This week is the ten-year anniversary of one of the biggest “upsets” in tennis history. In 2015, Serena Williams had won the past four Slams coming into the US Open, holding the second “Serena Slam” of her career. She was going for the calendar Grand Slam, all four majors in the same year. Then, in the US Open semifinals, Serena lost to Italian journeywoman Roberta Vinci, who basically sliced and drop-shotted Serena until Serena lost the plot completely. I bring up the infamous Vinci upset because something huge happened in Serena’s quarterfinal match just days earlier. Serena played her sister Venus in the QF – it was a night match on Arthur Ashe Stadium, with a full house. Donald Trump waddled into Ashe, and everyone booed him. This was just a few months after he announced that he was running for president, and before this decade-long descent into authoritarianism. Trump hasn’t been back to the US Open since then. But now sources claim that he plans to come back this weekend.
President Trump will attend the US Open, sources tell Page Six, for the first time since the Queens-born pol was booed at Arthur Ashe Stadium back in 2015. Sources tell Page Six that Trump will be at the tennis tournament on Sunday for the Men’s Singles Finals.
One hint that the commander-in-chief will be in the area is that, we hear, air space will be frozen, throwing off the travel schedules of any high-flying tennis fans who chopper out to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center via helicopter!
A source told us: “Blade, which has been helicoptering corporate sponsors and attendees from Manhattan to the matches, are moving flights two hours ahead of the finals,” since the area’s airspace will be frozen during the president’s visit.
Reps have not commented on Trump’s attendance, and the president has been known to change his schedule at the last minute.
In 2015, he attended the US Open with his wife, Melania Trump, to see Serena Williams play her older sister, Venus Williams, and the then-GOP presidential front-runner was booed by fans as he entered, according to a video posted by ESPN at the time. It remains to be seen what the reaction from his hometown crowd will be during Trump’s second administration.
As if the ten-year anniversary of the Vinci match wasn’t cursed enough! Jesus. What’s also crazy is that he’s going to the men’s final, which will feature no American men. The men’s semifinals are today, but the final will probably be Jannik Sinner versus Carlos Alcaraz or Novak Djokovic. Sorry, Canadians, Felix Auger-Aliassime really doesn’t have a chance in his semi! So, Trump will turn up at the all-European men’s final… and not the women’s final, which features American badass Amanda Anisimova versus Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka?
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
