Last Tuesday night during US Open fan week, Roger Federer returned to Arthur Ashe Stadium to play Andy Roddick in a highly anticipated exhibition match.
But many of those in attendance cared little for watching the Swiss great and his famously powerful, graceful groundstrokes.
An entire suite on premiere level one, one of the new premium levels at the stadium, was filled with influencers who talked loudly during the match and stood up at random to snap selfies.
“They don’t even care about tennis,” sniffed one fan who noted how loud the influencer crowd was when Federer was trying to serve. “They are all just getting drunk and being rowdy.”
In recent years, the US Open has turned into New York’s longest, most debaucherous end-of-summer party. This year will be the most raucous yet for the tournament, which kicked off Sunday — if the Federer-Roddick match is any indication.
“I don’t want to be a pearl clutcher because it definitely feels more relevant and vibrant than it did ten or 15 years ago,” said Caitlin Thompson, founder of tennis’ preeminent literary magazine, Racquet. “But, I also don’t think anyone’s really there to watch tennis [anymore].”
Anastasia Folorunso, host of the Ground Pass podcast, is more positive.
“Deep focus is for Wimbledon, this is New York baby,” she quipped.
In 2025, the party was one for the books.
The smell of cannabis was so strong, with fans vaping and sparking up just beyond the tournament’s gates, that Norwegian Casper Rudd dubbed the stench “the worst thing about New York.”
Fans guzzled down a whopping 738,459 Honey Deuce cocktails and grew so rowdy Serbian star Novak Djokovic had to implore the chair umpire to restore order at one point.
This year, Danny Zausner, COO of USTA National Tennis Center, told The Post they expect to sell a record 800,000 Honey Deuces — up from a mere 5,000 in 2007 when the vodka-melon concoction first went pro.
There will also be more influencers than ever before. In 2025, the Open doled out 54 “creator accreditation” passes. That number has more than doubled for 2026, as first reported by Front Office Sports.
Meanwhile, local dispensaries say they’re staffing up with additional drivers to meet demand from US Open attendees who want goods delivered to them just outside the stadium.
“You get high, it makes [tennis] a little more entertaining,” said Tre Davidson, a manager at Silk Road, a dispensary in Jamaica, Queens, just a few miles from Arthur Ashe. The shop’s website promises drop off right at the grounds’ gates.
A 2025 attendee, a consultant in his mid-twenties at one of the Big Four accounting firms, recalled arriving at 10 a.m. and immediately hitting the Honey Deuces
“They go down like water and I wasn’t really buying water,” the man, who spoke anonymously because his employer had paid him to attend with a dozen colleagues, told The Post. By day’s end, he’d had six of the signature cocktails and four beers, and seen one of his colleagues escorted out for berating the ref and calling him as “piece of s—t” who needed eyeglasses.
His group stacked their empty cups to show off their consumption, as has become the trend in certain boozy circles. By the end of the day, their collection towered more than six-and-a-half feet tall.
“It’s become a flex,” longtime tennis fan Jay Strell, 57, told The Post of the boozing, likening the tournament in recent years to an “amusement park.”
Some say the party-hard atmosphere is due, in part, to the fact that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for regular tennis fans — not corporate lushes and social media-obsessed influencers — to score tickets.
The ongoing $800 million renovations to Arthur Ashe are creating 2,000 new courtside seats and an extra level of suites — at the expense of the cheaper seats in the stadium’s upper bowl.
The renovations are also adding to the chaos. At Tuesday’s exhibition match, one elevator operator quipped, “No one knows where to go.”
Even those who make a living in social media question what the Open has become.
Ellie Williams, the 27-year-old known for covering NYC nightlife on social media @ellie.forthegirls, has been attending the Open since she was a kid and is nostalgic for tamer times.
“I think it’s kind of sad, honestly … [today it’s very much like], let’s dress up and go because I want to be seen,” she said. “Who is actually here for the tennis?”
Strell, who works in PR, agrees, but both he and Williams still plan on going to the Open.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “It’s still a Grand Slam.”
