The world’s best tennis players are outfitted by Nike, including Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, who have combined to win the last seven men’s singles Grand Slams, and women’s world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka. But watching the matches at this year’s U.S. Open, chances are, you saw a lot less of the swoosh than you would have a few years ago.
In 2022, 21 of the 64 seeded singles players (top 32 in either men’s or women’s) were sponsored by Nike, but this year only 11 out of 64 sported the brand.
Adidas has actually surpassed Nike, sponsoring 15 seeded players. The German apparel company also had 36 total players in the draws to Nike’s 35, a massive shift from Nike leading 48 to 28 just three years ago.
The narrative is even more dramatic when looking at young prospects—specifically, top 50-ranked players under 25 years old. At the 2022 U.S. Open, 16 such players wore Nike and only three wore Adidas. Three years later, both brands sponsored exactly eight players who fit the criteria of a potential budding star.
In addition to outfitting more athletes, Adidas also debuted a new collection from its Y-3 luxury brand: an experimental, minimalist collaboration with Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. The “Y” stands for the designer’s name and the “3” is for the three slanted stripes in the Adidas logo. The Y-3 brand has been around since 2003, but the 2025 U.S. Open generated renewed interest, with Google search traffic for “Y3” or “Y-3” hitting its highest days in the United States in more than 10 years.
A few players have moved directly from Nike to Adidas this decade, including former No. 3-ranked Elina Svitolina, who changed in 2023, and 2025 U.S. Open quarterfinalist Felix Auger-Aliassime, who made the transition in 2021.
The bigger shift of former Nike athletes, however, has been toward brands that haven’t typically boasted robust lineups of tennis players. In fact, a pair of top men’s stars did just that this calendar year—2024 U.S. Open semifinalists Jack Draper and Frances Tiafoe.
Athleisure brand Vuori took a dive into pro sports this summer by signing Draper, whose Nike contract was expiring, for a deal reported to be worth around $5 million annually. “I have always been someone who has wanted to do a bit of something different anyway,” Draper said in a press conference. “I’m very blown away and grateful for the fact that they want me as a kind of like the face of the brand at the moment.”
Tiafoe—who signed with Lululemon back in January, becoming the brand’s biggest tennis star—echoed the sentiment of wanting to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a medium-sized fish in a big pond.
“There are a couple decent guys, a couple decent athletes, that are over at Nike,” Tiafoe said jokingly in a press conference, referring to Sinner and Alcaraz. “Why not be the guy instead of one of them?”
The 27-year-old American, who earned $11 million off the court last year (fourth-most among men’s tennis players), all but confirmed that Nike wasn’t committed to shelling out the same kind of money for him that other companies were. “I wanted to go to the market to see what the market was like,” Tiafoe said. “There’s a lot of interest for me in the market, and more than Nike did.”
Other players who have left Nike include 2024 Wimbledon semifinalist Lorenzo Musetti, who began wearing Asics this season; 2024 U.S. Open finalist Taylor Fritz, who signed with luxury clothing and accessory company Hugo Boss six months before his big run; and former No. 5-ranked Russian Andrey Rublev, who debuted his own original clothing line Rublo two years ago.
The trend is reminiscent of what happened in basketball during the 2010s, when Stephen Curry, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard left Nike to pursue deals with Under Armour, Adidas and New Balance, respectively. Football has seen similar cases too—2024 NFL MVP Josh Allen just started wearing New Balance cleats instead of the swoosh.
The difference in tennis is the variety of new brands that entered the mix. Back in 2019, seeded players at the U.S. Open were outfitted by 13 different brands. By 2022, that number had risen to 20, and this year it’s up to 22.
“More companies are getting into tennis,” Fritz said. “Every brand wants to do a tennis line, even brands that don’t necessarily sponsor tennis players. It’s just kind of become a popular thing, athleisure and sporty clothes in general.”
On, initially known for its running shoes, is one of those companies that has pivoted hard into tennis in the past few years, signing former No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek, No. 6-ranked Ben Shelton and hyped Brazilian teenager Joao Fonseca.
“The way they treat us and the whole relationship, how they make [the apparel] with the player, it’s pretty amazing,” Swiatek, who was with Nike until 2020, said. “It’s something different, and I never experienced that with other brands.”
Amidst the rise in alternative options for tennis players to be face of a brand, Nike seems more focused on quality of its roster rather than quantity. “A lot of the top tennis brands are starting to really zero in on a couple of people they want, and that’s kind of it,” Fritz said.
That may be true of Nike, but not Adidas, which has retained nearly all of its elite tennis talent. Elena Rybakina, a former Adidas athlete, struck a new deal with Yonex shortly after winning Wimbledon in 2022, but the rest have stayed loyal. The company’s top tier doesn’t come close to matching Nike’s, but its lineup still includes Grand Slam finalists Alexander Zverev, Jessica Pegula, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Karolina Muchova, as well as 2017 French Open winner Jelena Ostapenko.
“Adidas always does a good job of trying to do something different every single year, especially at the Open, because it’s New York, and I think it’s more fun to try things and be bold,” Pegula said. “Being able to wear the Y-3 was really cool.”
Loads of young up-and-comers, particularly Americans, donned Y-3 in Flushing last week—17-year-old Iva Jovic, 21-year-old Ashlyn Krueger, 19-year-old Learner Tien and 21-year-old Alex Michelsen, all of whom but Jovic have already cracked the top 50.
Nike can clearly call itself the winner of the U.S. Open apparel wars, however, if the highly anticipated Sinner-Alcaraz showdown ends up happening in the men’s finals for the third straight Grand Slam. If it does, though, it will look a lot different than the last time the two played at the U.S. Open back in 2022, when they wore nearly identical orange and blue Nike outfits.
“You can see the push [to care more about apparel], and now brands are having more than just one kit for their roster of athletes,” 2023 U.S Open champion Coco Gauff said. “When I was going to the U.S. Open [as a kid], it was kind of looking like a cheerleading squad, everybody in one kit… I don’t recall my parents or anyone really caring what they were wearing.”
People certainly care now about apparel.
“It just brings more fans to the sport,” Gauff said. “We obviously have our core of tennis fans, but I think fashion helps bring just casual fans to the sport, a new demographic.”
