After two weeks of intense competition, the 2019 US Open has come to a close in dramatic fashion. At the center of it all was Serena Williams, who was competing for her 24th Grand Slam title. If Williams got the win, she would have tied Margaret Court for the most major wins in tennis history.
Back playing in the United States, Williams seemed to have the crowd on her side. Williams, however, was still trying to return to her dominant peak; in her previous three Grand Slam finals appearances, she lost each match in just two sets.
Still, if there’s one thing Williams had on her title match opponent, Bianca Andreescu, it was experience. Williams won her first singles Grand Slam title in 1999. What was Andreescu doing at that time? She was not even born yet.
Andreescu started off 2019 ranked 179th, but after a couple of premier tournament wins, she came into the tournament ranked 15th. Andreescu’s elite play carried over into the US Open and the title match, where she shocked Williams in a straight-sets victory — 6–3, 7–5.
The 19-year-old became the first Canadian to win a singles Grand Slam title and the first teen to win the US Open since Maria Sharapova in 2006 (who also won at age nineteen.) Following her historic victory, Andreescu is now ranked fifth in the world on the WTA rankings.
In addition to Williams, Coco Gauff and Taylor Townsend were two other American players in the spotlight at the Open. The fifteen-year-old Gauff shot into the national spotlight after her upset win over Venus Williams at Wimbledon. Coming into the US Open, all eyes were on her, and she did not disappoint. She ended up making it to the third round before losing to former US Open champion Naomi Osaka.
The conclusion of the match featured a stirring moment when Osaka invited Gauff to join in on the winners interview with her, where both players praised the other.
The other young American favorite, Taylor Townsend, surprised everyone by defeating Simona Halep in the second round. She made it all the way to the round of 16 and lost to the eventual-champion Andreescu.
On the men’s side, everyone was shocked to see fan favorites Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic eliminated relatively early; Federer lost in the quarterfinals to Grigor Dimitrov, and Djokovic lost in the fourth round to Stan Wawrinka.
18-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal ultimately made it to the finals, playing the Russian Daniil Medvedev, who had been fined for unsportsmanlike conduct earlier in the tournament.
In his third-round match, Medvedev snached a towel away from a ball boy and received a violation. The crowd began to boo him, and he responded by holding his middle finger up close to his head at the crowd. He went on to win that match and thanked the crowd: “First of all, I can say thank you all, guys, because your energy tonight gave me the win.”
The combination of Nadal’s international fame and Medvedev’s polarizing behavior made the former the crowd favorite in the title match. Nadal dominated at the start, winning the first two sets and seemingly building towards an easy, three-set win. Medvedev, however, had other plans and battled back to win the next two sets. The energy of the crowd seemed to switch throughout the almost five-hour-long match, as Medvedev won praise from the audience, with spectators eventually cheering for both players. Medvedev ended up falling in the fifth set, and Nadal won 7–5, 6–3, 5–7, 4–6, 6–4.
With the victory, Nadal brings his Grand Slam title number to 19, just one away from Federer’s record 20. The “Big Three” of Nadal, Federer, and Djokovic have won 51 of the last 59 Grand Slams since the French Open in 2005; 86 percent of Grand Slams have been won by one of the three in the past 14 years. Additionally, since the start of 2017, every Grand Slam title has been won by either Nadal, Federer, or Djokovic.
The tennis title season has now wrapped up for 2019 but will start up again with the Austalian Open in January 2020. All eyes will be on the Big Three to see if they can continue their winning ways and if Nadal will tie — or break — Federer’s Grand Slam record.
