Marlins GM Ng goes unnoticed at Open
NEW YORK — Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor made an appearance at the U.S. Open on Thursday afternoon, a few hours before his game against the Miami Marlins. It did not go unnoticed.
The U.S. Open tweeted about it from their official account. The ESPN broadcast shared a video of Lindor throwing a tennis ball back and forth with his new pal, Alexander Zverev, who recently advanced to the third round. It’s safe to say that fans knew he was there.
Few people noticed Marlins general manager Kim Ng, who braved biblical flooding the night before to watch Sloane Stephens take on Coco Gauff from the Arthur Ashe Stadium president’s suite. Ng, who is close friends with a member of the USTA’s board of directors, Kathleen Francis, was sitting next to Anna Wintour, the editor-inchief of “Vogue”, who inspired the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.” A photo of Wintour began to circulate on Twitter. Ng is pictured right next to the fashion icon — albeit, out of focus — and people still didn’t recognize her.
Ng wasn’t complaining. The GM isn’t one to thrust herself into the spotlight (which has become a bit of an issue since she was hired by the Marlins last year, the first woman to become a general manager of a men’s team in the history of major North American sports). She was perfectly content to blend into a crowd, particularly at an event that carries such personal significance for her. Long before baseball, tennis was the first sport that Ng loved. Her parents played it, her grandparents played it, so she started playing it, when she was four, and continued throughout high school. The sport filled her with a sense of empowerment — and in some ways, brought out the doggedness she’s become known for as an executive — but it also connected her to two role models that had a profound effect on a young woman looking to chart a path that was largely uncharted.
“I was a little bit young to follow Billie Jean King, but by the time I got to high school, I really started to understand what she had done for the sport and for women, in general,” Ng said. “Martina (Navratilova) was much more my sweet spot, age-wise — 10-yearsold through college. Amazing athlete. The thing that always really grabbed me about Martina was that she took the sport to another level, for women. She redefined what many people thought of as a female athlete. She just raised the bar. Her physique, the way she trained.
“It was also the idea that she was not afraid to be different. She was her own person, and she told it like it was and didn’t take anything from anybody. I think that really helped me in terms of thinking about how I should be growing up. And things that I should be thinking about. And that it was okay to be different. I got a lot of that from my family, but I think externally, it was important for me to see somebody else living that credo.”
On the day she accepted the job as Marlins GM, Ng listed Navratilova and King as mentors.