Consider the thing that does not know what it is. The United States. Most people in their 20s. The humble croffle. A tennis event might not be high on that list—make the draw, sell the tickets, let the players scythe each other down till there’s a winner; it’s a pretty simple recipe. But on any given day, the U.S. Open is also a lifestyle brand, an alcohol hotbed, an oven disguised as a park, a gathering of the famed, the site of a short-lived dating show that had nothing to do with tennis but was nonetheless promoted on the Open’s YouTube channel, and, a few spots further down the list, one of the biggest tennis tournaments on earth.
The Open is the fourth major of the year and the sport’s chaos magnet. Tennis has a notoriously, groaningly long season, so by the time the tour schleps to Flushing Meadows in late August, everybody is burned out or injured or both. Their work reflects their mental state. Last year, the combustible Russian, Daniil Medvedev, invited a late-night crowd to jeer for six straight minutes after a photographer ran onto the court at match point. On that night, this game of decorum belonged to the aggrieved and the sloshed—at least until Medvedev lost in five sets.
