It's all over, even the shouting

The women's singles competition is finished at the U.S. Open in New York, the last "major" professional tennis tournament of the year. Screamin' Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus (right) defeated Jessica Pegula of the United States, 7-5 and 7-5.  It was a fairly close match, but as so often happens in high-level tennis, just a few crucial points made all the difference. Pegula's serve deserted her for a short while, and there's not much margin for error against a slugger like Sabalenka.

The Belarusian, whose country's name was never uttered, in protest of Putin, avenged her finals loss last year to Pegula's sometimes-doubles partner, American Coco Gauff.

That's Billie Jean King handing out the trophies. The giant tennis complex at the old Word's Fair grounds in Queens is named after her.

The prize money is $3.6 million for Sabalenka, and half that for Pegula. Not that either one of them needs it all that much. For one thing, note that the final result was Nike over Adidas.

Today we get the men's singles final, pitting the amazing American Taylor Fritz ("Don't call me Swift") against Jannik Sinner, the Italian (with the red hair, that'd be northern Italian). Fritz is an intriguing character. For some reasion he reminds me of Neil Young, go figure. The Yankee is relentless, and Sinner, the top seed, has always got some injury or other to worry about. To win, the men have to take three sets. And so it could be more interesting than people expect. You might set the video recorder to go long.