Ons Jabeur leaves Centre Court after a memorable Championships #shorts Wimbledon
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I was dumped by Nike and had surgery in the last year – now I’m the most tattooed Wimbledon champ ever… The US Sun
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Elina Svitolina Aims for a Wimbledon Singles Final Against Jabeur or Sabalenka The New York Times
Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur advance to Wimbledon semifinals – ESPN ESPN
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Aryna Sabalenka sends ‘kisses and love’ to friendly rival Ons Jabeur ahead of Wimbledon semi Tennis Magazine
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Aryna Sabalenka, Ons Jabeur advance to Wimbledon semifinals – ESPN ESPN
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Aryna Sabalenka sends ‘kisses and love’ to friendly rival Ons Jabeur ahead of Wimbledon semi Tennis Magazine
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Don’t be surprised if we hear more about Muslim women in sports this year.
Tunisian tennis star Ons Jabeur is the No. 2 seed at the first grand slam of the 2023 tennis season – the Australian Open, which got underway on Monday.
Jabeur turned heads in 2022 with thrilling performances at Wimbledon and the US Open, and she’s not the only Muslim woman athlete in the spotlight.
Doaa Elghobashy has been training to make Egypt’s Olympic beach volleyball team after she and her teammate were the first Egyptian women to compete in Beach volleyball at the Olympics in 2016.
Meanwhile, three-time NCAA All American and Olympic bronze medalist in fencing, Ibtihaj Muhammad aims to empower women and girls through sports, her clothing line and books. And three-time Egyptian Olympian, Aya Medany is working to increase gender equality in sport.
These Muslim women have made history in their respective competitions and opened doors for a new generation of athletes.
Despite their accomplishments and years of progress making sport more inclusive of Muslim women and girls, there are still hurdles to clear.
This is a look at the roads to success for Jabeur, Elghobashy, Medany and Muhammad and how changing rules have impacted their faith and participation in sport.
According to the Pew Research Center, there were nearly two billion Muslims around the globe in 2019.
In recent years, Muslim women and girls have competed in a range of sports on the world stage – from fencing to figure skating.
But even with the rise of media and social media coverage, an exact number of Muslim women athletes is difficult to pinpoint in part because some don’t vocalize their beliefs or wear clothing indicative of their faith.
However, over the past few years, camps and community programs designed to expose Muslim girls to sports and help them develop athletic skills have increased – like Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir’s organization, Dribbling Down Barriers.
Influencer and former Somali National Basketball team captain, Jamad Fiin hosts a basketball camp for Muslim girls, while Toronto-based Hijabi Ballers hosts training programs in various sports.
And more Muslim majority countries have allowed women to participate in international sporting events.
According to the International Olympic Committee, nearly half of all competitors in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics – 5,457 – were women.
Of those athletes, nearly 380 represented countries designated as Muslim-majority, according to a 2017 Pew study.
The 2016 Summer Olympics hosted a slightly smaller percentage of female athletes – a record at the time. There were just over 5,000 women competitors that year, and just over 380 came from Muslim-majority countries.
Some sports organizations have made it easier for them to compete in modest uniforms. Take the international federations governing basketball and soccer.
The International Basketball Federation’s (FIBA) rule banning religious head coverings was overturned in 2017 and the international organization governing football (FIFA) lifted their ban on head coverings three years earlier.
In the US, the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) recently changed its rules to permit student athletes to compete in religious head coverings as long as they don’t pose a risk to other players.
For the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), headgear rules vary by sport. Women’s basketball rules currently requires students to get waivers to wear religious headwear.
An NCAA spokesperson told CNN Sports the organization has granted all of the basketball waivers in the past and that it is considering a proposal in May to drop the requirement.
And according to WNBA PR, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) does not require players to submit waivers.
Recently, legislation like Maryland’s Inclusive Attire Act, which allows students to modify athletic or team uniforms to conform with their religious requirements, has passed. Only a few other states – Ohio, Illinois, and Utah – have similar laws on their books.
Sports sociologist, Jay Coakley, called these developments promising. He’s taught about the connections between sports, culture, and society at the University of Colorado.
The participation of Muslim women in sports was put on his radar at the Brighton Conference on Women and Sport in 1994.
“I always thought that the way Muslim women were clothed was grounded in discrimination and that it constituted a significant barrier for women participating in society,” he told CNN Sports.
“I listened to, especially the women from Egypt who were in full burkas and with their face covered up to the lower part of the eyes (and) upper cheekbones … They saw it as a source of freedom.”
However, Coakley warned that any progressive policies are only as permanent as the people who want to enforce them.
In other words, rules can change.
Tunisian Jabeur, ranked No. 2 in the world in women’s tennis by the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), had a stellar record in 2022.
The 28-year-old reached the finals of Wimbledon and the US Open last year and also competed in her first WTA Finals event, which is open to the top eight women’s singles and doubles tennis players in the world.
Jabeur, who was born in Tunisia, started playing at the age of three. In 2017, she broke into the world’s top 100.
The WTA does not have any restrictions for players who want to wear one or any other religious covering. Covering arms and legs is also allowed.
Jabeur, who does not compete in a hijab, was not available to comment about it when later contacted by CNN Sports.
But she told media at a US Open press conference that her road to success hasn’t been easy.
“There (are) a lot of difficulties growing up coming from Tunisia (and) it’s not easy to believe that you can be here one day, but thankfully I made it happen,” she said about how she became involved in tennis.
“It’s just part of the process and I feel like you should always have difficulties to be stronger, to be here one day and face the best tennis players in the world.”
The US Open tweeted that Jabeur was “the first North African, Arab, and Tunisian woman to reach the #USOpen final.”
A similar tweet was posted a few months earlier by Wimbledon. Jabeur advanced to the finals at that tournament as well.
Jabeur’s success is attracting more people to the sport. According to the Women’s Tennis Association, membership in the Tunisian Tennis Federation has grown and the number of young Tunisians showing interest in the sport has climbed with Jabeur’s success.
Media at a 2022 US Open press conference asked about her ability to inspire young girls to play tennis. Jabeur smiled.
“I hope I can send a powerful message that if I made it here, everybody can make it here. Especially for women from different countries, especially from women from the Middle East, from the Arab world,” said Jabeur, who has been dubbed by Tunisians “The Minister of Happiness,” told media.
In Cairo, Egypt, 26-year-old Doaa Elghobashy is competing on her own terms. She’s among the top 500 volleyball players in the world and is training to help Egypt’s beach volleyball team qualify for a second time in the 2024 Olympics, with new teammate Farida El Askalany.
Elghobashy has experienced what some other Muslim women never have – support and acceptance from her sport’s governing body.
She made her Olympic debut in 2016 in Rio De Janeiro. The International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) gave her last-minute permission to compete in the Games in hijab, making Elghobashy the first hijabi athlete to do so in beach volleyball.
“I was so happy that they made the decision, because it meant they were giving [an] opportunity for more people to participate in the Olympics,” said Elghobashy, through a translator, in an interview with CNN Sport.
“I have the right to play sports in whatever I feel comfortable in,” added Elghobashy.”
Elghobashy wears hijab, long sleeves and pants on the court. She said she’d oppose anyone who would try to stop her.
“The hijab is part of me,” she told CNN Sports on a break between practices. “At the end of the day, it’s a sport and I’m not a model. I’m an athlete and people should focus more on my athleticism rather than my clothes.”
“Just because I’m a hijabi doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t have the opportunity to play at the Olympics,” she added. “I did this, I achieved it. I deserved it.”
According to the International Olympic Committee, all participating Muslim majority countries sent women to the 2016 Summer Games, with the exception of Iraq.
Just four years earlier, all Olympic nations had women athletes on their teams for the first time in modern Olympic history. This included Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei, which allowed women to participate in the Games for the first time at the 2012 London Olympics.
This was largely celebrated as a step forward for women in sports, but some, like 34-year-old former Olympic pentathlete Aya Medany, took a step back.
She was the first Olympic pentathlete to compete in a hijab when she represented Egypt in the 2012 London Games.
The pentathlon is an event comprised of five different sports – running, swimming, fencing, shooting and horseback riding. All of these events, with the exception of swimming, allow Muslim women to dress modestly.
However, the swimsuit regulations were an issue for Medany, and part of why she says she stopped competing in 2013.
“It was a very tough decision and like mentally it wasn’t easy,” Medany told CNN Sports. “I feel from inside that I’m not ok, but this is the only way. This is the best way, the best in the worst scenario.”
Like many swimmers, Medany wore a full body suit in the Athens Games in 2004 and Beijing in 2008. After the International Swimming Federation (FINA) announced a ban on the full body suits in competition would go into effect in 2010, she started to consider retirement.
She said this was a problem for her because she wanted to dress modestly – to fully cover her arms, legs and torso – a religious principle she values.
However, the swimsuits became a problem for FINA after over 100 world records were set by swimmers wearing the suit. Leaders of FINA were concerned that the suit, which was made of polyurethane, might aid a swimmer’s speed, buoyance and endurance.
Medany tried to adapt by competing in swimsuits that didn’t fully cover her body. It paid off athletically. She qualified for the London Games, but spiritually, she said the change did not sit well with her.
She initially retired in March 2013 – citing her discomfort with the rules, the Arab Spring, and injuries.
A few years later, she returned to international competition in the pentathlon and individual fencing. She said family and coaching staff helped her process the spiritual discomfort with the swimsuit regulations.
She said she retired again in 2020 because of the pandemic. A year later, she was appointed to the Egyptian parliament.
She’s also a member of the International Olympic Committee’s Athletes’ Commission and teaches fencing to girls in a Jordanian refugee camp on behalf of the NGO, Peace and Sport.
The challenges Medany experienced as an athlete motivated her to try to make sports more accessible to women and girls from different backgrounds.
“I said, ‘ok,’ that one day I’m going to be in the other position, in their position, and I’m going to listen to people so whatever they have, whatever they need,” Medany said.
Ibtihaj Muhammad, 37, said she also faced discrimination while training as a fencer in Maplewood, New Jersey.
She told CNN Sports she started fencing at the age of 12, at the behest of her mother, who liked that fencing uniforms made it easy to practice modesty as they fully cover the fencer’s body.
“She saw this unique opportunity for me to participate in a sport as a Muslim kid without having to run to Modell’s or Dicks Sporting Goods to add something to the uniform like I did in track and field or in tennis,” Muhammad said.
She recalled having to ask permission to compete in her hijab in high school. When she competed, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) required student athletes who wanted to modify uniforms for religious reasons to file a letter with the school’s athletic director.
She said they were asked to be ready to present the letter to officials at every sporting event. Muhammad said she felt the rule was applied selectively.
“Everyone knew that I wore hijab, but it was really just kind of like this discriminatory thing that happened to me as a kid,” she said. “And it was just kind of normal. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play.”
NJSIAA changed its rules in 2021 and no longer requires student athletes to get approval to compete in religious head coverings.
Like Medany, Muhammad said she hopes to make sports more welcoming for Muslim women and girls.
She authored a children’s book called “The Proudest Blue,” which celebrates diversity. She’s promoted the Nike “Pro Hijab,” which aims to make it easier for hijabi athletes to compete.
Mattel created a Barbie doll that looked like Muhammad as part of their “Shero” collection in 2017.
Muhammad has also been vocal about other social justice issues – from safe drinking water to athletes with disabilities.
The day CNN Sports spoke with Muhammad, WNBA star Brittney Griner, had been sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony for drug smuggling.
“My heart is with Brittney and her family for what’s happening,” Muhammad said during the August interview.
“I can’t even imagine being in this situation, but I do feel like this could have happened to anyone and this is why we have to continue to fight for her freedom because I feel like especially as athletes this could’ve been any of us.”
Griner was released from Russian detention in December.
Muhammad, Medany, Jabeur and Elghobasy say they hope to make a significant impact for the next generation of Muslim women athletes. They serve as mentors and have been living markers of how change is possible.
“I’ve always felt like I was doing it because of the lack of representation, and I want more girls who look like me to feel like they have a place in sports. It doesn’t have to be fencing,” said Muhammad.
“I just want us to get out there. I want us to feel comfortable, but I also want other people to know that they have to be comfortable with us being there as well.”
Hello and welcome to Flushing Meadows for today’s US Open women’s final. We’ve got a cracker of a match in store between the two best players in the world today: Iga Swiatek, the world No 1 and top-seeded Pole who’s already won six titles this year, and Ons Jabeur, the Wimbledon runner-up and Madrid champion who has reached five finals in all in 2022.
They play different styles, but a common quality is that they have built varied, sustainable games that afford them a number of different options, making them far more adaptable and reliable than their opponents. This was clear on Thursday as Swiatek and Jabeur faced Aryna Sabalenka and Caroline Garcia in their respective semi-finals, both challengers resting their success on all-out attack. When nerves struck, at the very beginning for Garcia and while Sabalenka led 4-2 in the third set, neither could adapt.
n
Swiatek is one of the best athletes in the world and possesses some of the most destructive weaponry off the ground and she is increasingly finding that balance again. Jabeur, meanwhile, is blessed with a complete game and a vast array of shots. She can smother opponents with her serve and forehand, she can slice them to death, pepper them with drop shots and she has also massively improved her physicality.
n
In the past, Jabeur had so many options that it was overwhelming. She often struggled to make the right choices on court. But she is now slowly learning how to use them, to adjust in the matches and to know when to be disciplined and to play more with instinct. “When I talk to my coach before the matches, I just feel like now I can do whatever I can do and what I want to do on the court, which is surprising for me and I surprise myself so many times,” said the 28-year-old.
The players should be on court in a little more than a half hour. Plenty more to come between now and then.
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Key events
Jabeur breaks in fifth game of first set!
First set: Swiatek 3-2 Jabeur* (*denotes next server)
Swiatek wins the first point with a highlight-reel backhand volley winner at the net. But Jabeur, who seemingly failed to answer the bell for today’s final and managed to win no more than two points in the opening three games, fires back with her second, third and fourth winners of the match for 15-40 and double break point. Swiatek saves the first, but Jabeur strikes on the second with a forehand winner from the baseline. We’re back on serve in the opener!
First set: *Swiatek 3-1 Jabeur (*denotes next server)
Jabeur badly needs a straightforward hold to settle into this match. She races out to 40-love on a couple of Swiatek unforced errors early in rallies and a forehand winner at the net, before double-faulting and misfiring on the baseline for 40-30. From there another Swiatek unforced error bails her out and she’s finally on the scoreboard.
First set: Swiatek 3-0 Jabeur* (*denotes next server)
Swiatek opens her second service game with a forehand winner before missing on a backhand for 15-all, gifting Jabeur her second point of the afternoon. Swiatek follows with her fourth and fifth winners, then closes out the hold with an 84mph second serve that Jabeur can’t get back into play.
Swiatek breaks in second game of first set!
First set: *Swiatek 2-0 Jabeur (*denotes next server)
A scratchy start for Jabeur, who is not moving well at all to start. She falls behind love-30 after double-faulting, then love-40 and triple break point down with a misfire from the baseline. The No 5 seed follows with unforced error from the baseline and is broken at love in her opening service game. Not great!
First set: Swiatek 1-0 Jabeur* (*denotes next server)
The world No 1 and top seed wins three quick points to open the match including a 102mph ace down the middle. She misses a volley on her first net approach on the next point, but closes out the stress-free hold immediately after with a crisp backhand winner to close out a 15-stroke rally.
But enough of the juniors: it’s time for the today’s feature attraction. Micaela Bryan, the daughter of former doubles world No 1 Bob Bryan, has just regaled the Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd with a performance of America the Beautiful. Swiatek and Jabeur have given their pre-match tunnel interviews and emerged on to the court.
They meet chair umpire Louise Engzell at the net for the coin toss, which Jabeur wins and elects to return first. The players are now in the warm-up. It’s a gorgeous 82F (28C) sunny day in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. We should be under way shortly.
Carlos Alcaraz isn’t the only Spanish teenager making noise in New York. Martin Landaluce, a 16-year-old from Madrid, has just won the US Open boys’ singles title with a 7-6 (3), 5-7, 6-2 win over Belgium’s Gilles Arnaud Bailly before a jam-packed crowd on Court 11.
The No 5 seed missed a golden opportunity to serve for the championship in the second set, letting the second-seeded Bailly off the hook from a 5-5, 15-40 bind on his serve. But he broke the Belgian in his first two service games of the decider and coasted through the finish line after 2hr 13min.
Landaluce’s win makes it a clean sweep for juniors from Rafael Nadal’s academy at this year’s US Open. Alex Eala, who also trains at the Mallorca club, won the girls’ title earlier today, becoming the first Filipino to win any major singles championship.
Martin Landaluce returns a shot during the US Open boys’ singles final on Saturday afternoon. Photograph: Frank Franklin II/AP
The 21-year-old Swiatek is the first No 1 seed to reach the US Open women’s final since Serena Williams in 2014. She’s also the first woman to reach the Roland Garros and US Open finals in the same season since Serena one year earlier. This is her third grand slam final, having previously lifted the French Open titles in 2020 and 2022.
Jabeur is the first woman to reach the final at both Wimbledon and the US Open in the same season since Serena in 2019. The 28-year-old Tunisian win is one of four African woman in history to reach a major final and first in the Open era. The other three were South Africans Irene Peacock (1927 Roland Garros), Renee Schuurman (1959 Australian Open) and Sandra Reynolds (1960 Wimbledon), each of whom came up short in the final.
Preamble
Hello and welcome to Flushing Meadows for today’s US Open women’s final. We’ve got a cracker of a match in store between the two best players in the world today: Iga Swiatek, the world No 1 and top-seeded Pole who’s already won six titles this year, and Ons Jabeur, the Wimbledon runner-up and Madrid champion who has reached five finals in all in 2022.
Our Tumaini Carayol has more on the stylistic matchup on hand:
They play different styles, but a common quality is that they have built varied, sustainable games that afford them a number of different options, making them far more adaptable and reliable than their opponents. This was clear on Thursday as Swiatek and Jabeur faced Aryna Sabalenka and Caroline Garcia in their respective semi-finals, both challengers resting their success on all-out attack. When nerves struck, at the very beginning for Garcia and while Sabalenka led 4-2 in the third set, neither could adapt.
Swiatek is one of the best athletes in the world and possesses some of the most destructive weaponry off the ground and she is increasingly finding that balance again. Jabeur, meanwhile, is blessed with a complete game and a vast array of shots. She can smother opponents with her serve and forehand, she can slice them to death, pepper them with drop shots and she has also massively improved her physicality.
In the past, Jabeur had so many options that it was overwhelming. She often struggled to make the right choices on court. But she is now slowly learning how to use them, to adjust in the matches and to know when to be disciplined and to play more with instinct. “When I talk to my coach before the matches, I just feel like now I can do whatever I can do and what I want to do on the court, which is surprising for me and I surprise myself so many times,” said the 28-year-old.
The players should be on court in a little more than a half hour. Plenty more to come between now and then.
Iga Swiatek, the current world No. 1 by a mammoth margin, has enjoyed a remarkable season in which she has undoubtedly been the best player on the WTA Tour, while Ons Jabeur has this year continued her steady rise to the upper echelons of women’s tennis and made history along the way.
On paper, Saturday’s final is Swiatek’s to lose.
Renowned as a clay specialist — her two grand slam titles have come at the French Open — the Pole has expertly adapted her game to the hard courts in 2022, winning four WTA 1000 events on the surface and becoming only the fourth woman in history to complete the “Sunshine Double” by winning Indian Wells and Miami back-to-back.
Those titles, as well as her second French Open crown, came during her remarkable 37-match unbeaten run earlier in the season, which finally came to an end in the third round at Wimbledon.
However, Swiatek has certainly struggled to recapture that form during the second half of the season and her involvement in the US Open final was by no means a formality before the tournament started.
She struggled through her semifinal, too, fighting back from a set down and 4-2 down in the deciding set against sixth seed Aryna Sabalenka in a match that took more than two hours to complete.
Swiatek, the first Polish woman to appear in a US Open singles final, said Saturday’s match will be “a great battle” against Jabeur, a player looking to make some history of her own.
The 21-year-old, who was tipped to become the dominant force in women’s tennis following Ash Barty’s early retirement this season, has proven herself to be incredibly clutch in tournament finals.
Of the 10 finals she has reached in her career, Swiatek has won nine and not lost one since her first final back in 2019.
Jabeur recognized that following her swift semifinal win over Caroline Garcia. “Iga never loses finals,” she said. “So it’s going to be very tough.”
‘Going for everything’
But Jabeur, who will return to her career-high ranking of world No. 2 after the US Open, undoubtedly has the tools to end Swiatek’s run with one of the most varied games on Tour.
The Tunisian will become the first African woman to compete in a US Open final and is looking to win her maiden grand slam at the second attempt.
She reached the Wimbledon final just two months ago, but was surprisingly beaten by Kazakhstan’s Elena Rybakina in three sets. Despite the defeat, she spoke of the confidence that run had given her. That certainly looked the case in a nerveless semifinal.
Jabeur brushed aside the dangerous Garcia, who was on a 13-game unbeaten streak, winning 6-1 6-3 in little over an hour to cement her place in Saturday’s final.
The career head-to-head between these two players stands at 2-2, with Swiatek winning their last meeting in the final of the clay court Italian Open in May, though Jabeur came out on top the last time they faced off on a hard court back in 2021.
“It feels more real just to be in the finals again,” Jabeur said after her semifinal win. “At Wimbledon I was kind of just living the dream, and I couldn’t believe it. Even after the match, I was just going to do my things and not realizing it was an amazing achievement already.
“But now I hope I’m getting used to it. I’m just happy the fact that I backed up the results in Wimbledon and people are not really surprised I’m in the finals. I feel very positive about this one. The most important thing is not to regret, because I’m going to give it all on this one.
“Even if this one is not going to happen, I’m very sure that another one will come. Just going to that [Wimbledon] final was really tough for me, especially the second set. But then I feel like this final, I’m going full in, I’m going for everything.”
NEW YORK — Caroline Garcia never really let Coco Gauff — or the crowd — get fully involved in their US Open quarterfinal Tuesday night.
From early on, Garcia played high-stakes tennis and put strokes where she wanted, sometimes right at Gauff’s feet, sometimes well out of reach. In contrast to the early success Gauff, still just 18, has experienced, it’s been a long journey for Garcia, who now gets to play in the first Grand Slam semifinal of her career at age 28.
The 17th-seeded Garcia took charge at the start and never relented in a 6-3, 6-4 victory over the 12th-seeded Gauff at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
“I just go for my shots,” Garcia said, “even when I’m stressed.”
She had lost both of her two previous matches against Gauff, who was the runner-up at the French Open in June, but was by far the better player this time.
“Her level was great and I knew it was going to be great coming in, and I feel like I didn’t play at the level I needed to come out with the win today — but overall I’m super proud of myself for this tournament,” Gauff said. “But I’m hungry for more, so maybe next year.”
Garcia, who is from France, hasn’t ceded a set at Flushing Meadows so far this year and stretched her winning streak to 13 matches overall, solidifying her status as someone playing as well as anyone in women’s tennis at the moment.
She finished last season ranked 74th, but now is projected to rise into the top 10 next week.
“The last couple of months,” Garcia said, “I feel healthy again.”
She will face Wimbledon runner-up Ons Jabeur of Tunisia on Thursday with a berth in the final at stake.
“I’m looking forward to the next challenge and what I can achieve,” Garcia said.
Jabeur became the first woman representing an African nation to make the semifinals at the US Open during the professional era with a 6-4, 7-6 (4) victory over the player who beat Serena Williams in the third round, Ajla Tomljanovic.
Jabeur said her run to the title match at the All England Club allowed her to “believe more in myself” and realize, “I had it in me that I can win a Grand Slam.”
Tomljanovic exchanged a lengthy hug at the net with Jabeur, who is a close friend, following the match.
“Just trying to do my job and hopefully I inspire more and more generations from Africa,” Jabeur said. “It really means a lot to me.”
In the Garcia versus Gauff match, it was 4-0 merely 17 minutes in, as spectators were still filing in. All in all, there was less vociferous support for Gauff than she heard in her previous victory in Ashe.
During that fairly perfect start, Garcia capped one 17-stroke exchange with a down-the-line forehand winner. She raised a fist and held that pose while looking at her guest box, where her father and coach were on their feet. It was a sequence that would be repeated.
Both are big servers: Gauff hit the fastest by a woman in the tournament this year, at 128 mph; Garcia leads the WTA in aces in 2022. Each delivered one at 117 mph in her opening service game.
But it was Garcia who read Gauff’s offerings far more effectively. Garcia often returned deep enough to seemingly startle Gauff, who rushed some responses. After one of several attempted replies by Gauff settled in the net, she jutted her racket toward the ground, as if to indicate: “Why do these keep landing right there?!”
That sort of constant pressure, and Garcia’s tendency to stay way inside the baseline to receive second serves, could have contributed to Gauff’s six double faults.
Garcia also quickly gained the upper hand from the baseline with her clean, crisp strokes. During a brief TV interview on the way from the locker room to the court, Garcia had said she hoped to be “more aggressive.”
She certainly was.
In a nod to her volleying expertise — something she has displayed in doubles, where she has won two Grand Slam titles with French partner Kristina Mladenovic — Garcia moved forward whenever an opening presented itself. She wound up winning 13 of 16 points when she went to the net.
Rather than fearing, and trying to stay away from, Gauff’s stronger backhand side, Garcia went after it, drawing repeated mistakes.
“I had a lot of unforced errors today; I think I had a couple of balls where I could have finished the point, especially when she was coming to the net — I missed a lot of passing shots when they were open,” Gauff said. “I think I just need to cut back on [the unforced errors], especially when you’re playing an aggressive player like Caroline — you can’t make that many unforced errors.”
Gauff occasionally would show a bit of frustration at her play, slapping herself on the thigh or knocking her racket on a courtside towel holder. She was trying to become the youngest American woman in the US Open semifinals since Serena Williams won her first Grand Slam title in New York in 1999 at age 17.
Garcia would not allow it.
The Associated Press and ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report.
