U.S. Open singles winners will get a record $5 million each
The U.S. Tennis Association announced the payouts Wednesday for the year's last Grand Slam tournament, which begins with the new mixed doubles event and its $1 million top check on Aug. 19-20. Singles competition starts on a Sunday for the first time — Aug. 24 — as those brackets expand from 14 days to 15.
The increases at Flushing Meadows — where last year's total compensation was $75 million — come as the sport's leading players have been in discussions with each of the four major tournaments in a bid to receive a higher percentage of revenues at the U.S. Open, Wimbledon, French Open and Australian Open.
Novak Djokovic, Coco Gauff and 2024 U.S. Open champions Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner were among 20 players who signed a letter sent to the heads of the four Grand Slam events in March seeking more prize money and a greater say in what they called "decisions that directly impact us." Since then, some players have held talks with the majors.
The previous high amount for a U.S. Open singles championship was $3.85 million in 2019, before decreasing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year's $5 million check represents a 39% hike from last year's $3.6 million. The same percentage increase was applied to the singles runners-up, who get $2.5 million each. Semifinalists will earn $1.26 million, a 26% rise.
At Wimbledon, which ended last month, prize money went up about 7% to about $73 million at the exchange rate when the All England Club announced its player payments. The singles champions were paid about $4 million apiece.
In New York, the winning teams in women's and men's doubles will receive $1 million, a new high for those events at the U.S. Open, where total prizes for qualifying are going up to $8 million, a 10% increase.
The $85 million in 2025 U.S. Open prize money includes singles, doubles, qualifying and wheelchair events.
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Yahoo
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Coco Gauff manifested a Grand Slam title at the French Open. Or did she?
Editor's Note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic's desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here. The idea came from an Olympic gold medalist, and the ritual didn't take long, so on the night before the 2025 French Open final, Coco Gauff pulled out a pen and a small piece of paper. Advertisement 'I will win French Open 2025,' she scribbled. Then she kept writing. 'I will win French Open 2025' 'I will win French Open 2025' When she ran out of paper, she'd filled up eight lines. Gauff had borrowed the technique from Gabby Thomas, the American sprinter who spent every morning at the Paris Olympics writing a similar intention in the Notes app on her phone: 'I will be Olympic champion.' To Gauff, it reminded her of something she'd discussed with her therapist. She'd always had an inclination for self-doubt, for negative thoughts that creep in before matches. Instead of ignoring them, her therapist wondered, what if she re-directed them? 'Instead of being like, 'What if I lose?'' Gauff explained on 'Good Morning America' earlier this year. 'Think about, 'What if I win?' Or, 'I will win.'' In the parlance of Gen Z, there was an easy way to describe what Gauff was doing. She was manifesting; at least, that's how some saw it. It was an old idea that resurfaced during the pandemic and caught fire online, resulting in a TikTok trend of 'vision boards,' where people illustrated their end goals with images, or 'scripting,' the practice of writing down your goals and desires over and over. The concept of manifestation gained popularity in the 2000s, when the self-help book 'The Secret' promoted the Law of Attraction, an idea that positive thoughts bring forth positive results. In reality, it was a repurposed version of the ancient theory of karma, or the belief that good deeds will lead to positive outcomes. When it came to the French Open, the outcome gave rise to an alluring idea: Gauff had defeated Aryna Sabalenka to win her second Grand Slam title through sheer force of will and positive thinking. She had, as the phrase went, spoken her win into existence. But was that right? Researchers have long cautioned there is no scientific basis for the idea of manifesting. 'Magical thinking,' said Elliot Berkman, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who studies motivation and behavior change. Advertisement But athletes are a fascinating cohort. They follow unusual routines. They lean on superstition and positive self-talk to increase confidence and belief. 'When you're desperate,' Gauff told reporters, 'you're just trying anything to think that it's going to help you win.' The law of attraction will not carry an athlete to victory on pure positive vibes, psychologists say, but there are actual scientific reasons why writing down your intentions and goals — why saying, 'I will win' — could offer a genuine performance benefit. A 2017 study by researchers at the University of Toronto showed that utilizing a ritual before performance can reduce anxiety and help an athlete rebound from failure. Another sport psychology professor says that writing down a simple intention can be powerful if the athlete then imagines what winning would look and feel like, which activates the same part of the brain used during performance, a concept known as functional equivalence. 'You're still activating those neural pathways that you would in the real world,' said Alan Chu, an associate professor at the UNC Greensboro. Studies have long shown that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them. One explanation is what psychologists call the 'Generation effect,' which indicates that people are more likely to remember information that they've actively produced rather than passively consumed. There is also no shortage of athletes who spent their formative years writing down their goals on paper. Michael Phelps, the legendary Olympic swimmer, would list his goals, then post the paper in a closet, where only he could see it. Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time leading rusher, started writing down his goals in high school, adhering to a message passed on from his coach: 'It's a dream until you write it down; then it becomes a goal.' Advertisement It was a similar sentiment to one repeated by former MLB outfielder Ichiro Suzuki when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in late July. 'Dreaming is fun, but goals are difficult and challenging,' Suzuki said. 'It's not enough to say I want to do something. If you are serious about it, you must think critically about what is necessary to achieve it.' Suzuki's message underlined the main flaw in the Law of Attraction doctrine. Berkman, the Oregon professor, says that research has shown that dwelling on the end result is often counterproductive in pursuing a goal. 'I think it is actually fairly intuitive why that doesn't work,' he said. 'Like, if I want to get from here to Kathmandu, just thinking about being in Kathmandu is not going to get me there.' But for Thomas and Gauff, the act of writing down their intention was less about outlining a goal or a behavior change, and more about putting them in the right mindset to compete. In this way, the process of writing the same intention over and over may have yielded a different effect, one that increased their resilience. In 2017, Nick Hobson, then a research psychologist at the University of Toronto, published a study that found that people who used a ritual before completing a task had less of a neurological response in the brain when they made an error. The explanation is fairly simple: The part of the brain associated with failure, called the anterior cingulate cortex, possesses something akin to an 'oh s— signal,' Hobson said. When a person uses a ritual before performance, it dampens the signal. 'You're going to make a mistake in any performance context,' Hobson said. 'So how do you trick your brain — your behavior — to say, 'I just made an error. That's OK. Let's slow down so that you prevent the occurrence of a subsequent error?' I think that's what rituals do. It makes the sting of a failure less aversive.' Advertisement Chu, the professor at UNC Greensboro, says there may be an even better way for an athlete to lift themselves up through positive self talk. Some research has suggested that athletes may get an even bigger dopamine boost by talking to themselves in the second person. 'Using the word 'you' sometimes could be more helpful than using the word 'I',' Chu said. 'Because you are almost feeling like you're hearing that voice from a third party.' For Gauff, the post-match explanation of her mental strategy was almost beside the point. As she scribbled on a piece of paper and looked in the mirror, she wasn't sure if it would work or not. But for one day, it did. That was enough. (Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Yanshan Zhang / Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle
