US Open Day 1 - Serena's not done yet; upsets galore
The Tennis Podcast
David Law
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 30 August 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We may have had the Serena celebration, but we haven't had her final match. Not yet. At the end of an extraordinary evening - which saw Serena honoured on court before, during and after her victory over Danka Kovinic - David, Catherine and Matt try to sum it all up. Why was it better to stage Serena's ceremony tonight rather than after a loss? How much better did her game look than in Cincinnati? And can she now go on a run?
Elsewhere, it was a day of upsets with Simona Halep, Daria Kasatkina, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Taylor Fritz all beaten. We talk about those shocks, Andy Murray's first straight sets win at a slam since 2017, why Ons Jabeur is under the radar here, whether we found Dominic Thiem's loss to Pablo Carreno Busta worrying or encouraging, and why Bianca Andreescu needs to do some grovelling to Nike.
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Billie Jean King. This is Mary and Bartori. |
| 0:03.1 | I'm Matt's Vylander. This is Mary Carillo. This is Pam Shriver. |
| 0:06.4 | This is Yannick Noah and you're listening to the tennis podcast. |
| 0:20.7 | Well, it may be Serena Williams' final tournament, but it is not her final tennis match. |
| 0:28.0 | Because she won. Incredibly. I mean, I suppose not that incredibly really, |
| 0:33.9 | because of all she's done in the sport, but she's beaten Danke Covenitch. |
| 0:38.7 | It has been the most incredible day one. We are assembled in the lobby of Catherine's hotel |
| 0:46.8 | at, oh, just about 20 minutes shy of midnight and it has been quite a day, Catherine. |
| 0:57.2 | Is that your cue for me to try and sum up today, because if so, pass. |
| 1:02.0 | You can just agree if you like. Yes, it's been quite a day, Matt. What do you think? |
| 1:06.8 | It has been quite a day. I don't think I've ever known an opening day of a grand slam be so much |
| 1:14.8 | about one story, you know, and it felt like the whole day everyone was waiting for the Serena |
| 1:20.5 | Williams match. She went out into the grounds. You saw signs, t-shirts. There was Serena at |
| 1:26.9 | the atmosphere. And yet at the same time an awful lot else has happened. Yeah. |
| 1:33.8 | I'm trying to put those two things together in my mind. And when you do, you just realise it's |
| 1:39.1 | a wild day. It's an overwhelming day. And it just gets this tournament off to the most unbelievable |
| 1:45.2 | start, really. Yeah, well, I mean, just before we get on to talking about the actual Serena Williams |
| 1:50.3 | story and match, that was a record crowd tonight for the US Open. It was 29,402 people. Now, |
| 1:58.8 | obviously not all of those were in Arthras stadium that they come into the grounds, but it was a |
| 2:05.0 | complete capacity crowd tonight. And there were no points in it in which people weren't in their |
| 2:14.0 | seats. It was the most astonishing atmosphere, astonishing crowd. We're going to go through it, |
| 2:18.4 | all of it. We're going to go through all the upsets that have happened today. There have been a |
... |
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