“I saw Serena this morning in the locker room. We had lockers next to each other. I saw her and she said, ‘Are you playing final today?’ I'm like, ‘Yes.’ She looked straight at me in my eyes, she's like, ‘Go for it, because you really deserve it.’ I was like, ‘Ahhhh. . . thank you.’”—Elena Vesnina, who partnered with Ekaterina Makarova to win the women’s doubles title over Martina Hingis and Flavia Pennetta.
Makarova and Vesnina were seeded fourth, while Hingis and Pennetta were unseeded. The top seeds, Sara Errani and Roberta Vinci, were upset in the second round, paving the way in the top half for Hingis and Pennetta to get through. In the bottom half, Makarova and Vesnina had to do the heavy lifting on their own when they faced off with the Williams sisters in the quarterfinals, although they had help from Kimiko Date-Krumm and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova, who upset No. 2 seeds Hsieh Su-Wei and Peng Shuai. While Serena’s comment to Vesnina was classy, keep in mind that if a champion is going to lose, he or she wants to lose to the person who won the event. Serena got her wish—if not a doubles trophy.
“Yeah, actually kind of in the third round maybe or fourth round I started to think about it in the back of my head, actually. ‘Imagine if I actually won singles and doubles.’ As I got closer, it started to get into my head. All I was thinking was ‘singles and doubles, singles and doubles.’ Winning those two. I was actually very happy.”—Omar Jasika, the 17-year-old Australian who won the boys’ singles despite being unseeded, then joined with Naoki Nakagawa of Japan to sweep the doubles.
Nick Kyrgios isn’t the only bright spot on Australia's tennis horizon. Pulling off a rare double, Jasika upset No. 5 seed Quentin Halys of France in the singles final, 2-6, 7-5, 6-1, then won the doubles as well. Jasika joined countrymen Pat Cash (1982) and Bernard Tomic (2009) on the roll of Australian junior U.S. Open singles champs. Cash said: “He is a little guy but he reminds me of Marcelo Rios, and Rios got to No. 1 in the world. He is a little lefty but he really hits the ball hard and fast. He has a good all round game and he works hard.”
“Yes, to be the first ever to win U.S. Open juniors, it's amazing feeling, you know. No one ever in history won that. Yeah, it's great.”—Marie Bouzkova, the unseeded, 16-year-old Czech who earned the girls’ singles title the hard way, beating four seeds en route to the win.
Okay, so Bouzkova isn’t the “first ever” to win the Girls’ title. She meant that she’s the first Czech girl to have done it, which is surprising enough when you look at the quality players the nation has produced. Bouzkova upset No. 2 seed Jelena Ostapenko in the first round, then took out two more seeds before she finished her work with a final-round win over No. 9 seed Anhelina Kalinina. “Czech Republic has, you know, top players,” Bouzkova said afterward. “We're a small country. We have so many good players. It just really gives me motivation also that I can be good. I look up to Petra Kvitova and Tomas Berdych. It gives me confidence.”