Tennis: Reilly Opelka fined at US Open for showing art gallery bag

Young U.S. tennis player Reilly Opelka, class of 1997, was fined at the U.S. Open, the fourth grand slam tournament, for carrying onto the court ... a bag from a well-known Antwerp art gallery, the Tim Van Laere Gallery. Opelka, known because at 2.11 meters he is the tallest tennis player in history along with Croatian Ivo Karlović, was fined ten thousand dollars at the end of his first-round match won against Korea’s Kwon Soon-woo (for the record, Opelka then beat in the later rounds our own Lorenzo Musetti and Georgian Nikoloz Basilašvili, all in three sets, before stopping in front of South African Lloyd Harris) because the gallery logo was not the size allowed by regulations. A hefty fine, of an amount similar to the penalties athletes who are guilty of misconduct or intemperate behavior receive.

Opelka, who after the U.S. Open will become No. 19 in the ATP rankings (his best ranking as well as the first U.S. tennis player), has a strong passion for art, and the Van Laere gallery is one of his main points of reference: a large part of his collection was built up precisely through purchases from the Belgian dealer. Apparently, among his favorite artists is the German Friedrich Kunath, known for his hyperrealistic works. It was a passion that led Opelka and Tim Van Laere to agree on a partnership, which made the American athlete the only tennis player on the circuit to be sponsored by a contemporary art gallery.

Hence the reason for the pink bag with the gallery’s logo on one side and the words “TVLG ART x TENNIS” on the other. This is not the first time Opelka has displayed the insignia of Tim Van Laere Gallery: the first time was at the Rome Internationals in May, when with a post on Instagram the tennis player had announced the agreement with the gallery. “It is the home of many of my favorite artists,” Opelka wrote, “and it is where my passion for art really began.”

At any rate, Opelka on first did not take the matter of the fine well. “US Open ticket sales must have gone bad this year,” the tennis player tweeted. “$10,000 for a pink bag seems like money thrown away.” The regulations of the USTA, the U.S. Tennis Federation, actually speak quite clearly about the sizes that commercial logos can be, and the one on Opelka’s shopper was not within the limits set by the regulations. As a joke, the next day Opelka showed up on the court again with another pink bag, this time without logos, but with “Unapproved” written on it in marker. And moreover, already there are fans tweeting photos of Tim Van Laere’s pink handbag asking Opelka to write “unapproved” on their shopper as well. Who knows, maybe it will become a cult object: at the next contemporary art fairs it will probably sell like hotcakes....

Tennis: Reilly Opelka fined at US Open for showing art gallery bag

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