Carlos Alcaraz said Donald Trump\u2019s presence at the US Open final will be \u201cgreat for tennis\u201d as the US president prepares to attend his first match at Flushing Meadows in a decade.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Spaniard reached Sunday\u2019s final by beating Novak Djokovic in straight sets on Friday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium. He will face defending champion Jannik Sinner<\/a> for a sixth grand slam title and a third in New York.<\/p>\n Alcaraz gave a positive response when asked about Trump\u2019s planned appearance at the final.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that it is a privilege for the tournaments having the president from every country just to support the tournament, to support tennis, and to support the match,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, playing in front of him \u2026 I will try not to think about it. I don\u2019t want myself to be nervous because of it, but I think attending the tennis match, it\u2019s great for tennis to have the president at the final.\u201d<\/p>\n The United States Tennis<\/a> Association said on Friday that Trump would be a guest in a corporate suite inside Ashe.<\/p>\n Trump was once a fixture in the US Open crowd<\/a> before launching his political career. The Trump Organization even maintained a suite adjacent to the broadcast booth, but gave it up in 2017 during his first year in the White House.<\/p>\n The president has been making a series of high-profile sporting appearances this year. He has attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans, the Daytona 500 in Florida, UFC cards in Miami and Newark, the NCAA wrestling championships in Philadelphia and July\u2019s Fifa Club World Cup final in New Jersey, where he made headlines by crashing Chelsea\u2019s trophy ceremony<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Barack and Michelle Obama appeared on opening night of the US Open in 2023, Trump\u2019s return on Sunday will mark the first by a sitting president in 25 years, when Bill Clinton took in the women\u2019s final in 2000.<\/p>\n Alcaraz, who first won the US Open as a teenager in 2022, has become the first man to reach the tournament\u2019s final without dropping a set since Roger Federer in 2015. He said Friday that not even Trump\u2019s presence, which ensures the match will carry political theatre unusual even for New York\u2019s grand slam, will distract him from his goal.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great for tennis,\u201d Alcaraz said. \u201cBut on Sunday, my job is to play my best tennis and not let anything else get in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz said Donald Trump\u2019s presence at the US Open final will be \u201cgreat for tennis\u201d as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-401601","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}