Alcaraz up 2-1 to Medvedev. I really would like to see Djokovic vs. Alcaraz again, to be honest.
I mean, I probably wouldn’t pick it from the start of the tournament, but with these four left, I’m cool with it.
Alcaraz vs. Djokovic
A re-match! Well, best I could hope for.
I feel myself missing the Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic days already. I hope Alcaraz gets a couple colleagues of his age to push him so it can be kind of a new “big three”.
Straight Set win for Alcaraz over Djokovic.
Wow, but that third set was a real battle. Wow.
This may well prove a historic game, the passing of the torch, where the GOAT was beaten by a player who may well become the GOAT in ten years.
Epic third set and Alcaraz showing a tremendous amount of character after a horrendous service game where he choked away three championship points to let Djokovic back in.
After that opening 12-minute game I thought the rest of the match was going be like that - certainly not the first two sets, it turned out.
Funny seeing CA, at match’s end, shaking hands with the McEnroes and Fowler, and then Djokovic’s box 
, before heading to his own.
Not bad - winning his first four major finals. More work ahead, though, if wants to surpass Roger’s first seven. 
Caught, ahem - gentlemen’s dubs final yesterday - great match that came right down to the wire, the winners being ranked 157th in the world last year.
Olympic results
Gold: Zheng Qinwen (China)
Silver: Donna Vekić (Croatia)
Bronze: Iga Świątek (Poland)
The best American result was Danielle Collins, eliminated in a quarterfinal.
Gold: Novak Djokovic (Serbia)
Silver: Carlos Alcaraz (Spain)
Bronze: Lorenzo Musetti (Italy)
The best American result was Tommy Paul, eliminated in a quarterfinal. This was Djokovic’s fifth Olympics and his first Gold. He can happily retire at any point now, although I expect he’ll keep playing for several more years.
America did medal in Men’s Doubles, earning Bronze and Silver. Nearly won the gold, but kind of blew it.
Italics mine.
Huh. Never woulda guessed. Imagine if he stays around for another one, at 41. Not outside the realm of possibilty, but wouldn’t go betting my embarrassingly huge NFT collection on it.
Two big upsets in the US Open men’s draw, with Alcaraz eliminated in straight sets last night by 74th seed Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands, and Djokovic knocked out a few minutes ago by 28th seed Australian Alexei Popyrin.
I didn’t see last night’s game, but I caught most of tonight’s on TV, and Popyrin is an exciting young player having a great year. It will be his first time in the round of 16 in the majors.
Just saw. Wow.
I went to bed at 6-4, 6-4, 2-4, thinking here we go again, Novak is coming back to win in five. Was surprised to this morning that he apparently capitulated meekly.
@Mighty_Mouse I just read the same thing in the AP article. The winner had that idea too:
Djokovic, Popyrin said, “wasn’t playing his best tennis; I was waiting for him to kind of step up.”
“I didn’t want to be one of those moments where Novak kind of stepped up and came back from two-sets-to-love down,” Popyrin said. “That was going through my head.”
U.S. Open is at the quarterfinals.
There’s still two American women remaining: Jessica Pegula (6 seed) and Emma Navarro (12). Pegula will play the Iga Świątek (1, Poland) tomorrow. I don’t see her winning. Navarro is playing is Paula Badosa (26, Spain) today. She has a chance to win; Badosa is a great player, but has been recovering from injury. The two Americans would meet in the final if they get that far.
And there’s two American men remaining: Taylor Fritz (12), and Frances Tiafoe (20). Both will face tough matches in the quarter finals, and if they both win, will meet in a semifinal. I’m thinking Fritz will win, but I’m not hopeful for Tiafoe.
Navarro has more that a chance against Badosa. She’s a clear favorite.
Pegula can’t seem to get past the big opponents in big events. So I’m expecting her to lose. She’s 0-6 in slam quarterfinals.
Three of the four Americans in the quarters come from fabulously wealthy families. The fourth is the son of a custodian of a tennis facility. Reminiscent of my days playing tennis in Pakistan 40 years ago. Two kinds of people in junior tournaments. Kids who arrived in chauffeur driven cars and ball boys who worked for tips.
I’ll write a separate post for some tennis rants.
Alexander Zverev (4, Germany) has serious issues. On the court, he punched his racket repeatedly with such force that his hand was bleeding. And then called a medical timeout for the physio to stitch him up. My feeling is he should have automatically lost his next service game for this breach of good sportsmanship. Self harm on the tennis court should not be rewarded.
Zverev also has a history of committing domestic violence against his partners. My feeling is he should be thrown off the ATP tour, but it’s not directly on-the-court behavior.
Second rant: the U.S. Open is a scheduling nightmare. Multiple matches have ended after 1am in New York. This is terrible for the players, officials, and the stadium crews. It’s not great for the audience in the stadium, but at least they can leave at will.
The root of the problem is they schedule too many matches in the two big stadiums and not enough in the smaller stadiums. For comparison, the Indian Wells tournament uses more stadiums, so that more matches can run simultaneously. (It also helps having three-set matches instead of five, but that’s a separate issue.)
I’m not sure it even helps with ticket sales. The tickets for the late night matches at the top of the huge stadiums are not a good value compared to close seats at reasonable time in the small stadium. I’m thinking the U.S. Open schedulers are simply clueless idiots.
In SoCal, it’s tennis kids in Teslas. My kids both play competitive tennis, albeit at a low level. (They’re the best on their school teams, but are unlikely to make the cut for a college team.) We can no longer afford lessons at the local tennis club since the pandemic increased demand. We can get them lessons at a nearby city-owned facility, but even that is becoming inaccessible due to tennis courts being replaced by pickleball courts. Tennis has always been a sport of the wealthy and it’s becoming more so, not less.
Emma & Taylor have done it!
Time for Francis and Jessica to join them.
And all four Americans in the quarters made it the semifinals. When was the last time more than one American woman and more than one American man made it to the semifinals of one Grand Slam?
Neat little factoid, from ESPN: Muchova and Pegula have yet to drop a set, the first time that has been done by multiple women at this stage of the tournament since 2014.
Somebody in another forum says it was the 2003 US Open, with Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick on the men’s side, and Jennifer Capriati and Lindsay Davenport on the women’s.