Tennis

Phase 1 of the weirdest United States Open was full of tennis lessons we never expected we would have to learn.Don’t pull a ball out of your pocket and smack it without looking.Don’t play cards with Benoît Paire.Don’t sign a new protocol and stay in a Long Island hotel. You still might not be allowed to cross a county line to play your match in Queens.Don’t argue line calls on the outside courts. With automated calls, there is no one to argue with.But there was another revelation, too. You don’t need a crowd to have a classic U.S. Open night match.Until now, the players and the spectators seemed to be essential ingredients: feeding off one another, inspiring one another.But Borna Coric and Stefanos Tsitsipas did it on their own in Louis Armstrong Stadium, forging a mutual masterpiece as they exchanged shouts, dirty looks and all manner of shots: bold, subtle, cocksure and humanizingly shaky in the third round.Tsitsipas, a prodigiously talented Greek full of hunger and swagger, seemed to have the match under control at 5-1 in the fourth set and seemed to have it under lock and key serving at 5-4, 40-0. But Coric, who has a tattoo that reads “There is nothing worse in life than being ordinary,” stayed true to his body art.One of the best movers in the men’s game, the young, bristle-haired Croatian kept grinding and swinging. He saved six match points and leveled the match at two sets apiece as Friday night turned into Saturday.Tsitsipas could have been excused for curling up into a ball on the baseline at that stage. But he stayed upright and even went up a break in the fifth set before Coric leveled.Tsitsipas had four more break-point chances down the stretch. But Coric held phenomenally firm and Tsitsipas cracked again, double faulting twice in the fifth-set tiebreaker as Coric prevailed 6-7 (2), 6-4, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6 (4).“I have to be honest, and say I was really lucky,” said Coric, who is now in the quarterfinals. “In the third and fourth set, he was playing unbelievable tennis, and I felt like I had no chance.”It was not the first tennis pandemic epic (a pandepic, perhaps?): Andy Murray and his bionic hip won a five-setter of their own in the first round against Yoshihito Nishioka. Earlier on Friday, Denis Shapovalov came back from a break down in the fifth to defeat Taylor Fritz.Although Novak Djokovic’s fourth-round default was certainly the most dramatic moment of the first week, he and Pablo Carreño Busta did not even finish the first set. For long-form quality, relentless intensity and midnight madness timing, there was no topping Coric and Tsitsipas.“This is probably the saddest and funniest at the same time thing that has ever happened in my career,” tweeted Tsitsipas, in new-generation fashion, just minutes after it happened.It would have been the match of just about any tournament — this one, coronavirus willing, still has matches through Sunday — and that it could happen in a fan-free environment in an individual sport was both reaffirming and unsettling.How much do the roars and the jeers really matter?The thought is, of course, not unique to tennis at the moment. Sport after sport is discovering what it means to play behind closed doors.But there were moments on Friday night when the lack of outside buzz and external distraction actually seemed to elevate the duel, making it possible to hear every sneaker squeak, every grunt and mutter.The court-level camera angles helped, too, bringing viewers into the players’ space and avoiding the wider shots that would have made clear that hardly anyone was watching in person.It was intimate, even meditative at times, as the two rivals took turns being brilliant under pressure to the sounds of the passing trains and a few shouts from their entourages.“Look, it would have been an amazing atmosphere to have fans in there — cheering a guy on as he makes this amazing comeback,” said Brad Gilbert, who called the match for ESPN. “But I do think that the players start getting locked in, and that it’s just about you and the opponent. I don’t think they even were noticing there was no crowd.”Call it their own bubble within a bubble.“You could see everything develop with clarity because you had no distractions,” Gilbert said. “But listen, I’m just so grateful we have a chance to do the tennis and just see the tennis. Obviously, this model without a crowd is not sustainable for the rest of tennis ever, but for the moment, it’s a lot better than no tennis.”The problem in New York during Week 1 was that not everyone who crossed the Atlantic to play tennis was allowed to do so, and that in Djokovic’s case, the biggest star in the men’s game essentially eliminated himself.Staging this tournament at all has been an immense undertaking, and the U.S.T.A. does not have the same financial means as the N.B.A. with its locked-down campus at Walt Disney World in Florida. Nor did it have the wherewithal to quarantine an international field of players for two full weeks before the first ball was struck.There were bound to be issues. For now, Paire is the only player known to have tested positive for the coronavirus in the controlled environment set up for the Western & Southern Open and the U.S. Open. But the devil has been in the details of the contact tracing, which forced seven players who had been in close contact with Paire to sign a new, more restrictive agreement in order to keep playing.When Nassau County health officials learned that those in contact with Paire were being allowed to compete instead of remaining in full quarantine, they effectively voided the new agreement. On Saturday, the French star Kristina Mladenovic, one of those in contact with Paire, was not permitted to travel to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center from the player hotel.She and her Hungarian doubles partner, Timea Babos, the No. 1 seeds, were forced to withdraw before their second-round match, after Adrian Mannarino of France had been allowed to play singles on Friday after great debate. He ended up losing to Alexander Zverev.This moving of the goal posts is not the way this situation should have been handled. Inconsistency undermines the rules, and that Mannarino was allowed to play because he was not at the hotel in Nassau County when the new edict was issued is not a good enough excuse.Every probable scenario should have been talked through and made clear with all the potentially relevant health authorities before the tournament began.Failing to do so undermines the U.S.T.A.’s remarkable efforts and certainly does not play well internationally.“US Open 2020: un tournoi amateur” (an amateur tournament) wrote L’Équipe in a headline over the weekend, bemoaning the lack of consistency and the lack of agreement among health officials within the same state. “The show has sadly moved outside the tennis courts,” L’Équipe wrote. “Even in the midst of a health crisis, that is not worthy of a Grand Slam tournament.”Babos, already back in Europe, echoed those sentiments in an Instagram post on Sunday.“I’m sitting in my kitchen crying,” she said. “It’s terribly unfair. I see no reasonable reason why it had to be like this.”Clearly, watching Mannarino play on Friday, it did not have to be like this. But that does not mean the 2020 U.S. Open, even tarnished and having lost its biggest men’s star, has not had its shining moments.Most of the players seem to appreciate the opportunity (and the paycheck), and they have paid it back with tennis worthy of the occasion, worthy of a Grand Slam tournament.Coric versus Tsitsipas was only the best of many examples: a late-night classic no doubt, even without the customary soundtrack. More

Arthur Ashe Stadium was nearly empty, but it was not quiet at the United States Open on a day which would have normally been a hectic Labor Day holiday.Serena Williams, who has been bolstered by the support of thousands of boisterous fans here over the years, was her own chorus on Monday as she pushed herself to a victory over Maria Sakkari, 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 in the fourth round of the U.S. Open.“I’m always going to bring that fire and that passion and that Serena to the court,” said Williams, who has been referring to herself in the third person perhaps more than ever during this tournament.She screamed when she lost points; she screamed when she won points. At one crucial moment, she even made a loud noise when one of Sakkari’s first serves landed in the net.“I don’t feel like I’m super different without a crowd, but I’m super passionate,” Williams said after the match. “This is my job. This is what I wake up to do. This is what I train to do 365 days of the year.”Though her intensity was the same, Williams said in an on-court interview after the match that she felt “less pressure” without thousands of fans there desperate for her to win.“It’s also different because breaks are longer when the fans are here, the clapping is longer — I could have used a little bit of this in this match,” she said, laughing.The win was Williams’s 100th career victory in the stadium; Roger Federer is a distant second on the career list, with 77 victories in Ashe.The win put her into the quarterfinal of a Grand Slam tournament for the 53rd time.Sakkari, one of the fittest and most athletic players in the sport, was a rare opponent to best Williams in several service categories: she hit 13 aces to Williams’s 12, and she won more points on her first serve. But Williams was more effective at aggressively returning second serves, which proved pivotal as she broke Sakkari’s serve three times and dropped her own just once.The 13th-seeded Sakkari had defeated the third-seeded Williams two weeks ago in the Western & Southern Open, which was also held on the U.S. Open grounds instead of its usual home in Mason, Ohio, near Cincinnati.“I was confident. I said to myself ‘I did it once, I can do it again,’” Sakkari said. “That was my mentality up until the end. She just came up with some better tennis when she had to. More experienced, she took her chances when I didn’t.”Sakkari gained an early edge in the final set by breaking Williams’s serve. Williams all but threw in the towel at a similar juncture in their last match, but with a Grand Slam title on the line, she steeled herself and rallied.“If you don’t get the chances with the good Serena against you, it’s done, you know?” Sakkari said. “I didn’t get my chances, got broken again. I was ahead, I was a break up, I had to somehow hold serves. One bad game and the match went the other way.”After a win and a loss against Williams in New York, Sakkari said she was encouraged by her own ability to summon her best tennis without a crowd on hand.“It’s not easy for everyone to compete without a crowd,” Sakkari said. “Many players were feeling a little bit turned off playing without fans.”Williams had been turned off by her own effort in her previous match against Sakkari. After squandering a lead against Sakkari in the lead-up tournament, Williams compared her propensity for elongating matches to “dating a guy that you know sucks.”“It’s like I have got to get rid of this guy. It just makes no sense,” Williams added.On Monday, Williams laughed when reminded of the analogy.“I feel this whole tournament I have been doing better with that,” she said. “Thank God I got rid of that guy. I never want to see him again — he was the worst.” More

Jennifer Brady did not want to become complacent about a career that was hovering stagnant in the singles rankings, so she sought discomfort.The choice has brought Brady, 25, to new heights: on Tuesday she will play in the first Grand Slam quarterfinal of her career, against Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan.In an interview, Brady said she had been looking last year for something “outside of the U.S.T.A.” and “outside of the box” to pull herself out of a rut.“I wanted more,” Brady said, adding: “I just felt kind of stuck, and I wasn’t happy with where I was. I thought if I changed something, maybe something good could happen out of it.“And it definitely did,” she said.Going against the currents in tennis, Brady left the traditional tennis training turf of Florida last winter for the cold of Regensburg, Germany, working with the coach Michael Geserer and fitness trainer Daniel Pohl. She lived in a small rented apartment in Regensburg, training six days a week and resting on Sundays, quickly learning that nearly everything in Regensburg is closed on Sundays.Geserer was immediately impressed by Brady’s mind-set. “Every day she steps on court or does exercises, she gives 100 percent,” Geserer said. “That made her stronger.”Brady, who prides herself on being receptive to coaching, worked harder than ever to get herself into the best shape of her life.“The training is different, the mentality is different,” Brady said of training in Germany. “It’s a totally different vibe. I really like it. It’s really structured, really intense. Every practice that I’ve had, I’m improving and getting better at something but I think not many American players would enjoy or thrive in that atmosphere.”The unconventional choice quickly paid dividends once the season began. At the first tournament of the year in Brisbane, Australia, Brady won three matches in qualifying to reach the main draw, where she beat Maria Sharapova in the opening round in what would be the penultimate match of Sharapova’s career. In her next match, Brady defeated Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1 ranked singles player and a clear fan favorite playing in her home country.“I have a lot of confidence in my legs, in my strength,” Brady said that week. “I think that I’m stepping on the court with a different mentality, a different sort of belief in myself and, just kind of changed. I feel like a different person, a better person; fresh, mentally, physically.”When the tour resumed after a five-month stoppage prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, Brady had not missed a beat.“She had the discipline and she had the goals,” said Geserer, who was giving her instructions from Germany while she was training in Orlando, Fla. “She wanted to get stronger, and she was working a lot. That paid off, but we are still at the beginning.”She won the first WTA tournament that returned in North America, taking the title at the Top Seed Open in Lexington, Ky., out of a field that had included stars like Serena Williams, Venus Williams and Victoria Azarenka.Brady did not drop a set in her five matches in Kentucky, and she didn’t lose more than four games in any set.Through four matches at the U.S. Open, Brady, seeded 28th here, has the same streak intact, including a dominant win Sunday over the 2016 United States Open champion, the 17th-seeded Angelique Kerber, 6-1, 6-4, to reach the quarterfinals at Flushing Meadows.“She’s serving very well, and the next shot after her serve is really fast,” Kerber said. “She’s dominating with her game, especially on her forehand side. I tried everything, but in the end, in the important moments, she played better.”Born in Harrisburg, Pa., where few other girls played tennis, Brady practiced mostly with boys. Seeing the success they had with their hard, heavy forehands, she developed a game that could compete with the same weapons. Those weapons still stand out, even in the professional ranks.“If you watch Dominic Thiem and Naomi Osaka, the way the ball comes off the racket is totally different,” Brady said. “Growing up a lot of people said I played like a guy. They thought it was an insult, but I was like, ‘That’s fine, I don’t care.’”As an adolescent, Brady trained at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla., alongside players like Madison Keys. But while Keys turned professional early, Brady instead opted to play in college at U.C.L.A.“I definitely wasn’t ready to perform or compete with any of these other players,” Brady said. “For me, college was a big learning experience on and off the court, just growing as a person, becoming more mature.”Though the path from college tennis to the elite professional levels has been well-trodden in men’s tennis, including recent examples like John Isner and Kevin Anderson, it is less common in women’s tennis, where promising young prospects often turn professional as teenagers.Brady is the first woman who played collegiate tennis to reach the U.S. Open quarterfinals since Gigi Fernandez in 1994.Brady will face Putintseva, seeded 23rd, for a spot in the semifinals. Brady said she is now driven by seeing just how much better she can get.“It’s not really about winning or losing or how much money I make or things like that — I just want to go out there and compete and have fun doing it,” she said. “It’s something that I love, so every single day I’m just happy to be out here competing.” More

Since its opening in 1997, Arthur Ashe Stadium has been the site of some of the most thrilling tennis in the history of the game, matches that have gone into the small hours of the night, in front of raucous and often unruly crowds, by tennis standards.It has also been the site of some of the strangest, most controversial moments in the sport.On Sunday, in what has already been a strange tournament — the first Grand Slam of the Open era to be played without spectators — Ashe added another spectacle to the list, even though only a handful of people were there to see it: tournament officials defaulting the world No. 1, Novak Djokovic, from his fourth-round match for hitting a ball into the throat of a line judge.Officials did not release the name of the judge, who was treated at the tennis center after crumpling to the ground upon being struck by the ball.Although the episode was unintentional, the rules required that Djokovic, who had just lost his serve to go down, 5-6, in the first set to Pablo Carreño Busta, be eliminated from the tournament.Because he was defaulted, he lost all of the ranking points he earned from his first three matches in the tournament. He will also be fined the money he earned at the Open, which was $250,000, and is likely to receive an additional fine for the episode.“The referee and the supervisor do the right thing, but is not easy to do it,” Carreño Busta said.No one had a stranger experience of the event than Carreño Busta, who was on the other side of the net when it happened, and then waited to see if the judge was OK and whether he was going to win the match without having to hit another ball.“I was looking to my coach, celebrating the break,” Carreño Busta said. “When I turned back again, the line umpire was on the floor. I’m very apprehensive with these kinds of things, so I was a little bit in shock.”Kim Clijsters and Naomi Osaka probably know the feeling.They were in Carreño Busta’s position in 2009 and 2018 for two other notorious episodes at Ashe.In 2009, in her semifinal match against Serena Williams, Clijsters was ahead by a set and leading, 6-5, in the second as Williams served at 15-30. A line judge called Williams for a foot fault on her second serve.Williams erupted and threatened her. The chair umpire then penalized Williams a point, ending the match, sending Williams storming off the court and Clijsters unable to celebrate an unlikely victory in her first major tournament back from the birth of her first child.Then, two years ago, Williams was at the center of another officiating controversy when she received a code violation for receiving coaching during the second set of the final against Osaka. She thought the warning had been rescinded and then erupted when she was docked a point for slamming her racket, and then a game for calling the chair umpire a thief, demanding an apology from him in front of 22,000 fans and a worldwide television audience.The apology never came and Williams lost the match, 6-2, 6-4.Even before he hit the ball that hit the line judge in the throat, Djokovic had lost his temper and smashed another ball in anger into the side of the court after losing a point.Is it something in the water at Ashe that makes players lose their composure, forcing referees and umpires to insert themselves into the outcome of the match in ways they never expected?For several minutes after the episode, Djokovic pleaded his case to tournament officials, Soeren Friemel, the U.S. Open tournament referee; Andreas Egli, the Grand Slam supervisor; and Aurélie Tourte, the chair umpire.“His point was he didn’t hit the umpire intentionally,” Friemel said. “He said, I hit the ball, I hit the umpire, but it was not my intent.”A funereal anticipation descended upon the stadium. The rule, however, left no room for debate. It was only a matter of time, just a few minutes more, until Djokovic was defaulted.“The two factors are the action and the result,” Friemel said. “The result of hitting the line umpire and her being hurt is the essential factor.”Djokovic sped out of the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in his car minutes later without making any public statements.“I need to go back within and work on my disappointment and turn this all into a lesson in my growth and evolution as a player and a human being,” he posted on his Instagram account.“I think he’s going to be a little bit upset about it,” said Alexander Zverev of Germany, who is now one of the favorites to win the tournament. “If he would have hit it anywhere else, if it would have landed anywhere else, we are talking about a few inches, he would have been fine.”Then he used the words that others who are witness to strange episodes on this court have said before.“I don’t know what to say,” Zverev said. “I’m a little bit in shock right now, to be honest.” More

Novak Djokovic’s default from the United States Open after hitting a line judge in the neck with a ball that he struck toward the back of the court in frustration is perhaps the most costly one in tennis history.It fell under the Grand Slam rule book’s definition of “physical abuse,” which states that players “shall not at any time physically abuse any official, opponent, spectator or other person within the precincts of the tournament site.”The rules subject a player to a fine of up to $20,000 for each violation of this rule, with the possibility of escalation if it is deemed a “major offense.”“In circumstances that are flagrant and particularly injurious to the success of a tournament, or are singularly egregious, a single violation of this section shall also constitute the major offense of ‘Aggravated Behavior’ and shall be subject to the additional penalties hereinafter set forth,” the rule book says.At its harshest, “aggravated behavior” can trigger “a fine of up to $250,000 or the amount of prize money won at the tournament, whichever is greater, and a maximum penalty of permanent suspension from play in all Grand Slam tournaments.”Djokovic had earned exactly $250,000 for reaching the fourth round of the U.S. Open.In a statement, the United States Tennis Association said: “In accordance with the Grand Slam rule book, following his actions of intentionally hitting a ball dangerously or recklessly within the court or hitting a ball with negligent disregard of the consequences, the U.S. Open tournament referee defaulted Novak Djokovic from the 2020 U.S. Open. Because he was defaulted, Djokovic will lose all ranking points earned at the U.S. Open and will be fined the prize money won at the tournament in addition to any or all fines levied with respect to the offending incident.”Despite the clarity of the rules, Djokovic pleaded his case for several minutes, saying that the line judge would not need to go to a hospital. A tournament official on court responded to him that the consequences might have been different had the line judge not collapsed to the ground and stayed there for a prolonged time in clear distress.Incidents of tennis players striking officials are rare, but not unprecedented. There were two high-profile incidents of similar defaults in men’s tennis, though none as significant as the disqualification of a top-seeded player at a Grand Slam.In a 2017 Davis Cup match in Ottawa, Denis Shapovalov, then 17, whacked a ball in anger that struck the chair umpire Arnaud Gabas in the eye and left his vision temporarily damaged.In the 2012 final of the Queen’s Club tournament in London, the Argentine David Nalbandian kicked a wooden box that was sitting in front of a seated line judge into his shin, bloodying the man’s leg.With Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer not competing, and Marin Cilic and Andy Murray having lost in the first week, Djokovic’s exit leaves the tournament without any men who have previously won a Grand Slam title. There will be a first-time Grand Slam singles champion in men’s tennis for the first time since Cilic at the 2014 U.S. Open.Djokovic is not the first decorated champion to have a tournament end in controversy. At the 2009 U.S. Open, Serena Williams was given a point penalty while down match point, ending the match, after threatening to shove a ball down the throat of a line judge who had called her for a foot fault.At the 1990 Australian Open, John McEnroe was defaulted from his fourth-round match for profane verbal abuse of officials. More

Novak Djokovic, the top men’s player in a sport with its share of meltdowns and misbehavior, became the first No. 1 disqualified from a Grand Slam singles tournament after he inadvertently struck a line judge with a ball hit in frustration at the United States Open on Sunday.Djokovic’s sudden ouster from the country’s premier tennis tournament immediately made a bizarre U.S. Open even more strange. It has been staged during the coronavirus pandemic, with players sparring with local health officials over contact tracing and the top women’s doubles team abruptly disqualified on Saturday. This was also the latest misadventure for Djokovic in 2020, a year in which he has expressed personal hesitation about vaccines, organized an exhibition tournament that led to coronavirus cases, including his own, and sowed division in the tennis world by forming a potential breakaway players’ organization.Djokovic lost his cool when trailing 5-6 in the first set in the fourth round against Pablo Carreño Busta, having lost several recent points. He had just lost a game while serving after being treated for pain in his left shoulder earlier in the game, giving Carreño Busta the upper hand.After losing the final point of the game, he pulled a ball from his pocket and smacked it with his racket toward the back of the court. It hit a line judge, standing about 40 feet away, in her throat. She cried out and crumpled to the ground, and Djokovic rushed to her side to check on her condition.She later walked off the court, still visibly in distress, and was treated by a tournament physician. But after a lengthy discussion with tournament referee Soeren Friemel at the net, Djokovic was defaulted, as disqualifications are known in the sport.“This whole situation has left me really sad and empty,” Djokovic said in an Instagram post in the early evening. “I checked on the linesperson and the tournament told me that thank God she is feeling ok. I’m extremely sorry to have caused her such stress. So unintended. So wrong.”Djokovic continued: “I need to go back and work on my disappointment and turn this all into a lesson for my growth and evolution as a player and human being. I apologize to the US Open tournament and everyone associated for my behavior.”Djokovic’s exit delivered an immediate blow to the tournament, which was considered unlikely to take place when New York was one of the epicenters of the coronavirus. The tournament is being held without spectators for the first time and with players and their teams tested daily and restricted to their lodging and the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.Djokovic was the only member of the “Big Three” in men’s tennis to play the event this year, with Roger Federer out for the season after two knee surgeries and reigning champion Rafael Nadal choosing to remain in Spain and prepare for the rescheduled French Open and other clay-court tournaments.Djokovic only decided to come to New York last month after lengthy negotiations with tournament officials over quarantine rules. But his default deprives the men’s event of the only player remaining who has won a Grand Slam singles title.Djokovic has won 17 major singles titles. Men’s tour officials have been eager for a new champion to emerge to challenge the dominance of the Big Three, but this was certainly not the way anyone expected it would happen.Some television viewers expressed puzzlement online at how a mere gesture of frustration, without intent to harm anyone, could lead to a disqualification when so many of the tournament’s historic losses of composure, like one involving Serena Williams in the 2018 U.S. Open final, carried penalties that were less severe. Williams received a series of conduct violations — for coaching, for racket abuse and for verbal abuse of the chair umpire — and was docked a point and then a game but not defaulted.The Grand Slam rules bar players from the abuse of balls as well as unsportsmanlike conduct, and tournament officials have the authority to disqualify a player immediately if they deem a case sufficiently serious.Players can be defaulted for “hitting a ball or throwing a racket without intent to harm” if someone is injured on the court, said Gayle David Bradshaw, a retired ATP Tour vice president for rules and competition. “In this case, there was no intent, but there was harm, and the officials had no choice but to do what they did,” he said.Officials have some latitude in deciding how serious an offense might be, but Friemel said Sunday’s ruling was clear-cut.”Based on the fact that it was angrily, recklessly hit, and the line umpire was hurt clearly and in pain, he had to be defaulted.” Friemel said. “We all agree he didn’t do it on purpose, but he hit her, and she was hurt.”Friemel said the discussion was lengthy with Djokovic because of the significance of the decision. “Defaulting a player at a Grand Slam is a very important, very tough decision,” Friemel said. “You need to get it right.”During a warm-up tournament for the U.S. Open that was staged at the same site, Aljaz Bedene, a Slovenian player, inadvertently hit a cameraman with a ball that he tapped in frustration and received a warning but was not defaulted because the cameraman immediately made it clear that he had suffered no injury.Carreño Busta, who is the 20th seed and from Spain, advanced to the quarterfinals with the default. Djokovic left the stadium without speaking to news reporters.“If it would have landed anywhere else, we’re talking about a few inches, he would have been fine,” said Alexander Zverev, a German player who was watching inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.In a statement, the United States Tennis Association said that because of the default Djokovic would be fined the prize money he would have earned in addition to any fines that will be levied because of the incident. He faces a fine of up to $20,000 for skipping his mandatory post-match news conference.Djokovic, 33, has won five of the last seven Grand Slam singles titles and had dropped just one set in his first three matches at the U.S. Open. But the first set against Carreño Busta was a tight affair, and Djokovic was testy. At one stage earlier in the set, he smashed a ball in frustration toward the side of the court, hitting no one.He failed to convert three set points on Carreño Busta’s serve in the 10th game, But when serving at 5-5, Djokovic fell hard on the second point while shifting direction and got up wincing and grabbing at his left shoulder. He received treatment in his chair, returned to the court trailing by two points and then lost the game, still looking uncomfortable with his two-handed backhand and resorting to a one-handed drop shot on two occasions.Miffed, he smacked another ball in frustration, then extended his left arm in apology toward the line judge as soon as he saw she had been struck. Goran Ivanisevic, Djokovic’s coach, slumped in his seat in the players box in the cavernous, nearly empty stadium, seemingly aware of the implications.Andreas Egli, a Grand Slam supervisor, and Friemel soon arrived on court to investigate the situation and discuss the incident with Djokovic and the on-court officials, including chair umpire Aurélie Tourte.“I know it’s tough for you whatever call you make,” Djokovic said to Friemel as they talked at the net.“Well, the rules are the rules,” said Carreño Busta, who had lost his three previous matches with Djokovic. “The referee and the supervisor did the right thing but it’s not easy to do it, no?”The incident was reminiscent of one involving Denis Shapovalov, who was defaulted in a Davis Cup match in 2017 after inadvertently hitting chair umpire Arnaud Gabas in his left eye after smacking a ball in anger, fracturing Gabas’s orbital bone. In 1995, British star Tim Henman became the first player in the Open era to be disqualified from Wimbledon after inadvertently hitting a ball girl, Caroline Hall, in the head from close range. Henman, playing with Jeremy Bates, was defaulted during a doubles match for unsportsmanlike conduct.In 2012, David Nalbandian, an Argentine star, was defaulted from the singles final at Queen’s Club after kicking a wooden advertising board and injuring linesman Andrew McDougall’s left leg.But until Sunday, no world No. 1 had been defaulted in the midst of a Grand Slam tournament. The closest equivalent for shock value at the U.S. Open was in 2009 when Serena Williams, seeded No. 2, received a point penalty for threatening a line judge who had called a foot fault in her semifinal against Kim Clijsters. The penalty was assessed on match point, handing Clijsters a 6-4, 7-5 victory.Ilie Nastase, a combustible Romanian, was defaulted in the second round of the 1979 U.S. Open after a series of tirades and then reinstated in a match against John McEnroe, who was later disqualified himself for misbehavior in the fourth round of the 1990 Australian Open. But both Nastase and McEnroe were past their primes.The modern men’s superstars have been genteel by comparison, in part because of a stricter code of conduct.Djokovic had never been defaulted on tour until Sunday.Matt Futterman contributed reporting. More

Right after the tournament’s completion, most of the athletes are off to the red clay courts of Europe. The weeklong Masters tournament in Rome, for both men and women, begins Sept. 14.The tours then split on Sept. 21, when the men head to the Hamburg Open in Germany and the women head to the Strasbourg Grand Prix in France. You can watch these through ESPN.On Sept. 27, the French Open begins, and with it, spectators return. Up to 20,000 people will be allowed on the grounds of Stade Roland Garros in Paris. More

How to watch: From 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time on ESPN2; streaming on the ESPN app.On Sunday, the severely thinned ranks of the singles draw will begin the fourth round of the United States Open with 75 percent of the field knocked out. While some of the betting favorites are still cruising, there are plenty of speed bumps to overcome as the knockout format causes players on hot streaks to collide.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are best estimates and are certain to fluctuate based on the completion times of earlier play. All times are Eastern.Arthur Ashe Stadium | 10 p.m.Naomi Osaka vs. Anett KontaveitOsaka, the 2018 U.S. Open champion, seemed frustrated at times during her third-round victory over Marta Kostyuk. While dealing with hamstring concerns, Osaka has seemed to oscillate between being in complete control of her points and sitting back entirely and hoping her opponents will play themselves into a mistake. As the tournament continues, it will be interesting to see if Osaka can stay sharp, as she did in a dominant second-round win over Caroline Garcia.Kontaveit, the 14th seed, has been consistent through her last two rounds, winning both easily in straight sets after struggling to win her first-round match over Danielle Collins. Kontaveit, of Estonia, reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in January but will have a hard time matching that feat against Osaka. Kontaveit’s variety of play will be her main weapon here. If she can throw off Osaka’s rhythm, she’ll still have a chance to upset the former champion.Arthur Ashe Stadium | 7 p.m.Denis Shapovalov vs. David GoffinGoffin, the seventh seed, can be described simply as a consistency player. On the court, he has the tendency to make his opponents hit just one more ball than they’re comfortable with, leading them into unforced errors. Goffin has also shown his consistency in his results, finishing his U.S. Open runs in the fourth round for the last three years. Now, having reached the round of 16 once again, he’ll be trying to make his first quarterfinal in Flushing Meadows by outlasting an in-form Shapovalov.Although Shapovalov has been impressive throughout this tournament, reaching only his second round of 16 at a major tournament, he struggled to put away Taylor Fritz during a five-set contest in the third round on Friday. His aggressive style, heralded by a powerful and pinpoint-accurate backhand, makes him an exciting player to watch. The open question is whether or not he’ll have the energy to hit ball after ball to the indefatigable Goffin. Shapovalov has spent 10 hours on court this week, not counting his doubles matches, and the wear and tear of the longer Grand Slam formats may make it hard for him to deliver the same performances going into the second week.Louis Armstrong Stadium | 11 a.m.Jennifer Brady vs. Angelique KerberBrady, the 28th seed, has reached the round of 16 at a Grand Slam event for the first time since 2017. Although Brady has been successful primarily on the doubles court, her run this year has been impressive. She has yet to drop a set at the U.S. Open in singles, and across three matches, she has only lost 14 games. However, she will face a much more difficult test in her first seeded player of the tournament, Kerber.Kerber, a three-time major champion, including a 2016 U.S. Open title, has also looked as if she is at the top of her game. Although she has lost more games on her path to the round of 16, she has demonstrated that her counterpunch groundstrokes still have the capacity to overwhelm opponents. A former world No. 1, Kerber has not been past the round of 16 at a major event since her championship performance at Wimbledon in 2018. On current form, she has every right to feel confident that she can push for another Grand Slam title.Louis Armstrong Stadium | 6 p.m.Borna Coric vs. Jordan ThompsonThompson, the world No. 63, will play in his first round of 16 match at a major tournament. Before Sunday, he had never been past the second round of a hardcourt major, and it will be interesting to see if the absence of fans at the U.S. Open helps ameliorate the nerves that players can feel upon their first time breaking into the second week at a Grand Slam.Coric, the 27th seed, pulled off a remarkable five-set upset over fourth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas. Coric faced six match points in the fourth set, but with a mix of patience and guile, he was able to push past Tsitsipas into the round of 16. Coric’s defensive style of play can be difficult to execute on faster hardcourts, but he adjusted well, taking more risks and coming into the net to put pressure on his opponent. If he’s able to physically recover from his late-night marathon, he should be able to execute again and push past Thompson.Other important matches:Rajeev Ram/Joe Salisbury versus Mackenzie McDonald/Christopher Eubanks, Court 17 | 11 a.m.Yulia Putintseva versus Petra Martic, Arthur Ashe Stadium | NoonAlejandro Davidovich Fokina versus Alexander Zverev, Louis Armstrong Stadium | 1 p.m.Novak Djokovic versus Pablo Carreño Busta, Arthur Ashe Stadium | 2 p.m.Aryna Sabalenka/Elise Mertens versus Vera Zvonareva/Laura Seigemund, Court 17 | 3 p.m.Petra Kvitova versus Shelby Rogers, Louis Armstrong Stadium | 4 p.m. More