Dave Portnoy has become enraptured with Belarusian tennis star Aryna Sabalenka’s game and quickly morphed into her biggest cheerleader.
The Barstool founder had front-row seats on the baseline for a Sabalenka match this past Monday and has been brashly and publicly betting on her ever since.
The attention did not go unrequited, as Sabalenka direct-messaged Portnoy and invited him to sit in her coach’s box for the U.S. Open finals against Coco Gauff on Saturday, the Barstool founder revealed Friday morning.
“Imagine that? Me constantly on National TV rooting against Coco Gauff in the US Open Finals? Me against the entire stadium and country? Me rooting for a Belarus tennis player vs. an American? The internet would have exploded. ‘There goes racist Dave again! Of course, he’d root against a Black woman in the finals!’” Portnoy wrote.
“Wallo and Gillie [hosts of Barstool’s ‘Million Dollaz Worth of Game’ podcast] would have had to do a redemption tour across the country apologizing for being my friend. The hit pieces would have been through the roof. It would have been chaos and I would have lived for every second of it.”
The hypothetical will only exist in our imaginations, as Portnoy has a prior engagement — hosting Barstool’s college football show in Tuscaloosa on Saturday before Alabama hosts Texas.
He made a plea for the U.S. Open to move its final from Saturday afternoon to prime time, a request that will almost certainly fall on deaf ears.
The U.S. Open will again be head-to-head with college football and the NFL this weekend, with the women’s final between Sabalenka and Gauff set to take place at 4 p.m. Eastern on Saturday.
The men’s final, featuring Novak Djokovic and the winner of Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev, will be on Sunday at 4 p.m.
Portnoy bet what was presumably a not-insignificant sum of money on Sabalenka to win her semifinal match against Madison Keys, and was crestfallen to see Keys take the first set 6-0.
Nevertheless, after Sabalenka stormed back, erasing a 5-3 deficit in the second set and winning it in a tiebreaker, and also taking the third set in a 10-point tiebreak, Portnoy released a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, at 1:00 a.m. ET.
Sweaty, disheveled and out of breath, Portnoy almost seemed like he was the one who underwent the physical and emotional exertion of coming back in the match.
He vowed that this was the last time he’d ever bet on tennis, a promise that he reneged on with a statement that he would indeed be betting on Sabalenka to beat Gauff.
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