Dave Portnoy and Aryna Sabalenka are continuing to form the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Sabalenka had invited Portnoy to sit in her coach’s box for her U.S. Open finals match against Coco Gauff last month, but the Barstool Sports founder had a prior commitment and could not be in two places at once.
Nevertheless, the two met up at an undisclosed location in Miami on Friday night.
Portnoy posted a photo on X of the two of them together, with the caption, “The Queen of Tennis @SabalenkaA.”
Portnoy’s captivation with Sabalenka began in the early rounds of the U.S. Open.
He would later make a probably significant wager on Sabalenka’s semifinals match against Madison Keys, manically live tweeting and vlogging the match that saw Keys win the first set 6-0 before Sabalenka roared back for the victory, winning tiebreakers in both the second and third sets.
After the match, Portnoy released a video on X, at 1 a.m. ET, in which he was out of breath from the adrenaline of having watched the comeback, saying, “That’s my girl,” and calling his winning wager “the biggest war I’ve ever been in.”
“I love her. I’m Sabalenka for life,” Portnoy said, still struggling to breathe, and said he didn’t know if he could ever bet on tennis again.
Portnoy woke up the next morning to a note in his direct-message inbox from Sabalenka inviting him to watch her finals match against Gauff, but he was already scheduled to be in Tuscaloosa for Barstool’s live college football streaming show before Alabama faced Texas.
He wrote a blog about how he would have relished the opportunity to fulfill the invitation.
“Imagine that? Me constantly on National TV rooting against Coco Gauff in the U.S. 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.”
While Sabalenka won the first set, 6-2, Gauff ultimately came back to claim the U.S. Open crown.
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