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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 6, U.S. hopes suffered 60 minutes of horror, a former champion hit a familiar ceiling and …
A difficult hour for two American tennis entertainers
In about 60 minutes Friday, a lot of hometown hopes for a second week filled with big-time energy and tennis acrobatics disappeared like air out of a balloon.
First Ben Shelton, the No. 6 seed who was in glorious form all hard-court season, sustained a shoulder injury while leading Adrian Mannarino of France in Louis Armstrong Stadium. He toughed out another set, struggling to turn over his forehand and in noticeable pain. After Mannarino won it, Shelton was done.
It’s too early to tell how serious the injury might be, but Shelton is a power player who puts tremendous stress on his shoulder with his serves and forehand. This is not the thing he wants to be managing so early in his career. He’s just 22 and was playing the best tennis of his life the past few months.
While Shelton was struggling, Frances Tiafoe, a two-time U.S. Open semifinalist and crowd favorite, was on his way to defeat to qualifier Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany.
Struff had Tiafoe on his heels for most of the afternoon, taking advantage of what Tiafoe said were slick conditions on Grandstand.
“I was late on everything,” Tiafoe said.
“I thought I still had some looks to be aggressive and take charge a little bit, and I just didn’t. It’s going to be hard to swallow how I played today and being out of the U.S. Open, for sure, this early.”
There was some American success before and after. Last year’s finalist Jessica Pegula and world No. 58 Ann Li made it to the fourth round in the day, but last year’s semifinalist Emma Navarro later fell to Barbora Krejčíková as evening arrived. In the night session, Taylor Townsend continued her stunning U.S. Open story by upsetting Mirra Andreeva, before Taylor Fritz, also a finalist last year, beat Swiss qualifier Jérôme Kym to advance.
But for Shelton and Tiafoe, two crowd favorites and staples of the late stages in recent years, it was a chastening afternoon at the tournament they rise for like no other.
Matt Futterman
Emma Raducanu’s ceiling is high — but hard
Emma Raducanu lost to three players at the four Grand Slams this year: Iga Świątek twice, Aryna Sabalenka and now Elena Rybakina. With the exception of her loss to world No. 1 Sabalenka at Wimbledon, in which the 22-year-old Brit led 4-2 in the opening set, they have all been one-sided defeats. These heavy losses to Grand Slam champions, in which Raducanu has not won a set, neatly encapsulate her current level: solid and improving, but overpowered when she meets the sport’s elite.
Rybakina, the No. 9 seed at the U.S. Open, hammered Raducanu 6-1, 6-2 Friday, and the generally comprehensive defeats have taken the shine off the signs of promise in the earlier rounds of each event. Three third rounds, plus a second-round defeat at the French Open, are reasonable foundations for next year, and there’s certainly an argument that such tough early draws have scrubbed the otherwise viable possibility of a deep run at a major.
There is no doubt that Raducanu has made big improvements in 2025, taking full advantage of generally staying healthy for the first time in several seasons. She got to world No. 33 a few weeks ahead of the U.S. Open, a career high since the points from winning the 2021 U.S. Open fell off three years ago. Should she keep moving up, she will start getting seeded at the majors and become more likely to get more favorable draws.
Working with new coach Francis Roig, a longtime lieutenant of Rafael Nadal, Raducanu’s serve has improved and she has tried to play more on the front foot. Her more default setting is to hustle and compete, but that way of winning gets taken away from her by the best players in the world. The penultimate point of the penultimate game against Rybakina summed that up, as Raducanu stuck around in a rally but remained mostly powerless as Rybakina gradually wore her down and then flicked away a backhand winner. The 2022 Wimbledon champion played well, but her first serve percentage was down at 47 percent, so this wasn’t a vintage display from Rybakina.
Raducanu raised both her floor and ceiling this year, but her one win in 10 top-10 matches in 2025 shows there is still a limit to what she can do against the very best. Improving that record will be her and Roig’s priority for the rest of the season.
“I would say it’s a goal for sure, and a target,” Raducanu said in her post-match news conference. “Yeah, I’ve lost to Iga twice, Aryna and Elena, so it’s tough.
“But at the same time, that’s where I’m at with my ranking. I can play top opponents in the first, second or third round. So I’ve just got to do my best in the next few months until Australia to just keep working to try and close the gap.
“I think depending on the day, depending on how we match up, I think I’m getting better overall.”
Charlie Eccleshare
Carlos Alcaraz locks his knee and then locks down
The difficulty of playing an injured player is a well-established tennis cliche. But generally that’s because it frazzles the fit player, who doesn’t know how best to exploit the opponent’s possible physical weakness.
In the case of Carlos Alcaraz, a medical timeout for a jarred-looking knee was bad news for Luciano Darderi for the opposite reason: It prompted the Spaniard to go supersonic.
Alcaraz had just been broken when he had his knee worked on for a few minutes, and when the tennis resumed, Darderi was serving down 5-4. Instead of Darderi being flummoxed by Alcaraz’s condition, the world No. 2 produced the outstanding game of the match. He opened the game with a forehand return winner off a first serve, before hitting a whipped forehand that Darderi couldn’t control, and producing some incredible defense then earned him a couple of set points. A disbelieving Darderi double-faulted to hand Alcaraz the set, and that was it.
Alcaraz didn’t lose another game as he rolled past the Italian No. 32 seed 6-2, 6-4, 6-0.
Alcaraz played down the severity of his knee injury after the match. “On the last point after the serve, the first step, I just feel something in the knee that, I mean, it was bother(ing) me,” he said in a news conference.
“I was worried after that. That’s why I ask for the physio. But, after five, six points, it was gone … After that, I just didn’t feel it anymore, and it was good. So it’s just about nothing serious.”
Alcaraz plays France’s Arthur Rinderknech in the fourth round Sunday.
Charlie Eccleshare
The return of a U.S. Open motif
Jasmine Paolini has backed up her two Grand Slam final appearances last year — just not at the Grand Slams. The Italian, who reached the championship match at the French Open and Wimbledon and lost them both but won the support of tennis fans all over, has made herself a fixture of the top 10 with strong performances at WTA 1000 level, the rung below the four majors. She won the Italian Open; she reached the Miami Open semifinals.
But Paolini, 29, has not gone beyond the fourth round of a Grand Slam. At the final one of the year, she exited early again — with the additional pain of being part of the cutest ritual of disrespect in sports.
No. 7 seed Paolini and 2023 Wimbledon champion Markéta Vondroušová produced an opening set of thrilling tennis in their third-round match on Grandstand, with Paolini’s heavy ball and all-action intensity in contrast with the Czech’s more languid, geometric style.
That was until Paolini made a few errors in the first-set tiebreak, which Vondroušová won 7-4. After that, Paolini’s game slightly fell apart. She went down 4-1, before playing a 13-minute service game with the Czech trying to force her way to a 5-1 lead and Paolini trying to use the energy of a fervently pro-Italy crowd to get her energy back.
But Vondroušová took it, which was the cue for the fuzzy yellow harbingers of doom to descend. There are jumbo tennis balls at most tennis events, but at the U.S. Open, they are particularly prominent and have a particular purpose. With full stadiums and large crowds on every court, kids — and adults — in search of autographs will hustle down to the front row with their cargo whenever they think a match is about to end. But tennis is a sport whose scoring system has no deadline, so the bobbing yellow wave cannot time its approach. Instead, it acts as the equivalent of a Roman emperor’s thumbs down.
With Vondroušová serving for the match, the emperors decided that Paolini was not long for the contest and hustled down. A few points later, they were proved right.
James Hansen
Other notable results on day 6:
Jessica Pegula (4) continued her relatively serene path through the draw with a 6-1, 7-5 win over Victoria Azarenka, the two-time Grand Slam champion of the 2010s.
Benjamin Bonzi saw his wild week at the U.S. Open end with a four-set defeat to a fellow Frenchman. Bonzi, whose opening-night match with Daniil Medvedev sparked the tournament into life, lost to Arthur Rinderknech 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.
Aryna Sabalenka (1) came through a tricky assignment against Leylah Fernandez (31) in what is becoming a signature fashion for 2025: eke out a first service game after saving some break points, develop some rhythm and then win. The defending champion triumphed 6-3, 7-6(2) to continue her other 2025 signature: winning tiebreaks. She is now 20-1 on the year.
Novak Djokovic (7) recovered from a tweaked back muscle and a lost tiebreak to beat Cameron Norrie 6-4, 6-7(4), 6-2, 6-3.
Shot of the day
Ben Shelton’s retirement was sad for tennis, but he still lit up his match with Adrian Mannarino.
Up next:
Linda Nosková (21) vs. Karolina Muchová (11)
11 a.m. ET on ESPN2/ESPN+
An all-Czech clash of completely contrasting styles lands on Grandstand for the opening match of the day. Nosková is all ballstriking and Muchová is all finesse … Except for the fact that Nosková has a sneaky good drop shot and Muchová can lace forehands with anyone on the WTA Tour. Muchová’s previous match against Sorana Cîrstea of Romania was epic, so her conditioning will likely be a factor, but the two-time U.S. Open semifinalist starts as the favorite for her ability to take Nosková out of rhythm.
Magdalena Fręch (28) vs. Coco Gauff (3)
11:30 a.m. ET on ESPN2/ESPN+
Gauff won her three previous meetings with Poland’s Fręch, but she has never played her two days after being moved to tears by the pressure of remodeling her serve in real time, at her most important tournament, in front of 24,000 people inside the biggest stadium in the sport. Gauff fought through to beat Donna Vekić in a tense, surreal match on Arthur Ashe. The morning slot should be less exposing.
Jannik Sinner (1) vs. Denis Shapovalov (27)
1 p.m. ET (estimated) on ESPN2/ESPN+
There could be some needle in this match, with Shapovalov one of the most outspoken players regarding Sinner’s anti-doping case and its resolution. The Canadian possesses the raw power and hyper-aggressiveness required to trouble someone with Sinner’s metronomic consistency, but beating the Italian these days also requires the ability to disrupt the actual rhythm of his game. Shapovalov, who can go blow for blow with anyone, may find that raw power blunted.
Alexander Bublik (23) vs. Tommy Paul (14)
8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN2/ESPN+
Two of the most entertaining players on the ATP Tour clash for the last match of the night session on Arthur Ashe. Bublik brings the improvisational touch and feel along with a howitzer first serve; Paul is all skittering athleticism and inventive power, like a live wire transformed into a tennis player. Both are prone to flights of concentration, so expect some one-sided sets before, fans can hope, both players hit their peaks at the same time and produce a match from the Gods.
U.S. Open men’s draw 2025
U.S. Open women’s draw 2025
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This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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