This May Be a Record
Jerry Balsam
My first visit to the 2024 US Open, on the first Tuesday of the tournament, was unlike prior tennis excursions. I was being a dad – a sitcom dad, if you will – and my daughter, age 9, is not terribly interested in tennis. As a result, I was at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center from well before the first ball was struck until 10:00 p.m., and I saw only three matches. After we watched our first match, which lasted nearly 2½ hours, my daughter and I toured the grounds. We took refreshments in the updated Chase Lounge, where we each picked up a baseball cap and a tote bag: one monogram per customer. My daughter played Roblox in the Advantage Arena gaming zone, which is new this year. We waited on line to hit a few balls in the Play Tennis Zone. After we had exhausted the time-killing alternatives, a responsible adult arrived to take my daughter back to Manhattan on the subway, thus concluding my Rose Mary Woods gap, and I returned to the tournament.
Our first stop of the day was Court 17, now known as Stadium 17, an upgrade in nomenclature if not in structure. This is not to say that Stadium 17 is lacking. To the contrary, it is one of the best courts for spectators in the Tennis Center. The trick is to get a seat behind the court, high enough that the sun won’t reach you as the day goes on. It is a recurring theme in these dispatches that sitting in the sun for hours is uncomfortable and potentially dangerous. While plenty of people don’t share my obsession and some even bask in the sun, there is enough interest in shaded seats to generate demand for websites that offer advice on how to find them. (For her part, my daughter deemed my wardrobe of long pants and long sleeves “not normal,” and we spent a good deal of our time scouting for other fans who were similarly attired. Concededly, there weren’t many.)
The first match of the day (following Caroline Wozniacki’s warmup and autograph session (italicized hyperlinks denoting photographs)) was between Katie Boulter and Aliaksandra Sasnovich. My sympathies were with Boulter, as Sasnovich hails from Belarus. For all I know, she’s a wonderful human being, but I have a problem with Russia and Belarus. While we’re talking geopolitics, I found it interesting that a spectator one row ahead of me was wearing a Roland Garros cap and, for stretches of the match, read the New York Post, an unexpected juxtaposition considering the newspaper’s view of foreigners generally and the French particularly.
Earlier this year, Boulter, the 31st seed, reached her career high in the rankings at number 27. Sasnovich was ranked in that range a couple of years ago, but she’s currently outside the top hundred and had to qualify for the tournament. The striking thing about Sasnovich’s game – aside from her couture, which featured a long-sleeved shirt and a skirt over leggings – was her service motion. Bringing back memories of Jay Berger and, cinematically, of Patrick Zweig, she dispenses with the backswing, standing like a statue with her racquet held high before she strikes the ball.
With Sasnovich rarely topping 100 mph on her serve, Boulter teed off on many service returns, often to good effect, but often donating points with errant returns. The match was played almost entirely from the baseline, although the stat sheet says that Boulter was effective when she came to the net, winning 11 of 13 forays, while Sasnovich was successful on only 2 of 7.
Boulter took a 2-0 lead with an early service break, but Sasnovich leveled the score, breaking back and then saving two break points before holding for 3-3. Sasnovich broke serve for a second time to take a 4-3 lead. In the ensuing game, she held serve from a 0-30 deficit as Boulter contributed four errors before spiking her racquet (in as genteel a manner as possible: she’s British). Sasnovich served for the set at 5-4, but double-faulted on break point to let Boulter back into the set. If the reversal deterred Sasnovich, it was not for long, as she broke right back. Boulter served up a double fault at 5-5, deuce, and Sasnovich nailed a crosscourt forehand for the break. She served out the set at 15, concluding with a forehand down the line into an open court.
In the second set, Boulter took a 2-0 lead once more, but this time held onto her lead. She saved a break point at 4-2, and then broke Sasnovich at love for the set, the last point coming on a double fault.
After a long bathroom break for Sasnovich, Boulter struggled to hold serve in the first game of the final set, saving four break points along the way. With Sasnovich serving at 1-2, 30-30, Boulter made her move, securing the break with a drop volley followed by Sasnovich’s eighth double fault. In the next game, Boulter fell behind 15-40 but captured four straight points to hold serve. Boulter then broke for 5-1 and served out the match, 5-7 6-2 6-1. The score makes it sound like the better player recovered from an early stumble and then cruised, but there was enough uncertainty in the process that Boulter’s victory appeared far from assured until the last several minutes.
After my parenthood interlude, I repaired to the Grandstand, catching a few points in the tiebreak as Elena Rybakina – last seen in these pages during her surprising semifinal loss at Wimbledon – secured a 6-1 7-6(1) victory over the Australian qualifier Destanee Aiava. Next up was a men’s singles match between the tennis scion, golf brother, and 16th seed Sebastian Korda and Corentin Moutet. The latter was supported by a flag-waving contingent of French countrymen, who chanted “Let’s go Coco” and “MOOO-tay.” Somehow, Korda managed not to complain that the bovine cheer was a veiled method of booing him.
The one time these players had faced off ended in a final-set tiebreak at the 2022 Australian Open, with Korda twice coming back from a set down to win. The undersized lefty Moutet is certainly capable of excellent tennis, as he showed at Roland Garros this year, when he bolted to a 5-0 lead against Jannik Sinner. For part of his professional career, Moutet adapted to an injury to his right wrist by hitting his backhand with one hand. His repertoire includes an underhand serve. Moutet is a volatile sort, having engaged in a post-match altercation with an opponent and subsequently being expelled by the French Tennis Federation.
Moutet took an early lead, with a backhand drop volley securing a break of serve for 3-1. Korda, who wore a protective sleeve on his right arm, broke back in the ensuing game and the set ultimately went to a tiebreak (but not before Moutet tried one of his underhand serves – which went wide) in which Korda dropped two service points but Moutet lost four. Korda, who started the match shaky at the net, closed the tiebreak with a backhand volley winner. The bigger man hit through the ball while Moutet, although adept at spin, angles, and variety, found it difficult to penetrate with his groundstrokes. Many of his forehands, struck with heavy topspin, traveled slowly and landed around the service line, which was not going to trouble Korda.
After the close first set, it was one-way traffic, as Moutet became increasingly unhinged. On the way to being broken in his first service game of the second set, the Frenchman threw down his racquet, cracking it, and then finished the job by breaking it over his knee. That merited a warning from the umpire. In the fifth game, Korda saved three break points, and Moutet got into another row with the umpire, ultimately drawing a point penalty. It was unclear what the dispute was about, but a subsequent report from the US Open stated that Moutet was complaining about the umpire using his phone. I suppose that explains why, when the fans jeered him in the sixth game, Moutet mimicked holding a phone. (Even assuming the umpire was being inattentive to the match, how much damage could he cause, now that US Open line calling is electronic?) After Korda closed out the set, 6-1, Moutet took a bathroom break, returning shirtless and tossing his sweaty shirt to a fan before putting on a fresh one.
Korda broke serve in the first game of the third set, giving Moutet an opportunity to share some more words with the umpire at the change of ends. When Korda broke for 3-0, Moutet brandished his racquet as though to throw it, but restrained himself. Serving at 0-4, Moutet hit a ball behind his back, unnecessarily, and lost the point. By this stage, he was mailing it in. After another point, he hit a ball high into the stands, but the umpire – perhaps hoping to get through the match without further incident – did not penalize him. Korda stepped to the line to serve for the match with new balls, which were supererogatory at this point. He got the job done, 7-6(3) 6-1 6-0, and Moutet stalked off the court without proffering even an insincere handshake for the umpire.
My last match of the day featured two unexpected Grand Slam champions on the comeback trail, Emma Raducanu and Sofia Kenin. Kenin’s big splash came in the plague year of 2020, when she won the Australian Open before the world shut down, and later made the final of the delayed Roland Garros. The next year, Raducanu famously won the US Open without dropping a set, the only qualifier to win a major tournament in the Open Era.
If the two most important shots in tennis are serve and return of serve, Kenin demonstrated in this match why she is hard to beat. Her serve rarely topped 100 mph, but she consistently placed it in the corners, often kissing the lines. These deliveries tended to elicit weak returns from Raducanu, setting up opportunities for Kenin to hit serve-plus-one winners. In her return games, Kenin often hit the ball deep down the middle, a shot popularized by a player who is attuned to slights real and imagined. An idiosyncrasy in Kenin’s game is her slice backhand. Whether she’s hitting it as a rally ball or as a dropshot, she keeps two hands on the racquet. If anything, this enhances the deception on the dropshot, which she used to good effect against Raducanu.
Kenin ran away with the first set, breaking Raducanu’s serve three times to take the final six games. Raducanu seemed a different player in the second set, breaking serve in the first game, albeit broken back when her lobbed reply to a Kenin dropshot sailed long. From 1-2, Raducanu captured five of the next six games, twice breaking Kenin’s serve and clinching the set with a forehand down the line.
While much of the crowd favored Raducanu, a vociferous fan in my neck of the woods shouted encouragement to Kenin, often addressing her as “Sonya.” I restrained the urge to correct him, which was a good decision, as I later learned that this is Kenin’s nickname and, indeed, what she calls herself on her website.
In the deciding set, Raducanu found herself in a 0-40 jam in the fifth game. She saved one break point with a service winner but then gave the game away with a double fault. That was all Kenin needed. She had a shot to close out the match when Raducanu served at 3-5 0-30, but the Brit took four consecutive points to stave off defeat. Not for long, however. Like Korda, Kenin served for the match with new balls. In her case, victory came quickly, as she held at love for a 6-1 3-6 6-4 final.
I was tempted to stay for the match in Louis Armstrong Stadium between Tommy Paul and Lorenzo Sonego. But it was already 10:00 o’clock, and I am not a night owl. Better to leave some gas in the tank (or charge in the EV, if you prefer) in anticipation of Thursday’s day session.