Welcome to the U.S. Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.

On Day 4, Carlos Alcaraz vanquished bad memories, the city’s tennis diasporas turned out and perhaps the best sports photo of the year came to the fore.

Carlos Alcaraz vanquishes demons of last year

A year on, Carlos Alcaraz’s second-round U.S. Open loss to Botic van de Zandschulp looks like the most overindexed result in the sport.

At the same stage of this year’s competition, Alcaraz posted a performance and result Wednesday night far more illustrative of who he is as a player. He destroyed Italy’s Mattia Bellucci 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 to set up a third-round meeting with No. 32 seed Luciano Darderi, delivering a display at odds with the alleged flakiness and inconsistency with which the Van de Zandschulp match has become synonymous.

In reality, that defeat last year was an anomaly: the only time in 11 Grand Slams that Alcaraz has failed to reach the quarterfinals, against the backdrop of his mentally and physically exhausting defeat to Novak Djokovic in the Paris Olympics’ gold-medal match three weeks earlier. Alcaraz’s tennis can be volatile during matches, but he is now 31-1 in his last 32.

After routing the world No. 65, he spoke of the impact of last year’s upset on his tournament this year. He admitted that he had thought more about his shock exit to Van de Zandschulp than his U.S. Open title win in 2022, and added: “I thought about last year when I stepped on the court. Some bad thoughts. I was nervous about it, like thinking: ‘OK, I don’t want to do the same thing as I did last year, losing in the second round.’

“I wanted just to improve from the experience. I think when I lost in the second round last year, it was one of those moments when I learned a lot how to deal with some situations, how should I have done things much better. I think I’ve just done it this year much, much better.”

The confidence and energy that coursed through Alcaraz last night underlined how the win could not have been in starker contrast to that monumental, if overindexed, defeat a year ago.

Charlie Eccleshare

Rising tennis stars bring their fans from all over New York City

After three wins in the first round, three rising Southeast Asian tennis nations prepared to bring their support to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center from all over New York City once again.

And while Wednesday did not extend the runs of Janice Tjen of Indonesia and Alex Eala of the Philippines, the diaspora populations concentrated in the city’s nearby Elmhurst and Woodside districts respectively once again came out to support the players making history for their countries. Tjen lost handily to Emma Raducanu of Great Britain, who beat her 6-2, 6-1, jumping on anything remotely short and crowding Tjen on her backhand side to stop her from unleashing her heavy inside-out forehand. The 2021 U.S. Open champion was simply too much for Tjen, who upset No. 24 seed Veronika Kudermatova in the first round and has won 100 of her last 113 matches on the third tier of professional tennis. She’s also the first Indonesian player to win a main-draw match at a Grand Slam since 2004.

Then it was Eala’s turn to carry the torch for the Philippines again, having made tennis history for her archipelago most of the past year. But she ran into Cristina Busça of Spain, who beat her 6-4, 6-3. Eala had some chances to draw even in the second set, but couldn’t find enough consistency. Still, her win in the first round over the No. 14 seed Clara Tauson, a wild match decided by a third-set tiebreak that Eala won 13-11, made her the first Filipino player to win a Grand Slam match in the modern era of tennis, which goes back more than 50 years.

Coleman Wong of Hong Kong is last to go. A close friend of Eala’s from the Rafael Nadal Academy in Mallorca, Spain, Wong plays Adam Walton of Australia Thursday, having beaten Alex Kovacevic of the U.S. in the first round.

Matt Futterman

The subject and snapper of the best photo in sports this year meet

Tennis photographs more beautifully than many sports. The athleticism, the ball on the strings, the back and forth of the players.

But one of the sports pictures of the year so far has nothing to do with any of that.

No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini’s first-round match against Destanee Aiava of Australia was a fairly straightforward win for the Italian, who last year made two Grand Slam finals and has held steady in the top 10 in 2025. But it produced a split-second alignment of player and racket so perfect that it defied belief. So perfect that capturing it was on the verge of improbable.

Step forward, Ray Giubilo, who delivered a work of art:

The photo went around the internet. So much so that when Giubilo was sitting at the side of the court for Paolini’s second-round match against talented American teenager Iva Jović, there was only one thing to be done:

Jasmine Paolini embraces photographer Ray Giubilo after he captured a once-in-a-lifetime picture of her during her previous match. https://t.co/xnWYDr3554 pic.twitter.com/bdnNimEtSj

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 28, 2025

Other notable results on Day 4:
Novak Djokovic (7) recovered from losing the first set against American qualifier Zachary Svajda to win 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-3. 6-1. Svajda led 3-1 in the third set, but cramp derailed him as the match wore on.
Last year’s finalist Jessica Pegula (4) continued her serene progress in the women’s draw. She lost just four games for the second match in a row, beating Anna Blinkova of Russia 6-0, 6-4.
And Aryna Sabalenka (1) won yet another tiebreak, her 19th of 20 in 2025, in beating Polina Kudermetova 7-6(4), 6-2.
Shot of the day

Alcaraz goes back to front on his way to victory:

Drop shots

🤝 At the handshake after their match, Jelena Ostapenko appeared to tell Taylor Townsend that she has “no education.” Townsend, who won the match 7-5, 6-1, discussed the altercation in her news conference.
💰Daniil Medvedev was fined $42,500 for his behavior during his first-round defeat to Benjamin Bonzi, which included inciting the crowd and smashing his rackets.
🤕Jack Draper, a semifinalist last year, has withdrawn from the U.S. Open with an elbow problem.

Up next:

🎾 Women’s singles: Hailey Baptiste vs. Naomi Osaka (23)
1:30 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN/ESPN+
Two of Osaka’s four Grand Slam titles have come in New York, and she came into this year’s U.S. Open on her best run of form since returning to tennis in January 2024, after giving birth to her first child. Baptiste will be a stern test of that form, with a similarly devastating serve to Osaka and the rally tolerance to test her off the ground.

🎾 Men’s singles: Jannik Sinner (1) vs. Alexei Popyrin
1:30 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN/ESPN+
The defending men’s champion faces a player who achieved the single greatest win of his career at this tournament 12 months ago. Sinner has looked irrepressible in the early rounds of Grand Slams this year, but Popyrin, who beat Djokovic in four astounding sets here in 2024, is a dangerous opponent.

🎾 Women’s singles: Donna Vekić vs. Coco Gauff (3)
7 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+
Gauff and her new serve needed her old foundations of athleticism and court coverage to get past Ajla Tomljanović in the first round. Vekić, with a comparatively powerful serve and even stronger ground strokes, will pose a different challenge — she beat Gauff at the Olympics last year.

U.S. Open men’s draw 2025U.S. Open women’s draw 2025

Tell us what you noticed on the fourth day…

(Top photo of Carlos Alcaraz: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)