By Tracy Zwick
17-year-old Upper West Sider Wyatt Bounds is in his fourth year as a member of the ball crew at the U.S. Open. He’s still there this championship weekend. That means he’s outlasted some of the world’s top singles players, all but four of whom have been sent home.
While the players often walk onto the tournament’s biggest courts in a spotlight with music thumping and an announcer ticking off their accomplishments, Bounds and his co-workers quietly dash onto the court in formation. They scramble to get everything in place before the light show begins, and then, ideally, become invisible.
Wyatt’s not the first of the three tennis-loving Bounds boys to work at the Open. His older brother, Griffin, spent three years on the ball crew. Younger brother Sawyer is planning to apply as soon as he turns 14, the minimum age for a tryout.
Griffin wasn’t always invisible. He was briefly internet-famous a few years ago when he caught a serve one-handed and it went viral. “Maybe that’ll be me this year,” Wyatt said. “I hope so.”
Virality hasn’t happened yet. But Bounds has shared the court with some of the sport’s elite athletes, including Novak Djokovic and Madison Keys. This year, he was invited to lead the ball crew at a special event during Fan Week that was held at the Waldorf Astoria. The ballroom was transformed into a tennis court, where American Ben Shelton, Greece’s Maria Sakkari, Canadian Leylah Fernandez and other top-ranked pros played an exhibition, with Andy Roddick serving as emcee.
The job of the crew is to manage the tennis balls, provide shade and water to players, and ensure the smooth operation of the match. “Players first, no matter what,” Wyatt said. That’s the catechism.
While ball crew members are instructed not to interact with players during their shifts on court unless the interaction is initiated by the players, Bounds clearly had some favorite experiences. “All the Americans are amazing to work for,” he said; “that’s well-known among the crews.”
One of Bounds’s favorite memories is of Tommy Paul, the American star who lost last weekend to defending champ Carlos Alcaraz. “I was giving him balls in Louis Armstrong Stadium,” Bounds explained. “Typically, players hit the balls they aren’t gonna use to the side, and you have to run a little to get ‘em. But Tommy pops them up right to you. I didn’t have to move at all.” It may not seem like much, but to the crew, “that’s an amazing gesture,” Wyatt said.
Bounds recalled some challenging experiences too. He described a match where Russian-born Yulia Putintsiva was playing popular Italian Jasmine Paolini, who “was great,” Bounds noted. But when he fed balls to Putintsiva, she “let them roll by, or smacked them into the curtain [at the back of the court], where it was a little scary.”
Danish No. 1 Holger Rune also gave Bounds a bit of a scare. He recalled a time when Rune “smacked a ball into the curtain just a few feet from me. That was more frightening because it had a lotta power on it,” Wyatt recounted.
The Bounds boys will tell you, though, that the job’s rewards make it a big net win. They get “the best seats in the house” – standing directly behind the players or under the chair umpire. Perks also include a pile of Ralph Lauren swag, from shirts and shorts to backpacks, shoes, caps and water bottles. There’s also tremendous camaraderie, the result of hours spent together on court and hours spent watching matches together during off hours.
“We’re supposed to be background characters,” Wyatt explained, but he also noted that unlike many other seasonal workers at the Open, their work was visible. Visitors and television viewers “see the six ball crew members on the court,” he said, “but there are lots of other people working,” including officials, supervisors, medical personnel, security and more.
It takes a large village to keep one of the world’s biggest sporting events running. That was, in part, what appealed to Bounds. “I wanted to be part of the behind-the-scenes operation,” he said. And so, for four summers, he’s been part of that crew, making the stars shine by disappearing into the background.
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