“As of now, I guess we could say it’s over, but in her own words, the door isn’t closed and locked, right?” Hechtman said Saturday. “I’d say there’s a crack open.” “I just believe, but I think she and Venus will still play doubles,” said Maci, whose Florida academy was the brothers’ longtime home base in their youth. “They have two of the best serves in the world and two of the best returns in the world, and in doubles you only have to cover half the court. When the Williams sisters perform together, it’s the greatest show on earth. Everything is possible.” The Williamses are indeed full of surprises and enjoy springing them. But what is 100 percent clear is that they are both out of this US Open, and that Serena’s farewell saga will no longer be the big story that blocks all the light in the press room (or at least America’s press room). . “It’s totally her tournament, in my opinion,” said Daniil Medvedev, the No. 1 seed and defending US Open men’s champion. But there is a big Grand Slam tournament going on for almost a week now in New York. Let’s find out what you might have missed:
Last year’s fairy tales are not this year’s fairy tales
In 2021, two multicultural teenagers made almost anything seem possible in tennis (and beyond). Leylah Fernandez, an unseeded 19-year-old Canadian with roots in the Philippines and Ecuador, knocked off the favorite to reach the women’s final. Emma Raducanu, an 18-year-old Canadian-born Briton with roots in China and Romania, defeated Fernandez in that final, becoming the first qualifier in the game’s long history to win a Grand Slam singles title. But midnight struck early this year and the carriage turned into a pumpkin in the first round for Raducanu, who lost to Alizé Cornet of France, and in the second round for Fernandez, who was defeated by Liudmila Samsonova of Russia. There was no dishonor in either defeat. Cornet is playing the best tennis of her career at 32 and upset No. 1 Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon. Samsonova has won two hard court titles leading into the US Open. But the early exits certainly underscore just how wild and crazy the Open was last year. Truly.
Some players withdraw and lock the door
While Serena was pulling on her sneakers and talking about “evolving away from tennis,” some of her lesser-known peers had no trouble saying the “R” word, including two longtime American pros, Christina McHale and Sam Querrey. McHale, a brooding 30-year-old from New Jersey, announced her retirement quietly after losing in the first round of the qualifying tournament. She turned pro at 17 and soon reached the third round of all four majors, reaching No. 24 in the world in 2012. “I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to fulfill my childhood dream all these years,” she said on her Instagram account. Querrey, a 34-year-old Californian with a laid-back manner and a power game best suited to fast courts, won 10 tour singles titles and reached No. 11 in the singles rankings in 2018, the year his big serve took him into the Wimbledon semifinals. The All England Club was also where Querrey scored his biggest win: upsetting No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who went on to hold all four major singles titles, in the third round in 2016. Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, also 34, has had some major wins of her own and broke into the top 10 in 2011 after reaching the quarter-finals of the Australian Open and the US Open. She came back from a serious knee injury early in her career and became a hard-hitting starter. She was a good player, but probably an even better wordsmith: she wrote articles and gave interviews full of wisdom and wit in German and English, as she did again at the US Open after her first-round loss to Belinda Bencic.
Serena Williams at the US Open
The US Open was very likely to be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career that pushed boundaries and defied expectations.
Glorious farewell: Even as Serena Williams faced the point of her career, she put on a bold display of the strength and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years. The Magic Ends: Zoom in on this composite photo to see details of Williams’ final moment at Ashe Stadium at this US Open. Her fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions it evoked. There was no shortage of submissions. Sisterhood on the court: Ever since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been intertwined.
“I think I brought everything to the game that I had to give,” he said. “Obviously it’s not as much as Serena, but in my own little world, I feel like I brought everything to it and my narrative is over.” She may play one last European tournament to give her European friends and family a chance to help her say goodbye, but she looked like a former player already this week with a beer in hand on the beach. “First day of retirement,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’m enjoying my six-pack while it lasts.” And maybe there are some advantages to retiring in America after all, despite Europe’s larger social safety net. “Every American I met and I told them I was retiring, their first reaction was, ‘Congratulations,’” Petkovic said. “All the Europeans I was telling this to were saying, ‘Oh my God, what are you going to do now?’ I have to say that in the last few days I’ve embraced the American way of looking at it a bit more.”
Other American women are still in contention
There will be no 24th Grand Slam singles title for Williams, but there could be a first for Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff and Danielle Collins, all safely into the fourth round of their domestic Grand Slam tournaments. Pegula, the No. 8 seed, Gauff, the No. 12 seed, and Collins, the No. 19 seed, are the three highest-ranked Americans in the world. Pegula and Gauff are also relatively new doubles partners who reached the French Open final together in June. He had no such luck in New York, where they were upset in the first round, but the 18-year-old Gauff, working with new consultant coach Diego Moyano, and the 28-year-old Pegula, still working with coach David Witt, continued to make progress in singles. So is Alison Riske-Amritraj, a 32-year-old with a lively personality and game who is returning to the round of 16 at the US Open for the first time since 2013. However, she has a tough task on Sunday as she tries to stop a resurgent Caroline Garcia of France. Garcia, once a top five player, has been on the rise since June and became the first qualifier to win a WTA 1000 event when she captured the Western and Southern Open titles last month. Her traditional airplane-inspired celebration – arms outstretched – is becoming all too familiar, and although Riske-Amritraj beat Garcia on grass in Nottingham in June, Garcia is in full flight now.
Wimbledon was a different world
In the last major tournament, Wimbledon banned Russians and Belarusians because of the invasion of Ukraine. The US Open did not follow that lead, much to the dismay of some Ukrainian players. Almost a week after the start of this major, there is no Ukrainian left in singles, but Russians and Belarusians make up almost a quarter of the remaining singles players. Ilya Ivashka of Belarus and Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov of Russia are in the men’s 16. Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova of Russia are in the women’s last 16. Another difference from Wimbledon: Men’s singles champion Novak Djokovic there was ineligible to play in New York.
The men’s tournament is blockbuster
On the same night Serena bid farewell to Arthur Ashe Stadium after giving tearful thanks to family and fans, Medvedev and Nick Kyrgios set up a fourth-round showdown on Sunday night that would normally be the talk of the tournament. Medvedev beat Kyrgios at this year’s Australian Open but has lost three of their other matches, including a round of 32 loss at the National Bank Open in Montreal last month. It’s a box office match and contrast in styles: attack and quick hitting, Kyrgios’ unreadable serve against the 6-foot-6 Medvedev’s elastic defense, and Medvedev’s ability to avoid mistakes and absorb pace deep down the court (the Russian can also serves many large himself). But Kyrgios, riding high after his first Wimbledon final in July, is playing the best, most consistent tennis of his hot and cold career, even if he was fined $7500 for spitting and cursing at his own support team during duration of a victory over. Benjamin Bonzi on Wednesday. Medvedev has had a volatile season, full of forced breaks (hernia surgery and Wimbledon ban) and losses, even on his preferred hard courts. But on the court, both remain volatile and sound as well as ridiculously, iconoclastically talented. And in this case the stadium is Ashe Stadium. It should be good. It could be great.
