US Open Storylines: Sabalenka’s latest shot and the ranking of the sinner and the Alcaraz ranking

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Athletics has live cover from day 1 of 2025 US Open

Will World 1 Aryna Sabalenka go “Slamless” in 2025-and is it even important?

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner could spend eight from eight to the Grand Chelem – but their biggest fight could take place in the world ranking.

Does Coco Gauff sacrifice his major for his biggest tennis?

And does that open up, with its title of mixed double already distributed, announces the end of the majors as the world of tennis has known them for so long?

US Open 2025 promises to be a cracker. Here, AthleticsThe tennis screenwriters, Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare, draw some of the key scenarios to follow during the next fifteen.

How will the reigning champion Aryna Sabalenka define the rest of her season?

Sabalenka had a hell of a season. She made the final of the Australian and French openings and the semi-finals in Wimbledon. She won the openings of Miami and Madrid. She made the final of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, California, and the Grand Prix of Stuttgart in Germany. She is the first in the “race” to the WTA Tour final.

But she always misses the only thing she really wants, which is to win a big slam. She would also like to end the year as world No. 1. But she has a more chance for this elusive majority, and Iga świątek is hot on her heels at the top of the ranking.

The positive points are that she is the title champion of the US Open, and she has won three of the last five majors on a hard ground. His big home record this year indicates to go deeply reliably that missing it at the end. But she also won a lot of victories thanks to equality breaks – equality breaks that have become equality breaks because she had to recover from her broken service, not because the two players held. Only two of the 19 sets that Sabalenka played in 2025 which ended with equality breakage did not have a break.

“If this goal will not be achieved, I still think this season has been really incredible for me,” she said at her press conference before the tournament.

“All these difficult lessons that I have learned this season will not make me stronger for the next one. I will work even harder in the pre-season to make sure that next year will only be a year of success, as really success.”

The n ° 1 of the world “without slams” is an archetype of tennis which refuses to move even if it ultimately means little. Sabalenka seems to be aware of this – but she will also be desperate to make sure she will not fill it.

Matt Futterman

Can Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner continue their remarkable sequence with another important step on the line?

Having never had a match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, not to mention a final, the US Open will not take anything for acquired with regard to a potential meeting between Alcaraz and Sinner in two weeks.

If the two best male players in the world dispute their third final of the Grand Slam in a row, it would be the first time that he occurred during the ATP tour during the same calendar year; Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic clashed in four consecutive finals in 2011 and 2012. Sinner and Alcaraz met in a final as recently as this week, but their Open Cincinnati competition was interrupted in the first set with the feeling of Italian.

What is particularly worrying for the rest of the field is that each time these two are played, they each raise a little more and create an ever increasing distance from their peers. The other particularly disturbing thing is that they have another important step on the line: the world’s n ° 1 ranking. If Alcaraz improves the result of Sinner in New York, he will assume the world n ° 1 ranking, after having lost it above Sinner last year despite his nearest rival during their three meetings that year.

And they seem to be aware of the task to be accomplished. “If we do not continue to improve, players will catch us,” said Sinner at a press conference on Friday. “It’s just a matter of time.”

After winning all the previous seven majors with each other, that does not seem to happen anytime soon.

Charlie Eccleshare

What will the long point of view of Coco Gauff mean for his slam Home, the site of his greatest triumph to date?

Focusing on the process rather than on the results is such the biggest clichés in sport and life. As the clichés go, it is not bad to follow.

GAUFF has become a foot display panel this week, when she changed technical work and embarked on the process of modifying her service a few days before the start of her slam at home, which is undoubtedly her most important tournament of the year.

His new coach, Gavin Macmillan, obtained quite rapid results with Sabalenka three years ago when he worked with her. Its double faults fell into the figures in a single district of 20 in a few weeks.

This does not mean that this will happen for Gauff. She knows it.

“I look in the long term,” Gauff said on Friday. “I hope I can bring everything together.” She knew she had to make a change, even if it potentially meant to sacrifice this tournament while she tried to learn on the fly.

“I don’t want to waste time continuing to do bad things,” she said.

Matt Futterman

Can things get worse for the generation of sandwiches in male tennis?

With each big home that passes, the sandwich generation of players born from the 1990s led by Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsisipas seems to move away more and more real claims. Zverev, as world n ° 3, is slightly separated from this, but for Tsisipas and Medvedev, it was a miserable year. Especially to the big slams, where they had two game victories between them in 2025.

Tsitsipas fights against an in progress back injury and has given disturbing quotes on the amount that affects it, while Medvedev looks desperately undernourished for a large part of the year.

Zverev said on Friday that consideration should be given to external factors when the form of a player’s shape, and that he expects Medvedev and Tsisipas to go back in the top 10 of the world. Currently, however, the real challenges most likely for the sinner and Alcaraz seem to be younger players than them rather than the tennis of lost lost boys.

How will the other Grand Slams react to double mixed?

The US Open Mixed event in double this week won a big victory for the event in the arms race of the Grand Slam. There were reproaches with the format and lack of appropriate double players, but generally the event made a lot of dollars and big titles.

It was the first subject raised with Emma Raducanu at her press conference on Friday, and she instantly suggested that the other majors should follow suit. “Yes, I think it would be so fun that all the Slams were involved and did something similar, even if it was not exactly the same format.

“I think it was a huge success.”

Of the other three, the French Open does not currently intend to modify its format of mixed doubles, while Wimbledon, generally the most traditional of Slams, seems to follow the example of the United States Open. The Tennis Club of the All England lawn did not respond to a request for comments; Tennis Australia, whose flagship event, the Australian Open, did not tend to be the most innovative by Slams.

That said, all other slams from now on, including the US Open, can refine and rework the event of mixed doubles from last week to make it an even more convincing package. Gauff, for example, said on Friday at a press conference that she really appreciated the event, but that she would benefit from more real double teams.

The only team of participating appropriate doubles, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, have retained their title by upgrading the stars in simple brought for the show.

Charlie Eccleshare

And what about the end-of-evening signature matches in the United States and the policy it has designed to limit them?

This tournament is known for its late finishes. He markets it and the famous. When the matches end in the morning hours and the players fall asleep as the sun rises, it is said to be an epic event, no matter how bad it is for people who compete one of the greatest prices in their sport or any other.

This usually happens during the night sessions on the stadium shorts, when two games take place, but do not start before 7 p.m. when a male match spends more than four hours or a female match is more than three, the tournament has a late finishing match policy, which he introduced last year. If a match should not start before 11:15 p.m., tournament officials claimed the right to move it in or outside the stadiums of Louis Armstrong or Arthur Ashe.

This does not mean that they will do it. While the first weekend of the US Open last year checked from Sunday evening to Monday morning, Zheng Qinwen and Donna Vekic set a record for the female match of the last finish in the history of the American open, with the closing point of Zheng at 2:15 am, which was a few minutes later that the first week of the first week. It had been broken on Friday, but started very early Saturday morning at 12:08 p.m., it was the last start -up match in the history of the American open.

They will talk to the players about it and take their opinions into consideration, but do not have to follow them. Other factors include the pace of the game in the match which takes place long and delaying the following one, the state of the match and other factors.

What does that mean? Probably a few late nights at the US Open.

Matt Futterman

Tell us what scenarios you are looking for in the comments.

(Aryna Sabalenka Top Photo: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)