It happens every summer like clockwork. The US Open kicks off in late August, and for two weeks, we all pretend to like honeydew. The mealy melon enjoys its 15 minutes of fame atop the Honey Deuce, the tennis tournament’s official cocktail since 2006. Although honeydew is perhaps the most avoided fruit salad component for the other 50 weeks of the year, the Honey Deuce is a highly covetable sip, popping up on Instagram feeds and in the hands of famous attendees.
For the unacquainted, the Honey Deuce combines Grey Goose vodka and Chambord raspberry liqueur with lemonade and is topped with three honeydew spheres meant to resemble tennis balls. “We specifically designed the cocktail to be paired with ballpark and concessionaire-type food and to pull at fans’ nostalgia for summertime pink lemonade,” Aleco Azqueta, Grey Goose’s vice president of marketing, tells PS.
The pastel drink looks and sounds delicious, but I’d much prefer mine without three mouthfuls of honeydew. Try as it might, the green fruit will never rise the ranks of the melon-verse to reach watermelon or cantaloupe status.
Despite honeydew’s lackluster flavor, US Open guests wait in long lines to shell out a whopping $23 for the Honey Deuce, which comes in a Grey Goose-branded collector’s cup displaying names of past champions. With such a steep price tag, the drink has become a status symbol of sorts, much like the sporting event itself, which seems to be getting more expensive to attend by the year. Posting a photo on your Instagram Stories of a courtside Honey Deuce is the perfect way to remind followers of your tax bracket – or at least your willingness to tolerate bland fruit.
If it feels like the boozy beverage has only gotten more ubiquitous in recent years, you’re not wrong. Azqueta shares that more than 450,000 Honey Deuces were sold at the 2023 US Open, an 11 percent increase from 2022’s sales. Since its debut 17 years ago, more than 1.8 million have been sold. “It’s almost as if the cocktail is the unofficial accessory of the tournament and has become a must have for those attending,” Azqueta says.
Stars ranging from Emma Roberts to Diplo sipped Honey Deuces in the stands at the Grey Goose VIP suite last year, and those inescapable melon balls were front and center during Kylie Jenner and Timothée Chalamet famous date at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
The Honey Deuce will likely continue on its upward trajectory until another sponsor serves up an equally Instagrammable drink. (Your move, Aperol.) Until then, we’ll all just have to keep pretending honeydew is actually edible.
Victoria Messina was a senior editor on PS’s Breaking News team. A University of Florida graduate with more than six years of digital media experience, she covers a range of topics, including TV shows and movies, celebrity style, rising stars, food trends, and just about any pop culture-adjacent subject in between.
