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Led by Coco Gauff and a solid of charismatic upstarts, tennis hit a candy spot at this 12 months’s U.S. Open with a various mix of previous and proper now, signaling the sport is freshly and firmly energized because it enters a brand new period.
No Serena Williams. No Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal.
No downside.
True sufficient, Novak Djokovic, who gained the twenty fourth main title of his profession on Sunday by beating Daniil Medvedev in the males’s singles closing, continues to be performing his magic act. But standard considering contended that tennis can be in hassle when the legendary champions who propped up the skilled sport for roughly the previous twenty years started leaving the sport en masse.
At this event, the commanding arrival of Gauff, who gained the ladies’s singles title Saturday night, together with memorable performances by Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe, proved that considering improper.
At the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, a quartet of legends not stifled the sport, overshadowing the typically stalled ahead movement of the younger gamers coming behind. You might really feel it on the grounds, which full of so many spectators that it usually appeared there was no house to maneuver with out bruising a shoulder. This 12 months’s occasion set attendance data almost every single day.
“It’s incredibly invigorating to see a shift in personalities,” stated Kate Koza, a Brooklynite and common at the Open since 2016, echoing a sentiment I heard repeatedly throughout the occasion’s two-week run. “We’re not just seeing the same faces with the same mythical back story.”
Tennis is altering, and no participant embodied that greater than the 19-year-old Gauff, who, ever since she burst onto the scene 4 years in the past with a first-round win over Venus Williams at Wimbledon, appeared destined for this second.
In these two weeks at the U.S. Open, she grew solely into herself. Her dutiful dad and mom — ever at her facet all these years on tour, along with her father as coach — gave her further freedom and fell simply sufficient into the background. Gauff thrived, making clear that she is now her personal lady. Think of how she demanded that her new coach, Brad Gilbert, tone down his chatterbox directions throughout her fourth-round wrestle in opposition to Caroline Wozniacki.
“Please stop,” she instructed, including a firmness that confirmed she was the one to dictate her motion at this occasion. “Stop talking!”
At Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, she commanded the stage.
She leaned into her pace and enhancing forehand to win 4 three-set showdowns throughout the event and performed like a wily veteran in the most heart-pounding moments.
She gained power from the crowd — look, there’s Barack and Michelle Obama, and over there, Justin Bieber. “I saw pretty much every celebrity they showed on that screen,” she stated, including that she embraced the second and vowed “to win in front of these people.”
As she scorched a closing passing shot previous Aryna Sabalenka to take the title, falling to her again and then kneeling to soak in the second via tears, Gauff claimed everlasting house in the collective reminiscence. Watching from a dozen rows again from heart courtroom, I felt goose bumps and shivers. The large stadium shook and swayed, most of the 23,000 followers inside the stadium on their toes, cheering and chanting. They needed this second, this champion, this recent begin.
Since Serena Williams gained her first main title as a 17-year-old at the 1999 U.S. Open, the Open has had different Black champions. Her sister Venus in 2000 and 2001. Sloane Stephens in 2017. Naomi Osaka, who’s Black and Asian, in 2018 and 2020.
But Gauff is the first in a brand new period — a brand new champion in a brand new tennis world — one with out the shadow of Serena. The torch has been handed.
Sure, most followers hated to see the males’s No. 1 seed, Carlos Alcaraz, the Wimbledon champion, go down in an upset to Medvedev in the semifinals. The dream matchup had been a championship between Alcaraz and Djokovic, possessors of the hottest rivalry in males’s tennis.
But if we’ve realized something from the lockdown grip 4 genius gamers have had on tennis, it’s that the anticipated course finally turns into monotonous. Look at it this fashion: If Djokovic and Alcaraz lastly face one another at the U.S. Open, the incontrovertible fact that they had been barely denied a Flushing Meadows duel in 2023 will make their matchup that a lot sweeter.
Last 12 months’s U.S. Open, with its send-off celebration of Serena’s retirement and profession, turned the web page. This 12 months’s event closed the guide and put it again on the shelf.
You might really feel the exuberance in the air from the begin, an power that advised a narrative: Djokovic stays — similar as ever — however everybody else in the two fields appeared liberated by dropping the shadow of Serena, Nadal and Federer.
The males’s quarterfinals featured not solely Alcaraz however two resurgent Americans of their mid-20s, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe, a fan favourite for his willingness to attach with the crowd.
As if to herald the incontrovertible fact that Black gamers are a budding, booming drive in each the males’s and ladies’s sport, Tiafoe and Shelton turned the first African American males to face one another in the closing eight of a significant championship.
That wasn’t the solely notable footnote. The fast-rising Shelton, 20, was the youngest American to succeed in a U.S. Open semifinal since 1992. He walloped Tiafoe to get there, wowing crowds with 149-mile-per-hour serves and in-your-face competitiveness that confirmed he wouldn’t again away from any problem — even when that problem was Djokovic.
After beating Shelton in a hard-fought, straight-sets win to advance to the males’s closing, Djokovic mimicked the celebratory gesture Shelton had flashed all through the event after victory — an imaginary cellphone to the ear, which he then slammed down, as if to say, “Game, set, match, conversation over.”
The smart grasp stays, nonetheless prepared to present an schooling to the younger ones for a bit longer.
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