The USTA’s censorship of Trump dissent at the US Open is cowardly, hypocritical and un-American | US Open Tennis 2025
WThe thumb of the dust finally settles in the days following the final of the Sunday open Sunday, the United States Tennis Association will publish its annual victory press release. It will praise another record opening: more than a million fans through the doors, an unprecedented social commitment, two -digit growth in food and drinks sales and hundreds of celebrities wrapped in Ralph Lauren Ralph. He walks in the growth of the game, defending diversity and transforming meadows rinsed into a pop-culture destination.
But for all the stages that the USTA is preparing to celebrate, this year’s tournament will remain in another type of first: the lamentable decision of the director organ of asking the broadcasters not to be dissenting against Donald Trump. By making this preventive concession, the USTA made an uncomposed error which cannot be canceled: sacrifice authenticity and credibility in order to protect a politician – any Politician, whatever the party, ideology or affiliation – of the noise of public disapproval.
According to the internal emails obtained by points of sale, in particular PA and Bounces, the USTA asked its television partners to “refrain from presenting any disturbance or reaction” when Trump appears on the screen on Sunday’s final. A separate note reminded the staff that he would have seated in the Rolex suite as a customer guest. The declaration of 11 words to The Guardian on Saturday evening of a spokesperson for the USTA – “We regularly ask our broadcasters to refrain from presenting off -course disturbances” – is so weak that it could complete under the weight of its own hypocrisy. (Rolex did not respond to a request for comments.)
After all, it is the same tournament which has fortunately televised a climate demonstrator sticking to a seat for almost an hour during the victory in the semi-finals of Coco Gauff against Karolina Muchova two years ago, as well as countless other fans disorders. The same tournament that increases their shoulders on drunk buffoonery behind its American reputation. The open has practically invented television distractions. Chaos is its brand. So that the USTA traces the line to show Boos for an exercise president is not a “political coherence” but a capitulation.
And what end? Due to the fear that Trump – once a must at the US Open, but hooked hard during his last visit in 2015, three months after announcing his first presidential campaign – can again be exposed as unpopular in front of a global audience? Due to the fear that a Jeers choir can overshadow the match itself? But this fear understands both sport and democracy.
The dissent of the crowd on emissions is not a ventilation of the civic order. This is his expression. Then, the British Interior Secretary, Theresa May, was hooked at the London 2012 Paralympic Games. French President Emmanuel Macron was whistled during the opening ceremony of the Rugby World Cup in 2023 in Paris. In the United States, the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, guarantees a choir of huae during public appearances, and it is practically a standing ovation next to the venom reserved for the NHL Gary Bettman of the Fans. And Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, received hostile receptions by sports crowds. In one way or another, the United Kingdom, France and the United States have survived these intact incidents.
That the Usta thinks that Trump must be isolated from reality indicates something darker. He recalls the regimes where the leader’s image must be protected from the ridiculousness of the public. This shows how the first term of Trump – and its intimidation of cultural institutions – still shapes behavior. In his first presidency, he was largely insulted by athletes and sports bodies. Now, as Tom Dart wrote before this year’s Super Bowl, he is increasingly accommodated or treated with silence.
The open is supposed to be the New York tournament, the impetuous and democratic tournament, rowdy and not filtered, dynamic and multicultural exuberant, where the crowd is as much a character as the players on the field. By disinfecting its reaction, the USTA is not protecting Trump. It eliminates the event from its unique character, its authenticity and its integrity.
This irony cuts even deeper because the open has always been at the forefront of progress. He was the first of the majors to award a price equal to women and men, long before other sports catch up. He made the platform, embraced and celebrated LGBTQ + athletes of decades before he was in the fashion to do so, from Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova in the 1970s to Renée Richards breaking the ground as one of the first transgender athletes of professional tennis, to open the nights of pride today. And the theme of this year, “75 years of rupture barriers”, honors Althea Gibson, who in 1950 became the first black player to compete in the predecessor of the tournament, the American Nationals, and followed a path for generations of black players who followed. Its history is literally integrated into the field this fortnight, banners and installations designed by Melissa Koby – the first black artist to create the theme of open – with constant reminders that sport has proud of inclusion.
According to a Maga point of view, of course, it probably looks like the Super Bowl Woke: the name of the king on the doors, the silhouette of Gibson on the Ashe stadium, Serena and Venus Williams Lionized, the “open” rainbow nights, and a ruling organization deceiving diversity in every turn. Which, if we are honest, may be one of the reasons why Trump appears in the first place: a 4D chess movement with the intention of transforming a tennis match into another grievance battlefield. Having hired by thousands of fans drinking $ 23-Vodka Citronades will not be exactly a bad look for its base, especially in a corrupt and disgusting hell like New York.
Fans will always do what fans do. If they want to huer, they will huer. But millions at home may never see it, thanks to a director who chose to act less as a sports guard and more as a nervous producer of campaign staging. For a sport that prides itself on honesty and clarity – the ball is in or out – it is a shameful retirement.
