Djokovic missed out on the calendar slam at the final hurdle but declared himself ‘the happiest man alive’ after his defeatSomething was wrong. The machine was malfunctioning. The power was blinking on and off. Routine backhands were dropping into the net. Forehands were flying long. On Amazon, which was hosting UK television coverage of the US Open men’s final, users were already beginning to voice their disapproval in the reviews. “Awful quality,” noted one. “Glitches throughout, not good enough service.” “Very disappointing quality coverage.” They weren’t talking about Novak Djokovic, but they might as well have been.Of course, over the years we have all glimpsed Djokovic in various states of disrepair, and most of the time we think we know...
Teenager’s victory came out of nowhere so it needs perspective – we cannot expect her to keep doing this in majorsSo: that happened. As Emma Raducanu emerged from Arthur Ashe Stadium clutching the US Open trophy to her chest, the blood on her knee still visible from where she had fallen, it was possible to feel a little dazed, a little concussed, to feel the edges of the night dissolving a little. In this new unreality an 18-year-old qualifier from Bromley is tennis’s newest star, a figure of adulation and idolisation well beyond the wet island for whom she has just claimed a first grand slam women’s title in 44 years.You could lose yourself in the records and the milestones:...
The 18-year-old showed tremendous composure from the start in her sensational straight sets victory to win the US OpenEmma Raducanu walked on to court for her first grand slam final with a smile, responded to the roar of the crowd with a gentle wave of her left hand, ready to go. If she was going to go down, she would go down on her terms.We need not have worried. In the most intense of arenas, in uncharted territory, the 18-year-old won her first grand slam title and the greatest thing about it all was that from the first moment to last, with only one or two moments of mild doubt, it almost seemed inevitable. Continue reading...
Bromley teenager was meant to have met her match in Belinda Bencic but she dismantled the Swiss in a masterclassLess than 10 minutes after Emma Raducanu emerged from the tunnel into Arthur Ashe Stadium for the biggest match of her life against the highest-calibre opponent she’d ever faced, the emerging British star was promptly broken in her opening service game.This is where the fairytale was meant to end: opposite the in-form Belinda Bencic, the newly minted Olympic gold medallist who had lost just once in her last 14 matches, whose class and experience would surely be too much for a teenager ranked 150th in the world. Continue reading...
The building blocks of our culture stop us seeing the famous as people. That is not the function we have assigned themNaomi Osaka gave a press conference on Friday night. She’s started doing them again, by the way; I mention this only because after opting out of media duties during the French Open this year, lots of people immediately decided that she was weaponising her own mental health as a sly ruse to evade media scrutiny. Still, a lot of red-faced talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists got to lecture a 23-year-old woman on her personal choices, so maybe that was the most important thing.It was a tough watch. Osaka had just lost in tempestuous circumstances against Leylah Fernandez at the...