NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, September 7, 2025 (by Michael Dickens)
Soul in Flight: A Memorial to Arthur Ashe is a 14-foot tall, two-ton statue created by New York artist Eric Fischl that stands proudly on the grounds of the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., site of the US Open. It is a favorite gathering spot for fans and a must-see while attending the year’s final Grand Slam event.
This year, the iconic landmark that is a tribute to the three-time major champion and trailblazing American tennis star Arthur Ashe, for whom the main show-court stadium is also named, is celebrating its 25th birthday.
“While the commemorative sculpture celebrates Ashe, it does not replicate him.”
There is a secret history behind the “Soul in Flight” statue at the US Open. #USOpen pic.twitter.com/DdpTUnODRE
— Tennis Channel (@TennisChannel) September 2, 2025
During a recent interview with Jon Wertheim that aired on Tennis Channel Live at the US Open, Fischl, a tennis enthusiast, said: “When I met with the board, the first thing I said was, ‘I was born to do this.'”
Fischl said that he was inspired by the service motion of a tennis player. It’s a shot that the 77-year-old American sculptor calls “the most beautiful” and “the one in which the server has the most control.”
Soul in Flight: A Memorial to Arthur Ashe (photo: Michael Dickens)
The sculpture, a heroic classical nude with his left arm stretched upwards that was unveiled in August 2000, is set on a beautiful, colorfully-landscaped mound designed by Mark Sullivan of Paul Friedberg Associates.
The esteemed American sports writer Sally Jenkins, writing last month in The Atlantic, described the sculpture as “an abstract Arthur Ashe surges from the earth like a lightning bolt striking upward instead of down.”
While it is not a literal representation of Ashe, who retired in 1980 after winning 44 singles titles during the Open Era – and is the only Black man to win titles at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open – its allegory of grace, power and aspiration are attributes that befit the humanitarian. Ashe died at age 49 in 1993 after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion during a heart bypass surgery.
Look closely and you will notice the subject of the sculpture is not holding a tennis racquet but rather a baton, something which Fischl said is not an accident.
“That’s what [Ashe] represents: the start of something that others have to carry on,” he said.
Soul in Flight: A Memorial to Arthur Ashe is located between Corona Park’s Unisphere, created for the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and Arthur Ashe Stadium, which opened in 1997. It is also framed by curved walls and includes biographical details inscribed. It also features an inspirational motto that was favored by Ashe: “From what we get, we make a living; What we give, however, makes a life.”
