For a tournament littered with upsets and exits, the 2017 US Open ended on Sunday night on a note of certainty: world No 1 Rafael Nadal brooked almost no challenge as he dominated his way to a 16th Grand Slam title, with a clinical 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 win over Kevin Anderson in the final.

At the same time, the women’s singles saw Sloane Stephens, an unseeded, and until recently injured, player emerge as champion with a comprehensive 6-3, 6-0 win over Madison Keys.

In fact, each of the US Open champ had their own special script en route to the trophy. Here’s a look at all the 2017 champions and what they achieved when they lifted the trophy at Flushing Meadows.

Grand Slam record

  • Stunning strike-rate: Nadal’s victory continued the Big Four’s supremacy over men’s tennis. In the last 51 Grand Slams since 2005, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray have combined to win 46 of them.
  • Serial finalist: Nadal takes his tally of finals in Grand Slam events to 23. Only one person is above him and no prizes for guessing who it is.
  • With his US Open triumph to add to his French Open one earlier in the year, the Spaniard has now won multiple Grand Slams in the season for the fourth time. He’s also only the third man in the 30s in the Open Era to do so.

Two trophies in two days

  • Martina Hingis was in top form at the tournament taking home both the women’s doubles and mixed double titles and adding to her collection of trophies.  She now has 25 Grand Slam titles, with her two trophies in two days in New York. She won the women’s doubles title with Taiwan’s Chan Yung-Jan and the mixed doubles with Jamie Murray of Great Britain. 

From World No 957 to US Open champ

  • Who can forget the mayhem in the women’s singles section where every day saw a new upset. Ultimately, it was Sloane Stephens who finished as the champion, beating compatriot Madison Keys in the final. It was a dream finish for a player who ranked as low as 957th in July this year and 83rd at the beginning of the tournament.
  • The 24-year-old Stephens is only the second unseeded woman to win the US Open, after Kim Cljisters who was unranked when she won in 2009, after coming off a maternity break.

Historic firsts

  • Jean-Julien Rojer became the first Dutch man since 1975 to win the men’s doubles crown at the US Open, when he and his partner, Horia Tecau of Romania beat Spain’s famed doubles pair of Feliciano Lopez and Marc Lopez in the final. 
  • His winning speech, though, drew plenty of applause and for good reason.
  • China’s Wu Yibing, a highly-regarded 17-year-old, stood out in the junior section, winning both the boys singles and the boys doubles title. Yibing became the first boy from his country to win a Slam and only the second Asian to win a boys singles title after Leander Paes in 1991.

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