Are we in the golden era of women’s tennis?
I think we could be, and I know that’s up for debate. For the record, my cat agrees with me, but I feed her, so she might be biased.
Let me make the case.
I went to the US Open last Saturday, third-round action, with the goal of seeing as many women’s matches as I could.
The schedule featured 16 women who had already combined for 16 Grand Slam singles titles, and that’s before you count Qinwen Zheng’s Olympic singles gold from Paris. And this was just one side of the draw!
And the matches delivered. I watched Keys go up 5-0 in the third against Zheng, only for Zheng to reel off seven straight games and pull off an incredible comeback. Then I ran over to Ashe to see Coco beat Cristina Bucsa in a competitive straight-set match. Anisimova, last year’s US Open finalist, got knocked out in an upset. Rybakina looked like she could win the entire tournament. And Jovic-Eala turned into one of the best matches I’ve seen in a while. They’re just 18 and 21, and already good enough, and popular enough, to be playing under the lights on Ashe.
And yes, I know: one Saturday isn't an era. So let's look at the last decade.
After Serena initially stepped away in 2017, the top of the sport became incredibly volatile. Look at the last 10 editions of each Grand Slam: Wimbledon has had 10 different women’s champions, the Australian Open eight, the US Open eight and the French Open seven. The rankings churned just as dramatically. In some years, more than half of the year-end Top 15 were gone from that group by the following season.
What feels different now isn’t that anyone can win. That’s been true for a while. It’s that the same core group keeps showing up at the top, year after year, instead of the hierarchy resetting every season. In each of the last three years, Świątek, Sabalenka and Gauff have finished as the year-end Top 3, while Rybakina and Pegula have finished inside the Top 7 alongside them.
Serena is hard to replace, but look at the sheer wealth of talent in the game now — the stars are staying at the top, the next generation is already pushing them, and you can get a match in the third round that feels like it could be a semifinal.
And the fits? Golden.
