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The 2015 US Open concluded with Novak Djokovic and Flavia Pennetta claiming the men’s and women’s singles titles.
World number one Djokovic won the men’s title for the first time since 2011, defeating Roger Federer in the championship match in similar fashion to how he won Wimbledon in July, winning in four sets.
As at the All England Club, ‘The Fed Express’ took the second set, looking to win the tournament for the first time since 2008.
From there ‘The Djoker’ dominated, taking the final two sets to win his 10th Grand Slam title and second US Open. In doing so he thwarted the Swiss’ bid to not only win a sixth title but also become the oldest ever Grand Slam champion.
It also buried the demons of last year’s shock semi-final loss to Kei Nishikori, who was a first-round loser this year, as well as two championship match losses to Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Djokovic will rest up before the final two Masters tournaments of the year, in Shanghai and Paris, then head to London for the annual ATP World Tour Finals in November.
As for Federer, the defeat was all the more disappointing given the manner in which he ruthlessly dominated compatriot Stan Wawrinka in the semi-finals.
The Swiss Maestro has now endured 13 straight Majors without winning, the longest drought in his Grand Slam career since first Wimbledon crown in 2003.
Nadal’s poor season continued when he crashed out in the third round to Italian Fabio Fognini, having led by two sets to love before collapsing to lose in five. It capped off his worst full Grand Slam year ever, having failed to reach the semi-finals at any of the four Majors, including at his beloved French Open.
His loss to Fognini, his third to the Italian this year alone, was also the first time he had lost a Major match from two sets up. He also lost to Federer in this fashion at the Miami Masters final way back in 2005, in what was just their second meeting ever, and first ever in any championship match.
Murray’s four-set loss to Kevin Anderson in the round of 16 ended his streak of Grand Slam quarter-finals at 18, having last failed to get this far at the 2010 US Open when he lost to Wawrinka in the third round.
The loss came as a surprise given his consistent season so far which saw him claim titles in Munich, Madrid, Queen’s and Montreal. At the latter event, he ended an eight-match losing streak against Djokovic in the final to win the title.
As far as the Aussies were concerned, 2001 champion Lleyton Hewitt played his final singles match at Flushing Meadows, losing to compatriot Bernard Tomic in the second round, but in typical Hewitt fashion, he didn’t go down without a fight.
Tomic, who turns 23 next month, was the best-performed of the Australian men, eventually losing to Richard Gasquet in the third round, while Samantha Stosur was the best-performed Australian overall, reaching the fourth round where she lost for a seventh time in as many meetings to eventual champion Pennetta.
Pennetta’s victory over compatriot Roberta Vinci in the championship match capped off a massive tournament of upsets in the women’s draw.
World number one Serena Williams arrived in New York attempting to emulate Steffi Graf’s 1988 feat of sweeping the Grand Slam calendar year, having completed a second Serena Slam by winning the last four Majors in a row.
As the top seeds fell in the early rounds, her odds of winning at Flushing Meadows for a seventh time shortened.
Third seed Maria Sharapova withdrew on the eve of the tournament due to a leg injury, while recent and former Grand Slam finalists such as Caroline Wozniacki, Ana Ivanovic, Lucie Safarova and Garbine Muguruza were notable early casualties.
But just as it seemed certain that Williams would march into her fifth consecutive US Open final, the world number one, who has clinched that ranking for the year, was stopped in her tracks by Vinci in the semi-finals.
Vinci had never even won a set against Williams in four previous meetings, but seemed to be inspired by Ivanovic’s victory against the world number one at last year’s Australian Open.
After Williams had won the first set, her place in tennis immortality seemed all but a formality, until Vinci came back to win the final two sets and sentence the American to just her fourth Grand Slam semi-final defeat and first in six years.
Vinci’s win came after compatriot Pennetta caused an upset in the earlier semi-final by defeating the highly fancied second seed Simona Halep in straight sets.
Pennetta, who also put out former Grand Slam champions Samantha Stosur and Petra Kvitova in earlier rounds, had won three of her four meetings against Halep, but lost the most recent encounter, in Miami earlier this year.
After she became the oldest first-time Grand Slam champion by beating Vinci in the final, the 33-year-old dropped a bombshell by announcing that she would retire at the end of this season.
It took her 49 Grand Slam tournaments to finally break through, beating Marion Bartoli’s record of 47 when she won Wimbledon in 2013, in what was also her final Major tournament before she suddenly retired six weeks later.
And so that’s all she wrote at the 2015 US Open, and that’s all at the Grand Slams for another year in which Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams dominated, winning three titles each.
Congratulations to Novak Djokovic and Flavia Pennetta, the two singles champions, and commiserations to the vanquished, Roger Federer and Roberta Vinci.
With the tennis season starting to wind down, the focus for the men will turn to the final two Masters events in Shanghai and Paris, and then the ATP World Tour Finals in London in November. For the women, there are a final few Premier events in Wuhan and Beijing, and then the WTA Finals in Singapore next month.
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