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Welcome to the U.S. Open briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories on each day of the tournament.

On day 2, nerves even get to champions, a rising star gets a reality check, and Carlos Alcaraz’s hair causes controversy.

Champions still get nervous sometimes

The end of Madison Keys’ Grand Slam season was about as different from its start as possible.

In January, Keys won the Australian Open, taking out defending champion Aryna Sabalenka in a knife-edge final.

Yesterday, at the U.S. Open, she lost to Renata Zarazúa of Mexico, the world No. 82, from 7-6(10), 3-0 up. Zarazúa made a stunning comeback to take the biggest win of her career, 6-7(10), 7-6(3), 7-5.

There is not much mystery about the stats sheet. Keys committed 89 “unforced” errors to just 34 for Zarazúa, who used height and incredible defense to make Keys hit ball after ball. The accumulated pressure made her hit for smaller margins, and so she missed.

The mystery here involves the nerves that Keys said affected her play throughout the match. The triumph in Australia, after 16 years as a prodigy preordained to win a stack of majors who had won none, was supposed to set her free.

Not so in her home Slam, where she has suffered plenty of heartbreak before, including getting bageled in the second set of the 2017 final against Sloane Stephens.

“For the first time in a while, my nerves really got the better of me and it kind of became a little bit paralyzing,” Keys said. “I felt like I was just slow, I wasn’t seeing things the way that I wanted to, which I feel like resulted in a lot of bad decisions and lazy footwork.”

Her win in Australia followed time in therapy: to learn not to define herself by her results. She always knew that would require constant work, that those sentiments might continue to pop up sometimes. And then they did, at a very inconvenient time.

“It’s more than just saying, I want to win. Just feeling like winning matters just way too much,” Keys said.

Zarazúa gets France’s Diane Parry — and a spot in the path of Coco Gauff that was meant for Keys.

Matt Futterman

Carlos Alcaraz leaves the U.S. Open abuzz

After over 40 minutes, one set, and 23 points, Reilly Opelka of the U.S. won an exchange against Carlos Alcaraz’s serve in their first-round match. Opelka, the 6ft 11in (211cm) serve bot archetype who lasers the ball down at over 130mph, is supposed to be the guy with the untouchable serve. But it was Alcaraz, who has declared a desire to be labeled a serve bot like Opelka, despite lacking the limitations required, who proved unbreakable on Arthur Ashe Stadium.

A locked-in, locked-down 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 win for a player who is 30-1 in his last 31 matches, but also prone to losing focus, was the perfect opening statement in Alcaraz’s push for the world No. 1 ranking in New York, as well as the U.S. Open title. Better the result of his nearest rival Jannik Sinner, and Alcaraz returns to the top of men’s tennis.

And if he gets back into that rarefied air, he might feel it whistling more keenly over his head. Alcaraz debuted a very tight buzzcut ahead of his win over the American, later explaining in his news conference that his brother had “misunderstood the machine” and left him requiring an emergency close shave. Better on his head than on the tennis court.

Alcaraz will play Mattia Bellucci, the extroverted, shotmaking Italian lefty, in the second round.

James Hansen

A rising star gets her next tennis reality check

Tennis, it turns out, isn’t quite as easy as Victoria Mboko has been making it look.

After winning the Canadian Open, a WTA 1000 title one rung below the Grand Slams to cap a season of near-uninterrupted growth, Mboko has finally come back down to earth.

Mboko, who turns 19 today, came into the U.S. Open nursing a wrist injury that she suffered in Montreal during that title run earlier this month, and the No. 22 seed had a reality check yesterday in the form of a two-time Grand Slam champion.

Barbora Krejčíková was much too strong on the day, winning 6-3, 6-2 against an Mboko who clearly wasn’t fully fit.

Losses have been few and far between this year for the Canadian, who cut a swathe through the second-tier ITF circuit before seamlessly adapting to life on the WTA Tour, but for the vast, vast majority of tennis players, they are a regular occurrence.

This defeat will have stung after all of the excitement of her home tournament, but Mboko knows there’ll be many more days like this. She hopes, though, that they’ll be outweighed by more like the magical ones she enjoyed in Montreal a few weeks ago.

Victoria Mboko played with strapping on her right wrist during her U.S. Open first-round match. (Ishika Samant / Getty Images)

Charlie Eccleshare

Other notable results on day 2

  • Anna Bondár of Hungary shocked Elina Svitolina (13) 6-2, 6-4, after an uncharacteristically error-strewn performance from the Ukrainian.
  • Venus Williams (WC) produced one more set of magic on Arthur Ashe, but ultimately fell to Karolina Muchová (11) 6-3, 2-6, 6-1.
  • Mirra Andreeva (5) put Alycia Parks of the U.S. to the sword in a 6-0, 6-1 win.

Shot of the day

A vintage Venus Williams drive volley on Arthur Ashe Stadium? Can’t be beat…

Up next:

There is no shortage of matches to watch on day 3. Here are the matchups we’re keeping an especially close eye on today:

🎾 Women’s singles: Katie Boulter vs. Marta Kostyuk (27)

11 a.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+

Two players who keep running into walls after building momentum meet at a Grand Slam. Boulter, who started the year running Iga Świątek close, is 7-8 since the French Open. Kostyuk has made promising runs at several tournaments before either running into Sabalenka or injury. They both enter this event with a question mark against their name, but the matchup could produce fireworks.

🎾 Men’s singles: Alexander Bublik (23) vs. Marin Čilić

12:30 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+

Speaking of fireworks, here’s Alexander Bublik. The Kazakh did not play any hard-court events coming into the Open, which means he arrives either undercooked or on the back of a remarkable run of three titles and 17 wins in 19 matches. Čilić, who won the title here in 2014, is back for the first time since 2022.

🎾 Women’s singles: Ajla Tomljanović vs. Coco Gauff (3)

7 p.m. ET on ESPN/ESPN+

2023 champion Gauff begins her campaign against the Australian who beat Serena Williams here to bring down the curtain on the GOAT’s career. Tomjlanović won’t be overawed by the Arthur Ashe atmosphere, and Gauff, who is playing while remaking her serve, will have to be alert.

🎾 Women’s singles: Donna Vekić vs. Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro

~ 7 p.m.  ET on ESPN+

A 2024 high-flier meets one for 2025. Vekić reached the Wimbledon semifinals and the Olympic final last year, producing the best season of her career. Bouzas Maneiro has been quietly rising through the middle of 2025, off the back of routing last year’s U.S. Open semifinalist Emma Navarro 6-0, 6-1 at Roland Garros.

U.S. Open men’s draw 2025U.S. Open women’s draw 2025

Tell us what you noticed on the second day…

(Top photo of Carlos Alcaraz: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic)