The cheers swelled from Arthur Ashe Stadium as Taylor Townsend approached the microphone on court. “Y’all know this is my moment,” she started, “and I’m about to take it.”
A day after being denied an American rooting interest in the women’s singles final and rushing for the exits in response, the Ashe crowd had reason to stick around and drink in the moment: the Chicago native and her partner, Kateřina Siniaková of the Czech Republic, had just defeated the all-American team of Ashlyn Krueger and Robin Montgomery 5-7, 6-0, 6-2 in Friday’s women’s doubles final. With the victory, Siniaková became a two-time career doubles slam champion while Townsend joined the club for the first time.
The moment was long in coming for the 30-year-old Townsend, a top-ranked junior player who was body-shamed by her home federation and denied coaching and funding as consequence. Last year, Townsend and Siniaková blitzed through the draw before getting blitzed back by Gabriela Dabrowski and Erin Routliffe, pushing her US Open victory celebration back a year. Though clearly disappointed, Townsend maintained a sunny disposition and vowed that she and Siniaková would finish the job. That they did in a year when the US Open showcased the depth of Black American players in tennis wasn’t lost on Townsend – who now has an adult US Open trophy to go with the one she won as a 16-year-old.
In many ways, the US Open has been the through-line for Townsend’s meandering story arc. Her junior doubles title here in 2012 – on the heels of a doubles title at Wimbledon and doubles and singles titles at the Australian Open – stamped her as a star on the rise, the crafty leftie charging down the hard trail blazed by the Williams sisters. Also during that US Open, Townsend became a national story when her mother revealed that the USTA had pulled funding for her trip and that the family had passed the plate around to get her to New York.
“I wasn’t in 100% health, and I said, I’m going to come, and I’m going to do what I can,” she recalled in press afterward. “To be able to come here and win as an adult, you know, and be able to play on Arthur Ashe and to hold this trophy, it’s something that’s so special to me, because I don’t forget the things that I’ve gone through.”
When Townsend’s pro career struggled to meet expectations, her physique became the default target for criticism; Pat McEnroe, then USTA’s player development chief and still a prominent narrator at this tournament, set the tone by effectively pronouncing Townsend physically unfit for federation support. The knock-on effects of that decision were undeniable: Townsend sank from 94th in the world singles rankings to 304th and hustled to remain on tour in the absence of sponsorship support, essentially playing tournaments for gas money. At the 2016 US Open, Townsend scrapped to qualify for the main draw – only to wind up losing her first-round match to fallen former world no1 Caroline Wozniacki.
The story could have ended there. But Townsend persevered, cracking the top 100 again in 2017 before reemerging in the US Open spotlight. In 2019, she gritted her way through qualifying again and stormed to the fourth round of the main draw, scoring her first top-10 victory against Simona Halep before losing to eventual winner Bianca Andreescu and ending the year a career-high 73rd in the rankings. When it appeared as if becoming a mom in 2021 might slow her down, she used it as motivation to get into the best shape of her life.
It all snapped into focus. In 2024, Townsend stopped the presses with a maiden doubles slam victory at Wimbledon, then kicked off the next year by winning doubles at the Australian Open. But it was the US Open that served as the main stage for Townsend’s breakout again as she made another fairy tale run to the fourth round in singles and battered the nostalgia act of Venus Williams and Leyla Fernandez en route to the doubles finals – where she and Siniaková lost in straight sets.
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They eventually bounced back, with Townsend helping the team to a noteworthy, for an American, championship on the terre battue of Roland Garros in June before making a triumphant return to New York as the people’s champ. She rallied the crowd behind her tassely outfits and indefatigable exuberance for another fourth-round singles run (losing to top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka this time) before completing her doubles revenge tour with Siniaková – a partnership that began with an Instagram direct message. (“I always say it: Guys, don’t be afraid to slide in the DMs,” Townsend joked.) On a sun-splashed Friday afternoon at Ashe, Montgomery and Krueger put a brief scare into Townsend and Siniaková, breaking for the first set. But the top-ranked doubles team quickly shook that off; in the second set shutout, they’d concede just two points on serve before cruising to the finish.
Basking in the afterglow of victory, Townsend resurfaced in the interview room at Ashe with another tassley outfit on and a gold grill in her mouth while double-fisting a pair of Honey Deuces – one more than she brought to the table last year. It was a hard-earned moment to gloat for a player who had been written off from the start. And she didn’t let the moment pass without acknowledging just what an achievement it was to reach this career peak as so many of her Black American contemporaries were making deep tournament runs. As on court, she made a point of uplifting Montgomery, a doubles wildcard entrant who qualified for the singles main draw.
“I’m so proud to be able to click on the TV and watch Frances [Tiafoe] and Ben [Shelton],” she said. “One of them is going to be able to be in a Grand Slam final, and that’s a beautiful thing. You know, Robin, myself, you know, it’s been Coco [Gauff], it’s been a phenomenal US Open for people of color, and just being able to show people, like, it’s possible, you know?”
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