The U.S. Open owes a lot of people a refund

On Sunday afternoon, the U.S. Open men’s final was supposed to be about one thing: two of the brightest young stars in tennis, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, fighting for one of the sport’s biggest prizes. Instead, thousands of paying fans were trapped in endless security lines outside Arthur Ashe Stadium, missing the opening sets of the most anticipated match of the year. The cause was obvious and avoidable: organizers chose to accommodate the arrival of President Donald Trump, whose security detail predictably brought the flow of fans to a grinding halt.

This wasn’t an accident. It was foreseeable from the moment his attendance was confirmed. Everyone knows that a sitting president doesn’t quietly slip into a major sporting event. The motorcades, the magnetometers, the Secret Service protocols, the re-routing of pedestrian and vehicle traffic — these aren’t surprises. They are the cost of admission. The United States Tennis Association, which runs the Open, knew that. It should have either said no to Trump’s presence or built out a plan that protected the fan experience. Instead, it did neither.

The result was chaos. Fans who had paid hundreds, in many cases thousands, of dollars to be part of the final ended up stuck outside the gates. Inside, cameras showed row after row of empty seats as Sinner and Alcaraz started their match. Outside, people fumed, checking their watches, knowing that the sport’s crown-jewel moment was slipping away while they shuffled forward at a snail’s pace. For those who eventually made it in, the damage was already done. You don’t get a second chance to see the first two sets of a Grand Slam final.

The USTA now faces a simple choice. It can pretend this was all out of its hands and hope the news cycle moves on, or it can take responsibility and refund anyone who asks. The latter option is the only fair path. Every fan who requests their money back should receive a refund equal to the face value of their ticket, no matter where they bought it. Whether someone paid through the official box office, on StubHub, or from a reseller on the street corner, the original issuer was the USTA. The failure was the USTA’s. They invited the disruption. They failed to plan for the inevitable consequences. They are the ones who must make fans whole.

Argument isn't about charity, it's about deliverance

Some will argue that it wasn’t the tournament’s fault — that the Secret Service sets the rules and there’s nothing organizers could do. But that excuse collapses under even mild scrutiny. If you know that your invited guest is going to create chaos, you either decline the guest or change your infrastructure to shield customers from the fallout. The USTA did neither. They wanted the glow of a political celebrity in the stands and rolled the dice that it wouldn’t ruin the experience. It did. That’s on them.

Refunds aren’t a radical idea. In fact, they’re standard practice in most industries. If a concert headliner cancels, ticket holders get their money back. If an airline cancels a flight, passengers are owed refunds by law. Professional sports teams routinely issue credits or refunds when games are postponed or rescheduled. Why should the U.S. Open, one of the wealthiest sporting events in the world with its corporate sponsors and TV deals, get a pass when its mismanagement left fans literally locked out of history?

The argument here isn’t about charity. It’s about delivering on the bargain represented by a ticket. When you buy a seat to the men’s final, you’re not buying the right to stand in a security line while the match unfolds without you. You’re buying the right to be inside the stadium, watching the action live. For thousands of fans on Sunday, that bargain was broken. The product was not delivered as promised. Refunds are the baseline minimum acknowledgment of that failure.