NEW YORK — U.S. Open crowds seem fond of Jessica Pegula, to be sure, but they treat Coco Gauff like she’s their own daughter.

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While the men’s matches were duds this time, the women’s quarterfinals were momentous and full of the momentum swings that defined the matches from a day earlier.

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Elena Rybakina came out for the midday match—her first time playing this early during the tournament—and became bothered by the stark shadows on Ashe, among other annoyances.

Zheng Qinwen left the court after winning the first set—somewhat unusually, as the player in the lead—which allowed the normally poker-faced Rybakina time to vent at her coach Stefano Vukov, blowing off some steam.

“I was quite negative and didn’t start well in the first set,” Rybakina said later. “I would say that I came and I was just letting the emotions out a bit, telling everything what was on my mind. He just kept me focused and tried to tell for me to remember what we talked before the match, what I should do.”

Rybakina, as is typical, showed fewer emotions once Zheng returned to the court.

“I’m trying to hide it, because yeah, you just don’t want to let the opponent also see your frustration when something is going wrong,” Rybakina said.

Rybakina won the second set quickly but the third was a battle, level at 4-4 before Rybakina secured a late break and consolidated it for a 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 victory.

The triumph was, as is typical with Rybakina, also understated on visible emotion, but she was smiling significantly more than usual as she made her post-match press rounds.

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Rybakina needed that win, likely, to secure the No. 1 ranking to which she will ascend on Monday; if she had lost, she would’ve needed Zheng Qinwen to win the title, or else the U.S. Open’s eventual champion would’ve taken the top spot.

The fourth quarterfinal was a scrappy one. Coco Gauff, known for her ability to win gritty matches, really brawled with Mirra Andreeva. Both players were well into the negative on their winners-to-unforced errors ratios, but Gauff never blinked, even when staring at two Andreeva match points.

The result is an elite semifinal lineup for Thursday evening: No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka vs. No. 3 Jessica Pegula and No. 4 Coco Gauff vs. No. 2 Elena Rybakina. It’s the first time the top four seeds have reached the U.S. Open women’s singles semifinals since 1975.

The maximally chalk line-up makes sense. There are no major semifinalist debutants in this year’s crop, on either the men’s or women’s side, which is in keeping with recent patterns. This year’s French Open really stands out as a disruptive tournament, results-wise; otherwise, as my chart on first-time major semifinalists shows, there haven’t been many in the last couple of years.

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Rybakina is a first-time semifinalist, though, at the U.S. Open; let’s pivot to a guy who is into the Final Four here for a third time.

Frances Tiafoe has reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open three times, in 2022, 2024, and 2026. But this time, like Rybakina, his run will be rewarded with a new career-high ranking.

Tiafoe, who was in the Top 10 at No. 10 for a cup of coffee in the summer of 2023, will be up to at least No. 8 in Monday’s rankings, and could further climb to No. 6 by reaching the final or No. 4 by winning the title. He’s in good shape to qualify for the ATP Finals in Turin for the first time, too, at No. 6 in the live race with a couple of months to go.

“I think I’ve been so routine-oriented all year, just continuously on a routine,” Tiafoe said after his quarterfinal win, when I asked him how he’d approach the endgame of this tournament. “Ideally you want to make every day feel the same. Again, winning becomes a habit, so just kind of approach it for what it is.”

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All of this was augured in a Bounces story that may have aged better than any other: my pre-Australian Open feature on Tiafoe and the transformation he’d made in the off-season after tough come-to-Jesus talks with his girlfriend, Ayan Broomfield, and his agents.

From January:

“Immediately after the U.S. Open I had a very serious conversation with my girlfriend and my two agents,” Tiafoe said. “It’s one of those things where you’re not really even saying anything; you’re just getting cooked and you’ve kind of got to take it. And don’t argue it, don’t try to fight it—that’s kind of what it was.”

The words were simple and blunt.

“It was very thorough and for a kid to understand—let’s just put it that way,” Tiafoe said. “It was like: you’re either doing it or you’re not, right? Let’s stop making excuses, stop doing this and that. You’re either doing it or you’re not—and it definitely hit home. Hence why I just kind of went dark: trying to figure out what that looked like. Now I’ve got a bunch of clarity and feel ready to go.”

The other big element of that story was Tiafoe making a bold hire: Dr. Mark Kovacs, who had worked in tennis as a performance physiologist and biomechanics researcher, but had never been a lead coach for a top player before.

After Tiafoe’s win, I caught up with Kovacs in the corridor outside the men’s locker room in Ashe, and we chatted about the key things Tiafoe has done throughout the year to make it such a success.

To read the interview—and get everything else here during the U.S. Open and beyond—please subscribe to Bounces! It’s still 15 percent off during the U.S. Open, but that time is running out! —Ben

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For bleary thoughts on a record-setting day and night in New York, with Ben Shelton beating Carlos Alcaraz, Jessica Pegula beating Emma Navarro, Frances Tiafoe beating Alex Michelsen, and Aryna Sabalenka beating Linda Noskova—and a call to action to make the obvious fix to repair this absurd situation—please subscribe to Bounces!

It’s still 15 percent off here for a few more days, until the end of the U.S. Open! About to hit a big milestone in subscriber numbers, so I hope more folks can join! —Ben

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If she can beat Zheng Qinwen in her quarterfinal match on Wednesday, Rybakina will become the 30th player to hold the No. 1 singles ranking in WTA history, and only the fourth player in the last seven years after Ash Barty, Iga Swiatek, and Aryna Sabalenka.

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But though Rybakina’s rankings quest is a big plotline for the rest of this U.S. Open, I was more intrigued by Osaka’s loss, a result which ensured that one of the most stubborn records across men’s and women’s tennis, nearly a half-century old, will persist into 2027.

To read about this barrier which major champions are consistently hitting up against, please subscribe to Bounces! There’s only a week left in the 15 percent off deal during the U.S. Open, so don’t delay! —Ben

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After Taylor Townsend lost the day’s opening match to top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka, the wins started rolling in: Alex Michelsen, Frances Tiafoe, Jessica Pegula, Ben Shelton, and Emma Navarro all advanced to the quarterfinals. And at least one will make the semifinals: Michelsen, the lone debut major quarterfinalist in the bunch, will face Tiafoe on Tuesday for a spot in the Final Four.

But the most memorable moment for me might have been from the day’s seventh American in action, Tommy Paul, who came into the press room after losing in a state of sardonic shell shock that echoed the way Andy Roddick used to talk after his losses to Roger Federer.

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Not because Tommy Paul played badly—he didn’t whatsoever.

But Carlos Alcaraz had just been that damn good, and asserted himself as the prohibitive favorite for a U.S. Open that had once felt wide open.

To read up on Carlos Alcaraz announcing himself as the clear U.S. Open favorite—plus a look ahead at matches to watch on Monday’s Labor Day slate—subscribe to Bounces! Still 15 percent off during the U.S. Open, but that’ll only last for one more week! —Ben

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Venus and Serena Williams had been requested, as a pair, for a post-match press conference, a standard post-match obligation which is required of all players in the Grand Slam rulebook if requested by media. Many reporters, I gather, had filed such a request on the tournament’s media operations system; I was one of them.

But within minutes of the match ending, the USTA sent credentialed media a message that “Serena and Venus Williams will not be available for press tonight.”

As someone who has been covering them for a long time, the update was entirely unsurprising.

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The vast majority of players will skip out on press zero times in their career, out of some combination of a sense of obligation and an aversion to the possible fines that are threatened for breaking the rules.

But as we know, the Williamses, in many ways, are not like other players. Between them, I could easily count 15-20 times when they haven’t shown up to press like other players would’ve. Sometimes they’ve incurred fines; the biggest one, to my knowledge, was the $5,000 that Venus was dinged for skipping out on press after a first-round loss at the 2016 Australian Open. Fines aren’t usually published for WTA Tour events; they normally are at Grand Slam events.

Sometimes, particularly later at night, tour officials implicitly encourage media to withdraw requests for known-sensitive players, including the Williamses, when they’re losing. They gently warn that the player will surely be in no mood to talk after a loss. Usually, in my experiences, the reporters oblige this ask and retract the request—I’ve done it myself, sometimes.

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But the various requests for the Williamses on Friday night stayed in the system. And that makes sense: they were U.S. Open headliners on Friday night, commanding the stage and holding the attention of the Arthur Ashe Stadium audience like no one had done so far at this U.S. Open. There were major unanswered questions about each of their futures. They’d spoken to reporters in Cincinnati after their first-round doubles loss there. Venus, also, had spoken to reporters late at night after her first-round singles loss in New York earlier this week.

But on Friday night, Bounces has learned, speaking to media was a non-starter for the sisters. Well, specifically, one sister. After waving to the crowd as she walked off Ashe, Serena fled the scene as fast as she could. Serena strode straight from the court out of the stadium and into a car, riding away into the New York City night without pause.

In her haste, Serena left behind Venus, who had stayed and gone to the locker room like players normally do after a match. Venus might well have been amenable to doing post-match press that night, but the tournament wasn’t going to make her do it by herself on behalf of a doubles pair after Serena had gone AWOL. (It is possible to request just one player from a doubles match for press, but I—and other reporters, presumably—had requested the team of two.)

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A day later, the USTA told Bounces on Saturday that neither Serena nor Venus would be fined for skipping press a day earlier.

Any decision to issue a fine for a code violation—and skipping press without an excuse such as an injury or illness counts as a code violation—is ultimately discretionary, and the U.S. Open is using its discretion to not sanction these stars, despite Serena’s violation being quite textbook.

There is surely a degree of seniority or favoritism at play here, and it can be debated whether or not that’s “fair.” Venus and Serena have been enormous assets to tennis, after all; why jeopardize their relationship with the tournament with a little rulebook enforcement?

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To my knowledge, all the players who were requested for press on Saturday did come in—including several American players on the tough end of very stinging losses.

Amanda Anisimova, who had made the final here a year ago, lost in straight sets to Anastasia Potapova on Armstrong. The loss will drop Anisimova out of the Top 10 after a 14-month residency, but she was perhaps the most upbeat of the players I’ll discuss here.

“I feel like I was playing quite well this week, and definitely finding my level again,” Anisimova said. “So I felt like there were a lot of positives. Today it was really tricky with conditions, and like I said, she played well. So yeah, it was just not my day today.”

Taylor Fritz, who had dominated Mattia Bellucci 6-0, 6-1, 6-1 in the previous round, led two sets to none in a choppy match against Francisco Cerundolo to start the day’s action on Ashe. But as Fritz’s errors increased, his lead slipped and he fell to an eventual 3-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 defeat.

“I don’t even know what to say,” Fritz said of his disappointment. “I don’t really want to talk to anybody, see anybody. I kind of just need to, like, get out for a couple days and then just kind of get back to work. I don’t know how I let that happen today.”

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Madison Keys suffered an even more dramatic collapse on the scoreboard. After blitzing the first set, Keys led Zheng Qinwen 5-0 in the third set and held a match point at 5-1, only to ultimately lose seven games in a row to fall to a stunning 1-6, 7-6(3), 7-5 defeat.

“I felt like I couldn’t play tennis anymore,” Keys said. “It just felt like it was a much bigger deal than playing a tennis match, all of the sudden.”

Keys had made it to press about an hour after the match, still feeling raw for reasons that seemed larger than this one loss.

“I obviously got off to a really good lead, and then… I just… got really—I mean, got really scared?” she said. “Like, I couldn’t swing. I don’t know. Tennis just feels really hard right now, so I feel like that kind of took over.”

Keys spoke in terms that were unspecific yet drastic.

“I just feel like I’ve kind of been struggling for a while now, and I feel like I was able to kind of play through it for a bit,” she said. “I’m sure everyone could kind of see that I was struggling a little bit. But inside, it felt probably even bigger than that.

“Yeah, some weeks are easier than others, and this [U.S. Open] week is obviously one of the harder ones just because you care so much. Yeah, I’m going to have to make some sort of changes.”

Asked to follow up on those “changes,” Keys spoke to the non-stop nature of the circuit.

“I think it's been something that's been building for a while,” she said. “I just kind of keep pushing it off and pushing it off just because that's how the tennis world works. It's just to the point where I actually need to do something about it.”

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Seven more Americans are in action in Sunday’s fourth-round singles matches; in fact, only one of the eight singles matches doesn’t feature an American. (The 10 Americans who reached the fourth round in singles is the most since 2002.)

To read up on the five matches I’ve picked as matches to watch—and to get all the rest of Bounces’ U.S. Open coverage—please become a paid subscriber! It’s still 15 percent off during the U.S. Open, but there’s only a week or so of that left!

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Lord knows some of these awkward moments have happened to me; they’ve certainly happened to other reporters, too, even at this U.S. Open.

But still, some tough questions need to be asked, because there are things people need to know. So with that in mind, I intrepidly raised my hand on Friday afternoon, ready to broach a topic that had caused improbable buzz this week around the U.S. Open.

It was going to be a high-risk, high-reward venture, but I force myself to be fearless as a journalist in these high-stakes situations. After all, surely someone had to ask Carlos Alcaraz about his nipples.

To see it all, please subscribe to Bounces! Thanks to everyone who has subscribed in the last 48 hours, which has been a big boost for Bounces! There’s still a 15 percent discount on Bounces subscriptions during this U.S. Open, so please get one for yourself and/or a friend soon! —Ben

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On the Thursday before U.S. Open main draw singles play began, many of the tournament’s biggest names appeared at a pre-tournament party at Crane Club in Manhattan’s West Side, a constellation of tennis stars that outshone any other pre-tournament event. Serena Williams, Coco Gauff, Aryna Sabalenka, Mirra Andreeva, Taylor Fritz, and more all showed up.

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The party was fronted by Dave Grutman, a well-connected Miami nightlife impresario who has cozied up to many star tennis players, hooking them up with various perks while they’re in Miami and beyond.

Followers of tennis players’ social media accounts have likely seen Grutman, particularly each March around the Miami Open. He’s gained a reputation as a fixer to the stars, helping turn South Florida into even more of a flashy playground for wealthy celebrities.

“After stepping into his world over the past year on a handful of visits to his gold-plated, bottle-popping playground, Miami, Florida, ‘larger than life’ just doesn’t seem to cut it,” GQ wrote of Grutman in a 2021 profile.

Though Grutman traffics in all flavors of bougie bacchanalia, he has a particular predilection for tennis.

From a 2023 profile in Avenue:

“I try to get out here every day of the week. I’m obsessed,” says Grutman, standing on the baseline of a private court in Miami Beach’s Sunset Islands, where he practices. He calls it the “Terrordome,” and it has just been upgraded with Prince-branded windscreens. (In addition to his hospitality work, Grutman is also the co-owner and creative director of the celebrated athletics brand.) “It helps me clear my head for the rest of the day and night, and I like that it’s a form of exercise that has a certain level of competition.” Even at casual 8am sessions, he tends to go big: Grutman brings high-profile guests such as tour players Genie Bouchard and Reilly Opelka, and regularly hits with the famed coach Jimmy Bollettieri. At his vacation home at Amanyara in Turks and Caicos, Grutman is known to book all the pros, both courts, and invite people to train with him. When he hits an especially good shot — most often on the forehand side — he says, “Buh-bye.”

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Merely hanging out with Grutman isn’t the issue that has concerned tennis integrity authorities, however. The problem was that his pre-U.S. Open dinner party was very clearly held on behalf of the American betting company DraftKings, which is one of the prominently listed “Partners” of Grutman’s on his website.

“Hosting @draftkings Welcome Players Party is my Favorite!!!” Grutman wrote in the Instagram caption of a carousel of himself posing with many of the biggest names in tennis.

Many—Aryna Sabalenka, Serena Williams, Grigor Dimitrov, Coco Gauff, Mirra Andreeva, Eva Lys—posed with Grutman in front of a wall of DraftKings logos.

This was the DraftKings party, after all, as it was called in both Grutman’s posts and coverage from outlets like Page Six.

Other attendees who are starring in this year’s U.S. Open included Taylor Fritz, Matteo Berrettini, Alexandra Eala, Anna Kalinskaya, and Elena-Gabriela Ruse. Former players Caroline Wozniacki and Chris Eubanks, who are covering the U.S. Open for ESPN, also attended.

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Grutman’s representatives have not yet responded to messages seeking comment at time of publication.

“It was a good one,” Anna Kalinskaya told Bounces of the party. “It was a dinner with a lot of people from tennis…the food was great. They had fish, they had steak. It was nice.”

Kalinskaya, who is not one of the players who posed directly in front of the logo wall in photos I’ve seen, told me she did not know DraftKings sponsored the event.

“I just went to catch up with my friends,” Kalinskaya said.

After photographs from the party began circulating, Bounces can report that the event was flagged to integrity authorities by multiple whistleblowers within the sport, catching their attention and prompting further investigation.

“We are aware of this event, and we are looking into the circumstances and details,” an International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Bounces.

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There is gray area here, perhaps. From my conversations with agents and players involved in the event, it is my understanding that these players were not paid to appear at the DraftKings event—unlike many appearances during the pre-U.S. Open circuit which are directly compensated—but attended out of loyalty and attraction to Grutman.

Still, their arranged appearances at a promotional event for a company that offers tennis betting could violate anti-corruption rules, and earn them discreet warnings from the ITIA to be careful about their appearances of affiliation with betting brands.

Even if the players were not directly compensated by DraftKings for appearing at its party, the appearances and photo-ops may have run afoul of Tennis Anti-Corruption rules, including:

D.1.b: “No Covered Person shall, directly or indirectly, facilitate, encourage and/or promote Tennis Betting”;

and D.1.q: “No Covered Person, whether personally or via another arrangement or legal entity, may endorse, be employed, sponsored and/or otherwise engaged by a Tennis Betting Operator.”

Incidents of these sorts of rule violations—such as appearing for an interview on a sponsored betting-themed podcast—often trigger private warnings to players and other tennis people covered by tennis anti-corruption rules.

Most often, it is former players who still work in tennis who have been penalized for breaking these rules when direct compensation was involved. Particularly, former American players James Blake, Mardy Fish, and Bob Bryan have all been penalized for being paid to promote gambling companies. All three were slapped with five-figure fines.

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There is, of course, thick irony here: while these optics could earn them a warning, all of these tennis players are now forced to appear in front of Kalshi logos—which began appearing around the perimeters of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center’s courts this week—by virtue of competing in the 2026 U.S. Open.

But as I mentioned in that story, the rules are much stricter around what players can do in terms of actual or apparent connections to betting companies. Tournaments and tours, meanwhile, are currently allowed to cash in and sell out.

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Thanks for reading Bounces! This post continues beyond the paywall below with a look ahead at matches to watch on Day 6 of the U.S. Open. Subscriptions are still 15 percent off during this 2026 U.S. Open, but prices will go back up after that, so don’t delay if you’re on the fence! Or get a group subscription!

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But on Tuesday evening and Wednesday afternoon at the U.S. Open, I had the opposite sensation, fulfilling a wish that’s been one of my most stubborn tennis-reporting bucket list items: observing the creation of a day’s order of play, and learning everything that goes into this complex and scrutinized process.

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After U.S. Open officials agreed to the idea, happily, I was escorted deep within the bowels of Arthur Ashe Stadium into the tournament’s nerve center and inner sanctum to witness one of the most high-profile administrative tasks in the sport.

After a brief tutorial on the room and the software, I was a fly on the wall as the work began. U.S. Open referee Jake Garner, U.S. Open tournament director Eric Butorac, Grand Slam supervisor Wayne McKewen, and a rotating cast of other officials put together Thursday’s Day 5 schedule for the U.S. Open, involving 32 second-round singles matches and the start of the women’s doubles event, using 12 large computer monitors—with very small font—and bespoke, purpose-built software.

It was fascinating to hear these administrators talk through their decision-making processes, see the interconnectedness of matches, and understand how star-player requests, broadcaster preferences, rest times, doubles, and more all impact what is put on court each day.

“It’s probably my favorite part of the job, to be honest,” Butorac told Bounces. “I like doing jigsaw puzzles at home, and I feel like this is sort of the ultimate 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. But you’re playing with a lot at stake.”

Being in this windowless room was hugely illuminating, and I’m excited to bring what I learned to Bounces subscribers. I’ve never written (nor read) a story like this before. If you’re a tennis nerd like me, I think you’re going to love it.

To read the whole thing, please subscribe to Bounces! Still 15 percent off new subscriptions and gift subscriptions during the 2026 U.S. Open! —Ben

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The Day 4 Matches to Watch are below the paywall—it’s a particularly stacked day on the men’s side, as the strong side of their lopsided draw is on tap.

Two more things to check out ahead of the paywall:

First, the newest episode of No Challenges Remaining, recorded Tuesday night outside Ashe, on Alcaraz’s return, Djokovic and Fils’ losses, Kalshi, Osaka’s fashions, and more.

And second, another hearty recommendation that you subscribe to the Forty Deuce newsletter, which is a dreamy combo of thorough news curation and Courtney Nguyen’s unmistakable voice.

Again, thanks to everyone who has subscribed to Bounces in these last few days, particularly after the Kalshi story; it’s always heartening when those sorts of things are what moves the needle here. 15 percent off remains in effect through the U.S. Open on all monthly, annual, and gift subscriptions! —Ben

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Is it still primarily a tennis tournament? Is it just a backdrop against which to take photos of yourself and your $23 cocktail?

Or is the U.S. Open, foremost and unavoidably, a tennis-themed casino?

The U.S. Open and U.S. Tennis Association seemed to opt for Option C on Monday morning when they announced a new deal with Kalshi, the betting website which has sprinted into all walks of American consciousness this year.

From the U.S.T.A.’s press release:

The USTA and Kalshi today announced a groundbreaking partnership making Kalshi the first Official Prediction Market Partner of the US Open. The exclusive, multi-year agreement begins with the 2026 US Open Singles Main Draw. Through this landmark partnership, Kalshi will have a presence throughout the 2026 US Open across US Open digital platforms and on-court signage.

“We’re relentless about keeping tennis at the cutting edge of global sports innovation and fan connection,” said USTA CEO Craig Tiley. “Partnering with Kalshi gives us an opportunity to pioneer that next generation of fan engagement while ensuring the integrity of our sport.”

The partnership comes amid the rapid growth of prediction market agreements across tennis and professional sports. Kalshi has millions of users, and tennis-related trading volume on the platform is up 25x YoY.

This announcement represents a capitalistic capitulation.

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Years ahead of the construction of an actual brick-and-mortar casino across the tracks of the 7 train, the U.S. Open has turned into a lounge for casual and degenerate gamblers alike. Around qualifying last week, spectators—mostly men—could be seen constantly betting on their phones as they stood around matches.

Sometimes they’re quiet and surreptitious; sometimes they’re loud and boisterous. Invested bettors often watch tennis matches the way they might have watched greyhounds at a dog track, screaming for their chosen pick to pay off. But unlike the dogs or horses—or the dice on a craps table, whatever—the players can hear and understand everything being shouted at them. It can be a dehumanizing experience which multiplies the considerable stress of being an elite tennis player. Beyond their time on match courts, players could already feel the effects 24/7 as aggrieved online gamblers pepper vitriol at their social media accounts.

The in-person aspect of this phenomenon is growing rapidly, but it’s not brand new. Last year on Bounces, I wrote about Swiss qualifier Leandro Riedi growing furious at an overt bettor cheering for him courtside at the U.S. Open.

“You can definitely see it immediately,” Riedi told Bounces. “I’ve experienced it enough now. I saw he was already at the first round, and he was screaming my name after the first point. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s a guy who’s betting, for sure.’”

Riedi said that it was as he was getting closer to defeat on Thursday that he became fed up with fickle fandom, and made it clear how much he associates gambling with the angry messages from aggrieved gamblers that fill his direct message inbox after each loss, as happens for nearly all tennis players.

“In the fourth set I was still behind and I was like: if I lose this match he will text me and say how bad I am and wish my mother dies,” Riedi repeated. “So I was, like, no, this guy can’t be here, I don’t want to see that guy. And then he’s pushing me and then if I lose he’s going to text me. That’s why I just said, ‘Can you please go? I don’t need this now.’”

Anecdotally, there’s far more of that going on this year, as many around the grounds have already witnessed.

Kalshi determinedly refers to itself as a “prediction market”—and the U.S.T.A. uses the same term—which sounds more sanitized than “bookmaker” or “betting company.” But during the U.S. Open they’re taking wagers on who will win each match. So, straightforwardly and non-euphemistically, Kalshi is a sports gambling app.

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With intermittent glimpses at the Kalshi website as I wrote this on Tuesday afternoon, it became clear how insane the scales of sums at play are here.

Early in the third set of the first-round match between Flavio Cobolli and Francisco Comesana, the trading volume counter had reached more than $8 million—just on one match on one website. I thought that was crazy.

But the cash rush was just getting started. By the end of the fourth set, the betting volume had increased to $14.9 million.

Early in the fifth set, it was over $17.1 million.

By the end, the volume was increasing by hundreds of thousands between each point, topping out at $21.7 million when Cobolli clinched the victory.

That’s, to be clear, an amount nearly quadruple the record-breaking $5.5 million the U.S. Open’s on-court singles champions will receive along with the U.S. Open trophy.

Also on Tuesday afternoon, a match featuring Taylor Fritz in the illustrious Arthur Ashe Stadium had a trading volume of just under $3 million early in the second set.

What struck me was how close the betting volume was at far-flung matches between, frankly, nobodies being watched by nobody.

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Elsewhere on Tuesday afternoon’s Kalshi tennis offerings, a first-round match at the Porto Challenger between 430th-ranked Niels Visker and 223rd-ranked Genaro Alberto Olivieri had finished with volume not far behind, accumulating $2.7 million on Kalshi.

A match at a Challenger in Bulgaria between two even more obscure guys was also getting considerable action. Pyotr Nesterov is ranked 301st and has made just $36,305 in prize money this year. Yanaki Milev is ranked 866th and has made just $13,348. Kalshi had volume approaching a half-million dollars on it when I checked before it had ended. While I have no knowledge that these specific players have been approached by gamblers, you can see, generally speaking, how the incentives and temptations for these types of players to fix matches would be massive.

It goes further. Those matches were Challengers, which at least are within touching distance of the main tour. But the live action promoted on Kalshi even went down to the paltry Futures level, where one could bet on a match at the M25+H Bagnères-de-Bigorre event between Axel Garcian, the ATP No. 992 who has earned just $2,761 so far in 2026 and Alexey Dubinin, the ATP No. 2,245 who has earned just $836 in prize money in the first eight months of the year.

These are barely professionals. The winner of this first-round match gets $495 for reaching the second round; the loser goes home with $319; a swing of just $176 at stake.

So why was more than half-a-million dollars bouncing around the outcome of this match on Kalshi?

As I scrolled on Kalshi, the website got even more surreal. Forget about an easily fixable tennis result: with its wide range of non-sports stakes Kalshi has offered infinite insider trading incentives. You may have heard recently about Trump’s teleprompter operator getting caught placing bets on Kalshi about what the president would say in his speeches.

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But Kalshi has even created a situation in which a customer could be financially incentivized to bring Ebola to a country. That’s, for lack of a better term, deeply fucked up.

This is a truly bizarre, dare I say dystopian company, and it’s now an official partner of the U.S. Open.

This is not the first time a Grand Slam event—or a tournament run by Craig Tiley, more specifically—has taken an official betting partner. Most recently, in 2016 the Australian Open brought on British bookmaker William Hill as its first official betting sponsor. That year’s tournament, as their luck would have it, was beset by scandals around betting, both after a BBC/BuzzFeed investigation into older stories of corruption dropped on the eve of the tournament, and my own report for The New York Times about suspicious betting patterns in an Australian Open mixed doubles match. (One of the players involved in my report, David Marrero, was later banned by the International Tennis Integrity Agency for two years and seven months for offering to pay for wild cards.)

William Hill’s ads did not return the next year, and the Grand Slam events did not dabble in further betting sponsors for nearly a decade.

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But given the enormity of Kalshi’s business, the temptation clearly proved irresistible to the U.S. Open’s better angels this time around. To be sure, betting has gone from a seedy underground adventure to something suffocatingly mainstream in American life. I’m sure I’m not the only one who flipped on the TV and smiled as I saw popular NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo dancing around in a big-budget, pun-based Grease send-up, only to be left frowning when it was revealed as a Kalshi ad at the end.

Tennis players are forbidden by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) from doing advertisements for betting companies like the one Antetokounmpo did. Tournaments, however, don’t currently face any such restrictions or regulations on their commercial deals, as you may remember from my report last year on shady Russian bookmaker 1xBet’s involvement in tennis.

The ITIA—which is funded by the U.S.T.A. and other tennis governing bodies—sent Bounces this statement on the U.S. Open’s new deal.

“Betting and trading markets are evolving extremely quickly, and the emergence of prediction and other non-traditional markets bring new opportunities and risk to all sports – including tennis. Whilst commercial deals are outside of our scope, we are working closely with our funders on the identification and the management of the risks.”

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What, I wondered, did players at the U.S. Open make of the tournament cozying up to and selling out to a betting company? I asked several players on Monday, hours after the deal had been announced. None of them had heard the news yet; several made indescribable facial expressions when I told them of it.

Danish player Clara Tauson looked the most shocked of all.

“I think it has to be one of the first big tournaments that’s having betting company as a sponsor,” Tauson told Bounces. “But they do whatever they want—and they need the money? I mean, I don’t really have a thought about that right now. I think that’s life: you have to get money from somewhere. I thought the U.S.T.A. had a lot of money, but apparently not enough.”

Chile’s Alejandro Tabilo mentioned the double standard in rules.

“I mean, it’s a little strange because, for us, they don’t allow anything like that,” Tabilo told Bounces. “By that part, it’s just weird. But as long as they give a little bit more to the players after, or stuff like that, maybe that will work. But it still gives a little more incentive to the people to bet, and then they come to our Instagram and they bombard us with hate. So I don’t know; it’s a weird situation for everybody.”

Wimbledon champion Linda Noskova literally shrugged as she explained feeling powerless.

“I know it’s a big topic, obviously: tennis is making a lot of profits thanks to betting and bettors,” Noskova told Bounces on Monday. “But at the same time, they’re not the greatest people that bet on sports, any sport—especially tennis, I would say so. All the bad comments and these negative feedbacks that we are getting after our wins or losses; I don’t know if [because of this deal] there’s going to be a bigger percentage of people writing to us or not. But at the same time, it’s all sport, tennis-connected so I guess it’s good for some people. I don’t think it is the best way to promote tennis, to promote sport. But at the same time, it’s business, so we can’t do much.”

Matteo Berrettini also looked particularly surprised when I told him of the Kalshi deal. Berrettini weighed the positives and negatives of betting in the sport, and as he spoke, the topic brought up many memories for him.

“Actually, my brother [Jacopo] is here: in Roland Garros, he received some messages on his phone threatening my family… They were saying, ‘Matteo is so bad, if you don’t tell him to lose, we’re going to kill your family.’ They were threatening us. Of course, we reported everything to the ATP, and they have the [threatener’s] phone number and everything.”

Berrettini also alluded to Lucrezia Stefanini, the Italian WTA player who was texted a photo of a gun before playing a qualifying match in Indian Wells this March.

“I received a WhatsApp message in which I was threatened over winning yesterday's match,” Stefanini said then. “They threatened me and my family and named my parents, the place where I was born, and they sent me a photo of a gun.”

Berrettini said he didn’t feel unsafe himself, but worried about others.

“We’re 30 years old—we’re big boys and stuff,” he said. “But if I’m thinking about the girls and the younger ones, to receive these kind of messages can be scary. We’re tennis players, you know? So it’s important to protect us.”

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There may be ads on Bounces some day, like nearly every publication has, but I can promise that there won’t ever be betting sponsors, even though those are the most common offers in my inbox. I’ve been presented numerous sponsorships from betting companies and have turned them all down. Also, I couldn’t even do it within current tennis rules and keep doing my job the way I have: reporters, historically, can be de-credentialed for having betting sponsors on their websites, and players could get into trouble for doing interviews with a betting-focused outlet. (We are also prohibited from placing our own bets on events where we are credentialed.)

But, undaunted, the tournaments keep raking it in. The house always wins.

In the meantime, I thank you for supporting Bounces and independent, unbought journalism in tennis.

Thank you for reading Bounces! This article is free to read and share, but to support my work here, please consider a subscription, which is 15 percent off during this U.S. Open. —Ben

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Thanks to Lev Akabas, data reporter at Sportico, we have a new way to understand just how unusual this match was: it was Scorigami!

Akabas has ported Scorigami, a popular device from American sports that was invented by sportswriter Jon Bois for the NFL in 2014 into tennis social media.

For those who haven’t learned of it in other arenas, Scorigami is a term for when a sporting event has a final score that has never happened before in the history of the league. For the original NFL version, the final scores of two teams are at play. In this chart, the winning team’s scores are the columns while the losing team’s scores are the rows. Squares marked green have previously been the final score of an NFL game; white squares have not happened yet.

It’s become a fun ritual on NFL Sundays as fans watch games unfold and wonder if the scores might careen toward one of those elusive white squares.

Akabas is not the first to try to apply Scorigami to tennis, but in his recent work, Akabas has ported this concept over to real-time Grand Slam tennis for the first time, tracking and cataloging the scores of all main-draw singles matches in the Open Era (since 1968), learning which ones are most common, uncommon, and never before seen. The project launched for the 2026 U.S. Open and was an instant hit; within the first 24 hours, the @TenniScorigami Twitter account already had more than 5,000 followers—no small feat in this dead-ball era of Twitter.

It’s the sort of thing I’ve wished tennis had had for a long time—NFL scorigami has existed for nearly a decade—and I’m glad Akabas put in the effort to bring it to life.

Akabas and I spoke at the U.S. Open on Tuesday afternoon about his invention, challenges around data-based projects in tennis because of the desert of information, misunderstandings about probability, mixed feelings about AI, and much more.

The Bounces 15 percent off sale is still going during this U.S. Open if you haven’t joined in yet!

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Arthur Ashe Stadium remains named after the pioneering champion who won the first U.S. Open in 1968 before his life of athletic excellence and activism ended far too soon, dying at age 49 in 1993.

Ashe’s impact has been especially visible this year, with Black men taking up more spots atop men’s tennis than ever before. There are four Black men in the ATP’s Top 12; two of them contested the recent final in Cincinnati: Fils and Tiafoe.

But for this story, I want to focus on another similarity between Ashe and Fils that has gotten less discussion: their shared first name.

Because of Ashe’s namesake stadium, the name Arthur fittingly appears all over the grounds of the building itself and the wider Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.

But “Arthur” is also more visible than ever on the courts themselves.

To read the rest of this story—and the Day 2 Matches to Watch—please subscribe to Bounces! Our U.S. Open sale is still going! Thanks to everyone who already subscribed with this deal! —Ben

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But none of us runners would have ever planned out the grueling nature of the first of our fifteen efforts on Sunday night—and into early Monday morning—which featured the latest match start in U.S. Open history and then the latest first-round finish in U.S. Open history.

Sometimes late matches can be prudently skipped, but these results were unavoidable: the exits of the man and woman who, respectively, hold more Grand Slam titles than anyone else in their draws.

To read about the first round exits of Novak Djokovic and Venus Williams—and hear what both had to say to reporters as they exited—please subscribe to Bounces. The 15 percent off sale is just underway and going strong if you haven’t subscribed yet!

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NEW YORK — In celebration of the year’s final major, and Bounces nearing its two-year anniversary, I’m excited to run our biggest sale yet: 15 percent off all Bounces subscriptions through the end of the 2026 U.S. Open.

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This offer also applies to gift subscriptions, in case you’re a Bounces devotee who wants to share the love with a favorite tennis fan in your life.

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You can get a year of Bounces for just a little more than the price of two Honey Deuces.

Bounces remains on the lower end, pricewise, of the top Substacks in the Sports category (currently, at #23, Bounces is the only tennis Substack in the Sports Top 100). I think readers will agree, given the amazing renewal rates here, that you get a lot of bang for your Bounces buck, during Grand Slam events and year-round.

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In addition to everything during the U.S. Open, I’ve got a ton of reporting collected from this summer which will keep Bounces crops watered for fresh features throughout the rest of this year.

The balance has shifted slightly over the last year: closer to 75 percent of posts are paywalled now. So if you’re only a free subscriber—and I love free subscribers, too—you’re missing out on a whole lot of stuff you’ll love and that you won’t get anywhere else.

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This will be the last Bounces discount of the year, and it ends shortly after the U.S. Open does, so don’t delay! And thanks to everyone for all of your support over these last two years! -Ben

But this Saturday was the first time I’d come up to Newport for their main event: the annual induction ceremony into the Hall of Fame.

Even with the festivities wedged against the first day of the U.S. Open, it felt crucial to me to make the four-hour trip to Rhode Island, because, at last, my G.O.A.T. was getting in.

No, not Roger Federer—though he’s quite nifty, too—but the one and only Mary Carillo. Yes, the menu for the big ceremony was the same as the bagged lunch offering in the event’s makeshift media work room: Ham and Swiss.

After an introduction by her idol and good friend Billie Jean King, Carillo took over the Hall of Fame’s stage like truly no one had ever done before.

You really should watch the whole thing in full below. I was sitting in the very last row, smiling the entire time.

She dazzled right away, calling King “the most singularly American person I’ve ever known—and I mean that in the best way.”

From there Carillo was off to the races, mixing charming childhood stories into remarkable crowd work with the pantheon of greats sitting in front of her.

It will surprise none that this was the section of her speech that resonated with me most:

“What a deep privilege it was to have that credential around my neck. I wanted to be a professional, a real journalist, knowing that what counts is to be accurate and to be fair. And there were way too many times when I was neither. But, that’s what I strove for, anyway. To love our sport with clear eyes. And, when necessary, to tell hard truths.

“And while it is an occupational hazard to piss off people in power—especially your bosses—here’s what you do, Gabriela:1 You do your time in the penalty box with the hope that you get out of it and have nobody hold a mortgage on you. Say what you mean, mean what you say, knowing the price and paying it without regret.

“And if you’re really lucky, really lucky, you’ve gotten to work in this game when tennis launched itself into the stratosphere.”

Carillo’s superpower was always mixing reverence and irreverence, and she hit a classic one-two punch by segueing from the call to high-minded journalism to what she called “a brief but moving poem.”

I don’t want to spoil the whole thing; please do watch it when you have a chance to savor it.

It may have seemed like a mismatch, to some, to see Mary Carillo on the same dais as Roger Federer. But for me, what she can do with a microphone matches what he could do with a racquet, and the sport is so, so fortunate to have had them both.

The most memorable part of the Federer half of the ceremony, perhaps, came from a Federer who has been long seen but rarely heard: Mirka, his wife, who introduced him. There was a lot of predicting going on beforehand about who might make Federer’s introduction—particularly after Maria Sharapova went a very splashy route by tapping Serena Williams last year—but in the end Federer kept it in the family, which really made the night much more personal for a guy whose career has felt like it belonged to the world.

Even for Roger Federer, they were tough acts to follow.

After the paywall, a look ahead at matches to watch on Day 1 of the 2026 U.S. Open.

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“Long time, long time,” the defending champion said as he sat down behind the podium.

Soon there would be words and answers beaming from Alcaraz’s mouth as well: he was facing a room full of reporters for the first time since a season-altering right wrist injury sidelined him more than four months ago.

Alcaraz answered questions about his injury, his comeback, new perspectives, and more in English and Spanish (translated into English for Bounces readers).

To read it all—and hop on for a tournament full of U.S. Open coverage—please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

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On the second and final day, it was most striking how much the air had gone out of the place. The three matches were all competitive and there were worthy champions in the end, but the first day’s star power had dimmed out considerably, and the stakes felt muddled and unclear as three matches were overstuffed into one night session.

Without the first day’s potent “x” factors, mixed turned into something closer to mid.

What went wrong? Let’s do an autopsy on a strange dud of a night.

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For all the details on Serena-Alcaraz, Svitolina-Monfils, the wild Andreeva-Rublev press conference and more, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

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Both players are vying for their first Masters 1000-level title; it’s Fils’ first final at this level, and Tiafoe’s second after reaching the final at the same venue two years ago against Jannik Sinner.

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This high-stakes match is the first 1000-level final between two Black men, and just the seventh all-Black men’s singles final at ATP level in the tour’s history, as far as my research showed.

There have been loads of all-Black finals at this level or higher of women’s tennis, of course, including two 1000-level finals just last year (Jasmine Paolini d. Coco Gauff in Rome; Victoria Mboko d. Naomi Osaka in Montreal).

There have been eleven all-Black women’s singles finals at the majors: nine between Venus and Serena Williams, one between Madison Keys and Sloane Stephens, and one between Osaka and Serena. At lower tour levels, Lori McNeil and Zina Garrison played against one another five times in finals from 1986 to 1995.

But in men’s tennis—where the last Black major singles champion was Yannick Noah in 1983 and the last Black major singles finalist was Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in 2008—this is a big deal, particularly coming on the heels of Ben Shelton having won the previous 1000-level event earlier this month in Montreal. It’s a meaningful milestone in a sport where athletes of color remain underrepresented.

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But on Tennis Channel on Saturday night, they had a distinct alternate way of talking about this final which I—and others I heard from—found grating while, also, expected.

“This may be our swaggiest final of the year on the ATP Tour,” Brett Haber said after Tiafoe’s win.

Haber reused that language again later in the night, after Coco Gauff had won the final match of the night to book a women’s final against Jessica Pegula, when a graphic showed the Sunday slate.

“Fils and Foe: Could you think of a swaggier men’s final?” Haber said again.

“Swagginess” is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But on Tennis Channel, the concept has nearly become a byword for Blackness. To my ears it’s a lazy trope or code, not unlike how White players so often get called “scrappy” during March Madness. “Swaggy” is theoretically a compliment, but it seems foremost to other and exoticize these players when comparing them to tennis norms.

Or, perhaps, to sound less academic, it’s just corny and cringeworthy. Hearing “swaggy” in 2026 lands in my ears as if someone thought they learned how the kids talk these days from 2010s Justin Bieber lyrics.

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Adding Up The Swag

I knew I’d heard this word a lot around Black tennis players on Tennis Channel, and wanted to find a way to quantify its usage somehow. Happily, I found a very cool website, Filmot, that searches auto-generated YouTube captions. Filmot gave me lots of results from the transcripts of Tennis Channel’s YouTube channel. Not everything said on Tennis Channel makes it onto their YouTube, of course, but it was a pretty decent place to start exploring this phenomenon.

The hits—when searching for “swag,” “swaggy,” and other conjugates—were overwhelmingly by anchor Prakash Amritraj, and overwhelmingly addressing the coolness of Black players. I’ve compiled those moments here:

The ending moment is perhaps the most telling: Arthur Fils understands, by this point in his Tennis Channel experience, that when asked Amritraj to list the “swaggiest,” he probably should reel off the names of some Black players. After all, a question about White European players trying out cornrows was introduced as “swag-related.” Are cornrows really “swag-related” or are they just associated with a particular race?

Applying the term to Black players is predominant and disproportionate but not exclusive. But by contrast, there were only three usages Filmot found from Tennis Channel’s YouTube in which “swag” language was used to describe non-Black players: once apiece for Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, and Jerry Shang. All three of those times, Amritraj’s word usage was met with immediate laughter.

Because it’s a slang term about coolness, it’s hard to find a great formal definition of “swaggy” that really nails its usage and connotation. Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “having a fashionable and confident appearance or way of behaving.” Other sources emphasize nonchalance in the definition.

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After my initial posts about this on social media seemed to resonate, I did hear from a few folks who contended that, while the overall trend was clear, Tiafoe and Fils themselves might just be very authentically swaggy individuals. And that may be true! Swagginess is, of course, subjective.

But the quantifiably outsized usage of it on Tennis Channel to describe Black players makes it clear that something else is going on here. To look at the Tiafoe-Fils pairing and declare it the ne plus ultra of swagginess seems pretty limited.

So I think Tennis Channel should either stop using the word, or start using it way more. Because there are lots of players in tennis, surely, who could check the boxes.

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NBA player Nick Young, often called “Swaggy P,” was perhaps most associated with the concept at the height of its 2010s usage, and he had a good handle on it that wasn’t racially coded.

“Swag is confidence: how you dress, how you move, your whole persona,” Young told Sports Illustrated in 2015. “I tell Iggy [Azalea] all the time, ‘You can’t care what people say. You’ve got to have that swag!’”

By that working definition—which I think is pretty good— I’d have lots of new candidates in tennis as the possible swaggiest. Hsieh Su-wei, foremost, of course. I’d also mention Daniil Medvedev, Jelena Ostapenko, Karolina Muchova, Learner Tien, Nikola Bartunkova, Mattia Bellucci—all of them have their own unique forms of swag. I’d love to hear from y’all in the comments as well, about who might be your nominees for this praise.

And of course, anyone who is winning, by definition, gets to seem pretty swaggy in tennis—even if they’re a huge dork at heart.

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For a bit more on U.S. Open news—and wild card snubs—read on below the paywall as a Bounces subscriber! -Ben

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