander Zverev. His four-set victory over Frances Tiafoe in an all-American semifinal nevertheless suggested that one of American sport’s most persistent statistical millstones — that no American man has won the U.S. Open since Andy Roddick in 2003 — may soon be lifted.With Taylor Fritz, Sebastian Korda, and Tommy Paul joining Messrs. Shelton and Tiafoe, it is remarkable to recall that only five years ago no American man ranked in the ATP’s Top 30 — the first such lapse since computerized rankings began in 1973. This year’s tournament offered encouragement that American men’s tennis may be returning to the days when Pete Sampras, John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, and Andre Agassi were regular U.S. Open champions. Moreover while Mr. Shelton, who hails from Atlanta, dates sporting royalty in the form of American soccer star Trinity Rodman — whose father is former basketball player Dennis Rodman — he has been commendably dedicated to improving his game and shunning the commercial temptations supplied by celebrity that have seemingly consumed players such as 2021 British U.S. Open winner Emma Raducanu who has won few matches since, but has landed lucrative sponsorship deals with Uniqlo, Evian, Dior and British Airways.In recent years, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, and Mr. Zverev have each been defeated in U.S. Open finals before subsequently winning the title. Should the dynamic yet dignified Mr. Shelton follow suit, such a sporting fairy tale would far eclipse the increasing “Disneyfication” of its setting.

Ben Shelton Leads a Home-Grown Revival That Outshines the U.S. Open’s Spectacle

Ben Shelton Leads a Home-Grown Revival That Outshines the U.S. Open’s Spectacle

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