With the current suspension of the ATP and WTA Tours, USOpen.org is reliving some of the biggest tennis matches in the tournament's history in photos. In our latest featured match, we look back at the 2017 US Open women's singles first-round match between Simona Halep and Maria Sharapova.
Watch a live stream of this classic match on Facebook Live and Twitter on Saturday at 4 p.m. ET. The full match will be posted on Sunday on the US Open YouTube Channel.
Five-time major champion Maria Sharapova, ranked No. 146 in the world at the time and playing in just her 11th match of the year, shocked No. 2 seed Simona Halep, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, in front of a sold-out crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Opening Night of the 2017 US Open.
There was a lot at stake for both players heading into the tournament. Sharapova was in the midst of a comeback after serving a 15-month doping suspension and battling a series of injuries that plagued her return to the tour that April. Halep, ranked No. 2 in the world, had the chance to move to No. 1 for the first time in her career with a solid performance at the year's final major.
Here's a look back in photos at this entertaining and high-quality match, which could have been a final instead of an opening-round match any other year.
2006 US Open champion Sharapova received a wild card to compete in New York in 2017. She was playing at the Open for the first time since 2014, after missing 2015 with an injury and 2016 due to her suspension. It was her first time competing at a major since the 2016 Australian Open, 18 months earlier.
Halep finished runner-up at the French Open and reached the quarterfinals at Wimbledon earlier in 2017. The Romanian advanced to the US Open semifinals in 2015 and the quarterfinals in 2016 for her previous best results in New York.
Sharapova dictated play from the beginning of the match, blasting 28 winners and breaking Halep's serve three times in the opening set.
Halep battled back from 1-4 down in the second set, taking five straight games to level the match at one set apiece.
The Russian quickly took a 4-1 lead in the final set and held on to defeat her Romanian opponent for the upset.
Sharapova finished the match with 60 winners and 64 unforced errors, to Halep's 15 winners and 14 unforced errors.
Prior to Halep's loss to Sharapova, the last No. 2 women's seed to lose in the first round of the US Open was Andrea Jaeger in 1981.
With the win, Sharapova improved her record to a perfect 7-0 career against Halep and 18-0 in night matches in Arthur Ashe Stadium.
Sharapova won her next two matches against 59th-ranked Hungarian Timea Babos and rising young American star Sofia Kenin, before falling to Latvian No. 16 seed Anastasija Sevastova in the Round of 16.
