Tennis fans who can’t decide who might perform best at the U.S. Open are not alone, as the year’s final Grand Slam tournament starts on Monday. Even the players themselves are unsure about what to expect.
“We’ve seen people, all the time, surprise us every single week, every single tournament, every Slam. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why someone maybe does well,” said Jessica Pegula, a six-time major quarterfinalist. “Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense.”
There is the usual uncertainty in New York due to injuries and the demands of a long season. An extra challenge this year is the frequent changes in playing surfaces: Tennis at the Summer Olympics was on Roland Garros courts, which are clay.
Players then moved from clay in Paris to grass at Wimbledon, back to clay, and now to hard courts for the U.S. Open. “It’s a strange year,” British player Dan Evans said. “That’s for sure.”
Pegula adapted well to these changes, winning a title in Toronto and reaching the finals in Cincinnati after the Olympics. Her doubles partner in Paris, 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff, played in three Olympic events but exited early in each, then lost her second match in Toronto and her first in Cincinnati.
“Changing surfaces, it’s tough, not just on your body, but mentally. … But it’s part of the job, and we’ll adjust,” said Tommy Paul, who won a bronze medal in doubles with Taylor Fritz for the U.S. in Paris and had a 1-2 record in Montreal and Cincinnati.
“Maybe there’s one player or two players that are burned out from the (Olympic) experience. But other than that, for the most part, everyone is pretty adjusted by now.”
The woman who beat Pegula in the Cincinnati final, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, skipped the trip back to France for the 2024 Games but said she isn’t sure that having or not having normal preparation will necessarily impact the results over the next two weeks.
“Everyone who came here thinks they are ready to win. I think it’s not just about being ready. You can be more prepared than the rest of the group,” said Sabalenka, a two-time Australian Open champion and last year’s U.S. Open runner-up to Gauff.
“But at the end of the day, it’s all about how hard you are willing to fight for it — especially on those days when you don’t feel your best.”
Another player not at the Olympics, Frances Tiafoe, reached the Cincinnati Open final before losing to No. 1 Jannik Sinner, whose two positive steroid tests from March were revealed less than a week ago.
Tiafoe, a 26-year-old from Maryland, feels that the home crowds and high attention at the U.S. Open help him perform at his best, so he focused on preparing for the site of his first Grand Slam semifinal in 2022.
“It’s open for a lot of guys this year, for sure. … It’s always different in a Slam. The lights are a little brighter,” he said. “We’ll see what ends up happening. Personally, I just like where I’m at.”
Then there are players like defending U.S. Open champion Novak Djokovic, who won a gold medal at the Paris Games but didn’t play any hard-court preparation events, and Carlos Alcaraz, the silver medalist whose only recent hard-court match was a loss in Cincinnati.
“Obviously, I would have loved to have more matches on hard courts before the U.S. Open,” said Alcaraz, who twisted his right ankle on Saturday but appeared fine when he practiced on Sunday. “But, I mean, it doesn’t affect me at all.”
Perhaps more interesting for players like Gauff or Djokovic is this fact: No woman or man has won consecutive championships at Flushing Meadows in at least a decade. Predicting the outcome is generally tough.
“At the moment … any given Sunday, anybody can win,” said Bianca Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open by defeating Serena Williams. “That’s honestly the beauty of it, because it does bring that variety.”
Recent Grand Slam results might not provide much insight, even though players who won this season’s trophies at the Australian Open (Sabalenka and Sinner), French Open (No. 1 Iga Swiatek and Alcaraz), and Wimbledon (Barbora Krejcikova and Alcaraz) might hope they do.
“I don’t really know where my level is, to be honest,” said the eighth-seeded Krejcikova, whose only singles matches since her win at Wimbledon have been at the Olympics.
It seems that predicting what will happen in New York is anyone’s guess.
“This (tournament) is a little bit of an anomaly,” said Katie Boulter, who competed at the Summer Games for Britain. “You never know what can happen.”
