What The 2025 US Open Says About The Future Of Tennis

0:07I'm Naila Budu. This is 1A. The U.S. Open finals take place this weekend in Flushing Meadows, New York. In the past two weeks, two names have dominated the men's tournament. Hello, everyone. First of all, Carlos, congrats. Again, an amazing performance, amazing battle, amazing everything to you and your team. Amazing job. I'm very happy for you, and you deserve it. So congrats. Those names, Yannick Sinner and Carlos Alcarez. We just heard the Italian player Sinner congratulating Alcarez after being defeated by the Spaniard at the French Open earlier this year. Meanwhile, in women's tennis, four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka is staging a comeback after some time away.

0:56She's also introduced us to some of her newest tour friends. Can you just introduce, did you bring another LaBubu with you? Yeah. Who is this? This is Andre Swagasy.

1:11Osaka's bejeweled tournament collection so far includes tributes to tennis legends like you just heard there. There's also been Althea Glitterson, named after Althea Gibson, Billie Jean Bling, after Billie Jean King, and Arthur Flash, after Arthur Ashe. Lububus aside, Venus Williams is also making headlines joining the doubles tournament with Canadian Leila Fernandez. Later in the show, we'll talk about the theme behind this year's Open, 75 Years of Breaking Barriers. It honors tennis legend Althea Gibson and the strides the sport has made toward becoming more accessible and inclusive. But first, we dive into all the latest from New York.

1:50I'm Naila Boudou, in for Jen White. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Back with more in just a moment.

2:00Let's meet our panel. Here to help us serve up the latest on everything going on at the U.S. Open is Gary Nathan. He's a tennis writer and author of Changeover, a young rivalry in a new era of men's tennis. He's also the co-founder of the sports website Defector. Gary, welcome to 1A. Thank you for having me. Also joining us is Kavitha Davidson. She's a sports journalist and author of the book Loving Sports When They Don't Love You Back, Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. She's also the host of the podcast Sportly. Kavitha, welcome back to the show. Thanks so much. Good to be back. Let's start with this message we got from Tuesday.

2:34I absolutely love tennis. I mean, it is my favorite thing to do. I am following every second of the U.S. Open. I am impressed with the players. I'm impressed with the strategy that is required to compete. I just think tennis is an amazing sport. I started watching actually when Roger Federer was playing. But once the Williams sisters just started dominating tennis, I actually became a fanatic. I had to see every single match that they played. When they lost, I was not happy. And just to see all the excitement around the U.S. Open, particularly with those young players that are on the tour now, how contentative they are.

3:12So it has me captivated. Thanks for that message, Tuesday. Let's start with expectations that you had for the U.S. Open this year, Kiri. Yeah, so on the men's side of the tournament, which is kind of what my book focuses on, we have two players rising above the fray. And that is Yannick Sinner, the number one player in the world, who we heard a little earlier. And then there's Carlos Alcaraz, his counterpart, his rival. and over the last two seasons these two have really transitioned the sport out of the era of Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic those those three legends uh it's known after the fact as the big three era and while those guys were dominating it was very hard to tell what was gonna what the future of the sport was going to be but it now seems to be Sinner and Alcaraz and they have both been cruising through the draw at the U.S.

4:09Open and seem inevitably destined to meet in another final this weekend. Get another Grand Slam final, right. Kavitha, what about you? What expectations have you had for the Open this year? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. Gary is the expert on these two players who have won every Grand Slam since 2024. On the women's side, you know, we have seen a powerhouse in Sabalenka just completely overtake the sport. but also, you know, Iga Svantec, obviously, and Coco, I think, came into this U.S. Open with great expectations. Now, she did also make the very curious decision to change her coach the week before the tournament in order to retool her serve, which can or cannot have served her, depending on your perspective here.

4:53Right, and we saw Naomi Osaka also change coaches. I want to talk about that, but let's just go back to the men for a minute. Geary, you go into so much detail about the sport and also specific matches. And there's such loving detail of all of these matches, which I presume is from you watching a lot of footage. Is that what inspired you to write this book? I would say the inspiration came from, you know, as a sports writer, you often want to tell new stories. And I almost settled into kind of a tedium of the big three era. Not to say they weren't incredible players who played very entertaining matches against each other, but you want to see some novelty, some fresh blood in the sport too.

5:36So I think I was really waiting for that vision of the future. And I really got it when I saw Sinner and Alcaraz play specifically one match at the US Open in 2022. And they were doing things on court athletically, technically, that seemed well beyond any of their peers. So that's when I kind of got the idea to follow this rivalry. And towards the end of 2023, I got the sense that it would be the defining rivalry for this era of men's tennis. And that's when I started writing the book. And, you know, fortunately for me and for fans of tennis, they've just kept delivering with some of the most spectacular tennis we've seen on the men's tour.

6:17Right, and I'm thinking of the French Open final between those two. This year was the longest in tournament history, right? It was five and a half hours. To give you an idea of how long this was, I was actually in France, and I started watching that match at the airport in Toulouse. And then when I landed in Paris, it was still going on. I think there was still another good two hours afterwards. So Alcaraz won that match, Sinner won Wimbledon. What are you expecting at the U.S. Open here now? Yeah, both of those matches were epics in their own right. And Sinner, as a player, is slightly favored on hard courts.

6:53That's where he's won the majority of his titles, and that's the surface that the U.S. Open has played on. So I would give him a slight edge should they meet on Sunday. But at this point, Alcaraz has had one of the best summers we've ever seen in men's tennis. Or heading into the Open, he had 39 wins and two losses since the start of the clay season. So I would expect a pretty incredible match, probably another five-set epic like we saw in Paris. And they're just so clearly ahead of the rest of their peers in a way that we've rarely seen in the men's game. And it's kind of funny that we've left that one era of dominance and moved directly into another one, even though some fans and some pundits maybe expected the field to be a little more open in the interim, but it's been a smooth transition.

7:46Yeah. And you think about that big three era, oftentimes you think about the idea that a player has one signature style. Gary, you read that Carlos Alcaraz has so many different versions of his play style that an opponent eventually has to beat several of them to win. Do you have a favorite of these versions of Alcaraz of who shows up on the court? I have to say my favorite Alcaraz is a slightly distracted Alcaraz who is maybe getting himself into conundrums on the tennis court and has to come up with very ingenious solutions. And he's just so wildly talented. His hands at the net in particular are one of the things that make him stand out.

8:27So anytime he's kind of improvising and coming up with a shot that he's never trained in practice before and really riling up the crowd, that's when he's in his best form. And he's done a lot of that. at the Open this week. Yeah. Kavita, I feel like I've just felt so sorry for watching players against Yannick Sinner, who has such a dominant style of play. Is there anyone who stands a chance against him, especially as how he's been playing in the Open so far? Yeah, I was actually at last night's match against Musetti, and there were these younger male tennis players behind me who had never seen Sinner play in person, and they were just in awe of the sheer power that he brings to the game and that he plays on just a completely other level from almost anybody else in the field.

9:16Now, obviously, Alcaraz is his biggest threat here, and they're on a collision course to see each other in the finals. But Sinner has absolutely steamrolled through his opponents through this U.S. Open. He's only dropped one set in the entire tournament. I think Alcaraz actually hasn't dropped a set yet. But I think everybody is looking forward to that matchup. But even before then, you know, Alcaraz and Djokovic kind of turning back the hands of time will meet in the semis. And that's always a fun matchup to watch. Gary, I learned from your book about the very long history between Alcaraz and Sinner.

9:52How far back does this rivalry go? And is it fair to call it a rivalry? Because they're also friends, right? incredibly uh alcaraz's first match on the minor league of pro tennis which is called the challenger tour was against yannick sinner so they have this history that goes all the way back to alcaraz being 15 years old sinner being 17 years old and playing uh one of these minor league events and alcaraz ended up winning that in three sets so their history goes back about as far as Alcaraz's life in pro tennis. And it's, it's almost cosmically entangled these two. Uh, I think what's so interesting about the rivalry that a lot of fans are picking up on now is the really nice, friendly, easy relationship they seem to have.

10:40And I don't want to overstate it. They're not best friends, but, uh, they are capable of extending real warmth and generosity in a way that would be foreign to sports fans of the 90s who are used to a lot more antagonism between sports rivals. So it's been pretty incredible to watch. I mean, just to give you a quick example, they played a high stakes semifinal last year in Indian Wells and there was a rain delay in the match. And typically you might imagine those players would go their separate ways and stay focused, but they hung out in the locker room and talked about life reportedly. So it's just a very different model of rivalry than we have seen in the past and in tennis in particular.

11:22Let's talk about the women's side. We're seeing Naomi Osaka back with a new coach and a strong focus to her play. Here she is talking about her most recent win. What does it mean to you to be back at this level playing as well as you are? Yeah, I mean, it means so much. I'm actually surprised I'm not crying. Yeah, I mean, it's there's been so much hard work that you guys haven't seen, but I'm just really grateful to my team and I'm just happy to be healthy. So, yeah, you guys are hopefully going to see her play again. Kevita, what has can you just kind of catch us off on what Naomi Osaka has been doing up until this U.S.

12:10Open? Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think everybody who's listened to the broadcast knows that she's given birth. She's been a mother. I think that some tennis fans get annoyed when that's brought up all the time with women players, so I'll just mention that. But really, you know, she's been centering herself mentally, which she's obviously been a huge advocate for athletes and mental health. And this coaching change, you know, she changed her coach from Patrick Maratical, which who who was Serena Williams's coach to Tomas Vickorowski. And she's basically said that he's retooled her game both mentally and physically on the physical side.

12:47You know, he hasn't changed her approach or the way that she hits the ball. He's changed her shot selection and her shot placement, and specifically, you know, making sure that her play is designed to hit her forehand from a stationary position, which is her strongest position. And mentally, she said, you know, he's like a teddy bear, and every time he smiles, it calms her down. And I think, you know, I, again, was there watching her last night, and when you watch her on the court, she is playing lighter, not necessarily lighter on her feet, but certainly lighter mentally. And it really is a joy to see her return to form.

13:21And I also think that she's playing. I was talking to a friend of mine about this, and he basically said she's playing like she wants to remind the world that she was a world number one. Gary, can I just ask you about she has become, to Kavitha's point, she's been very public about the mental health challenges she's faced. How do you think that's sort of how do you think that how much of an advocate she has become? because as we're seeing professional athletes become much more transparent about the strain that they're under. I think one of the central challenges for any tennis player is maintaining a healthy relationship with the sport just because the developmental pipeline for it is so grueling and you start so early and it's such a kind of blinkered life that you live to stay on track to be a pro.

14:09So Naomi's been very open and raw about the difficulties along the way. She'd taken in a hiatus from doing press conferences. She took a break from the sport altogether at times. And I just think aside from all the problems that they have to solve on court, staying in the right headspace is one of the most difficult things. And you hear older tennis players talk sympathetically about the younger generation coming up with social media and attention at a scale that they never had to deal with. So I think there are new pressures that these players face and Osaka, I'm really glad to hear Osaka come out on the other side of these challenges.

14:50I love the quote she had the other day about feeling like tennis was a video game. Sometimes you have to go back a level, but then you build back up. I just think it's such a long career that these players lead and there's a lot of management of emotions and psychological pressures. And I think one of the themes of the book with Sinner and Alcaraz is that neither of them faced an unhealthy amount of parental pressure, which is what causes a lot of these players to crack. And they're able to treat the game as something they do out of love and passion, which I think has helped them stay steady as well.

15:28We got this message from Esther who writes, I have been captivated by the resurgence of Venus Williams, who seems propelled simply by her sheer love for the game. I'm an aspiring doubles player, so I've had a lot of fun watching women's doubles. Can I just ask you about doubles and the changes the U.S. Open has made to sort of elevate that a little bit? And then they've had a little help from players like Venus Williams? Yeah, for sure. I think that some very old school tennis fans or diehards think that doubles, especially the mixed doubles tournaments, are a little bit of a gimmick. But they're really fun to watch.

16:00I think the scheduling of it has caused some concern. You've got players like Jessica Pagula playing the day before she has in between, you know, her off days in between a quarter and a semi. But, you know, it has been wonderful to watch. I was at Venus's first singles match last Monday, actually. And, you know, it's always an incredible thing to watch someone like her come back to the sport. And as she said, she came back on her own terms and she came back healthy. And that was really important. And then watching her and Leila Fernandez together has been wonderful, even if they got eliminated.

16:34But it's been a great run. And I don't know if she's done yet, which is pretty great. We're going to head to a quick break here. Coming up, Venus Williams and Novak Djokovic are stunning spectators, not only with their endurance and performances, but also with their age. We talk about the performances many are calling age defying. Back with more in a moment.

16:59Let's get back to the conversation with this message we got from Wendy in Florida. When COVID shut down the state of Florida for two months, my son was sitting on the couch with his iPad. And I decided that since he couldn't do his spring sports, that I would get him into tennis because they were still having tennis lessons. And they had a little tennis group even that was for elementary kids. So I went to the tennis club and took Gregory to the club. He was unhappy. He didn't want to go that day. He'd never done tennis. He wasn't happy with me. But after his lesson, he fell in love with tennis.

17:31He was in elementary school. He's continued to play tennis through middle school. He's now going to play in high school. He's a freshman in high school. We have fallen in love with the sport. It has been wonderful for him. Thanks, Wendy, for that message. The United States Tennis Association, the USTA, says tennis participation has grown steadily since the pandemic in 2020. The USTA estimates there are currently 25 million active tennis players in the country. Kavitha, how would you describe the trajectory of tennis and its growth, particularly over the past decade or so in the U.S.? Yeah, it's interesting because tennis has always been seen as this very, it is this very elite sport.

18:11And anyone who's been to the U.S. Open in recent years knows that it is prohibitively expensive. So it tends to attract a very one percent audience. But, you know, as as terrible as this as as this was for for every other aspect of life, the covid pandemic was really a huge boon for tennis. You know, they're now marketing themselves as the healthiest sport in the world. And that is because they are naturally socially distanced and also, you know, involves a lot of aerobic exercise. So, you know, the growth of tennis participation since 2020, I think, has led to huge growth in the viewership as well.

18:48And you see that with some of the attendance numbers. I think you've also seen a real effort in tennis, as you have in other sports, to appeal to Gen Z and to appeal to younger audiences who are more and more kind of stratified in whether they're watching sports in general or not. So you see things like the U.S. Open becoming real events. There are reasons to get ground passes and hang out at the tennis center instead of having to just go to matches. And that has absolutely helped the health of the sport as well. Gary, also I wonder how players like Francis Tiafoe, who's kind of a hometown hero here in D.C., but players like that who talk very openly about their background and not coming from really wealthy backgrounds, if that helps encourage maybe this idea of it being more accessible as well.

19:38Yeah, absolutely. Tiafoe is one of my favorite characters in the men's game and one of my favorite interviews I did for the book. And he's among this cohort that is definitely diversifying the game. And I think if you go to your local courts, me as a New Yorker, there's a really lovely contrast between the stereotype of tennis as this game for the 1 % and then the reality of who you see playing on the public courts. I've played all over the boroughs of New York and it's a really wonderful cross-section of all the people who live here. And yeah, Francis is a big part of that story. He has such a specific, lovely story.

20:16Child of immigrants from Sierra Leone. His father was a custodian at a tennis center and Francis was living there with his brother. and he came to love tennis through that kind of unusual path and is now one of the very best players in the world who is putting up a great fight against the center and the Alcaraz rivals. And the theme of this year's Open is 75 years of breaking barriers, celebrating tennis icon Althea Gibson, who in August of 1950 became the first African American to compete at the U.S. National Championships, which would later become the U.S. Open. Here she is in an interview talking about her legacy after retiring from the sport.

20:58I always feel this way. When you retire undefeated, why not let it stay that way? That's the way the public will remember it. If I go back and actually get defeated by, you know, a lesser opponent, well, that wouldn't make me feel too good. Althea was 30 years old when she won what would later be known as the U.S. Open. also getting attention this year at the Open. Venus Williams, who we mentioned, and Novak Djokovic, not only for their stellar performances, but because of their age. Venus Williams, who at 45 had a great doubles run we have been talking about, was stopped on Tuesday by Taylor Townsend.

21:37Townsend talked about what it meant to beat the woman who inspired her to get into tennis. The earliest memory is obviously watching on TV, especially here at the U.S. Open. And I remember I loved her back out Reebok dress. That was what drew me to tennis. It was the cute outfits. It wasn't the tennis. It was the cute outfits. So, I mean, I remember watching that. But growing up, watching Venus and Serena had always been, you know, for me and my sister, it was an inspiration. And we really wanted to be like them when we grew up. And so it's an honor to be able to share the court with her today.

22:10Evita, there are many headlines that are describing Venus's doubles run as age defying. What can you tell us about her performance this year? Yeah, I mean, listen, I think that you wouldn't be wrong to have had lower expectations for Venus. She, you know, she's battled a lot of injuries. She's battled health issues, chronic health issues in the last several years. And she only played in three tournaments this year before entering the U.S. Open. So, you know, I think a little bit of that rush showed in the third set of her first and only singles match. But, you know, she has clearly regained the joy.

22:46And as she said, she was just very happy to be competing on her own terms and when she's actually healthy. And watching her with with Layla kind of has has reinforced that. So, like I said, I think that any anybody it's kind of anybody's guess about whether she will come back for more tournaments next year. But she didn't seem to you know, she didn't seem to want to really stop that momentum. them. As we're talking about injuries, I wanted to ask you about the Czech player Karolina Muhova, who faced us off against Naomi Osaka last night. She made headlines after her wrist surgery in 2024 and how she would perform when she returned earlier this year.

23:24It seemed like there was another injury with her leg. Kavitha was causing problems for her during her loss last night? Yeah, it looked like she was favoring that leg. And I think that Naomi was picking up on that, because you could see that she was absolutely kind of targeting that side of her, which is really unfortunate. You know, we did have already a walk over against Sabalinka in this tournament. You never want to see injuries play a major part of it, but it is the last slam of the year. And, you know, as Gary mentioned, it's one of the most grueling tennis. Tennis is one of the most grueling schedules that it could be.

24:03But Lujova can also be commended for her comeback from this pretty serious wrist injury that she had a few years ago. Gary, what kind of injuries are tennis players most susceptible to? What have we seen? As you mentioned, as Kavitha was just mentioning, this is the end of the season. So you're kind of a lot of people are making it to the finish line, sometimes struggling with a lot of different injuries. Yeah, I think the game has transformed dramatically in terms of the physical demands it makes on the players. It's gone from kind of this genteel lawn game to this game of highly explosive movement, especially lateral movement, which puts a lot of demands on the lower body in particular.

24:41So you'll see hip injuries, knee injuries are quite common. And then you'll also see a decent amount of shoulder injuries. They are putting a lot of force into these serves, into these ground strokes. So I would say my view is that the modern tennis calendar, which runs year-round, basically leaves them two or three weeks for offseason, is incompatible with the physical realities of playing tennis. And I'm very curious to see if that change is going forward because these overuse injuries really add up and it takes a toll on the big tournaments as well when you see, as Kavita mentioned, a walkover at the very late stages of the U.S.

25:21Open. How much of that play is dictated by the economic realities of the sport? I think that's a huge part. In fact, they have expanded some of the tournaments that used to be one-week tournaments into almost two-week tournaments. Those are the Masters tournaments on the men's side. And I think the fact is they've realized they can sell more tickets on more days. And once you can pump up revenues that way, it's very hard to kind of put the toothpaste back in the tube and streamline the calendars down again. And I think we've seen players like Iglesiante, Carlos Alcaraz speak out against the calendar and the stresses that it puts on them.