‘This is my moment’: Taylor Townsend’s road comes full circle with US Open triumph

The 30-year-old once denied USTA funding returned to Arthur Ashe Stadium to complete her career doubles grand slam alongside Kateřina Siniaková

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.