Taylor Townsend led 4-2 in the second set on the Grandstand on Monday, let three break points go, and after four deuces watched Maja Chwalinska hold for 4-3. The crowd started chanting her name as she walked back to serve. Townsend won the last eight points of the match.
The 6-2, 6-3 win put out the No. 20 seed and sent through an American ranked No. 96 in singles who has never been seeded at a major. Townsend is the world No. 2 in doubles and has reached the fourth round at the US Open twice, in 2019 and again last year. Chwalinska, a Roland Garros finalist three months ago, was playing her first main-draw match in New York.
They had never met, and both are left-handed, which took away the crosscourt forehand geometry each is used to seeing. Townsend’s game is built on the hands that made her a former world No. 1 in doubles and on a willingness to come forward that few in the women’s draw share. Chwalinska is a baseliner who has played almost her entire season on clay, and whose only previous appearance at this tournament ended in qualifying.
“I thoroughly enjoy playing here,” Townsend said afterwards, and credited the tournament with changing the experience for American players over the past few years. She has become one of the event’s reliable disruptions, and her run to the fourth round last year, along with the press conference that followed her second-round win, made her one of the more visible players in the game for a fortnight.
For Chwalinska the defeat closes out a strange three months. She arrived at Roland Garros in May ranked No. 114 and entered through qualifying. She reached the final, the first qualifier to do so, and lost to Mirra Andreeva. That fortnight moved her to No. 21. She has won one match in the five she has played since, beating Cristina Bucsa at Cincinnati and losing in Toronto, Monterrey and now here.
The seeding that put her on a show court against Townsend was not a misjudgement. Grand Slam seedings at the US Open come straight off the rankings on a fixed date, with no adjustment for form or surface, and the WTA rankings are a rolling 52-week total rather than a measure of how anyone is playing. A player who banks a runner-up’s points at a major carries them for a year, winning or not.
The same lag ran the other way in June. Her Paris run finished too late to count toward the Wimbledon entry list, and a Grand Slam finalist needed a wild card to get into the next major. Two months on, a player with one win since May opened a Slam inside the top 32 seeds.
The loss costs her almost nothing. This was her main-draw debut in New York, so there were no points to defend, and the Roland Garros total does not come off until next June. She will be seeded through the Asian swing. Townsend plays Taylah Preston next.
