Taylor Townsend reveals feelgood chat with son AJ after devastating US Open loss
Taylor Townsend suffered a heartbreaking defeat at the 2025 US Open, but her young son, AJ, was there to cheer her up after she lost against two-time Grand Slam winner Barbora Krejcikova in the fourth round.
American Townsend has been one of the standout stories of this year’s hard-court Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows, but not just for her performances with the racket as she has also received praise for how she handled Jelena Ostapenko’s verbal insults earlier in the tournament.
2017 French Open winner Ostapenko, furious over an uncalled net call, told Townsend she had “no education” and “no class” after the 29-year-old refused to apologise after the error.
The American hit back during their exchange after the match while in the post-match press conference, she added: “I didn’t back down because you’re not gonna insult me, especially after I carried myself a certain type of way with nothing but respect.
“And if I show respect to you, I expect respect as well.”
Several tennis players have come out in support of Townsend with Naomi Osaka’s comments perhaps summing it up best by saying: “I think obviously it’s one of the worst things you can say to a black tennis player in a majority white sport.”
After beating Ostapenko in straight sets, Townsend followed it up with a 7-5, 6-2 win over fifth seed Mirra Andreeva and then looked set to beat Krejcikova in straight sets.
She was 6-1, 5-4 up when she had her first match point on the Czech’s serve, but failed to capitalise as it went to the tie-breaker. Another seven match points came and went before Krejcikova took it to a third set before winning 1-6, 7-6 (15-13), 6-3.
Despite the devastating loss, Townsend believes she has a lot more respect from her tennis peers.
“I don’t think that I’ve ever put on a performance like this. And even when I had gone deep in some tournaments or played well, it always was like, ‘oh, okay, she’s just on a run,'” she started off.
“And I think that, you know, you know, more than anything, I gained the respect of, you know, everyone in the tennis world, you know, and put a lot of my competitors on notice that the things that they were kind of like, ‘ooh, we think that she’s this type of player’.
“But I think I said it the other day. I really eliminated the but and gained quite a lot of respect in the tennis world, both from men and women. So that’s great, but I’m exactly where I need to be. It feels good.”
Her four-year-old son AJ watched the entire match at Louis Armstrong as he tried to encourage his mother both during the encounter and after.
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But Townsend revealed a heartwarming message from her son that helped to cheer her up after the defeat.
“I told AJ I was like, wow, you stayed there the whole time? It was over three hours,” she revealed. “And he said, sat there, and when I was talking to my coach when she was on the bathroom break, he was like, if you need anything, I got you just ask me. I’m like, ‘okay’. It’s nice to be able to have that.
“I was in the cool-down area. And he was like, ‘Hey, mom, let’s work out together’. And I’m like, ‘Sir, I just played three hours. I don’t want to work out’. He’s like, ‘let’s do some squats’. I’m like, ‘I’m good’.
“So, you know, that’s the kid thing, where it’s just like, they have no idea. And I actually said it because I wanted to know what he was going to say.
“I was like, ‘yeah’. He was like, ‘Good job mom’. I was like, ‘Thanks’. I was like, ‘AJ I lost’. He was like, ‘It’s okay’. And I was like, ‘That’s the attitude’. So I’m trying to embody that.”
