U.S. Open recap: Jumbo-tennis-ball-toting kids tamed by thrilling Townsend Krejcikova match

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The Athletic has live coverage of the 2025 U.S. Open, and you can follow all the U.S. Open coverage, too.

Welcome to the U.S. Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.

On Day 8, the U.S. Open’s jumbo tennis ball went rogue, the art of playing with a lead took center stage, and Carlos Alcaraz achieved another milestone.

A cute harbinger of doom gets its power taken away

Since at least 2024, the U.S. Open’s jumbo tennis ball has acquired meaning beyond being a canvas for autographs. With the tournament getting busier and busier, the hunt for a favorite player’s signature has become more competitive. It now requires planning.

Fans still surge forward at the call of “game, set and match” no matter the occasion. Field court or stadium court, favorite player ever or one they didn’t know existed until taking a seat to watch them play for their tennis life, the ritual is the same. Ball under the arm. Permanent marker in hand. The conciliatory handing over of $53.35, and maybe some wheedling to an eventually obliging parent, happened earlier.

But the competition means some fans make their move earlier. So look up at any scoreboard that suggests one player is not long for the tournament, and you are likely to see a gaggle of giant tennis balls slowly bobbing down steps. Tennis might sometimes turn on a single point, but the kids aren’t interested in a comeback. They have become the equivalent of the Roman emperor’s thumbs down, determining that a match has arrived at its final stages and that the player who is behind is dusted.

Sunday, they finally met their match. In the second-set tiebreak during Taylor Townsend’s thrilling match against Barbora Krejčíková, Townsend had no fewer than eight match points; at 6-3 in that tiebreak, she had three in a row. The harbingers of doom prepared to move; Krejčíková made them wait. And then, at 6-7, she laced a backhand onto the edge of the edge of the sideline, so close to being out that the kids — and ushers — thought she had missed it, prompting that surge to the front.

But Krejčíková hadn’t missed it. So she stood at the baseline, at 7-7 in an already ludicrous tiebreak, wondering why a coterie of tennis-ball-toting kids were hunched over near the umpire’s chair, stuck between the autograph they craved and an actual seat.

The tiebreak went on for 14 more points before Krejčíková won it to force a third set. Meanwhile, the jumbo tennis balls were stuck in purgatory, stripped of their power of prophecy.

— James Hansen

The art of playing with a lead

The last couple of days have served as a reminder that playing tennis when level or behind is very different from playing when ahead, especially for underdogs.

Saturday, Denis Shapovalov was a point from leading Jannik Sinner 4-0 in the third set of their third-round match. Sinner got out of that hole, and then Shapovalov got to 40-40 on his own serve at 3-1. Sinner’s shoelace snapped, so he paused to change his shoe, giving Shapovalov some time to think about the scenario he likely did not need. Sinner put on his shoes, broke Shapovalov’s serve and rolled to victory untroubled from there.

In the night session, Anna Kalinskaya was the better player on the same court for much of her first set against Iga Świątek. She served for it on three occasions and failed each time. She hit double faults on two of her four set points. Świątek, perhaps the greatest front-runner in the sport, ultimately came back to pinch the set in a tiebreak before winning the match in straight sets.

On the same court a day later, Arthur Rinderknech grabbed an early mini break in a first-set tiebreak against Carlos Alcaraz. In what had been a serve-dominated match up until that point, he was on course to take the opening set. Instead, he double-faulted on the next point and won only one more before losing the tiebreak 7-3. Alcaraz won the next two sets far more easily and cruised into the quarterfinals.

And over on Louis Armstrong Stadium, Townsend got herself to within a point of beating Krejčíková on no fewer than eight occasions. Her run to this point had been typified by her fearlessness, but with victory in sight, she couldn’t seize the moment, undone by her own caution while ahead and Krejčíková’s freedom when behind, with the Czech blazing winners onto the lines to save several of them.

The ability to step up in such moments is a part of what separates players such as Sinner, Świątek, Alcaraz and Krejčíková, all of them multiple Grand Slam singles champions, from the rest of the field.

— Charlie Eccleshare

Marketa Vondrousova rolls on, and on

How exactly did Markéta Vondroušová do that?

Elena Rybakina was rolling. After losing the first set of their fourth-round clash, Rybakina appeared to have taken over the momentum of the match when she broke Vondroušová to win the second set 7-5. But Vondroušová regrouped to overpower one of the most powerful players in the world, never more so than in the final game, when she fired three aces to get her first match point, then blasted another big serve to seal a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 win in a battle of the 2022 and 2023 Wimbledon champions.

Vondroušová endured two surgeries in the last year and she barely played from February to May because of lingering pain. But then she started winning matches on the clay and has been dangerous ever since. She won the Berlin Open, beating world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka along the way, and now she is into the quarterfinals in New York.

She certainly didn’t look like someone who had shoulder surgery during the past year Sunday night, when she blasted 13 aces to just five for Rybakina. The Kazakh failed to return 34 of Vondroušová’s 82 serves, with the Czech disrupting Rybakina’s baseline rhythm with alternate backhand slices and heavy forehands.

Vondroušová’s victory means that the Czech Republic, with a population of 11 million, has two of the eight quarterfinalists at this year’s U.S. Open. One more is still in with a chance, as Karolína Muchová takes on Marta Kostyuk in the fourth round Monday.

— Matt Futterman

Carlos Alcaraz’s highlight reels get something extraordinary to go with them

Carlos Alcaraz generally has a match or two early on in a major when his concentration temporarily wavers.

At this year’s U.S. Open, not so much. With his straight-sets win after Rinderknech, Alcaraz is into the 14th Grand Slam quarterfinal of his young career — but his first without dropping a set along the way.

It’s a telling statistic for a player who looks more locked-in than ever, having reached the final of his previous seven events. He’s referenced learning lessons from last year’s second-round defeat here to Botic van de Zandschulp. And he said he doesn’t think he’s performed this consistently at any other point in his career.

None of which is to say Alcaraz isn’t still producing the usual smattering of mind-bending shots. In the penultimate game of his victory over Arthur Rinderknech on Sunday, Alcaraz chased down an overhead and speared a forehand passing shot on the run that drew gasps from the crowd, before caressing another ludicrous forehand past the Frenchman to set up the chance to break and serve for the match.

This is the Alcaraz tennis experience: The extraordinary is normal, and to have dropped just nine games on average per match as world No. 2 feels kind of strange, even for a player who is now 33-1 in his last 34 matches. The Spaniard is slowly erasing his already tenuous reputation for inconsistency — in-match unpredictability does not necessarily lead to up-and-down results — and now that in-match wavering appears on the wane, too.

— Charlie Eccleshare

Other notable results on Day 8

• Jessica Pegula (4) started a day of mostly smooth sailing for the top seeds on Arthur Ashe Stadium, beating compatriot Ann Li 6-1, 6-2.

• Novak Djokovic (7) had a similarly smooth path against Jan-Lennard Struff (Q), going untroubled in a 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 win.

• Aryna Sabalenka (1) eased into the quarterfinals, beating Cristina Buçsa 6-1, 6-4.

• And Taylor Fritz (4) made a potentially difficult match against Tomáš Macháč (21) look routine, coming through 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

Shot of the day

Carlos Alcaraz played two hyperdrive return games to break Arthur Rinderknech in the second and third sets of their match. Here’s the best shot of the third:

(U.S. Open)

Up next

🎾 Marta Kostyuk (27) vs. Karolína Muchová (11)

1 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN/ESPN+

There are bigger names and more acclaimed players on the schedule, but this duel has the potential to be the best pure tennis match of the day. Muchová’s finesse is well known, but Kostyuk has her own version of it, sliding and stepping in and out of corners and sneaking forward to close points before her opponent notices.

🎾 Ekaterina Alexandrova (13) vs. Iga Świątek (2)

1:30 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN/ESPN+

The “Iga Świątek struggles against power hitters” maxim has more holes than most in tennis, but Alexandrova is in hot form and beat the world No. 2 in Miami last year, on very similar courts. That is to say that this match should be a competitive one, but because of the two players involved, not because of an axiom that falls apart under the slightest pressure.

🎾 Naomi Osaka (23) vs. Coco Gauff (3)

2 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN/ESPN+

The first genuine blockbuster of the tournament. A four-time Grand Slam champion versus a two-time Grand Slam champion. Two of the biggest sports stars in the world on the biggest stage in tennis. A pure ballstriker against an elite defender. Tennis cinema is hopefully on the way.

🎾 Jannik Sinner (1) vs. Alexander Bublik (23)

7 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN2/ESPN+

When Alexander Bublik beat Jannik Sinner at the Halle Open in Germany earlier this summer, he became the first player not named Carlos Alcaraz to beat Sinner in 49 matches. He gets another shot on the hard courts in New York, and with Sinner having at times looked discombobulated by Denis Shapovalov’s mercurial shotmaking in the previous round, Bublik will believe he has a chance. He doesn’t have much choice.

U.S. Open men’s draw 2025

U.S. Open women’s draw 2025

Tell us what you noticed on the eighth day …

(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic / Getty Images)

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