{"id":107320,"date":"2025-08-24T20:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/107320\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T20:37:08","slug":"u-s-open-storylines-sabalenkas-last-grand-slam-shot-and-sinner-and-alcarazs-rankings-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/107320\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Open storylines: Sabalenka\u2019s last Grand Slam shot and Sinner and Alcaraz\u2019s rankings fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you would like to follow The Athletic\u2019s U.S. Open coverage, click here and follow our tennis page<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Athletic has live coverage <\/a>of Day 1 of the 2025 U.S. Open<\/a><\/p>\n

Will world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka<\/a> go \u201cSlamless\u201d in 2025 \u2014 and does it even matter?<\/p>\n

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner<\/a> could go eight from eight at the Grand Slams<\/a> \u2014 but their bigger fight might take place in the world rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Is Coco Gauff<\/a> sacrificing her home major for her greater tennis good?<\/p>\n

And does this U.S. Open<\/a>, with its mixed doubles<\/a> title already handed out, herald the end of the majors as the tennis world has known them for so long?<\/p>\n

The 2025 U.S. Open<\/a> promises to be a cracker. Here, The Athletic\u2019s tennis writers, Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, chart some of the key storylines to follow over the next fortnight.<\/p>\n

How will defending champion Aryna Sabalenka define the rest of her season?<\/p>\n

Sabalenka has had a hell of a season. She made the final of the Australian<\/a> and French Opens<\/a> and the semifinals at Wimbledon<\/a>. She won the Miami and Madrid Opens. She made the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. and the Stuttgart Grand Prix in Germany. She\u2019s first in the \u201cRace\u201d to the WTA Tour finals.<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s still missing the one thing she really wants, which is to win a Grand Slam. She\u2019d also like to finish the year as the world No. 1. But she has one more chance for that elusive major, and Iga \u015awi\u0105tek<\/a> is hot on her heels at the top of the rankings.<\/p>\n

The positives are that she is the defending champion at the U.S. Open, and she has won three of the last five hard-court majors. Her Grand Slam record this year speaks to going deep reliably as much as missing out at the last. But she has also eked out a lot of wins through tiebreaks \u2014 tiebreaks which became tiebreaks because she had to recover from her serve being broken, not because both players held. Only two of the 19 sets Sabalenka has played in 2025 that ended in tiebreaks have not featured a break.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this goal is not going to be achieved, I\u2019ll still think that this season has been really amazing for me,\u201d she said in her pre-tournament news conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of those tough lessons that I learned this season are only going to make me stronger for the next one. I\u2019ll work even harder in the preseason to make sure next year is going to be only a year of success, like truly success.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cSlamless\u201d world No. 1 is a tennis archetype that refuses to budge even though it ultimately means little. Sabalenka appears to be aware of that \u2014 but she will also be desperate to make sure that she does not fill it.<\/p>\n

Matt Futterman<\/p>\n

Can Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner continue their remarkable streak with another milestone on the line?<\/p>\n

Having never had a match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, let alone a final, the U.S. Open won\u2019t be taking anything for granted when it comes to a potential meeting between Alcaraz and Sinner<\/a> in two weeks\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

If the world\u2019s two best men\u2019s players do contest their third Grand Slam final in a row, it would be the first time it has ever happened on the ATP Tour in the same calendar year; Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic faced each other in four straight finals across 2011 and 2012. Sinner and Alcaraz met in a final as recently as this week, but their Cincinnati Open contest was cut short in the first set with the Italian feeling unwell.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s especially worrying for the rest of the field is that each time these two play each other, they each elevate the other a bit more and create ever-increasing distance from their peers. The other especially worrying thing is that they have another major milestone on the line: the world No. 1 ranking. If Alcaraz betters Sinner\u2019s result in New York, he will assume the world No. 1 ranking, having lost it to Sinner last year despite beating his nearest rival in all three of their meetings that year.<\/p>\n

And they appear aware of the task at hand. \u201cIf we don\u2019t continue to improve, players will catch us,\u201d Sinner said in a news conference Friday. \u201cIt\u2019s just a question of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

After winning all of the previous seven majors between them, it still doesn\u2019t look like happening anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Alcaraz and Sinner are moving further away from the rest of the men\u2019s field. (Clive Brunskill \/ Getty Images)What will Coco Gauff\u2019s long view mean for her home Slam, the site of her biggest triumph to date?<\/p>\n

Focussing on process rather than results is one if the biggest cliches in sports and life. As cliches go, it\u2019s not a bad one to follow.<\/p>\n

Gauff<\/a> became a walking billboard for it this week, when she switched technical coaches and embarked on the process of changing her serve just days before the start of her home Slam, which is arguably her most important tournament of the year.<\/p>\n

Her new coach, Gavin MacMillan, achieved pretty fast results with Sabalenka<\/a> three years ago when he worked with her. Her double faults dropped into the single digits from the neighborhood of 20 within a few weeks.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that will happen for Gauff. She knows that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at long-term,\u201d Gauff said Friday. \u201cI hope I can get it all together.\u201d She knew she needed to make a change, even if that meant potentially sacrificing this tournament while she tries to learn on the fly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to waste time continuing to do the wrong things,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Matt Futterman<\/p>\n

Can things get any worse for the sandwich generation in men\u2019s tennis?<\/p>\n

With every passing Grand Slam, the sandwich generation of 1990s-born players led by Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas seems to slip further and further away from genuine contention. Zverev, as the world No. 3, is slightly separate from this, but for Tsitsipas and Medvedev, it\u2019s been a miserable year. Especially at the Grand Slams, where they have two match wins between them in 2025.<\/p>\n

Tsitsipas is battling an ongoing back injury and has given worrying quotes about how much it\u2019s affecting him, while Medvedev has looked hopelessly underpowered for much of the year.<\/p>\n

Zverev said Friday that consideration has to be given to external factors when assessing a player\u2019s form, and that he expects both Medvedev and Tsitsipas to work their way back into the world\u2019s top 10. At present, though, the most likely genuine challengers to Sinner and Alcaraz would appear to be the players younger than them rather than the lost boys of men\u2019s tennis.<\/p>\n

How will the other Grand Slams react to the mixed doubles?<\/p>\n

The U.S. Open mixed doubles<\/a> event this week scored a big victory for the event in the Grand Slam arms race<\/a>. There were gripes with the format and the lack of proper doubles players, but generally the event made plenty of dollars and headlines.<\/p>\n

It was the first topic raised with Emma Raducanu in her news conference Friday, and she instantly suggested the other majors should follow suit. \u201cYeah, I think it would be so fun if all the slams got involved and did something similar, even if it was not the exact same format.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was a huge success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the remaining three, the French Open currently has no plans to alter its mixed-doubles format, while Wimbledon, typically the most traditional of the slams, looks unlikely to follow the U.S. Open\u2019s lead. The All England Lawn Tennis Club did not respond to a request for comment; nor did Tennis Australia, whose flagship event, the Australian Open, has tended to be the most innovative of the slams.<\/p>\n

That said, every other slam from here on in, including the U.S. Open, can refine and rework the mixed-doubles event from the last week to make it an even more compelling package. Gauff, for instance, said in a news conference Friday that she very much enjoyed the event, but that it would benefit from more actual doubles teams.<\/p>\n

The only proper doubles team taking part, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, retained their title by outclassing the singles stars brought in for the show.<\/p>\n

Charlie Eccleshare<\/p>\n

And what of the U.S. Open\u2019s late-night signature matches and the policy it designed to limit them?<\/p>\n

This tournament is notorious for its late finishes. It markets it and celebrates it. When matches finish in the small hours of the morning and players get to sleep as the sun is rising, it\u2019s talked about as an epic event, regardless of how bad it is for the people competing for one of the biggest prizes in their sport or any other.<\/p>\n

This generally happens during the night sessions on the stadium courts, when two matches take place but don\u2019t start before 7 p.m. When a men\u2019s match goes more than four hours or a women\u2019s match goes more than three, the tournament has a Late Finishing Match policy, which it introduced last year. If a match isn\u2019t likely to start before 11:15 p.m., tournament officials have claimed the right to move it into or out of Louis Armstrong or Arthur Ashe Stadiums.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean they will. As the first weekend of last year\u2019s U.S. Open ticked from Sunday night into Monday morning, Zheng Qinwen and Donna Vekic set a record for the latest-finishing women\u2019s match in U.S. Open history<\/a>, with Zheng closing out match point at 2:15 a.m. That was just a few minutes later than the finish time for Sabalenka\u00a0and Ekaterina Alexandrova\u2019s third-round match earlier in the first week. That had been down on the Friday, but started very early Saturday morning, at 12:08 a.m. It was the\u00a0latest-starting match in U.S. Open history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They will talk to the players about it and take their opinions into consideration, but don\u2019t have to follow them. Other factors include the pace of play in the match that is going long and delaying the following one, the status of the match and other factors.<\/p>\n

What does that mean? Probably some more late nights at the U.S. Open.<\/p>\n

Matt Futterman<\/p>\n

Tell us which storylines you are looking out for in the comments.<\/p>\n

(Top photo of Aryna Sabalenka: Jamie Squire \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you would like to follow The Athletic\u2019s U.S. Open coverage, click here and follow our tennis page.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,1794,428],"class_list":["post-107320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-sports-business","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}