Figured it would be prudent to make a thread about the Open, I'm hoping there are some more tennis fans here on this site. Lots of major storylines for the tournament this year, including:
Can anyone stop Nadal? With no Djokovic in New York this year, Nadal looks to be the favorite to win the Open. He was also blessed with a relatively easy draw, with the highly-seeded players in his path (Rublev, Norrie) not playing well enough to pose a real threat to him. The player with the best chance to beat Nadal before the semi-finals might be the American Frances Tiafoe. A potential semi-final clash with 3-seeded teenage phenom and fellow Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz looms large.
The Rise of the Young Americans? It's been a while since there was a truly great American men's player like Agassi, Sampras, or Roddick. These days, a host of young American talent has started to ascend on the tour. US number 1 Taylor Fritz has been knocked out of the Open already (by Tracy Austin's son, no less), but exciting players like Tommy Paul, Jenson Brooksby, Brandon Nakashima, former Buckeye JJ Wolf, and the aforementioned Tiafoe are still in the tournament. All of them are 25 or younger, meaning that we could be hearing their names for years to come.
Serena Williams's farewell tournament. I'll be honest, I thought Serena was going to lose her first match at the Open and call it quits on a great career. In the matches she's played this year, she looked awful. She ended up winning against an unseeded Kovinic, but that match couldn't have prepared anyone for what she showed last night, where she went blow-for-blow with the 2nd ranked player in the world and won. She displayed an incredible level last night, better than she's looked in years, and that too at 41 years of age. Incredible stuff, and I'm excited to see how far she goes.
Medvedev's Title Defense. World number 1 Daniil Medvedev shocked the world last year when he beat Djokovic to win the US Open. To defend his title, he'll likely have to get past Nick Kyrgios, a mercurial yet big-serving Australian coming off a finals run at Wimbledon. Beyond that, a Medvedev-Nadal finals matchup would be a rematch of two classic major finals, the 2019 US Open final and this year's Australian Open Final, both of which went 5 sets. Will Medvedev finally break through against Nadal and defend his US Open title?
Let's try and refrain from talking vaccine politics as they relate to Djokovic, and focus on the tennis. For the relatively unfamiliar to tennis, I'm happy to answer any questions.
