The 5 Greatest Matches in US Open History

Some tournaments produce great tennis. The US Open produces theater. Night sessions, a crowd that never fully quiets down, matches that run past midnight because nobody in Flushing Meadows is in a hurry to go home — the format seems to invite chaos, and over more than 50 years, it's delivered some of the sport's most complete matches. These five hold up.

Serena vs. Venus Williams, 2008 quarterfinal

Two sisters, one net, 7-6(6), 7-6(7). Venus led the second-set tiebreak 6-3 and held four set points to close it out. Serena saved every one of them, then won six of the last seven points to finish the match. *Tennis Magazine* called it the best women's match of the year. It's easy to forget, watching two players who'd go on to define a generation of the sport, that this was still just a quarterfinal.

Steffi Graf vs. Monica Seles, 1995 final

Seles had been out of tennis for over two years, since being stabbed on court by a spectator in 1993. Her return to a Grand Slam final, against the world No. 1 who'd dominated the sport in her absence, was less a tennis match than a genuine question about whether she could still do this at all. Graf won 7-6, 0-6, 6-3, in three sets that swung as wildly as the emotional register of the match itself.

John McEnroe vs. Björn Borg, 1980 final

The rivalry that defined the sport's biggest personality clash of its era, settled at the US Open in five sets, 7-6, 6-1, 6-7, 5-7, 6-4. It was McEnroe's second straight US Open title, and one more chapter in a head-to-head that never really had a boring entry.

Andre Agassi vs. Pete Sampras, 2001 quarterfinal

Four sets, four tiebreaks, zero service breaks in the entire match: 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 7-6. Two of the most complete players of their era traded holds for nearly three and a half hours without either one cracking the other's serve once. Sampras won it — and it remains one of the tidiest, most relentless matches ever played at Flushing Meadows.

Carlos Alcaraz vs. Jannik Sinner, 2022 quarterfinal

Five hours and fifteen minutes. Alcaraz, 19 years old, saved a match point to beat Sinner, 21, in a match that didn't finish until 2:50 in the morning — still the latest finish in US Open history. Alcaraz went on to win the whole tournament, his first Grand Slam title. Sinner would get his own, more than once, a few years later. Neither player has ever really stopped being linked to that night.