Battlefield tennis court, daily newspaper junge Welt, 09.09.2024

After Rafael Nadal’s partial retirement, Roger Federer’s complete retirement and Novak Djokovic’s arrival in the autumn of his career, the dominance of the big three in men’s tennis has crumbled. This has made everything more exciting. As in women’s tennis, the Grand Slam winners are now taking turns to dominate. This is precisely why many people expected a wild US Open (26 August – 8 September), the last of the four Grand Slam tournaments, this year.

And it got wild! Carlos Alcaraz suffered a strange defeat in the second round against Botic van de Zandschulp. Like shortly before, he had been sitting at the preparatory tournament in Cincinnati with a lack of precision. Perhaps he was still licking the wounds of his bitter Olympic final defeat a few weeks ago. At 21, the Spaniard still has everything ahead of him, but he needs to become more emotionally stable. Novak Đoković’s third-round defeat was almost predictable: Yes, his opponent Alexei Popyrin played unbelievably that day, but normally the Serb would have controlled him with his strong returns. Unfortunately, he is a diva right now: Đoković won Olympic gold in Paris, has been fed up with titles ever since, and he always plays his worst tennis there.

Scandal surrounding Jannik Sinner: Before the tournament, it emerged that the Italian number one in the world rankings had tested positive twice in March for the banned steroid clostebol. The doping proceedings against him were conducted in the background in a very athlete-friendly manner, without being made public before the verdict of the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA). Acquittal! Sinner’s lawyers’ theory of contamination was accepted, then Sinner’s masseur, who had treated a wound on his own finger with the chemical, accidentally passed the clostebol on to him… Because the story is so beautiful, we’ll just believe it, although some colleagues naturally made caustic comments. The high-flyer was the only one of the big names in New York to play a flawless tournament and was in the final on Sunday (after editorial deadline).

His opponent there was Taylor Fritz, who made it to the first Grand Slam final in the early autumn of his career. He had pleasant opponents in the preliminary rounds, but then came the double whammy: first Alexander Zverev, the German is actually very strong at the moment. But against Fritz he seemed outplayed, as he has in recent years, and he should have taken it easy. In the semifinals, his American competitor Frances Tiafoe was slightly inferior in terms of athletic ability and could not capitalize on her 2:1 set lead against Fritz (4:6, 7:5, 4:6, 6:4, 6:1).

Symbolic of the heat and attrition battle in New York was the fact that the young British semi-finalist Jack Draper had to vomit on the court several times during his match. And how the ladies and gentlemen played happily through the night because that was what the organizers wanted. A match started after midnight (local time) at this US Open, for example, during the third round match of the eventual tournament winner Aryna Sabalenka (Belarus), and several dozen people were still lost in the stadium. The ball boys and girls, like the players themselves, were pushed to the limit of their performance. All of this just because the night shifts are intended to stimulate the sale of day tickets. Idiotic.

The battlefield was also prepared for the women’s competition, and here too the favorite Iga Świątek (Poland) slipped up early on, which corresponds to the fluctuating form curve of her tennis year. Here too it was the Americans’ hour. But not that of last year’s winner Coco Gauff, who was vulnerable due to her weak forehand and a catastrophic serve and was consequently eliminated. The 23-year-old New Yorker Emma Navarro, on the other hand, was only stopped in the semi-finals by Sabalenka. And the other American, Jessica Pegula, eliminated the very plain Karolína Muchová from the Czech Republic, who currently plays the most beautiful tennis on the planet. A high-class final on Saturday evening our time was decided narrowly in favor of Aryna Sabalenka (7:5, 7:5), it is her first US Open title.