Cincinnati Open fans were recording messages to their favorite players. Then, the tournament organized surprise visits from the game’s biggest stars.
MASON, OH − No one would ever mistake Carlos Alcaraz, the constantly smiling, 22-year-old ATP phenom, for the Grinch.
But it’s fair to speculate that Alcaraz’s heart may have grown three sizes Aug. 11.
Alcaraz entered a Center Court suite and was met by a few ATP media members. One handed him a phone, an earpiece and told him to press play.
Alcaraz beamed as he saw the finished product of the video he was in Aug. 6 at the Cincinnati Open.
Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek, four of the top players in tennis, made a special surprise visit to fans, who believed they were filming messages to their favorite players ahead of the tournament.
The video, posted to X, has been viewed nearly one million times since it was posted the morning of Aug. 11.
“I love it,” Alcaraz said. “You see the pure side from the people who really love tennis, who really care about tennis and, in some way, how tennis has touched them.”
Sabalenka sat on a sectional couch in the players’ terrace to watch the video just minutes after winning a three-hour match on Center Court to reach the Round of 32.
“It was priceless. It was what really inspired me,” Sabalenka said. “I want to do it more and more.”
Cincinnati Open surprised fans with visit from the top stars in tennis
As one can imagine, getting four of the top-ranked tennis players in the world on the same schedule for video content is not a walk in the park.
Maggie Brown, the Cincinnati Open marketing and community relations manager, began planning the video a few months ago.
A big part of the Cincinnati Open’s $260 million renovations was to make the venue more intimate for fans. More practice courts were added, as was seating around them, to give fans an up-close view of their favorite players. This took it up a level.
“We came up with this idea to surprise and delight fans and get them closer than they’ve ever been to the world’s best players,” Brown said. “When we were planning on what we wanted our players to do, it was our highest priority that we saw the potential in this project and we pushed to make it happen.
“Everything came together just in time.”
Before the magic could be made, there was the strenuous task of finding the right fans for a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
An ATP media member sat in the Cincinnati food courts for hours during the early days of the tournament, when qualifiers are trying to play their way into the main draw and the game’s top players are warming up in front of crowded practice courts.
“Just watching people interact and observing who the biggest fans were,” Brown said of the selection process. “They would go up and ask, ‘Who is your favorite player? How big of a tennis fan are you?’ They hand-picked some of the biggest tennis fans, who would be the most excited. That really comes through in the content.”
The finishing touch was figuring out how to smuggle a few of the most recognizable faces at the tournament into the tent for the video.
The plan was to dress each player up in construction gear to get them into the tent unnoticed.
It worked like a charm, and the rest was history.
“The final product, it blew us all away. I think everyone on our team had tears,” Brown said. “Working here at this tournament can get crazy, but you see something like that and it’s like, this is why we do what we do. We’re here to make memories.”