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Australian Open: Within Hours, Three Top Americans Fall
MELBOURNE, Australia — Did the United States Open really end only four months ago?
It seemed much more distant than that on the opening day of the Australian Open, as the leading American women fell at the first hurdle, one by one, on the biggest show courts at Melbourne Park.
First was Sloane Stephens, the surprise U.S. Open champion last September. Stephens, seeded 13th here, has yet to win another match since that emotional breakthrough and was beaten on Monday in Margaret Court Arena by Zhang Shuai of China 2-6, 7-6(2), 6-2.
Next to tumble was Venus Williams, the 37-year-old who had one of her finest seasons last year in the major tournaments but was handed one of the most daunting opening-round assignments here: the unseeded Belinda Bencic.
Bencic, a former top 10 player from Switzerland who has come back very strongly from left wrist surgery, prevailed, 6-3, 7-5, in Rod Laver Arena, taking the initiative from the baseline repeatedly to defeat Williams for the first time in five matches.
Next in line was CoCo Vandeweghe, the No. 10 seed and a semifinalist here last year, who was upset, 7-6 (4), 6-2, by Timea Babos, a Hungarian veteran, in Hisense Arena. Vandeweghe later said she had been suffering from the flu, which had affected her preparation for the tournament.
“In women’s tennis, I think we see it: Anything can happen when there is no Serena Williams,” Babos said in her post-match interview.
Even without Serena Williams, four American women reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open last year, but after Monday’s collective stumbles, the only one of those four women still in the singles tournament here is Madison Keys, who will play her first-round match on Tuesday.
“Tennis is definitely a roller coaster,” Stephens said at her alternately downbeat and upbeat news conference. “But I have learned to just not panic. It will be O.K. There’s always going to be times when it’s really tough, and there will be times when you’re on an extreme high. I think for me now it’s not that great, but it’s nothing to panic about, guys.”
Stephens’ tennis roller coaster has been one of the wildest rides imaginable of late. After an 11-month injury layoff, she roared back to win her first major singles title in New York. Since then, she has lost eight straight matches and is 0-2 in 2018 after losing in the opening round in Sydney to Camila Giorgi, 6-3, 6-0, and now to Zhang, a former Australian Open quarterfinalist who was nearly seeded here.
“I’m not going to dwell on it just because I lost eight matches in a row and say, ‘Oh winning the U.S. Open, it’s haunting me now,’” Stephens said. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
She added: “You know, before I would get so upset about what people would write and say things about me on TV and blah, blah, blah — and now it’s like, yeah, who cares? I won a Grand Slam. I’m going through a tough time. Who cares?
“No one cares about my life. I’m just having fun. I’m enjoying it. There’s too much emphasis on the bad things that happen after something really great happens.”
Four other American women also lost early on Monday: the youngsters CiCi Bellis, Taylor Townsend and Sofia Kenin, as well as the veteran Alison Riske.
But the most prominent American to fall was the fifth-ranked Williams, who reached the finals of the Australian Open and Wimbledon last year in addition to the U.S. Open semifinals. She was defeated in Melbourne last year by her sister Serena Williams, who was two months pregnant at the time.
“Last year was last year,” Venus Williams said after her loss. “This is a new year. You can’t live in previous years.”
Serena Williams, who gave birth to a daughter in September, has not played another tour-level match since that victory, while Venus Williams has continued to excel and even talk about playing at least until the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
But Bencic, 17 years Venus Williams’s junior, is a remarkable talent, and she played a poised and aggressive match on Monday to become one of the few to have defeated both Williams sisters in singles (she upset Serena Williams in the final of the Rogers Cup in 2015 before experiencing injury issues).
“I think she played well,” Venus Williams said. “I don’t think I played a bad match. She just played above and beyond.”
Stephens, too, has been troubled by a knee issue, but her confidence has also seemed to be a factor. And though she served for the match at 5-4 in the second set on Monday, she was unable to close it out.
It all amounted to a big shift in mood from the last Grand Slam tournament: a shift best represented by Stephens’ coach, Kamau Murray, normally a gifted and expansive communicator who walked out of Margaret Court Arena wearing a pained expression before delivering a series of remarkably curt answers to a series of questions.
Is it more a mental or a physical problem at the moment for Stephens?
“We’ll see; we’ll see,” Murray said, as he headed for the staircase.
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