This happens year after year, at Grand Slam after Grand Slam, until years become decades and the drought — now a 21-year stretch with an absence of United States men’s tennis champions in the biggest events of the calendar year — gets another year tacked on. It always starts with one American losing in the men’s draw. It has always ended with the rest of them falling.
And on Thursday, at Louis Armstrong Stadium, it was Sebastian Korda — seeded No. 16 but the fourth-highest American in the U.S. Open draw — who revealed the first crack in the foundation of the country’s young tennis players aiming for that elusive title, with unseeded Tomas Machac winning 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 during their second-round match.
Korda never truly recovered after dropping the final four games of the opening set, and he was the first seeded American to get eliminated from the men’s draw, with Tommy Paul still needing to win in the afternoon to reach the third round.
Korda was up 4-2 in the first set with a chance to serve for a three-game lead, but Machac broke Korda to pull back within a game. He didn’t lose in that set again.
After the third game of the second set, Korda took a medical timeout to get his right arm looked at, and later in the match, a trainer examined that arm again, too.
Still, Korda jumped out to a 3-0 lead to start the third set. There was a fist pump. His shots were crisp. It was a brief flash of the potential that sparked his rise in the first place.
But when Machac faced a break point in the third set down 4-3, he ripped off a 119 mph serve to salvage. Then, he salvaged the set when Korda hit a shot into the net. Machac took the next two games, threw his arms in the air after advancing and secured a spot in the third round later this week.
Korda, still, is just 24 years old. He’s the son of former Grand Slam champion Petr Korda, the sister of top LPGA golfer Nelly Korda and — even after this latest setback — a key piece of the future core in American tennis.
But Korda has advanced to the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam just once. Two of his Grand Slam appearances this year lasted until the third round, and in the Open, he couldn’t even reach that point.
And in the present, and in the overarching context of the drought, the collection of players with a shot to end the drought has thinned again.
