Tonight in Flushing Meadows there is Italy-Germany – Sinner-Zverev at 18, Berrettini-Otte after dinner -, broadening the goal we can say that for now this is the US Open of the very young. And for now, a nice US Open. Indeed, according to Alex Corretja, former top player today Eurosport commentator, «the most beautiful US Open in recent years». This is thanks to the surface, which this year is not too fast and therefore forces everyone to play, “and to bring out the best”.
The very young, it was said. Apart from Sinner, 20 years old, in the men’s debut of the second week there are still the other 20 year old Jenson Brooksby (99 atp), who today challenges Novak Djokovic, the prodigious Carlos Alcaraz (55 Atp) and Felix Auger Aliassime (15 Atp), 39 years old in two, who are even in the quarterfinals and will play with each other for a place in the semifinal that smells a lot of the future. Another ‘intruder’ – albeit older – is the 25-year-old Dutch Botic van de Zanschulp (# 117 Atp) who has already won the Oscar for the coolest name on the board.…
In the women we find an already established 20-year-old, the winner of Roland Garros 2020 Iga Swiatek, another very green slammer like Bianca Andreescu (21 years old, winner in New York in 2019), and above all Leyla Fernandez, 19 years old today, Canadian ( of Filipino origins) like Andreescu, who eliminated one after the other two former number 1s, Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber; and 18 year old English Emma Raducanu, 150 Wta.
For years we have been waiting for the famous changing of the guard, and with Federer, Nadal and Serena Williams far from the Great, Andy Murray still fighting but also advanced in years, this time only the patriarch Djokovic is left, in the smell of the Grand Slam, to fight against the nouvelle vague.
In short, the young people may struggle to take the finals that matter, but they are quickly occupying the lower and middle floors of the Grand Slams. Better to get to know them, therefore, starting from the brave Fernandez, who certainly does not have the physique of a wonderwoman (1.68) but knows how to play with the elegance and fuidity that many beaten women with more centimeters but less phosphorus lack. Or from the “alien” Brooksby, as the Equipe has renamed him, and from the ‘baroque bric-a-brac’ of his tennis (copyright Julien Reboullet), made up of a lot of talent and decidedly whimsical shots like the backhand volley. two hands “of which no tennis manual would allow themselves to publish an image”. But that works. “Jenson is a great creative,” says his coach Joseph Gilbert. «A super competitive, who has already left normal school for 10 years to train five to six hours a day, who loves brawl and since he was a child he based his game a lot on sensations. And for this he does things that others do not do ». Who knows, maybe the new Federers, the new Nadals and the champions of tomorrow are already among us. But they don’t look like the identikit we made of them.