The US Open has gone pretty much like everyone predicted: the men’s semifinals contain the two best players I’ve ever seen, the greatest of all time… and some other guy. Meanwhile, the women’s semifinals contain four players who can all plausibly win it all. Nothing shocking here, but still lots to like. So… who do I actually like?
Much like the previous versions of this format this year, it’s not exactly rocket science on the men’s side. If you pick Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz, you can sleep soundly. If you pick anyone else … good luck. But on the women’s side, it’s as even as can be. So no use wasting any more time: here’s who’s going to win the 2025 US Open. Probably.
Yet to face a seeded player this tournament, Pegula has lost 23 total games across five entire rounds. Going from that to facing Aryna Sabalenka has to feel like eating plain pasta with butter as an appetizer before having a Ghost Pepper for your entrée. But the last time the two played at the US Open was in similar circumstances: last year’s final, and it was a really close match (Sabalenka took it 7-5, 7-5). There’s no reason Pegula can’t win it all, she’s a victim of the quality of the field — she won’t get any help getting this done, and beating a super-duper rested Sabalenka back-to-back with either a resurgent Anisimova or Naomi Osaka is as hard as it gets. And Pegula has had plenty of time to prove she can handle this type of smoke — I’m not sure she can do it consistently.
Have we ever been so back? Because we are outrageously back. Naomi Osaka has roared back to the darling of Arthur Ashe stadium and is destroying to the point where I am ranking her above a Top 5 player in the world. Karolina Muchova threw the kitchen sink at her and it didn’t matter — Osaka is poised to continue this run until the sun goes down.
This is the old Osaka, the one who dominated hardcourt tennis in her first semifinal since having a child. She looks happy, focused, and absolutely prepared to take her fifth hardcourt major on the backs of consistent, quality tennis. I legitimately believe this is happening, and I’m all for it — for a while Osaka was the bridge between the old era of women’s tennis dominated by Serena Williams and the new era which has mostly been Swiatek’s domain. If she can start being a consistent quarterfinalist again, the WTA tour will just be that much cooler.
Well, what did I say about bringing a crowbar when your door slammed shut in your face? Anisimova dug supremely deep, turned the tables on Iga Swiatek and now looks poised to potentially win this whole thing. She has an elite record against Sabalenka too, going 6-3 against her all-time. I won’t actually go so far as to say she’s the favorite over Sabalenka, but with her lighter semifinal and head-to-head record (along with a culture changing win over Swiatek)… she very well might be.
This is your defending champion. This is the winner of three of the last four hardcourt tournaments. This is the world number one, so why on earth would you pick anybody else? Well, on one hand, Sabalenka hasn’t had a single real battle throughout the tournament — she hasn’t lost a set, and her quarterfinal opponent withdrew from the match before it even happened. But let’s be honest: this late in a tournament, it’s not about getting hardened in the fires of competition, it’s about rest and exhaustion. Sabalenka has barely played in the last week, and that gives her a massive edge over Jessica Pegula who, while also without a set loss, actually had to play a quarterfinal. All four of these players can win, but Sabalenka is the pick.
Ok, let’s just all get on the same page here: what Auger-Aliassime has done this tournament is incredible, beating three Top 15 players in a row to get to his first career semifinals. But I’m going to keep this short, sweet and honest: If Felix Auger-Aliassime beats Jannik Sinner this round, let alone the winner of Djokovic-Alcaraz in the final, I do not understand tennis. If that happens, you have permission never to take anything I write about tennis seriously ever again. Thanks, and have a nice day.
You know, I wrote this article during Wimbledon, and here’s what I said about Djokovic:
“There is a path for Djokovic, but it’s not based in tennis reality. It’s based in the cinematic glory of somehow beating the two harbingers of his personal apocalypse [Sinner and Alcaraz] back to back, and show the world that he isn’t done yet.”
This tournament hasn’t exactly reinvented this specific wheel. Djokovic showed against Taylor Fritz that he is still probably the third-best player on tour, but we have yet to see anything this year that suggests he will accomplish anything beyond here ever again. It’s strange to say, since every time the GOAT walks on the court, you can easily talk yourself into it. We’ve all seen it, and he even has a winning record against Carlos Alcaraz all-time. But it was not this Carlos Alcaraz, and I simply don’t see it for Novak this time, or really anytime going forward. He doesn’t have the stamina that his opponents will have anymore, and unlike his previous opponents, they will be perfectly comfortable in five-set matches. His silver bullets have rusted over, but there’s always an inkling of belief he’ll just win it anyway.
It might be smart for Carlos to ask his opponent Novak about how the best-in-the-world title fluctuates year over year — he dealt with this for about a decade with Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, and Alcaraz has discovered how quickly the tables can turn on you when playing someone as technically dominant as Sinner.
Another US Open would certainly swing the momentum back in his direction, though he and everyone else are dealing with one of the most well-tuned hardcourt players in history. Then again, I said that about Wimbledon and Alcaraz, whose multi-speed game in theory should be better on the surface than Sinner, and the Italian won it anyway. Tennis is a moderately random sport, and the result of this US Open will certainly be a dose of controlled randomness.
I am not ranking them both tied at one because I’m not a coward, but it may be more accurate just to say that Sinner and Alcaraz are the sickest gamers on the planet and may the best man win. We’re really just splitting hairs anyway.
Rather than try to encapsulate why Sinner is the favorite in a short paragraph (because I already did that in the Top 8 piece and then he embarrassed Lorenzo Musetti who I said I liked), I’m going to focus on one piece of it: his two-handed backhand.
This is the best weapon in tennis as far as I’m concerned, taking the belt from Alcaraz’s forehand. His ability to hit it from such extreme angles comes from how low to the ground he gets while still generating absurd power from an otherwise incredibly compact stance. It allows him to disguise where he is placing the ball while punishing opponents who dare to go backhand to backhand with him — he’ll freeze you with a down-the-line passing shot or outright winner if you get too cute.
Arguably, Sinner’s backhand has enabled his meteoric rise to true superstardom. It allows him to hit every shot at a high level, rather than unleash a nuclear bomb every once in a while like Alcaraz does. Combined with his natural length, he will turn pokes into winners, digs into passing shots, and frustrate any opponent that ever heard their coach tell them to “hit it to their backhand!” Against Sinner, that’s not going to work.
