In one final go at the U.S. Open, Serena Williams fell to Ajla Tomljanović in the third round on Friday night. Sports Illustrated’s Jon Wertheim and Chris Almeida discuss the thrilling match, and what it shows about elite players when they near the end of their careers.
Jon Wertheim: We all know what the ultimate storybook ending was. And this wasn’t that, but a Friday night battle with three sets of high-quality tennis and staving off match points … This would have been script 1B. It wasn’t Serena winning the tournament, but it was a hell of a way to go.
Chris Almeida: We got a lot of really long games, a lot of lengthy rallies, a lot of clean, unlikely winners. In the third set, you could tell that Serena was a little bit gassed. She could tell that she was a little bit gassed. And so she started going for broke, and a lot of those shots worked out and cut through the court and won her points. That was really fun to watch. And the crowd obviously loved it.
