About a decade ago, when Tommy Paul, Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe were rowdy teenagers making mischief in the United States Tennis Association dorms in Florida, they dreamed that days like Sunday at the US Open would eventually come.
Coco Gauff and Ben Shelton were barely 10 years old at the time and were still thinking about how big a role tennis would play in their childhood, although one was sure it would play a pretty big role.
Let’s take a look at Sunday at the US Open, and these five players took center stage in what looked like an all-day American tennis festival in the fourth round, a part of the tournament that featured players, particularly on the men’s side, who had been out for so long Europe occupied the main roles. Not on Sunday, when the last Grand Slam tournament of the year was about serious business and the round of 16.
The program featured wall-to-wall colors of red, white and blue; Black and white and multiracial players; Players from wealthy families (Fritz), from more modest backgrounds (Shelton, Gauff, Paul) and one (Tiafoe) who started with almost nothing; Some players have years of tour experience and one was so raw (Shelton) that he needed a passport last year so he could leave the United States for the first time to play in the Australian Open.
“We always believed this would happen,” said Martin Blackman, general manager of player development for the USTA, who has known all five players since their early years. “But you never know when.”
When Serena Williams, a majestic and groundbreaking figure in sports and culture for more than two decades, retired from professional tennis at this tournament last year, she left big questions about who could fill the huge void she left behind, especially in the American one Tennis. Within a few days, some pretty good leads came. Gauff and Tiafoe – charismatic figures with bright eyes and big smiles who play with equal amounts of heart, skill and athleticism – made it to the deep end of the 2022 tournament, the quarterfinals for Gauff and the semifinals for Tiafoe.
However, that was last year and there was no guarantee that she or any of her compatriots would recreate the magic of some of those days. Sunday represented a good average.
As Fritz looked at the draw in the middle of last week, his eyes wandered to the area directly above him, where Shelton, Paul and Tiafoe were huddled together. Some big names were out and his people were still very much alive. He immediately thought, “One of them is going to be in the semifinals,” and that was pretty cool.
Paul and Shelton got the action going at noon Sunday in the opening game at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The stands filled more with each change and grew louder each time Shelton’s booming serve put big numbers on the radar.
Two adrenaline-fueled shots reached him at a speed of 149 miles per hour as he built a commanding two-set lead before Paul came to life with the crowd gathering behind him. The stadium was almost at its capacity of 23,000 spectators when his last forehand player sailed wide. It wasn’t the result Paul wanted, but the match had its moments.
Early on, he looked at the video board and saw that he and his friends were on the list of Americans remaining in the tournament. He let it sink in, those names from the dorm room, names that would be heard in the final rounds of junior national tournaments in his teenage years.
“We all grew up together,” Paul said shortly after the loss. “Kinda cool.”
Every audience at a Grand Slam tournament supports the players from their home country. At the Australian Open it was: “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy, Oy Oy!” The chant is a constant refrain. French crowds break out and spontaneously play “La Marseillaise.” At Wimbledon, the British will rush onto the court to recruit a young player they’ve never heard of with the same energy as Andy Murray.
The US Open crowd, by reputation the loudest and rudest of all, is doing its best to get over the finish line.
Shelton, 20, hugged Paul at the net, wanting to hear what the loud screams of the largest crowd he had ever played before would sound like. You can hardly blame him for that.
“Great atmosphere, I felt the love all day,” he said on the pitch a few moments later.
And it stayed that way when Gauff played against Caroline Wozniacki, a former world number 1. Wozniacki is on the comeback after giving birth to two children and has long been a crowd favorite in New York.
However, she had never played against Gauff on a day that felt like a flashback to a few generations ago, back to the days when American men and women always held the promise of becoming and being the class of the sport biggest stars counted. This was part tennis match, part revival meeting, with even more shouts of “Go Coco!” than anyone could count on in a building where Gauff, who is just 19, plans to make her home for the next decade.
A slight complication, welcome for the hometown crowd, arose around 4 p.m. when Tiafoe strutted into Louis Armstrong Stadium to play Australia’s Rinky Hijikata just as Gauff was finding her rhythm. Like a parent faced with a choice between their children, Blackman needed a plan.
“First with Coco, then over to Frances,” he said as he hurried down a hallway beneath the stadium.
There was also a slight complication for Gauff in the form of a wobble near the end of the second and beginning of the third set that led to her hitting backhand after backhand into the middle of the net. Wozniacki quickly took the lead, breaking Gauff’s serve in the first game of the third set. But Gauff and her 20,000 friends didn’t want it to last long, not that day. With a lot of “Come on!” through gritted teeth, she navigated the final six games and bulldozed her way back to the quarterfinals.
“There were a few chants, which was really nice,” Gauff said later. “The audience is incomparable to any of the other slams.”
She won two of the three US Open preparatory tournaments and is full of confidence despite losing sets in three of her first four singles matches.
“I’ve been in this position before,” said Gauff, a French Open finalist last year. “I can go further.”
Meanwhile, Tiafoe was over on Armstrong.
If Ashe is the great cathedral of American tennis, Armstrong is its party room, a 10,000-seat concrete box with an upper seating level that appears to hang almost directly above the court and a retractable roof that ensures the sound travels evenly upward and below echoes when open. And no one but Carlos Alcaraz knows how to throw a party these days like 25-year-old Tiafoe, who broke into the top 10 of the rankings for the first time earlier this year.
The drunker and more temperamental the fans, the better for him. He clenches his fists, shakes his racket, and even wags his tongue every now and then after curling his forehand and bouncing his two-handed backhand to get it the way he likes it, with as many shouts as “Go Big Foe.” !” how he can snatch them away. This is what he has long believed American tennis should be like, and one of the reasons he is Paul’s favorite player in the sport.
Next up for Tiafoe is Shelton, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“He’ll come after me and I’ll come after him,” he said. “I plan to be in the semifinals.”
Then it was Fritz’s turn, taking the spot for Armstrong early in the evening and entering shortly after Tiafoe left the court against Dominic Stricker, 21, from Switzerland, one of the surprises of the tournament. Stricker had to win three games in the qualifying tournament to get into the main draw, and in the second round he defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas, a two-time Grand Slam singles finalist. He had already played 22 sets of tennis in New York, including two five-setters, before he hit his first ball against Fritz.
Much of the Tiafoe crowd streamed down the stairs to the main court at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Waiting below were thousands more, ready to take their place, Honey Deuces, Aperol spritzers, beer, poke bowls and fries in hand.
Three American headliners had already moved on, and about three hours later Fritz joined them with a straight-sets victory over Stricker to reach the Grand Slam singles quarterfinals for the second time in his career and the first since Wimbledon in the Year 2022.
“There is no place I would rather go running than here,” said Fritz.
Madison Keys and Jessica Pegula were scheduled to face each other in the fourth round on Monday, and Peyton Stearns of Ohio and the University of Texas was scheduled to face Marketa Vondrousova, this year’s Wimbledon champion. This hometown party continued.