The United States Open Tennis Championships is a hard court tennis tournament located at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York City. The US Open is where the best tennis players from all across the world compete for prize money at every round and the coveted US Open trophy. The tournament is one of four annual grand slams, the other three being the Australian Open, the French Open, and Wimbledon. The five primary championships of the US open, men’s singles, women’s singles, men’s doubles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles, begin on the last Monday of August and continue for two more weeks. The tournament consists of 7 rounds with draws of 128 people for each of the 5 brackets, beginning with the first round up until the final. Due to the pandemic, the athletes live and practice in a strict player bubble with no fans on site. This may seem difficult for the players to endure, but they are each given a VIP suite, usually reserved for corporate sponsors, meaning a tennis apartment complex.
The top half of the men’s singles draw for this year’s US Open began with top seed Novak Djokovic fighting for his fourth US Open title and 18th grand slam, chasing rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal who he is 3 grand slams and 2 grand slams behind respectively. Federer is out of the tournament after undergoing a right knee procedure and Nadal has opted out due to travel concerns amid the coronavirus pandemic. In order to win the trophy, Djokovic would have had to go through young talents Alexander Zverev (seed 5) and Stefanos Tsitsipas (seed 4), both hopeful for their first grand slam win The bottom half of the draw is headlined by 2 seed Dominc Thiem and 3 seed Daniil Medvedev, the runner up of last year’s epic championship versus Nadal. The first, and most shocking upset came in the third round where the 27th seed Coric beat the 4th seed Tsitsipas in a five set thriller. In the 4th round, an unexpected accident occurred when Novak Djokovic, who is looked up to by many fans, unintentionally hit a lineswoman in the throat with a stray tennis ball out of anger. Due to the rules, Djokovic was disqualified from the tournament, eliminating his hopes at a 4th US Open title. This allowed 20th seed Pablo Carreñ Busta to advance and go on a quick run, upsetting 12th seed Denise Shapovalov and almost beating 5th seed Zverev before losing the semifinal in a grueling fifth set. In the final, we saw 5th seed Zverev go toe to toe with Dominc Thiem. This match was another tough 5 setter with Zverev taking the original two set lead before Thiem won three consecutive sets in an incredible comeback, winning the US Open Men’s singles trophy and the 4.8 million dollar prize money.
The ultimate duo of 1 seed Mate Pavić and Bruno Soares were the main story of the men’s doubles side, which consisted of 64 participants (32 teams). Disregarding their first two matches, the duo of Mate Pavić and Bruno Soares defeated all their opponents in straight sets, with their last match being a win against the 8th seed Jamie Murray and Neal Skupski in the final. With this win, the two champions won 400,000 dollars.
On the women’s side, 3rd seed Serena Williams and 4 seeed Naomi Osaka both strived to win yet another US open. The draw began with a couple big upsets: 1st seed Karolina Pliskova lost in the second round and 2nd seed Sofia Kenin lost in the fourth round. Another shocker of the tournament was when unseeded Victoria Azarenka ended Serena’s title hopes as she went on a huge run in the tournament, beating everyone in her path until she came across Osaka in the final. Despite Azarenka’s great play, Naomi Osaka played almost flawlessly, winning the championship for the second time in a row.
The 2020 women’s doubles tournament was loaded with upsets and unpredictability. For example, 1st seeds Timea Babos and Kristina Mladenovic were forced to withdraw due to the fact that Kristina Mdladenovic came in contact with a player who received coronavirus despite the player testing negatives 10 times. Considering the circumstances, the US Open Women's Doubles competition ran surprisingly smoothly and rewarded unseeded Laura Siegemund and Vera Zvonavera with the title of Grand Slam champions.
In conclusion, in spite of the current pandemic the US open did an amazing job of providing quality tennis and entertainment to the public, during a time when other sports have been unable to do so.
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