A In the video shot from the stands at the US Open with a smartphone by university professor Gwen D., it clearly sounded as if the entire 23,000-strong audience of this Grand Slam final was voicing its discontent. Thunderous boos could be heard. “That’s how it really was today in the Arthur Ashe Stadium,” she commented in a Facebook post.
The expressions of disapproval were, of course, not directed at the finalists Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. They sounded, rather, after the first set, when the cameras turned to the match’s most prominent guest of honor, Donald Trump. If you watched the match on television, you hardly heard the boos. While the president grinned into the cameras, there was only a dull, indistinct background murmur.
That ESPN had filtered out the boos clearly heard by spectators like Gwen D. was not a spontaneous decision by the director. The tournament organizers, the US Tennis Association (USTA), had politely requested in a memorandum not to show “reactions to the presence of the president.” The full attention, the federation said, should be devoted to the players.
Donald Trump, who showed at most peripheral interest in the tennis itself and disappeared again long before the match point, probably hoped that all the attention would belong to him. Large stadium appearances fit the image he would like to project of himself as a ruler; the historical role models are surely familiar.
“Unforced error”
But unlike golf, UFC fights, or the Super Bowl, he probably could expect that the New York tennis crowd would not be particularly fond of him. So he or people around him apparently triggered the preemptive censorship.
That is not surprising. The bigger scandal was, therefore, that both the tennis association and the TV channel ESPN gave in to the demand at all.
The USTA’s decision to comply with the White House’s wishes and shield Trump’s self-presentation from noise is hardly understandable. The British Guardian called it in tennis jargon an “unforced error” – a fault without necessity. The US Open are actually the Grand Slam tournament that cares least about etiquette.
Loud expressions of opinion and dissent are part of its charm. Two years ago, it was shown in detail how a protester glued himself to his seat during the women’s semifinal. Also two years ago, when Alexander Zverev confronted a fan for his far-right remarks, the microphones remained open. That the USTA, at the tennis venue dedicated to women and LGBTQ rights advocate Billie Jean King, is now filtering the noise for Trump’s sake is at least disconcerting.
More understandable is ESPN’s concession. The American television network, which belongs to the Disney group, has recently acquired the league’s own NFL Network, which in turn should lead to the league obtaining a ten percent stake in the sports network. The multi-billion-dollar deal still has to be approved by the Trump administration, and thus ESPN has every reason to present itself favorably toward Trump.
This presumably led recently to the cancellation of a Spike Lee documentary about Colin Kaepernick on ESPN. About that quarterback who sparked worldwide athlete protests against racially motivated violence. Surely Lee’s documentary would not have avoided criticism of the NFL.
The tennis audience in New York, of course, didn’t care. The spectators made clear what they thought of Trump. And in the age of social media, this could not be hidden even with TV censorship.
