The US Open, like the city it calls home, is a bustling, raucous and fast-paced environment that awakens, enhances, and sometimes even overwhelms, the senses. But imagine what it would be like to experience America's Grand Slam, or even play in it, if one of those five keys tools was taken away from you.
On Tuesday of US Open Fan Week, attendees who wandered into the American Express Fan Experience got to experience that firsthand at the tournament's "Come and Try BVI" event: a hands-on demonstration of blind and visually-impaired tennis. This branch of adaptive tennis, abbreviated BVI, has existed globally since the 1980s, and more than 30 countries host tournaments. But it has been taking root in the U.S. only recently, thanks to the fledgling United States Blind Tennis Association (USBTA), which was founded in 2022.
The organization's beginnings, in fact, don't hail that far from the Open's New York City home: Pennsylvania mom Dana Costa, whose daughter Domiana is visually impaired, was integral to both its founding and that of many grassroots BVI tennis organizations around the country. In addition to a group in Pittsburgh, where the family lives, there are similar ones in other cities like Cincinnati, Philadelphia and Nashville, and recently expanded as far west as California.
Costa, on hand for the event, described the opportunity to "have the US Open as a stage to demonstrate what blind and visually impaired tennis is" as "extremely exciting," and "instrumental to the growth of the sport."
The sport is categorized into four levels: B1 through B4 and B5. Players in a B1 sight classification have no sight, and are allowed up to three bounces before hitting the ball. The game is played either on a badminton court, or within the service boxes of a regulation tennis court. A specially-adapted sponge ball, that has a noise-making device like bells inside of it, is used, as are smaller-sized tennis racquets. Fans, many of whom were children and teens, who entered the US Open's indoor space strapped on a pair of specially-designed goggles that aligned with those sight classifications and, after a brief tutorial of what to expect, jumped on to court.
Native New Yorker Carly Cooper, who estimated she's played tennis for more than 30 years, ranked the experience of playing BVI tennis as one of the toughest on-court challenges she ever tried. Her 9-year-old son also tried it out.
"It changes your perceptions for sure," Cooper said. "You just have to focus so much more on the sound. It just feels like you're laser-focused on what's happening that there's no room for anything else. It's hard to explain, but it was very cool to experience."
As participants traded groundstrokes and underhand serves with each other, they were also joined by Maureen Esposito, who was a bronze medalist in goalball (a team sport designed specifically for athletes with vision impairments where teams of three try to throw a ball into the net) at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics. Esposito has played tennis for about a year after being introduced to it, in what she says was a full-circle moment, by one of her Atlanta teammates: Margaret Ostrowski, who has been involved with both Costa's Pittsburgh group and the USBTA.
Esposito left Paralympic-level sport after that third and final Games to have children, but BVI tennis has afforded her a fresh chance to live a healthy lifestyle through sports, she says.
"Tennis is a lifelong sport, so I always wanted to play tennis, but my eyesight was too poor," Esposito, whose vision is in the B3 class, said. "So now coming into it as an adult, an older adult, I'm just thrilled to be able to play. I don't want to get off the court. I want to stay on. I'm loving every minute of it."
Even those who didn't get on court themselves were enthralled by the demonstration. Carl Broadnax, a veteran tennis coach at Norwalk Grassroots Tennis and Education in South Norwalk, Conn. as well as a physical education teacher, brought 10 of his pupils to the US Open for the second day of US Open Fan Week, and found himself fascinated by something he admitted he had never before come across.
"I look at [this event] as an opportunity for kids to become more empathetic to people who have disabilities, that they're capable of showing their abilities," he said. "Having an experience that they're not used to, putting them in an uncomfortable position that is safe, I like that. It gives teachers and coaches as well as students an opportunity to learn from others. I absolutely love that. Exploring this here at the Open, I think it's amazing."
