The US Open! This tournament, supposed to be the pinnacle of sport, the embodiment of merit, sweat, self-sacrifice, those hours of solitude on the court and training, that merciless discipline that makes an athlete a champion. And what are we being sold in endless glossy columns and sponsored Instagram posts? Certainly not the sporting achievement, but the pathetic parade of a “court of mirages”: Botoxed stars, supermarket bimbos, silicone clones, and interchangeable influencers whose only contribution to humanity is a plastic smile and a promo code for a pair of sneakers mass-produced by children.
The contrast is obscene. On one side, players who transform their bodies into precision instruments, who pay for each victory with blood and tears. On the other, a gallery of idle, thoughtless, worthless extras who make their navels an idol of cosmetic surgery, their only asceticism.
Sport is diverted from its essence to become the backdrop for a walking advertisement for emptiness, a podium offered to these new aristocrats of nothingness. They produce nothing, create nothing, inspire nothing, except an abysmal fatigue in the face of the degradation of the sporting spectacle.