US Open 2021 tennis - Upsets, drama, controversy, bathroom breaks, how the first week was the 'best Grand Slam in years'

On occasion the first week of a Grand Slam can feel like the warm-up for the main event. It’s entertaining and you watch it, but usually it doesn’t completely grip you and send you on the same roller-coaster ride as the second week. The 2021 US Open has been different.

The first week of the final Grand Slam of this year has been enthralling from start to finish. There has been drama, shocks, five-set thrillers, newcomers breaking through, controversy, wild weather, and much more. It has been one of the finest first weeks of a major this century, and if that sounds like recency bias, let’s take a quick minute to reflect on some of the highlights.

Where to start? How about day one? Usually a day for the top seeds to get into their groove, maybe drop a set, but ultimately ease into the second round without too much trouble. Not so this year, not when three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray was up against third seed Stefanos Tsitsipas.

The match itself was brilliant enough, a near-five-hour high-quality epic that swung back and forth before Tsitsipas eventually managed to eek out the win. But along with the action on the court there was enough accompanying drama to fill the first week of the tournament, with Murray sweating through his only pair of trainers just the start of things. Tsitsipas’ lengthy bathroom break at the end of the fourth set riled Murray so much that he was still taking shots at his opponent on social media the day after.

Murray’s reaction - and the social media fallout - also set Tsitsipas up to be a pantomime villain from there on, with boos following him on his trip to the toilet in the second round and in the third round, when he shortened things up significantly. Oh and that third-round match: another superb back-and-forth contest as 18-year-old Carlos Alcaraz stunned Tsitsipas in five sets.

Day one also saw towel-related outbursts from Nick Kyrgios, an emotional retirement for Carla Suarez Navarro, a brilliant match between American duo Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys, and the first of many five-set matches.

And the drama has simply continued to stack up.

Novak Djokovic lost a set in his opener against Holger Rune – with both players confused whether the crowd were booing or cheering for ‘Ruuuunnnnneee’ – Bianca Andreescu won in nearly three hours, Maxime Cressy and Andreas Seppi saved nine match points between them and won shortly after one another, Karolina Pliskova fired a tournament-record 24 aces to beat Amanda Anisimova, defending champion Naomi Osaka lost in the third round and then said she plans to take an indefinite break from tennis, Frances Tiafoe delighted the home crowd by beating fifth seed Andrey Rublev in a thriller, Hurricane Ida hit so hard that a match played under a roof had to be suspended, Emma Raducanu announced herself to New York in a big way, Ashleigh Barty bid farewell to New York as she crashed out, Reilly Opelka was fined $10,000 (!!!) for carrying an unapproved bag onto the court…the list goes on.

Eurosport tennis expert and two-time Grand Slam finalist Alex Corretja says he thinks the 2021 US Open has been "the best Grand Slam I can remember in many years".

"The matches at this tournament are unbelievable. In my opinion, I don’t think that the courts are that fast so that makes the rallies a little longer and this is bringing huge tennis. Everyone has to develop their games, everyone has to create good shots and good rallies. The atmosphere of the crowd is back, the players feel it, the fans feel it. I am enjoying it so much. I think we have seen so many good matches, so many young guys coming up, showing that tennis – men’s and women’s – is very close. The gap between the top 80 or 90 is not that huge, or at least as not as big as it used to be.

"These guys like Peter Gojowczyk and Botic van de Zandschulp both showed they can play. They came through the qualifying tournament but they are so, so dangerous. I think this is why it is getting so much more difficult – the top guys need to play better and better. The level of the players is raising so much and you can see that they are fit, they are strong, they can run and they hit the ball hard but can also defend. I think it has been the best Grand Slam I can remember in so many years."

The return of fans has definitely played a part in it all, with the empty stadiums from last year a distant memory after a number of raucous atmospheres over the last week. And the statistics tell part of the story too.

In the first week there were seven fifth-set tie-breaks, which is equal with 1980 and 1983 for the most since the tournament started using tie-breaks in 1970. There have been 10 comebacks from two sets down, which is also level with the tournament record. There was nearly a record-breaking 11th comeback on Sunday as Diego Schwartzman pushed Botic van de Zandschulp to five sets after the dropping first two, only to fade in the decider. The 33 fifth sets played at the tournament is also the most since the 2004 US Open.

On the women’s side there have been a lot of high-quality matches, perhaps helped by the fact that a lot of the seeds survived the opening rounds. The top 20 seeds – barring 13th seed Jennifer Brady who withdrew from the tournament – all made it through to the third round, which is unusual on the sometimes unpredictable WTA Tour. And there have been exciting performances from unseeded players, such as Leylah Fernandez, who beat Osaka so impressively over three sets and then upset Angelique Kerber, and Raducanu, who has looked so good over the first week of the tournament.

Raducanu’s journey is just one of the storylines to follow in the second week, where the women’s draw looks extremely open following Barty’s exit and the men’s draw continues to circle around Djokovic’s quest for a Calendar Slam. Daniil Medvedev looks nailed-on to reach the final after his imperious displays so far, but will he continue to cruise through? And will Djokovic slip up before a potential semi-final against Alexander Zverev, who beat him in stunning fashion at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics recently?

We’ve been spoiled so far, and it looks like there is even more goodness to come.