Roger Federer saved a match point and edged Nick Kyrgios in the third set of the last match of the Laver Cup Sunday night in Prague O2 arena, clinching the inaugural edition of tennis’s newest tournament, a team competition pitting top Europeans against the best from everywhere else, though for the time being this means the Anglosphere.
No one expected surprises and there were none Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Open final. They like winners in Queens, and if they respect underdogs and appreciate the drama of unlikely upsets, they go for the champion when the champion gets going. Rafa Nadal was indomitable for two weeks and there was no reason not to cheer him on to his third U.S. Open title, his 16th Slam.
With as much steel in her game as her friend and rival had jitters in hers, Sloane Stephens defeated Madison Keys handily to win her first major title Sunday afternoon in Queens.
FLUSHING MEADOW, NY—Rafael Nadal consolidated his year-long comeback to the No. 1 rank on the ATP Tour last night, dominating a courageous but vulnerable Juan-Martin del Potro in four sets at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Queens. He earned a date to Sunday’s U.S. Open final with first-time finalist Kevin Anderson, who kept his nerve in a hard-hitting service and baseline duel with Pablo Carreno-Busta in the first men’s semi-final match.
Maryland-born Frances Tiafoe challenged the mighty Roger Federer, keeping pressure for five sets on the five-time champion in their first-round U.S. Open match at New York’s Flushing Meadows.
Tommy Paul’s great run at Washington’s Citi Open tennis tournament was stopped in a thrilling three-set quarterfinal match Friday by former champion Kei Nishikori, who adjusted his legendary defensive finesse to full-bore when down a set and 4-5 in the second.
Jared Donaldson cut down Marc Polmans and Tommy Paul overwhelmed Lucas Pouille, raising hopes once again for the new generation of American tennis men.
Having won his tenth Monte-Carlo and Barcelona tournaments earlier this season, Rafael Nadal, after two seasons of being on and off the disabled list, reasserted his claim as the king of tennis on clay surfaces.
Shreveport native Ryan Harrison teamed with New Zealander Michael Venus to win the men’s doubles trophy at Roland-Garros Saturday in a three-set shootout that stayed even until the last three games.
Americans will be present at this year’s French Open finals, albeit in the doubles draws rather than the more widely followed singles.
Australian men are out at the French Open, as Sam Groth, partnering with Swedish veteran Robert Lindstedt, went down yesterday in the third round.
It’s the weekend at the French Open, sold out despite what Parisians call a heat wave (balmy for most Americans). The long queues on the outside first-come-first-served courts fray nerves, even as they demonstrate the popularity of the two-week event. Would that more Americans were getting into the second week; some of our women stars are likely to make it, notably Venus Williams, but on the men’s side all the burden is on Steve Johnson and John Isner.
Venus Williams got her campaign underway for another Grand Slam trophy, beating China’s Qiang Wang on Sunday at the start of the French Open at Paris’s storied Roland Garros grounds
Rafael Nadal took his fifth Madrid Open trophy on Sunday, continuing his campaign to regain his title as King of Clay.
Stan Wawrinka got his gorgeous backhand going early in the second set of the men’s final at the U.S. Open Sunday night. It would be an exaggeration to say it was all smooth sailing from there, but it was the key to victory over the top seeded Novak Djokovic, world number one and defending champ at Flushing Meadows.
With Andy Murray and Serena Williams both out of the U.S. Open, the only certainty is that nothing is certain this year, in tennis no less than other places of public interest.
Tennis audiences tend toward good manners and fair-play, and you won’t find much jingoism at Flushing Meadows.
Madison Keys stunned Naomi Osaka despite a third set 1-5 deficit, winning points at desperate moments when the Japanese prodigy (her father is Hawaiian, in case it matters) served for the match.
The sheer beauty of the Isner-Tiafoe first round match at the U.S. Open only partly stemmed from their contrasting styles, ages, backgrounds.
Donald Dell observed that the Rio Games was seriously cutting into the tennis tournaments on the North American summer circuit, of which the Washington Open (Citi Open in its current phase) is his own baby.
It did not work out quite as hoped in the men’s draw at the Australian Open at Melbourne, with only John Isner, the tall Floridian with the big serve and huge improvements on the ground strokes, making it to early hours of the second week before succumbing in straight sets to the tenacious David Ferrer, the battler from Alicante on Spain’s Mediterranean coast.
The new tennis season begins auspiciously for American men, with Jack Sock and Taylor Fritz putting on a terrific first-round display of strength and skill. You can say it might have been nice to save this for a later round, but you can’t fix the draw—though evidently you can fix some other things —and it was fine to see our up-and-coming big men play so well.
It has been a tournament of come-backs-from-the-brink, grit, and courage.
Tremendous match. The drama was in the first set, when it appeared close right through the tiebreak, and in the second Miss Pennatta got a big lead early; still, Miss Vinci, with the old fashioned style, very heavy on sliced one-handed backhands and graceful approaches to the net, that flummoxed the No. 1 seed and defending champion Serena Williams in the semi, gave her higher-ranked friend a run for her money.
Civilization as we have known ended a few minutes before 3 p.m. on a hot Friday afternoon at the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows, as Serena Williams blew the thrilling third set of her semifinal against Roberta Vinci.
The stupidity or dishonesty of tennis professionals and allegedly serious observers of the sport compels them to comment that the Williams’ way of playing is “muscular,” meaning masculine. This reflects a meanness and envy and mostly an incomprehension of what they are doing. Sports like all other fields are filled with dopes and blockheads. Every once in a while someone comes along and innovates in ways that influence the sport profoundly. That’s the Williams sisters.
The competitive fury is arguably the Williams’ most characteristically American trait. Legend has it that Richard Williams saw a match on television and was so enchanted by the check presented to the winner that he decided to make tennis number ones of his youngest daughters. The reality is somewhat more nuanced. He said not: “How can anyone do this?” He said: “Why not us?”
Race, sex, class, and tennis in New York City.
Marin Cilic gave Japan’s rising son a tough match in the semi-finals of Washington’s Citi Open, a small gem of a tournament that warms players up for the end-of-summer U.S. Open. It was competitive enough to say he coulda had he only woulda.
