In this new series on USOpen.org, we examine the tactics that led to the title. In addition to telling you what happened in the championship match, we take a closer look at the "how" and the "why." First up: How Bianca Andreescu negated Serena Williams' serve.
When Serena Williams landed her serve in the 2019 US Open women’s singles final, she lost more points than she won.
Let that sink in for a minute.
With arguably the greatest single weapon the women’s game has ever seen, Williams owns a shot that is peerless. Yet on tennis' grandest stage, Bianca Andreescu found a way to neutralize the ultimate threat.
The young Canadian capped off a remarkable hard-court season in New York last summer, when she defeated Williams to win her first Grand Slam title.
Andreescu won the toss and chose to receive. Against 23-time major champion Williams. In the US Open final. She trusted her approach from the very beginning, and her confidence never wavered.
Her impressive finals performance in front of a partisan crowd was highlighted by fierce shot-making, incredible calmness under pressure and the rare ability to stand toe-to-toe with Williams from the baseline.
While the 23-time major singles champion was the first to admit she wasn’t at her best, take nothing away from Andreescu’s performance—a prime-time effort that showed maturity beyond her years and a tactical game that withstood even the fiercest of blows.
In the biggest match of her career, one part of the young Canadian’s game shined through the most: her ability to attack Williams’ serve.
How good was Andreescu? She won 30 of 43 points—an incredible 70 percent—on Williams’ second serve. In 22 years and 113 matches in New York City, Williams has never won such a low percentage of points.
Here are three other quick facts:
- Williams has only lost more points on serve than she’s won three times: in the 2001 final against sister Venus, in the 2011 final against Sam Stosur and in this year’s final against Andreescu. Williams lost all three of those championship matches.
- Whether it was nerves or the consistency of Andreescu’s return game applying the pressure, Williams made her first serve just 44 percent of the time. Only twice in two decades at the US Open has Williams had a lower first-serve percentage: in the 1998 second round against Pavlina Nola (43 percent) and in 1999 at the same stage against Jelena Kostanic Tosic (38 percent).
- Williams hit eight double faults, her third most ever in New York. She hit nine in her first-ever US Open singles match against Nicole Pratt in 1998 and 10 in a 2015 second-round win over Kiki Bertens.
“The game plan right from the start was to make her work for every ball, to get as many returns in the court as possible. I'm just really happy with how I executed because I think that's what I did the whole entire match.”
So what made Andreescu so effective?
She rarely gave Williams any free points on her second-serve return game. Of the 35 second serves she saw, she got 32 back in play—including the first 27, until she netted a backhand into the net with Williams serving at 1-4, 15-40.
Andreescu’s consistency is almost Novak Djokovic-esque. She hit just three clean return winners, including two in the final game of the match, but frequently returned the ball deep from both wings. Impressively, her backhand held up under the scrutiny.
Andreescu returned 28 of the 35 second serves she saw from the backhand side. Her forehand is clearly her stronger stroke—for what it’s worth, she won five of those seven second-serve points on this flank—but her backhand never broke down, even as Williams continued to serve into the body to stop the Canadian from taking a clean cut at the ball.
But by returning deep through the middle of the court, Andreescu played a high-percentage game, minimizing the risks by aiming over the low part of the net and not giving Williams angles to work with.
The result was a career-defining performance that has firmly placed the Canadian on the path to superstardom.
