Evelyn Reynolds

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    Frances Tiafoe Has Them Talking About Tennis in Freetown, Sierra Leone

    Tiafoe, whose parents emigrated from the war-torn country before he was born, is the youngest American man to reach a U.S. Open quarterfinal in 16 years, and he has enough talent for two nations.In the stadiums and sports clubs of Freetown, Sierra Leone, soccer is the favorite topic. But on Tuesday, several hours after Frances Tiafoe, a son of two Sierra Leonean émigrés, beat Rafael Nadal to reach the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open, tennis has nudged itself into the conversation.“Oh, yeah, there is a lot of talk about Tiafoe right now,” Abdulai Kamara, a sports blogger and the owner of the Hereford Sierra Leone Football Academy, said in a telephone interview from Freetown. “We don’t really follow tennis closely here, but now there is some interest. Some people are curious about Frances, and they want to know more.”While the tennis community in the United States is excited that Tiafoe, who was born in Hyattsville, Md., has become the youngest American man to reach the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in 16 years, some in Sierra Leone are proudly claiming the young tennis star as their own, too.The gregarious and talented Tiafoe, 24, has enough magnetism and dynamic tennis skills for two nations.The Sierraloaded publication referred to “Sierra Leone’s Tiafoe,” in a flash update on the historic win, and Kei Kamara, a soccer star from Sierra Leone playing for Montreal in Major League Soccer, wrote on Twitter, “One of us,” after Tiafoe’s win, calling it a “massive achievement.”Tiafoe’s uplifting story began when his parents — who had not yet met — left Sierra Leone for the United States in the 1990s to escape a civil war. They each moved to the United States and, after they met, settled down in Maryland and had twin boys, Franklin and Frances.The boys’ father, Constant Tiafoe, found work on the construction site for the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md. Constant Tiafoe was so industrious, he was offered the job of the maintenance director of the facility. He was given an office, where sometimes the twins slept, the better to, as they grew big enough to hold rackets, spend time on the courts.They both played, but Frances displayed a unique passion, watching the lessons given to the older boys at the center and mimicking their every move, then hitting balls off walls and serving to ghosts on outer courts until dark.Tiafoe combines speed, power and court savvy.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times“All the stories are true,” said Mark Ein, an entrepreneur and chairman of the Citi Open in Washington, D.C., one of the premier events on the tennis calendar. “Frances was obsessed with tennis.”Ein has known the Tiafoes since the boys were five and has become a friend, adviser and mentor. His own mentor was Ken Brody, an investment banker and tennis enthusiast who built the Junior Tennis Champions Center to enact a vision that Tiafoe might one day fulfill.“Ken used to say, ‘If the Czech Republic can develop champions in a country that size, then we can do it here in D.C.,’” Ein said.It was not long before Frances began to display a unique athletic agility — speed, power and court savvy — combined with a nearly unquenchable thirst for the game. He was paired with Misha Kouznetsov, a junior coach from Russia who pushed and pulled Frances through the early stages of his tennis development, which at times were remarkable.At first, the Tiafoes saw tennis as a vehicle for the boys to secure a university education, which only seemed attainable with a scholarship. Constant left his job at the training center to start his own business, but he ended up working at a carwash while the boys’ mother, Alphina, worked as a nurse. Money was scarce.“It wasn’t anything supposed to be like this,” Tiafoe said Monday after defeating Nadal. “Once we got in the game of tennis, it was like my dad was like, ‘It would be awesome if you guys can use this as a full scholarship to school.’ I mean, we couldn’t afford a university. So, use the game of tennis.”But Tiafoe shone so brilliantly at such an early age, that college was relegated to an afterthought as a lucrative professional career burst into view. When he was 14, in 2012, Frances won the prestigious Petits As tournament in France, around the same time that sports publications got wind of his humble and fortuitous upbringing at the J.T.C.C. The following year, Tiafoe won the Orange Bowl, a top tournament near Miami for the world’s best juniors. He was on his way, it felt.American tennis coaches, administrators, agents and the most knowledgeable fans began to see that Tiafoe might be the next great American player, which for so long had been a searing void in the game.But the development of professional players in today’s game often comes slowly, and Tiafoe has, at times, struggled. He turned professional in 2015, and for the next four years he reached the third round of a major tournament only once, at Wimbledon in 2018.He ended last year ranked No. 38 and is currently No. 26. That will improve after his breakthrough performance in the U.S. Open, no matter what happens Wednesday against the No. 9 seed, Andrey Rublev.Now Tiafoe’s popularity is rising fast, not only among Sierra Leonean soccer stars, but also from basketball megastars, including LeBron James, who congratulated Tiafoe on Twitter.“I mean, that’s my guy,” Tiafoe said of James, one of his sports idols. “To see him post that, I was like, ‘Do I retweet it as soon as he sent it? I was like, ‘You know what? I’m going to be cool and act like I didn’t see it and then retweet it three hours later.’”Tiafoe’s career has been defined by high expectations, plateaus, self-analysis and improvement.“There were such huge expectations for him at such an early age,” Ein said. “He achieved so many firsts, and he was considered the future, the hope of American tennis. That’s a lot for a teenager, and he handled it really well. He knows success is not always a straight line, but he also knows that if you are always headed towards true north, you can achieve your goals.”Ein and Tiafoe regularly swat an adage back and forth: that everyone wants to be a star like Beyoncé, but no one wants to put in the work to get there.During one of his plateaus, after the 2018 season, Tiafoe began to hear from people around him that he needed to train more, eat better, study film and improve his preparation — anything that might push him into the top 5 in the world.During the winter, over lunch in Georgetown, Tiafoe explained to Ein what he had been hearing and revealed his response to the well-intentioned pressure.“He told them, ‘Don’t worry,’” Ein recalled, “‘I got this.’ A few days later, he was on his way to Australia, where he reaches the quarterfinals of a Slam for the first time. That’s the Frances Tiafoe story.”Many people in the tennis world also know the story of Tiafoe’s early life in Maryland. But much of his tennis story is still heading north. Some of it is being written at the U.S. Open, and some of it is being written in Sierra Leone, where the legend of Frances Tiafoe is just taking hold. More

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    WTA Finals Set for Texas This Year, but a Return to China Is Uncertain

    The year-end event is due to return to China in 2023, but the tour said its suspension of tournaments there after Peng Shuai accused a former government official of sexual assault remained in place.The WTA announced Tuesday that Fort Worth would host its annual season-ending WTA Finals this year.The tournament, which will begin Oct. 31, said it had a one-year agreement to play in Fort Worth, “with the event thereafter due to return to Shenzhen, China.” But the WTA said the suspension of its tournaments in China remained in place, leaving the WTA Finals’ return to China in 2023 uncertain.WTA tournaments in China have been suspended since December, when Steve Simon, the tour’s chairman and chief executive, announced the decision, after the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai shared in a post online an allegation of sexual assault against a former top Chinese government official.In the following weeks, Peng, 36, was not seen publicly, and it was unclear whether she was safe or able to speak freely without interference from the Chinese government. She later deleted her post.In November, the editor of a state-run newspaper shared clips said to be of the Chinese tennis star on Twitter. But they were unverified, and Simon called them “insufficient.” The WTA had called for Chinese authorities to investigate the accusation and end censorship on the subject before suspending tournaments.After Peng went public with her allegations, tennis fans were spotted at tournaments, including this year’s Australian Open, with signs and T-shirts reading “Where is Peng Shuai?” Others, including Serena Williams, took to social media to express concerns about Peng’s safety.“If powerful people can suppress the voices of women and sweep allegations of sexual assault under the rug, then the basis on which the WTA was founded — equality for women — would suffer an immense setback,” Simon said in a statement in December, announcing an effective boycott of tennis in China. “I will not and cannot let that happen to the WTA and its players.”In February, around the time Peng met with the International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach at the Beijing Games, Simon called for a chance to have a private meeting with Peng, adding in a statement that “we continue to hold firm on our position and our thoughts remain with Peng Shuai.”In an email on Tuesday, a WTA spokeswoman said that the organization “continues to work towards a resolution in China and are hopeful we will be in a position to operate events in the region in 2023 and beyond but will not compromise our founding principles in order to do so.”The WTA’s stance has not come without a cost. China had been a fundamental source of financial stability for the WTA, with 10 events that accounted for about one-third of the tour’s annual revenue in 2019. The most profitable and recognized of those events was the WTA Finals, which offered record prize money of $14 million in 2019.The WTA gained some relief from that loss of revenue in March, when, after more than a decade without a title sponsor, it agreed to a multiyear deal with Hologic, a leading global medical device and diagnostics company focused on women’s health.The WTA Finals have been roaming the world for a home since 2019, which was the first year of what was supposed to be a 10-year deal that would have kept the tournament in Shenzhen, a city of more than 17 million.But the following year, the WTA Finals were canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, and in 2021, the tournament scrambled at the last minute to find a host and ended up in Guadalajara, Mexico, where Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain won the final against Anett Kontaveit of Estonia.Having the tournament in Texas this year brings the WTA Finals, which has had different names over the years, back to the United States for the first time since 2005, and it adds to the tour’s presence in the United States to end the year. After the U.S. Open, the WTA will have a 500-level tournament in San Diego in October and a 125-level tournament in Midland, Mich., about 130 miles northwest of Detroit.The tournament in Fort Worth, about 30 miles west of Dallas, will be played at Dickies Arena, a 14,000-seat multipurpose venue that opened in 2019. The venue has hosted a rodeo, concerts, the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, and the first and second rounds of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. More

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    The Great U.S. Open Ball Debate of 2022

    The Open is the only Grand Slam tournament where women use different balls than men, and the Wilson ‘regular-duty’ ball has gotten into some players’ heads.Tennis players are the Goldilocks characters of sports.The balls are too big, or too small. The courts are too fast, or too slow. It’s too cold, or too hot, or too sticky, or too sunny.“Some weeks you don’t play well, and you got to blame it on something,” joked David Witt, who coaches Jessica Pegula, the American who reached the quarterfinals on Monday with a win over Petra Kvitova.And so it has been at the U.S. Open this year as the women — well, some of them — have waged a rebellion over the Wilson balls they have used for years at the tournament. This is the only Grand Slam event where the women and the men use different balls.These yellow spheres are loved and loathed.Pegula, who has lost just one set in four matches, and that one in a tiebreaker, happens to love the balls. Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, has called them “horrible.” That is so tennis. Rarely is there any consensus. Players often make contradictory complaints in the same tournament, or even the same day, about the same thing.You are officially forgiven if you have lived your life thinking all tennis balls are created equal but with different names and numbers stamped on them. But now, a quick tutorial in tennis ball technology.The men at the U.S. Open use what is known as an “extra-duty” ball, which means the felt on the outside of the ball is woven slightly more loosely than the “regular-duty” ball the women use.Iga Swiatek and her sports psychologist have talked about the challenges posed by the regular-duty balls.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesEverything else about the balls is the same — their core construction, their size and weight, how they rebound and how quickly they deform, according to Jason Collins, the senior product director for racket sports at Wilson Sporting Goods.However, the regular-duty balls “play faster,” Collins said through a spokeswoman for the company. Felt that is woven more tightly doesn’t fluff up as much and can wear away, so there is not as much friction when those balls make contact with the ground or the strings of a racket.The additional friction of a fluffy ball allows players to create maximum spin. Those who rely heavily on that spin can struggle to make a regular-duty ball travel the way they want it to, especially after a few games, when the ball begins to lose whatever fluff it had right out of the can and gets smaller.Players who hit a flatter ball, like Coco Gauff, or Pegula or Madison Keys, don’t have this problem as much. But some still do. Paula Badosa, who was seeded fourth and lost in the second round, hits as flat as anyone. She said she hated the balls.“You feel more like you’re playing Ping-Pong sometimes,” Badosa said after her first-round win. Two days later, she was out of the tournament.Another point of complication and confusion: Regular-duty balls are always used on clay courts and other surfaces that are moist because they don’t collect the moisture the way the looser felt of the extra-duty balls do. Extra-duty balls are the balls of choice for outdoor hardcourts, like those at the U.S. Open, except when they are not.And then there is one more complicating factor: Tennis is run by seven separate organizations, with tournaments all over the world, many of which have different companies that pay for the right to supply the balls. That means players can end up playing with a different ball from a different manufacturer from one week to the next. And every ball is just a little bit different, and behaves differently depending on heat and humidity and air pressure.According to the United States Tennis Association, which owns and organizes the U.S. Open, the women have played with a different ball than the men for as long as anyone can remember; the WTA Tour has always wanted it that way, and the tournament abides by the tour’s preference.Stacey Allaster, who is the U.S. Open director and was the chief executive of the WTA from 2009 to 2015, said the sports science experts on the women’s tour have long felt that the faster, more aerodynamic ball helps limit arm and shoulder injuries.Every year, Allaster said, the U.S.T.A. asks the WTA what balls it wants to use, and the answer has always been the same. “As far as we know, a majority likes it, so we could end up trading one problem for another.”Amy Binder, the chief spokeswoman for the WTA, confirmed that the players and the sports science teams have favored the faster regular-duty balls, but executives have heard from “a select number of our athletes that they would like to consider a change.”The WTA will continue to monitor and discuss the matter, Binder said, though she said the decision on the ball ultimately rested with the U.S.T.A.The ball controversy has had previous iterations. After Ashleigh Barty won the Australian Open in January, her coach, Craig Tyzzer, said she would never win the U.S. Open as long as the tournament used the Wilson regular-duty balls. (Barty retired in March at age 25, while ranked as the world No. 1.) The latest gripes started earlier this summer, when the players began playing with these balls in the lead-up to the U.S. Open.Tennis, though, is all about making adjustments and finding solutions as the conditions change throughout a match, and a tournament, and a season. The challenge can be as much mental as it is physical.A tennis umpire examined one of the tennis balls during a fourth-round match.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesPegula kept switching rackets in her match against Kvitova on Monday, experimenting with different string tensions in search of one that felt just right as the humidity and the condition of the balls changed. Looser strings hold the ball for longer (think of a trampoline) and provide more time to spin the ball.“Something feels off, you have to make a change,” Pegula said “It’s important not to let it frustrate you too much.”That has been the challenge for Swiatek, who travels with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz. They have talked plenty about all the challenges created by these balls that Swiatek so despises.Abramowicz does not tell Swiatek not to think about the balls because then the first thing she will think about is the balls.“It’s like I would tell you right now not to think about a blue elephant for a minute, and literally the first thing popping into your mind is this blue elephant,” Abramowicz said. “You accept the thought, because it’s already there, and move on, refocus, find anchor in something else.”Pegula and Swiatek will meet Wednesday in the quarterfinals, a match that could become a test between Pegula’s flexibility and Swiatek’s ability to think about other things besides the balls. Or maybe the balls will have nothing to do with the outcome.What will happen with the balls next year is anyone’s guess, but Allaster said the WTA would need to decide what to do soon. Wilson has already been asking which balls the U.S.T.A. needs in 2023.Someone is not going to be happy. More

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    John McEnroe Gets His Revenge

    John McEnroe was sitting on a couch 43 stories above Manhattan, his gray curls and sleepy, crinkled eyes betraying every one of his 63 years, some of them hard ones, regaling an awe-struck podcaster with stories of his glory years. His rivalry with Bjorn Borg, his battles with chair umpires and his own demons.The awe-struck podcaster was Kevin Garnett, the N.B.A. champion, Olympic gold medalist and 15-time N.B.A. All-Star who is 17 years younger than McEnroe. Garnett was 8 years old when McEnroe won his last Grand Slam singles title in 1984.Somehow, that does not matter, not even a little bit.Thirty years after McEnroe played his last match at the U.S. Open, the irascible kid from Queens, the notorious hothead who griped and cussed and kicked his way across the hallowed grass of Wimbledon and every other tennis court, possesses a star power that has barely faded. It is especially bright during the U.S. Open. He is the leading voice of the tournament on ESPN, the subject of a new documentary, even the narrator and superego of a lovesick and unathletic teenage Indian American girl with a hot temper on Mindy Kaling’s comedy “Never Have I Ever.”The staying power is sweet revenge for the man whom much of tennis officialdom once viewed as toxic to their genteel game.“Maybe I wasn’t so bad after all,” McEnroe said during a recent interview at the end of a day that began with an early-morning appearance on “CBS Mornings” and then was jam-packed with chats with journalists, including from N.P.R.’s “Fresh Air.” “These guys who were trying to run me out of the game, maybe they should have been trying to help me instead of hanging me out to dry back in the ’80s.”‘The Weight of the Name’McEnroe won seven Grand Slam singles titles, plenty no doubt, but not as many as Jimmy Connors or Andre Agassi or Ivan Lendl, who each won eight, to say nothing of Borg’s 11, Pete Sampras’s 14 or Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, who have tripled his tally.Yet, McEnroe still looms over his contemporaries, as well as Sampras, who dominated the era just after McEnroe’s. When he walks the grounds of the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, he is still the quarterback of the varsity football team in the high school cafeteria.“Johnny Mac!” fans yell to him as he passes.If they can get a word with him, they often tell him how they liked how he thumbed his nose at authority, in a way that perhaps they have never felt empowered to.Word got back to Nadal last week that McEnroe was griping on television that the Spanish champion was violating the time limit between serves. “I’m going to have a chat with him,” Nadal said with a wry smile.He has written two memoirs and been the subject of multiple books. There was a feature film in 2017 about his rivalry with Borg, the Swedish great he vanquished into retirement. The next year came a documentary about him focusing on his brush with perfection in 1984. He has hosted a game show.John McEnroe and Coco Gauff during Tennis Plays for Peace, an exhibition to benefit Ukraine.Jamie Squire/Getty ImagesWhen the United States Tennis Association wanted to hold an exhibition to raise money for relief efforts in Ukraine, McEnroe was among its first calls. In that exhibition he played doubles with Nadal, Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek. All are younger than his oldest child. He’d love a chance to coach Denis Shapovalov of Canada, the flashy and talented, but temperamental, lefty — sound familiar? — but has yet to get the call.Showtime released the latest documentary last week. The 100-minute film — McEnroe’s longtime agent, Gary Swain, is among the executive producers — is an exploration of his tortured psyche and the seemingly unfulfilled promise of someone who was, for a brief few years a long time ago, both the greatest player who ever lived and perhaps the most miserable.“The weight of the name ‘McEnroe,’ it’s heavy all across the globe,” said Barney Douglas, who directed the latest documentary.But why?McEnroe’s younger brother, Patrick, who also played professional tennis and now commentates (and squabbles) with him on ESPN, thinks he knows the main reason.“He’s authentic,” Patrick McEnroe said.Mellowing, Just a Little, With AgeDuring his playing days, John McEnroe may have been a bit too authentic. Tennis officials and some of their comrades in the news media viewed McEnroe as a menace to the sport. They fined and penalized him and threatened him with suspensions. They derided his penchants for hopping on concert stages to jam with rock stars and indulging in their late-night habits. The British press and the paparazzi hounded him so intensely, especially after his marriage to the actress Tatum O’Neal, that he skipped Wimbledon at the height of his career.As it turned out, McEnroe was already where tennis was headed long before it arrived, in good ways and bad.His game, which was all serve-and-volley all the time, may be completely out of step with nearly every top pro these days. But McEnroe possessed in spades something that continues to separate the best from the merely great — that magical and unteachable touch and creativity that allow a player to blast one shot and feather the next one. He could hit an opponent off the court on one point, then practically catch a 100-mile-per-hour forehand rocket on his racket on the next one.John McEnroe won the 1981 U.S. Open after defeating his rival Bjorn Borg in the final. He finished his career with seven Grand Slam singles titles.Photo by Professional Sport/Popperfoto via Getty ImagesHe also brought to the court the petulance and nastiness, the relentless attacks on chair umpires and equipment that have become so integral to the modern game, whether it was Serena Williams threatening to shove a ball down a linesman’s throat during her 2009 U.S. Open semifinal against Kim Clijsters or Nick Kyrgios’s tireless tirades at Wimbledon this year.The tennis gods blessed him with limitless talent. But they also saddled him with a mind prone to the anguish of tennis in a way that many top professionals now openly discuss. There have been therapists who have tried to help McEnroe explore that struggle, sometimes by his own choosing, sometimes at the direction of the legal system, with varying degrees of success, he said.And it all played out when television cameras first began treating tennis players like the reality television stars they are today. (Stay tuned for Netflix’s tennis version of “Drive to Survive,” the Formula 1 series, that is now in production.) That made McEnroe that rare character remembered, even lionized, not just for how he won but also for how he stumbled and fell short, a narrative of triumph and also a cautionary tale.“I was a little shy, and it was all a little overwhelming, and then somehow it all started to become magical,” McEnroe said of his journey.Like so many other modern stars of the game, though, he struggled to enjoy it.The tennis commentator Mary Carillo, a fellow New York native and his mixed doubles partner for their win at the French Open in 1977, recalled an 18-year-old McEnroe losing his temper with a waiter at a Paris cafe that spring. McEnroe spent several minutes yelling, “omelet du fromage,” which was the only French he spoke, at a waiter who ignored him. The waiter finally wandered over and quietly, but dismissively, told McEnroe, “The omelet is closed.”“To this day, when we’re arguing about something and I’m done with it, I just say, ‘The omelet is closed,’” Carillo said.John McEnroe argues with the chair umpire during Wimbledon in 1981.Bettmann / ContributorLooking back, McEnroe acknowledges a lot of what he sees in himself still angers him. Long before Djokovic and Kyrgios and plenty of others started using the coaches and family members in the player boxes to vent their frustrations, McEnroe directed an expletive at his father as he clapped for him during a match at Wimbledon.McEnroe later told him he was yelling at someone else in the crowd. His father accepted the explanation, though McEnroe is pretty sure his father knew he was lying.“It gave us both plausible deniability,” he said.Even his mother landed in the line of fire sometimes. He was still living at home when he won his first U.S. Open, sleeping in his childhood bedroom each night, eating his mother’s food, which he would impolitely order her to provide at a specific time before his matches.Fed up with his behavior, she asked him why he couldn’t behave more like his friend Peter Rennert, the tour pro who was his constant sidekick.“That made me feel like I was an inch tall,” McEnroe said.Age has mellowed him, though not entirely. His second marriage, 25 years and counting, to Patty Smyth, the lead singer of the rock band Scandal (“I am the warrior. …”), and six children have given him some perspective, as well as a few talking-tos when he gets out of line.But when he hears people saying his serve-and-volley game would not have a prayer against the likes of Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer, his voice rises to resemble that unmistakable ranting of the man who made chair umpires’ lives deeply unpleasant.Dial back time to the peak of his powers, put him on a grass court at maximum intensity, and McEnroe is comfortable in his belief that every so often he could have beaten the modern greats.“I would have gotten under the skin and made them think,” he said. “Would not have had a winning record, but I would have gotten to them a few times.”Sounds plausible. In his own way, McEnroe has gotten to all of us — and still does. More

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    Rafael Nadal Loses His Serve and His Way at the U.S. Open

    His loss to Frances Tiafoe was Nadal’s earliest defeat at a major tournament in more than five years and the first time he had been beaten in any major in 2022.Rafael Nadal clenched his fists and roared at the U.S. Open on Monday.He had just broken Frances Tiafoe’s serve to take a 3-1 lead in the fourth set, reclaiming the momentum against an inspired, much younger American opponent who had cracked before with a major upset in reach.It looked, from long and recent experience, as if Nadal was teeing up another comeback victory in a career defined by in-the-moment grit.But a strange thing happened on the way to another revival. Nadal lost his serve and his way in the next game under the closed roof of Arthur Ashe Stadium, and though he still scrapped and whipped his trademark topspin forehand, he was ultimately unable to avoid an unpleasant fourth-round surprise.He would not win another game as Tiafoe, who had never won a set against him in their previous two matches, prevailed, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.“I played a bad match, and he played a good match, and at the end, that’s it, no?” Nadal said at a news conference afterward. “I was not able to hold a high level of tennis for a long time. I was not enough quick on my movements. He was able to take the ball too many times very early, so I was not able to push him back.”As Nadal, cleareyed in victory and defeat, pointed out, tennis matches often come down to court position.Tiafoe spent most of the match on or inside the baseline, taking quick cuts and finishing with 49 winners. Nadal spent too much of the match well behind the baseline, sprinting to the corners and lunging to extend rallies (or not). His game lacked spark and depth.If you lose the battle of position, Nadal said, “you need to be very, very quick and very young.”Then Nadal, 36, smiled, not because he was content but because he had set up his next line.“I am not in that moment anymore,” he said.This was Nadal’s earliest defeat at a major tournament in more than five years and the first time he had been beaten in any major in 2022, a strange and potent brew of a season full of unexpected joy and pain.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Tennis After Serena: Tennis has long thrived on singular stars, no one bigger than Williams. But perhaps women’s tennis doesn’t need one big name to be interesting.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.This should go down as one of Nadal’s greatest campaigns, not his most complete season but the year he took the lead over his longtime rivals Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic in the chase to finish with the most Grand Slam singles titles.Nadal won his 21st at the Australian Open and his 22nd at the French Open and came within striking range of his 23rd at Wimbledon before an abdominal injury forced him to retire before the semifinals.That injury cost him preparation time ahead of the U.S. Open. He played just one official match before New York, losing to Borna Coric in the round of 32 at last month’s Western and Southern Open.But Nadal, so familiar with the comeback trail, was able to train with full intensity in Ohio, pushing himself on the practice courts with coaches Marc Lopez and Francisco Roig and doing the same in New York after Carlos Moya, the lead member of his coaching team, arrived.Nadal, left, and Tiafoe met at the net. “I played a bad match, and he played a good match,” Nadal said afterward.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesNadal has triumphed without ideal preparation throughout 2022. He arrived in Australia in January having played only one official tournament in the previous seven months because of the chronic foot condition that has troubled him, off and on, since his late teens.But he worked his way into the Australian Open and rallied from a two-set deficit to defeat Daniil Medvedev in a 5 hour 24 minute test of endurance and resilience in the final.“If we put everything together, the scenario, the momentum, what it means,” he said in Melbourne, long after midnight, “yeah, without a doubt probably have been the biggest comeback of my tennis career.”He kept rolling, winning 20 straight matches in all before sustaining a freak injury in March in the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., on a blustery afternoon against a much younger Spanish star, Carlos Alcaraz.In an intense, physical duel in which last-second swing adjustments were often necessary in the high winds, Nadal sustained a stress fracture in his rib cage. Though he somehow reached the final, losing to Taylor Fritz, the new injury cut short his preparation for his beloved clay-court season.When he returned, his foot pain resurfaced. After losing to Denis Shapovalov at the Italian Open in mid-May, he looked as gloomy as he had ever looked in the aftermath of a defeat, talking openly and grimly about the prospect of tennis no longer being worth the trouble or the pain.But after mulling retirement for the second time in a year, Nadal found a way — with the help of regular painkilling injections — to win his 14th French Open. Then he found a way to resolve the pain on a longer-term basis by undergoing a procedure in which radio waves were used to deaden the nerves in his foot before Wimbledon.He arrived in London relieved and reinvigorated, only to strain his abdominal muscle in a quarterfinal victory over Fritz. But there would be no semifinal match, as Nadal withdrew before facing Nick Kyrgios, and there will be no deep run at the U.S. Open, where Nadal won a fourth singles title on his last visit in 2019 but could not hit the same high notes on this visit.“Of course Tiafoe is playing more solid than before, serving well I think today, taking the ball very early,” Nadal said. “Good backhands. He’s quick, as everybody knows. But I don’t think I pushed him enough to create in him the doubts that I need to create. Tennis is always a balance. When somebody’s not playing that well, it’s easier that the opponent plays better. If my ball is not a high-quality ball, then he’s able to do his game much easier.”After winning the 2019 U.S. Open — in another gritty five-set final against Medvedev — Nadal sat courtside and cried in Arthur Ashe Stadium as he watched a video tribute that showed footage of his 19 major victories.His count is now up to 22, one ahead of Djokovic, who won the Wimbledon title this year but who, as a foreigner unvaccinated for the coronavirus, was not permitted to enter the United States to take part in this U.S. Open.As in the pandemic year of 2020, when Nadal and Federer were absent in New York and Djokovic was defaulted after striking a ball and inadvertently hitting a lineswoman in the throat, there will be no member of the Big Three in the final eight at the U.S. Open.“Fifteen minutes after losing at the last Grand Slam tournament of the year, everything is dark, but that’s normal,” Nadal said in Spanish. “Then time passes and there’s no solution but to continue, and in the end, I know I have the interior strength to do it.”Nadal and his wife Maria Francisca are expecting their first child later this year, but for now, the Big Three plan to reassemble later this month, competing for Team Europe in the Laver Cup in London, along with Andy Murray. But the path to the more prestigious title in New York is now open to another generation of contenders, including the 27-year-old Kyrgios and 24-year-old Tiafoe.“It’s cool to see a new era,” Tiafoe said on Monday.It is not quite here in earnest: Djokovic, 35, just won Wimbledon and will presumably be hungry for more success if he can play a fuller schedule in 2023. Nadal holds two of the four majors and will reclaim the No. 1 ranking at age 36 if neither Alcaraz nor the young Norwegian Casper Ruud reach the U.S. Open final.But a new era is surely on the horizon. Consider this tournament — and days like Monday — a sneak preview. More

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    Rafael Nadal Defeated at U.S. Open by an American, Frances Tiafoe

    The next generation of top American players has struggled heavily against Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer in Grand Slams. Tiafoe broke through by winning, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3.It happens at just about every Grand Slam. One of the American men of the so-called next generation begins to look dangerous, raising hopes for a breakthrough.Then one of those familiar foes who have hogged the biggest trophies in the sport dashes the dream.Lately the Americans have been getting closer, which has made the failures more difficult to swallow. Taylor Fritz said he wanted to cry on his chair beside the court when he lost to Rafael Nadal in a fifth-set tiebreaker in the Wimbledon quarterfinals this summer.No one has to dream anymore.Frances Tiafoe emerged on Monday at the U.S. Open in a way that went beyond the other top Americans of his generation, beating Nadal in four sets to knock one of the sport’s so-called Big Three — who also include Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer — out of a Grand Slam tournament.Tiafoe beat Nadal, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, with an intense, joyous effort on an electric afternoon at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. He grabbed his head and crouched to his knees when Nadal hit the final backhand into the net.“I don’t even know what happened,” Tiafoe said, moments later. “Unbelievable day.”

    Men’s Singles Fourth RoundFinal22 Frances Tiafoe64662 Rafael Nadal4643 .spt-live-blog-width { max-width: 600px; margin: auto; } .spt-grid-item { font-family: nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; padding: 5px 0; width: 100%; border: none; } table.spt-scoreboard { font-family: nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: 300; font-size: 15px; border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%; } tr.spt-scoreboard { border-top: 1px solid #ddd; } tr.spt-scoreboard:last-of-type { border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; } td.spt-scoreboard { padding: 13px 0 12px; text-align: left; /* vertical-align: top; */ } .spt-black { color: #121212; } .spt-athleteName { word-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; hyphens: auto; margin: 0 !important; } .spt-score { padding: 13px 0 12px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; width: 30px; } .win { font-weight: 700; } .spt-score sup { position: absolute; top: 7px; text-indent: 2px; font-size: 12.5px; } .spt-winner-mark { width: 1em; margin-left: 5px; height: 1em; display: none; } .spt-winner-mark.win { display: block; } .spt-container { display: flex; align-items: center; } .spt-medal-wrapper { display: flex; align-items: center; justify-content: center; } .serve { display: inline-block; border-radius: 10px; width: 10px; height: 10px; background-color: #ffe532; margin-left: 5px; } .spt-seed { font-size: 12.5px; color: #666; font-weight: 300; width: 21px; text-align: right; display: inline-block; } .spt-flag { transform: scale(.9); margin-top: 1px; margin-bottom: -1px; } .spt-meta { margin-bottom: 5px; } div.spt-title { padding-bottom: 5px; font-weight: 700; } div.spt-status { font-weight: 400; } @media (min-width: 600px) { .spt-grid-item { /*text-align: center;*/ } .spt-score { width: 50px; } .spt-meta { text-align: center; margin-bottom: 10px; } } The victory represented the next step for the American men, who have not won a Grand Slam singles title in 19 years. Tiafoe and his fellow 20-somethings have become solid members of the top 30 this year, but have yet to crack the next level.For Tiafoe, a strong and talented 24-year-old from Hyattsville, Md., who is one of the fastest players in the game and built like an N.F.L. defensive back, the win was the biggest of his career. It came in his home-country slam in a stadium packed to the rafters with the sound bellowing off the roof after nearly every point, with raucous cheers for both an American underdog and a beloved champion.Tennis for Tiafoe, who is the child of immigrants from Sierra Leone, was simply a means to gain a scholarship to college. Then it became far more that.Tiafoe rode the crowd for all it was worth, pumping his fists and asking for more noise on his best shots. After a key winner gave him a decisive break of Nadal’s serve in the third set, he sprinted to his chair, revving up the crowd even more and letting the roars fall over him.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Tennis After Serena: Tennis has long thrived on singular stars, no one bigger than Williams. But perhaps women’s tennis doesn’t need one big name to be interesting.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.The loss for Nadal, who was seeded second, came less than 24 hours after Daniil Medvedev, the top seed and defending champion, lost to Nick Kyrgios. It blew the men’s tournament wide open and nearly guaranteed that there will be a first-time Grand Slam champion for the third consecutive year.Tiafoe said ahead of the match that he needed to somehow equal Nadal’s intensity from the first point to the last, and that is exactly what he did. He stumbled briefly in the fourth set, when he was forced to serve as the roof was closing because of a rainy forecast. Noticeably shaken, he complained to the chair umpire, missed an easy volley and got sloppy with his groundstrokes, letting Nadal break him.But he quickly came back to break Nadal’s serve in the next game, and then began hammering away and scampering across the court to chase down every ball he could reach and many he couldn’t. A serve that regularly hits 130 miles per hour on the radar gun was plenty helpful, too. A 134-m.p.h. rocket brought him to within one game of the finish line.Nadal will not get a chance at a 23rd Grand Slam title in New York.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesHe also took advantage of the fact that Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, was not playing at his best.Nadal is still finding his form at the end of a strange, injury-plagued year that somehow could still end up being one of his best.He could barely walk on his chronically injured left foot six weeks before the Australian Open and thought he might have to retire. Then he started to feel better, played one tournament before the year’s first Grand Slam, and then won it, coming back from two sets down in the final against Medvedev, the world No. 1.He cracked a rib ahead of the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and then the pain in his foot returned just a few weeks before the French Open. He received injections to numb his foot before each match and still won his 14th French Open title. He also left Paris on crutches.Playing on the Wimbledon grass for the first time in three years, he got better with each match and appeared destined for a showdown in the finals against Djokovic. But he tore an abdominal muscle during his match against Fritz. He withdrew from the tournament the next day.Rehabilitation from that injury took longer than expected. Nadal arrived in New York having played just one hardcourt match, which he lost to Borna Coric of Croatia in Ohio. In Queens, Rinky Hijikata, a wild-card entrant from Australia ranked 198th in the world, took the first set off him in the first round. Nadal struggled to find the court for much of the first two sets of his second-round match against Fabio Fognini of Italy.On Monday against Tiafoe, Nadal had to consult with a physiotherapist after the first set. He double-faulted at key moments and could not produce the torque that has always been so essential for his power but also makes him prone to injuries.“I don’t even know what happened,” Tiafoe said. “Unbelievable day.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesAfter the match, Nadal was philosophical as always, saying that complaining about his spate of injuries or wondering what might have been had he not gotten hurt, or if possible distractions had not developed — his wife, who is pregnant, was hospitalized while he was in New York — would not change the outcome. After all, sometimes he has been terribly hurt and somehow managed to come out on top — just not this time.“We can’t find excuses,” he said. He continued: “I have been practicing well the week before, honestly. But then when the competition started, my level went down. That’s the truth. For some reason, I don’t know, mental issues in terms of a lot of things happened the last couple of months. Doesn’t matter. At the end the only thing that happened is we went to the fourth round of the U.S. Open and I faced a player that was better than me. And that’s why I am having a plane back home.”Tiafoe is headed back to a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time since the Australian Open in 2019, the last time he played Nadal — and lost — in a Grand Slam.That performance, when he was 21, announced him as a potential force. Suddenly people in the game started looking to him as a savior for American men’s tennis, which has struggled for several years to find its next big star.Tiafoe has said it was all a bit too much too soon, and it happened before he really understood the dedication and commitment required to climb to the highest echelon of the sport.After shooting into the top 30 he slumped. He has steadily climbed the world rankings since the middle of last year. He also made the final 16 at the U.S. Open in 2020 and 2021, and did so at Wimbledon this year. Coming into Monday’s match, he had won all nine sets in New York this year, and had been especially tough in the crucial moments, winning four tiebreakers. But he was battling Nadal and history at the same time.Tiafoe had been winless in six tries against Federer, Djokovic and Nadal, though he had given Djokovic all he could handle in four tight, physical sets at the Australian Open last year.He spoke of being more mentally prepared to take on Nadal than he had been three years ago.“I’m not going to have that ‘first time playing him, excited to play,’” he said of Nadal after his third-round win against Diego Schwartzman, the 14th seed, eight spots higher than him. “Now I believe I can beat him.”Tiafoe is part of a promising and talented group of American players that also includes Fritz, Tommy Paul and Reilly Opelka. They essentially grew up together at junior tournaments and training at the United States Tennis Association centers in Florida.They were born within 12 months of each other in 1997 and 1998 and have been jockeying with and supporting one another since they were 14 years old. Tiafoe has always been the alpha of the group, always looking to rib his mates, especially Fritz.Fritz was once the worst of the foursome but he has had the most success and is the highest ranked. He got the groups’s first win against the Big Three earlier this year, when he overcame an ankle injury during his warm-up and beat Nadal in the final in Indian Wells.Martin Blackman, who as director of player development for the U.S.T.A. has watched Tiafoe and the others in his age group and played a role in the federation’s investment in them, said on Sunday he was confident Tiafoe could break through that Grand Slam barrier against Nadal.“It takes 100 percent focus and intensity from start to finish,” Blackman said.That is exactly what Tiafoe delivered. More

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    The Void Serena Williams Left in Tennis Doesn’t Need to Be Filled

    Tennis has long thrived on singular stars, no one bigger than Serena Williams. But perhaps women’s tennis doesn’t need one big name to be interesting.Serena Williams is gone from the game; at least, we think so. Given the sharp, competitive way she played at the U.S. Open last week, maybe, just maybe, she’ll end up coming back for an encore.Let’s take her at her word, despite the malaise that settled on the grounds at Flushing Meadows in the days following her defeat to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia. Their three-hour match Friday night featured some of the most thrilling tennis played at this tournament in years.Now what? That was the question fans were asking over the Labor Day weekend, many of whom had bought their tickets just before the tournament began, gambling that Williams would keep playing and that they could watch her last great run. With her gone, not even the players who are left in the tournament have a firm grasp of who will take her place in women’s tennis.“I don’t know,” said Jessica Pegula last week, echoing a typical locker room sentiment. Pegula, an American barely known outside of tennis even though she is currently ranked No. 8, made note of the remarkable explosion of talent on the women’s tour, which features its deepest-ever bench, but lamented that nobody has been up for filling the Serena void.“It’s open for someone to step up,” she said. “That’s why you look at someone like Serena, dominant over several eras, and it’s pretty crazy.”Of course, tennis, like most sports, thrives on big names. On the women’s side, in the modern era of professionalization, the racket passed from Billie Jean King to Chris Evert to Martina Navratilova to Steffi Graf and Monica Seles. Then it was Venus Williams’s turn, and finally, Serena, who not only pushed the game in popularity and reach, she helped changed the way the game was played.“It’s hard to picture tennis without her,” Pegula added, dolefully.Steffi Graf with the U.S. Open trophy in 1988 the year she won the Grand Slam.Peter Morgan/Associated PressDoes women’s tennis need such a dominating figure to be interesting?Maybe it’s a matter of perspective. Rivalries and dynasties are great things. Many fans seem content to follow a small handful players or, in other sports, teams. The few players who win big and win consistently — like Williams and Novak Djokovic — are the ones whose stories take up most of the oxygen.But is there another more satisfying way of looking at sports?Is the N.B.A. at its best when the Golden State Warriors are in the finals, year after year, and winning the league title, in four out of eight seasons?Did we only care about the N.F.L. when the New England Patriots were bullying everyone in sight?Simone Biles had her well-documented struggles at the Tokyo Olympics, but how cool was it to watch Sunisa Lee emerge from relative obscurity and win gold in the all-around event?Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.In men’s tennis, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Djokovic are pure genius. Bless the Big Three. But after reigning over the game for nearly two decades, each one of this trio feels past his due date.Despite Monday’s stunning loss to Frances Tiafoe, Nadal may play for at least another year. Djokovic looks like he has no plans to slow down until he is 70. Federer says he will give it one last hurrah when he can return from yet another knee injury.All to the good, unless, like me, you want some spice and variety and you like not knowing with near 100 percent certainty who is going to dominate every big tournament.Over the last several days, I spent time in Manhattan, randomly asking strangers what they knew about Iga Swiatek, the top women’s seed at the U.S. Open. The standard response was a quizzical, dumbfounded look. “Who?”Swiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, won her second French Open in June. She also won 37 straight matches this year, the longest such streak in the 21st century.She has a compelling, all-court game. She is intelligent, contemplative, and engaging.But let’s face it, outside of tennis fans, in America, arguably the most critical market in tennis because of its size and spending power, Swiatek isn’t well known. She does not seem poised to fill the void left by Serena Williams. But that’s fine. No player will. The game, with its drama, athleticism and skill, should be able to attract fans.Iga Swiatek is the top seed at the U.S. Open. Will she be the next player to dominate tennis?Mike Segar/ReutersIt’s been interesting to watch the matches at Flushing this week, not only on the big courts but on the outskirts of this glammed-up tennis mecca — which, unlike, say, lush and intimate Wimbledon, has the look and feel of public tennis courts on steroids, with a looming football stadium stuck in the middle.Serena’s influence is everywhere. Remember how she spoke of “evolving” away from tennis? What a perfect word, because that is what she has done for tennis. She’s been the prime force in its evolution.You can see her fingerprints in every women’s match. The powerful, percussive groundstrokes hit from every corner. The biting serves. The aggressive, swinging volleys. The strength and speed. Virtually every player looks like they could be competing in the Olympic Heptathlon.Women’s tennis has never contained this much depth. Yes, you can watch the young and talented Coco Gauff, 18, ranked 12th, now into her first U.S. Open quarterfinals on Tuesday, and make the obvious comparison to a young Serena Williams because of their race — and because Gauff has steadily pointed to Serena and Venus for laying down the path for her tennis journey.It helps that Gauff also has the same sort of ambitious grit. As she came from behind in each set of her Sunday match against China’s Zhang Shuai, Gauff channeled Serena’s moxie, giving a Dikembe Mutombo finger wag, pumping her fists, flying from corner to corner to hit groundstrokes that echoed with a boom across Arthur Ashe Stadium.But throughout this tournament the grounds have been filled with competitors like the 86th ranked player in the world, Ukraine’s Dayana Yastremska — who, like so many other, credits Serena Williams for sparking her love for tennis as a girl. The shots that fly off Yastremska’s racket, no surprise, look like they’re ripping out of a cannon.Serena isn’t truly gone from the sport. She left a lot behind and remains part of tennis in a profound way. Her influence is all over the grounds.But that the void she left can’t be filled and doesn’t need to be. More

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    Nick Kyrgios Is Having a Very Good U.S. Open. Make That Summer.

    The often tortured tennis player said he was “really sick of letting people down,” after beating No. 1 ranked Daniil Medvedev to advance to the quarterfinals.His tennis, always sublime some of the time, has been sublime far more of the time.There is no arguing with Nick Kyrgios’s recent results: a first-time Grand Slam singles final at Wimbledon in July; a singles title in Washington, D.C., in August; and now a best-ever run to the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in September after outclassing the defending champion Daniil Medvedev, starting and finishing with an ace down the T and knocking the Russian from the No. 1 spot.“I was just really sick of letting people down,” he said after his victory, 7-6 (11), 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, over Medvedev on Sunday night. “I feel like I’m making people proud now. I feel there’s not as much negative things being said about me. I just wanted to turn the narrative around almost. That’s basically it. I just was feeling so depressed all the time, so feeling sorry for myself. I just wanted to change that.”It is good to see a gifted tennis player making fuller use of his gifts. Good to hear an oft-tormented man sound like he has found, for now, a measure of peace, though Kyrgios is still no Zen master; still no angel.Off court, he faces charges of assault from a former girlfriend and a court hearing in Australia scheduled for next month, as well as a defamation suit in England, brought by a British fan that Kyrgios claimed “was drunk out of her mind” during one of his Wimbledon matches.On court, he is still a magnet for fines (and fans) at age 27 and a combustible, foul-mouthed racket smasher with a nasty spitting habit, all of which makes the Kyrgios show less than ideal family entertainment.He tossed a few more rackets on Sunday night as he beat Medvedev for the fourth time in their five matches and for the first time in a major tournament. He also, as so often, directed a few more oaths at his support team even as they gave him nothing but encouragement.“Stay focused Nick!”“No negative energy, man!”“You can do it!”Yes, he could. His victory over Medvedev was an often-dazzling mix of power and finesse.Thunderous serves followed by feathery drop shots that an out-of-sorts Medvedev was unable to reach or control despite his foot speed and big wingspan at 6-foot-6.Deft backhand chips that just barely cleared the net followed by fully ripped forehand winners on the move.Patient backcourt exchanges followed by serve-and-volley to keep Medvedev from camping out behind the baseline to return.Krygios has all the shots and though he is still without a formal coach, he said he has tried to address his weaknesses this year by improving his fitness, his second-serve variety and above all his forehand return.Kyrgios, left, had more support from the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium than his opponent Daniil Medvedev.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesWhat makes him so tough to neutralize on a night like Sunday are the abrupt shifts in rhythm and tactics. It is hard, even for a supreme defender and pace absorber like Medvedev, to settle in for long. It is the upside of Kyrgios’s short attention span: a resistance to routine.What also made Kyrgios tough to beat was his refusal to implode even if he seemed to be reaching a boil in the opening set, the pièce de résistance of this particular tennis spectacle.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.The latest sellout crowd of nearly 24,000 could sense the danger, too, and though there were a few Medvedev fans in attendance, it was much easier to hear the Kyrgios supporters, who know their man at this stage.“Come on Nick!”“Keep it together!”“Don’t get distracted!”With coaching from the stands allowed on a trial basis at this year’s U.S. Open, Kyrgios had no shortage of volunteer coaches, and it seemed they sensed the precarity of this state of tennis grace.Medvedev had three set points in the tiebreaker. Kyrgios saved them all and then failed to convert three set points of his own.After faltering on the second point, he screamed at his team, using an expletive: “Tell me where to serve!” After the third, he wheeled and spiked his racket. But on the next point, he hit a perfectly weighted drop shot winner, and then secured the set when Medvedev missed a forehand wide with a passing lane available.In the third set, with Medvedev serving in the second game at 30-all, Kyrgios fired a forehand passing shot that Medvedev could only deflect with his racket, sending the ball high in the air on his own side of the net. Kyrgios watched its flight and then, presumably sensing a chance to entertain, ran past the net post and, before the ball landed, knocked it past Medvedev into the open court, wagging his index finger triumphantly.There was only one problem: It is against the rules to strike a ball in the air on your opponent’s side of the net unless it has first bounced on your side and then spun back. Instead of break point for Kyrgios, it was 40-30 for Medvedev, who went on to hold serve.It was a bonehead move, as Kyrgios would concede later, but again, no Kyrgios implosion — only banter with his box. “I thought it was legal when I did it,” he said, while sweeping the next three games to take command of the match for good.As a result, men’s tennis is guaranteed to have a new No. 1 after the U.S. Open.“Not going to cry in the room, but I’m a little bit disappointed,” Medvedev said.It has been a strange and unsettled season for the Russian star. He blew a two-set lead in the Australian Open final and lost to Rafael Nadal, was banned from Wimbledon because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and then ran into Kyrgios in New York on a night when Medvedev said he was feeling slightly ill and low on energy down the stretch.But he conceded that he had been feeling fine when Kyrgios beat him last month in the second round of the National Bank Open in Montreal.Kyrgios’s four-set victory over Medvedev was equal parts power and finesse.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe new No. 1 after the U.S. Open could be Nadal, who has been there before but never at age 36. It could also be 19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz or 23-year-old Casper Ruud.Nadal and Marin Cilic, who faces Alcaraz in the fourth round on Monday night, are the only men left in the draw who have won the U.S. Open or, for that matter, any major singles title.Medvedev thinks Kyrgios has a shot to join them, and it is tempting to agree.“He’s tough to play,” Medvedev said. “He has an amazing serve, but from the baseline it’s not like when the point starts, you know you have the advantage.”Medvedev continued: “If he plays like this ’till the end of the tournament, he has all the chances to win it, but he’s going to get tough opponents.”Next up in Kyrgios’s first U.S. Open quarterfinal is another Russian, Karen Khachanov. Win Tuesday and Kyrgios would face either Matteo Berrettini or Ruud in the semifinals.Despite Kyrgios’s often-glittering record against highly ranked players, he is 1-1 against Khachanov and Ruud and 0-1 against Berrettini.But Kyrgios, never at his best in New York until now, looked inspired for much of Sunday night with the big crowd mostly in his corner and showing love for his flashy shotmaking.“I hadn’t won a match on Ashe before this week, and now I’ve won two against two quality opponents,” he said. “I feel like I’ve been able to showcase. There’s a lot of celebrities here, a lot of important people here watching. I wanted to get on that court and show them I am able to put my head down and play and win these big matches.”Stay inspired, whatever the reasons, and he just might pull this off. He certainly is looking for a reward before he heads back to Australia after being on the road for several months with his girlfriend Costeen Hatzi.“We’ve got to try and just tough it out and keep pushing each other, keep being positive,” he said. “We do realize it’s next week we’re going home, but three more matches potentially, then we never have to play tennis again.”A throwaway line or a promise? Kyrgios, like his serve, is not always easy to read. More