Free Refills

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.

Or: Why Andy Murray Is Almost but Not Quite An Asshole

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.

I closed my piece for Friday with this paragraph:

But Federer is clearly well below 100 percent. There’s just no question. He won yesterday because Youzhny got hurt. He plays Feliciano Lopez in the next round, and, barring some miracle of healing, Federer is going to lose.

Despite expecting to see a one-sided win for Feliciano Lopez, I watched anyway. And what I saw instead was what I have come to see as standard Roger Federer, in which against a player like Lopez, here the 31-seed, a veteran player, legitimately one of the, yes, thirty-one best players in the world, Federer is just simply, brilliantly better. The match was Roger in full flow, and, as with every match in which he achieves that state, it was beautiful to behold. And beautiful despite it being something of a whuppin’, three-three-and-five to Federer, finished in a mere 1:46 for three sets, less than the time many players take to play two.

So I was wrong. Federer very, very much did not lose. Unless, perhaps, I was right: that among Federer’s myriad other skills, we can now add a magical ability to heal.

A little necessary background, first of all: I am such a big Federer fan that when he loses, I generally feel gutted. I just want him to win so fucking badly. I was watching the Federer-Tiafoe match Tuesday night with a friend who perennially roots for underdogs, and I told him that while I sometimes do the same, I will never root against Federer. I said, “That’s like rooting against beauty itself.”

At the heart of it, beauty is why I watch sports. I invest a lot of energy and emotion into watching because, agony or ecstasy in the result, there is that frisson in getting to the see physicality and physical expression elevated to the level of art. Even in the realm of professional sports, the grind of “this is a job” can never fully suppress the joy inherent in the sports themselves. These are games after all. You know, like children play.

With all that in mind, it pleases me to see that my viewing of tennis has gotten a little more astute, that I see the game a little more clearly, and that therefore I bring a bit more energetic balance to my watching. Sometimes it’s clear that there’s no real point in investing any energy into a given match. Sometimes you can just see it: today there will be no magic. That was the case in Federer’s match yesterday against Mikhail Youzhny. Right from Federer’s first service game, it was clear that his play was off. I first noticed it in his serve. His follow-through looked muted, like he was holding back from putting the full weight of his body into the serve. I started paying close attention. By the middle of the set, he was hitting some serves at less than 110 miles per hour, a good ten-to-fifteen miles per hour. slower than he usually does. And some of his first serves were going wildly astray. Still, somehow he won the first set, 6-1. But in his first service game of the second set, he got broken. He broke back, held, then broke again and was serving up 3-2 when I decided to stop watching. Federer clearly wasn’t right. I said to myself, “Either he will win because he’s Roger Federer, or he will lose because he’s injured. Either way, nothing particularly worth watching is going happen here.” I had work to do, so I went to do my work.

So as the match went from Federer serving for the set in the second, to getting broken to even things up, to losing in the tiebreaker (without even being especially competitive), then getting broken early and losing the third set, I didn’t feel my usual anguish at an impending Federer loss. I was sad because it was disappointing, but sometimes players get injured. Whaddayagonnado?

Except that he didn’t lose. I was working at the computer, and I had the muted TV on behind me, and I checked on the match from time to time, and in the fourth set I turned around to see Youzhny receiving treatment. I checked the score: Federer was up a break. “Wow,” I said. “Is Federer going to win because the other guy got hurt?” And that’s what happened. Federer pulled it out in five sets.

But Federer is clearly well below 100 percent. There’s just no question. He won yesterday because Youzhny got hurt. He plays Feliciano Lopez in the next round, and, barring some miracle of healing, Federer is going to lose.

While beating the top seed in the bottom half of the draw is a great result for Borna Coric, it is hard to overstate just what a bad result this is for the US Open, and for tennis in general.

Unless Coric makes a deep run–and there is nothing in his recent results to suggest that he’s ready to do so–then all we’ve seen here is the top young talent in the game get knocked out not because of some amazing performance by his opponent but because of the particularly New York stupidity in match scheduling. Zverev didn’t even start his match Monday night until after 10:30 pm. He finished at 2:02 Tuesday morning. After press, the return drive to Manhattan, and then trying to get to sleep after all the adrenaline of a hard-fought tennis match, it was reported that he didn’t get to sleep until 6am.

And you could clearly see, as the match wore on, that he was physically and emotionally exhausted. He was emotionally flat. He had no pop in his legs. Yes, he hit 43 winners, but that went with 58 unforced errors. But importantly, of those 43 winners, 22 were aces. That meant that he was unable to put a point away once it got started. And anyone who has watched Sascha Zverev play know that this is not a normally a problem for him.

By depriving an already-depleted draw of most of the star power in the bottom half of the draw, the organizers have denied themselves a hook to draw in the interest of the casual fan. With so much hand-wringing happening about how to grow the game, it might be worth the USTA taking a closer look at how they schedule.

---

On the other hand, Denis Shapovalov’s win against Jo-Wilfred Tsonga was great for the game. First of all, he simply played Tsonga off the court. But second of all, it was the manner in which he did it. He played utterly fearless tennis. Frequently he hit shots that were near-impossible, and the vibe he gave off was that it never occurred to him that the shot was impossible. It’s thrilling and joyous to watch, and one has to hope that he goes a long way in this tournament–it would be a fantastic narrative to counter the loss of Sascha.

On the one hand, we’re all mad at Andy Murray for waiting until after the draw to pull out (did he really think one more day was going to finally heal his hip?), which kept Federer as the 3-seed, which allowed him to draw into the same side of the draw as Nadal, which means our Narrative of Greatest Hype features a Nadal-Federer semi-final, which is not quite as bright and shiny as potentially meeting in the final, is it?

On the other hand–and not to take too much away from Frances Tiafoe, who continued to show that the ceiling on his game is very high indeed–the quality of Federer’s play would seem to indicate that his back is not 100%, which suggests that he’ll either lose before the semis, or else get soundly thumped by Nadal if they end up playing each other.