Might as well get it out of the way: Bill Ackman's tennis game is not humiliating in itself. If it's Ackman's humiliation you seek, might I direct you to: his hammy and conspiratorial screeds on Twitter; his use of antisemitism as a cheap cudgel against college administrators and students while somehow defending Elon Musk from the same charge; the time he unintentionally called attention to the shoddy scholarship of his own wife; and the way he groveled to Donald Trump, only to go lemon-booty once Trump's White House began a trade war that endangered his money. But the tennis is fine—pretty much what I'd expect if you told me that a fit 59-year-old had spent a decade getting really into tennis with a billionaire's resources. What's humiliating is that Ackman was allowed to display his game on a grass court at a sanctioned ATP Challenger event, which he did on Wednesday, losing his first-round doubles match, 6-1, 7-5.
How did we get here? The Hall of Fame Open takes place in Newport, R.I., on the grass courts at the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It is perhaps most noteworthy for being the only tour-level grass-court tournament held outside of Europe. It was an ATP 250 event from 2009 until 2025, when it was downgraded to a Challenger 125 event. Even with this diminished status, it is still an event that active touring professionals are seeking to compete at in order to win ATP points and prize money. It's not an event that random guys can just amble into. Entry is determined by existing ATP ranking points. Ackman, being a 59-year-old hedge fund manager, does not have any ATP ranking points. In a characteristically bloated Twitter essay, he explained how he made his way into the doubles draw:
I met @NickKyrgios on @X and he proposed we play an ATP tournament together. Unfortunately, Nick got injured so our doubles hopes have been delayed, but fortunately fate intervened.
@JackSock managed to get a wildcard into the @TennisHalloFame Hall of Fame Open in Newport Rhode Island, an @atptour Challenger and @WTA 125 event, and invited me to be his partner. I of course accepted.
[...]
I strongly encourage you to visit the Hall of Fame, attend the tournament, and come to cheer us on (or boo me, if that is your point of view). If we win, I am pretty sure I will be the oldest person in tennis history at 59 to win ATP points.
I am playing the best tennis of my life and Jack is one of the greatest doubles players ever (he won @Wimbledon and the @usopen, and a gold medal in the Olympics), and we start practice this Friday, so you never know.
Ackman's partner is not an active ATP player, either. An elite doubles player who also peaked at No. 8 in singles, Jack Sock retired in 2023 and promptly switched over to professional pickleball. At the end of his career, his conditioning was in visible disrepair, and he lost an official ATP match to a part-time tennis player with a day job in real estate. Sock unretired in order to pursue a wildcard at this week's tournament, and the tournament happily obliged, per Front Office Sports:
“As a former champion here in Newport, Olympic gold medalist, and three-time major champion in doubles, the Hall of Fame was happy to support Jack Sock’s wildcard request,” a spokesperson for the International Tennis Hall of Fame tells Front Office Sports. “Jack asked Bill Ackman to be his doubles partner, and the ATP approved the selection,” she added, highlighting that Sock is a fan favorite in Newport and that Ackman is a long-standing supporter of the Hall of Fame’s nonprofit mission.
In other words, he bought his way in. It's worth noting that a decade ago, well before Ackman gained a reputation for his exploits in execrable posting, I only knew him as a finance guy heavily into tennis. He invested in the early career of American standout and current world No. 12 Frances Tiafoe. "He’s done so much for me,” Tiafoe told Bloomberg in 2015. “[Ackman] gave me a chance to play around the world and not worry about any finances at all. You know, tennis is a very expensive sport, and my family is not wealthy enough to do that.” More recently, Ackman invested in Novak Djokovic's somewhat inert attempt at a player union. At some point, he figured out that you can dump a lot of money into tennis and be rewarded; just ask the Saudis.
Here, Ackman even managed to buy a place in a real professional contest. The result was the most embarrassing tennis I've seen in a match that awarded ATP points. Even without Ackman, the match had the potential to become a clown show, because it involved Bernard Tomic, a talented, once-promising figure of Australian tennis who spent much of his career openly tanking matches and seeking attention in vaguely pathetic ways. So you've got a low-grade provocateur, a retired guy who plays pickleball, and a 59-year-old hedge funder all on court together. The fourth player was Omar Jasika, whose biggest career headlines had to do with a two-year ban for cocaine in 2018.
The opposing team spent the bulk of the match degrading themselves by tapping sycophantic baby shots to Ackman, allowing him to partake in pointless rallies. It's as if they were all trying to get on his payroll. The ATP has a provision in its rulebook requiring that players make their "best efforts." If anyone tried to enforce that here, three of the four players on this court would be doomed.
Ackman can afford to take three tennis pros—and three better tennis pros than these—out to the court for the practice session of his dreams. But this tournament degraded itself and the sport in general by allowing an official doubles match to be commandeered into an exhibition match, all in service of some rich dope who sees the real world as his to manipulate. Recently he's tried to rejigger the New York City mayoral race, calling on Andrew Cuomo to drop out of the race to maximize Eric Adams's chances, even though voters overwhelmingly picked Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee. Ackman has gotten behind Adams so enthusiastically that he was even allowed to hand-pick his campaign manager. These two feel spiritually suited for one another. The Challenger tour, which is supposed to be a pathway for professional tennis players to make their way onto the main tour and earn a living, has become yet another desperate playground for Ackman.
After the match, Ackman described his first experience with "stage fright," in another Twitter essay no one asked for. "Throughout the match, my wrist, arm and body literally froze with the expected negative outcomes. I had difficulty breathing, and it was not a fitness issue. It got a bit better as the match progressed, but I was not able to overcome it," he wrote, about a match where the other three participants were struggling to play just badly enough to include him in the fun. "Whatever respect we already have for these incredible athletes, it is not enough." The highest form of respect, of course, is making a mockery of their workplace.
