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The 144th edition of American tennis’s grand prize—the US Open—kicks off today at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, but if you’ve been out and about around the city this past week, you may have already caught some of the buzz. The week before the main draw of the Open features qualifying matches out on the Flushing courts—they’re a great way to see top-tier tennis without the top-tier pricetag of many Open tickets—along with Saturday’s free Arthur Ashe Kids Day, which set an all-time attendance record of 47,875 this year. (On Tuesday night, Ashe Stadium featured a fan-friendly spectacle, Mixed Madness, which saw players like Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios, or Coco Gauff and Ben Shelton, join forces to play a mini tournament of mixed doubles, with the winner’s purse donated to charity.)
Elsewhere, that warm-up week is when tennis brands and corporate partners hold an armada of Open-adjacent events, from dueling tequila parties (Aryna Sabalenka’s at the St. Regis and Naomi Osaka’s at Torrisi) to a raucous pickleball tournament with Caroline Wozniacki, Carlos Alcaraz, and Taylor Fritz in the courtyard of the Lotte New York Palace hotel.
On Thursday, I had the great privilege of hitting tennis balls for a couple hours with the legendary Andre Agassi, a two-time US Open champion (among scores of other accolades), at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, courtesy of DraftKings, which offered the opportunity to a handful of its high-ticket clients. (The biggest lesson—and there were many—that I learned from that day: Tennis suddenly becomes very easy when Andre Agassi is your doubles partner. The second-biggest is that, even at age 54 and nearly two decades away from the pro tour, his two-handed backhand is both a fearsome weapon and a thing of great beauty.)
But on to the big show—here’s what to keep an eye on during this year’s tournament:
On the women’s side, while there are probably a large handful of players who could take the title this year, it’s likely going to come down to one of three: Coco Gauff, the defending champion and third seed here; Iga Swiatek, the world number-one player and first seed; or Aryna Sabalenka, last year’s runner-up and this year’s second seed. There’s a bit of an asterisk behind those first two, though: Swiatek, who’s been utterly dominant on the tour (and who won here in 2022) has had a rough time of late, losing in straight sets in the semifinals of the Open warm-up tournament in Cincinnati recently, and otherwise having a bit of a tough time getting into the later stages of big tournaments when playing big players. Gauff, meanwhile, has been in a slump for much of the summer, losing in early rounds and disappointed at the Olympics in Paris. If there’s ever a time for a comeback, it’s now.
Which leaves Sabalenka: Since winning the Australian at the top of the year, she’s had injury setbacks and few victories to show—save for an utterly dominant performance at that Cincinnati warmup. She couldn’t be peaking at a better time, and—barring the kind of mental and emotional setbacks or wild cards which are always a possibility with Sabalenka—would seem to be the favorite to take home her first Open title and avenge her defeat at the hands of Gauff last year.
Regardless of who wins, though, there are some first-round matches that are every bit worth your while. Watch for Jelena Ostapenko, the master of dark strategies and quirky gamesmanship, vs. a Naomi Osaka who still seems to be struggling to find her form after her return to the tour—or the buoyant Jasmine Paolini vs. Bianca Andreescu, also returned to the tour after a devastating ankle injury last year.
As for the men, it’s turned into a bit of a quandary. After much bemoaning of the fact that, for literally decades, tennis was dominated almost solely by the so-called Big Three (Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal), we now find ourselves with…a different version of the big three (though this installment hasn’t yet earned the capital letters of the former). Jannik Sinner, Carlos Alcaraz, and, yes, Djokovic—the defending champion at the Open—have mostly locked down the major titles of recent seasons, and will likely do so for some time: Though all have had injuries (and in Djokovic’s case, a surgery), all seem healthy now. So who’s going to win the Open?
Each of the players comes with a micro backstory of the moment. For Djokovic, it’s one of triumph at the Olympics—he finally won that gold medal, the single prize of tennis that had until then eluded him. Since that, though, he’s taken some time off and away from the warmup tournaments, so he’s a bit of a wild card in terms of positioning for the Open. Alcaraz’s story is one of mostly epic dominance—save for an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Gael Monfils in Cincinnati, which seemed to have truly rattled him. All eyes on him, then, to see how he navigates New York, both physically and emotionally.
Which brings us to Sinner, who has dominated tennis headlines in recent days for all the wrong reasons: We learned that he had tested positive earlier this spring for miniscule quantities of an anabolic steroid (one that is found in certain over-the-counter creams used, apparently, by Sinner’s fitness coach and physiotherapist, both of whom Sinner has since parted ways with), though an investigation determined that he was not at fault, and he’s long been cleared to play. The question remains, of course, whether the kind of scrutiny this has brought to him—by both the media and by certain players, who have questioned what they see as a double standard in the treatment of such cases—will get in the way of his move through the tournament.
It may very well come down to the strength of the draw and the quality of players those three will have to face to make it through to the last rounds. Djokovic would seem to have the thorniest path through to the finals, with Sinner somewhere in the middle (a late test against 2021 Open champion Daniil Medvedev could actually determine the winner this year), and Alcaraz’s perhaps the breeziest route through to victory. What the heart wants, of course: a rematch of Djokovic vs. Alcaraz in the finals—one that captures the jaw-dropping grandeur of their Olympics final a few weeks ago.
As for the early men’s matches to keep an eye on: The first round wouldn’t seem to be all that, but provided that the expected people make it through to the second, treat yourself to Taylor Fritz vs. Matteo Berrettini and Monfils vs. Casper Ruud.
Enjoy the tennis!
