US Open 2024: Even the players aren’t sure who will be at their best on New York’s hard courts

NEW YORK (AP) — Tennis fans unable to decide who has the best shot at doing well at the U.S. Open have company as the year’s last Grand Slam tournament is set to begin Monday. Even the players themselves aren’t sure what to expect.

“We’ve seen people, all the time, surprise us every single week, every single tournament, every Slam. Sometimes there’s no rhyme or reason why someone maybe does well,” said Jessica Pegula, a six-time major quarterfinalist. “Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense.”

There is the usual uncertainty that comes in New York, thanks to the vagaries of injuries and the grind of a long season. One additional factor this time could be all of the surface-switching: Tennis at the Summer Olympics was played on courts at Roland Garros, also the French Open site. So players went from clay in Paris to grass at Wimbledon, then back to clay, before shifting to hard courts before the U.S. Open.

“It’s a strange year,” British player Dan Evans said. “That’s for sure.”

Pegula, for one, handled that last transition just fine, going from the Olympics to a title at Toronto and a runner-up showing at Cincinnati. Her doubles partner in Paris, 2023 U.S. Open champion Coco Gauff, played in three Olympics events, exiting early in each, then lost her second match in Toronto and her first in Cincinnati.

“Changing surfaces, it’s tough, not just on your body, but mentally. ... But it’s part of the job, and we’ll adjust,” said Tommy Paul, who won a bronze medal in doubles with Taylor Fritz for the U.S. in Paris and had a 1-2 record in Montreal and Cincinnati. “Maybe there’s one player or two players that are burned out from the (Olympic) experience. But other than that, for the most part, everyone is pretty adjusted by now.”

The woman who defeated Pegula in the Cincinnati final, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, skipped the trip back to France for the 2024 Games but said she isn’t all that convinced that having — or not having — normal preparation necessarily will dictate results the next two weeks.

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“Everyone who came here, they think they are ready to win. I think it’s not about who is ready. You can be ready ‘better’ than the rest of the group,” said Sabalenka, a two-time champion at the Australian Open and runner-up to Gauff at last year’s U.S. Open, “but at the end of the day, it’s all about how hard are you ready to fight for it — especially on those days when you don’t feel your best.”

Another player not at the Olympics, Frances Tiafoe, reached the Cincinnati Open title match before losing to No. 1 Jannik Sinner, whose two positive steroids tests in March came to light less than a week ago.

Tiafoe, a 26-year-old from Maryland, finds the home crowds and high attention of the U.S. Open bring out his best, so he wanted to concentrate on getting ready for the site of his first Grand Slam semifinal in 2022.

“It’s open for a lot of guys this year, for sure. ... It’s always different in a Slam. The lights are a little brighter,” he said. “We’ll see what ends up happening. Personally, I just like where I’m at.”

Then there are those such as defending U.S. Open champion Novak Djokovic, who won a gold medal at the Paris Games but didn’t play a single hard-court tuneup event, or Carlos Alcaraz, the silver medalist whose only recent match on a hard court was a loss in Cincinnati.

“Obviously, I (would) have loved to have more matches (under) my belt on hard courts before the U.S. Open,” said Alcaraz, who twisted his right ankle Saturday but seemed fine when he practiced Sunday. “But, I mean, it doesn’t affect me at all.”

Perhaps of more interest to someone such as Gauff or Djokovic is this statistic: It’s been at least a decade since any woman or man won consecutive championships in Flushing Meadows.

Some figure predictions are hard to come by, generally.

“At the moment ... any given Sunday, anybody can win,” said Bianca Andreescu, who beat Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open. “That’s honestly the beauty of it, because it does bring that variety.”

Recent Grand Slam results might not offer any clues, even if the players who won this season’s trophies at the Australian Open (Sabalenka and Sinner), French Open (No. 1 Iga Swiatek and Alcaraz) and Wimbledon (Barbora Krejcikova and Alcaraz) hope they do, of course.

“I don’t really know where my level is, to be honest,” said the eighth-seeded Krejcikova, whose only singles matches since her triumph at the All England Club came at the Olympics.

The bottom line, it seems, is that it’s anyone’s guess what will unfold in New York.

“This (tournament) is a little bit of an anomaly,” said Katie Boulter, who competed at the Summer Games for Britain. “You never know what can happen.”

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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis