Kravis, Lutnick, Paulson Cheer as Nadal Wins 19th Grand Slam

(Bloomberg) -- Henry Kravis punched the air with his fists when Rafael Nadal both broke and held serve in the decisive fifth set of the U.S. Open Men’s Final.

Kravis was watching just steps from the court with KKR colleagues Joe Bae, Pete Stavros and Tagar Olson as Nadal defeated Daniil Medvedev Sunday in an epic 5-hour match to win his 19th Grand Slam. Also sitting court side, in arguably the best seats in Arthur Ashe stadium, were Bill Ackman, Ralph Lauren and Howard Lutnick.

Read more: Nadal moves within one of Federer on all-time slams list

Lutnick was in a suite with Carl Icahn and Eminence Capital’s Ricky Sandler on Friday night, and with his sons on Sunday. Wearing a charcoal gray hoodie and jeans, Lutnick shared his first memories of the U.S. Open, when the tournament was still held at Forest Hills before moving to Flushing Meadows in 1978.

“We didn’t really have money for tickets, so me and my little brother would wait outside,” he recalled. “I knew all the names of all the players so in the early rounds, I would find players who were way down in the list and we’d go running up to them and get their autograph."

“They’d ask ‘Are you going to come in and root for us?’ and we’d say ‘Sorry, we don’t have any tickets.’ So they’d say ‘Hold on,’ go inside, come back and give us a couple,” said Lutnick, who recalled watching such past champions as John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg and his friend, Dick Stockton.

Sitting ahead of the KKR contingent in the front row was hedge fund manager John Paulson and behind him, Michael Tennenbaum, the former Bear Stearns executive who authored a book titled “Risk: Living on the Edge.”

Like Lutnick, Tennenbaum experienced his first US Open at Forest Hills. “You’d see the tennis champs going back on the subway, like Roscoe Tanner,” said Tennenbaum, dressed in a navy t-shirt, colorful striped pants and bold red shoes to match his eye-glasses.

Nadal was presented his $3.85 million prize money check by Jennifer Piepszak, JPMorgan’s CFO.

The usual contingent of Hollywood actors were also sprinkled throughout the crowd, including Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta Jones and Mariska Hargitay.

Financiers including Stephen Schwarzman and Kip DeVeer, as well as the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, showed up for Saturday’s women’s final. It was won by 19-year-old Bianca Andreescu, who upset crowd favorite Serena Williams 6-3, 7-5 to become the first Canadian to win a Grand Slam title.

“I was sad to see Serena lose, but she did come back like a champion from down 5-1" in the second set, said BentallGreenOak’s Sonny Kalsi.

After the women’s final, guests including Olivia Flatto, Robert Wolf and Marathon’s Bruce Richards dined on burrata and beef tenderloin at the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s Legends Ball honoring Rod Laver. Co-chairs of the event at Cipriani 42nd Street included Jody and John Arnhold, Andrea and Erik Lisher, Judy and Russ Fradin, Fred Luddy, Debbie and Ajay Nagpal, Rob Pohly and Barbara and Gary Tolman.

--With assistance from Amanda Gordon and Erik Schatzker.

To contact the reporter on this story: Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill

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