US Open draw takeaways: Serena Williams could make a run; Rafael Nadal gets ideal matchups
Serena Williams landed in her final tournament.
As it turns out, not in a bad spot at all.
Williams, the six-time U.S. Open champ, theoretically will have a chance to make a bit of a run facing 80th-ranked Danka Kovinic in the first round and the very vulnerable No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit after that.
The question is whether Williams’ body will hold up well enough to put consecutive matches together — something she hasn’t had much success with since returning to tournament tennis at Wimbledon.
In reality, since the 40-year old Williams announced on Aug. 9 that she was transitioning away from professional tennis, her form has not been good. Though she did score one win in Canada over Nuria Parrizas-Diaz, she got handed pretty thorough defeats by top-15 players Belinda Bencic and Emma Raducanu while struggling with what seemed to be knee soreness.
It’s hard to know what to expect from Williams, but the New York crowd will be a huge asset. And she ended up in a fortunate section of the draw alongside Kontaveit, No. 14 seed Leylah Fernandez and No. 23 seed Barbora Krejcikova who have all struggled in the past few months to come back from health setbacks. On paper, one of those three should be in the quarterfinals. But given their current form, it’s kind of anyone’s ballgame.
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Here are five more takeaways from the men’s and women’s draws:
Most wide open Open in recent memory
This is the rare circumstance in tennis where you could have as many as a dozen different men holding the trophy and maybe twice as many women and not be terribly surprised by the result.
unvaccinated Novak Djokovic sitting at home because he can’t get into the U.S., Rafael Nadal’s health a significant question mark and both No. 1 seeds showing vulnerability in their last few tournaments, this will be a huge opportunity to see first-time Grand Slam winners in both draws.
No. 1-ranked Daniil Medvedev, the defending champion, seems to enjoy the conditions in New York more than anywhere else in the world. He’s 18-2 at the U.S. Open since 2019, with both losses coming against the eventual champions. But since his heartbreaking loss to Nadal in the Australian Open final this year, Medvedev’s play just hasn’t been quite as sharp as we’ve come to expect.
Medvedev looks like he’ll have a tough path back to the final, too. In the fourth round, he could face Nick Kyrgios, who is having a career year and just beat Medvedev in Canada earlier this month. The quarterfinals would likely pit him against Canadian Open champion and two-time U.S. Open semifinalist Pablo Carreño Busta or No. 8 Felix Auger-Aliassime. For entertainment’s sake, a semifinal between Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas — who don’t particularly like each other going back to a famous incident in Miami five years ago — would be a pretty fun matchup.
For women’s No. 1 seed Iga Swiatek, it’s been a bit of a struggle since the end of her 37-match winning streak, which included the French Open title. Swiatek recently complained about the Wilson balls being used by the USTA, which are a bit lighter and subsequently more difficult to control with her heavy topspin game.
If that’s in her head, Swiatek could be vulnerable to an early upset.
Nadal got a near-perfect draw
Though the calendar-year Grand Slam possibility died when Nadal withdrew from the Wimbledon semifinals, nobody has beaten him this year in the majors. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen much of Nadal since then as he’s tried to recover from an abdominal muscle tear.
Nadal got just one prep match under his belt in Cincinnati, losing in three sets to the eventual champion Borna Coric. The big issue for Nadal with that injury was serving, and it’s still unclear how much that affects him now and whether it will flare up again playing a string of best-of-five set matches.
Plenty of breakthrough possibilities this year
When you consider the likeliest candidates to win their first Grand Slam title, you have to start with 21-year old Italian Jannik Sinner. He has always had the raw tools and massive power, but his game has gone up a level this year since Darren Cahill (who also works as an ESPN analyst) joined his coaching team. Sinner is starting to consistently go deeper in the majors, including Wimbledon, where he beat Alcaraz and was up two sets on Djokovic in the quarterfinals before his inexperience showed. He could end up facing Alcaraz again here in the quarterfinals in what should be one of the premier rivalries of the next decade.