The Season’s Last Tennis Grand Slam, the US Open, Is Getting Under Way Right Now.
This is a special major, because a player is competing here who could complete the calendar-year Grand Slam, having already won the season’s three previous ones. That will be the main intrigue of this year’s American major:
Will the living legend of tennis, America’s Serena Williams, win it!
Serena Williams, winner of the 2014 US Open Photo: AP/Darron Cummings
There is one more difference this year: Arthur Ashe Stadium, the centerpiece of the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, greets players and spectators with its roof structure in place. For now it will only protect them from the sun, since the roof is due to be completed in 2016. It will be the third Grand Slam final venue with a retractable roof for when it’s needed. Before that, protection from the weather by a roof was achieved at the Australian Open’s Rod Laver Arena and on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. A similar project is planned for Roland Garros’s main court, Court Philippe-Chatrier as well.
Right now, on Court 10, Nikoloz Basilashvili, playing under the Georgian flag, has started his first-round match. He is facing Spain’s Feliciano López. Nikoloz met Feliciano in the second round at Wimbledon and beat him in a tense five-setter (7:5 3:6 6:3 2:6 6:4), though he lost in the third round.
Nikoloz Basilashvili during his third-round match against Spain’s Roberto Bautista Agut at Wimbledon 2015 Photo: Paul Zimmer
Featured image: USOPEN logo Inside post thumbnail image: Joseph D. Sullivan
Translated from Georgian with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic), reviewed by the Velorbola editors.
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April 15, 2019
