U.S. Open 2025: Pure Chaos, Per Usual

Full disclosure: I wasn't going to post about the U.S. Open until the weekend. I'm trying to finish this project and wanted to prioritize it, so I thought I would chill on the seed report, predictions and early observations. But why did the U.S. Open have to go ham, like, right out the chute? Let's start with ...

Messy Medvedev

Look, I know Daniil Medvedev does it for the drama, and by "it" that's anything. That is his bag. But Sunday night was another level. Honestly, I had turned my head for one second, listening from the other room for the start of the match point that Benjamin Bonzi had against Medvedev and all of a sudden, I heard booing and screaming. I came back in and literally had no idea what I was witnessing. Medvedev hyping the crowd, the crowd going insane, the umpire going "please" and this guy with a huge camera and a wry smile on his face. Yeah, buddy, it was you. You started it. 

I say this every year -- New York fans at night are a dangerous crew. Not only are they drunk, but most of them came in with no advance knowledge of how tennis works anyway. Of course Bonzi should have gotten a first serve. I don't even get what Medvedev was going on about, but questioning the umpire's manliness and intentionally riling the crowd?

That's not even the worst of what he did. The other problem is that Medvedev had an opponent who was standing there trying to serve so he could win his match. Tennis is supposed to be played at the server's pace, but Medvedev kept inciting the chaos so they couldn't even play. And it didn't even change the call? AND the call to give him a first serve was 100 percent the right call!

Another thing I thought would happen Sunday night was that I would go to bed at a decent hour, but after that mess? I absolutely stayed up to watch Medvedev lose. Rest assured, had he won, I would have turned off the TV at match point. But truly, another low from Medvedev. Maybe his lowest. I was rooting for the umpire to not shake his hand. Livid, I was. Over tennis. Again. Help.

After the match, Medvedev snuck on his angel's wings and claimed ignorance, that he did nothing wrong in the moment, that he was just a little upset with the first-serve decision. You know whose perspective I'd like on that one is his wife, who left when he started beating up his racquet after his loss. 

SIDEBAR: And by the way, when we try to accommodate non-fans of tennis, this is what we get. I'm not just talking about the half of the dunderhead crowd that got mad when the umpire did his job. The mixed doubles. I mean what are we doing. What we're doing is accommodating the people who know who Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu are, but not who Katerina Siniakova and Tomas Machac are. And instead of educating new fans (because that Siniakova/Machac story is something else), what do the tennis powers that be do? They rush the mixed draw and make it more like an exhibition instead of a legit part of the tournament -- and leaving doubles specialists high and dry so we can watch Jack Draper and Jess Pegula fart around on center court. Why do we always abandon what tennis is for the people who don't appreciate it? Tennis is the only sport willing to change its core identity for the sake of a few dollars and extra street cred. Anyone who mentions baseball: Look, that is a boring-ass sport to watch and they needed to do something about it. Tennis is not that. Sigh. End SIDEBAR.

It's a Game of Inches, But My God Clara Tauson

That's basically the whole point. In case you didn't catch this insane drama during the Tauson/Alexandra Eala match:

OK, so. I know there's money on the line here. So I can almost forgive Tauson wanting a closer look at this call to see if Eala made contact with the ball past the net into Tauson's court because you can't do that. This image shows that it's right there. OK. Move on, right. No! Shockingly, Tauson turned this into a five-minute debate with the umpire which in retrospect mainly served the purpose of throwing her own self off her game. Porque? To what end? 

Probably the part of this interaction that made me cackle was when Eala just walked up like she was in the office: "Excuse me, what is the score?" I hollered. 

Anyway, Tauson's young. Hopefully this was an expensive lesson learned.

Avoiding Chaos: Venus Williams

I have to acknowledge that I was a little afraid of watching the night match last night between Venus Williams and Karolina Muchova. First of all, I anticipated a shellacking and I hate to see the queen getting beat up like that. Second, as mentioned, I was convinced to the point of hyperventilating that she was going to retire at this tournament. 

I'm pleased to report that neither happened. I gotta say, Venus looked better last night than she has in a minute. No one has seen her on court a lot, but I mean the way she was getting hang time on some of those ground strokes? Vintage, baby. Let's goooooo!

She was defending her second serve better than she has in a while, too. Yes, it's still a meatball, which I do not understand given her height and power, but she placed it better and although Muchova was able to take some of them for a ride, Venus stayed in it. 

I really thought we were looking at an upset after she won the second set. But one thing you wouldn't have known from that crowd was how well Muchova was playing. She was hitting that serve in the corner pocket every time. She played smarter and cleaner tennis. And it's also a little eerie how much she looks like a young Chris Evert. That's not weird to anyone else?

Anyway. Obviously, we are on the tail end of an illustrious career and I really am going to try to settle down and just enjoy it. 

The Hall of Fame Has Me LOLing

Last thing, I promise. Look, I'm not going to link to the post I wrote after I read about Maria Sharapova's drug suspension because that would open up the line of inquiry as to whether someone who has had a drug suspension should be in the Hall of Fame to begin with. Given today's climate, it would be a cold and empty place. But anyway. 

Sharapova was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame over the weekend before the start of the Open, and Serena Williams came out to introduce her. Look, if Serena can get over their non-rivalry being called a rivalry, I guess I should too. But still, I had to crack up when I saw this. She came out there like

League Watch: Mixed Opportunities

A couple months ago, I was feeling pretty good about my tennis game, but feeling kind of meh about the fact that for all the progress I'd made, my teams never advanced to sectionals. At that point, it had probably been nearly 10 years since I'd been on a team that advanced that far in a season.

But then, as I noted (and made a podcast episode about!), I joined my friend's team at the last minute and helped them have a nice showing at my first sectionals event in Florida. Little did I know then that I would be back at Lake Nona. I mean, like, in weeks.

I joined a mixed doubles team earlier in the summer and although there was only one other team in our group. Now, back in the day, I played a lot of mixed doubles. Mostly, I played with my ex-husband, whose kamikaze-style pretty much prepared me for any future partners (and opponents!) I might have. But I also played USTA, and in every division I possibly could. It was routine for me to play 7.0, 8.0 and 9.0 matches at three different clubs in the same day. (This was actually intentional and how I chose to live my life at the time.) But I loved it -- the fast pace and the knowledge that I was the worst player on the court and needed to be at my best for our team to win.

It has been a long time since I ate, slept and breathed mixed doubles and that was quite evident during my first match in this 8.0 league. I came into it with a fairly dominant record in doubles all year, so I was confident about my game. 

However. 

I played against a couple of old tennis buddies who I hadn't seen in years, both of whom I felt comfortable against, especially considering that my partner was a 4.5 player. But it became pretty clear that both my opponents had quite improved over the few years since I'd last seen them, especially the guy. He was killing me with his lefty spin and power and his partner was just being consistent. Not missing one thing. Myself? I was missing lots of things -- line calls because the ball was flying past me, volleys because the ball was flying at me and groundstrokes because ... you understand. My partner was also pretty error-prone that day and the first set was done in no time. Although I felt like I settled down in the second set, it wasn't enough and we lost it 6-4. 

It was a rude awakening for sure. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do about the lack of comfort with the increased speed and pace of a match outside of exposure to it. I knew I still had some good mixed doubles in me, but didn't really find it until about four matches in. But when my partner and I got into the groove, we were on. Which was good. The bad news was that we were only five matches in the season. And these matches were important. Whoever won the division would advance to sectionals. And we were going back and forth with them each week. Going into the last match, we were down to the wire. We were tied 2-2 going into the last two matches. 

The first match was against one of the aforementioned old buddies, the big guy with the lefty junk. I knew his partner was a solid 4.0, so I felt like we were going to be there a while. Fortunately, my partner gave me some good advice to counter his serve and his forehand (specifically, he said do not hit to the forehand. Good advice) and my groundstrokes that had gone MIA all season long were finally connecting. Team win.

So we really couldn't afford to lose the last match because when it came to head-to-head tiebreaks, we would have lost out. They were ahead of us in sets and game percentage. But the last match for my partner and I was the team we had lost to a few weeks ago -- a mother and son duo. The son was big and had huge groundstrokes and mom was steady. We lost in a third-set tiebreak last time, so, again, I felt this was going to be a long one. It wasn't. We won in straight sets and man did it feel good to play good mixed doubles again. I felt like I was comfortable with the pace and was able to slow down enough to find gaps in the court so we could make winning volleys.

As sectionals approached, we practiced together, but you never know what you're going to get out there. Plus, one of my partners was not available during most of those practices, so the first time we had played together since our utter domination in June was, well, at sectionals. First up was this wily team, with an older guy who was obviously holding out in warmups. His slice was particularly annoying and he was killing me with it, keeping me back on the baseline trying to get them back in play without giving his partner easy putaways. It wasn't easy. His partner wasn't easily intimidated by my partner targeting her at net. It took us a few games to get back in sync. I'd say I got scared straight after losing my serve at 4-all after a game that had to have been at least 20 minutes long and a dozen deuces. I got really pissed and started playing better after that. We pulled it together just in time to win the first set 7-5. It helped that the guy seemed to lose steam as well after that marathon game. After that, we closed out pretty easily. 

On the other courts, one line had lost and the other had split sets. Right after we had finished our match, it started raining. We had been dodging rain the whole morning but this downpour meant that was it for the day. On the outdoor courts. Our last court went indoors to play a set tiebreaker which they won before I could even make it to where they were. So, first day: Not bad. We were 1-0 and tied for first. Plus, without a Miami team to contend with (usually the strongest region in Florida), things were looking good.

Day two! Our first team up was also undefeated. The highest-rated team in each of our four divisions went to the semis, so beating this team would be helpful. Our opponents were a shorter lady with a cream-puff serve and a guy who had a very good spinny serve, just enough to keep us pinned where we didn't want to be. Picking on the lady in this setup was definitely the right move. But she was a tricky one. She was consistent with her returns and also extremely chipper, which, I'm sorry. It's 10 a.m. and I don't do that in the morning without caffeine. I still feel like the attitude was strategic and designed to annoy me, which was successful. She was VERY nice. 

The match had the potential to be a spicy one regardless, because right away, our opponent called my partner's serve out, which did not look out. He circled a mark. Our teammate watching courtside let out a low whistle and our guy on the other side got defensive. "We're gonna be like that already?" he said. "With the sportsmanship?" Which wasn't the right term anyway, but also? How are you going to circle a mark that shows that YOU WERE WRONG and then have the nerve to get pissy about getting called out?!

Anyway, we won the first set 6-4, and it became clear that the other two matches were over because our teammates were now sitting courtside. We knew the team next to us lost, but we didn't know if we still had an opportunity to win the match. My partner noticed our teammates nearby and promptly said, "I don't want to know what happened." I didn't either because I didn't want to get tight if it was 1-all. But I went back to my bag and overheard my opponents saying that they had already won the match. Bummer. I didn't tell my partner, but we went back out, determined to take advantage of the momentum of our strong play towards the end of the first set. 

Which did not exactly go well. We started out pretty flat and made some dumb mistakes and before we knew it, we were down 4-1. We pulled it to 2-4 and came up against the guy's serve. I realized during his last serve game that he really liked hitting that spinny serve down my middle on the deuce side, and the bounce was really high. I could manage that much better on my forehand side but this guy never hit his serves out wide. It was a risk, but I decided to stand closer to the midcourt so I could get around that spin, and hope that if he did go wide, I could get to it. This change in position kept us in his service game and before we knew it, we were in a long battle for this game, with multiple deuces. We did not win that game, even though we came close several times. Obviously, if we had, it would have made a huge difference -- serving at 4-3 feels better than 2-5. That last game didn't take long, and then we were in a tiebreak. We were up 5-1 and 5-2 in the 10-point tiebreak, and then it just fell apart. That chipper lady really came up clutch at the end with some key volleys. Team loss. Boo.

So, we were at 1-1 but hey, not totally out of it yet! If we could win and the undefeated team could lose, we still had a chance. We had about 90 minutes to reset -- and all of us were playing in the next match. I, for one, was ready. I wanted to beat someone's ass and our next opponents seemed up for the whupping. Actually, I had no idea how they played and we didn't need to know because the guy pulled up lame and we won by default. The rest of our team wasn't so lucky and we took a tough second loss.

Still, we had a great time out there and I definitely discovered some things I could still do to improve my doubles game. Our team was missing our captain at sectionals because she and her family were out of town. With the event happening so close to the airport (like, super close. We had to stop serves at times because planes were roaring overhead) she was able to rejoin us as the last match closed, so we got to leave as a team. It wasn't the result we wanted, but we had a great time out there and we do intend for utter domination next year.

For me, believe it or not, I will be back in Lake Nona in December playing sectionals in a league that I did not realize was a serious league. More about that in the next League Watch.