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      Carlos Alcaraz Emerges as a Sensation at the U.S. Open

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      After the teenager from Spain stunned Stefanos Tsitsipas, he said he has dreamed of playing on “the best court in the world” for much of his 18 years. Now he’s won on it.The coming-of-age party and fifth-set tiebreaker were over on Friday night. Carlos Alcaraz, an 18-year-old Spaniard, had finally finished throwing towels into the Arthur Ashe Stadium stands after his U.S. Open upset of Stefano Tsitsipas. One by one or in small groups, the fans walked up the stairs toward the exits.They were smiling, sometimes shaking their heads and uttering words like “amazing” and “unbelievable.” This being 2021, two young boys ran toward their mother brandishing their phones to show off the courtside selfies they had taken with Alcaraz.Has another tennis star been born? We will see. Big expectations can bring even ultra-talented teenagers down to earth. But the 55th-ranked Alcaraz looked like the real deal against the third-seeded Tsitsipas, ripping next-level groundstrokes, making the court look small with his foot speed and embracing the big stage and moment with the same gusto that Spain’s greatest player Rafael Nadal did in his teens.It is quite a package, and it was quite a third-round match: four hours and seven minutes of momentum shifts, fast-twitch offense and defense and raw emotion.It ended with Alcaraz flat on his back on the court that he had never set foot on until Friday morning when he walked into the nearly empty stadium for practice and looked up — and up — at the five tiers of stands.“When I walked in, I took a photo with my team,” he said in an interview in Spanish. “It was spectacular. I could not believe this moment had finally come. In my opinion, it’s the best court in the world. So big.”One wonders if Alcaraz’s court preferences will change if he becomes a regular on center court at the French Open or Wimbledon. Clay after all is Spain’s favorite tennis canvas and Alcaraz’s first surface. But his bold game seems right for bright lights and big, brash cities. He experienced Ashe Stadium to the fullest in his debut with the crowd roaring for him, in part because of the ill will that Tsitsipas has generated of late with his anti-vaccine stance and gamesmanship but also because of Alcaraz’s incandescence.He sank his teeth into the match immediately, jumping out to a 4-0 lead, forcing Tsitsipas to adapt to the ferocious pace.“Ball speed was incredible,” Tsitsipas said. “I’ve never seen someone hit the ball so hard. Took time to adjust. Took time to kind of develop my game around his game style.”According to data from Hawkeye, Alcaraz’s average forehand speed was 78 miles per hour: 3 miles per hour faster than the U.S. Open men’s average this year. His backhand speed was 75 miles per hour: five miles per hour faster than the average.No wonder Tsitsipas felt like there was no safe haven, but he appeared to have solved the problem when he won the second set and then took a 5-2 lead in the third, going up two breaks of serve. But he lost the edge and the set in a tiebreaker before roaring back to win the fourth set 6-0.The logical thought at this stage was that the kid had had a great day, but that best-of-five sets against a top three player would remind him of how far he had to go.So much for logic. Alcaraz resumed mixing huge groundstrokes and deft drop shots, hitting high notes with the crowd providing nothing but positive feedback. The final score was 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 0-6, 7-6 (5).Carlos Alcaraz during his upset win over Stefanos Tsitsipas.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“I didn’t expect him to raise his level so much, especially after having lost the fourth set this way,” Tsitsipas said. “He was a completely different player.”You cannot prepare yourself completely for such situations. You must experience them to find out what you are made of. Alcaraz, index finger wagging and fist pumping, looked very much in his element.“The fact that the crowd was behind me and pulling for me to win is what I think helped me reach that level in the fifth set,” Alcaraz told me. “Without them, I wouldn’t have made it. It’s something I will never forget.”It has been quite a first U.S. Open, quite a first visit to New York, but Alcaraz has imagined himself here for years.“I could see from watching on television that the New York fans were passionate about tennis,” he said. “I wanted to experience that for myself.”He is from Murcia in southeastern Spain, and from a tennis family. His father, also named Carlos, was a fine junior player and later became the sports director at a tennis club in Murcia.“In my family, I think we have the sport in our blood,” Alcaraz said. “We all played from the time we were young.”He started hitting at age 3 and was soon winning national junior titles in Spain while playing against his elders. He won his first ATP points at 14 — an exceptionally young age — at an event in Murcia. He played the professional tournament only because it was close to home, but his potential was clear in the small world of Spanish tennis.Nadal, one of men’s tennis’s greatest prodigies, was born and raised on the Balearic island of Majorca in a sporting family and did not lack for local tennis role models. Carlos Moya, the French Open champion and the first Spanish man to reach No. 1 in the ATP rankings, was also from Majorca and mentored and practiced with Nadal when was in his early teens.Rafael Nadal and Alcaraz at the Madrid Open in May.Sergio Perez/ReutersAlcaraz has had contact with Nadal. There is no shortage of photos on the internet of them posing together when Alcaraz was still a junior. They played in May in the second round of the Madrid Open on clay, and Nadal won 6-1, 6-2. But the comparisons are likely to continue if Alcaraz keeps grabbing big matches by the lapels.“Thanks to Rafa, I learned the importance of playing with high energy and giving everything from the first ball to the last,” Alcaraz said. “The challenge of trying to go to where Rafa has gone is also a big motivation for me, even if I know it’s all but impossible.”The Spanish star who has had the biggest influence on Alcaraz’s game is actually Juan Carlos Ferrero, another former world No. 1 who is now Alcaraz’s coach and operates an academy in Villena in Alicante.“Since I met him when he was 14, 15, I knew of his potential, about his level,” Ferrero said on Saturday at the Open.Ferrero, a French Open champion and U.S. Open finalist in 2003, was a great mover: a fluid baseliner who unlocked rallies and problems with structure and consistency. Alcaraz is a serial risk taker who likes to resolve the conflict in a single swipe of his racket but does share one of Ferrero’s qualities: fast feet. Alcaraz’s ability to run around his backhand and rip an airborne forehand is already world class.“When you see somebody at 18 who can hit the ball that big already off both sides and moves that well, it’s close to unique,” said Paul Annacone, who coached former No. 1s Pete Sampras and Roger Federer. “To me, his backhand is actually better than his forehand. He misses his forehand. It’s huge, but he misses it. He doesn’t miss the backhand much at all. Sometimes I do wonder, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, whether someone who plays like that is really fearless or just doesn’t have any tennis I.Q. yet. That’s the unknown, but if you look at the kid’s tools, once he understands how to open up the court and use short angles and realize he doesn’t need to blast everything, it will be pretty scary.”Getting the balance right will take time, and the next challenge will be avoiding a letdown on Sunday when Alcaraz will be the favorite instead of the underdog against 141st ranked qualifier Peter Gojowczyk of Germany in the fourth round.“I know I have to take this round by round,” he said. “I can’t get ahead of myself, but I think I have a great opportunity here.”What is clear for now is that Alcaraz’s take-no-prisoners style of play is not a reflection of his approach to life outside the arena.“Outside the court, I’m a relaxed guy, pleasant, always laughing and making jokes,” he said. “I am totally the opposite of what I am on court.” More

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      Shelby Rogers Beats Ashleigh Barty at the U.S. Open

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      The American beat Barty, who had won five tournaments this year including Wimbledon, 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (5). Rogers made the crowd work for her.Shelby Rogers held an unusual distinction when she walked onto the court in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday. She was the last remaining American woman in the U.S. Open women’s singles draw, and it was only the third round.Sofia Kenin, Serena Williams and Venus Williams all skipped the tournament with ailments, and stars like Coco Gauff, Sloane Stephens, Danielle Collins and Jessica Pegula had already been eliminated.It was looking nearly as bad for Rogers, too. Trailing 2-5 in the third set to top-seeded Ashleigh Barty, Rogers completed a stirring comeback to the delight of the pro-American audience to score the biggest upset of the tournament, ousting the Australian 6-2, 1-6, 7-6 (5).Barty, the defending Wimbledon champion and winner of the 2019 French Open, has held the No. 1 spot in the WTA women’s rankings since Jan. 24, 2019 and had won five tournaments this year, including the Cincinnati event leading up to the U.S. Open. She went into Saturday’s match without losing a set in her first two encounters, and held a 5-0 advantage over Rogers.Barty was gracious after the loss, paying tribute to Rogers and saying she is prepared to move on knowing the year has been a success, over all.“You can’t win every single tennis match that you play,” she said. “I’m proud of myself and my team for all the efforts we’ve put in in the last six months. It’s been pretty incredible. I don’t think we could have asked for much more honestly. I wouldn’t change a thing.”Rogers was equally as effusive about Barty, noting that her opponent had not been home to Australia since February, in part to avoid complications and quarantines due to coronavirus travel restrictions.“She’s resetting on the road, she’s worked through some injuries on the road,” Rogers said. “She’s won five titles. She’s remained No. 1. I mean, this girl is everything every player wants to be.”With the home crowd behind her, Rogers, 28, won the first set easily. Perhaps Barty just needed waking up. It looked as if that might be the case when Barty cruised to an easy win in the second set and then went ahead, 5-2 in the third. Victory was only a few points away.“I think that game put some oxygen into her lungs,” Barty said.There were moments in that seventh game where Rogers’ body language suggested that defeat was imminent. She slumped when shots went astray, walked from one end of the court to the other after losing a point without much conviction and appeared under siege at one point. But it was Barty who would not hold her nerve. She made three unforced errors in that game to allow Rogers to break her serve, and grasp onto hope.Shelby Rogers of the United States after defeating Australia’s Ashleigh Barty on Saturday night.Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith renewed energy derived in part from the supportive fans, Rogers held her serve and then broke Barty again. Generally, she prefers to strike balls firmly and close to the net, but Rogers recognized that Barty was having more trouble with high-bouncing balls, and began to rely on that tactic to push her advantage.“It’s not the way I like to play,” she said in an interview on court after the match, “But it was what I needed to do against her.”Barty was now the one under siege and served tenuously, trailing, 5-6. But at 40-30, Rogers mistimed an overhead slam and hit the ball into the net. They would go to a tiebreaker, and Rogers had the momentum.Even though it would remain close, Barty was playing more desperately and struggling to keep pace, while Rogers surged on a wave of adrenaline, now running back to her spot and pumping her fist to the fans.Most of the points Rogers won in the tiebreaker came off Barty’s mistakes as Rogers was content to keep pushing the ball back, often with a looping arc to it, and then waited for Barty to crack.The final point, though, came on a strong serve by Rogers that overwhelmed Barty, and her backhand block went wide. Rogers dropped her racket and put both hands to her face. She picked up the racket, went to the net to shake hands with Barty and the chair umpire, and then flung it to the side again and raised her arms to the crowd, half in triumph, half in disbelief.Her next opponent is the exciting British teenager, Emma Raducanu, in the fourth round.A year ago, when Rogers was still working her way back from knee surgery, she reached the quarterfinal stage here. She lost to Naomi Osaka, the eventual champion, in a stadium that was empty because of coronavirus restrictions. But fans are back in attendance at full capacity this year, and Rogers took advantage.“The crowd has taken it to another level this year,” she told them on court.“I’m thankful that I couldn’t hear myself breathing as heavily as I did last year in the empty stadium,” she said. “But, gosh, that was really something special. I got chills out there on the court. I don’t know if that’s normal when you’re playing a tennis match, but it happened. I will never forget that moment.” More

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      Even for the Greatest Players, Life in Tennis Can Be a Slog

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      Naomi Osaka is taking an indefinite break from tennis as she struggles to find meaning and joy from playing. It’s a sadly familiar script for the sport.The moment resonated with nearly every player who has ever picked up a racket, and especially those who have reached the pinnacle of tennis.A tearful Naomi Osaka sat behind a microphone late on Friday night and spoke of how the sport she has so dominated at times has become a joyless binary journey between relief after victories and sadness following losses. There is no contentment, no happiness.Then came what may be her last public words for some time.“I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while,” she said.How long is anyone’s guess. But while Osaka’s misery is her own — like the unhappiness of the unhappy families Tolstoy refers to at the start of Anna Karenina — tennis has seen this movie so many times before that an unavoidable question arises: What is it about this sport that makes so many of the best players in the world, a collection of athletes seemingly swaddled in wealth and fame and glory, so intolerably miserable?“I think with anything you’re passionate about, it’s always a love/hate relationship, because you want that thing so bad all the time, you want to be perfect,” Bianca Andreescu, the Canadian star who won the U.S. Open the first time she played it in 2019 but has battled injuries, inconsistency and the frustrations that come with both ever since, said after her third-round win Saturday. “In my case, it’s tennis.”Careers cut short because of broken minds rather than aging bodies haunt tennis like ghosts.Bjorn Borg of Sweden, a superstar of the 1970s and winner of 11 Grand Slam titles, lost his fourth U.S. Open final in 1981. He walked off the court, drove away in his car, and never played another Grand Slam tournament again. He was 25. Steffi Graf, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, quit at 30, just weeks after a French Open title and a Wimbledon final, saying she had lost her motivation and passion for the game. Andre Agassi and Jennifer Capriati succumbed to drug abuse and, in Capriati’s case, addiction, though they managed to mount comebacks.More recently, Paula Badosa of Spain has spoken of her battles with depression brought on in part by the frustrations and pressures of the game. Iga Swiatek of Poland, who won the 2020 French Open at 19, spoke after a recent loss of seeing little other than tennis balls when she closed her eyes at night. After losing a hard-fought match at the Olympics she sobbed into a towel as though she had lost a close relative.Paula Badosa has spoken of her depression brought on by the pressures of the game.Aaron Doster/Associated PressAthletes in team sports talk about the joy that comes from being a part of something larger than themselves, of heading into battle surrounded by a band of brothers and sisters.Golfers play an individual sport filled with crushing frustrations, but they walk peaceful, beautiful grounds through a morning or afternoon, a caddie by their side lending advice and providing technical and emotional support. When they lose, the golf course gets the best of them.Tennis players and coaches speak of the singular form of intensity and loneliness that accompanies the game.From the time they are small children, tennis players run on hard, often hot, and sometimes sweltering courts for hours as a human on the other side of the net tries to pound them into exhaustion and defeat. And they do it alone, prohibited from communicating with anyone during the most important matches.They cross borders and time zones and oceans often from week to week during a grueling, 11-month season. Sometimes they compete at 11 o’clock in the morning. The next day they might start at 11 at night. Sleeping and eating schedules are discombobulated.Tennis players talk differently when they talk about losing. The player not holding the trophy at the end of a tournament does not come in second place, and semifinalists do not finish in third or fourth. Pro golfers who finished fourth often say they had a great week. Marathoners and swimmers talk about being on the podium.As Novak Djokovic, no stranger to tennis misery, said the other night, “We are a particular sport that only has one winner.”The coronavirus pandemic has only magnified pressures and pitfalls, and added another kind of loneliness. For more than a year, at most tournaments players have had to limit their movements to their hotels, practice courts and competition venues, passing long hours alone in soulless rooms. They are tested for Covid-19 every few days, always one swab away from a 10-day isolation far from home.Daria Abramowicz, a sports psychologist who travels with Swiatek, said the sport in its modern form is an energy sucking journey of climbing the rankings ladder, defending your position, and cultivating fans, as well as sponsors, who can provide a financial safety net but bring their own demands.Daria Abramowicz, a sports psychologist, with Iga Swiatek in Australia in February.Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“If your tank is empty or almost empty, and if you feel burdened that there are a lot of challenges all around the performance, it is impossible to enjoy the process and enjoy this moment,” Abramowicz said.For better or worse, Osaka has taken on burdens.After the murder of George Floyd, she flew to Minneapolis to march with protesters. After the shooting of Jacob Blake, she single-handedly brought her sport to a standstill when she announced she would not play her semifinal match in the Western & Southern Open. She wore a mask with the name of a different victim of police violence onto the court for each of her matches at the U.S. Open last year.“She allows herself to really feel and experience that sadness,” said Pam Shriver, the former top player and Grand Slam doubles champion.In May, ahead of the French Open, Osaka tried to overturn years of tennis protocol when she refused to participate in post-match news conferences because she said they put too much stress on players, especially after losses. Her stance led to an ugly confrontation with tournament organizers and her withdrawal from the tournament after just one match.In Japan, where she has become a symbol of a new, multiracial vision of a traditionally homogeneous society, she embraced the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron and becoming the face of the Games. It was her first competition since the French Open.She has told the world about her battles with depression the past three years, a move that John McEnroe said took great courage. The seven-time Grand Slam winner, who 40 years later is still shaken by the sudden departure of Borg, his chief rival, said her candor probably helped countless people. McEnroe added that it may also make it harder for Osaka to thrive because of the increased attention it brings.“She’s the type of player we need around the sport another 10 years, that should win a bunch of more majors hopefully, if she’s in the right head space,” McEnroe said days before the start of the U.S. Open.After spending roughly two years on the pro tour with Swiatek, Abramowicz has concluded that players can survive careers — inevitably filled with losses and disappointment — only by working every day to build self-worth and self-confidence that is not measured by wins and rankings points but rather relationships. Only then can they find a way to enjoy the process, as enervating as it might be.“You need to maintain the core values, because without that there is nothing,” Abramowicz said. “There is just burned ground.” More

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      Canadian Tennis Players Excel at the U.S. Open

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      Canada’s high-performance tennis program is achieving its goal of producing elite players, several of whom have advanced at the U.S. Open.The Canadian flag is everywhere at the U.S. Open, where Canadian players are winning on courts across the grounds and beyond.On Saturday, Bianca Andreescu won in Louis Armstrong Stadium while Denis Shapovalov waited to play there in the night session. On Friday, Felix Auger-Aliassime beat Roberto Bautista Agut in Armstrong, Vasek Pospisil won at doubles on Court 10, and three Canadian girls won junior qualifying matches at the Cary Leeds Center in the Bronx.The biggest win took place in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, when Leylah Fernandez, a French Open junior champion two years ago, beat No. 3 seed Naomi Osaka to muscle her way toward the front of Canada’s booming tennis program, an assembly line of players that includes four men in the top 60 and six girls in the top 100 of the junior rankings.Not bad for a country with about a tenth of the population of the United States. But Canadian players are pouring over the border and making New York their temporary home.“I’m just glad that there’s so many Canadians going deep in this tournament,” Fernandez said shortly after she had showed the steely nerve it took to oust the defending champion in the world’s biggest tennis stadium. Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday, is the latest young Canadian to captivate the tennis world, following in the path of Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open; Auger-Aliassime; Shapovalov; and, before them, Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard.A country of about 37 million, Canada has made a concerted effort over the past several years to develop elite players, and it is working. Most of them pass through Tennis Canada’s high-performance development program, and many were either immigrants themselves or the Canadian-born children of immigrants.Fernandez belongs to that list, too, although her route is unique. Her father and coach, Jorge Fernandez, was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal with his family when he was a small boy. Fernandez’s mother, Irene Exevea, is of Filipino descent from Toronto.Jorge Fernandez describes himself as a former journeyman professional soccer player in the lower levels of the game, mostly in Latin America. He never knew anything about tennis until his daughter showed interest as a schoolgirl.“She played some soccer in Montreal,” the elder Fernandez said in a telephone interview Saturday, “but I didn’t want her to just follow me. I wanted her to find her own passion.”That turned out to be tennis, but Leylah struggled to gain the favor of the local tennis associations. She was part of a Quebec-based development program for a while, but it dropped her, Jorge said, in part because she was tiny. She still wanted to play.“I told her, ‘It’s OK, we’ll do it ourselves,’” her father said.They plunged ahead on their own, and soon enough, Leylah Fernandez was tearing through the ranks of her age group and several years above it, winning so many tournaments that Tennis Canada officials finally invited her to train with them.But as often happens when parents hand their children over to tennis federations, there were differences of opinion, especially over how much Leylah should play. Ultimately, Jorge Fernandez took his daughter out of the program, although amicably, he says.“I told them we would meet up again,” he explained, “and look, we have.”He continued: “It’s OK to have disagreements. We all wanted the same thing, which is for Leylah to be successful. We just had a different idea of how to do it, for a while. But they have been doing great work. I tip my hat to them with all the success they have had with so many Canadians going through the program.”Bianca Andreescu playing on Saturday.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah’s mother thought their daughter would be one of those successes, too. According to Jorge Fernandez, Exevea thought he was crazy to remove his daughter from a program that provided free coaching and more. But he was committed to doing it himself, so he and Leylah and her younger sister, Bianca Jolie, who is 17, continued to train on their own in Montreal. (The oldest, Jodeci, is a dentist in Ohio and did not play tennis competitively).That left the chief bread-winning duties to Exevea, who, unlike Jorge Fernandez, has a university degree. She moved to California so she could earn U.S. dollars and stayed there for three years while Jorge tapped into his knowledge as a former professional athlete to coach his daughters.“Those were difficult years, because they only saw their mother maybe two times a year,” Jorge said. “We finally decided to move to Florida. It’s the Mecca of tennis, and we could have the whole family together again.”To learn the art of tennis and coaching it, Jorge Fernandez immersed himself in the sport, reading texts and watching videos on the internet. His goal was to cultivate a balance between work and fun to ensure that Leylah never got burned out. He taught his daughter, who is 5 feet 6 inches, to study Justine Henin, who is listed at 5-6¾, because it seemed like an appropriate blueprint for success.Despite her size, Leylah Fernandez is a potent ball striker. Her father claims that, pound for pound, Leylah is “the best power hitter on the tour,” and she derives confidence from her strength. Even before she took the court against Osaka, she said she knew she could beat the four-time major champion.“From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone,” she said Friday night, before noting that it was past her bedtime.When she won the French Open junior title in 2019, Leylah Fernandez asked her father if they could celebrate at McDonald’s. Always diligent about nutrition, and in a city known for its culinary expertise, Fernandez chose the fast food restaurant as a way to splurge. Her father agreed.“It was just the two of us,” Jorge said. “It was sweet, but at the same time, the whole family should have been there. It’s one of the difficult things of the tennis life, all the travel.”Jorge Fernandez could not attend his daughter’s victory over Osaka. He was in Florida attending to business. But before she took the court, Leylah called him for the strategic game plan, and he was true to his ethos.“He told me to go on the court, have fun,” she said, and she followed the advice perfectly, flashing a brilliant smile during a relaxed but exuberant speech after the match.For a time, her family had debated moving to Ecuador so that the girls could play for that country. Instead, they retained their loyalty to Canada, and Leylah Fernandez plays on the Canadian team for the Billie Jean King Cup. On Sunday, she will play No. 16 seed Angelique Kerber, a three-time Grand Slam tournament champion, for a spot in the quarterfinals.Already, she and her compatriots have helped raise the profile of Canadian tennis a notch higher.“Our goal here is just to have fun on court,” she said, “to do our best. Hopefully we can inspire kids in Canada to keep going.” More

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      How to Watch the U.S. Open on Saturday

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      Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty feature at Arthur Ashe Stadium as the third round of singles play concludes.How to watch: From 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time on ESPN2; and streaming on the ESPN app. In Canada on TSN from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and streaming on TSN.ca and the TSN app.Matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern Standard.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 2 p.m.Novak Djokovic vs. Kei NishikoriNovak Djokovic, on a quest for a career-defining Grand Slam, has not been kept out of the second week of a Grand Slam event since the 2017 Australian Open. The task of breaking that streak falls to Kei Nishikori, a finalist at the 2014 U.S. Open. Nishikori struggled with a wrist injury in 2017 and has more recently faced issues with his right shoulder. Although his game can now be inconsistent at times, Nishikori could push Djokovic to exert himself more seriously, or at the least provide some very entertaining tennis.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 1 p.m.Belinda Bencic vs. Jessica PegulaBelinda Bencic, the 11th seed, won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in August, and has kept her foot on the pedal since. Bencic has lost only 16 games on her way to the third round, overwhelming her opponents with steady counterpunching on defense and acute shot making on offense.Jessica Pegula, the 23rd seed, has been similarly dominant in her past two matches. Following her run to the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in February, she will be looking to match her career result and push herself into the top 20. As these two hardcourt heavyweights meet, it’s hard to say which will persevere.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 3 p.m.Gael Monfils vs. Jannik SinnerGael Monfils, the 17th seed, struggled at the beginning of 2021, losing in the first round at the Australian Open, but has found his form since then. Monfils recently recorded his 500th ATP Tour win, joining an exclusive club that only contains 10 other active members.On the other side of the net, the relative newcomer Jannik Sinner has only won 60 professional matches. However, Sinner has already made himself a mainstay near the top of the tour, reaching the finals at the Miami Open to break into the top 20.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 7 p.m.Ashleigh Barty vs. Shelby RogersAshleigh Barty, the first seed, has followed an unusual pattern through the first two rounds of play. She has won the first set in both of her matches at ‘6-1’, while needing to win seven games to then finish off the second set and secure victory. Shelby Rogers, ranked No. 43, will need to start brightly in order to push back on the momentum that Barty has begun to build.Sleeper match of the day.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 6 a.m.Emma Raducanu vs. Sara Sorribes TormoEmma Raducanu was ranked No. 338 before this year’s Championships at Wimbledon. After receiving a wild-card into the main draw, the 18 year-old won three matches without dropping a set, catapulting herself up the rankings. Although her hard court preparation this summer was only at challenger level events, she played through the qualifying rounds and her first two matches at the U.S. Open without dropping a set once more, and will look to reach the second week of play on her first attempt at Flushing Meadows.Sara Sorribes Tormo upset the 22nd seed, Karolina Muchova, in the first round and then skated past Hsieh Su-wei in the second. Her powerful baseline shots are moderated by her clay-court upbringing, making it difficult for opponents to set themselves against a barrage of consistent, deep balls. More

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      Naomi Osaka Loses to Leylah Fernandez at the U.S. Open

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      In tears after the third-round match, the defending champion said, “I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”Naomi Osaka, the defending women’s singles champion, was upset, 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4, in the third round of the U.S. Open on Friday night by Leylah Annie Fernandez, an unseeded 18-year-old from Canada.During her post-match news conference Osaka was in tears.“I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match,” she said. “I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”She flashed two thumbs up and left the room crying.The 73rd-ranked Fernandez, a quick and dynamic left-hander, had never faced Osaka, but she did not appear intimidated, clenching her fist after winning key points and often dictating play with her topspin forehand.It was a memorable evening for teenagers in Arthur Ashe Stadium. In the preceding match, Carlos Alcaraz, a dynamic Spanish 18-year-old, eliminated the No. 3 men’s seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas, in a momentum-shifting thriller that came down to a fifth-set tiebreaker. That was the final match of the day session, and when the arena had been cleared and the night-session crowd had taken their seats, Fernandez followed Alcaraz’s lead, rallying to defeat the third-seeded Osaka.The upset came on the same court where Osaka had become a global star by surprising Serena Williams to win the 2018 U.S. Open. Osaka has since won three more Grand Slam singles titles, including one at last year’s Open.Fernandez had never faced Osaka but did not appear intimidated.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesOsaka broke Fernandez’s serve at 5-5 in the second set with a backhand winner and then served for the match. She had not faced even a break point at that stage but was unable to close out the victory. Fernandez went on to win the first five points of the ensuing tiebreaker, prompting Osaka to hurl her racket to the court. Fernandez then evened the match at one set apiece.“I guess I wanted to stay on the court a little bit longer, and I wanted to put on a show for everybody here,” Fernandez said in her post-match interview. “One hour was just not enough for me on court.”Fernandez quickly took the lead in the third set by breaking Osaka’s serve again in the opening game, and though Osaka began to find her range in her own service games, she could not solve Fernandez’s slower left-handed serve.Osaka did not hide her frustration. After Fernandez hit a net-cord winner in the second game of the final set to go up, 40-15, Osaka took hold of the ball and smacked it high into the stands, receiving a code violation for ball abuse.Fernandez would face no break points on her serve in the final set, and when it came time to serve for the most significant victory of her career, she held at love. At 30-0, she hit a terrific backhand drop-shot winner, and on her first match point, Osaka misjudged a forehand and hit it wide.Osaka appeared to be frustrated in the final set, hitting a ball high into the stands.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesArms up and smiling, Fernandez jogged forward to the net for the handshake.“From the very beginning, right before the match, I knew I was able to win,” she said.Fernandez’s victory was the first major upset of the U.S. Open women’s tournament, which, despite the depth of talent in the women’s game, had largely respected the seedings in the first two rounds. But Friday’s result was the latest setback for Osaka, the biggest star in the women’s game after Serena Williams. Since winning the Australian Open in February, she has played sparingly and has not won another title or even reached another semifinal.Osaka withdrew from the French Open after winning one round after she was fined for declining to take part in the mandatory post-match news conference. Later she explained in a post on social media that she had experienced depression since winning the 2018 U.S. Open and had often found it difficult to face the news media. She returned to her home in Los Angeles and decided to skip Wimbledon but returned to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, where she became the first tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron but lost in the third round to Marketa Vondrousova.Fernadez’s parents, left, after the upset.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesShe was beaten in the round of 16 of the WTA 1000 event in Cincinnati by Jil Teichmann in her only North American tournament before this year’s Open. After defeating Maria Bouzkova in straight sets in the first round in New York, she received a walkover in the second round when Olga Danilova withdrew because of illness.But because of her lack of recent match play, the unexpected break did not turn out to be an advantage. Fernandez, brimming with energy, was able to capitalize. More

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      Carlos Alcaraz Upsets Stefanos Tsitsipas, Emma Raducanu Advances at the U.S. Open

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      Carlos Alcaraz shocked Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday. Then Leylah Fernandez stunned Naomi Osaka. On Saturday, the fast-rising Emma Raducanu gets her chance at the final 16.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesGeoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFor years, tennis has been asking itself how it will move on as its biggest stars head for the exits.If the first week of the U.S. Open is any indication, it just might be with three 18-year-olds named Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez who have barged in where they don’t yet belong, but clearly do.With howls of “Vamonos!” coursing through the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, Alcaraz of Spain pulled off the upset of the tournament in knocking off Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, winning a five-set classic, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 0-6, 7-6(5).When Alcaraz was done, Leylah Fernandez stepped into the spotlight.Fernandez, the product of an Ecuadorian father and a Filipino mother who was raised in Canada, went toe-to-toe with the defending champion, Naomi Osaka, and outlasted the four-time Grand Slam winner to win 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in front of a raucous night crowd that largely expected to see Osaka put on a clinic against a teenager ranked No. 73 in the world who had never made it past the third round of a Grand Slam.Osaka struggled to gain control of the match and solve Fernandez’s lefty power, always a dangerous combination. Fernandez looked like she might make an exit with Osaka serving for the match at 6-5 in the second set, but she had the audacity to break Osaka’s serve, then ran away with the tiebreaker and never looked back.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIt was just a few months ago that Tsitsipas, with his flowing dirty-blond hair and philosopher-prince soliloquies about tennis as a form of self-expression, looked to be the heir apparent to the Big Three of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.But ever since he coughed up a two-set lead over Djokovic in the French Open final, he has frittered away good will with inconsistent play, pronouncements that getting the Covid-19 vaccination is unnecessary, and a never-ending series of midmatch toilet breaks that go on and on and on. His father, Apostolos, who doubles as his coach, was in his corner Friday, but there weren’t many others.After a couple of matches on the field courts, Alcaraz strutted into Arthur Ashe Stadium like a middleweight boxer intent on landing some quick crosses on the jaw of his opponent. Did he ever.Alcaraz, known as “the next Rafa” in tennis circles, especially in Spain, already had Tsitsipas on his heels in the third game when he ripped a crosscourt forehand by Tsitsipas, who stopped and stared at the mark and shook his head with an “are you kidding me?” laugh.Alcaraz was just getting started. By the time he broke Tsitsipas’s serve for a third time to clinch the first set, the seats of the biggest stadium in the sport were filling up with thousands of fans who were acting like they had been on a first-name basis with Alcaraz for years.It’s a funny thing about young and little-known tennis players like Alcaraz and Raducanu, who were both well outside the top 200 a year ago — they develop followings like indie bands. The field courts at major tournaments function sort of like small night clubs. As word spreads of a player whose strokes and stage presence can’t be missed, the bleachers and the standing room surrounding those outer courts swell beyond capacity, with fans who will speak years later of catching Alcaraz or Raducanu in a tiny venue up close, the way the early adopters of the Talking Heads still talk about those nights at CBGB in the East Village in the 1970s.Carlos Alcaraz during his upset win over Stefanos Tsitsipas.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesThat was the vibe at Raducanu’s match on Thursday on the tennis hinterland known as Court 10 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the last court before the South Gate exit.Raducanu, whose parents are Romanian and Chinese, was born in Canada before moving to England when she was 2. She was barely known in England before Wimbledon. There, in her Grand Slam debut, she played her way into the second week of the tournament with her fearless, clean strokes and aversion to giving up a chance to put pressure on her opponent, whether that means whipping forehand service returns or firing second serves that look like first balls.The Wimbledon run ended dramatically in the round of 16, when, playing in front of 12,000 screaming fans on the No. 1 court for the first time, she suddenly couldn’t breathe. She retired from the match, down a set and 3-0 to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, leaving all of England crestfallen.In an interview on Thursday, Raducanu said that what ailed her was physical — simple exhaustion brought on by a series of long rallies against a mature opponent — not what most assumed was a panic attack from the pressure of a more intense spotlight than anything she could have anticipated.“I was playing at such a high level for so many days and I wasn’t used to it,” Raducanu said after her second round win over Zhang Shuai of China. “We had some 20-shot rallies and I could not control my breathing. The doctors advised me not to continue. I hated retiring.”Since then, Raducanu has played a lot of matches and won a lot of matches, at tournaments in Northern California, Chicago, and at the U.S. Open, where she has won 10 consecutive sets, including three wins in the qualifying tournament.She is long and lean and athletic in the most graceful way. She stays low to the ground as she moves across and into the court, chasing down every ball she has the slimmest chance of reaching. Waiting to receive the serve, she crouches like a shortstop anticipating a sharp line drive.By Thursday afternoon, Raducanu had the overflow crowd on Court 10 chanting her name. As she served to clinch the match against Zhang, drums started to sound just beyond the fence. These were not just any drums. They were the booming sounds of the Howard University marching band, which was performing throughout the grounds all day. And they were intermittent, playing without warning, even as Raducanu was about to toss her ball in the air to serve.Raducanu has won 10 consecutive sets.Seth Wenig/Associated PressRaducanu said she twisted her mind into thinking the drums were celebrating her. When it was over, a bulging pack of fans hung over the fence asking for autographs and selfies. She obliged every one, nearly forgetting to grab the racket she dropped in the corner of the court on the final point before she left.She will move to a larger stage on Saturday for her third round match against Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain.“I’m ready to play on anything, even the park at the back P17,” she said, referring to the outer practice courts in Flushing Meadows.Alcaraz was more than ready. His battle against Tsitsipas lasted more than four hours. After letting Tsitsipas even the match at a set apiece, Alcaraz was down 5-2 and two service breaks in the third set, and Tsitsipas was bullying him around the court like a man playing a boy. It was a moment when most players, much less a teenager, would go away against the world’s third-ranked player.Alcaraz did the opposite. He blasted forehands and backhands at the lines, and put Tsitsipas on the run chasing drop shots and topspin lobs as he drew even at 5-5. Soon Tsitsipas was talking to himself after nearly every point. A drop shot and a searing passing shot clinched the set in a tiebreaker for Alcaraz, whose trademark is a little unconscious hop he takes after he hits winners.He windmilled his fist as the crowd exploded. Only Alcaraz’s coach, the former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, stayed in his seat. Forgive him, he has been here before. Tsitsipas headed off the court for another of his signature toilet breaks, to a rousing round of boos.The break worked for Tsitsipas, who reeled off the next six games to take the fourth set, 6-0. It was another moment when the teenager could have faded.Instead, he called for an on-court massage, and on to the fifth set they went, trading service games until what seemed like an inevitable deciding tiebreaker as the crowd chanted “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!”Once there, Alcaraz kept on blasting, leading with his chin. A forehand right at Tsitsipas’s gut that he rimmed into the net gave Alcaraz three match points. He needed every one, missing by an inch at 6-4 on a topspin lob before one last winner down the line completed the coming out party, with one last explosion from the crowd as he collapsed on the court.“The best match of my career,” Alcaraz called it.Almost as good as that Talking Heads show at Max’s in 1975.This is how tennis moves on. More

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      Bianca Andreescu Returns to the U.S. Open With Winning on Her Mind

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      Dogged by injuries, the 2019 champion didn’t play a single match last year, but the young Canadian has surrounded herself with a new team focused on keeping her healthy.So much has changed since her first visit, but Bianca Andreescu is still undefeated at the U.S. Open, where she swept to the 2019 title in precociously grand style, defeating Serena Williams in straight sets in the final at age 19.After playing no official matches in 2020, she is back in the third round this year, but is also looking back.“I work on being in the moment, but I do get the flashbacks quite often here,” Andreescu, who practices visualization techniques, told me on Thursday. “I think that’s a good thing because it builds my confidence a little bit, going back and thinking about all that happened in 2019.”She was in the same physical space as she walked the sprawling grounds where she became Canada’s first Grand Slam singles champion, yet she was in a different place. Her support team is almost entirely new: from her agents, Max Eisenbud and Marijn Bal, to her fitness trainer, Abdul Sillah, to her coach, Sven Groeneveld, who was taking copious notes in the stands of Louis Armstrong Stadium on Thursday night as Andreescu defeated Lauren Davis 6-4, 6-4.It felt so familiar, and yet so strange. Andreescu walked into the interview room as if she were intent on remaining incognito, mask on, hoodie up, eyes barely visible. It was the same room that was packed in 2019, camera flashes firing in rapid succession as she and her former coach Sylvain Bruneau posed with the U.S. Open trophy. But on this night, with pandemic health restrictions in place, there were just a handful of masked reporters. No flash bulbs. No Champagne. No buzz.After she finished, we respected the U.S. Open rules, speaking by Zoom for a follow-up interview even though we had just been sitting 12 feet apart in the same room.“I feel like we’re in some kind of Blade Runner movie,” I said.“Exactly,” she said. “It’s just super weird, and it’s crazy that it’s still going on, but you can’t really do much about it.”The pandemic has taken a toll on many professional tennis players, including Andreescu, who tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this year. But her troubles did not begin there.At the end of her breakthrough 2019 season, in which she also won the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and the Rogers Cup in Toronto, I traveled to Toronto to spend a day with Andreescu and watch her become the first tennis player to receive the Lou Marsh Trophy, awarded to Canada’s top athlete in any sport.But she was limping that day after receiving a platelet rich plasma injection in her ailing left knee, and since then her career has continued to feel like a playground game of one step forward and two steps backward. Injuries, a concern for Andreescu since she was one of the world’s best juniors, have repeatedly knocked her back.Since her return to the tour in 2021, her fortunes have yet to turn in earnest. She had to quarantine for two weeks ahead of the Australian Open at the start of the season after Bruneau tested positive for the coronavirus after the charter flight to Melbourne. Back in form at the Miami Open, she reached the final against Ashleigh Barty only to retire in tears after injuring her ankle. She then missed much of the clay court season after testing positive for Covid-19 herself in April; split with her longtime management agency; lost in the first round of the French Open; split with Bruneau; and then lost in the first round of Wimbledon, too. At 21, she concedes that her love of the game and the tour has dimmed on occasion.“For sure, a couple times this year, when I caught Covid and the part about not being able to see my friends and family for such a long time,” Andreescu said. “My grandma caught Covid. She’s 86. She survived, thankfully, but so many of these things made me question, should I be traveling during this time? But you can’t stop forever, so I tried to deal with everything in the best way I could. Some things I wish I could have done better, but you live and learn, and I’m in a good place physically and mentally right now, and I think that’s all that matters.”Eisenbud, the senior vice president at IMG, is convinced that the best is yet to come.“Listen, you don’t beat Serena at 19 years old in the final of the U.S. Open if you’re not really special,” he said.Andreescu after winning the 2019 U.S. Open singles final.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesThat is undeniable. Andreescu’s beguiling blend of power, touch and explosive movement makes her a transcendent tennis talent. But while she will be the favorite to win in the third round against Greet Minnen, she is still searching for confidence and consistency. That is unsurprising, considering the many moving parts in her game and her lack of experience and match play. She has still played just one full season on tour, and that season in 2019 was also interrupted by injuries.Variety is her trademark — she has all the shots — but she also has a taste for risk and for sharp angles that can lead to flurries of unforced errors. Watching her play and deploy her vast arsenal of weapons can be intoxicating, but there is also the sense that she is winging it, relying on instinct rather than a deep tactical understanding.“I get bored really easily,” Andreescu once told me. “So even on the court I just try to mix it up. That can be a setback and an advantage, because I have a lot of tools in my toolbox so I try to choose the right ones at the right times as best as I can, but I’m still working on it.”Her new team was assembled with input from Eisenbud, who began managing Maria Sharapova when she was 12 and helped her become the highest-earning women’s athlete. He later helped the Chinese star Li Na capitalize on her success.“One commonality around Sharapova’s Grand Slam wins and Li Na’s Grand Slam wins was that everything around the team was calm,” Eisenbud said. “I need to try to get calm water around Bianca.”Eisenbud and Bal actively recruited Andreescu and have been jointly managing her since June 1. Silla, her new fitness trainer, helped Naomi Osaka improve her conditioning and footwork ahead of her first U.S. Open title in 2018. Groeneveld, who is working with Andreescu on a trial basis, is one of the most experienced coaches in tennis. He coached Sharapova in the later stages of her career and helped her manage chronic injuries, which was an important factor for Andreescu.She interviewed Groeneveld and several other coaches by FaceTime earlier this year after she made the difficult decision to part ways with Bruneau.“Sven really stood out right from the start,” she said. “I had what I wanted in a coach written down and what I didn’t want in a coach written down. I made sure to really, really pay attention to this, because I want to get to the next level, and Sven honestly checks all the boxes: Maria Sharapova, injuries, being around on tour a long time, and that experience really, really helps, and I already see it.”To avoid injuries, Andreescu said they have tailored her schedule to make sure that she does not push too hard on the court during practice if she is pushing hard on her fitness. She also has continued working with Kirstin Bauer, an Austrian physiotherapist and osteopath who is the one holdover on Andreescu’s team from 2019, aside from her parents and her dog Coco.“I had so many changes happen with my agency, fitness trainer, coach, and having Kirstin by my side through literally everything I’ve been through the last two and a half years is comforting,” Andreescu said. “We work a lot on prevention.”Staying healthy remains the challenge for Andreescu, and it is nothing new. As a junior, she had back and shoulder injuries as well as stress fractures in her feet that restricted her to non-weight-bearing exercises.“We had an office chair, and we took the back off it and wheeled it on the court, and every day she would spend an hour and work forehand and backhand,” said André Labelle, one of her early coaches. “I think she had a three-month stretch in the chair.”But for all her commitment, she has continued to miss too much playing time as a professional, and though it is easy to imagine her dueling for Grand Slam titles for years to come with the likes of Osaka, Barty and Coco Gauff, that vision only makes sense if Andreescu can improve her staying power. “I’m very impatient,” she said. “I want everything, you know, right away, but I’m getting better with that.” More