US Open Facts and Facets Plus More Tennis News
Edition #156
Intro:
This topic went so under the radar, especially with the NFL season starting, the MLB season hitting the home stretch, and whatnot. It was hectic.
With a bit of time on my hands to write about tennis today, let’s dig deeper into the facts and facets of the US Open because you already know about the regular stuff. Also, lots of tennis news has been popping up in the last few days, so that’s gonna be in here too.
US Open:
We saw an all-American semifinals at the US Open this year, something we haven’t seen in 19 years. At this time in 2005, Youtube was just launched plus the iPod Nano and Shuffle were release. Plus, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, killing 1,836 people and causing catastrophic damage. A powerful earthquake also hit Pakistan and India in October. In sports, the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl for the third time in four years (the Tom Brady era was beginning) and Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France.
In 2005’s all-American semifinals, it was Andre Agassi versus Robby Ginepri. Agassi won and moved on to face the legend, Roger Federer. The outcome was what you’d expect with a loss for Agassi. That’s almost the same thing that happened in the finals this year with Sinner (the international player) beating Taylor Fritz in straight sets. Fritz is in some historic company becoming the fourth player in the 21st century to get to a major final.
With that, I lead into this next part. Sinner is now the first Italian player ever to win a US Open men’s singles. More than that, the Italians Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori played in the mixed doubles part of the tournament to secure the victory there.
More than that, Aryna Sabalenka now has 2 total grand slam titles in her career (both of them won this year). Both Alcaraz and Sinner also attain the same achievement. Speaking of which, for the first time in 7 years, Novak Djokovic failed to make it past the round of 16. That’s so crazy and a wow. Like I said above, with Alca and Sinner splitting the cake with themselves, the only win that Djokovic has this year is the Paris Olympics Men’s Singles Gold Medal.
Speaking of the Olympics, the young guns in those sports carried over to the US Open. 16-year-old Iva Jovic became the youngest American to win a match in the US Open. Is this the next tennis phenomenon?
Back to Sabalenka and Sinner, the win columns belong to them. Sabalenka is now the 8th fastest woman to reach 50 hardcourt wins and Sinner hasn’t lost a match since his title run at the Cincinnati Open. The win streak is now 11 matches old. I hope I didn’t jinx him, although I’m certainly good at doing that.
Doubling that number gets us to another record. It’s been 22 years since the Big 3, Djokovic, Nadal, and Federer didn’t win a grand slam. That’s broken now with Sinner and Alcaraz taking all those. Both of them were under 24 years old, which is the first time since 1993, that all these titles were won by players under this specific age.
From player history, we go to combined.
The match between Sabalenka and Ekaterina Alexandrova began at 12:08 A.M. EST, which is the latest time a match has ever started at the US Open. 2:15 A.M. EST was the closing time of Zheng Qinwen’s victory over Donna Vekic. It is the latest time ever that a women’s match has been completed. 2:35 A.M. EST was the closing time for the match between Zverev and Etchverry which Zverev finished in 4 sets, 15 minutes shy of the record time. (ALL OF THESE ARE NOT ON THE SAME DAY.)
Final record I have to address. 5 hours and 35 minutes. For some kids, that’s the amount of a school day. That’s about the time of a shift for many workers. Well, Daniel Evans played Karen Khachanov in the first round and played for 5 hours and 45 minutes. Here is the score. 6-7(6), 7-6(2), 7-6(4), 4-6, 6-4. Evans rallied from 4-0 to prevail.
Tennis Events/News:
Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from the Laver Cup. Will he play in the Australian Open? Will he retire? Questions are being asked everywhere.
The lead tennis event now is the Davis Cup.
