The season of the virus came, it saw and it conquered most of the United States tennis season, wiping out Houston, Indian Wells, Miami Open, Citi Open, Newport, but the US Open stood strong and refuses to cower to the Chinese communist virus or whatever the hell it really is.
The 2020 US Open commences today finally and pro tennis picks up the broken pieces and will stage the first major tournament since Australian Open.
The best players in the world will compete in front of no tennis fans for the biggest stakes in the sport, the considerable prize money and valuable ATP and WTA points.
And the appealing first round matches of the first round will make us forget about politics, conspiracies, media manipulation. Now we can all focus on tennis, just pure tennis.
The players are starved for this tournament and have been waiting patiently all year to strut their stuff again.
Today:
Brandon Nakashima vs Paolo Lorenzi. Young vs old or very old. Lorenzi is 38 now.
Andy Murray will see if he has enough flashes of brilliance left to handle the dangerous Japanese lefty and Delray Beach finalist Yoshihito Nishioka.
15 year old Robin Montgomery got a wildcard and will take on Yulia Putintseva, the 23 seed.
5 seed Alexander Zverev vs former US Open finalist Kevin Anderson.
Goliath vs David…Reilly Opelka vs 7 seed David Goffin.
Jannik Sinner vs Karen Khachanov, 11 seed.
Kim Clijsters, age 37, returns after eight years away from the US Open and will play Ekaterina Alexandrova.
Coco Gauff vs Anastasija Sevastova.
Serena Williams vs Kristie Ahn, who famously went 11 years between her two US Open main draw appearances (and ten years between major main draw appearances – 2018 AO). Last year Ahn reached the US Open fourth round as a wildcard. Twelve years (2008) ago she lost to Dinara Safina as a teenaged wildcard. Serena of course has her sights set on major title no. 24 which has infamously eluded her.
Denis Shapovalov vs Sebastian Korda.
Danielle Collins vs Anett Kontaveit.
Steve Johnson vs John Isner.
Taylor Fritz vs Dominic Koepfer.
Wildcard Ulises Blanch vs 13 seed Christian Garin.
Ahn · Gauff · Serena · US Open 2020
Scoop Malinowski · August 31, 2020 at 8:21 am
Ben Paire has supposedly been tested positive for corona and is out of the tournament. Though his Instagram account does not show any posts that he was even in New York or on the grounds. Just about every other player on Instagram has shown plenty of photo of being at the USTA National Tennis Center. I’ll let you connect those dots. Enjoy the tennis everyone!
Scoop Malinowski · August 31, 2020 at 2:30 pm
Korda just won the second set vs Shap it’s 46 64 now. Korda looks like he belongs. Choked a little at the end of the first to donate the break with some errors. But back on track. Korda is serve and volleying quite a bit off his first serve. James Blake says Shap has to exploit his second serve to break down the first serve. At Eddie Herr at the end of 2019 I asked Petr Korda what would happen if Sebi did nothing else in practice but serve and volley for a month straight? My thinking was he has a big serve, why not try to get in instead of just staying back and grinding? Petr didn’t give a clear answer. He said something about it taking time to complete all the skills and aspects of it. So now it’s kind of surprising to see Sebi serve and volleying so much. I wonder if that question at Eddie Herr sparked something? Sebi looks really good, I like his game and especially the expression on his face. It’s calm, poised but I also see a feisty sneer under the mask of calm. This kid looks like he belongs, he believes and he wants and expects big results soon.