In a historic flop for US men’s tennis, no player reached the fourth round of the US Open, or any Grand Slam this year, with the loss of last man standing Tim Smyczek on Sunday at Flushing Meadows.
Spain’s Marcel Granollers beat the 109th-ranked US wild card 6-4, 4-6, 0-6, 6-3, 7-5 after three hours and 24 minutes to reach the last 16 and complete a humiliating and unprecedented Open-era Grand Slam wipeout for American men.
It came on the heels of no US man reaching the third round at Wimbledon for the first time since 1912 and last month, which produced the first week in rankings history without a top-20 US player.
While US boys once dreamed of being the next Jimmy Connors or Andre Agassi, US tennis has been reduced to trying to pilfer the next potential Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods from rival sports to try and reverse the fall from grace.
“We’ve been trying to encourage some of the kids that were going to play basketball or American football to get out on a tennis court,” said former world No. 1 and seven-time Grand Slam singles winner John McEnroe. “We need truly great athletes, need to try to nab some of the kids playing some other sports.”
With a growing challenge from Asia and Eastern Europe, there is a far tougher global landscape than decades past for who those who accept the task of trying to win the first US men’s Grand Slam singles title since Andy Roddick captured the 2003 US Open.
US 13th seed John Isner said after his third-round loss that he was off to watch a national telecast of his beloved collegiate American football squad.
While major US network television coverage beyond the Grand Slams and pre-US Open events is limited, some form of American football is shown all year long.
Toss in such popular sports as basketball, baseball and US stock car racing, and add the growth of soccer and golf, and US tennis is fighting for talent without Grand Slam-champion role models to offer.
The next generation of running talent takes center stage at today’s Berlin Marathon, in the absence of stars including Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge and Ethiopian world record holder Tigist Assefa. With most of the major marathon stars skipping the event in the wake of the Paris Olympics just more than a month ago, the field is wide open in the men’s and women’s races. Since 2015, Kipchoge has won five times in Berlin, Kenenisa Bekele has won twice and Guye Adola once — with all three missing today. Kenyan Kibiwott Kandie and Ethiopian Tadese Takele are among the favourites for the men, while
Taiwan’s Tony Wu yesterday beat Mackenzie McDonald of the US to win the Nonthaburi Challenger IV in Thailand, his first challenger victory since 2022. The 26-year-old world No. 315, who won both his qualifiers to advance to the main draw, has been on a hot streak this month, winning his past nine matches, including two that ensured Taiwan’s victory in their Davis Cup World Group I tie. Wu took just more than two hours to top world No. 172 McDonald 6-3, 7-6 (7/4) to win his second challenger tournament since the Tallahassee Tennis Challenger in 2022. Wu’s Tallahassee win followed two years of
Zhang Shuai yesterday said that she nearly quit after losing 24 matches in a row — now the world No. 595 is into the quarter-finals of her home China Open. The 35-year-old is to face Spain’s Paula Badosa as the lowest-ranked player to reach this stage in the history of the tournament after Badosa reeled off 11 of the last 12 games in a 6-4, 6-0 victory over US Open finalist Jessica Pegula. Zhang went into Beijing on a barren run lasting more than 600 days and her string of singles defeats was the second-longest on the WTA Tour Open era, which
Taiwanese martial artists bagged one gold, four silver and three bronze medals at the World Junior Wushu Championships in Brunei, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Brunei Darussalam said yesterday. Liu Yu-tzu won the gold medal in the girl’s taijiquan A group and also picked up a silver medal in the girl’s taijijian A group. Hu Hsin-ling, Yu Min-hsun and Chen Chao-hsiang each won a silver medal in the girl’s jianshu B, boy’s nangun B and boy’s taijijian A groups respectively. Hu also won a bronze medal in the girl’s qiangshu B group, while Yu and Lin Shih-hung picked up bronze medals
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