Cleaning out the notebook and notes app from a rollicking 2024 U.S. Open … and a reminder that you can DM me to have the SI Tennis Mailbag emailed to you weekly and you can subscribe to Served with Andy Roddick here.
1. First, a macro thought: Roger Federer and Serena Williams are retired. Rafael Nadal may never again play a sanctioned match. Novak Djokovic is 37. And yet, tennis marches on, with bounce in its step. The U.S. Open—now a three-week event, thanks to the USTA’s ambition and logistical savvy—set records for attendance. ESPN renewed its TV contract for double the current price. Celebrities came. Social media hummed. Two Americans in the final helped domestically. But the overall takeaway from this event: For all of tennis’s dysfunction, governance issues and turf wars, this is a sport built to last. And it will.
2. Jannik Sinner is your 2024 men’s champion after he handled Taylor Fritz in the final. The tournament began with Sinner shrouded in questions and it ended with him answering many of them, as he beat all comers. Fittingly, in this year—the first since 2002—with no Big Three member winning a major, the four big titles were split evenly between their two worthy heirs. Speaking of players winning both hard court majors in 2024 ...
3. Aryna Sabalenka is your women’s winner, the favorite before the tournament fulfilling expectations. For the third—and what easily could have been fourth—hard court major in 20 months, she took the racket out of the field’s hands, managed herself beautifully and emerged with the trophy. We talk—and we should talk—about mid-career ascents like Jasmine Paolini and Jessica Pegula, Sabalenka’s turn from volatile slugger and controlled aggressor is no less radical.
4. Andy Roddick remains the answer to a trivia question. Which is to say Fritz did not become the first American male since 2003 to win a major. But he came close, winning six matches with authoritative, efficient tennis. He has (on cement courts) cemented himself, not only as the alpha American but as a force at the top of the sport.
5. Pegula did herself proud, reaching her first major semifinal, going one additional round and putting up a hell of a fight against Sabalenka in the final. She also stands as a sterling example of how to manage a career. She started the year disappointingly and admitted that her flame was lacking in intensity. So she made some personnel changes, took some time off, and … she is back and better than ever.
6. Karolína Muchová will kick herself—no injury, please!—after winning the first set in the semifinals and then failing to close against Pegula. But what an event for the 28-year-old. Apart from hitting the shot of the tournament, she established herself as a purist’s player of choice. She has so much variety, so much athleticism, so whimsically deployed.
7. So about 10 minutes after the women’s semifinal, I met a cluster of fans, maybe 20 deep, a family clan that included a 92-year-old grandmother. They had come to watch their relative play. Though the player, Emma Navarro, lost to Sabalenka, the vibe of this group of fans was unmistakably upbeat. They were smiling, laughing, wearing what-a-fun-experience looks. That snapshot provides much insight into Navarro, whose ascent in 2024 has been predicated on precise ball striking and movement, but accompanied by balance, optimism and self-possession.
8. Frances Tiafoe came up short in his bid to win or die trying (his words) dazzling for 5.9 matches, but, as he could sniff the finish line against Fritz in the semis, he couldn’t quite close. Still—validating his decision to skip the Olympics—he reinvigorated his career these past six weeks or so. And time is still on his side.
9. Jack Draper did not lose a set in reaching the semifinals. He then lost three sets (and, at various times, his crumpets) against Sinner. Still, a fine tournament for a fine player. Buy this stock while still reasonably priced.
10. The mustachioed Aussie duo Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson were gutted after losing the Wimbledon final 6–7 (7), 7–6 (8), 7–6 (11–9). One major later, they come good winning the title here, beating Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz in the final. … Good on 'em.
Ukraine’s Lyudmyla Kichenok put off her wedding to play the U.S. Open. Good move. She and partner Jelena Ostapenko—who, tennis being tennis, is coached by Kichenok’s fiancee Stas Khmarsky—beat Kristina Mladenovic and Zhang Shuai 6–4, 6–3 to take the title.
11. In the boys’ event, Rafael Jodar of Spain took the title. Mika Stojsavljevic of the UK took the girls’ title. Death, taxes and Colette Lewis’s coverage of the juniors.
12. In the mixed event, Sara Errani (fresh off her Olympic gold) and Andrea Vavassori became the first all-Italian team to win the title, beating Taylor Townsend and Donald Young. Nevertheless, the pairing of Townsend and Young—now 35, playing his final pro event—was a heartwarming story. One hopes Young knows that he ought to leave this sport with his head high. Actually, he ought not to leave at all. Quietly, he had—and has—a lot more impact than perhaps even he realizes.
13. There was no wheelchair pro event on account of the Paralympics, happening concurrently in Paris. But there was a junior event, one of the many small winning touches from the USTA for which they didn’t get enough credit.
14. This sounds uncharitable. This sounds like cherry-picking data. (Guilty as charged.) But for an episodically regnant player, Iga Świątek sure takes some bad losses; and sure turns in some mystifyingly vacant performances. She is a sublime player. She also has won one major off of the clay. It’s been two years since she went beyond the quarters of a non-clay major. Here, she lost tearfully to Pegula, 6–3, 6–4 in a match that didn’t feel as close as the score suggested.
15. Proving yet again that—much as tennis administrators and agents pretend it isn’t so—energy is a finite resource … Carlos Alcaraz was attempting to win his third straight major, but he lost his second match. Now it is time for a well-earned recharge break, the career equivalent of a charging station … not so fast. His schedule for the rest of the year: Laver Cup, China, a Saudi exhibition, Europe events, Davis Cup and, improbably, an exhibition in Charlotte. Tennis is gonna tennis.
16. Speaking of players low on reserves, Djokovic clearly enjoys making a fool of time. But fresh off his Olympian effort at the Paris Games, he fell in four sets in the third round to Alexei Popyrin, looking very much like a 37-year-old man. This marks the first year since 2002 (!) that none of the Big Three claimed a major.
17. Another reason to applaud Sabalenka. For the foreseeable future, coaches will say, She had the yips and recovered to win multiple majors. Coco Gauff had 19 double faults—11 in the decisive set—in a tough-to-watch fourth-round defeat to Navarro. As she tries to repair her game and psyche, Sabalenka ought to loom large as inspiration.
18. Maybe this is always the case. It’s hard to quantify. But it seemed like so many players acquitted themselves well … and then left on bitter terms. Injured Alex de Minaur reached the quarters and wilted. Injury-addled Grigor Dimitrov reached the quarters and wilted. Paula Badosa played superbly in Week 1 and then wilted. Daniil Medvedev—sui generis, charming, fun to watch—but yet another close-but-not-quite major. Tough sport, tough sport.
19. The week before the tournament, this was a central question: How would Sinner deal with the unprecedented role of being at the center of controversy? He answered that unambiguously. But questions still swirl over the terms and conditions of his doping case. I had thoughtful, respected former players tell me they are convinced he did not cheat. I had thoughtful, respected former players tell me they are convinced he cheated and skated.
20. The “boy who cried merger” perhaps … but I had multiple sources swear to me that the ATP/WTA merger/ acquisition plan—code name One Vision—is proceeding apace and the goal is to make an announcement by the respective year-end finals. An aggregated product to go to market in PowerPoint-ese. There are a lot of issues to work through—not least the inconvenient fact that the ATP is worth four to five times the WTA. But one nonnegotiable is equal prize money.
21. Every fourth year, tennis deals with the interruption—on balance, a happy interruption—of Olympic competition. Here, the three men who won Paris medals (Djokovic, Alcaraz, and Lorenzo Musetti, in descending order) were eliminated early. The season is too long. Players are fried. The switch from clay to grass to clay to hard is too much. The emotional investment exacts a price. No, wait. Here come the women. Zheng Qinwen, Donna Vekić and Świątek all reached Week 2. And Zheng took out Vekić in one of the stronger matches of the tournament.
22. Let’s discuss: Any sporting event that ends after 2:00 a.m. is, by definition, unserious. The USTA in particular is great at press releases. It’s less great at effective action.
To paraphrase the administrators’ response: Players insist that matches do not start before 11 a.m. Men insist on playing best-of-five sets. Television insists on commercials and on-court interviews. Business pressures insist on two sessions. Fairness insists that matches are played on the scheduled day. Something has to give here.
One solution we discussed on Served: Start matches at 11:00 a.m., not noon. And if the first night match goes beyond, say 10 p.m., the second match must begin on the secondary court. But when matches finish in the infomercial hours—unfair to the players, the officials, the volunteers, the ball kids, etc.—it makes the sport look patently ridiculous.
23. It’s generally agreed upon that Alexander Zverev is the men’s BPNTHWAM. That is, the Best Player Never to Have Won a Major. Here, he cruised for a week. Then he lost in the quarters to Fritz. The abiding Zverev irony: Outwardly, he projects a, um, liberal sense of self-belief, from his comments to the necklaces with the circumferences of bridge cables. Then, when matches tighten, so does he, retreating literally and figuratively.
24. Unforced error of the tournament? The USTA gloated about its use of replay. Paraphrasing, again, here, Let those benighted tours get embroiled in Cincinnati-style controversy. We are evolved! But then, when it actually came time to use the replay, officials, bafflingly, made the wrong call. All this would be obviated if players admitted to mistakes and conceded points. But in the absence of that, at least use the technology to get it right!
25. Okay, another whiff: The rule permitting fans to move around during play was a fail. One fan likened it to a Broadway intermission while the play is ongoing. Fans a few feet from the baseline standing during points. An influencer made a video a few rows back of an important women’s match. Fans talking on their phones during points. The saddest sight you will ever see: kids scrambling after the 5–3 game of Gauff-Navarro to position themselves for autographs; conveying to Gauff, We think this match is fait accompli. The USTA is hellbent on taking the starch out of tennis and making it—we hate this term—fan-friendly. But the midmatch cocktail hour ain’t it.
26. Five players who failed to reach the second week, but impressed nonetheless … Learner Tien… a pair of one-handers, Li Tu and Aleks Kovacevic, who took sets off Alcaraz and Tiafoe, respectively … Destanee Aiava who deserves radical empathy for her journey and is still only 24 years old. Jessica Bouzas Maneiro, for the second major in a row, reached the middle weekend.
27. A nod to Dan Evans. Rather than defending his D.C. title—the biggest of his career—he went to Paris and partnered with Andy Murray to provide this magic moment. Age 34, with four wins on the year and in danger of falling deep out of the top 200 … he comes to New York, wins the longest match in U.S. Open history (d. Karen Khachanov) and reaches the middle weekend.
28. For the first time since the 90s, there were five top 20 Americans on both the male and female sides. And two Americans in the final. But bubbling below the surface—and sometimes above the surface—the USTA player development is tennis writ small: a battlefield of infighting, petty turf wars and starkly different opinions about how to spend funding. Spending has been slashed, spearheaded by headers—some of them former players who benefited from the USTA’s funding—who believe it is no longer the job of the organization to bankroll top prospects. Story to watch: the formation of a new Player Development Advisory Council (PDAC), “that taps experts from across the U.S. tennis ecosystem to provide in-depth input on how the USTA can best enhance and optimize its support for high-performance American players at all levels of the game.” Members include Bob Bryan, Jim Courier, Lindsay Davenport, Chris Eubanks, Mary Joe Fernández, Madison Keys, Ben Navarro, Michael Russell, Bryan Shelton and Jessica Pegula.
29. It was hard to see on TV, but the coaches’ box on the show courts came equipped with tablets containing advanced stats of the matches. So when coaches were barking instructions, sometimes they went beyond Keep fighting, you got this, and contained insight based on fact.
30. From the boulevard of broken dreams that is the qualifiers draw … those failing to make the show include the French graveyard of Richard Gasquet, Lucas Pouille (who once beat Nadal here), Benoît Paire; young Dino Prižmić (who took a set off Djokovic in Australia); Olga Danilović (a Week 2 player at Roland Garros); and Hailey (why didn’t she get a wild card?) Baptiste.
31. A lot of credit to Caroline Garcia for the periodic reminder that sports gambling is a devil’s bargain. Sports leagues, teams and media outlets—Sports Illustrated, CBS, Tennis Channel, ESPN included—all benefit handsomely from this revenue river. And the players, i.e. the people whose labor is the source material for all this betting action? A) They get abused by cretins on social media. (Sidebar: You probably want to ask what went wrong in my life when you lose money betting on an athlete and then, as if the athlete is not sufficiently dejected, spew vitriol at them—inevitably anonymously—because you lost a few bucks.) B) They are strictly forbidden from using the product that is generating this waterfall of money. (Sidebar: Should sports accept sponsorship from products that athletes are forbidden from using?) C) They are not allowed to carve out their own product deals. (Sidebar: At least in the NFL and NBA, per collective bargaining, players get 50% of the revenue from betting and data-sharing sponsorship.)
Meanwhile, the tours and events can plaster back walls with advertisements and make data rights deals with bookmakers—data, of course, based on the players’ labor …
My take: Sports gambling is here to stay. Legal gambling is, on balance, preferable to illegal gambling. There are plenty of other addictive behaviors and financially unwise decisions we should have the freedom to make. But the lack of guardrails and regulation and legislation (and morality?) right now is astounding. We will look back on this period the way we look at smoking sections on planes and putting cigarette vending machines in schools or Joe Camel marketing to kids.
32. The NCAA makes tennis look consistent and common-sensical by comparison. So college athletes can get paid for NIL deals or endorse the campus diner or the booster’s insurance company, but college tennis players can’t accept U.S. Open prize money—earned compensation for actual labor—without jeopardizing their eligibility. Uh, got it. Half-joking, I suggested that the USTA simply confer on, say, Maya Joint, a NIL deal (or grant) commensurate with the prize money she earned. The USTA’s balance sheets would be unchanged. She would get the money and keep her eligibility. I presented this fact pattern to Darren Heitner, a leading sports lawyer. Is this an exploitable loophole? He responded: “Yes, as long as the money paid was in connection with non-playing deliverables. Working through this for a client now.”
33. Emma Raducanu caught some grief (what else is new?) when she was asked about Andy Murray and responded thusly: “It doesn’t feel different at all. Tennis is unforgiving in that sense. No matter who you are, it just moves on. Of course … I watched him win this tournament but yeah, it’s fast-paced like life—it’s old news the next day.”
Do you know something? She was absolutely correct. The train moves on. No disrespect to Murray—or Federer or Serena or innumerable other players—but the plotlines continue to evolve. This is a sign of health.
On the other hand … Raducanu skips the Olympics to ramp up for the U.S. Open. She plays Washington, D.C. and does well—but not well enough to make the main draw of Canada or Cincinnati. And she won’t deign to try and qualify for main draws. So she comes to the Open without playing for a month. And loses in the first round to Sonya Kenin. This is not a credible way to run a career.
34. The slate of candidates for the latest class of the International Tennis Hall of Fame: Bob Bryan, Mike Bryan, Daniel Nestor and Maria Sharapova. Easy to see all four getting the nod. (In the spirit of full disclosure: I shall vote for all four.)
One twist: Sharapova’s doping ban gave some people pause. So much so that Billie Jean King even got involved, sending a letter of support to members of the International Tennis Hall of Fame official voting group, encouraging them not to withhold recognition.
35. In last year’s women’s final, Sabalenka won the first set. Then, clearly rattled by the partisan crowd—she, gamely, admits to this—she withered and lost to Gauff. Late in the tournament this year, Sabalenka was asked by intrepid Pam Shriver what she had to do to win over the crowd. Because she is fun and uninhibited, Sabalenka joked, “Drinks on me.”
Fun laugh line. But, wait. Let’s play this out. There are roughly 24,000 fans in the stands. There are kids. There are teetotalers. Some fans have to drive home. Let’s say half, 12,000, would accept that offer. A Honey Deuce is priced at $23. That’s $276,000. Let’s round up. Tip your server and all. Let’s say it’s a $300,000 bar tab. The difference between a winner’s check ($3.6 million) and a runner-up check ($1.8 million) is $1.8 million. There is no guarantee, of course, that fan support = title. But simply as a hedge, if buying the crowd a drink increased crowd support (surely it does) ... and if increased crowd support jacked up your chances of winning the title by more than 16% (also likely) … picking up the bar tab for the entire U.S. crowd is actually an investment worth making.
36. The Republic of Tennis often takes umbrage—not wrongly—when players commit acts of shaky ethics. When players commit acts of exemplary (and unrehearsed) sportsmanship and decency, well, that ought to be recognized as well. Without further ado, a hat tip to Miomir Kecmanović. Note the 12:20 mark:
37. Let’s play connections, New York Times style.
Bolt, Joint, Keys, Sun (tennis players with objects for a surname).
Michelsen, Tien, Jović, Nakashima (players from southern California, reasserting itself as a tennis hotbed).
Tabilo, Badosa, Raducanu, Rusedski (players born in North American countries that they do not represent).
Hurkacz, Becker, Tomljanović, Sampras (purple, this one: the winning player in a legend’s final match).
38. By most accounts, tennis’s roots trace to the 12th century when French monks took to batting a ball over a net with their open hands. Even then, there was frustration that came with missing the intended target. From the matches at the cloisters to tennis in, say, 2015, players managed to control their emotions after these unforced errors, as they came to be known. Yet, somehow, in the last decade or so, exasperated players—almost always male—have developed a habit of missing shots and then, indiscriminately/recklessly blasting the ball. Shapovalov. Djokovic. Stefanos Tsitsipas. Terence Atmane. The Saturday before the Open, the Winston-Salem final was marred when Alex Michelsen did this.
Tennis being tennis, there’s no consistency. Djokovic gets defaulted from the 2020 U.S. Open. Michelsen got a free pass and the obligatory he was lucky he didn’t get defaulted. The players rightly clamor for equal justice in these—and other—matters. But isn’t there a simple solution? Make like those monks and control your frustration. Don’t rifle the balls into the stands. It’s not cool. It’s also dangerous.
39. If you missed this Washington Post piece on Ben Rothenberg, it is worth your read. One takeaway from L’Affaire Zverev: The German legal system is just bizarre. How, well, mixed up is it that a German court has jurisdiction over what an American citizen says, writes and publishes? I get it. Ben has his detractors and his supporters; I count myself in the latter camp. Zverev, too, has his detractors and supporters. Fine. But the chilling impact of Zverev’s lawsuit ought to strike us all as, well, chilling.
40. Thanks to reader Barry Spring for calling to our attention the strangest patch deal of this event. Move over ball girl bully Yulia Putintseva repping The Economist. Here comes Tomáš Macháč for the Ben Crump Law Firm. Crump, for our foreign audience, is a social justice attorney whose clients include the family of George Floyd and victims of the Flint water crisis. Eyeballs are eyeballs. But I would like to hear a business case being made here. How many potential plaintiffs say, You know, I was going to find other representation for this lawsuit. But then I saw a tight-shorted Czech slugger with a Crump patch and I had my law firm!
41. Indulge me this annual gripe … Never in the history of ever has there been a sponsorship worse than Evian at the U.S. Open. It’s infernally hot out. Players are vomiting. Fans are fainting. Wouldn’t it be nice if the water were … what’s the word we are gunning for here; oh, right … free? Instead, fans are paying an extortionate $6.75 for containers the size of a thimble. Meanwhile, players are leaving plastic bottles strewn on the court—at odds with the daily press releases from the USTA bragging about their “sustainability” efforts. Isn’t sponsorship predicated on the idea that the interaction would make the consumer more inclined to purchase the product?
42. Hearing that the price of a suite for the 2025 U.S. Open has now jumped north of $1 million. Food and beverage, additional. There are around 80 suites. We oooh and ah at the $100,000 players make for first-round defeats. But frame prize money as a percent of gross revenue and someone is getting a sweet/suite deal. (Hint: it ain’t labor.)
43. I was heartened that a few of you asked about this. The U.S. Open program contains a compendium of the finest tennis writing (remember tennis writing?). This year the program is available for order at www.tennisprograms.net.
44. Multiple eagle-eyed readers reported seeing Camila Giorgi gallivanting in and around New York last week. So… she’s allegedly on the lam from Italian authorities. She’s in a country with EU extradition. She’s less than a year removed from a top 50 ranking. And she’s 32. Can someone just make this documentary already?
45. I can’t stress how much the USTA does right. This is less a tennis tournament than a feat of logistics. What’s the worst thing you can say? There are too many grounds passes sold? But this is less a shank off the frame than an error of omission … the draw ceremony, or lack thereof. Ask any major sports league about the keys to growth and they will stress the importance of creating events beyond live action. The NFL draft. The NFL schedule release. All-Star festivities. Skills competitions. Signing Day. Fan appreciation nights. Intra-squad games. The release of the draw before tennis majors would fall squarely into this category. Yet, the U.S. Open treats this with all the pomp and occasion of someone installing toner into the printer.
46. Two former champions (Stan Wawrinka and future solar energy magnate Dominic Thiem) got wild cards. A 2014 women’s finalist (Caroline Wozniacki) did as well. But both the 2014 men’s finalists—Marin Čilić and Kei Nishikori—were shut out. So they played in Europe last week. I was told that Nishikori’s agents at IMG even offered the USTA a future IMG event wild card (Miami) to sweeten the deal. Obviously, that did not happen. And, yes, wild cards are terribly unseemly, flying in the face of merit, corrupt bargaining chips that reduce players to chattel and demean us all.
47. Thanks for your Tennis Channel compliments and critiques. Steve Weissman, Chanda Rubin, Prakash Amritraj, Paul Annacone and I had fun on the morning pregame shows. Mark Houska and Ross Schneiderman are the wizards who make it happen in the control room. From the full disclosure department, Friday The Wall St. Journal published this.
48. This might mark the event when then-conflicts of interest in the TV compound went from hold-your-nose and roll-your-eyes unseemly, to simply untenable, intolerable. And Nick (please do lecture us about the scourge of bullying) Kyrgios didn’t so much cross a line as he vaulted over it. But let the record reflect: ESPN did so much, so right. Three weeks worth of coverage. The viral interview with Li Tu. More options from outer courts. More low camera angles. More meaningful data. More Chris Eubanks, who is every bit as delightful as you suspect. Early in the tournament came news that the network re-upped with USTA for, I’m told, $2 billion over the next 12 years. Godspeed, friends. While we’re here, full credit to Pat McEnroe. Maybe 10 years ago at Wimbledon, he pulled me aside.
“I have three words for you.”
“Um, okay.”
“Taylor. Harry. Fritz.”
“Um, okay.”
“Watch him play in the juniors. Mark my words. He’s going to contend for majors one day.”
49. He didn’t get the plaudits of Thiem, verklempt Diego Schwartzman, Danielle Collins, Shelby Rogers, Donald Young, et al. But tennis will miss Carlos Bernardes. Adios, to a pro.
50. If you enjoyed the Sports Illustrated coverage, thank Clare Brennan and reward her with a follow.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as 50 Parting Thoughts From the 2024 U.S. Open.
