It has long been the position of those on the Right to have sports regarded as a respite from political and social issues. It has always been the position on the Left to have athletes, coaches, and franchises used as conduits for activism and social change. And when it comes to the press, they have been insistent on amplifying those activist desires on the playing field.
The New York Times has sent a stringer out to Melbourne, Australia, to go beyond promoting activism in athletics; they are now insisting upon it. Currently, the Australian Open is underway, and there has been a noticeable trend emerging in the post-match media gatherings. Routinely, the American players - both men's and women's - have been facing questions about how they “feel” about playing under the U.S flag, and what their impressions are about playing as Americans.
These queries are not emerging from the press pool randomly. They have been delivered each time by the same reactionary journalist. Owen Lewis is a Canadian sports reporter, covering this tournament for The Athletic, the dedicated sports portal for The New York Times, and he has been a persistent pest in these pressers. He seems not at all interested in the sport or the match results, and is instead rather insistent that the U.S. players answer for the controversies taking place across the ocean in their homeland.
He asked of Amanda Anisimova, “I’ve been asking a lot of the American players how it feels to play under the American flag right now. I’m curious how you feel.” She politely talked about her pride in the team and how everyone was performing, but Lewis was not content with decency. “Just to clarify a little,” he persisted, “sort of in the context of the last year of everything that’s been happening in the US, does that complicate that feeling at all?”
Amanda then calmly closed the door on his desperate attempt. “I don’t think that’s relevant.”
Jessica Pegula was also in Owen’s firing line, as he led with “The US is a year into the second Trump admin, and a lot of people are suffering,” and then he moved to her home state, asking “When you've been in Florida, have you noticed a kind of shift in the mood at all?” Pegula gave him a meandering and wholly indirect line of answers, pretty much attempting to run out the clock while coming from a sport without a defined time limit.
Next up was Ethan Quinn, and he was not having any of it. “A lot’s happened in the last year,” Lewis began, “there’s a lot of tension there right now, so I’m wondering how you feel about all of that and how it feels to play under that flag right now.” With a perturbed expression, Quinn cooly answered, “Umm, no comment on that.”
Best of the lot was Taylor Fritz. His display and body language in absorbing the insipid line of questioning said plenty. Lewis peppered him with his now-rote badgering, asking about the past year back home and how he “feels about all that.” Fritz could see the trap being set up well ahead of time and refused to even engage.
A liberal reporter at the Australian Open keeps baiting American tennis players to bash Trump, conservatives, & ICE…
— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) January 22, 2026
Taylor Fritz was visibly irritated with the questioning saying, “Whatever I say will be put into a headline & taken out of context”
pic.twitter.com/lxoK6us921
One player who did rise to Lewis’ bait was Coco Gauff, and she would have been wise to follow the lead of her compatriots. Gauff saw fit to expound on how difficult it is to be a black person in America.
“I hope forward that we can have a lot more peace in our country and more kindness in the way we speak to each other about different topics & things like that," she said. "Obviously I’ve been pretty vocal about how I felt. At this point, I feel a bit fatigued talking about it just because of the fact that it is hard being a black woman in this country and having to experience things, even online, and seeing marginalized communities being affected.. and knowing that I can only donate and speak out."
Gauff has a net worth of tens of millions of dollars, travels the globe, and has a platform that the vast majority of the country does not possess. But her life in America is “hard.”
Frankly, Owen Lewis is doing no favor for his outlet at all. It was a few years ago when the Times moved all of its sports coverage to The Athletic. If this is the approach to sports that it wants to take, it will do little to draw people to its subscription-only portal.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about President Trump, his administration, and conservatives.
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