New York - 09/13
Good morning and welcome back to TIE-Breakfast: all the tennis you need with breakfast.
Ace Cream's daily newsletter during Masters 1000s and Grand Slams, every morning at 8:30.
Today is Sunday, September 13, in New York it's 02:30 and it's 20 degrees. Ok, let's go.
Today at breakfast
- 🇰🇿 Rybakina beats Sabalenka to take the US Open and No. 1
- 🇺🇸 Harrison and Skupski close out men's doubles without dropping a set
- 🇬🇧 Hewett beats Oda to win his fifth US Open wheelchair title
- 🇩🇪 Zverev and Shelton play for the title tonight at 20:00
WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY:
🇺🇸 Harrison And Skupski Win Men's Doubles
Christian Harrison and Neal Skupski beat Kevin Krawietz and Tim Puetz 6-4, 7-6(6) and went through the fortnight without dropping a set.
It's their second Slam of the season after the Australian Open, built on a draw where they took out Bolelli and Vavassori in the quarterfinals and top seeds Heliovaara and Patten in the semifinal. The second-set tiebreak, closed out 8-6, was the closest Krawietz and Puetz came to reopening the final. For Harrison, who has racked up plenty of injuries and surgeries on the way here, winning a title in New York carries a weight the score doesn't tell.
🇬🇧 Hewett Wins His Fifth US Open Wheelchair Title
Alfie Hewett beat world No. 1 Tokito Oda 6-0, 7-6(5): his fifth singles title in New York, his eleventh singles Slam.
A 6-0 set against Oda isn't something you see often, and the second set went to a tiebreak precisely because the Japanese player started playing like himself again. The sense is that Hewett settled the match in the first half hour and mostly had to hold his lead from there. Oda came into the final as world No. 1, but at the Slams he keeps running into the same opponent.
WHAT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT:
🇰🇿 Rybakina Beats Sabalenka And Becomes No. 1
Elena Rybakina beat Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 to win her first US Open.
In the third set she gave up almost nothing on serve, and those twenty minutes closed out the match, after Sabalenka had put everything back in play by winning the second. For the Belarusian, it ends a nineteen-match winning streak at Flushing Meadows and a ninety-nine-week run at No. 1; after the match she said she'd tried to do what she could with what she had, and it wasn't enough. From Monday, Rybakina will be the first Kazakh player atop the WTA rankings, with her third Slam after Wimbledon 2022 and January's Australian Open, and she's the sixth player to win Melbourne and New York in the same year, the first since Sabalenka in 2024. That both titles came by beating Sabalenka in the final is the detail this season will carry longest.
WHAT HAPPENS TODAY:
- Zverev vs Shelton - Men's final on Ashe from 20:00 Italian time. The head-to-head reads 5-0 Zverev, with just one set dropped along the way, but they've never met in a best-of-five. Shelton comes in off the first Slam final of his career, having gone through defending champion Alcaraz in the quarterfinals; Zverev, world No. 2, is playing his third major final of the year after winning Roland Garros and losing Wimbledon.
Further reading
- US Open LIVE: Rybakina triumphs, Sabalenka falls in three sets
- Rybakina wins the 2026 US Open: Sabalenka beaten in three sets
- Zverev-Shelton, the US Open title on the line: time and how to watch
- Alfie Hewett beats world No.1 Tokito Oda to win men's wheelchair singles title
Enjoy your breakfast, and have a good day.
See you tomorrow at 08:30 with TIE-Breakfast
