On Daniil Medvedev’s US Open mayhem, and Benjamin Bonzi’s bonkers—and deserved—win

NEW YORK—“It was a fun moment to live,” Daniil Medvedev said very early on Monday morning, after his five-set loss to Benjamin Bonzi at the US Open.

The “it” Medvedev was referring to was the near riot he had helped incite inside Louis Armstrong Stadium a couple hours earlier.

The scene played out like this:

Bonzi was serving at 5-4, 40-30 in the third set—match point. He had just missed his first serve. A photographer, trying to get to the photo pit in time to take a shot of the Frenchman’s victorious moment, mistakenly scurried onto the court instead. Chair umpire Greg Allensworth stopped play and gave Bonzi a first serve. Medvedev, who had been on emotional edge and looking for trouble all evening, finally had a reason to go bananas.

He ran toward Allensworth and waved his arms to get the fans to boo him. He screamed into a nearby camera. He stood and jawed with Allensworth as the jeers, boos, hisses and shrieks filled the arena—and never stopped. The delay lasted for 6 minutes. When it finally ended, a shaken Bonzi lost his match point, was broken, and eventually lost the set. All to the thunderous delight of the crowd.

It was fun moment for Medvedev to live, and, I’m guessing, a fun moment for most fans to watch. If you’re tennis lover of a certain age—like, over 50—this is the type of chaos that you remember from the famed bad-boy days of your sports-watching youth.

I can still feel the sense of hysteria that Ilie Nastase created in what came to be known as the Monday Night Massacre, a similarly unhinged evening-session performance with John McEnroe in 1979, also on Armstrong. Like Medvedev, Nastase incited the crowd to the point where play was impossible. As with everything in bonkers 1970s New York, though, the proceedings went a little farther than they did last night. Objects were thrown, security and police ended up at the net with Nastase and McEnroe, and umpire Frank Hammond was removed from the chair. Allensworth should consider himself lucky.

All of this might sound ugly and dumb in retrospect, but mayhem is part of the lore of the night session in New York. I’m sure many fans who attend those sessions now would love to be part of a scene like that. Medvedev had already done his part to add to that history in 2017, when he taunted the crowd and briefly turned himself into a villain on the same court. On Sunday, he was ready and waiting to do the same thing again, and the New York crowd was ready to follow wherever he led, for as long as he wanted. If you were there, you’ve got an “only in New York” story to tell the grandkids.

In that sense, Medvedev-Bonzi was the perfect way to kick off the Open. We might even thank the wayward—and possibly excommunicated—photographer for setting it all into motion. But as it was happening, there was also a sense that it was unfair to Bonzi. He had to stand and wait for six minutes as Medvedev went through his theatrics. He had to watch Allensworth do nothing to stop it. He lost that set, and the next one 6-0, and only recovered himself in the fifth.

Medvedev didn’t feel like he did anything wrong.

“I just expressed my emotions, my unhappiness with the decision, and then the crowd did what they did without me asking them too much, and it was fun to witness,” Medvedev said, conveniently forgetting that he egged the crowd on in the first place.

He even pinned some blame on Bonzi.

“At one moment I asked them to stop, but they didn’t,” Medvedev said. “I thought, OK, let’s try to control them to stop, but they didn’t want to stop…one time after three minutes [Bonzi] had a moment he could serve, and then one guy would whistle and he didn’t serve. His problem.”

Medvedev, who had been on emotional edge and looking for trouble all evening, finally had a reason to go bananas.

I agree with Medvedev that there wasn’t a need for a first serve there; the delay by the photographer was short. Ultimately, it’s Allensworth’s responsibility to get the situation under control, and maybe he should have started the serve clock and told Medvedev to start playing. But his job wasn’t easy, either; if he gives Medvedev a code violation at that point, does that just send everything to another level of chaos?

Fortunately, the story has a happy ending. Bonzi found his competitive fire again in the fifth, and even began to use the crowd for his own purposes—fans in New York like anyone who flaps their arms for them. His victory was deserved, and made for a surprisingly just and civilized conclusion, much more so than Nastase’s massacre.

“I never felt that way on the court, and I’m very proud, like, to fight like I did in the final set,” Bonzi said.

“It’s kind of crazy, this match. For me it’s like my best victory ever. It’s very special to do it here.”