U.S. Open Updates: Djokovic Faces Medvedev With Grand Slam at Stake

The sequence with the let was bizarre. It sounded like an ad began to play accidentally over the loudspeakers and when the point was called off, Djokovic threw his hands up in frustration (not that it had developed much anyway). Still, tough break during a key point — these little things that have happened so far seem like small incremental annoyances that are combining to lift the overall tension. As if there’s not enough at stake as is.

Djokovic has plenty of room to come back in the best-of-five format, and he’s done it many times here: he has lost the first set in his last five matches in this tournament. Each of the previous four times, he came back to win the second set and the match.

Medvedev has only lost one set at the Open this year, in the quarterfinals against qualifier Botic Van de Zandschulp.

Medvedev was able to play the first set on his terms, hitting more winners (13 to 10) and fewer unforced errors (7 to 10) than Djokovic. But Djokovic at least seems in command of his own after two shaky opening games, and there has been very little separating the two for the past 30 minutes.

After a competitive first set, Medvedev proved hapless in a 7-5, 6-2, 6-2 loss, which gave Djokovic his ninth Australian Open title and the first leg of a possible Grand Slam.

After winning his U.S. Open semifinal on Friday, Medvedev said he had been caught off guard in the Australian Open match when Djokovic used unexpected tactics.

“He was playing different than the matches he did before with me, and I was kind of not ready for it,” said Medvedev, who until Sunday had not faced Djokovic since that match. “So now, I am.”

Medvedev said he had been disappointed by his effort with the Australian Open title on the line, and suggested his flatness might have been influenced by the pandemic restrictions at the tournament, which limited crowd size.

“I always give my best, but I feel like I didn’t leave my heart on the court in Melbourne,” he said. “Even if, of course, I wanted to, there was something not turning up in this match.

“That’s what I’m going to try to do on Arthur Ashe with, hopefully, 100 percent of the fans,” he added. “No matter the score, I’m just going to turn up the heat and try to do my best, even more than what I did in Melbourne.”

De Groot defeated Yui Kamiji of Japan, 6-3, 6-2, in Louis Armstrong Stadium to complete the Slam, which has been possible in wheelchair tennis only since 2016, when Wimbledon introduced a singles competition.

De Groot, 24, thanked the U.S. Open for showcasing her final in one of its biggest stadiums.

“That’s the kind of attitude that we need as wheelchair tennis players: to play on the big stage, play our singles match on Armstrong, that’s just such a professional move,” de Groot said. “Those kind of things are needed for us as players to keep improving as well.”

“I think it motivates us,” she added. “We will work harder when people work harder for us.”

De Groot was followed into Armstrong by Dylan Alcott of Australia, who completed his own Golden Slam in quad singles, beating Niels Vink of the Netherlands, 7-5, 6-2.

Vink, 18, is one of the brightest young talents in wheelchair tennis, and he expressed contentment with his result, calling Alcott’s Golden Slam “insane.”

“Losing to the big boy, I’m happy with my second place,” Vink said.

Like De Groot, Alcott thanked organizers for putting the wheelchair finals on a major court.

“Hopefully changing the lives of millions of people with disabilities around the world, that they can see themselves on the big stage doing what they love, so thank you very much,” Alcott said.

After thanking a list of practically everyone he had ever met, Alcott’s voice began to crack with emotion.

“I just can’t believe I just won the Golden Slam,” he said, resting his head on the microphone as he collected himself. “I used to hate myself so much. I hated my disability, and I didn’t even want to be here anymore. And I found tennis, and it changed and saved my life. And now I’ve become the only male ever, in any form of tennis, to win the Golden Slam, which is pretty cool. I just want to thank everybody here in New York for coming out and supporting us.”

Alcott, 30, then hinted at retirement from the sport.

“I’m going to be upfront: I don’t know if I’ll be back here,” Alcott told the crowd. “So I really appreciate everything, I love you so much, and thanks for making a young, fat, disabled kid with a really bad haircut, thanks for making his dreams come true. Because I can’t believe that I just did it.”

Djokovic, 34, who has already earned a record $151.9 million in prize money in his career, also stands to gain more than $2.5 million in performance bonuses from his various sponsors if he completes the first calendar-year Grand Slam since 1969.

Medvedev, 25, who has already banked a comfortable $17.3 million in prize money in his career, would also expect bigger pay days from sponsors if he becomes a rare player from his generation to break through for a major men’s title.

In 1973, the U.S. Open became the first major tournament to pay men and women equal prize money; it took 34 years for Wimbledon to catch up and begin offering equal prize money in 2007.

The prize money at the Open made a bigger difference in Saturday’s final between the relative newcomers Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, both of whom had under $1 million in career earnings before their totals were more than doubled by their Open windfalls.

But for both of the women — particularly for Raducanu, who can tap into huge marketplaces in both Britain and China with her fluent command of Mandarin — the money made off court is likely to dwarf the amounts on their checks from the Open.

Djokovic can justify some of his travails: He had a far tougher road in terms of opponents. He defeated the sixth-seeded Matteo Berrettini in the quarterfinals and the fourth-seeded Alexander Zverev in the semifinals.

Medvedev, 25, did not face a top-10 opponent before his meeting with Djokovic, 34. Medvedev, who embraced a villain role and sustained a quadriceps tear during his first final here in 2019, said he had a less eventful trip to the final this time.

“This year I didn’t have the stories, and that’s a good thing,” Medvedev said. “I have the experience of two finals of Slams that can help me — doesn’t mean it will — but can help me.”

He added, “The only thing I can say is all what I have left, I’m going to throw it out on Sunday.”

Stosur, who stunned Serena Williams to become the 2011 U.S. Open singles champion, won her first women’s doubles title at the U.S. Open in 2005, when Gauff was only a year old.

Gauff, who fought back tears during the trophy ceremony, was pulled in for a consoling embrace by McNally during the pair’s remarks at the trophy ceremony.

Gauff’s mood brightened when she looked to Stosur and congratulated her on her victory.

“Sam, you were actually my first ever autograph from a professional tennis player,” Gauff said, laughing. “So playing a final against you was really cool.”

The pair defeated Giuliana Olmos of Mexico and Marcelo Arevalo of Spain, 7-5, 6-2.

Krawczyk won this year’s French Open with Salisbury and Wimbledon with Neal Skupski. She is the seventh player, male or female, to win three major mixed doubles titles in the Open era, and the first since Martina Hingis and Leander Paes in 2015. The two other women to have done it were Martina Navratilova (1985) and Margaret Court (1969).

“Honestly, just to think about that, it’s just crazy to me,” said Krawczyk, who was born in Palm Desert, Calif., and played at Arizona State before turning professional. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet. No, I’m just happy to be able to play in front of a lot of friends and family here and to play with Joe and have our whole team with us.”

Salisbury also won men’s doubles, with Rajeev Ram of the United States, and became the first man to win both events at the U.S. Open in the same year since Bob Bryan in 2010.

Djokovic, who is beloved in the Balkans and is also one of the most popular tennis players in China, has struggled to win over fans in countries where the major tennis tournaments are held.

Despite his nine titles in Australia, for example, he remains an object of national derision, as reflected in a game show earlier this year.

The crowd reception in Arthur Ashe Stadium has been mixed for Djokovic during this tournament, far inferior to the full-throated support that Serena Williams received during her Grand Slam bid in 2015.

“Obviously you always wish to have the crowd behind you, but it’s not always possible,” Djokovic said last week.

Djokovic said he thought the crowd was booing him during the first round here this year; spectators were actually enthusiastically chanting the surname of his opponent, Holger Rune.

“It was not an ideal atmosphere for me to tell you that,” Djokovic said. “But I’ve been in these particular atmospheres before, so I knew how to handle it.”

That group’s dominance, however, has led to extraordinary stagnation in the sport’s pipeline.

Only one man born in the 1990s, the 2020 U.S. Open champion, Dominic Thiem, has won a major singles title, and he did so after Djokovic was defaulted from that Open after inadvertently striking a line judge with a ball.

Thiem, who turned 28 this month, is hardly young for a tennis player, but he is the youngest active male player to have won a Grand Slam singles title.

That is in sharp contrast to women’s tennis, where on Saturday Emma Raducanu, 18, became the third player born in the 2000s to win a major.

Medvedev, who will try to defeat Djokovic in today’s Open final, would seem best positioned to make a breakthrough; this year he became the first man outside the “Big 4” to hold the ATP No. 2 ranking since 2005. But at 25, he is already a veteran by the standards of most generations.

“That’s kind of an attitude I have; job is not done,” Djokovic said. “Excitement is there. Motivation is there, without a doubt, probably more than ever. But I have one more to go.”

By reaching the final, Djokovic has made it one step closer than Serena Williams’s Grand Slam bid came in 2015, when she lost in the semifinals to Roberta Vinci. Djokovic, who has recently followed Williams’s lead in declining to answer questions about the goal that he is pursuing, said he could relate to what she was going through.

“I was talking to Serena; she was very emotional about everything that was going on,” Djokovic said of Williams in 2015. “I can relate to what she’s been going through right now, I understand it now. Obviously, once you’re in that situation, you can really comprehend what a player goes through.

“I understand why she wanted to avoid all the questions about it because in the end of the day, you have to go out on the court and deliver,” he added. “You’re expected to always win. For a great legend that she is, she always has that expectations from everyone, including herself. It’s no different with me.”

When

Saturday, Sept. 11, at 4 p.m. Eastern time.

In the United States

On ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

In Canada

On TSN and streaming on the TSN app.

(Pete Sampras, who won a record-setting 14th major title at the 2002 U.S. Open, is now a distant fourth place.)

Despite his tie with Nadal and Federer in major titles, Djokovic is considered the most successful player in men’s tennis history by most statistical measures. He has spent more time with the No. 1 world ranking than anyone else, at 337 weeks, having surpassed Federer’s record of 310 weeks earlier this year. Djokovic is also the sole player to have won all nine of the prestigious Masters 1000 events, and he has won each of them twice.

The overall Open Era record for major singles titles belongs to Serena Williams, with 23.