U.S. Open Players Invent Match Points for ESPN RedZone

Ahead of ESPN’s scheduled 11 a.m. ET debut of RedZone at the U.S. Open, players assigned to outer courts prepared red BROADCAST MATCH POINT cards for rallies they believed should be televised before becoming important. The cards would sit beside the official scoreboards without altering the tennis score. They certified only that the current point could, through a sufficiently committed sequence of later points, contribute to a match eventually ending.

The first cards were reserved for break points and set points. During a rules briefing, a player at 1–1 argued that losing the next point would make the following game more urgent, expanding the standard to any rally with a credible route to future distress. By the end of the briefing, every point qualified. Ball kids were instructed to raise a card only when the roaming feed was facing another court.

The tournament referee confiscated the cards on the ground that tennis already had authorized names for important points. The ban moved urgency from paper into bodies. Players replaced the cards with a two-arm warning signal performed before ordinary serves, ensuring that any camera arriving late would encounter either an emergency or a medical-looking tableau.

Officials attempted to restore order by restricting the signal to genuine match points. They also introduced a Camera Hold, pausing the serve clock whenever a player at match point was waiting for RedZone. The rule was intended to prevent television movement from deciding a match through a time violation.

In the routing simulation, all 16 active courts eventually reached a genuine match point and stopped there. When producers requested a priority list, officials adopted an Equal Match Point Rule: RedZone could enter one held court only if every other held court received the same opening shot and uninterrupted attention. A single feed could not satisfy the requirement, making every active court temporarily ineligible for coverage.

The resulting RedZone Continuity Plan identifies one safe destination: an empty practice court with no players, score, umpire or unfinished point. Because nothing there can conclude off-screen, it is scheduled to receive the day’s first uninterrupted coverage. The routing note contains one instruction: cut away if tennis starts.