United States Open Tennis Tournament

The U.S. Open, tennis' two-week walk on the wild side, was more like a pleasant stroll through the park for Pete Sampras, the one player whose serve no one could tame. You could get windburn from a Sampras serve. At the U.S. Open, you also got Sampras as a re-Pete champion Sunday, when the 22-year-old knocked 12 aces past Cedric Pioline to bag his third Grand Slam title, his second U.S. Open trophy and his second major championship in a row.

Denis Istomin left skid marks on Arthur Ashe Stadium Court, stark evidence of how hard he was trying. Istomin, a 23-year-old from Uzbekistan who is coached by his mother, drew applause from his opponent, Rafael Nadal three times after smacking extraordinary winners. And yet it was the maestro Nadal, the world's top-ranked player and the top-seeded man at the U.S. Open, who accepted a standing ovation at the end of his 6-2, 7-6 (5), 7-5 second-round victory Friday night at the U.S. Open.

Patrick Rafter could have turned this Grand Slam into confinement, retreating into a self-protective shell as defending champion at the U.S. Open. A sea of doubt was out there. One former Open champion, John McEnroe, said the 25-year-old Australian was a one-Slam wonder. Another Open champion and the top-seeded player, Pete Sampras, said that the difference between himself and Rafter was 10 Grand Slams. Now it's nine.

The news of the day is not that tennis fined Serena Williams. It is that tennis did something. For many, including this typist, the action was a shocker. Not the size of the fine, the existence of one. This is a sport that tiptoes around its superstars like lion trainers at the zoo during feeding time. Outbursts such as Williams' tirade of intimidation against a lineswoman in the semifinals of this year's U.S. Open usually send the mice in blazers scurrying to the basement. Tennis runs via a dysfunctional collection of Grand Slam officials, men's and women's tour officials, men's and women's tournament directors and players' agents.

NEW YORK -- The official language of New York, that special brand of booing that comes from someplace deep in the diaphragm, blared through Arthur Ashe Stadium late Thursday night, but the odd part about that was its recipient. Out there on the court, doing a post-match TV interview, making whine upon whine that dredged the jeers, stood the same Novak Djokovic who only 12 months ago had ripened into a darling of the National Tennis Center, reaching the final and enchanting the audiences with dead-on impersonations of other players.

Gabriela Sabatini, a 20-year-old Argentine with a loser's image, who in recent months lost her coach, her boyfriend and her old style of tennis, won the U.S. Open Saturday and immediately announced party plans. "I'm going to get drunk on orange juice," Sabatini said.

NEW YORK -- A woman who at 17 won a U.S. Open and looked almost disbelieving won a U.S. Open at 26 Sunday night and commenced thoroughly hopping. So this Serena Williams hopped and hopped and hopped, seven hops in all, her euphoria suggestive of the wait it took to attain it and the struggle of beating Jelena Jankovic to earn it. "I'm sorry, I'm so excited," Williams told Jankovic as they hugged at the net after their stirring 6-4, 7-5 final that gave Williams her third U.S. Open title, her ninth Grand Slam singles title and, more poignantly, her first U.S. Open title since 2002 and her first Slam title since January 2007.

The fate of three International Tennis Federation (ITF) umpires -- including Lynn Welch of the U.S. -- who were dismissed from the U.S. Open earlier this week after allegations they had mishandled their Olympic credentials in Athens last month -- will be decided this week, according to Stefan Fransson of Sweden, supervisor of officials for the ITF.

That a frustrated-looking Roger Federer lost for the first time after 55 consecutive hard-court victories has not turned the tennis world upside down or sent a seismic shock through the sport. Nor has it made the answer to this straightforward question any easier: If not Federer, who? "To win here?" asked fifth-seeded James Blake at a pre-U.S. Open interview Saturday. Yes. Other than Blake, of course.

So how big an upset was it? In the fourth round of the U.S. Open Sunday night, Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova lost to Manuela Maleeva-Fragniere, who isn't even the best player in her family. Maleeva-Fragniere, ranked No. 9, two places behind sister Katerina, shocked the No. 2-ranked Navratilova, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3. "It is probably what I have lived for in my tennis career," Maleeva-Fragniere said. Navratilova reacted differently. "Wimbledon took so much out of me," she said.

A U.S. Open tennis tournament that had something for everybody this year offered up one more juicy tidbit on its last day Monday. Roger Federer lost. That hasn't happened here in six years and 40 matches. He's like USC with a lead at halftime, Tiger with a five-foot putt. But the man who played in all four Grand Slam tournament finals this year, winning the French Open and Wimbledon and extending his men's record for most major titles to 15, ran up against a new sheriff in town.

Roger Federer is five inches shorter and about seven years older than Juan Martin del Potro. But the 6-foot-1, 28-year-old Federer has 15 major titles. He is in his 21st Grand Slam tennis tournament final. He is in his 17th final in the last 18 majors. And today Federer might become the first man since Bill Tilden in the 1920s to win six straight U.S. championships. The top-seeded Federer beat fourth-seeded Novak Djokovic, 7-6 (3), 7-5, 7-5, Sunday in the second men's semifinal at the U.S. Open.

A curly-haired mother and her curly-haired daughter painted over some tennis ugliness with airy joyousness Sunday night at Arthur Ashe Stadium. Unseeded Kim Clijsters won her second U.S. Open championship with a 7-5, 6-3 win over Danish teenager Caroline Wozniacki, who was seeded ninth. After a match-winning forehand, Clijsters, 26, celebrated with her 18-month-old daughter Jada and her husband Brian Lynch, who once played basketball at Villanova and who tugged on his stubbly beard throughout the match.

You had your bagel for breakfast. Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams had theirs in a late lunch Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. Once they digested that, it was time for real food, for something sumptuous. Not only did Clijsters, the comeback kid who is now a 26-year-old mom, upset third-seeded Williams, 29. She did so in one of the stranger and more dramatic women's matches in U.S. Open history. The strange part was the score. Clijsters won the first set in 27 minutes at love.

A new, improved Andy Roddick was on display Thursday night at the U.S. Open. He is a product worth looking at these days, maybe even buying into. Yes, the old Roddick had streaks of inconsistency, of adolescent under-achieving. His game has always been huge, but so has his downside. In years past, there have been blowups at chair umpires, blowups at himself, blowups merely for the sake of blowing up. But the version on display, in front of a full house of 23,763 in the monstrous tennis stadium that annually lines the coffers of the U.S. Tennis Assn.

It was a day of great joy for 17-year-old American Melanie Oudin. Despite a cramping strain in her left thigh, Oudin upset fourth-seeded Elena Dementieva, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, on Thursday in a second-round U.S. Open match. But it was also a day of great sadness for fifth-seeded Jelena Jankovic, a finalist here last year but who became a second-round loser to Yaroslava Shvedova, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (6). Jankovic played despite learning that her grandmother had died in Serbia on Wednesday.

For years, people have wondered if there is anybody in tennis more boring than Stefan Edberg. The answer is probably not. Sure, like Bjorn Borg and Mats Wilander before him, Edberg carefully cultivates the classic low-key Swedish personality, but his is even lower key. If Edberg works at it, which he often does, he can make his face as blank as a snowscape in his hometown of Vastervik. At the U.S. Open a couple of years ago, Edberg was asked if he knew a joke. He said he knew a Norwegian joke.

Some might call the recent behavior of the world's most prominent tennis players a bit strange, or possibly, charming, if you favor the kind approach. Whereas last year was--with a few exceptions--a campaign of dullness, in 1987 the top players seem to have taken the year off for strange behavior. Just two days before the U.S.

Serena Williams took only 53 minutes and committed only nine unforced errors in her 6-1, 6-1 second-round victory over 51st-ranked Melinda Czink of Hungary. It was an emphatic win and it prompted Serena to do a little happy dance when it was over. That was in contrast to a second-round match earlier in the day when Venus Williams played with her left knee heavily taped. That didn't stop third-seeded Venus from dispatching 124th-ranked Bethanie Mattek-Sands, 6-4, 6-2, and moving closer to an anticipated fourth-round encounter with 2005 Open champion Kim Clijsters.

Rafael Nadal would be the first to say he's coming back from sore knees and it's no big thing. Richard Gasquet would be the first to say he's coming back from a raw deal and it's a huge thing. The two young tennis stars played a first-round match on center court at the U.S. Open on Wednesday. Nadal won, as expected. Gasquet showed flashes of brilliance in the 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 defeat, as expected. But this was much more than your routine match. This one had connections, multiple story lines and an off-court soap opera.