The fi­nal Grand Slam of the year, the US Open, went al­most ex­act­ly as script­ed or ac­cord­ing to the form book, de­pend­ing on how you look at it.

The num­ber one seed in the men’s sin­gles, the Ger­man ten­nis star Alexan­der Zverev, took the crown, while in the women’s sin­gles, Ele­na Ry­bak­i­na (now of­fi­cial­ly world num­ber one but seed­ed num­ber two for the tour­na­ment) crowned her as­cent by out­last­ing top seed and de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Ary­na Sa­balen­ka in three gru­elling sets of high-qual­i­ty women’s ten­nis from the two best fe­male play­ers in the world at the mo­ment.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, Ry­bak­i­na, who is a Russ­ian-born Kaza­khstani pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis play­er, has been a per­son­al favourite of mine ever since she an­nounced her­self to the world by cap­tur­ing Wim­ble­don in 2022. I ad­mire her fan­tas­tic at­ti­tude on court when she is play­ing and she re­mains an ab­solute joy to watch.

Where Sa­balen­ka treats her rac­quets like per­son­al en­e­mies need­ing pub­lic ex­e­cu­tion af­ter a missed base­line win­ner, Ry­bak­i­na process­es er­rors with the tran­quil com­po­sure of Pi­geon Point Beach on a breeze-less Sun­day morn­ing. She nev­er seems to get flus­tered when she miss­es a point, be it a bad shot or an easy put away; she just gets on with the game and awaits to play the next point. What a su­perb dis­po­si­tion! Un­flap­pable, clin­i­cal, and com­plete­ly im­mune to pan­ic, she played like a cham­pi­on des­tined to col­lect plen­ty more sil­ver­ware.

Dur­ing the tour­na­ment, Ry­bak­i­na was el­e­vat­ed to the num­ber one rank­ing in the world and she jus­ti­fied the rank­ing when she de­feat­ed Sa­balen­ka, whose raw, hot-blood­ed pas­sion fre­quent­ly re­sults in a rack­et be­ing sac­ri­ficed to the court sur­face, as though the rac­quet was act­ing on its own.

On the men’s side, my loy­al­ty ini­tial­ly lay with my favourite men’s play­er Car­los Al­caraz, be­fore shift­ing briefly to his con­queror, 23-year-old Amer­i­can Ben Shel­ton. Zverev was nev­er quite my cup of tea, hav­ing long car­ried the un­for­tu­nate tag of ten­nis’ "near­ly man" af­ter three heart­break­ing Grand Slam fi­nal loss­es. Yet af­ter watch­ing him hoist the US Open tro­phy to cap off a re­mark­able 2026 cam­paign (adding to his break­through French Open ti­tle ear­li­er this year), and lis­ten­ing to the stark re­al­i­ty of his jour­ney, my re­spect for the Ger­man top seed has grown ten­fold and I am over­joyed that he won the ti­tle.

Di­ag­nosed with Type 1 di­a­betes at just four years old, Zverev was giv­en the stan­dard med­ical prog­no­sis: elite, pro­fes­sion­al ath­let­ics would be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble, if not down­right dan­ger­ous. For­tu­nate­ly for ten­nis fans, his par­ents and in par­tic­u­lar his moth­er, Iri­na Zvere­va (a for­mer So­vi­et ten­nis stand­out who coached both Alexan­der and his broth­er Mis­cha) po­lite­ly re­ject­ed the med­ical con­sen­sus. She re­fused to buy in­to med­ical lim­i­ta­tions and walked out of that hos­pi­tal con­vinced her son’s am­bi­tions would not be dic­tat­ed by his di­ag­no­sis. She helped him man­age the ill­ness from a young age. We al­ways re­fer to fam­i­ly sup­port but how mag­nif­i­cent was his fam­i­ly in these try­ing times for the young­ster?

Men­tal­ly, it must have been a re­al strug­gle for Zverev. For years, he kept his di­ag­no­sis un­der wraps, ter­ri­fied that op­po­nents would view his con­di­tion as an ex­ploitable weak­ness. He has of­ten de­scribed play­ing pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis with di­a­betes as com­pet­ing in two match­es si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly: one against the for­mi­da­ble ath­lete across the net, and an­oth­er against his own volatile in­ter­nal chem­istry. Fi­nal­ly, when he did open up about his con­di­tion in 2022, he right­ful­ly em­braced his sta­tus as a role mod­el and, in the same year, he launched the Alexan­der Zverev Foun­da­tion to pro­vide in­sulin and med­ical sup­plies to chil­dren in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Not be­ing one of my favourites, I nev­er paid much at­ten­tion to Zverev dur­ing changeovers be­tween games, but his on-court rou­tine is quite mind-bog­gling and just shows the mind­set and pure de­ter­mi­na­tion of this spe­cial, gift­ed ath­lete. Dur­ing changeovers, while oth­er play­ers qui­et­ly chew on ba­nanas, Zverev is man­ag­ing a med­ical clin­ic at his bench. Op­er­at­ing un­der an of­fi­cial Ther­a­peu­tic Use Ex­emp­tion, he checks a Blue­tooth-con­nect­ed smart­phone that syncs with his Con­tin­u­ous Glu­cose Mon­i­tor to track his blood sug­ar in re­al time. That means he mon­i­tors his blood sug­ar at all times, keep­ing it man­age­able dur­ing game time.

What hap­pens if his blood sug­ar ris­es above nor­mal glu­cose lev­els, you ask? The man has an an­swer for that. If his blood sug­ar spikes mid-match, he car­ries in­sulin pens right in his bag and ad­min­is­ters in­jec­tions be­tween games. Imag­ine bat­tling through a gru­elling five-set­ter, star­ing down a 130 mph serve, feel­ing your glu­cose lev­els drift out of range, and hav­ing to prick your­self with a nee­dle to low­er your blood sug­ar be­fore step­ping back out to re­turn serve. Com­pet­ing against the world’s best while keep­ing your in­ter­nal bi­ol­o­gy from spik­ing mid-set is an as­ton­ish­ing feat of sheer willpow­er.

In check­ing the record books, hav­ing bro­ken his Grand Slam curse at the French Open ear­li­er this year, Zverev be­came the first known play­er with Type 1 di­a­betes to win a ma­jor sin­gles ti­tle. His rise to World Num­ber One feels en­tire­ly earned as well. With Jan­nik Sin­ner and Al­caraz around, it was felt Zverev would not make it, but he cap­i­talised on in­juries to Sin­ner and Al­caraz’s loss of form to right­ful­ly be­come num­ber one in the world.

His vic­to­ry speech, pay­ing trib­ute to his moth­er's stub­born faith and un­wa­ver­ing re­fusal to ac­cept lim­i­ta­tions, was enough to bring a tear to the eye of par­ents any­where in the world. He re­flect­ed on his child­hood bat­tle and the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port from his moth­er that helped him chase his dreams. In his own words, “When I was four years old, the doc­tors told us I would be lim­it­ed in sports due to my di­a­betes. It took a strong moth­er to leave the hos­pi­tal and say, my son will be­come any­thing he wants. This dis­ease will not lim­it him.”

Iri­na and Alexan­der Sr didn't just raise two tour pros af­ter re­lo­cat­ing from Rus­sia to Ger­many in 1991; they left a blue­print for re­silience that tran­scends sport. What a fan­tas­tic lega­cy to leave not on­ly for young­sters in Ger­many but through­out the world who as­pire to achieve their goal of be­com­ing pro­fes­sion­al sports­men/women. Ku­dos to you, Alexan­der Zverev; you are in­deed spe­cial!

On a de­cid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent sport­ing note, at­ten­tion now piv­ots to this week­end's Caribbean Pre­mier League play­offs. As for Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR)? The less said, the bet­ter. TKR man­aged to com­plete­ly un­rav­el with the bat in their do-or-die game on Fri­day night, leav­ing them­selves firm­ly out of the equa­tion af­ter an abysmal run.

Mean­while, the ti­tle feels sur­pris­ing­ly open as the Guyana Ama­zon War­riors look like they’ve hit a sus­pi­cious bump at pre­cise­ly the wrong mo­ment, strip­ping them of their ‘over­whelm­ing favourite’ tag. If forced to drag a prized five-dol­lar note out of my wal­let (which is hard to do these days), my mon­ey is go­ing to a side that has nev­er lift­ed the tro­phy: the An­tigua & Bar­bu­da Fal­cons. Rest­ed, dan­ger­ous, and boast­ing the sharpest bowl­ing at­tack in the com­pe­ti­tion, they look primed to claim their very first CPL crown and shock the re­gion. May the best team win!

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.