GAME, SET, MATCH

Arthur Ashe Crowd Serves Trump a Loss

Donald Trump had been chasing the tennis life for decades. The old photos told the story: the red cap, the belly pushing against tennis whites, the clipboard in his hand as though officiating from some imaginary Wimbledon. He wanted to be seen as part of that set—the crisp, country-club elite who spoke the language of backhands and private boxes. On the court, though, his game looked more like a series of unforced errors strung together with grunts and excuses. Every forehand was a shank, every volley a mishit, every serve a let ball that never cleared the net. He was a player who thought he was serving aces when in fact he was lobbing softballs for ball kids to chase.

Fast-forward to 2025, and Trump returned to Arthur Ashe Stadium not as a fixture of the tennis world, but as the man whose mere presence derailed the final. The match between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner was scheduled for 2:00 p.m., but Trump turned it into a rain delay without a drop of rain. Security checkpoints, closed corridors, and the president’s traveling circus pushed everything back. Fans were stuck in a tiebreak they never signed up for, forced to wait while Trump smirked from his Rolex suite.

When the cameras caught him on the jumbotron, the boos came down like an Alcaraz forehand: heavy, unrelenting, impossible to counter. The sound was less a chorus than a clean winner down the line—New Yorkers calling game, set, and match against the man who once begged to be taken seriously by their city. He smirked, pretending to hit a winner, but it was all spin and no pace. ESPN cut away quickly, but not before everyone saw him get bageled by his own hometown crowd.

The contrast was brutal. Stephen Colbert had been cheered like a player returning from injury to win a five-setter. Hugh Jackman, Shonda Rhimes, and CC Sabathia all drew warm applause. Trump? He was treated like a foot fault on championship point—embarrassing, costly, and immediately forgotten except for the ridicule it inspired.

When Alcaraz lifted the trophy, Trump lingered in his suite, clapping for no one, ignored by the man who had just won his second U.S. Open. That was the final insult: Alcaraz, the champion, didn’t even mention him. Trump wasn’t part of the story; he was the interruption, the racket smash, the ball that sailed over the baseline and out of play

.Trump once staged himself in tennis whites, desperate to belong to the club. By 2025, he had become the club’s cautionary tale. At the U.S. Open, he wasn’t just heckled—he was defaulted. It was a triple-bagel of humiliation, a match he never even started, because the crowd had already won 6–0, 6–0, 6–0 before the first serve was struck.

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