The Gatecrasher

By Tom Jones

Daniil Medvedev against Carlos Alcaraz has been an odd matchup in 2023. They’re the last two U.S. Open champions and the only two players outside of the Big Four to be world number one since 2004. They have both had major roles as the biggest challenger to unsettling Novak Djokovic (and to an extent, Rafael Nadal) at the top of the game in the last three years as well.  

And yet, they are two players who have felt in recent times like their careers are going in completely opposite directions. Alcaraz has become the ascendant, the “true heir” to the Big Three. Meanwhile, Daniil Medvedev’s relevance at the truly elite level of men’s tennis was on the slide ever since he lost the Australian Open final to Nadal from two sets up and lost the #1 ranking after just three weeks.

Medvedev has since reestablished himself as a true force again at world number three, a tier just below Djokovic and Alcaraz. But even so, the Alcaraz matchup still highlights how different things are from Medvedev’s peak in 2021 and the start of 2022. 

Medvedev is arguably a perfect representation of this generation of men’s tennis, the original “NextGen”. These players are pure baseliners with limited and uncomfortable net games, but an almost unmatched rally tolerance and huge serves to make up for it. You win by being near unbreakable, and if opponents can get the serve in play they still have to compete with wall-like defense.

Players like Andrey Rublev and Jannik Sinner have struggled so much with Medvedev because when at his best he nullifies all their strengths. The extremely deep return position limits the effects of their serving, his defense from the back of the court can absorb the groundstrokes and get them back all day. 

Rublev, and to an extent Sinner, lack the volleying skill to effectively attack Medvedev; they can’t serve and volley reliably and they lack tools like a drop shot to make Medvedev sweat. It’s forehands and backhands, and Medvedev’s are better. 

And then there’s Carlos Alcaraz. There are a lot of things Alcaraz does incredibly well. His forehand is outrageous, especially when he wants to show you how hard he can hit it. His movement and athleticism are almost unmatched on tour now. He’s a blend of lighting attacks with sensational defence as a bonus. 

But what really sets Alcaraz apart from his contemporaries and the generations that failed before him, beyond just being “better”, is his touch. He regularly serves and volleys and is comfortable at the net. His signature forehand drop shot is so precise and gets so much disguise it’s near unstoppable. Even when he hits it badly, players are forced so deep by Alcaraz’s topspin forehands that sometimes they still can’t get there in time. 

And so, Alcaraz can be a nightmare matchup for Medvedev. The deep return position and commitment to rallying behind the baseline are quite easily punished by the serve and volley of Alcaraz alongside those delightful drop shots. Even with Medvedev’s footspeed, he can’t get to all of them. Medvedev thrived as the ultimate baseline machine, but when someone has a more complete game to punish that he can come unstuck. 

Their first two matches of 2023 were extremely one-sided. Alcaraz won their Indian Wells final 6-3, 6-2 under extremely limited pressure. It was the worst hard-court Medvedev could have played him on; an extremely slow surface that asks him to hit through the court and one he couldn’t slide on. When one player can hit through conditions and the other can’t, there’s usually only one winner. 

The Wimbledon semi-final was equally uncompetitive, again Medvedev struggling with the conditions. His deep return position was just never going to be the winning play on a grass court, and it only allowed Alcaraz to come to the net and use the drop shot even more. His forehand would effortlessly penetrate through the court in rallies and leave Medvedev exposed, unable to slide into shots or set himself properly. Alcaraz could diffuse any tension with a simple drop shot at any point. It ended 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 in under two hours. 

After that, many people thought this matchup was impossible for Medvedev. Having seen him outgunned and with no solution to the issues created by his deep return position, he was widely written off in the matchup. Alcaraz was only going to get better, Medvedev had had his time as the main man already. Now he was back down to earth, and some wondered if he would ever beat Alcaraz again.

I was always a little more optimistic, if only because the two matches before were in the worst possible conditions for Medvedev. A court he can’t hit through and two he can’t slide on. My belief had been and remains that on a more regulation hard-court- i.e., not the gritty conditions of Indian Wells– Medvedev can genuinely challenge and beat Alcaraz. 

Even with optimism, though, I wasn’t expecting Medvedev to end up two sets to love up in a U.S. Open semi-final against Alcaraz, making the defending champion absolutely spiral in panic on Arthur Ashe Stadium. 

*****

Admittedly, the match could have easily started in Alcaraz’s favor. Medvedev was nervous in his early service games, with several double faults. Had Alcaraz converted some early break points, this match might have looked very different. Medvedev was ultimately able to survive in part thanks to being able to aim serves repeatedly at Alcaraz’s forehand and force errors. Alcaraz, for his part, was doing the same on his service games. 

The scoreline was being kept even and on serve in that opening set, but it didn’t feel particularly like Medvedev was close to taking it for large parts. There were a lot of miscued Alcaraz forehands, but never enough to cause genuine problems. Alcaraz was still comfortably relying on his net play to bail him out of trouble if things ever got even vaguely dangerous for him. Medvedev’s return was unthreatening for most of the set. 

But he managed to get himself into a tiebreak. Having finally found rhythm on his serve, he wasn’t under threat so often and was beginning to make inroads on return. His speed and anticipation carried him to more of those drop volleys. He was finding a way to take Alcaraz out of his comfort zone, and when his own serve was becoming impenetrable it was the winning recipe.

So, Medvedev took the first set in the tiebreak. And then Alcaraz imploded. I can only assume that the panic set in because he was being pushed by a player he previously had, or thought he had, completely worked out. Now, though, Medvedev was a new prospect. Alcaraz couldn’t just use the drop shot as a get-out-of-jail-free card anymore. A player he was so comfortably beating on his own terms previously was now matching him and beating him, and it unsettled the Spaniard deeply.

The errors began to fly. Alcaraz seemed desperate to up the intensity but was misfiring frequently. In his efforts to regain control, he slowed down the points, but that simply played into the hands of Medvedev, the metronomic baseline king. When Alcaraz did attack, Medvedev came up with mind-boggling retrievals, like a sliding backhand slice pass to break for 5-1. The second set was as comfortable as it gets in a grand slam semi-final against the world number one. 

Of course, I don’t think any of us expected Alcaraz to just give in there and then. He is far too good — and proud — for that. He went off court after that 6-1 set to regroup as you might expect, then came out at the start of the third raring to go again. It felt like he’d now struck the right temperament and found his groove again; intensity but without the panic, shots that weren’t going to miss. He started flaying forehand passing shots by Medvedev, securing an early break and not looking back.

I think the feeling among those watching, beyond the expectation of an Alcaraz improvement, was a lack of trust in Daniil Medvedev. A certain legendary comeback from two sets to love down by Rafael Nadal against the Russian– a loss that demoralised and derailed the majority of his 2022 season–was looming over him. And when Alcaraz had break points at the start of the fourth, I thought we were looking at a sequel. 

But then Medvedev managed to hold, hanging on to some momentum. I do wonder what might have happened had Alcaraz broken and taken control of that set, taking another lead and beginning to set serious doubt into the mind of Daniil Medvedev. In retrospect, it’s hard not to see it as a major sliding doors moment in that semi-final. 

Serving 2-3 down, Alcaraz found himself unable to convert a game point and faced endless deuces. Medvedev had found his groove on the return, cranking extreme angles even from his remote court positioning and Alcaraz was leaking uncharacteristic errors again. With every deuce point Alcaraz won, it felt like he had escaped the danger. But each time Medvedev pegged him back, and you just felt there was something there for him.

With a second break point, he did, with a stunning cross court backhand return that Alcaraz couldn’t get over the net on his approach. Alcaraz’s tried-and-true serve and volley tactic had been foiled by Medvedev’s lasered returns. 

The 4-2 game from Medvedev was perfection. Huge serves rattled down, stopping Alcaraz getting any momentum and immediately the defending champion was 5-2 down. It was a masterclass from Medvedev, playing extremely quickly and efficiently…until it came to serving it out. 

Medvedev’s first serve deserted him in the final game. The lack of first serves had been an issue at various points in the match, and all summer, frankly, because it consistently led to two outcomes: a) an aggressive second serve return from Alcaraz putting him on the backfoot, or b) a double fault. He was regularly hitting 120 mph second serves to stop Alcaraz gaining any advantage.

Medvedev served multiple double faults in the final game and hardly found a first serve to relieve any pressure. He was 15-40 down. After all that work to break the Alcaraz serve, to stave off the comeback and to see out the match, he was close to losing his win and handing momentum back to him. 

Alcaraz was unbelievably close to closing out the comeback, too. Medvedev hit a rushed forehand that landed two millimeters inside the court which Alcaraz then blasted long. With the chance wasted, he looked down at the court and the edge of the line, shocked an out call hadn’t come. The margins in tennis do not get much finer than that. 

While Medvedev was extremely clutch in seeing out the game despite his serving struggles, Alcaraz really let him off the hook at times. He hit some poor errors to let Medvedev escape, including a regulation crosscourt forehand error on another break point, and while credit should obviously go to Medvedev for finding a way to get over the line, Alcaraz had many second serves to look at but just did not punish some of them like he’s become expected to do.

But regardless of a bad final return game from Alcaraz, Medvedev thoroughly deserved this win. After his early wobble in the first set, he cruised through his service games and managed to get more joy on return. Put him on a suitable hard court and he will thrive. 

He ran down drop shots from Alcaraz all evening- it was quite stunning to watch. I really expected him to begin to fatigue in the latter stages of that fourth set. He certainly looked dishevelled and sweaty at times after sliding up to the net for yet another drop shot, but he never gassed out. 

Medvedev’s problem in Indian Wells and Wimbledon was that he had no response to the serve and volley. At times tonight he lacked those answers still; Alcaraz got his fair share of points won by pulling Medvedev out of position on return and laying a simple volley into the middle of the court that was unreachable. 

But today, Medvedev’s game and the surface allowed him to find answers far more than he had at any point before. He could hit through the court – his forehand, typically a weakness against the highest level of opposition, was superb. He maintained that deep return position while finding angles sharp enough to foil Alcaraz’s net rushes, and he consistently answered the Alcaraz drop shot. He fully deserved this win in what was arguably one of the most impressive performances of his career. 

Alcaraz will have a lot of regrets. I think he played quite poorly at various points, especially in the second set. I was quite alarmed to see him spiral so badly, because I’ve just never seen anyone put that kind of pressure on him and force such a loose performance. Even in his difficult moments against Djokovic, it’s been more about being outplayed than losing his head like this. 

I think Medvedev’s court coverage and return rocked him. It’s not just the dominance he’s had over Medvedev in their matches this year, it’s the fact that he wasn’t able to be fully confident and reliant on his favorite play: the drop shot. It got punished, it was consistently retrieved, and winning was going to require a level of perfection that Alcaraz wasn’t able to offer. 

It’s an important lesson for him, I feel. Just because he’s the next great player doesn’t mean he’s going to get everything easy. Novak Djokovic isn’t the only man who can challenge him, and he isn’t the only thing that Alcaraz should be thinking about. Alcaraz frankly embarrassed Medvedev on two of the biggest stages in the sport, that’s going to put a lot of motivation in the mind of the Russian to right those wrongs and win. Medvedev is more than just the other guy behind the top two. 

Medvedev has relished the role of gatecrasher at times. Two years ago, here he stopped Novak Djokovic winning the calendar slam by beating him in a convincing and comfortable straight sets final. Four years ago, he found himself two sets to love down to Rafael Nadal but battled it deep into a fifth set in arguably the match of the year – he just did not go away. And at the start of last year, he had Nadal on the ropes in Australia, on the cusp of getting a second grand slam title and another swift straight sets win over a member of the Big Three. 

Sure, he didn’t see out either of those matches against Nadal — that’s a difficult matchup for him I wish I had time to discuss the technical intricacies of — but he got damn close. Upon breaking back when Nadal served for the title for the first-time in Melbourne, he waved his arms, urging the crowd to make some noise. No one in that stadium was cheering for Daniil Medvedev, but he was going to relish crashing their Nadal party as long as he could. 

He did the same here tonight, trying to pump up a crowd that was entirely behind Carlos Alcaraz, giving them a thumbs up in the final game after the repeated applause for every fault he hit. Daniil Medvedev does not care whether you like him, he does not care if you want to watch Carlos Alcaraz get to another final or witness the history of Djokovic achieving the calendar slam. Throw all you like at him, he will take it, and he will ultimately see himself over the finish line. 

No one was talking about Medvedev as a contender for this title coming into this U.S. Open. He’s had plenty of success this year but mainly in swings he has previously struggled in, the Sunshine Double, Rome, and Wimbledon. He had an uncharacteristically poor North American summer, losing to Alex de Minaur in Toronto and Alexander Zverev in Cincinnati. 

Everyone expected another Djokovic-Alcaraz final, everyone wanted another Djokovic-Alcaraz final. I think many of us expected Medvedev to make the semis but like at Wimbledon to fall quite tamely to Alcaraz. Novak and Carlos were the real stars of the ATP and were far ahead of anyone else, and this matchup was increasingly being thought of as a lost cause for Medvedev. 

I don’t think this means Medvedev will suddenly cope with Alcaraz easily. It still took a lot of work to get the win and had multiple sliding doors moments- break points early in the first set for Alcaraz, break points early in the fourth and in that final game. 

But regardless, he has a huge and fully deserved win to his name over the sensational Carlos Alcaraz in New York. This is Medvedev’s best court and his best tournament. He now has a fifth grand slam final (all five will have been against Nadal or Djokovic) and a third at the US Open. That is nothing to scoff at.

On Sunday, he will have the chance to become the ultimate gatecrasher again and take the title from Djokovic, beating the world number one and two back-to-back in a tournament where they were sucking up all the oxygen. 

But regardless of what Medvedev does against Djokovic, he has the win he was after. He’s made his statement to those who doubted whether he could still hang with the very best in men’s tennis. Carlos Alcaraz is a bad matchup for Daniil Medvedev, but Medvedev showed us that it’s not an impossible one.

The Adaptability of Coco Gauff

I first watched Coco Gauff in the summer of 2019, when my family and I went back to New Zealand (we’d lived there for five years in the 2000s) for a couple weeks. Wimbledon was squarely in the middle of our trip, and I stayed up late or got up in the wee hours to watch every day, my tennis fandom at its peak at that point. I remember watching Novak Djokovic’s first round match, and how his title defense began with a double fault against Philipp Kohlschreiber. I remember Hubert Hurkacz, then unknown to me, hitting a diving volley winner against Djokovic en route to winning the second set. But my clearest memories of Wimbledon that year came from watching a 15-year-old Gauff play Polona Hercog in the third round.

Gauff had already made headlines by beating Venus Williams in the first round. She’d come through qualifying, too, straight-setting the top seed before rolling over two more opponents to qualify for the main draw. Making the third round of Wimbledon was already a remarkable accomplishment for a 15-year-old, so when Hercog took a 6-3, 5-2 lead over Gauff, I was sad but not disappointed or surprised.

Then, down match point, Gauff produced a sick backhand slice down the line, loaded with sidespin, that leapt away from Hercog for a winner. I had seen great match point saves before, but rarely such a unique, audacious shot under that level of pressure. (And Gauff was only 15?!) It got Gauff back into the match, she won the second-set tiebreak with a swing volley winner after an agonizingly patient rally, and when she won the third 7-5, the kid had become a star.

If you go back and watch the highlights of the Hercog match, you can see many of the qualities that just earned Gauff the 2023 U.S. Open title. Serving at 5-3, 30-15 in the second set of that match, two points from the win, Hercog unleashed a vicious forehand down the line, punctuating it with the kind of extended grunt that implied she was sure the ball wasn’t coming back. Gauff ran it down, painted the baseline with her next shot, then cleaned up with an inside-out forehand winner. It was that same belief-defying defense that frustrated the Australian Open champion and newly-minted world number one Aryna Sabalenka into forehand error after forehand error today.

Still, what made the biggest difference for Gauff in winning this title was her willingness to improve. Her forehand broke down for much of the last two years, broke down terribly, to the point that she’d openly acknowledge it was an obvious problem. She made the Roland-Garros final in 2022, but after Iga Świątek destroyed her in that final, the forehand just didn’t look sufficiently stable for Gauff to win a major.

Gauff apparently agreed. After some frustrating results in 2023, she hired Brad Gilbert, who had a profound effect on not just Andre Agassi’s career, but his life. They started working on the positioning for the forehand instead of taking on the insurmountable task of radically changing the stroke. Gauff started trusting her forehand rather than trying to protect it, and positive changes were swift and significant. Gauff beat Świątek, who had run over her in all seven of their previous matches, in Cincinnati this year. She followed it up with a win over Karolina Muchova to secure the title.

And Gauff’s forehand was a legitimate asset at times in the U.S. Open final, not just a liability to be overcome. At 5-3 in the second set, Gauff began her service game by trading forehands with Sabalenka, the owner of one of the most brutally powerful drives in the world. It should have been a mismatch. Instead, Gauff changed direction first and fired a winner down the line. Sabalenka was more rattled by Gauff’s defense than anything else, but the young American’s forehand meant that Sabalenka didn’t have a safe zone to aim at when she was rattled. By the end of the match, Gauff looked infinitely calmer than her opponent, despite being the one without a major title and the younger player by six years.

*****

Gauff is a big reason why the WTA is so fun right now. Between the top six players — Sabalenka, Świątek, Gauff, Jessica Pegula (with whom Gauff often plays doubles), Elena Rybakina, and Ons Jabeur — it feels like anyone can beat anyone. Świątek held the number one ranking, but Sabalenka and Rybakina proved to have her measure this year. When it seemed that those two had separated themselves, Jabeur toppled both at Wimbledon. Now Gauff has beaten Świątek and Sabalenka in huge recent matches. Sabalenka has just taken over the #1 ranking, but that spot is very much up for grabs.

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the state of the WTA. The average age among the top six is under 25. With any luck, they’ll be playing each other for years to come. The ATP has fewer standouts; Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz had separated themselves from the rest of the pack by so much that when Daniil Medvedev beat Alcaraz last night, many were shocked. The best two or three matchups on the ATP are incredible, but without them, the technical and mental flaws in the rest of the field are sadly apparent. The WTA is far deeper and more competitive.

Even if the current top six on the WTA don’t last long, it seems overwhelmingly likely that Gauff will be a fixture at the top for years on end. Her breakout having come so early in her life and career has worked wonderfully to her advantage; her maturity at 19 goes way beyond what many of her peers boast at 29. What will Gauff’s level be in two years? Five years? I can’t wait for her to show us.

Novak Djokovic: Aged But Not Yet Grey

The gap between generations appears to be a sort of lonely place, one where your greatest peers have become nostalgia pops. You outlive, refuse to die, adapt alongside the changing of the guard to prolong it. The youth try to take control with a snap of their fingers but you burn the prints from the skin of their hands. The problem for them, of course, is that you’re just that bit better still and so why would you go? 

Novak Djokovic needs this, doesn’t he? This pushback, that feeling of something not going his way. There’s a demeanor about him when it happens, a hint of oh-just-you-wait-and-see. It’s an entirely different way of walking, of talking. It’s like he sees himself a martyr on sacrificial stand, an offering. A temptation to just try a little bit because hey, who knows? Maybe? The thing is that nothing ever really gets done off the back of a maybe.

He hooks himself up to the mains, shoulder barges his way into a higher gear. Riling himself full-body-screaming style, anger and rage and confidence hand-in-hand-in-hand, any sense of injustice or bad calls from umpires, line-judges, questionable play from opponents is used, regardless if he’s in the right or wrong. If he perceives himself to be hard done by, in any tiny way slighted, that’s all that matters, it’s time to go, it’s time to move heaven and earth to chase the change of momentum. So frequently, those around him can do nothing. Not the crowd cheering loudly for whoever he’s playing, nor his rivals growing weary on the other side, nor any devil or god keen to make their influences felt. This is a Djokovic thing. Claim you, rip your dog-tag from about your neck, time and again, all of this to remind you that yeah, he’s got you. Oh, he’s got you good. Take it from his cold dead hands if you can but you can’t and you know it.  

You wonder if he hasn’t gone mad from the undying nature of it all long ago and what you’re watching now is simply the result of it. That crazy untouchable. Cornflakes for breakfast, the U.S. Open for lunch, therapy for dinner. The void seems to go on forever and through it comes Djokovic, this liquid man, aged but not yet greyed, tired, not yet finished. Having spent the majority of his career teaching us all to fear the man in distant third place, he now finds himself in front. Naturally, this is all he’s ever dreamed of but this writer will admit that they did wonder if achieving his worldly objectives might leave a man a bit directionless.

So easy it is to find yourself without motivation, Djokovic has instead gone hunting for it anywhere he can find. Having called his shots and made them in terms of tennis history, he now finds himself tangled in a battle with time, coming from out of the fogs of the future with the physical faces of youth. Chief amongst these is Carlos Alcaraz, a 20 year old megastar from Spain, donning sleeveless kits that must have Djokovic wondering if he’s destined to be forever haunted by ghosts of his past. Then we have his opponent from the U.S. Open semifinal, Ben Shelton. Confidence that promises titles with just a bit more work, he’ll cause headaches in the future. Djokovic loves it though, you can tell. He values the presence of playing talents that were where he once was, way back before he climbed through the space between really very fucking good and godly. They’ll all remember this as well, in years to come when they’re reflecting back on their own careers, if they’ve won slams or if they haven’t, been world number one or just missed out, they’ll remember when Novak Djokovic read them the riot act out in public, told them they’re not yet fully there when they felt like they should be. That’s what keeps him going this late on, that very specific knowledge of how unlikely it is that he made it in the first place and how very unwilling he is to let it all go.

As he prepares for yet another major final tomorrow, it’s becoming ever clearer that when all is said and done, the lesson of Novak Djokovic’s career will be to get through the rough times. Any way you can, keep it beating, that damn heart of yours. It won’t be pretty because when is it ever? Cry your tears. Wipe the snot. Know your worth. But hang on in there. It gets better but you need to be here to make it happen. So fuck around and find out. Go find stuff to be mad about and be proud of doing it. Ruffle some feathers, cause a scene, be really fucking annoying if you have to be. Get them talking and then do it all over again. And so to the people searching for the reasons behind Djokovic’s behaviors, you need look no further than the fact that he likes kicking rocks. Some of them bounce and land awkwardly but he’s going to keep right on kicking them. And when the day comes when the roots have taken hold and the landscape hasn’t changed in far too long, remember the man that was willing to keep changing it.

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Star Power

John McEnroe said that Ben Shelton had the “proverbial puncher’s chance” before his U.S. Open semifinal with Novak Djokovic. It was an understandable thing to say. Though Shelton is an explosive, powerful player, at just 20 years of age, matching Djokovic — a 23-time major champion who is likely the best player of all time — is absurdly difficult.

But McEnroe’s assessment didn’t quite work for me. Having a puncher’s chance is a phrase typically used in boxing. It means that even if you’re at a severe skill disadvantage, there’s still a remote possibility that you can land a perfect punch that floors your opponent. Alas, if you’re not capable of hitting a shot powerful enough to literally concuss the man on the other side of the net, the same phenomenon does not apply in tennis. Boxers can score victory with one heavy swing of the arm, tennis players need to lace a tiny ball onto the outside of a thin line for hours on end. Best-of-five, in particular, is simply too long to accurately sustain a risky game style. Pulling an upset as big as Shelton over Djokovic takes hours of improbable success, not a single defining moment. It might happen in the first game, it might happen in the third set, but that skill gap is going to make itself apparent.

In Djokovic-Shelton, Novak separated himself in the sixth game. Shelton had served some missiles in his first two service holds, but at 2-3, the serves came back, the errors flowed, and Djokovic broke easily. He followed it with a comfortable hold, and though Shelton saved four set points and had a chance to break back at 3-5, it already felt like Djokovic was impervious to Shelton’s weapons. The three-time U.S. Open champion won 16 straight service points in the opening set. He rarely bothered with groundstrokes intended to end the point — he was content to sit back, rally to the middle third of the court, and let Shelton misfire.

Shelton has a level of confidence that frequently borders on cockiness. That confidence would be mind-boggling to see in anyone, much less a 20-year-old, and it’s the main thing that differentiated Shelton from Djokovic’s typical victim in a major. Most Djokovic opponents put on a brave face pre-match, but it’s clear within a game or two that they don’t have any genuine belief that they can win. Shelton’s belief seemed to last into the second set. Maybe it was the fact that Djokovic was defending at his typically outstanding level, winning a number of highlight-reel points, or maybe it was that Shelton was misfiring frequently, but the belief seemed to slowly ooze out of the young American as well. At 1-2 in the third set, Shelton played fantastic defense and duped Djokovic with a counter-drop shot winner, marking his best effort of the match to that stage. When he celebrated with a standard fist-pump rather than the unique, demonstrative reactions that had become expected of him over the fortnight, I thought he was done.

Then, late in the third set, the energy returned. Djokovic played a loose service game. Shelton channeled Rafael Nadal with a laser of a banana forehand onto the sideline. He blasted a 145 mph serve to hold. The celebrations were out in force, the fans were roaring themselves hoarse, and Djokovic was subdued on the other side of the net.

The movie ended, of course. Djokovic stopped the slide at set point down, staying alive with a big serve, and eventually closed the match out in a tiebreak. All things considered, Djokovic didn’t show Shelton’s game much respect during the three sets. He mostly hit safe shots. For all Shelton’s serve is talked about (remember those 149 mph bombs earlier in the tournament), he was never very difficult for Djokovic to break. Djokovic didn’t even compliment Shelton’s tennis after the match. Novak hit a few tough volleys, but for the most part, it looked like he was never physically or technically tested.

So, in a weird way, Djokovic mocking Shelton’s celebration (which, whether you liked it or not — and I did — was objectively petty) might be the biggest compliment he paid the young American all night. It implied that he had been bothered by Shelton’s presence, if not his forehands and backhands. Djokovic spent most of the third set not reacting to any points, even his own brilliant shots, as if not wanting to give the heavily pro-Shelton crowd an antagonist to root against even more strongly. He even seemed tight at times, despite never being remotely in danger of losing the match. Shelton is a star, and while not every match he plays will be in front of a crowd this invested, he’ll have fans wherever he goes.

*****

I’ll admit that I don’t really like the way stardom works in sports. The goal in sports is to win, that’s what athletes train their whole lives to do, so when an athlete rockets to stardom because of their looks or nationality — or in Shelton’s case, his likability and charisma — I feel bad for other players who haven’t done anything wrong, yet don’t get the same recognition. Markéta Vondroušová is not a star despite winning Wimbledon. Iga Świątek has gotten some criticism for her personality because, in the eyes of some, she’s not marketable enough despite winning four major titles. It’s not fair.

That said, it’s hard for me to argue that Shelton’s acclaim isn’t deserved. I’m not sure that his tennis will ever be at a major-winning level — though it certainly could be, he’s just 20 — but he’s managed to share his confidence with crowds in a way I’ve rarely seen in tennis. He has enjoyed overwhelming crowd support in his entire run here, as well as at the Australian Open. His energy even quieted his equally charismatic countryman, Frances Tiafoe, during their quarterfinal. Much is made of Djokovic’s dislike of crowds that root against him, but both his mid-match tightness and his celebration after are among the biggest actual signs of crowd-related distress that I can recall from Djokovic.

People love Shelton, which is as good a reason as any for him to be a star. He has detractors, sure, but they’ll only increase the size of the discussions about him. What I learned from this tournament — and what I hope Shelton learned too — is that Ben Shelton, at 20, managed to generate enough of an on-court presence to bother the greatest player of all time more than a little bit. And, even if you don’t think much of Shelton’s game, I’d say that means he had a pretty fantastic U.S. Open.

Can Carlos Alcaraz Defend the U.S. Open Title?

September 9, 2008 — Roger Federer screamed in victory as he collapsed to the New York hard court. Andy Murray had just bunted a defensive forehand into the net, giving Federer his fifth consecutive U.S. Open title. Federer’s campaign for the trophy in 2008 was arduous, featuring a five-setter in the fourth round and a couple other tight matches. But for the most part, he had been imperious at the U.S. Open since 2004, scarcely breaking a sweat en route to his next major trophy. 

Since Federer beat Murray, there have been nine different first-time U.S. Open champions on the ATP, including the 2008 runner-up. Two of them, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, have won multiple titles in New York. But even they have never won the tournament two years in a row, which seems notable, especially against the sheen of Federer’s five-year hold on the tournament.

Why has no man been able to defend the U.S. Open since 2008?

For starters, the field has gotten stronger. Juan Martín del Potro won the title in 2009, and to this day is the only player besides Djokovic to beat both Federer and Nadal in a major. Nadal completed his evolution into an all-surface player in 2010, winning his first U.S. Open in September that year and going on to win the tournament more times than any ATP player in the following decade. Djokovic, who has a near-airtight case for being the greatest hard court player ever, stopped Nadal from defending the title in 2011 and won the tournament again in 2015 and 2018. Then Murray beat Djokovic in five sets to win the 2012 final, snuffing out Djokovic’s title defense. 

The legends of the men’s game aren’t the only obstacle. Everyone else, perennially blocked from winning the Australian Open, Roland-Garros and Wimbledon by some combination of the Big Four, tends to play with an extra dose of vigor at the U.S. Open. Marin Čilić swept everyone aside in 2014, seemingly blessed with a random bolt of lightning from the tennis gods. Stan Wawrinka caught fire in 2016. Frances Tiafoe took out Nadal just last year. Ben Shelton is having the tournament of his life right now after failing to win back-to-back tour level matches for most of the year. Though he wasn’t defending the title in 2021, Djokovic was worn down by a brutal draw as virtually all his opponents played their best tennis, allowing a brilliant Daniil Medvedev to feast on his exhausted frame in the final. 

Then there’s the fact that the U.S. Open comes near the end of the calendar. Defending champions are sometimes worn thin, exhausted from the seven-month grind between the start of the season and the U.S. Open. Injury kept Nadal from even attempting to defend his title in 2014, and took out Djokovic mid-title defense in 2019. 

Rivals, the field, and injury have proven a combination that no man since Federer has been able to conquer for two years in a row. But there’s good reason to think that recent Wimbledon champion, world number one, and defending U.S. Open champion Carlos Alcaraz will be the one to break the duck. 

As mentioned, Alcaraz won the last U.S. Open, so if he can follow it up this year, the streak is over — though at just 20 years of age, he should have plenty more opportunities in the future. But let’s look at why he has a good chance to defend the title right now. First, he’s the best player in the world. Though he’ll soon lose the #1 ranking to Djokovic and narrowly lost to the Serb in the Cincinnati final, the five-set win over the 23-time major champion in July’s Wimbledon final more than makes up for that. Djokovic had not lost at Wimbledon in six years, which speaks volumes about how well Alcaraz had to play. Djokovic is an extremely close second, but after those two, the rest of the field is miles behind.

Djokovic may have won this match, but Alcaraz had chances to put it away in straights and ended up pushing the Serb to the absolute brink.

Then there’s his endurance. At last year’s U.S. Open, Alcaraz had to play three straight five-setters — he was match point down in the most difficult match among the trio, the quarterfinal with Jannik Sinner — before upending Casper Ruud in four to win the final. Alcaraz’s title win was precarious, but there’s an argument that the difficult road will serve him well in the future. Having won so many attritional matches in a row, Alcaraz is unlikely to get tired and lose the way the far older Djokovic, whose recovery abilities have faded slightly since his physical prime of the early-mid 2010s, did in the 2021 final. Not only that, but the young Spaniard is a significantly better player now than he was at last year’s Open. Alcaraz’s coach Juan Carlos Ferrero said then that his charge was only at 60% of his abilities, and even if that turns out to be an exaggeration, Alcaraz’s fierce rate of improvement isn’t slowing yet. Even if his last three opponents peak, Alcaraz could rip through them more easily than he did the end of his 2022 draw.

Alcaraz may also be catching the field, which is certainly weaker now than it was in the early 2010s (what with the Big Four firing on all cylinders), at the right time. Djokovic is unquestionably a massive threat — but he’s also clearly a lesser opponent at the U.S. Open than the Australian, having won three titles in New York to his 10 Down Under. And Alcaraz has most of the rest of his competition figured out. He beat Medvedev so badly at Wimbledon that some are questioning if it’s even possible for the 2021 U.S. Open champion to beat Alcaraz in the future. Alexander Zverev, Alcaraz’s quarterfinal opponent tonight, may have beaten him at Roland-Garros last year, but has gotten demolished in their most recent meeting and is coming off a marathon with Sinner.

Winning the U.S. Open is still going to be a battle, for Alcaraz or any eventual winner. The young Spaniard may be indefatigable over the course of a match or even a tournament, but no one is immune to the calendar’s long, slow grind. Djokovic has the confidence from the Cincinnati final and will still be out for revenge from Wimbledon. Alcaraz could pick up an injury like the one that forced him out of the Australian Open this year. Zverev or Medvedev could slowly wear Alcaraz out with their spindly defense, weaking him for Djokovic to finish off even if they don’t beat him themselves.

Right now, though, Alcaraz is my pick to win the U.S. Open for a second straight time. While there’s good reason that no one has been able to defend the title since Federer, the enormity of Alcaraz’s skill makes one think the young Spaniard will break the drought at some point, whether he wins the tournament this year or not. It’s just a matter of when. 

The Burden

By Tom Jones

As I start this piece, it is 5am UK time on September 4th. Iga Świątek’s U.S. Open title defense has just lost to Jelena Ostapenko in the 4th round. She is no longer the world number one. Aryna Sabalenka will take that spot after the U.S. Open, ending a 75-week run at the top for Świątek, who leaves the Arthur Ashe Stadium without her crown for the first time since April 2022 when Ash Barty suddenly retired from the sport. 

This has been coming for a long while. Since Sabalenka won the Madrid final over Świątek, the margins have been extremely tight in the rankings and Sabalenka has had opportunities at slams to take the number one ranking from her. At Roland-Garros, Świątek was due to lose number one if she lost her semifinal. Sabalenka was one win away at Wimbledon, and had she made the final (which she was two games away from doing) she would be the number one already. 

At this U.S. Open, Świątek needed to get one more win than Sabalenka to stay at the top. Considering Sabalenka’s remarkable consistency in slams this year, that would likely have meant making the final or winning the title. Imagine that. You’ve got to make it to the tail end of a grand slam, the last of the year, just to maintain a slight lead at number one. 

Sabalenka has been on Świątek’s heels from the word go in 2023. She’s led the WTA Race (points accumulated from the start of the year) since she won Adelaide way back at the start of the year. Let’s make it very clear: Sabalenka deserves this. Their tour results have been even for most of the year, but Sabalenka has been more consistent in slams — the rankings reward that. She grinded Świątek down over the course of eight months, matching her pound for pound and Świątek finally came up short right at the finish line against a player who had beaten her before. 

With all that said, last night’s match was disappointing for Świątek and highlights some of the key reasons she’s losing the ranking. She played an extremely clean opening set against Ostapenko to start. She served very well, mainly going for body serves but throwing in serves out wide to great effect as a switch up that caught Ostapenko out and got multiple aces. She was matching Ostapenko in rallies when they happened and was very rarely being left flat footed with a winner flying past her. That can happen with Ostapenko — that’s her whole thing — but it mainly happens if and when you give her the balls to let rip on. Świątek was controlling points far more and when the winners did fly, she didn’t let it get to her; she did well to accept that it wasn’t always on her racket. 

Really, she could and arguably should have closed this match out in two sets. It was two poor service games that cost her the set and that will not come as a shock to anyone who has watched her matches in the past few months. 

Her serve has been an issue for a long time. Many people point to the second serve as the problem; it is vulnerable as she often goes for a slow kick serve. On her favored clay it works a treat and gets her out of trouble often. On hard or grass courts though, that serve just sits up at the perfect angle, not actually kicking off the surface to force an awkward return. Ostapenko was teeing off on some of those second serves when put in the middle of the box at 80 mph. A lot of big hitters on tour have been, too.

I think because the return winners are more eye-catching, people think the second serve is the issue. But Świątek wins plenty of second serve points — you don’t stay at number one for such a long spell with that obvious a weakness. People know to attack it, they just can’t usually do it with enough success. The real issue is first serve, primarily her low first serve percentage in big moments. In the service games Świątek lost to Ostapenko, she was not consistently making first serves which put her under so much more pressure. Giving opponents consistent looks at the second serve only magnifies that pressure.

When Świątek has needed her serve the most in big matches this season — the Madrid final against Sabalenka, the Rome quarterfinal against Rybakina, this match — it has deserted her. In the first set of the Madrid final she was rolling first serves in because she was struggling to land them at all. In Rome, she led a set and a break before failure to land first serves cost her that lead and eventually the second set. Last night, she allowed Ostapenko essentially to just focus on her own service games, having gifted her the break. Ostapenko served phenomenally all match and particularly in that second set. Świątek offered the opportunities, Ostapenko wasn’t going to give them up. 

And that’s been the issue in Świątek’s losses a lot of this season, gifting breaks that she won’t get back. In a lot of matches over the summer, there has been, consistently, at least one bad service game every set. And it’s not just that it’s first serve misses that lead to return winners, it’s strings of loose unforced errors from nowhere. I’ve seen more forehands into the net (that in any other situation clear it cleanly) than I can count. That’s the concern: She’s so consistently offered the chances. That will catch up to you in moments like the Ostapenko match, when there’s a lot on the line. 

That serving problem is as much a technical issue as a mental one. The classic tennis mantra is “bad technique breaks down under pressure”. Well, Iga Świątek’s serve is consistently breaking down under pressure. In these matches against bigger servers, I think she feels the pressure on her own service games far more. She doesn’t have as much margin for error; she can’t reliably break the serve of a Sabalenka or a Rybakina, they can just take the racket out of your hands. In the pressure moments today, she faltered. At 3-4 in the second set, Ostapenko broke to serve for the set, Świątek’s serve deserting her once again. 3-4 has been a bit of a cursed game for her: it was 3-4 in the third of both the Ostrava(!!!) and Madrid finals that she was broken to let her opponent serve for the match. In these tight moments, these clutch moments, she keeps coming up short. 

The serve has improved in areas, however. She’s hitting more aces and getting more variety in her serves- those wide serves we saw against Ostapenko were not in her game a few months ago. Technical changes in tennis are slow and under huge scrutiny; they will take a lot of time to bed in properly. She can serve well in some matches and moments, but still cannot do so regularly when the serve is under pressure for extended periods. Even the world number one has improvements to make. 

So, Świątek could have won the in two, but didn’t. Okay, whatever, we went to a third and final set. This pair’s last match went to a final set tiebreak in Dubai 2022, so it wasn’t over yet. But, uh…it was over. Alarmingly quickly. Świątek had the trademark poor service game to start the third set. Ostapenko rattled through her service game again, slamming aces down the middle with pinpoint precision. Świątek’s returning timing was way off — maybe a mix of fatigue, frustration, and quality from her opponent. And then, 30-0 up in the third game, Świątek began to collapse. A second break. Another easy hold with poor returning. Świątek was spiraling, her title defense on the verge of collapse. And another break came. 5-0. 

Some people were extremely critical of that final set. I understand why; watching a world number one, with so much on the line, fall apart so dramatically is startling. I have had rash moments calling out her attitude towards the end of losses. I had no qualms about the loss last night, though. Ostapenko did not let up for three sets; she continued to find the court with almost every shot and kept the pressure up the entire time. She often will have spells of winners and then spells of dumping forehand returns into the net. Today, she was pretty much perfect from ball one. That takes its toll. 

For me, that last set wasn’t pathetic or giving up the fight. It was a player hitting the wall. In that final set on Arthur Ashe, you could see the burden of 75 weeks at world number one, being relentlessly chased and grinded down by Aryna Sabalenka and Elena Rybakina from the word go, on display. 

Świątek has played more matches than anyone else this season. She must be utterly exhausted and was being asked to dig deep and find a level and a desire within her that frankly only the very greatest players to ever do it probably could have found. Let us not start criticizing a player who has essentially been tasked with jumping through fiery hoops every week to stay at the top for failing once after eight full torturous months. I think many players would have buckled earlier. 

*****

Aryna Sabalenka is the new world number one. It comes as a due reward for a remarkably consistent season. There was the maiden grand slam title in Australia, a first Indian Wells final, another Madrid title beating Świątek in an epic final, a first ever Roland Garros semi-final, another Wimbledon semi-final too. She has found remarkable consistency this year coming off a very dark 2022 struggling with her serve and double faults galore. The turnaround to regain control of that serve is impressive enough, let alone the other staggering achievements. 

I am happy for Sabalenka, and I don’t say that through gritted teeth or just to be polite. It would have been insane to think that after everything she’s done this year, she wouldn’t end up at number one. Imagine how soul crushing that would be; to chase and chase all year, come so unbelievably close but lose out because of a combo of another slam semi-final chokes and the number one rocking up and winning another slam in front of your eyes. I don’t know how she would get up and go again in 2024 if she hadn’t achieved this. 

This is how number ones can fall. They are chased by the pack, pushed as far as they possibly can be by the newest challenger and they finally bow out because they just cannot give any more. It might not seem the most gracious way to lose your status — I know there have been cases where players take it with victory rather than relying on defeat and that probably feels better, but is it a surprising way to go? 

The world number one is a much coveted and desired position, obviously. It’s the pinnacle of the game. It’s what everyone wants more than anything else, but I think the great and curious dichotomy is that once it is achieved, it’s a double-edged sword. The world number one is a burden as much as a joy. There’s nowhere left to climb. Everyone is chasing you. You’re the standard, the one to beat, the scalp everyone is after. That is a heavy burden to carry, and it is one Iga Świątek has felt quite acutely in 2023. 

She was very open about playing not to lose at the Australian Open this year, going out in the fourth round there too to Elena Rybakina. At the start of 2023 she felt the burden, I am not sure if she still felt it here, but I can’t help but feel it was a factor in the end. There is no shame in that. A 22-year-old cannot be expected to carry this forever and not have the weight affect them. 

More than anything, I am so impressed how with how Świątek has responded to the setbacks this year. She was never going to be able to replicate 2022, a year in which she had a 37 match winning streak and won two grand slam titles as well as four WTA 1000s. She played at her absolute peak level for months on end, which was not realistically sustainable. She has still had a wonderful season and achieved brilliant things. She made the final of Madrid for the first time. She made a Wimbledon quarterfinal for the first time and had career-best runs in Canada and Cincinnati with a semifinal at each. Oh, and she defended her Roland-Garros title, the first successful slam title defense on the WTA since Serena Williams at Wimbledon in 2016. Not bad going. That was the big goal for the year and she achieved it. Anything else is a bonus. 

I feel similarly to how I did watching the winning streak end in 2022 to Alizé Cornet at Wimbledon. Realizing in the latter stages of that match the end was here, it was over. I had time to process it as the match went still, and back then, like now, I think you could tell she was hitting the wall. She had nothing left to give and she spiraled. 

I was upset, naturally, as I am now. But it also gives us the chance to properly reflect on the achievements, now that it is a chapter closed and not an ongoing saga, a treadmill of unending high stakes. We can appreciate how insane 75 weeks at world number one in her first stint is: third best only behind Martina Hingis and Steffi Graf (not bad company!). 

We can appreciate how volatile the WTA rankings could have been if Świątek had not defined the position as she did. Ash Barty left the sport suddenly, a clear number one and leader suddenly gone. Świątek began her streak there in unusual circumstances, not winning it, not gaining it through an opponent losing, but inheriting it by the luck of retirement. Oh, how it spurred her on! 

It’s not like all is lost for Świątek, either. I doubt she takes number one back again before the end of the year, that is very much Sabalenka’s honor now, but look at 2024. She didn’t play Miami this year after winning it in 2022. She retired from her quarterfinal in Rome as a two-time defending champion. She hasn’t won any WTA 1000s this year and has fourth-round losses at two of the four slams. She has plenty of room to improve, as mad as that sounds with 8000 points to her name. 

She now also gets the luxury of time off. She has time to recharge, mentally and physically, but also to work on the practice court. When do elite level players get genuine training blocks to work and improve? She knows that she has things to improve, and I’m sure with greater clarity and improvement her mentality woes will end. Just look how much she improved after one week of practice ahead of this U.S. Open. 

Sabalenka, meanwhile, will defend 2500 points immediately come January including her maiden slam. No one defends their maiden slam. She then has an Indian Wells final to back up, a Madrid title and then two grand slam semi-finals in the stretch of five weeks. She will almost certainly lose the #1 ranking much faster than Świątek did.

That’s the beauty and the burden of the tennis tour: the grind never stops. That’s the burden Iga Świątek dealt with so well in the face of adversity this year, and I’m more than certain that Sabalenka will cope with it too. But let’s be clear, Świątek isn’t out of the picture. I don’t think any player will have a huge stint at number one now. The points gaps are too tight, there’s too much to defend for the players at every swing. Świątek raised the standard of the new era, and we get to bask in the glory of it. 

To close, I want to use an iconic tennis quote from Jimmy Connors about being number one. I’m sure you’ve heard a variation of it already. 

“There is only one number one. It’s a lonely spot, but it has got the best view of all.”

I know Iga Świątek has found it lonely atop the WTA. She’s not exactly a personality naturally molded to be a star, but she has worn the crown gracefully and stepped into the void left by Ash Barty better than anyone could have imagined. Aryna Sabalenka, I am sure, will find it a lonely place at times, too. But I hope both women enjoy the view they’ve had while they’re up there, and I hope they’re both contending to rack up the weeks at that prestigious spot for many years to come.

Jeļena Ostapenko: Innocent Violence

We’ve all got that jigsaw. That one that doesn’t quite fit together properly. The pieces are correct but the bigger picture is there somewhere, hidden beneath the broken ridges that fold across each other slightly. It’s a frustration because it SHOULD be fine! The box says 200 pieces and you have that many but still, there’s something not quite right about all this. And then you spot it, there, bent out of shape in the corner, eaten up and shat out by your family dog, crayoned over before that by your little brother, accidentally thrown up across by the “fun” family uncle, is that magical 201st piece. It shouldn’t work because it shouldn’t but it does and so when you slot that final piece in and stand back to admire it and you finally have it at just the right angle and the bird on the branch of the tree outside your window is singing just the right note and your mum has made you your favourite meal for dinner, that’s when you finally get Jeļena Ostapenko.

Of course, you awake the next morning and boom, the piece is gone and the jigsaw is wrong and your dad’s cheating on your mum and the bird has been hit by a car and the dog has shat on the carpet again but none of that matters now because for that brief moment, you saw Ostapenko at her best, a thoughtless nature about her. A rare sight, she seemed free, unburdened. You know you got lucky because Ostapenko isn’t traceable, you can’t follow her as she goes. She’ll come to you only when she’s good and ready and present you with this tennis. If it were logical, it wouldn’t be her.

Her game when it’s like this reminds me of what happens when you give someone a racket for the first time and tell them to try and play. They swing as hard as they can and hope and fail right as she does not. It’s almost childlike in its addicting simplicity. Innocent violence. Bang-bang-bang, there we have it, folks. In theory, a player of Iga Świątek’s creative gusto should be perfectly positioned to unsettle opponents. The problem for her, as we saw in their match at the US Open last night, is that Ostapenko has little respect for thinking tennis. Many have described Świątek as being like a deer in headlights and that’s a touch unfair given the headlights in question were attached to a jet-powered steam-roller. Could she have done more? I mean, maybe, but when you’re wearing the crown and the jester tricks it from your head, there’s not much you can do but accept and applaud.

Clinging to motivation within professional sport is difficult, so quietly easy it is to find yourself without any. I think Ostapenko combats this in the only way she can, by remaining unpredictable to everyone including herself. I can just as easily see her losing in her next match in straightforward fashion as I can her holding the trophy come Saturday and I love that for her and for us. Tennis is wild and so is she, with her attitude and outfits that some call terrible but has me wishing that more players would be willing to be themselves out there.

People will ask what the point of a player like Ostapenko is if she doesn’t back up her wins and I’d answer those people by asking what the point of anything is as we all stand atop this hunk of rock twirling through space on a collision course with god knows what as the ice-caps slowly melt and the sky slowly burns? We’re all just bumbling about trying to find our way and if Ostapenko’s way is sometimes through jagged undergrowth barbed wire fences and sometimes firing cannonballs, so be it.

Job Done: Jelena Ostapenko celebrates after beating Iga Swiatek at the US Open. Image: US Open Youtube Channel

Coco Gauff Is Still Just Getting Started

I think Coco Gauff is going to have a better career than many of us can imagine right now. Though she’s just 19 years old, she rose to prominence a full four years ago by beating Venus Williams at Wimbledon. Her experience and maturity belie her age. When her forehand was falling to pieces for much of this year, concern rose about her odds of winning a major one day. Then she improved the shot significantly in, seemingly, the space of a couple weeks. Given the increased longevity of modern athletes, she may have close to another two decades on tour. What she will accomplish during that time is anyone’s guess.

During Gauff’s fourth-round U.S. Open match against Caroline Wozniacki today, I felt like I was watching two seasoned veterans, despite Wozniacki being 14 years older. Wozniacki is an elite defender, even now, deep into her 30s and after a retirement in 2020. After losing the first set, she continued to doggedly chase down every ball, sometimes finishing the point with a huge backhand, sometimes frustrating Gauff into errors. When she tied the match and then went up a break in the third, she would have had good reason to think she’d be the eventual winner.

And it wasn’t that the 19-year-old didn’t get frustrated, because she did. It was that she clearly never lost belief that she was the better player. Brad Gilbert was incessantly telling her from the stands to hit with more shape; instead, Gauff blasted the hell out of consecutive backhand winners en route to breaking back. She never lost control of the match after that.

Midway through the third set, I realized that I had never really been nervous for Gauff, even when she trailed by a break in the third set. I’m trying to figure out why that is — Wozniacki looked a lot like her old self during the match, and Gauff wasn’t at her best, making 36 unforced errors through the first two sets. What I’ve arrived at is that right now, it seems like Gauff is playing utterly without pressure.

That probably seems an odd thing to say — of course she’s playing with pressure. Even at 19, she is an established star. She is an American playing in New York behind the hopes of an entire crowd. But her game has become imbued with a sense of reliability. There’s the crushing crosscourt backhand, the electric movement, the big serve. The forehand, once among the worst shots on tour, seemed to dip to the baseline when it mattered most while Wozniacki’s would fly long. Despite Wozniacki’s brave performance, even when she was in the ascendancy, her success was at least partially due to Gauff’s lapses. When Coco went on a run, it was because she was imposing her game.

It feels as if Gauff has forgotten how to lose. She won Cincinnati, breaking the duck against Iga Świątek in the semifinals on her eighth try. She has lost a set in three of her four U.S. Open matches so far, yet has come through all of them. Her last loss was a nail-biter to doubles partner Jessica Pegula in Canada; before that, you have to go all the way back to Wimbledon, which already feels like a different era in Gauff’s career, to find her most recent defeat. Świątek is Gauff’s likely quarterfinal opponent. While the world number one would undoubtedly be a favorite in that match, she’s no longer the easy pick.

That Gauff has come so far in so little time is staggering. The magnitude of the win over Świątek in Cincinnati is difficult to exaggerate — in seven tries, Gauff had never even won a set against Iga. But she went into the Cincinnati semifinal armed with a steadier forehand and (somehow) the confidence that she could pull the upset. Now that she has, there’s no obvious barrier between her and the biggest prizes in the sport. In the Roland-Garros final last year, Świątek crushed her, and it was thought at the time that Gauff had no way to win. Though that was on clay, which Świątek will probably rule for the better part of the next decade, the equation has now changed.

Brad Gilbert’s much-discussed influence has no doubt been helpful, but if the coach is to get credit for an idea, the player should always get more for implementing it. Knowing the problem with something without having the intent and the ability to fix it is not particularly helpful. Gauff clearly has both.

Levels to the Game

The U.S. Open’s AI-powered IBM Insights give Laslo Djere a 24% chance of beating Novak Djokovic in the third round of the U.S. Open tonight. This is obviously bullshit. Yes, Djere played Djokovic close in their only previous meeting, winning the first set 6-2 before falling in a pair of tiebreaks. But I could fling any number of stats at you to prove that Djokovic’s chances of losing are essentially negligible. He has not lost in the third round of this tournament since 2006. He has not lost before the fourth round in any major since 2017. He is 20-1 in his last 21 matches at majors, and that one loss was a nail-biter to Carlos Alcaraz, who is ranked just the 37 spots higher than Djere. Djokovic would not lose this match once if he had to play it four times, no matter what the odds tell you.

But the more conclusive reason that Djokovic has no chance of losing tonight is that he is simply on another plane than Djere. You hear a lot that at the top of the rankings in tennis, the difference between the players is more mental than physical or technical. This is mostly bullshit, too. Djokovic’s return of serve is infinitely better than 7th-ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas’s, his forehand is miles clear of #3 Daniil Medvedev’s, his movement could make #9 Taylor Fritz cry, and his firepower is to #13 Alex de Minaur’s as a firework is to a party popper.

Djokovic does have the mental edge as well, of course. Still, that mostly comes into play against the few rivals who, over the course of the last 15-plus years, have been able to match his technical skills on a given day. Most players on tour can’t come close to equaling Djokovic’s mastery of the game — once Novak punches their serve back into play, it’ll become apparent that they can’t hit aggressive backhands consistently, or once he gets them on the run, he’ll expose that they can’t defend. Tonight, Djere will lose because it will become painfully obvious at some point during the match that he can’t possibly match Djokovic in a crucial area. Maybe it’ll be the serve, maybe the movement, maybe the consistency, but it’ll be something. Djere isn’t going to lose to Djokovic because he choked on a big point.

Iga Świątek is on another plane from most, too. Her demolition of Kaja Juvan (her best friend!) today should become instantly legendary, even as far as tennis demolitions go. Świątek won a staggering 50 of the 66 total points played. Winning two-thirds of the points in a match is usually sufficient grounds to shower the loser with pity — I’ve never seen a player win a percentage as absurd as Iga’s 75%. Juvan was completely and utterly screwed from the start.

So clearly we’re dealing with a hierarchy here. Some players are better than others; some players are completely and irrevocably better than others.

Another soundbite tennis people like to throw around is that players truly believe they can be the best in the world at some point. Take Tommy Paul, who clearly believes the sky is the limit for his career. He’s having a great year. He got a profile in New York magazine. Ranked 14th, Australian Open semifinalist, recent conqueror of Carlos Alcaraz. But he’s never going to get to #1 in the world.

It’s nothing against him, it’s just that the task is so monumentally tough. I was at Paul’s Australian Open semifinal against Djokovic, then the top-ranked player on the ATP, and it was a pretty painful watch. Paul clawed back from 1-5 down to 5-5 in the first set, but after that, only managed to win three of the last 17 games of the match. Djokovic would hit repeatedly shots like the return below that had Paul walking to the other side of the court in defeat before the point was over, shots that Paul just wasn’t physically capable of. To be clear, getting crushed by Djokovic isn’t a death knell for your hopes of winning a major. But to get crushed by him when you’re already fully developed and reasonably experienced on tour might be.

Here’s my theory: A player’s undying belief that they can one day be ranked #1 in the world is more productive in blunting the psychological damage of a loss than in actually helping them get to #1. It’s impossible for most players to reach #1, really. Lest it seem like I singled Paul out, Andrey Rublev, Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe, Karen Khachanov, and Alex de Minaur, who are all ranked higher than Paul, are never getting to #1 either. (And that’s a conservative list.) Everyone knows fairly early on whether or not a player is or is capable of living on that first tier. Alcaraz was immediately and blindingly special, as were the Williams sisters and the Big Three, as was Świątek when she won Roland-Garros at 19. Some players need a little longer to round out their games — Stan Wawrinka didn’t hit his prime until he was 28 (though even he never attained the top ranking) — but for the most part, it doesn’t take much to differentiate players between #1 material and everyone else.

And I think that the players know this too, in a place deep and dark that their delusional belief in themselves covers as best it can. There is no way Paul and de Minaur, who Djokovic pummeled in Melbourne even more viciously than he did Paul, could have taken beatings that brutal to Djokovic and come out of it thinking they could beat him the next time. The professional tennis tour isn’t a living ecosystem of superpredators who can all eat each other; the Challenger Tour may be like that. The two or three players who marry hard work with genetic luck feast while everyone else fights for scraps.

Think about how hard that must be — Paul essentially said in his presser after the Djokovic loss that his gameplan fell to pieces almost immediately, and he couldn’t do anything thereafter. That, to me, sounds devastating. You spend your whole life trying to perfect a craft. You master it better than anyone in the city you grew up in, maybe the country for a moment. You get your shot against the all-time-best player in a major semifinal. And you get demolished so thoroughly that it’s clear you had no way to win from the beginning. Short of a complete physical transformation, you’ll never beat that guy.

And yet, Paul seems unbothered. Sure, he’s had some bad losses this year. But he’s ranked at a career-high, nearly beat Alcaraz twice in a row during the North American swing, and is into the second week at the U.S. Open. How is he doing it? The logic says that if he keeps winning, he’ll run into Djokovic, at which point he’ll get pulverized again.

I think it’s that his belief in himself defies logic. By maintaining hope that he can one day attain the top of the pyramid, a loss to Djokovic becomes a roadblock rather than stark proof that he might be able to crack the top five in the world, but never the top two. I don’t see any other way that a player can keep going without dragging their feet when it’s so apparent that the standout players on each tour are blessed with something all the hard work in the world could never produce.

*****

I hope I haven’t disrespected the players not ranked at the very top of the game. Really, I admire them, maybe more than the all-time-greats. What better example of perseverance than the pursuit of a task that may not just seem impossible, but might literally be impossible? What better way to pay respect to the difficulty of conquering a sport than to keep trying in the face of that impossibility? It’s far more than I could ever do, even if I had all the athletic gifts in the world. These players won’t reach the summit they’re chasing, but I’ll remember that they tried.

And I wish less of the tennis world would exaggerate the odds of the underdog. I understand it, obviously — drama sells. A commentator declaring a match a foregone conclusion kind of leeches the competition out of the competition. But I think that minimizes what the underdog is up against. It’s the impossibility of their task that makes it so amazing when they take a meaningful step towards it. So part of me hopes for a day that a broadcaster asks their partner what a hopelessly trailing, overmatched opponent can do to beat Djokovic, Alcaraz, Świątek, or another all-time-great, and gets the boring and cruel but ultimately honest answer:

“Nothing.”

Changing of the Guard? Not Just Yet

By Srihari Ravi

Carlos Alcaraz stunned Novak Djokovic in five sets to become the first player in 10 years to defeat the Serb on the Wimbledon Centre Court and in a Wimbledon final, and to also become the first player outside the Big Four to win The Championships in 20 years. This officially marks the changing of the guard in men’s tennis……right? Wrong.

Whenever statements like that are made, it is usually a result of historical significance and context being thrown out the window. It is quite frustrating, to say the least, when one result is extrapolated beyond the realms of reality and is also used as ammunition for some convenient revisionism of Djokovic’s legacy. Like I mentioned in the first and only piece that I have written for Popcorn Tennis so far, recency bias is a disease. It was not long ago that Djokovic looked borderline impossible to defeat at the slams, and he did win the Australian Open and Roland-Garros. You would think that he was, at some point, bound to lose a match that was decided by the finest of margins. Holding off all challengers until he lost that match to a generational talent in Alcaraz is beyond admirable.

To the delight of the entire tennis fraternity, Djokovic and Alcaraz met once again in the final of the ATP Masters 1000 in Cincinnati. And to my personal delight, it was Djokovic who edged Alcaraz in a clash decided by the finest of margins. Djokovic won 133 points to Alcaraz’s 128, and the difference in points won was entirely due to Djokovic’s edge in both tiebreaks (9-7 and 7-4 in sets two and three, respectively). Djokovic collapsed to the ground after converting his fifth championship point after three hours and 49 minutes, recovering from 5-7, 2-4 down and from saving a championship point in the second set.

That was not only yet another enthralling match between the two but also was a stern reminder to the detractors, who had his tombstone ready, that Novak Djokovic is not going anywhere and that he could not be farther away from being done. He may be 36 years old, but his longevity is simply unfathomable. One Wimbledon final loss in five sets, which is supposed to be the norm, does not change that. That said, his clashes with Alcaraz are a memorable rivalry in the making. 

Yes, I am going to address the proverbial elephants in the room. Firstly, even though some are shying from doing so due to the 16-year age gap and the fact that they are both from different generations, I’ll freely call this a rivalry. Secondly, I’m assuming that the two put themselves in a position to contest for the biggest titles on tour on a regular basis. Let us not forget that we had to wait more than a year for another match between them after their epic Madrid semifinal in 2022, which the Spaniard won in very similar fashion to Djokovic’s Cincinnati victory. 

This rivalry is a marketer’s dream. I had already mentioned at the start of this piece that Alcaraz climbed what is currently tennis’ Mount Everest: Beating Djokovic in a Wimbledon final and beating him in a Grand Slam match that went to a deciding set. Only one man managed to do the latter since the Djokovic renaissance in Wimbledon 2018, and that was Dominic Thiem in the 2019 Roland-Garros semifinal. Not to mention that only one man had previously defeated Djokovic in a Grand Slam final that went five sets: Andy Murray at the 2012 U.S. Open. However, Djokovic has also proven to be something of a kryptonite of Alcaraz’s.

While Djokovic was heavily backed to win the Cincinnati final considering how underwhelming Alcaraz was prior to the final and in Toronto, the odds were actually in the Spaniard’s favor. He was 6-0 in Grand Slam finals and Masters 1000 finals combined, and since his breakthrough he simply has not lost a match that has ventured deep into the deciding set. Enter Djokovic, who tore up that script and handed Alcaraz a defeat that was the first of its kind. It is quite understandable why the Spaniard was in tears following that match.

In every aspect, including trading the No. 1 ranking multiple times over the span of several months, these two players have matched one another pound for pound. Remember when we were all upset that Alcaraz cramped at the beginning of the third set of their Roland-Garros semifinal this year? Well, it’s safe to say that we have been more than compensated for that. May the tennis world be blessed with many more Novak Djokovic vs. Carlos Alcaraz epics, and thank you to Alcaraz for filling that void whose existence we feared after the Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal era.