Once you start to believe that there’s no such thing as magic, that the machinations of the mind can explain everything and eventually will, then you will stop seeing magic, no matter how incredible what you witness, no matter how unlikely. A coincidence is just a coincidence, utterly without meaning.
But if you choose to see it otherwise…
A pair of ravens flew overhead at that precise moment: a statement of fact. Beyond that, only this question remains: Which world would you rather live in?
But the very idea that the difference between our unconscious and dissatisfying lives and a connection to the vastness of what we’re capable of, both individually and together, is really as simple as just learning to breathe, connecting through the breath to all that’s around us, and meeting the moment–perhaps it terrifies us. Because all of the pain and all of the suffering–war, famine, hatred, killing–might then be seen to be more than just the sad reality of our lives, but instead might be a tragedy so towering that to really begin to comprehend it might send us scurrying back to the comfort of our couches and televisions and easy unconsciousness. Because to begin to believe, to truly believe, that it really doesn’t have to be this way, and that we truly have the power to change it, to change it right fucking now and we’ve always had that power, it must just disrupt us at our very core. Better to stay stuck where we are a member of the human race, in general accord with all those around us, rather than shake things up by truly embracing our true natures and the true nature of the world–that creation of the most beautiful sort is eternally available to us, we only have to choose it–and demonstrating and risking the opprobrium of all those who aren’t ready yet to begin to imagine that the pathway out of their suffering, be it a world of dull grays or the fiery pain of sharp knives across flesh, is right now and has always been immediately at hand.
Some days, the pain washes over you. You find yourself swimming in black seas. You know the feeling, yes? You go looking for any bright spot, anything, to light up the darkness.
Well, how about this: Tottenham Hotspur are playing in the Champions League (and beat Borussia Dortmund, 3-1, yesterday, hooray). Meanwhile, Arsenal are playing in the Europa League.
Go suck, Arsenal.
So how should we summarize the Slam season in general? And how do we expect the respective tours to progress from here?
Among the women, we had four different winners over the four Slams. Serena won in Australia and then left the tour to have a baby. Young Jelena Ostapenko won in France and has had okay results since (the quarters at Wimbledon, the third round in New York). After a lackluster early season and her meltdown in Paris, Muguruza beat Venus for the Wimbledon title. And now Sloane Stephens comes out of nowhere to win in New York. Do you see any kind of pattern there? Because I do not. It seems like this is a year of transition. Let’s hope that this year’s breakthrough players continue to play well through the end of season–and beyond. After all, last year, it looked like Angelique Kerber was going to truly embrace the role of becoming a long-term force on the tour, but this year, she was merely a shell.
The story atop the men’s game has been, in essence, the drop-off of last year’s top-two, Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, and the return to splendor of Federer and Nadal. Federer and Nadal were both amazing in Australia, and their final there was a classic. Afterward, Federer stormed through the North American spring hardcourt season. When things returned to Europe and Nadal’s beloved clay, Nadal owned everybody. I maintain that Federer did not play a great Wimbledon, but still, he was better than everybody else. And then Federer was lackluster in New York, the injury he suffered in Montreal clearly taking a lot from him, and it was Nadal who was brilliant.
Back in April, I predicted a remarkable year for both Federer and Nadal, and that’s pretty much how it worked out. Yes, I hoped for a more remarkable ending to the Slam season, that Federer and Nadal would compete the way they did in Australia, and that unfortuantely isn’t what happened. Still, though: at the end of 2016, would you have guessed that Federer and Nadal would split the four Slams between them?
And where to from here? The Asian swing and the European fall tournaments can sometimes feel like something of an afterthought after the U.S. Open. This year, for the men, with so much of the top end of the field out for the season, it will seem especially so. Unless Federer regains his form and offers some stout competition for Nadal in the late-season Masters 1000s–which is possible, if he wants to compete for year-end number one–then the season will end not with a bang but a whimper. We’ll see.
Among the women, there’s been no clear number one. With many rankings points still to play for, let’s hope we some exciting play and perhaps some consolidation among the top players in the game.
What impressions are we left with about the U.S. Open as a whole? Let’s consider the women’s and men’s tournaments separately.
I have in the past called the women’s game, “Serena, and a parade of also-rans.” Based on the results here, it appears, though, that this is starting to change. Here at the Open, when top players lost, they tended to lose to very strong players. Halep lost to Sharapova. Sharapova lost to Sevastova, who lost to Stephens. (I think we can now put Stephens into the the conversation as a top player.) Kvitova beat Muguruza. Venus beat Kvitova, and Stephens beat Venus. Last year’s finalist, Karolina Pliskova, made it to the quarters before losing to Vandeweghe. Vandeweghe lost to Keys in the semis. Svitolina and Vesnina also lost to Keys. So there is some sense that we’re beginning to see a consistent field of top players atop the women’s game.
The men’s game, on the other hand, is in a bit of a tough spot right now. With Djokovic, Murray, Wawrinka, Nishikori and Raonic all out with long-term injury, the Open lost a lot of its shine. And many of the players who did play hardly wowed us. Sascha Zverev, considered by many the top young player, lost in the second round. Thiem succumbed to the arduousness of his own style of play as much as Del Potro’s play on the other side of the net. Monfils made the third round before retiring against Goffin. Goffin made the round of sixteen, but only because he stubbornly refused to retire did his round-of-sixteen match go three whole sets–and the player who beat him, Andrey Rublev, got crushed in the next round by Nadal. None of Berdych, Dimitrov, Kyrgios and Gasquet made it out of the second round.
Even players with more positive results struggled. Federer made the quarters, despite mostly lackluster play. Del Potro made the semis and took a set off Nadal before he ran out of gas. And Anderson made his first final, where he was totally overwhelmed by Nadal.
Aside from Nadal’s play, about which more in a moment, the best thing about the Open might have been that young Denis Shapovalov made the round of 16 on the back of his fun, stylish play. I very much look forward to seeing more of him.
So, Nadal: he was a clear level, maybe two, above everyone else in the field. Yes, he dropped first sets in three of his seven matches, but once the match got rolling, so did Nadal. He didn’t once face a fifth set. It may not have been quite as dominating a victory as what he accomplished at Roland Garros a few months ago, but nonetheless, he was never under any serious pressure. A couple of years back, I said that he would never again regain top form, that his style of play had taken too much out of him over the years. I was wrong.
Stephens def. Keys, 6-3, 6-0
Nadal def. Anderson, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4
In two finals over two days, we saw exactly zero truly competitive sets. The matches themselves were a far cry from anything like classics, but the storylines of which they are a part will endure. Sloane Stephens’ victory over Madison Keys was the capstone of her amazing return to the tour. Nadal’s victory was a fitting addition to an astonishing season, in which he returned from injury to incredible success: two titles and one final over the four Grand Slams; titles in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Madrid; a final at the Miami Open.
Nonetheless, finals are finals. They’re worth a little discussion.
The first four games of the women’s final were competitive, and there were some long, high-quality rallies, but pretty quickly it was clear that Stephens had the upper hand. Keys does not like to play long rallies, and the longer Stephens was able to keep the ball in play, the more pressure Keys found herself under. Keys needed to adapt, either by becoming more patient and waiting for her spots, or by trying a different method to end the points early (presumably by coming to net). But the weight of the situation got to her, and she began to get more and more into her head, and so the clarity of mind necessary to calmly adapt escaped her. Once the break came, Keys’ remaining belief more or less crumbled. Consider: from that point on, Stephens won nine of the final ten games.
Stephens’ poise was utterly remarkable. She seemed completely unrattled at any point in the match. Perhaps her time away from the game as she recovered from her surgery gave her the space to get very clear about what tennis meant to her. Just how remarkable was her summer? She made the semis in both the Rogers Cup and the Western and Southern Open, and over those two tournaments and the U.S. Open, she beat Kvitova (twice), Safarova (twice), Kerber, Makarova, Venus, Cibulkova, and Roberta Vinci. That’s an impressive list.
Based on the assuredness she displayed over the past two weeks, it seems that she has immediately thrust herself into the conversation as one of the top players in women’s tennis. It’s true, many players have won a Slam and then found the weight of expectations to be too much to deal with. Perhaps she will be another player of that ilk. But the fortitude she displayed over the past two weeks (and this year as a whole) suggests otherwise.
The men’s final was a bit more competitive, perhaps–not only did Anderson never melt down, he also displayed a willingness to get outside his comfort zone and try to adapt to the realities of the situation, namely that Nadal, in returning from so deep, was not going to be easily aced, and that once the ball was in play, Nadal’s movement, still astonishing at 31, was going to keep Anderson from hitting easy winners. Anderson tried coming to net regularly, but Nadal was simply too good for him. Anderson was under pressure from Nadal’s return game from the very start, and it was only a matter of time until Anderson broke down. Anderson did his best, but ultimately it was a straightforward victory for Nadal.
Sloane Stephens’ odd 6-1, 0-6, 7-5, victory over Venus Williams and Madison Keys 6-1, 6-2, beatdown of CoCo Vandeweghe guarantees that we’ll see a first-time Slam winner at the end of the women’s final on Saturday.
And what can we expect to see? Honestly, I have no idea. While some people had Keys as a sleeper pick to go all the way, no one thought Sloane Stephens would put together a streak like this and reach the final. What happens here is anyone’s guess.
I’m excited for it, and you should be too. In addition to being an intriguing match-up, it’s a great moment for women’s tennis and a great moment for U.S. tennis.
And it’s obviously a great moment for these two young women. Stephens is 24. Keys is just 22. May this be the first of many big-stage meetings between the two. I wish them both the best.
It was at 5-all, 30-15 in the first set, Roger Federer serving, when Juan Martín Del Potro blasted a forehand that must have traveled 600 miles per hour. DelPo hit it so hard that, despite just okay placement, an already-sprinting-in-that-direction Federer couldn’t even get a racquet on it. At his best, Federer just lets that point go, serves an ace on his next serve, and it’s forgotten. But if you’ve watched Federer enough, you’ve seen points that seem to rattle the guy. (Think back to the missed overhead in the fourth set of the Australian Open final this year, after which Roger pretty much fell apart–speaking relative to his abilities, of course–until early in the fifth set, at which point he was already down a break.) So it was here. He double-faulted on the next point. At break point, he hit a so-so serve that he followed in to net, then hit a so-so volley to Del Potro’s forehand side, which gave Del Potro an easy cross-court pass and the break. Del Potro held at 6-5 to take the set.
Federer seemed consistently off throughout the match. Still, as with his first- and second-round matches here at the Open, he seemed like he was going to escape. He won the second set and held four set points, including one on his own serve, in the third. Del Potro saved all four and won the third set 7-6 (8). After that, it was no great surprise to see Federer broken early in the fourth and lose the match.
Clearly my predictions aren’t worth much. Though I predicted that Andrey Rublev didn’t have the tools to challenge Rafa on this stage (Rafa proved me right, winning 6-1, 6-2, 6-2), I also predicted that DelPo wouldn’t be able to recover from his illness and previous-round five-setter against Dominic Thiem. Nope. And before that, I predicted that Federer, having struggled so mightily against Tiafoe and Youzhny in the first two rounds, and clearly not 100%, would lose to Feliciano Lopez in the third round. But then Federer hit his stride against Lopez. He looked strong against Kohlschreiber. But it was here against Del Potro that Federer played the match I suspected he would against Lopez and got shown the door.
Nevertheless, I’ll make another prediction. Nadal surely watched Del Potro’s weak backhands, almost always crosscourt, and knows that he can send heavy crosscourt forehand after heavy crosscourt forehand to DelPo’s backhand side, and that DelPo will be unlikely to have a response. In the other semi, both Anderson and Carreno Busta are both solid players, but neither is Rafael Nadal. At this point, the US Open is Nadal’s to lose.
For years, I have artfully deflected my friends’ increasingly ardent attempts to get me to join their fantasy football leagues. “It’s fun!” they tell me. “It makes the games more fun to watch.” Both of those things may be true, but I have chosen to not participate based on some hard-won self-knowledge: I don’t tend to do things casually, or at least, not for very long. Either casualness morphs into its close cousin–boredom–or else the thing seizes my interest, and I pursue it with an ardor that most people would regard as almost obsessive.
One of Kevin Anderson, Pablo Carreno Busta, Diego Schwartzman and Sam Querrey is going to be a finalist at the US Open. They are fine players all, but a level below truly elite. In a normal year, reaching the quarterfinals would constitute a very solid Slam performance for any of them.
But this year, because of a field vastly depleted due to injuries and then the vagaries of the draw, most of the top players ended up in the top half of the draw. The primary exceptions were Sascha Zverev, who succumbed to the US Open’s stupid scheduling; Marin Cilic, who lost in the third round to Diego Schwartzman, never quite match fit after his injury at Wimbledon and subsequent lay-off; and Jo-Wilfred Tsonga, who is consistently inconsistent and got his ass kicked by Denis Shapovalov.
And so: Anderson, Carreno Busta, Schwartzman and Querrey are the quarterfinalists in the bottom half of the draw.
Everybody’s dream scenario prior to the draw was a Federer-Nadal final. It’s one of the great rivalries of all time, and it took on new depth this year with Federer’s win in the final of the Australian–an instant classic–followed by his subsequent beatdowns of Nadal at Indian Wells and Miami. And then Nadal owned the clay-court season. And then Federer won Wimbledon. They’ve been far-and-away the best two players this year. And they’ve never played each other at the Open.
But because Federer pulled out of Cincinnati with injury, he didn’t pick up the ranking points to overtake Murray prior to the Open, which left Murray as the two seed, which meant it was 50-50 that Federer would draw into Nadal’s half, which is what happened. And so the dream lost a little shine: a potential semi-final match-up isn’t quite as sexy as one in the final.
It’s looking increasingly likely that we’re going to see that semi. Nadal is playing terrifically well, and his quarterfinal opponent, Andrey Rublev, is only 19 years old and isn’t likely yet to have the tools to push Nadal on a stage this big. Federer seems to have hit his stride, having followed his straight-set victory against Feliciano Lopez with one against Philipp Kohlschreiber last night. Federer’s quarterfinal opponent, Juan Martín Del Potro, spent everything in his five-set victory against Dominic Thiem yesterday and so is unlikely to be able to fully recover before Wednesday. Straight-set quarterfinal victories for both Federer and Nadal seem relatively probable, meaning both could be quite fresh for a Friday semi-final.
So the nightmare scenario is this: that Federer and Nadal beat the hell out of each other in some epic, classic five-setter. Then, in the other half of the draw, someone wins with relative ease. An exhausted Federer or Nadal plays that someone and loses the final. This would be a gross injustice.
And this all adds up to part of the reason why Andy Murray is almost an asshole. The draw was on Friday, August 25th. Murray withdrew the next day. I honestly cannot see the motivation for not withdrawing before the draw. Gee, Andy, did you really think that one extra day was going to make all the difference? So all you really did was create a chance that the best potential storyline for the tournament had a 50-50 chance of not happening, and that is in fact how the probability worked out. Way to make it about you, Andy.
But the other reason why Murray is almost but not quite an asshole is that I applied for a job writing for the ATP (the organization that run’s the men’s tour), and if I get anywhere with the application process, they’re surely going to come here and read my writing, and I need to put my professionalism above my feelings as a fan, and that means I obviously can’t be seen calling Andy Murray, one of the top players in the game, an asshole. So I’m not. I’m most definitely not calling Andy Murray an asshole.
But almost an asshole? Yes.
Better hope that either Federer or Nadal hoist that trophy, Andy. Otherwise I might be forced to go all the way.