The US Open is always at the forefront of making big changes to aid the tennis world. Take the example of the introduction of equal prize money for men and women at the 1973 US Open. While the other Grand Slam tournaments soon followed, it was the US Open that led by example after the likes of Billie Jean King and others strongly vouched for it. To date, the US Open continues to attract the attention of millions of fans worldwide and recently announced a major surprise for the likes of Carlos Alcaraz, Coco Gauff, and others.
Earlier today, the US Open announced the prize money purse for this year’s edition. It became the first tournament to have a prize money of a whopping $90 million. This is the largest prize money purse offered to the players, with the US Open hiking the purse from $75 million last year to $90 million this season, a 20% increase. On the other hand, Wimbledon offered $71 million in prize money, whereas the Australian Open and the French Open offered $63 million and $65.5 million, respectively.
2025 US Open prize money sets record for largest purse in tennis history.
More info : https://t.co/BINfnymUOs pic.twitter.com/85xr0MopzW
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) August 6, 2025
Further, this year’s men’s and women’s singles champions will make $5 million each, which is $1.4 million more than last year’s sum. The increase in prize money would also be translated to the players losing in the earlier rounds. Meanwhile, this increase comes at a time when the likes of Novak Djokovic and others have questioned the tennis bodies if they were paid enough in proportion to the profits generated by the tournaments.
Moreover, renowned coach Barry Fulcher also stated once, “It’s tough for a player at this level of the game to make any sort of money at all, and that is what we are trying to address with these events on the Progress Tour. We want to create more opportunities for players to genuinely make a profit because when you look at the prize money on offer at these entry-level rankings events, it is difficult to understand the economics.”
Thus, this increase will help even the players who lose in the first round itself to take home $110,000, which is a decent sum for a player down in the rankings to sustain on the tour. Nonetheless, the real effect of this increase in prize money purse will be for players like Coco Gauff and Carlos Alcaraz, who are expected to dig deep in the tournament. Ahead of the tournament, Gauff received a piece of advice from legendary coach Rick Macci on how to improve her weakness.
Serena Williams’ ex-coach assesses Coco Gauff’s weakness
Over the course of the season, Gauff’s defeats have been attributed to her biggest weakness on the court, her serve. The American sensation continues to commit double faults, which result in crucial loss of service games. In turn, it affects the match result, and Gauff has been unable to correct it so far. However, Macci has a trick in his sleeve on how Gauff can overcome this weakness.
He said, “To consult or help someone, obviously right off the bat, it would be Coco Gauff. I mean, there’s no doubt about it, I could flip the script with her second serve and forehand. No doubt about it, but it’d have to be done in the off-season. At the end of the day, they were gonna take off some time last year, year before, when there was a lot of time to do reconstructive surgery [on the serve], but you know, when you start winning a little bit, sometimes that speed bump or that technical flaw, can be kind of camouflaged.”
Meanwhile, Gauff is in the final of the women’s doubles competition at the National Bank Open. Partnering with McCartney Kessler, the duo will face Taylor Townsend and Zhang Shuai in the summit clash later today.
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