2017 US Open--the most unpredictable tennis in decades

The 2017 US Open was one of the most entertaining US Opens that I can remember.  The tone of the two weeks was set on the first night when unseeded Maria Sharapova, coming off a 15-month suspension for PED use, defeated the number two seed Simona Halep in the opening round.  Even granted that Maria Sharapova is a former Grand Slam winner, that match confirmed what we knew going in—it would be a wide-open tournament.

That was certainly true on the women’s side, due to the absence of Serena Williams who was otherwise engaged.  One can sum up the situation with the observation that the number one ranked player, Karolina Pliskova, had never won a major.  There are relatively few women players who have won majors, because Serena has won so many lately, and those who have won majors have fallen off after their victory (a surprising lot have trouble dealing with the “pressures of success”).  There were a number of potential favorites (mostly Eastern European women whose last names end in “a”), but the field felt wide open.

The situation was not quite as extreme with the men.  Several possible champions were missing the tournament, namely Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Stan Warwrinka.  Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were the heavy favorites, but both were older players with a history of injuries, so anything could happen.  In the end, in the quarter-finals only 2 of the 8 players would be seeded in the top 10, and only 3 would be in the top 16.

The past 13 years have been incredibly stable for men’s tennis.  If you look at any 5-year period from the start of the Open Era (1968) you’ll find somewhere between 8 to 12 men won the 20 major titles in that period.  Doing some random sampling the smallest number I found in the 20^th century was 7, between the years 1978-1982 (Vilas, Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Teacher, Kriek, and Wilander).  However, between 2006-2010 and 2007-2011, only 4 men won a major title (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, and Del Potro).  The number went up to 5 when Andy Murray started winning majors in 2012, and from 2010-2014 until 2013-2017 each 5-year span has had only 6 major winners (Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray, Warwrinka, and Cilic). 

The opportunity to win a major seemed to energize a lot of the players who otherwise might have just gone through the motions before being eliminated by Serena or Roger.  The Sharapova/Halep match featured inspired tennis on both ends.  Subsequent matches featured a number of upsets, with an unlikely quartet of US women sweeping into the semi-finals.  Venus Williams, seeded ninth, was not quite a surprise, but Madison Keys (15 seed), Coco Vandeweghe (20 seed), and Sloane Stephens (unseeded) were not projected to get that far.

But in the quarter-finals Vandeweghe got past number one seed Pliskova, Williams beat 13 seed (and two-time Wimbledon winner) Petra Kvitova, Keys beat an unseeded player named Kaia Kenepi, and Stephens won a three setter over 16 seed Ana Sevastova.  Pliskova was the only top-8 seed to make it to the quarter-final, a sign of all the upsets that occurred on the way there.

Sloane Stephens, who had been ranked in the low 900’s earlier in the year, decisively beat Madison Keys in the final to win her first major title.

The men’s side was also filled with upsets, with only two top ten seeds (Nadal and Federer) making it to the quarter-finals.  The biggest disappointment was when Juan Martin Del Potro thwarted the chances of the first ever meeting of Nadal and Federer at the US Open by beating Federer in the quarter-finals.  Del Potro won the 2009 US Open title by beating Federer, making him the only player outside the “Big Three” to win a major from 2006-2011, so this was the second time he blocked Federer’s path to the Open title.

It was almost an anti-climax when Nadal beat some guy named Kevin Anderson, the 28 seed at the tournament.  Nadal managed to win his 16^th major, but to do so he needed a field so weak that he never faced anyone in the top 20.  He faced only two seeded players, Del Potro (24) and Anderson (28), which was a lot easier than having to beat Djokovic, Federer and Murray all at the same tournament.

Having a period dominated by possibly the two greatest men’s tennis players ever (Federer and Nadal), along with another all-time great (Djokovic) has produced some incredible tennis.  And having a period of women’s tennis dominated by arguably the best female tennis player of all time (I'd still give that crown to Steffi Graf) has been entertaining.  Predictability is nice, but unpredictability is more interesting.

But after the excitement of the 2017 US Open, I am looking forward to a period where there is a little more variety in the number of winners at Grand Slam tennis tournaments.