US Open Takeaway: #14, Handshakey awkwardness

This 17-point roundup is about the men and women who put it all on or inside the lines at the rowdiest major event of the season. The hits started early, and they simply kept coming.

See No. 15 here.

14

It was the limp handshake bandied about the world.

Daria Kasatkina removed a seemingly ailing Jelena Ostapenko from women's singles play at this U.S. Open, and the subsequent handshake at net was nearly nonexistent. Ostapenko, the freshly minted French Open champion a mere three months earlier, refrained from eye contact and delivered her phalanges to Kasatkina's own digits in a most perfunctory way, with her mind and seemingly half her body already in the locker room.

The tennis Twitterati duly took note, rest assured. Above that fray, though, the non-exchange didn't sit well with the tennis establishment itself.

Asked in the post-match press conference if she and Kasatkina were friends, Ostapenko said, "I actually don’t know her. We just play the same tournaments from the age of 10 or 12. I saw her many times, but I don’t know her."

You can certainly call that her own Mariah Carey moment. https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2016/09/mariah-carey-i-dont-know-her-meme

At her end, though, Kasatkina probably got in the better post-match zing comment.

Outdone but not forgotten in this arena: That much-delayed CoCo Vandeweghe–Agnieszka Radwanska handshake after the American's marquee victory.

Follow Jon on Twitter @jonscott9.