Tennis

Daily Bagel: Big Bang Baby

Sell your soul and sign an autograph.

Courtney Nguyen

Courtney Nguyen

— 10 min read
Daily Bagel: Big Bang Baby
Credit: Jimmie48

Well, holy shit! That was some slate of US Open Women's Semifinals not-presented-by Vital Proteins, huh? I'm on PST and even I'm still recovering. Big ups to all who stayed up past midnight on the East Coast.

The night started as last year's women's event ended: Aryna Sabalenka played an outstanding match and withstood the constant pressure from Jess Pegula to win, though this time it took a lot longer and felt less inevitable. Aryna won 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a little over two hours, and everything you needed to know in the match was seen in the final game. With Aryna serving to close out the win, Jess kept the pressure on to close the gap to 30-30. Aryna responded with a clean ace. Aryna muffed the match point with an absurd overhead smash into the net to go to deuce. She responds by hitting a clean backhand winner. It took her a few more points, but she finally crossed the line with her 43rd winner of the night. Gutsy, gritty, wobbly, but ultimately inevitable. That's the Aryna way.

People were calling that match the match of the tournament when Naomi and Amanda wandered into the tunnel awaiting to be called to court. Those people would be very wrong (though possibly asleep) three hours later, after Amanda engineered the incredible feat of reeling in a seemingly inevitable Naomi to win 6-7(4), 7-6(3), 6-3 to make her second straight Slam final. She's also now 3-0 over Naomi. From Taylor to Amanda, the Americans really have been brought the feel-good stories to the Open this year, which is saying something considering, you know, America right now.

So it'll be Aryna vs. Amanda on Saturday. Balls will be bludgeoned.

And now we bagel:

"It has taken some dramatic mental improvements for Anisimova to reach this point. Her eight-month mental health break in 2023 has clearly played a significant role in her growth, but in general she has always struggled to maintain her composure, nerve and self-belief in the heat of battle. While some players are born competitors, Anisimova’s path to gaining the self-assurance required to compete with the best players in the world has been long and arduous. She has spoken about embracing therapy, maintaining a positive outlook at all costs and confiding in her loved ones. While she has stressed the importance of moving on from Wimbledon, she did not run away from it. Sometimes, humour helps. The night before her win over Swiatek, she decided to watch highlights of the Wimbledon defeat for the first time to ensure that she did not make the same mistakes twice. What did she learn? “That I was slow as hell,” she said, laughing.
  • I was worried about how Naomi was going to process and react to that loss, one where she was out-hit from the baseline, one that serves as her first career loss after making a Grand Slam quartefinal. Her press conference allayed all my concerns. She's gonna be just fine. Watch out in Asia:
  • Dan Wolken argues only Naomi Osaka is the true "needle-moving" successor to Serena Williams. (Yahoo)
  • Aryna Sabalenka is into her third Grand Slam final of the year and guys, regardless of what happens on Saturday, let's nip the "Slamless No.1" bullshit in the bud, ok? It's not even a question that Aryna's been the dominant No.1 this year. Could that change depending on what happens in Asia and the WTA Finals? Perhaps! But...probably not!
  • But what a statement win over Jess in the semifinals. Pegula, coming into this tournament completely low in confidence and form, does an escape room with her friends, has a few drinks, says "fuck it" and just casually marches to her second major semifinal. Remember, 12 months ago she was still "Quarterfinal Jess". Now she's making Slam semis and no one really bats an eye.
  • Jess played a near-perfect match against Aryna, who still could have got this done in straight sets if not for a 10 minute dip in the first set. After winning her quarterfinal, Jess assessed her run last year to the US Open final and, as per all her assessments, really, it was accurate: "I went on a crazy run and I played some girl that just happened to be having a 5% crazier run than me." Once again, Aryna was just 5% better.

root beer dum dums are lowkey goated

the people's princess

Support me on Ko-fi!
  • On retirement and rivals: Lovely interview with Rafael Nadal by Charlie Eccleshare. (The Athletic)
With so many injuries throughout his career, Djokovic on a hard court was Nadal’s ultimate challenge. “I needed my body and my physical performance to the highest level to compete against Novak on a hard court,” he said.
“Roger was able to cut the points very fast with his serve, but Novak and me, our games are closer. He was better than me on hard without a doubt, but until 2013, 2014, I was able to compete against him the proper way.
“Then later, when you have a lot of issues in the body, you lose a little bit of confidence in the movement. You start avoiding things that you feel you can’t do like before, because you feel that if you do this kind of thing, you can be injured. The mental part of that had a huge impact against Novak. I needed this extra energy in terms of movement, in terms of bringing my game and my body to the limit. And I was not able to produce that anymore.
“I was able to create more damage on other surfaces like grass, but needed to create this super-long battle in terms of physical demand. It’s not about playing long, I was able to play for a long time, it’s about the movement that I need to do to push him to the limit.”

benito remains undefeated on twitter

  • The Fug Girls round up the US Open fashions (click through the slideshow) and it's pretty hard to argue that Naomi Osaka didn't take the trophy (click through the slideshow). The bedazzled Labubus took it over the line, and I'm not even a Labubu person. As a bonus, their recap of the events of the fortnight is perfect. (Go Fug Yourself)
But: A fan tried to grab Jannik Sinner’s bag. Karolina Muchova started crying in the middle of a match because she noticed an ex-boyfriend in the crowd whom she didn’t want there. Coco Gauff openly wept on-court during a bad run of serves, well aware that the media fervently covered the hiring of a new mechanics coach a week before the Open to try and fix her yips. Taylor Townsend played some of the sharpest singles of HER career, but had to spend the whole week answering questions about Jelena Ostapenko, who lost to Taylor and then jammed a finger in her face and said she had “no education” after Taylor did not apologize for a net cord that went her way (in Taylor’s defense, it was not the last shot of the point and sometimes people forget in that situation). And after Benjamin Bonzi had match point against Daniil Medvedev and netted his first serve, an overeager photographer ran onto the court, which led to the umpire stopping play to yell at him and then awarding Bonzi a clean slate of serves. Medvedev LOST HIS SHIT.
  • Also, let the record reflect that The Fug Girls know ball:
"I am SO TIRED of the ESPN crew trying to create hype around this kid as the next Alcaraz. We still have the current Alcaraz! He can be the first Joao Fonseca. Also, he's still only 19, so everyone give him time. He'll get there, but right now it's such a man-made lake to me and I'm tired of it."
For Sabalenka, Duguid described her brand strategy as more of a blank slate because her portfolio isn't as developed as Osaka's right now. But that doesn't mean Sabalenka isn't doing well for herself. According to Forbes, she has $15 million in endorsement deals from the likes of Nike, Wilson, Audemars Piguet, Whoop, and Master & Dynamic.
"We're just being very strategic and trying to find brands that will help her storytell," he said. "Give her more presence in the West and more gravitas. So we're choosing brands that are either more elevated or the exposure is of the level she deserves."

coco's a real one.

Tennis has long been among the lonely, isolating sports. In the last decade, though, the vibe has started to shift. The rules on coaching have relaxed, increasing the communication between players and the coaches in their box courtside. One consequence: the fist pumps go both ways.
“For tennis players, it’s sort of like a group hug but from afar,” said Alicia Naser, a behavioral scientist and performance coach who works with both hockey and tennis players.
For Lauer, the fist pump helps facilitate one of the most important aspects of the mental game: Playing with intention. The process includes understanding the “response stage” — the moment just after a point — and the “recovery stage”, which means controlling your breath and preparing for the next one. Looking at it that way, the fist pump in 2025 is actually akin to a deep breath.
“If I’m fist pumping, that means I’m steady enough mentally to do that,” Lauer said. “I’m not necessarily thinking about mistakes that I’ve made or I’m not frustrated by what has happened in the previous points.
“It relates to being more confident and being able to analyze and problem solve a bit better.”

iconic

  • I know it's STILL probably too soon for a lot of y'all but The Athletic look back on THE TENNIS UPSET OF THE CENTURY. It really is hard to describe how it felt watching this all unfold in real time. The first line of the article:
"It is the tennis match that no one wants to talk about." 
  • Me reading this specific set of paragraphs and screaming "YES! YES! YES! YES!" This is precisely what everyone who has watched a lot of Swiatek was seeing in the first six months: she had become one-note. (The Athletic)
Fissette told Świątek that she didn’t need to be a hero on every shot. She hits with amazing, heavy topspin. Almost no one on the tour can match her on either wing. Why not use that spin and that advantage to change the height of the ball over the net and push her opponents further behind the baseline, to open the court for an easier winner?
She can play with more patience than most players who can’t generate her prodigious revs. She can accelerate over the ball and land it with plenty of margin, rather than blasting flat and true for the lines to win points. And she can use that advantage to construct points, rather than crushing them, climbing the ladder to the front of the court to finish off an opponent hopelessly scrambling far behind the baseline.
Like everyone else, Fissette had watched Świątek win her maiden Grand Slam title at the 2020 French Open, when she was just 19. She played with so much variety then, finessing drop shots and relying more on sharp angles and arcing strokes than flat, linear power. Wiktorowski had simplified her into a first-strike, all-out aggression machine. It won her four majors, but also stunted the qualities that separate her from other great players. The peerless footwork. The impregnable defense. And that patient, high-margin, sideline-breaking spin, that takes opponents’ legs and leaves them feeling like a puppet on a string.
  • I agree with this. The narrative of "OH BOY WE NEVER KNOW WHICH CARLOS WE'RE GONNA GET" is wayyyyyyyy overblown. Look at the stats! Be serious! (The Athletic)
  • Andy Murray Forever. (Reddit)
  • Every few months I watch this video and then this is all I eat for every meal for like weeks at a time and those are the happiest weeks:
  • I'll be streaming on Twitch during women's final on Saturday! Follow me at pandaxprs12 to get an alert when I go live!
  • Join our growing Discord to chat with me and other fans during the tournament, suggest links for the Bagel Bites, and just have a general fun time.

Read more