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NEW YORK — A year ago, Ben Shelton started his U.S. Open on Court 10, in the quasi-hinterlands of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. To find it, walk over to the other side of the fountains, where a ball that flies over the back fence is basically gone forever.
First Monday a year later, he had a different assignment: opening up Arthur Ashe Stadium at high noon against Dominic Thiem, the 2020 champion and a player whom Shelton watched, jaw on the floor, through his teen years.
How much has Shelton’s life changed in a year?
“I just felt comfortable,” he said. “Used to it. Felt like I had been there before.”
He had indeed. The then-20-year-old played three matches in the biggest stadium in the sport last year, culminating in a semifinal duel with Novak Djokovic. That ended with the 24-time Grand Slam champion mocking Shelton’s hang-up-the-phone celebration, with Shelton staring Djokovic down during an icy handshake.
“After last year, the stage doesn’t get much bigger than that,” Shelton said.
Maybe. Or maybe it does.
For the first time since 1996, there are five men and five women from the U.S. in the top 20. Since none of the men is ranked higher than No. 12, it’s not exactly the glory years of Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang. No American man has won this event since Andy Roddick in 2003. But those top five women include Coco Gauff, the defending champion, and four others ranked no lower than Madison Keys at No. 14.
The hope is palpable. The grounds are teeming, with the metal bleachers and concrete gangways of the field courts packed with bodies, noise and expectation.
U.S. Open fans poured into the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center with a sense of genuine hope. (Frank Franklin II / Associated Press)
Shelton was batting leadoff for the bigger names in the top half of the draw, with Gauff coming on after him. She couldn’t rely on the calm and comfort that Shelton experienced as the opening act before he eased through a fading Thiem 6-4, 6-4, 6-2.
Ben Shelton is seeking to emulate his run to the semifinals in 2023. (Seth Wenig / Associated Press)
The last time Gauff played a competitive match here, she finished it flat on her back, with tears streaming down her face and 24,000 delirious fans screaming for her and everything she meant.
The 20-year-old doesn’t like to wave to crowds, because then she sees how many people are watching her. It makes her nervous. But Shelton gave her a jokingly hard time about it during a charity match in Fan Week, so Monday, she waved. Here come the butterflies.
Warming up calmed her down, but then she very nearly lost her serve in her first two attempts. Then she settled down, plowing through an even shakier Varvara Gracheva of France, 6-2, 6-0.
“I feel like I’m finding my game,” Gauff said when it was over.
She’s been shaky since losing in the semifinals of the French Open in June. Earlier than expected losses. On-court spats with coaches over errors and with chair umpires over calls. Her wins this summer have mostly come against players outside the top 50.
She’s No. 2 in the world. She knows she’s supposed to be better than that.
She lost early in Cincinnati, too, but then had a good week of practice, she said. In that time, she flipped the scenario around in her mind, telling herself that the early loss in Ohio, where she was the defending champion, had been a blessing in disguise. It gave her extra time to train, some flat track after the hamster wheel of the Olympics, Canada and Cincinnati.
Coco Gauff says she is settling into her game after a rough patch. (Fatih Aktas / Anadolu via Getty Images)
She walked onto Arthur Ashe on Monday believing that regardless of the scoreline, she would be able to find her game.
“Obviously, getting through the first round like this is good,” she said. “I’ve learned that how you start a tournament doesn’t mean how you’re necessarily going to finish and vice versa.”
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True enough, but the first step is to survive the start. Taylor Fritz knows this better than just about anyone. Two years ago, he arrived in New York thinking he could actually win it.
Djokovic wasn’t playing because he refused to get vaccinated for COVID-19. Rafael Nadal was playing injured. Roger Federer was a month from retirement. Carlos Alcaraz was just a guy called Carlos Alcaraz, or about as close to that as he has ever been.
Fritz instead lost in the first round, to a qualifier named Brandon Holt. Holt is best known for being the son of Tracy Austin, a two-time champion a few generations back, and for beating Fritz at the U.S. Open in 2022 when Fritz thought he had a chance to actually win it.
Taylor Fritz used the momentum of a tight first set to ease past his opponent, Camilo Ugo Carabelli. (Fatih Aktas / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Fritz will think about that loss, and about the double-edge of a home Slam, at every U.S. Open and until he retires.
“It’s awesome to be playing at your home Slam with the crowd and just everything going on,” he said after a straight-sets win over Camilo Ugo Carabelli of Argentina.
Keys, the 2017 runner-up to another American, Sloane Stephens, joined the trio in taking care of business when she rolled through Czech doubles star Katerina Siniakova. Emma Navarro blasted Anna Blinkova, 6-1, 6-1.
Stephens was taking care of business, up 6-0, 3-0 on France’s Clara Burel, but then she faltered to lose 0-6, 7-5, 7-5.
There were some better American surprises. In her first main-draw match on the WTA Tour, 16-year-old wild card Iva Jovic beat Magda Linette of Poland, who is double her age and ranked 347 places higher.
Before the pandemic, Jovic played soccer and swam, an all-round athlete. But once COVID-19 arrived, tennis was the only sport she could pursue, since she didn’t have to be part of a team.
Now she’s the youngest American ever to win a main-draw match at the U.S. Open.
Iva Jovic defeated Magda Linette, who is ranked 347 places above her. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)
Linette figured to be a bit of a tall order, but Jovic had watched other juniors that she had beaten take out solid tour players in recent months. She convinced herself she had the level.
“I have nothing to compare it to, but it’s definitely nice for my first one to be in New York,” said Jovic, who played in front of a packed crowd on Court 15 that could have turned other teen knees to goo.
Then there was Taylor Townsend, the Wimbledon doubles champion, leaning into her status as a big-serving lefty nightmare on the singles court.
“This isn’t an all-of-a-sudden thing,” Townsend said after beating Martina Trevisan of Italy.
“The success that I had in doubles and the understanding of the self is translating now onto the singles court.”
Taylor Townsend’s best singles run in New York was a fourth-round appearance in 2019. (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
Another surprise? Brandon Nakashima blasting Holger Rune, the No. 15 seed, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 in a tidy hour and 55 minutes. Throw in Rune’s recent form, and Nakashima’s propensity to lull opponents into errors, and it’s not exactly a big one.
Then came Frances Tiafoe, who had a night slot at Louis Armstrong Stadium. This is the tournament for which he spends 50 weeks each year counting the days, and he has said, with only the slightest bit of sarcasm, that it’s one of just two that he really cares about.
The Citi Open in Washington, D.C., is the other, but nothing compares to his home Grand Slam. That can be a double-edged sword, as for Fritz.
“I’m so amped up,” Tiafoe said last week. That too can have both advantages and disadvantages, and he knows it. New coach David Witt’s reputation as one of the more laid-back souls in the game is one of the reasons Tiafoe hired him.
“I can get really high and pretty low, and he keeps me even-keeled,” he said. “Not allowing moments to be bigger than they are, or to be as strenuous as I can sometimes make them.”
Frances Tiafoe is beginning to look more like himself after a difficult first six months of the year. (Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images)
Come showtime, Tiafoe was doing his thing, with plenty of the whippy forehands and touch volleys that can make him a human highlight reel when he is on. On is what he was for much of the night, which ended in a four-set win over another American, Alex Kovacevic.
Tiafoe wobbled a bit in the third set, failing to put away Kovacevic with the efficiency he will need if he wants to get back to the second week.
“Got pretty tough there at the end,” Tiafoe said.
On the always nervy opening night at the home Slam, it was enough to take care of business.
(Top photo of Brandon Nakashima: Matt Rourke / Associated Press)
