This wasn’t an accident. It was foreseeable from the moment his attendance was confirmed. Everyone knows that a sitting president doesn’t quietly slip into a major sporting event. The motorcades, the magnetometers, the Secret Service protocols, the re-routing of pedestrian and vehicle traffic—these aren’t surprises. They are the cost of admission. The United States Tennis Association, which runs the Open, knew that. It should have either said no to Trump’s presence or built out a plan that protected the fan experience. Instead, it did neither.

The result was chaos. Fans who had paid hundreds, in many cases thousands, of dollars to be part of the final ended up stuck outside the gates. Inside, cameras showed row after row of empty seats as Sinner and Alcaraz started their match. Outside, people fumed, checking their watches, knowing that the sport’s crown-jewel moment was slipping away while they shuffled forward at a snail’s pace. For those who eventually made it in, the damage was already done. You don’t get a second chance to see the first two sets of a Grand Slam final.The USTA now faces a simple choice. It can pretend this was all out of its hands and hope the news cycle moves on, or it can take responsibility and refund anyone who asks. The latter option is the only fair path. Every fan who requests their money back should receive a refund equal to the face value of their ticket, no matter where they bought it. Whether someone paid through the official box office, on StubHub, or from a reseller on the street corner, the original issuer was the USTA. The failure was the USTA’s. They invited the disruption. They failed to plan for the inevitable consequences. They are the ones who must make fans whole.