TennisTok

James Hansen on watching the US Open on TikTok.

Tennis is simultaneously ripe for and antithetical to highlights. A single, gossamer drop shot or supersonic serve makes a wonderful clip; a wonderful clip cannot do justice to the tactical and athletic currents of momentum that wax and wane over 2, 3, 4, and 5 sets. A staggering thirty-shot rally is a highlight that might change a match indelibly; it might have no bearing on the result at all.

Blessèd, then, be the US Open’s TikTok, which thrives on this tension between sport and spectacle. It picks a side, going all in on spectacle; creating narrative and order not from the structure of its sport, but the use of trending sounds, viral formats, and cutting captions.

It makes this ball boy a bigger star than Roger Federer; it makes celebrations (cellys) outweigh the match they’re hyping; it even manages to make US talent Ben Shelton’s absolutely swagless dial-up phone routine an iota less cringe. It throws out the internal logic of a tennis match in favor of the features of the platform—but still adds snippets of informative commentary that would make TV pundits blush, for its end-of-day recaps. It also casts the limelight generously, in a sport where power, economics, and attention are staggeringly top-heavy. Not everyone can be a walking highlight reel or part of the Big Three, but anyone might drop in a ludicrous tweener, or deadpan plug their social media in an interview, however vanishing their appearance at Flushing Meadows.

GET CAUGHT UP