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      ‘I’m Just Serena,’ Swinging Freely for Another Grand Slam Run

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      Of course Serena Williams is confident. She deserves to be. And her opponents know that her improving game and overwhelming crowd support make beating her in this U.S. Open all the more difficult.Serena Williams is almost 41. She did not play competitive tennis for nearly a year, and it showed — truly it showed — at Wimbledon, in Toronto and in Mason, Ohio, at the three tournaments where she made painfully brief appearances earlier this summer before arriving in New York for her farewell U.S. Open.She looked slow to react and slow on the run. She looked rusty, mistiming returns off second serves that she would once have punished.But that is all irrelevant now. Williams is relaunched, as she made clear by defeating Anett Kontaveit, the No. 2 player in the world, on Wednesday night.Williams is into the third round of what is very likely her final tournament: convincingly replaying her greatest hits — big-point aces, swing-volley winners, full-cut groundstrokes on the move — and quickly giving first-time opponents like Danka Kovinic and Kontaveit a true taste of what it is like to face the real Serena.With her 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2 victory over Kontaveit complete, Williams was asked on court by ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernandez, “Are you surprising yourself with your level at the moment?”Williams looked at her for a little while and chuckled.It was the most telling answer of the evening, and no actual words were required even if Williams did tack on a few when the chuckling was done: “I’m just Serena you know,” she said.“She’s not coming here to be surprised by winning, otherwise she wouldn’t be here,” said her coach Eric Hechtman.This is not bravado. This is hard-earned confidence. The kind that comes with being raised by parents who made it clear that greatness lay ahead if the right choices and sacrifices were made. The kind that comes from measuring yourself against an uber-talented big sister named Venus from the moment you could pick up a racket on a court full of cracks in Compton, Calif. The kind that comes from winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles across nearly two decades against rivals from multiple tennis generations and despite all manner of setbacks, both professional and personal.Williams has good reason to believe that she can rise above, even in the twilight, because she has done it so often.Serena Williams’s Farewell to TennisThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Decades of Greatness: Over 27 years, Serena Williams dominated generation after generation of opponents and changed the way women’s tennis is played, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles and cementing her reputation as the queen of comebacks.Is She the GOAT?: Proclaiming Williams the greatest women’s tennis player of all time is not a straightforward debate, our columnist writes.An Enduring Influence: From former and current players’ memories of a young Williams to the new fans she drew to tennis, Williams has left a lasting impression.Her Fashion: Since she turned professional in 1995, Williams has used her clothes as a statement of self and a weapon of change.“I would never, ever count Serena Williams out, and if you do, that would be your biggest mistake,” said Kathy Rinaldi, the captain of the United States King Cup team, who was watching on Wednesday.If you do count her out, as Williams has explained before, you are only going to help her.“Because she’s going to use that to prove you wrong,” Rinaldi said. “But she’s really enjoying this one. You can clearly see. It’s got to be really tough for her opponents: to face her and face the crowd.”It has been quite a team effort so far: Williams rolling back the years and five tiers of stands packed to the roof in sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium with fans wholly committed, perhaps for the first time, to showing Williams nothing but love in a venue where she has generated ambivalence in the past with her outbursts and, at other times, with her dominance as she racked up six U.S. Open singles titles and made long runs at No. 1.But with Williams preparing, in her words, to “evolve away from tennis,” the U.S. Open crowd seems to have considered her body of work, enduring excellence and manifest love of the game and the battle and decided to go all in.“There’s no rush here,” Williams said with a grin, alluding to her impending evolution. “I’m loving this crowd. Oh, my goodness, it’s really fantastic. There’s still a little left in me. We’ll see.”Watching her lose 6-4, 6-0 last month to Emma Raducanu in the first round of the Western and Southern Open with tape on her left leg, it did seem reasonable to believe she might not be able to pull her game together in time.“She was a little banged up in Cincy,” Hechtman said. “She’s much better now and of course the crowd helps a lot, absolutely. At the end of the day, you play that many years and that many tournaments and win that many titles, you need the big stage to get you up for it.”There have been more standing ovations than at a national political convention, myriad shouts of support and, less sportingly but probably unavoidably, plenty of cheers for the opposition’s errors, including their missed serves.The latest sellout crowd on Wednesday night even booed a machine: disagreeing with the electronic line-calling system when one of Kontaveit’s winners was shown to have landed on the extreme outside edge of the sideline.In the second set, Kontaveit won one of the points of the tournament — a spectacular scrambling effort punctuated with a backhand winner — and was greeted with a golf clap.It will not get easier for her rivals. Ajla Tomljanovic, the tall and unseeded Australian who will face Williams in the third round on Friday night, was playing on Court 7 on Wednesday as Williams and Kontaveit dueled in the main stadium.“I was hearing the crowd and it like scared me, even though I was playing on a different court,” Tomljanovic said. “So I’m going to have to get my earplugs.”Tomljanovic said before even seeing the draw she had a vision that she would face Williams in New York and was only hoping that it was not going to be in the first round.So it has turned out, and Tomljanovic, like nearly all of Williams’s opponents in this latest comeback, has never played her before. Like Kontaveit, she wants the experience to make her career feel complete but is not sure how she will handle the moment (Kontaveit ended up in tears at her news conference).“I do this trick where I feel like the crowd is cheering for me as well,” she said. “I heard Novak Djokovic say that once about doing that in his matches. It’s a good one. It’s all about tricking your mind really, because you can’t control what the crowd does.”The British chair umpire, Alison Hughes, tried her best on Wednesday night and ended up saying “please” a great deal more than she succeeded in truly quieting the din.It is a moment that spurs thoughts of U.S. Opens past, particularly of Jimmy Connors’ rip-roaring run to the semifinals in 1991 as he was celebrating upset victories and his 39th birthday.“I just feel like I have had a big red X on my back since I won the U.S. Open in ’99,” Williams said. “It’s been there my entire career, because I won my first Grand Slam early in my career. But here it’s different. I feel like I’ve already won, figuratively, mentally.”A record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title still seems an unreasonable notion to many of us outsiders. She is 40, after all, and also playing doubles with Venus starting Thursday night, which could put extra strain on her injury-prone frame.Her ex-coach Patrick Mouratoglou counseled against doubles during majors and was proved correct in 2018 when in her first major after coming back from childbirth she played both events in the French Open and had to exit the singles draw with an injury.She and Venus have not played doubles at a major again until now, but it is understandable that they want this full-circle moment, and Hechtman said the plan is simply to eliminate a full practice session on the days Serena plays doubles.But her singles draw certainly gets one thinking about the possibility of a deeper run. There are no Grand Slam singles champions left in Serena’s quarter of the draw and only one left in her half: the unseeded Canadian Bianca Andreescu, who beat Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open final.But going all the way surely does not seem preposterous to Team Serena, and when Hechtman was asked very late on Wednesday night about the Connors precedent, he mulled it over and said he was leaning toward a different U.S. Open swan song: Pete Sampras, who won the 2002 men’s title in what turned out to be his final tournament.Dream on New York, and as the Williams family would surely endorse, dream big. More

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      It Was Anett Kontaveit Against Serena Williams, and the Crowd

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      Anett Kontaveit walked out of the players’ tunnel first, with barely a notice from the audience in Arthur Ashe Stadium, which was half full at the time. She made a small waving gesture, to no one in particular, and then went to her chair to prepare for her role as the villain in the biggest tennis spectacle of her life: the Serena Williams U.S. Open.As Williams made her own appearance underneath thunderous applause just moments later, Kontaveit never looked up or glanced over. She just continued to put on her wrist bands, drink water and select her first racket.She got up, walked onto the court first, knowing that for the vast majority of people in the building, she was there only to be the foil for the queen of tennis, there to lose.“It was her moment,” Kontaveit said. “I was trying to do my own thing. Of course, this is totally about her and I was very aware of that.”In the face of a tidal wave of support for Williams, Kontaveit played her role as the antihero as if fashioned from a script, playing well enough to raise the drama, but not well enough to win. Williams took the match, 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2, to advance to the third round, eliminating the worthy Estonian challenger and No. 2 seed from the U.S. Open.But Kontaveit did not go out without conjuring some of the best tennis from Williams in years. She made some brilliant shots and penetrating serves, but Williams was better on the biggest points, to the delight of 29,959 spectators, a record crowd for a U.S. Open night session. In team sports, athletes regularly encounter hostile environments of 30,000 fans or more. But standing alone in front of all that passion, energy and desire is something different, and Kontaveit informally awarded the audience an assist in the outcome.“It was really hard,” Kontaveit said of the crowd, adding, “I knew it was coming. I guess you can’t learn from anyone else’s mistakes. Feeling it, it was something I never experienced before.”The fans not only cheered when Williams won a point; they yelled encouragement to their heroine throughout the match, shouting, “We love you, Serena,” and “Come on, Serena,” including at critical moments on Kontaveit’s service toss, which is against audience decorum. Several times the chair umpire had to take the fans to task and ask for quiet as Kontaveit waited.Serena Williams had 11 aces to Kontaveit’s five.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“They were not rooting against me,” Kontaveit said. “They just wanted Serena to win so bad. I don’t think it’s a personal attack against me or anything. It’s fair. She deserves this.” When the match was over and the players had shaken hands at the net, Kontaveit quickly gathered up her rackets and within moments was back in the locker room, sorting out her feelings after playing one of her best matches of the summer, only to lose to a crowd favorite.Kontaveit knew what was coming well beforehand. She understood she would be facing a substantial onslaught of support in favor of her opponent, and claimed it would relieve her of all expectations and pressure.The precedent had been set on Monday during Williams’s declarative first-round straight-sets win over Danka Kovinic of Montenegro. The crowd for that match was so loud, and in such a celebratory mood, that Kovinic said she could not hear the ball coming off the strings of the rackets, an important signifier of how the ball might move after it lands. Kovinic, ranked No. 80, spoke of actually being swept up in the moment herself, dazzled by the celebrities in attendance that night. For Kontaveit, it was more about the competition, and she was not as carefree afterward.Although she has earned the No. 2 ranking, she has had a difficult summer, losing three of her last four matches on hardcourts entering the U.S. Open. She said she contracted Covid-19 in April and had difficulty regaining her strength. Her one singles title this year came in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February, but she also made it to the finals in Doha, Qatar, later that month.Kontaveit reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open in her first try in 2015, but since then has not been immune to getting knocked out in the first or second round of a major. It has now happened 16 times in the 27 majors she has entered since that run. Her best result at a major is reaching the quarterfinal stage at the 2020 Australian Open, where she lost to Simona Halep.She does have some experience of going deep into the tournament at the U.S. Open. As a junior in 2012 she reached the final, losing to Samantha Crawford.This year, players have commented that the courts at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center are faster than normal, a factor that would tend to enhance the playing style of both Williams and Kontaveit, since each relies on power. Kontaveit indicated she was all for it.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAfter an early exit from the Western and Southern Open outside Cincinnati, she arrived early in New York and practiced on the same courts. The difference was that then, there was virtually no one in the stadium watching. On Wednesday, the entire tennis world was tuned in.As Kontaveit said on Monday, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever experience something like this again.”The next player to experience it will be Ajla Tomljanovic, from Australia, who beat Evgeniya Rodina in three sets on Court 7 at roughly the same time that Williams and Kontaveit were playing. Even from over there, Tomljanovic could hear the noise pulsating from Ashe, the same din that she will be facing in person on Friday night.“I’m like, Court 7 isn’t that close,” Tomljanovic said. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, my God, that’s annoying me and I’m not even playing against her.’” More

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      Who Will Serena Williams Play in the Third Round?

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      The scene was quieter on the much smaller Court 7, with only a few dozen people sitting on the metal bleachers on Wednesday night to watch Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia defeat Evgeniya Rodina of Russia in three sets.Tomljanovic, 29, will now face Serena Williams in the third round. The two players have never faced each other.Tomljanovic, No. 46 in the world, arrived at the U.S. Open after an impressive performance at Wimbledon in which she advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to the eventual champion, Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan.Rodina handily took the first set of the night, 6-1, but then Tomljanovic quickly took the first three games of the second set. Down 3-0, Rodina called for a medical trainer to the court. The trainer appeared to be treating her leg before they left the court.While Rodina was being treated, Tomljanovic put on a sweatshirt and practiced her serves to stay warm. Rodina returned to the court after several minutes with what appeared to be tape over her right thigh.Rodina won the next two games to make it 3-2, and then called for a trainer to the court again. Down 5-2, Rodina again called for a trainer, who appeared to redo the tape on her leg.Tomljanovic won the next set, 6-2. After the second set, Rodina took another medical timeout and left the court. Tomljanovic appeared to take issue with Rodina’s second break and had a few words with the chair umpire about it.Serving at 5-3, Rodina failed to close out the match, as Tomljanovic pushed it to 5-4, winning the break with a forehand.At 5-5, the two players dueled out an 11-point game that Rodina lost on a forehand unforced error. Up 6-5, Tomljanovic closed out the match on her serve.The third round starts on Friday. More

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      Celebrities and Athletes Who Showed Up to See Serena Williams Tonight

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      Two nights after a number of politicians, A-list actors and professional athletes came to see Serena Williams play in the first round of the U.S. Open, the stars aligned again.Like Monday night, the guests in Williams’s player’s box included Alexis Ohanian, her husband; Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., her daughter, who turns 5 on Thursday; Oracene Price, her mother; and Anna Wintour. Tiger Woods was also joined, and he was eventually greeted by Venus Williams during the first set.After coming to Monday night’s match, Spike Lee returned for the second round match, sitting courtside. Tennis star Billie Jean King also came back.Dionne Warwick before the matchMichelle V. Agins/The New York TimesGov. Kathy Hochul of New York joined the list of politicians to come watch Williams, after former President Bill Clinton and Mayor Eric Adams of New York were in attendance on Monday.Others in attendance or expected to attend include: Dionne Warwick, Jason Collins, Amy Schneider, Zendaya, Anthony Anderson, Bella and Gigi Hadid, La La Anthony, Chelsea Handler, and Steve Nash. More

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      Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams and One Last Shared U.S. Open

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      Osaka lost in the first round Tuesday to Danielle Collins, but would remember the final Grand Slam of the year for the front-row seat she had to her idol’s farewell party. A little more than 24 hours had passed since Serena Williams captivated Arthur Ashe Stadium with her opening-round triumph and bedazzled tennis dress, wrap and hair, and now it was Naomi Osaka’s turn.A year ago, with Williams sidelined with a hamstring injury, Osaka had brought so much heat to the U.S. Open, even before her third-round loss led her to announce that she needed to step away from tennis because it brought her so little joy and so much sadness, even if the sport had allowed her to eclipse Williams as the highest-paid female athlete.Now, for what she says is the last time, Williams is back, and once more, these two megastars that transcend their sport are connected, just as they have been since a fireworks-filled final at Ashe four years ago evolved into both a torch-passing and a moment that has linked them through their careers.Osaka, who lost to the 19th-seeded Danielle Collins, 7-6 (5), 6-3, in a match that bled into early Wednesday morning, is struggling to get out of a prolonged slump as she battles nagging injuries and could not reclaim her magic the way Williams did Monday night. “This is what makes you great, being able to win matches like this even if it’s in the first round,” Osaka said after coming up short. The loss meant a second consecutive premature exit from a tournament that once looked like it would be her grandest stage for years, and it happened despite all those connections she embraced over the past week to the role model she still reveres, who will be back in the spotlight Wednesday night.“I’m a product of what she’s done,” Osaka said Saturday in her pretournament news conference. “I wouldn’t be here without Serena, Venus, her whole family.”Like everything else at this tournament, Osaka’s match seemed peripheral to Serena Williams’s narrative, even if Osaka’s loss had its own significance. At the moment, Osaka is more famous than she is successful at the game that gave her stardom, which could become a problem if those two phenomena do not align soon, and now she will have to do it without her tennis guidepost on tour with her. Since Williams delivered her intentionally vague announcement that she would stop playing competitive tennis at some point after this U.S. Open, few players — perhaps even, few people — have taken the news as hard or tried to collect these last morsels of Williams’s professional tennis life as much as Osaka has.Sensing that end might not be far-off, Osaka cried as she watched Williams’s first match in Toronto earlier this month at the National Bank Open, and she cheered Williams on during her first-round match at the Western and Southern Open in Ohio the following week.It was similar to how she felt after she beat Williams in the semifinals of the Australian Open last year, a loss that caused Williams to break down during her news conference and end it after just a few questions. At the time, Osaka sensed that was the last time Williams was going to play in Australia.Assuming Williams keeps her word, Osaka’s intuition will have aged well once more. The morning after the first-round Toronto match, Williams’s announcement in Vogue that the end was imminent hit Osaka hard.“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God,’ this is what devastation must feel like,” Osaka said of what she felt as she read the news. “It really is an honor just to keep watching her play.”Osaka was watching once more Monday night. She donned a baseball cap and a pair of round glasses and sat roughly 20 rows up from the court, even to the baseline, in the front row of a corporate box but in the open air, with fans passing in the aisle within an arm’s length of her.Coco Gauff, another young Black player who has credited Williams’s career with providing inspiration and a road map for her own path in tennis, was in the stands as well. Gauff, who had won her first-round match Monday afternoon, had planned to watch Williams’s match on television, but changed her mind, deciding she did not want to miss the moment dedicated to the woman who had given her belief.“It made me feel that I could do it,” she said Monday of learning about how Williams and her sister Venus had grown up poor in Compton, Calif., and broken into what had been an overwhelmingly white sport. “I hope that somebody can look at me and say that I feel like I can do it because she did it.”Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is Haitian, is a Japanese national, but, like Williams, she grew up largely as a Black woman in America, but their links go far beyond that.Like Williams, Osaka was largely coached by her father, who has spoken of copying the playbook Richard Williams essentially wrote for creating female champions. Osaka also has an older sister who played professional tennis; Mari Osaka, 26, retired last year.For much of their childhoods, Mari was the better player, though Naomi appeared to have a higher ceiling because of her speed, just as Serena Williams did. The first mountain each had to climb was getting good enough to play with and then beat their older sisters. Like Williams, Naomi Osaka has not been shy about speaking out on social justice issues, especially in 2020, following a series of police killings and shootings of Black people. Both have been unafraid to take on the tennis establishment.They played each other five times. Osaka won three of the matches, most memorably the 2018 U.S. Open final, when an overmatched Williams was penalized for receiving coaching and ended up in an ugly dispute with the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. Osaka ended up in tears during the trophy ceremony as the crowd howled at the outcome.That was the first of Osaka’s four Grand Slam singles titles. It was the second of the four finals Williams lost while on the precipice of tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles championships. Williams has not won any Grand Slam singles titles since then. Osaka has won three more, including the 2020 U.S. Open, and was on the cusp of taking the torch from Williams and full control of the sport until her struggles with mental health prevented her from playing all but a few matches during the last six months of 2021. This April, she made the final of the Miami Open, her best result since her comeback began in January, but battled an Achilles’ tendon injury that derailed her preparation for the French Open and forced her to pull out of Wimbledon. After a few hard-fought losses this summer, Osaka badly wanted to play into the later rounds of the U.S. Open, and she came out on fire, lacing serves and forehands and digging balls out of the corners as she sprinted to an early 3-0 lead, looking like the Osaka of two years ago. But Collins quickly matched every ounce of Osaka’s power and proved just a little bit sharper, and maybe a bit luckier in the crucial first-set tiebreaker. She floated a desperate lob that caught the back of the baseline and knuckled a mis-hit service return that Osaka could not handle to clinch the set. In the second set, Osaka took another early lead only to succumb to another rush from Collins, as her forehand grew a little too loose on a night with so little margin for error. Collins gambled with big swings that paid off more often than not, and more often than Osaka’s gambles did. With Collins serving for the match, Osaka had two shots to get back on serve but couldn’t find the winners she needed and sent a backhand long to give Collins the match. “I just have to chill a little bit,” Osaka said while the loss was still raw. “There’s a lot of random chaos in my head right now.”She paused a slow walk off the court and an early departure from the tournament to sign some courtside autographs. Then it was over, and the tournament spotlight was back on Williams once more. More

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      Serena Williams’s Next Opponent Is a Struggling Anett Kontaveit

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      They will face off in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday, a venue that feels like home to Williams even if it has not always been a haven.At nearly 41 years of age, Serena Williams would seem to have seen it all in tennis, but the new experiences keep coming in what she has suggested — but coyly not quite confirmed — will be her final tournament.Since returning to the tour in June after nearly a year’s absence, she has played five singles matches: four of them against opponents she had never faced.More novelty lies ahead on Wednesday night in the second round of the U.S. Open when she will play her first career match against Anett Kontaveit, the No. 2 seed.They will face off in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium, a venue that feels like home to Williams even if it has not always been a haven.Kontaveit, a 26-year-old Estonian whose international profile is not nearly as high as her ranking, has surely never experienced anything quite like what awaits her on Wednesday. But she sounds more excited than daunted.“I’m going to fight as hard as I can for every point and really enjoy the atmosphere of being out there against the greatest player of all time,” she said. “I think it’s such a great opportunity.” Kontaveit is the highest-ranked player in history from Estonia, the northernmost of the three Baltic States. But she is not Estonia’s first elite women’s singles player. Kaia Kanepi, 37, reached her first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal in 2008 at the French Open and has been to six more, most recently, in a big surprise, at this year’s Australian Open.Kontaveit, a ferocious ball-striker with a powerful serve, has made it to only one Grand Slam quarterfinal at this stage, which helps explain her relative anonymity. But she did break new ground for Estonia by reaching the championship match of last year’s WTA Finals, the tour’s prestigious year-end event, losing to Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain.That run boosted Kontaveit’s ranking, but her best results have come in lower-tier events and often indoors: no surprise considering Estonia’s long winters. Though she has often trained in Britain and was once described by the country’s Daily Telegraph as “an honorary Briton with a cut-glass” English accent (presumably a compliment), she still lives in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, in an elegant modern apartment that she has decorated with plants and some of her own handmade pottery.“She does get recognized in the street, and she has a lot of fans in Estonia for sure,” said Torben Beltz, the veteran German coach who joined her team in June before Wimbledon.Kontaveit, a prodigy who won the Estonian women’s singles title at age 13, received instruction from her mother Ülle Milk in her formative years. But she has had a series of prominent international coaches on tour: working with the Dutchman Glenn Schaap; the Briton Nigel Sears; and Dmitry Tursunov, a straight-talking and deep-thinking former tour player from Russia who was instrumental in Aryna Sabalenka’s rise into the top three and then Kontaveit’s.But Tursunov and Kontaveit ended their partnership this spring. Kontaveit attributed the split to Tursunov’s Russian nationality making it complicated for him to secure visas and travel with her consistently on tour after the nation’s invasion of Ukraine, but that did not keep Tursunov from being quickly rehired for a trial run by Emma Raducanu, the 19-year-old British star.Though Kontaveit reached the final of the Qatar Open in February, this has been a trying season. She said she contracted Covid-19 in late April and withdrew from the Madrid Open and said she struggled physically when she returned to the tour.“We all know she had long Covid kind of,” Beltz said. “She was not fit, but she’s very close again to get this back and is playing better in practice really well now. So I think it’s coming.”This will be Kontaveit’s first match with Williams but not the first match Beltz will coach against Williams. He previously worked with Angelique Kerber when she faced Williams in a series of major matches, including the 2016 Australian Open final that Kerber won and the 2016 Wimbledon final that Kerber lost.“I’ve been scouting her for a long time,” Beltz said with a laugh. “Every tournament when you play good you have to scout Serena, because you know your player may have to face her. But it’s great to face a champion, I think. It’s going to be a good match tomorrow.”Kontaveit reached the final of the Qatar Open but lost to Iga Swiatek of Poland.Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockBeltz scouted Williams this time from afar by watching on television when she defeated Danka Kovinic of Montenegro on Monday night in an extraordinary atmosphere at Ashe Stadium.“I couldn’t get a ticket,” Beltz said. “This is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in women’s tennis. I think it’s the greatest thing for the sport, and we all have to thank Serena for all she did. Especially right now with the end coming.”Though Williams has struggled since her return to the tour in June, winning just two of her five singles matches, Beltz could see progress against Kovinic.“I think her ball speed, serve and return is really up to her prime time,” Beltz said of Williams. “I saw her other matches, and it looks like she’s improved over the last couple of weeks. She looks in better shape and looks good now. For Anett, I think the key is to just go out and try to play her best tennis but also enjoy the moment. It’s going to be a big challenge, a great challenge, but I think she wants that challenge and wants to embrace it.”Remarkably, she may get to embrace the challenge twice in Williams’s farewell U.S. Open. Kontaveit and Shelby Rogers, her American partner, could also face Williams and her sister Venus in the second round of the women’s doubles tournament. More

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      With Upset Over Taylor Fritz, Brandon Holt Is Making a Name for Himself

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      Holt, a qualifier who inherited tennis skills from his mother, the U.S. Open winner Tracy Austin, and his other pastime — music — from his father, is putting together a tidy run at the tournament.As the son of a famous tennis champion, Brandon Holt is often asked what he has taken from his mother, Tracy Austin, who won the United States Open twice. Did he inherit his service return from her? Did she bequeath her court savvy to her son?Some of his tennis skill set does derive from his mother, and some of it is his own. But what did Holt get from his father, Scott Holt?“His musical taste,” Brandon Holt said, and for the rising tennis star, that is something very precious.Ever since Holt, 24, rolled his ankle in his sophomore year at the University of Southern California and was forced to spend significant time away from tennis, he has become an avid guitar player, borrowing from his dad’s record collection to strum along with the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Oasis, Pink Floyd and more.The guitar was something he picked up to get away from the mind-numbing magnetism of social media during his rehabilitation. He bought a guitar and learned chords and songs from the internet.“Every time I felt the urge to go on Instagram or something, I would pick up the guitar,” he said. “And I fell in love with it. Now it goes wherever I go.”Holt was too exhausted after his record-breaking upset win over the No. 10 seed, Taylor Fritz, on Monday to play later that night. In his hotel room on Tuesday morning, he grabbed his instrument and started jamming, just like any other day on tour, as long as the doctors allow it.Several months ago, Holt was recovering from a hand injury that temporarily jeopardized his career. He found he could strum the guitar, but picking the strings hurt his hand. He asked his surgeon if he could still pick through the pain.“He said, ‘That depends,’” Holt recalled. “‘Do you want to be a professional tennis player or a professional musician?’”The answer to that question is affirmatively the former. Holt is having the tournament of his life, piling career-best win on top of career-best win to reach the second round of the U.S. Open. If he can beat Pedro Cachin of Argentina, who is ranked No. 66 in the world, on Wednesday, Holt would become the first man with a wild-card entry into the qualifying rounds of the U.S. Open to reach the third round of the main draw.In other words, the U.S. Open gifted him the opportunity to compete in the pretournament qualifying rounds, which meant that he would then have to win three matches just to get into the main draw. He did that for the first time in his young career and then stunned Fritz in four sets.Holt, left, beat his friend, the No. 10 seed, Taylor Fritz, to advance to the second round.Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressHe is the first wild-card qualifier to beat a top-10 seed, men or women, and the second man to win a match in the main draw. He did it by beating Fritz, an old friend — they have played against one another in Southern California since before they were 10 — who had designs on winning the U.S. Open.Fritz is also 24, but he has been playing in major tournaments for seven years. Quicker to develop professionally, Fritz was always helpful to Holt as they played against one another in their youths and trained together over the years. Fritz acted almost as a mentor while Holt bided his time. When they were young, Fritz invariably won their matches, but there was nothing weird about the tables turning as they did on Monday.“No, that’s not the right word,” Holt said. “I felt really happy, maybe just, I don’t know, stress relief. Sometimes, you want something so bad, and you want it to end so that it comes true, and when it happens, it just feels so good.”Holt’s gradual development has allowed him to surface into the thick of the U.S. Open eight years older than his mother was when she first won the U.S. Open as a 16-year-old phenom, seeded third, in 1979. Holt, who came into the qualifying rounds ranked No. 303, went to regular schools, avoided the grind of international travel as a teenager and spent four years in college with strong (free) coaching, top nutrition and training facilities (also free).“He really liked being a normal kid,” said David Nainkin, the lead men’s national coach for United States Tennis Association player development. “He’s got a strong family background, and he’s just taken his time and gotten a little better and a little better over time.”Austin remains a part of her son’s coaching staff and occasionally makes critical suggestions, Nainkin said, like a recent footwork adjustment that added 10 miles per hour to his serve. Nainkin added that Holt, always a smart player, has also taken a quantum leap in self-analysis of his game during his time at the U.S. Open.“He’s improved in just the nine days that he has been here,” Nainkin said.Tracy Austin won the U.S. Open twice and is now watching her son Brandon try to do the same.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesAlso, he is devouring newfound information about his opponents, statistics he had never had access to before. The U.S. Open is the first tournament Holt has played in which in-depth technical data is available on all players — from groundstroke speed to first-serve tendencies.Nainkin also believes that Holt’s pathway to the professional ranks has been enhanced by his maturity and independence. Before he was granted the wild card into qualifying, Holt traveled the world by himself — no parent, no coach, no manager — playing in Tunisia, Mexico, Ecuador, Britain and the Dominican Republic and ranked as low as No. 924.His only traveling partner was his guitar, a 2.5-pound semi-acoustic that he plugs into his computer and listens through headphones. Holt packs the guitar into his luggage and sets it in the corner of his hotel room and plays it every day, sometimes for two hours at a time, before he catches himself, lest he develop hand cramps while playing barre chords.Although he was drawn to his father’s musical tastes, neither of his parents plays an instrument, he said. His grandmother on his father’s side is an accomplished pianist, and sometimes they play together. Holt’s favorite song to play is one that could apply to all his friends and family members who could not make the journey to New York to witness his breakout tournament.“‘Wish You Were Here’ by Pink Floyd,” he said. “If there is only one song I could play for the rest of my life, it would be that one.”Luckily, there are no such restrictions. Holt is showing he can play a lot more than just that. More

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      Defending U.S. Open Champion Emma Raducanu Loses in the First Round

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      Raducanu, who won the U.S. Open women’s singles title as a qualifier without dropping a set last year, fell to Alizé Cornet in straight sets.Emma Raducanu, who won last year’s U.S. Open as a little-known 18-year-old qualifier without losing a single set, will not defend her title this year after losing in the first round to Alizé Cornet on Tuesday night.For Cornet, a 32-year-old Frenchwoman ranked No. 40, the win, 6-3, 6-3, was her second major surprise victory of the year after she upset No. 1 Iga Swiatek in straight sets in the third round of Wimbledon. Cornet achieved the best Grand Slam result of her career earlier this year at the Australian Open, where she reached the quarterfinals before losing to Danielle Collins, who went on to reach the final.For Raducanu, now 19, the loss came in what has been a challenging year for her in Grand Slam tournaments. Raducanu reached only the second round at each of the first three majors, losing to Danka Kovinic at the Australian Open, Aliaksandra Sasnovich at the French Open and Caroline Garcia at Wimbledon.“I’m sorry I beat her tonight but I’m really happy with my performance,” Cornet said on the court after the match. “I felt like I played a really solid match, I was fighting my heart out and hanging in there. I think my game at the net was pretty good, I think it was a bit of everything, playing with a bit of variation, and it definitely worked tonight.”Alizé Cornet of France celebrating after defeating Raducanu.Elsa/Getty ImagesCornet and Raducanu stepped into a breezy Louis Armstrong Stadium on Tuesday as the American flag hanging above the court moved swiftly from the start of the match through the end. They played before a modest crowd on a night that featured Rafael Nadal on the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium at the same time.“Alizé’s defense was pretty good,” Raducanu said after the match, with a hat over her eyes. “I thought she was just scrapping everything back. There were junk balls in the middle of the court. With the wind blowing around, it was really difficult. She just kept getting it back.”Raducanu added that she thought she wasn’t going for as many balls because of the windy conditions.The match got off to a close start, with each player splitting the first six games. Then, down 4-3 in the first set, Raducanu failed to tie up the set on her serve, double faulting to bring the match to 5-3.Up 40-30 in the next game, Cornet threw her arms up into the air, calling for cheers from a crowd that had been supporting Raducanu from the beginning. Cornet went on to take the set, 6-3, with a forehand winner.The set was the first Raducanu had dropped in her career at the U.S. Open.“I’m going to drop down the rankings and climb my way back up,” she said. “In a way the target will be off my back slightly. I just have another chance to claw my way back up there.”After the first set, a medical trainer was called onto the court, and appeared to be treating Raducanu’s right hand. Raducanu struggled with blisters earlier this year.Raducanu said she has been dealing with blisters while in the United States, adding that it could be because of the humidity in some cities along the tour.“You tape it up and move on it,” she said. “It’s a blister — not much you can do about it. It is what it is. Sometimes these things happen in these conditions.”Cornet took the first game of the second set, and Raducanu took the next game, and then another, winning the final point with an ace.Then down 40-15, Cornet decided to go with a drop shot that Raducanu could not reach, but Raducanu came back quickly, winning the next point to go up 3-1.Cornet pushed the set to 3-2 with a backhand winner, and she then tied the set at three games apiece without giving up any points. Cornet took the next game to go up 4-3, as Raducanu lost the break with a backhand unforced error into the net.As she stepped back onto the court, down 4-3, Raducanu looked up into the crowd as if she were searching for someone or something. The crowd responded with several people yelling “c’mon, Emma.”Serving at 4-3, Cornet took the next game, with Raducanu hitting into the net on the final point.Raducanu failed to extend the match on her serve. Down 40-30, Raducanu hit a backhand volley out, giving Cornet the win.The match would have been significant for Cornet even if she had lost. This year’s U.S. Open is Cornet’s 63rd consecutive appearance in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament, a record streak in the Open era that started at the 2007 Australian Open, where she lost in the first round.While the U.S. Open is the last Grand Slam of the year, Raducanu said she will consider playing in other tournaments.“It could be exciting for me to start my kind of climb back up there,” she said. “How far can I go till the end of year?” More