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The Age of Influence Jerry Balsam
Friday, August 28, 2026
Qualifying was supposed to end on Thursday, August 27, but the rain intervened, pushing off the conclusion of qualies to Friday, and that was my opening. I made the trek to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center to join my friend LP. Our US Open history goes back at least a quarter century, as he and I witnessed Lleyton Hewitt defeat Pete Sampras in the men’s singles final of 2001, a mere two days before the events of 9/11. LP being of Hungarian extraction and married to an Aussie, we had no choice but to head to Court 10, where the Hungarian Zsombor Piros was facing off against the Aussie Chris O’Connell. LP even had his high school classmate and our mutual friend MW, another American with Hungarian ancestry, put together a primer of Hungarian imprecations that might be useful if the situation were to call for it.
At age 26, Piros has yet to break the top 100, and his claim to fame is running afoul, as a junior, of Wimbledon’s all-white rule, albeit not on his outer garments. (As usual, italicized hyperlinks take the reader to photographs I have posted on my Instagram feed.) O’Connell, 32, has topped out at number 53 in the world, and is one of the last practitioners of the one-handed backhand. He made an appearance in these pages in 2023 when he defeated his countryman, later suspended, Max Purcell, in a first-round match on Court 15. A lot can change in three years; this year, Court 15 was not used until the second week of the tournament.
I arrived just after Piros had held serve to open the second set, with O’Connell having nabbed the first. Piros then broke serve and held to open a 3-0 lead before he was himself broken at love. At 3-3, Piros saved four break points, which in retrospect was crucial to the outcome. That’s because in Piros’s next service game, at 4-4, O’Connell attacked successfully from 30-30, first to get to break point, then to elicit a short lob that he could put away for a winning overhead, enabling him to serve for the match. O’Connell indeed hit a winning smash, but he landed awkwardly, twisting his left ankle. He threw down his racquet in frustration, then sailed his cap across the court as he let loose a stream of expletives (none of them found on LP’s Hungarian cheat sheet). A trainer sprayed and then taped O’Connell’s ankle, and he was able to continue, but no longer in optimal form. Trying to clinch the match, he was broken at 30, with Piros’s down-the-line backhand sealing the break. Piros himself doubled over afterward, perhaps suffering from cramps. The set went to a tiebreak, and Piros came back from a 2-3 deficit to win five consecutive points and square the match. At that point, O’Connell gave up the fight. Piros was in the main draw with a 5-7 7-6(3) ret. victory, and O’Connell’s hopes for a $140,000 payday – the prize money for a first-round loser – were dashed by one step gone awry.
My next stop was the plaza where Andy Roddick and Jon Wertheim were interviewing Carlos Alcaraz upon his return to competition. Alcaraz said that he resolved not to watch tennis while out with his wrist injury but eventually could not restrain himself. Roddick astutely observed that Carlitos should cherish his luxurious mane of hair while it lasts, because it may not be there forever.
Finally, LP and I continued to a crowded Stadium 17, where Rei Sakamoto was up a set over the 2014 finalist, now 36 years old, Kei Nishikori. Sakamoto, a lanky 6’5”, turned 20 in June, and he was serving bombs in the upper 130s. He took no chances, racing to a 6-1 lead in the second-set tiebreak before finishing the match with an ace wide in the ad court for a 6-4 7-6(3) victory. Perhaps the match was not only about serve, but that was a big part of Sakamoto’s success story: he racked up 19 aces against one double fault, whereas Nishikori had four double faults and nary an ace. Sakamoto collapsed to the court in celebration: this was to be his second trip to the main draw of a major, after qualifying in Melbourne in January. Afterwards, there was a program to honor Nishikori, who is retiring at season’s end. Craig Tiley and Eric Butorac posed for photos with Nishikori and presented him with a poster recounting his career. I imagine that Tiley and Butorac were ready for this ceremony at each of Nishikori’s matches, which was probably a better use of their time than greenlighting the US Open’s justifiably controversial relationship with Kalshi, which Jon Wertheim has aptly characterized as “an abject moral failure.”
One cannot be naïve about the relationship between world-class tennis and socially harmful products. Just check out this video of the 1969 US Open men’s singles final, the match in which Rod Laver completed his second career Grand Slam. In the opening seconds, we see a helicopter hovering over the grass court at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills to dry it, while the scoreboard in the background invites us to “Come to Marlboro Country.” And that is to say nothing of the Virginia Slims Circuit. Even as late as the 1980s, the hallowed lawns of Wimbledon were invaded by the tobacco industry.
Nevertheless, for tennis tournaments to consort with the gambling industry seems worse. The damage done by tobacco was spread diffusely throughout society, without a specific nexus to tennis. One cannot say the same of gambling, which has served, and will serve, to corrode the integrity of the sport, not to mention the threats it presents to the mental and physical wellbeing of the players. It is a shame that the United States Tennis Association, in its quest for the almighty dollar, has debased itself in this way, and let’s not forget the retired players at the Nothing Major podcast, who have similarly sold out the sport that provided (and provides) their livelihood and that they purport to love. I’m with this comment that appeared after Nothing Major rolled out its sordid deal:
I’m guessing the pod is locked into the Kalshi contract at least through the US Open…. I’ll…check back in after the tournament ends. I hope the guys…are taking people’s concerns and comments seriously and will…look into the issues surrounding these betting companies. It’s a great podcast, and I’d love to come back.
Other comments made similar points, often in stronger terms.
My unexpected freebie day at the qualies was an appetizer for the tournament’s decidedly-not-free fortnight. Ticket prices at the US Open have soared, and it has become nigh on impossible to buy tickets immediately upon their release, as the scalpers and bots do their thing. If prices in the resale market had held at the levels seen over the course of the summer, I would have concluded that this is what the market will now bear, and the USTA was leaving money on the table by not charging those high prices in the primary market. The USTA, however, is not known for leaving money on the table. Aside from its getting a piece of the action on resales, perhaps it knew or anticipated that the summer prices were out of whack. Once the tournament began, I saw prices drop on the resale market, as scalpers had inventory they needed to move before it became worthless.
This phenomenon will complicate my buying decisions in future years. I like to know in advance when I’m going to the Open, but I may have to be flexible about buying tickets on the morning of play. The contrast with Wimbledon is telling. The All England Club has held the line on ticket prices, but the tickets are very hard to come by. At the US Open, it is easy to get tickets, provided you are able and willing to pay a king’s ransom.
Let’s add another factor to the mix. There used to be an extensive lineup of summer tournaments before the US Open, which gave fans an opportunity to see tennis in less frenetic surroundings. For me, that has meant New Haven and Newport, both of which have been eliminated from the ATP Tour. With nearly all the Masters 1000 tournaments now lasting twelve days, the smaller tournaments are being squeezed off the calendar, and there are simply fewer days of tour-level play available. In the old days, you could have three tournaments going on simultaneously, for twenty-one days of play in a week. Now, you get twelve days of limited action in one venue, and that’s it. How is it possible that Los Angeles and Chicago no longer merit an ATP event? You can imagine the fate of smaller venues like Bretton Woods, South Orange, or Longwood Cricket Club. This is bad for the fans and unloved by the players, but since when do those constituencies count?
Tuesday, September 1, 2026
My first day at the tournament proper was the second day of play. These days, I buy tickets to Arthur Ashe Stadium as rain insurance. Ashe – a bad stadium named after a great man – now has fewer seats in the upper bowl and more expensive seats near the court. Remember, the USTA does not leave money on the table. Notwithstanding my feelings about the stadium, I buy Ashe tickets because they’re not much more expensive than grounds passes. Indeed, there have been occasions when they are anomalously cheaper than grounds passes. On this day at the US Open, there was rain in the morning and in the late afternoon and evening. Things worked out in that I was able to watch indoor tennis in Louis Armstrong Stadium and outdoor tennis on the Grandstand, without having to set foot in Ashe.
The USTA’s motto might as well be: “ABC. Always. Be. Closing.” Not only is the entire lower bowl of Armstrong off-limits to general admission tickets (i.e., grounds passes and even Ashe tickets), but the same is true for the first several rows of the upper bowl and all the seats behind the court.
The upper bowl did not prove the best venue for watching a match, and not merely because of its distance from the court. These days, there is no restriction on fans entering and exiting during play. While I watched the match between Flavio Cobolli and Francisco Comesaña, an endless stream of spectators marched in and out, often pausing to take selfies, as influencers and would-be influencers will do.
Cobolli, a Roland Garros finalist and sixth in the world, was seeded fifth because of the absence of world number 1 Jannik Sinner. Comesaña had fallen to number 119 in the world, far off his career high of number 54. Comesaña is part of a dwindling contingent of players wearing Fila, as the company retrenches on endorsement deals.
Although Cobolli was a heavy favorite in the match, Comesaña played with belief and flair, often coming to the net to finish points. According to the stat sheet, he came to net 50 times over the course of the contest, winning 39 of those points. Cobolli was somewhat more sparing in his approaches but with an outstanding success rate, as 27 out of 31 forays won him the point.
Both players like to hit forehands, often from the backhand corner, sometimes even outside the doubles alley. Comesaña, in addition to his two-handed backhand, employed a single-handed slice effectively. That shot produced a combination of underspin and sidespin so that the ball stayed low and skidded away from Cobolli.
Comesaña held serve to start the match after denying Cobolli on four break points. Cobolli got to 40-0 in his opening service game but was ultimately broken. In the fifth game, Cobolli broke to get back on serve, but Comesaña retaliated to take a 4-2 lead. From there, the players held serve, and Comesaña pocketed the first set, 6-3.
During the changeover, Cobolli changed his shirt, revealing the compression performance tracking vest he wears against his chest and triggering the old Seinfeld debate: Is it a “bro” or a “mansiere”?
Comesaña was, if anything, emboldened in the second set, breaking serve in the third and seventh games to canter away with the frame, 6-2. On set point, he hit an ace on second serve, his 112 mph delivery catching slivers of two lines.
Arguably the turning point of the match came in the third game of the third set. Serving at 1-2, 15-40, Cobolli reeled off four straight points to hold serve and another two in the next game to set the stage for a break of Comesaña’s serve and a 3-1 lead. That break was decisive, because Comesaña earned eight break points in the set – including two in the final game – but could cash in on none of them.
In the fourth set, Cobolli raced to a 4-0 lead, breaking Comesaña’s serve twice. He relinquished one of the breaks with a double fault but held his nerve otherwise, finishing the frame with a 128 mph ace out wide.
Comesaña was not done. As the fifth set began, he held serve, then broke Cobolli with a rocket of a forehand down the line. Cobolli, however, immediately broke back. The seventh game lasted for fourteen points, with Comesaña managing to hold serve and go up by 4-3. In the ninth game, he was not so fortunate, as Cobolli broke on his second try, a big forehand return of serve eliciting the decisive error. Serving for the match, Cobolli fell behind by 15-40 but dug out of the hole, finishing the match with a swinging forehand volley for a 3-6 2-6 6-3 6-4 6-4 victory in four hours and fourteen minutes. It was another day to trot out Simpson’s Paradox, to which tennis lends itself, as the winner, Cobolli, won only 156 points to Comesaña’s 161.
My next destination was the Chase Lounge, where I scored a free cap and drank free lemonade. When I returned to the action, the day session on Ashe was over, leaving a lot of fans looking for seats all around the grounds. I found a spot on the Grandstand, where Elena Rybakina was finishing up her match against the 17-year-old wild card Thea Frodin. Perhaps best known for portraying Serena Williams on the big screen, Frodin has broken into the world’s top 600. I won’t venture to guess how far she may go, but I will note that she saved three match points against Rybakina with aces, so she can certainly serve. Rybakina finished the match, 6-3 6-2, with an ace of her own, 99 mph up the T.
I post tennis photos on Instagram, whence they are automatically posted on the affiliated social network Threads as well. No influencer I, the photos tend to attract little attention, but offer useful links that I can use in writing these dispatches. This photo, of Rybakina’s service motion, has garnered all of two views on Instagram. Somehow, the same photo, as seen on Threads, has accumulated over 10,000 views, mostly before she went on to win the tournament. The ways of social media elude me, as I shall elaborate later in this dispatch.
Next up on the Grandstand were two 24-year-olds, Lorenzo Musetti and Arthur Fery. The physical contrast between the two is striking. Fery is 5’9” and stocky, Musetti 6’1” and built like a greyhound. Throw in Fery’s mechanical motions and Musetti’s fluidity, especially with his one-handed backhand and a whip of a forehand, and it looks like they’re playing two different sports. But Fery has some ideas on the court, as manifested by his Wimbledon semifinal this year. What’s more, his ATP ranking of number 33 is not disproportionately influenced by the run at Wimbledon. Jeff Sackmann’s Elo ratings, which treat a match won at Wimbledon like a match won at Delray Beach (albeit taking account of the quality of opposition), have him at number 36.
You may ask: If Sinner withdrew from the tournament and Fery is number 33 in the world, why was he not seeded, thus sparing him from a first-round match with Musetti? The answer must be that he gained points and ranking places by reaching the final of Winston-Salem during the week before the Open, too late to make the roster of seeds.
The players were even through 3-3 in the first set, but then Musetti reeled off three straight games, breaking Fery twice. Musetti’s first break in the second set, in the sixth game, came on one of his picture-perfect backhands, a laser down the line. He fought off four break points to hold for 5-2 and served the set out at love.
In the third set, with the lights having been turned on at 5:45 p.m., Fery finally made headway on Musetti’s serve, breaking for a 2-0 lead before Musetti struck right back. Musetti broke again for a 3-2 lead and held at love twice to go up 5-3. Fery saved a match point in the ninth game when Musetti’s backhand passing shot caught the tape. Musetti played a loose game when he served for the match and was broken at 15. Not to worry, however, as he returned the favor, breaking Fery at 15 for 6-5 and going up 40-0 on his serve. Fery saved a second match point with an inside-in forehand, but Musetti closed out a 6-3 6-3 7-5 victory with a 135 mph ace up the T. Shortly thereafter, the raindrops started falling again.
So it was back to Armstrong, where the overhead fans had been turned on, to my approval. The match on the agenda featured Gaël Monfils, celebrating his fortieth birthday while ranked number 311 in the world (albeit number 49 in Jeff Sackmann’s Elo ratings), and Paraguay’s 22-year-old Daniel Vallejo, world number 60, who earlier in the year had incurred the largest fine in Roland Garros history for questioning the assignment of a female umpire to his match.
In the first set, Vallejo reeled off four consecutive games from 1-1, breaking Monfils twice. Withstanding three break points in the eighth game, the young Paraguayan, with rain audibly pounding on the Armstrong roof, took the first set, 6-2.
At that point, it was easy to think – I did think – that Monfils is 40 years old, has fallen out of the world’s top 300, and is playing out this season before hanging up his well-worn sneakers. Instead, he stepped into what Bill Simmons has called the Juvenation Machine.
A blow-by-blow recapitulation of what followed would be beside the point. After the first set, the players contested 21 games, and Monfils won 18 of them. He broke Vallejo’s serve seven times and held all his service games for an unlikely 2-6 6-1 6-2 6-0 victory. Of course, the crowd was squarely in the Frenchman’s corner, and there were some spectacular points along the way, including one of Monfils’s patented jump shots in the fourth set.
During the post-match interview, the crowd serenaded Monfils with Happy Birthday. It was after 9:00 p.m., and I did not stay for the match between Alex Eala and the qualifier Mary Stoiana, which was a rout for the former.
Tuesday, September 8, 2026
My first stop was the Grandstand, where there were reasonably good seats in the shade for a sparsely attended boys’ singles match between the second seed, Jamie Mackenzie, and Kanta Watanabe of Japan. Mackenzie, born in New Zealand, plays for Germany. Based on his junior results, I’d judge it unlikely that Watanabe has a future on the pro circuit. Notwithstanding Mackenzie’s seeding, I also wonder whether he is a future pro. He’s only 5’11” tall and somewhat thickset. Such a build does not rule out success at the highest levels – think of Stan Wawrinka – but it’s not a plus. What is more, I don’t think I saw him hit a single volley in his match with Watanabe. While the day of the net-rusher has passed, there remains a virtue to being able to finish points in the forecourt.
Mackenzie contented himself with serving hard – 128 mph was the fastest serve I recall seeing – and hitting forehands, often from the backhand corner. In short, he played the modern game. Now that Alcaraz has popularized the drop shot, Mackenzie tried several of them, but without good results. Nevertheless, he cruised through the first set, 6-2, without facing a break point. Indeed, he did not have to withstand that test until the eighth game of the second set, fending off Watanabe’s bid to draw even and holding, after five deuces, for a 5-3 lead. When serving for the match at 5-4 30-30, Mackenzie let a Watanabe passing shot go – like I said, I don’t remember him hitting a volley – and it landed in. A service winner got him back from this break point to deuce, and he closed out the match from there, 6-2 6-4.
After clinching victory, Mackenzie removed his baseball cap, revealing a head of bright red hair. If we are looking for omens based on physical characteristics, Mackenzie can only hope to follow in the footsteps of Don Budge, Rod Laver, and Jim Courier.
The next boys’ match on the Grandstand featured the fourth-seeded American Keaton Hance and the German Oliver Majdandzic. Majdandzic had both thighs taped extensively, which seemed like a bad sign at his age. He also has an idiosyncratic elbow bend early in his service motion. Hance, a Californian who attends the University of Texas, has gone deep in the majors, reaching the boys’ finals this year at the Australian Open and the semifinals at Roland Garros. He also won the US Open boys’ doubles last year with Jack Kennedy.
The first set went on serve until 5-5. Majdandzic fell behind 15-30 when his serve hit the tape and sat up for Hance. (Yes, in junior tennis, net-cord serves are in play.) Hance nailed a forehand winner for 15-40 and then secured the break when Majdandzic sent an inside-out forehand wide. Hance served out the set at love, playing serve-and-volley successfully (no Mackenzie he) on set point.
The second set was a formality. Hance ran his streak to nine consecutive games, closing out a 7-5 6-0 victory with another serve-and-volley point.
Having been unsuccessful in securing a spot in the Chase Lounge for this day, I walked to the Chase Terrace, which adjoins the Grandstand. Alas, there was no lemonade for me: it seems that the Chase Terrace closes after Labor Day. The facility was still there, but unattended.
While I had purchased a rain insurance Ashe ticket, it was definitely not raining. Nevertheless, I hiked up to Row X during the first set of the quarterfinal between Frances Tiafoe and Alex Michelsen. Tiafoe saved a set point at 4-5 but succumbed to another at 5-6, and I had seen enough. Or, better put, I had not seen enough: from the upper reaches of Ashe, you’re not really seeing the match; you’re just part of the crowd that roars when something exciting happens. (With a telephoto lens, however, you can get a good shot of Team Tiafoe.) I moved on, missing what turned out to be an epic victory for Tiafoe, who survived Michelsen’s serving for the match in the third set and eventually won the contest in five. I did hear the Ashe crowd from time to time during my tour of the field courts.
Before settling in on the sun-bleached seats of Court 6, I peeked at the practice courts, where doubles partners warmed up by playing singles against each other. Well, not so much playing singles as practicing serves and returns, which are particularly relevant to their discipline.
My first match on 6 was a girls’ doubles contest between the second-seeded Brazilian pair of Nauhany Vitoria Leme Da Silva (but you can call her Naná) and Victoria Luiza Barros and the team of the Russian Ekateria Dotsenko, a mere 14 years of age, and Yu Jun Lin of China, who, like her Brazilian opponents, is 16.
Leme Da Silva and Barros had taken the first set before I arrived, but they were broken at 3-4 in the second when Leme Da Silva bricked a forehand volley. Dotsenko was broken when she served for the set at 5-3, with Barros, who was active at the net, hitting a winning volley to clinch the game. At 5-6, Leme Da Silva returned the favor, popping a volley long to give the set to Dotsenko and Lin.
In the junior doubles, the final set is a match tiebreak. Many points in that tiebreak went against serve – not shocking in a match in which each team had its serve broken five times – but the Brazilians prevailed, 6-4 5-7 [10-6], when Dotsenko netted a forehand on match point.
The next match featured three Argentinians and one Spaniard, as Marcel Granollers, the token European, teamed with Horacio Zeballos to face Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni. Granollers and Zeballos, both north of 40, were seeded second and have appeared in these reports before; the unseeded Gonzalez and Molteni, 43 and 38 respectively, showed up in my Wimbledon 2024 report. Before he aged out of singles, Granollers appeared in my US Open reports from 2009 and 2016.
When I saw Gonzalez and Molteni at Wimbledon, they were wearing Fila; by now, they were in K-Swiss. Zeballos remains clad in Fila, while Granollers, wearing Joma, goes old-school with a Prince racquet. Granollers had an interesting mix on his service points, sometimes hitting the ball silently, sometimes roaring like a jet taking off from nearby LaGuardia Airport. As with many lefty-righty teams, Granollers and Zeballos had their lefthander, Zeballos, play the deuce court, keeping their forehands in the middle.
Gonzalez was broken in his opening service game and Molteni later averted a 0-4 deficit, fighting off a break point to hold for 1-3. At 1-4 15-0, Gonzalez followed up his serve with a swinging forehand volley that wrong-footed Granollers, who went down in a heap, evidently twisting his ankle. After a medical timeout, he was able to continue. Zeballos eventually served out the first set, 6-3.
The second seeds changed the service order in the second set, with Zeballos being first up, at 0-1. He dug out of a 0-40 hole with five straight points to hold serve. In the next game, Molteni found himself down 0-40. He got to 30-40, but then was broken on a beautiful inside-out forehand pass by Granollers. Another break of serve, this time of Gonzalez, enabled the second seeds to close out a 6-3 6-3 win. Granollers appeared to limp as he walked off the court.
The lights came on at 6:00 p.m. before the next men’s doubles match, between the seventh seeds, Guido Andreozzi of Argentina and Manuel Guinard of France, and the twelfth seeds, Hugo Nys of Monaco and Edouard Roger-Vasselin of France. I wasn’t certain the match would go forward, as Eric Butorac and other officials examined the area behind the baseline. Whatever ailed the court must have been manageable, because play soon began.
If we’ll deem Nys an honorary Frenchman, all three French players wore an identical kit from Lacoste. For his part, Andreozzi’s service motion was a modified version of the Jay Berger/Patrick Zweig hesitation play, the difference being that Andreozzi (who sports a prominent tattoo on his left biceps) does not hold his racquet still for nearly as long. In this match, Andreozzi and Nys were the middle-aged players at 35, Roger-Vasselin the old-timer at 42, and Guinard the baby at a mere 30. As the doubles game faces extinction, which I hope is averted, it should not be surprising that so many of its surviving practitioners are of advanced age. Given the large disparity in prize money, moreover, it makes sense for players to try to make a go of it in the more lucrative singles game as long as possible.
On the very first point of the match, the umpire called “touch.” Roger-Vasselin – whose father is remembered by fans of a certain age for defeating Jimmy Connors in a Roland Garros quarterfinal in 1983 – requested a video review and got the call reversed. As the first set moved toward a tiebreak, a huge crowd joined in the plaza outside Ashe, waiting to enter for the night session. The day session would finally end with Tiafoe’s victory in a match tiebreak, setting the stage for a 3:33 a.m. finish to the quarterfinal between Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz. While the crowd on Ashe cheered for Tiafoe, the tiebreak in my doubles match was tied, 4-4. Andreozzi then netted a forehand volley for a mini-break that gave Roger-Vasselin the chance to serve out the tiebreak from 5-4. That he did, as Guinard missed a passing shot and then Andreozzi could not return a second serve.
In the second set, Guinard, who has a big serve befitting his height, won five straight points from 0-40 in the second game. In the next game, Roger-Vasselin was broken when he pulled a backhand wide. Eventually, Guinard served for the set at 5-4. At deuce, he hit a forehand winner and exclaimed loudly, provoking another video review, as Nys complained of a hindrance, i.e., being distracted by Guinard’s celebration. The claim seemed ridiculous at first blush, but it took the umpire several minutes of watching video before he confirmed that Nys could not have gotten to the ball in any event. From there, Guinard held serve to tie the match.
In the deciding set, Andreozzi saved two break points in the eighth game, and the teams held serve from there to set up a match tiebreak at 6-6. As the match moved toward its conclusion, spectators thronged at the side of the court but still respected the wheelchair seating area. When Andreozzi and Guinard jumped to a 4-0 lead in the match tiebreak, I joked that this was reminding me of the Alcaraz-Sinner 2025 Roland Garros final. My jest proved more prophetic than I had expected. Sinner won two points in that tiebreak in Paris. In this case, the final tally was 10-1, with Guinard sealing victory, 4-6 6-4 7-6[1] with a forehand winner, followed by another bellow that could not be challenged in a video review. After seeing Andreozzi and Guinard greet well-wishers beneath the stands, I went home and went to sleep well before Alcaraz fell to Shelton, which obviously opened the door to a most unfortunate outcome in the men’s singles event.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
While the USTA monetizes the US Open in almost every way imaginable, a bargain lurks largely unnoticed. The women play their singles semifinals on Thursday night and the men theirs on Friday. That leaves the day session on the tournament’s second Thursday for wheelchair players, juniors, and the men’s doubles semifinals. These matches are not grist for influencers or those who love them, and thus the price of admission is a big fat zero. I don’t know how long this will last (even Wimbledon has charged admission for qualifying since 2017), but I plan to take advantage while I can.
My first match of the day came on Stadium 17, where Sun Xinran, the top seed from China, faced off against Mariia Makarova of Russia in a girls’ singles quarterfinal. Both Sun, the top seed, and Makarova, seeded seventh, are 16, and they were doubles partners in this tournament.
I arrived in time to see Sun finish the first set by capturing a tiebreak, 7-2. The second set was not competitive. Makarova took a medical timeout after three games and served at lower speeds thereafter. She managed to hold serve at 0-5, but that just delayed the inevitable, as Sun finished out a 7-6(2) 6-1 victory. The events that followed gave me a further education in the mysteries of social media.
Makarova made a beeline for the umpire’s chair, never bothering to shake hands with Sun. I later posted a photo of this on Instagram, pointing out that Makarova did not even offer up a drive-by handshake of the type immortalized by Jelena Ostapenko. I did not think much of this incident, but the world of Instagram and Threads did. Whereas most of my photos attract viewership in the double digits or low triple digits, this one picked up over 180,000 views, with various commenters complaining about Makarova’s sportsmanship or lack thereof, and one defending her by showing video of Makarova high-fiving Sun in their subsequent doubles match. My best guess is that Meta (the owner of Instagram and Threads) and its algorithm pumped up this photo because my caption suggested conflict, and conflict draws eyeballs.
The next match on Stadium 17 was another girls’ quarterfinal, between two Russians, Anna Pushkareva, the fifth seed and current Wimbledon junior champion, and Ekaterina Dotsenko, whom we saw in doubles earlier in this report. I noticed that all the junior matches had only five ball kids instead of the requisite six, with only one kid rather than two stationed behind the receiver. Perhaps this is because the juniors are second-class citizens, or perhaps it is driven by their event taking place in the second week of the tournament, when many potential ball kids are back in school.
Pushkareva, 17 years old and bigger than Dotsenko, hit harder than her opponent. She has a bit of the Jenson Brooksby limp-wrist setup for her serve, but that straightens out later in her motion. With two breaks of serve, Pushkareva went up 5-2 40-30, but was broken as she tried to close out the set. Dotsenko held at love and then got to 15-30 on Pushkareva’s serve before Pushkareva won three consecutive points to win the set, 6-4.
This match was not grabbing me, so I moved on, which was just as well, because Pushkareva bageled Dotsenko in the second set. I moved to Court 12, where Jordan Lee, the winner of Wimbledon’s boys’ singles and the eighth seed, was facing Guto Miguel, the top seed from Brazil, who had won the Roland Garros junior title. I saw Lee close out the first set, 6-4, and Miguel break to open the second. With no seats in the shade and my inability to tolerate the hot sun in my face, I just had to move on, missing what must have been an exciting conclusion, as Miguel saved three match points before winning the contest in a match tiebreak, 4-6 6-3 7-6[11].
I got to Louis Armstrong Stadium, where there were plenty of seats in the shade, in time to see the unseeded Marcel Latak break Keaton Hance’s serve to take a 6-4 5-4 lead. Latak is an American, Chicago-born, whose parents came from Poland. Sporting his own unconventional service motion with an extremely pronated wrist, he got to 40-0 as he tried to serve out the match. It took five tries, but he ending up winning, 6-4 6-4, and flashed a wide grin. He was ultimately to take the title, defeating Miguel, 3-6 7-5 7-6[13], after saving three championship points.
It was now a little after 2:00 p.m., and the men’s doubles would not begin until 4:00, so I returned to Stadium 17, this time for a girls’ doubles match between the unseeded identical twins Annika and Kristina Penickova and the eighth-seeded team of Jamaica’s Alyssa James and Ukraine’s Polina Skliar, who is only 15.
The Penickova twins, born in California to parents who had played tennis for the Czech Republic, may have been unseeded, but they were no pushovers. In the second round of the tournament, they double-bageled the second-seeded Brazilian team of Barros and Leme Da Silva. Even in junior events, you don’t often see a 6-0 6-0 scoreline in doubles. Annika Penickova is left-handed and Kristina is right-handed. I thought that I once read that identical twins are more likely to have one left-hander and one right-hander, as was the case with Tom Gullikson and the much-too-soon departed Tim Gullikson and, famously, the Bryan Brothers, but Wikipedia throws cold water on the notion, and I have tracked down the original article, which did not say quite what I had recalled.
Annika started the match without a visor but soon joined her sister in wearing one. Annika wore a wristband, while Kristina did not. The twins broke James’s serve in the first game of the match when she missed a backhand volley, and everyone held from there to give the set to the Penickovas, 6-4. They broke James again to start the second set before being broken back on a deciding point (there being no-ad scoring in the junior doubles events). With 4:00 o’clock approaching, I returned to Armstrong. The Penickova twins were to win the match, 6-4 6-4, and ultimately the girls’ doubles title.
The first men’s doubles semifinal was between the sixth-seeded team, Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz of Germany, and the unseeded three-time champions of the event, Rajeev Ram of the US and Joe Salisbury of the UK. Krawietz and Puetz, 34 and 38, respectively, were clad in orange shorts and blue shirts, perhaps an hommage to the nearby New York Mets, albeit not well-timed this year.
After the Germans held for 3-2, Salisbury had a visit from the trainer. In the next game Krawietz and Puetz broke serve on their third break point, when Salisbury motioned to hit a volley, then pulled back, faking Ram out and causing him to hit his own forehand volley long. Krawietz served out the set at love, putting it in the books at 6-3 when Puetz, with both ankles enjoying extra protection, put away a backhand volley.
In the second set, Krawietz and Puetz nabbed a break in the third game, when Krawietz lobbed Ram, leaving Salisbury, playing behind his partner, to volley the ball into the net. In frustration, Salisbury whacked a ball into the empty upper bowl of Armstrong.
Serving in the eighth game, Puetz saved two break points and held for 5-3 with a 129 mph service winner. While Ram held in the next game – and received treatment on his legs from the trainer during the subsequent changeover – Krawietz served out the match at 15 for a 6-3 6-4 win.
As on the Friday of qualifying, I then saw a duo who might be seen as the grim reapers of tennis, Craig Tiley and Eric Butorac, who held a ceremony to mark the retirement of Rajeev Ram at age 42. Eons ago, Tiley coached Ram at the University of Illinois, and Butorac was Ram’s occasional doubles partner, so there appeared to be genuine affection for the retiree. Ram spoke emotionally after receiving a commemorative poster, particularly about his late father, whom, he said, he hoped he made proud. Little did we know at the time that Salisbury was soon to retire, too, as a mere lad of 34. Had we known, would there have been a ceremony for him? I rather doubt it, notwithstanding his three consecutive US Open men’s doubles titles with Ram. If you make your mark in doubles but you’re not an American, the USTA probably is not interested in you.
With the lights on for the second semifinal, the British players were on opposite sides of the net, with Henry Patten teaming with Finland’s Harri Heliovaara to form the top-seeded squad, while Neal Skupski (a Fila holdout) played with the American Christian Harrison, who has resurrected his career after eight surgeries.
Skupski put away an overhead to break Heliovaara at love in the third game. Patten saved two break points in the fifth game, and his team broke back in the eighth game, when Skupski missed all five first serves and double faulted on break point.
The set went to a tiebreak, and Skupski and Harrison took an early mini-break. Serving at 3-5, Patten double faulted. Harrison, serving for the set, was briefly denied when Heliovaara hit a great touch cross-court forehand, but the second try was a charm, as Harrison hit an ace out wide at 109 mph.
Video review returned in the third game of the second set, when the question was whether Harrison’s racquet contacted the ball before it crossed the net. With Skupski serving at 15-30, it was an important point. The umpire concluded that Harrison did not offend, and Skupski went on to hold. In the next game, with Heliovaara serving at 30-30, Skupski hit a touch backhand volley for a winner and then Patten dropped a short forehand passing shot into the net for the break. With the match slipping away at 2-5, Heliovaara served again and fell behind 0-40. He saved two match points, but not the third, as Skupski pulled an inside-in forehand passing shot down the line to claim victory, 7-6(4) 6-2.
Harrison and Skupski were eventually to win the event, defeating Krawietz and Puetz in the final, 6-4 7-6(6), and giving Skupski his third major men’s doubles title, Roland Garros being the only trophy in the set that he is missing – after he and Joe Salisbury lost the 2025 final to Granollers and Zeballos. (He has also won the mixed doubles at Wimbledon twice.) Yes, the usual suspects show up at the business end of many a major tournament doubles draw, and I’ll continue to watch them while the crowds pile into Arthur Ashe Stadium with binoculars. |