The fight for tennis’ future takes center stage at U.S. Open
Though its exact origins are debatable, tennis was probably invented—in some form—several centuries ago by the lords of feudal Europe. The culture of the game, now a global multimedia spectacle, still often demonstrates these origins. More than in any other sport, etiquette is paramount: there are right and wrong times for speaking and applauding, lots of rigidity to the fashion, and certain ways you’re supposed to behave while winning or losing.
Every year, when the ATP and WTA come to New York City for the U.S. Open, this vestigial code receives its greatest stress test. And 2025’s tournament has proved to be an especially vivid clash between the aristocratic history of the sport and the hyperactive, berserk texture of modern life—at its most extreme, of course, in America. This year’s socio-historic petri-dish got active quickly: on the first night of the bracket, Daniil Medvedev ignited what was tantamount to a tennis riot during his compelling first-round flameout.
For the past half-decade, Medvedev has been one of the best tennis players alive, and also one of its most animated. He’s had a long love affair with the rowdier New York crowds, drawing energy from a manic call-and-response that can either propel his game to its highest levels—he won the tournament, in 2021—or drag it down into immolating crash. Against Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, his unique bond with the people morphed into downright demagoguery, as he whipped the stands into such a frenzy that play was suspended for several minutes.
Down 3-6, 5-7, 4-5 and on the verge of a second-straight first-round major exit, Medvedev forestalled match point by overreacting to official Greg Allensworth’s routine call. Mid-serve, a photographer too eagerly entered the edges of the court, and when Allensworth then rewarded Bonzi an additional serve attempt, Medvedev’s frustration and beleaguerment turned into something more lively. He threw red meat to the late-night crowd, summoning their boos as he screamed at Allensworth, blew him kisses, and imitated the perpetrating photographer by bringing his racquet to his eye like it, too, could take pictures.
With Medvedev’s loving encouragement, the crowd never quieted down, and after a while, Bonzi decided to just serve through their noise. He failed to finish the set, falling 6(5)-7(7) and allowing Medvedev back into the match. Bonzi then lost 0-6 in the next set, still rattled throughout. He pulled it together, though, for the decisive set, winning 6-4, and setting Medvedev upon what should be a long introspective road as 2025 winds down and the tour enters its longest gap between grand slam tournaments. It doesn’t seem he’s at that constructively reflective place just yet, though: “I didn’t do anything bad,” Medvedev said during press availability after the match. “It was fun for me.”
Latvian Jelena Ostapenko had considerably less fun in her second-round loss, later in the week. A power-first player who overwhelms opponents with the force of her serves and groundstrokes, she had more than she could handle against American Taylor Townsend, who absorbed Ostapenko’s thunder and made the match funky and beguiling. Townsend wowed with determined side-to-side rundowns and gorgeously arcing parabolas. And rather than accept her two-set loss, Ostapenko tried turning the afternoon into a war of manners. In the long story of tennis, such sour pedantry often carries weight.
Ostapenko’s sanctimonious claim of outrage was that Townsend had broken a sacred rule by winning a point with a shot that hit the net, and not apologizing for it. “There are some rules in tennis which most of us players follow,” she posted to Instagram later that day, referring to a rule that does not, in fact, exist within official guidelines. She also suggested that Townsend’s approach to pre-match warmups was illegal—again, untrue. All this posting came after Ostapenko met Townsend midcourt following her 5-7 1-6 loss and seemingly told her that she had no class and no education—accusations that came off as more than a little bit racist to the rest of the world, but Ostapenko had a post for that, too: “I was NEVER racist in my life,” she specified, choosing an unsettlingly floral cursive font for her missive. “If she plays in her homeland,” more of Ostapenko’s extensive posting said, “it doesn’t mean she can behave [however she wants] and do whatever she wants.”
Tennis may be more diverse, tolerant, and representative of all people than ever before, but this outburst betrays that some still long to keep the game’s gate fiercely, and wrench it back to its more colonial past. Back then, the competitive ascendance of a Black woman was structurally impossible. But after surviving both Ostapenko’s shot depth and her outrageous assault of words, Townsend continued to rise: two days later, in a primetime night match, she clobbered No. 5 seed Mirra Andreeva, blitzing her with sensational aggression, ending many quick points with crowd-pleasing slam dunks at the net. “Welcome to the show,” she said to cheers in her post-game interview. Yes, tennis is more open than ever, but New York still sees and appreciates when certain competitors are made to play the game on hard mode.
Coco Gauff knows something about this dynamic. After defeating Aryna Sabalenka in June’s French Open final to take the trophy, she had to deal with the indignity of a sore loser. Sabalenka declined the opportunity to give her vanquisher proper credit, looking past Gauff’s tremendous defense to blame God for what happened, instead; ”It felt like a joke,” Sabalenka said after falling in three sets. “Honestly, like somebody from above was just there laughing saying, ‘let’s see if you can handle this’….Honestly, sometimes it felt like she was hitting the ball from the frame. Somehow magically the ball lands in the court, and you are kind of on the back foot.” Like Townsend, Gauff knows how it feels to outplay someone, only to immediately endure their adversary’s very public efforts to stamp an asterisk upon their glory.
But right now, Gauff has been faced with a different foe: herself. Perhaps nothing has captivated the 2025 U.S. Open public so much as Coco’s vulnerability under the metropolis lights. Visibly sobbing as she used her forearm to cover her face between overly hard sets—Gauff won this tournament two years ago, and now appears to be in existential battles during its opening rounds—her difficulties bring to mind certain song lyrics: “Fool child, you’ve never gonna make it / New York just wants to see you naked / And they will.” Gauff has made it through three rounds in spite of, or maybe because of, the international exposure of her rocky soul. Always a roller coaster player who has coaches and analysts begging for a more dominant, clinical form, Coco’s current trials of the spirit may be her most dramatic yet. Some of the best theater in tennis, these days, is seeing whether the meta drama of the sport will make or break her.
Monday will drop her into a blockbuster fourth-round matchup with Naomi Osaka. Currently in the most exciting part of her Andre Agassi narrative, Osaka is playing her best tennis since taking a step back from the sport in 2021. At the time of her self-ejection from the tour, she had just won the most recent grand slam, her fourth in as many years. But Osaka didn’t want to be on the rocket ship towards infinite levels of fame and attention. She knew herself enough to recognize that her humanity would be too damaged by reaching the upcoming stratosphere too quickly. So she left, and ignited a discourse about mental health in sports that hasn’t stopped since. She’s been back since 2024, but it’s right about now that her career enters its march back toward prospective history, where any player who gathers double-digit grand slam titles is forever locked in.
Osaka is a mother now and, like Agassi before her, both more grounded and more bodacious in her return to the field. Agassi sported jorts, mullets and bandanas when he came back on his own terms; Osaka is wearing self-designed, boldly ruffled skirts and elaborate pre-match hairpieces. Attached to her bag are viral, bespoke Labubus, covered in jewels and named “Billie Jean Bling” and “Arthur Flash.” She re-enters public consciousness as a character of her own making, after refusing to go into the caricature template that sports media tried shoving her into.
And so Monday night will see the U.S. Open’s second week begin with a bang. Osaka and Gauff, two generational players with very different approaches to the spotlight, figure as a cosmic pair of opponents. They have an even record against each other at grand slams, but it’s been five years since they met at one. In their last New York match, in 2019, Osaka was just entering her prime, while Gauff was a 15-year-old who surged her way into the third round. Osaka took care of business, but it was only a few months later in Australia that Gauff had figured out how to turn the tables, and evened the matchup with a win. Quite a lot has happened in the long interim, and it’s about time we see what happens next.
