The last time the same man and woman won the first and last Slam of the year was 36 years ago when Mats Wilander and Steffi Graf each claimed the Aussie & US Open bookends for 1988.
Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka matched that feat this year, winning both hard-court Slam events for 2024. (They also both won Cincinnati right before this, so give ’em a trifecta.)
Graf and Wilander are Tennis Hall of Fame inductees, and it is a comfy bet that Sinner and Sabalenka will join them one day.
Sidenote: 1988 was also the year that Graf won the Calendar Golden Slam (all four majors plus the Olympics in the same year), the only player to accomplish that feat. And Wilander took three out of four Slams that same year (Stefan Edberg won Wimbledon). Wildly dominant year for those two.
Also, throwback photos are fun. Check out that sweater vest on Mats.
The last time the same man and woman won the singles titles at the Australian Open and US Open in the same season? 1988, when Hall of Famers 🇩🇪 Steffi Graf and 🇸🇪 Mats Wilander prevailed.
— International Tennis Hall of Fame (@TennisHalloFame) September 9, 2024
Aryna Sabalenka and Jannik Sinner have rewritten history 36 years later! pic.twitter.com/Mf0BeUVLuw
Jannik Sinner Enters Multiple Major Territory
When Sinner won his first major this year at the Australian Open, our headline read “Jannik Sinner Puts Tour on Notice.”
At the time he was wrecking Djokovic in a rapid sequence of matches and mowing down everyone in sight. How have things shaken out since then?
- He has a 55-5 record for the year, a 92% winning percentage.
- He has won six titles and counting: Australian Open, Rotterdam (500), Miami (1000), Halle (500), Cincinnati (1000), US Open.
- He assumed the No. 1 ranking by reaching the French Open semifinals.
- He reached the quarterfinals in all four Slams, the only player to do so this year.
- He pocketed over $10MM in prize money and certainly much more in endorsements.
- He became the sixth player in history to accumulate over 11,000 ranking points, joining the Big Four and Pete Sampras.
- He got a new girlfriend, Anna Kalinskaya.
- He turned 23 years old.
He has more than delivered on his promise.
After dropping the first set of the tournament, he only lost one more the rest of the way. He beat four Americans on home soil, including Tommy Paul in the fourth round and Taylor Fritz in the finals 6-3, 6-4, 7-5.
And he did all this with the cloud of a doping scandal hanging over his head starting in Indian Wells. He privately defended himself within the rules and was publically exonerated the day after winning Cincinnati, bringing a whirlwind of outside controversy with him to New York.
He handled the whole thing with maturity, a hallmark of his character and playing style. Something like that would crater most players and lead to an early exit, but on the court it only appeared to cost him the first set of the tournament. After that, he settled in and the rest of the field never had a chance.
That level of maturity is going to carry him far in tennis over the next 10+ years.
In the finals against Fritz he was simply too good in the big moments. The heavily pro-American crowd only had one or two chances to get involved, and by then it was too late in the third set. Fritz didn’t play poorly, and Sinner didn’t play great. The thing is, Sinner has to play two to three levels below his standard in order for someone to be competitive with him.
He has reached the hallowed place that champions reach where he knows how to win even on his bad days.
And he seems entirely unfazed by the big stages. If he’s swirling on the inside (and it’s not apparent if he ever is), he certainly doesn’t show it on the outside, and that makes it extra difficult for his opponents to know if they’re chinking his armor at all during a match.
With two majors under his belt now, the race with Alcaraz for career majors is officially on. Alcaraz currently leads 4-2.
Alcaraz has the better all-around game, as evidenced by his having already claimed Grand Slams on all three surfaces (ridiculous). But Sinner is the better hard-court player, and will likely do most of his Slam damage at the Australian and US Opens.
We still haven’t seen that rivalry truly heat up because they haven’t met in a Grand Slam final yet. Maybe 2025 will be the year. Then this ride will really get fun.
Aryna Sabalenka Finally Conquers Flushing Meadows
Look who’s back.
After reaching the semis in ’21 and ’22, then the finals a year ago, Aryna Sabalenka finally found the winner’s circle at the US Open, defeating American Jessica Pegula 7-5, 7-5 in a hard-as-nails championship match.
In a rematch of their Cincinnati final a few weeks ago, Pegula gave her all she could handle. It looked like things were wrapped up when Sabalenka took a 3-0 lead in the second set, but Pegula stiffened her resolve and reeled off five straight games to come within mere points of the set.
Then Sabalenka stood tall and reeled off four straight games of her own to finally earn her collapse-on-the-court moment at the US Open.
The Belarusian is the best hard-court player on Tour, and it isn’t close.
She generates so much power off the ground that her opponents’ only opportunities come when she starts to misfire. The problem for Sabalenka is that when she misfires, she tends to misfire in bunches for several games in a row. That’s when her opponents can make something happen.
But if she gets back on track, which hasn’t always been the case, it’s game over again for her opponent.
That has been her biggest breakthrough in the last two years which saw her win two Australian Opens, the US Open, and briefly lay claim to world No. 1. She is an endlessly emotional player on the court. Not a single point goes by that you don’t see a full-body reaction from her in between points. She’s had to learn to control that, even a little bit, to find her way to these trophies.
That same extroversion gives us all the funny one-liners and dance videos, though, and it makes her one of the brightest stars on tour.
Don’t rein it in too much, Aryna.
Americans Came to Play
The Americans waved the red, white, and blue all over the place this year.
Taylor Fritz’s and Jessica Pegula’s finals appearances marked the first time each draw featured an American since 2002.
In Fritz’s case, he was the first American man to reach a Slam final since Andy Roddick reached the 2009 Wimbledon finals, and the first American man to reach the US Open finals since Roddick in 2006. Roddick fell to Federer on both occasions.
One round earlier, Francis Tiafoe and Emma Navarro competed in the semis, marking the first time since 2003 that the Americans had two contestants in both semifinal draws.
At the tournament’s end, the United States has six men in the top 17 and four women in the top 11.
Pegula climbed to a career-high No. 3 in the world, while Fritz finds himself back in the top 10, jumping five spots to No. 7, also a career-best. Navarro, meanwhile, enters the top 10 for the first time in her career at No. 8.
It was a riveting week for American tennis fans as they had a lot to cheer about. American tennis is not what it was in the past, but it is the best it has been in a long time.
Reflex Volleys
More Changing of the Guard Stuff
With Alcaraz and Sinner splitting the four majors this year, it marks the first season since 2002 that none of the Big Three won a major.
Novak’s Olympic gold medal leaves an ever-so-slight, wee outline of an asterisk on that, but the annual stranglehold is over.
Early Ousters
Every tournament has upsets, but it felt like minor planetary shifts when Alcaraz fell in the second round and Djokovic followed him one round later.
Yet another testament to the mind-boggling consistency we saw from the Big Four for the last twenty years.
We knew it at the time, but as our distance from them grows, we’ll see more and more proof points like this that underscore how uncommon and otherworldly their excellence was.
Rankings Shakeup
How about Alexander Zverev at No. 2?
With Alcaraz and Djokovic both losing early on his side of the bracket, Zverev missed a golden opportunity to get that elusive first Slam, but he has been arguably the most consistent player on tour this year and this No. 2 ranking is well deserved. The bad news? He trails Sinner by more than 4000 points. He can keep his hopes for No. 1 at bay for a while.
Djokovic fell to No. 4, which he probably doesn’t care about but will also squeeze some motivational juice from.
Fritz jumped five spots to No. 7 and Jack Draper rode his semifinal run into the top 20 for the first time, sneaking in at No. 20.
On the women’s side, Pegula and Coco Gauff swapped places, with Pegula leaping to No. 3 and Gauff falling to No. 6 after failing to defend her title. Navarro moved up to No. 8 and Paula Badosa re-entered the top 20 as she continues her comeback climb up the rankings.
Ons Jabeur, who had to withdraw from the tournament, falls out of the top 20 for the first time in three years.
