Generally it sits alone on a desk on the U.S. Open or within the grip of a thirsty tennis fan. Typically it’s stacked, possibly in a pair, possibly in a precariously balanced tower.
In every single place you look is the acquainted clear cup of the Honey Deuce.
For some time, columns of Honey Deuce cups had been all that Christine Dinisi noticed when she opened her cabinet whereas on the lookout for a water glass. “For a very long time, till a few yr or two years in the past, they had been my solely cups in my condo,” mentioned Dinisi, 34, who estimated she had about 20 in her kitchen at one level.
The Honey Deuce, product of Gray Goose vodka, raspberry liqueur and lemonade, and garnished with honeydew melon within the form of tennis balls, has been the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open since 2006. The drink is a draw all by itself, however the arduous plastic cup, with the present yr and names of earlier U.S. Open winners printed on it, is a sought-after memento, serving to some followers justify the cocktail’s $22 worth.
Dinisi, a advertising providers supervisor for a New York structure and engineering agency, has been amassing the cups for years. She mentioned the Honey Deuce was a motivating issue for her journeys to Flushing Meadows Corona Park. “It might be one of many causes to go to the U.S. Open,” she mentioned.
Final yr, greater than 405,000 of the cocktails had been bought on the Open. On the center weekend of the event, some stands ran out of the collectible cups, as a substitute delivering the Honey Deuce in a generic cup for the lowered worth of $20.
On Monday, Trudy Potter, Susie McMullan and Debbie Morrison, all of Ridgefield, Conn., had been leaving the Grandstand with eight cups stacked amongst them.
“We come right here for this,” Potter mentioned of the cups. “My children love them,” McMullan mentioned.
The buddies get pleasure from amassing the cups as mementos of their visits to the U.S. Open, with the itemizing of the victors’ names providing a file of the event over time. “The years go by, and we keep in mind the winners,” Potter mentioned.
However there’s a key, Morrison mentioned, to conserving the cups in good situation yr after yr: “Hand-wash them,” she mentioned. In any other case, the cups might crack and fade.
Dinisi has needed to jettison a good variety of cracked cups through the years. However she likes that the cup seems to be extra like a water glass than a typical stadium memento, and its arduous plastic construction makes it sturdier than most.
That was by design. Aleco Azqueta, the vp for advertising at Gray Goose North America, mentioned the acrylic cup was constructed in order that bartenders may pour and serve the drinks as rapidly as doable, and in order that they might be protected for followers to hold round in a stadium.
“For a lot of followers, the cups are central to their whole U.S. Open expertise,” Azqueta wrote in an electronic mail. “The event is a classy affair, and it typically feels just like the Honey Deuce is handled as a trend accent.”
Whether or not it’s making an elegant assertion on the seen-and-be-seen occasion that marks the unofficial finish of summer time or merely doing its job as a receptacle for a candy, signature drink, the cup is ubiquitous at New York’s Grand Slam event.
For her half, Dinisi depends much less on the Honey Deuce cup now than she as soon as did — “I lastly broke down and acquired some actual, precise water glasses,” she mentioned — however she’ll nonetheless take house one or two this yr. It wouldn’t be the Open with out them.