Evelyn Reynolds

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    On the Tennis Court, Lefties Can Be ‘Annoying’

    Some players say southpaws have an advantage, and many righties must prepare to play them.As a child, Rafael Nadal hit with two hands from both sides until he was told to choose one side so he would have a single-handed forehand. Although the boy did most things right-handed, he instinctively started playing tennis as a lefty.With his talent and his tenacity, Nadal likely would have been an all-time great no matter what, but being left-handed might have given him an edge — most notably, his high bouncing serve to a right-hander’s backhand has proved especially challenging for his rival Roger Federer. A win at Roland Garros would give Nadal 21 Grand Slams, one more than Federer. And since Nadal has won the French Open 13 times, including the last four years, he is the heavy favorite again in 2021.The conventional wisdom is that being left-handed is an advantage in tennis. Lefties naturally hit with a slight side spin and can serve wide to a righty’s backhand in the ad service box on the most crucial points, and right-handed players suddenly find they need to adjust their tactics in rallies after days or weeks of playing only righty opponents. Switching gears during the tournament makes lefties “really annoying” to play, the player Matteo Berrettini said.Petra Kvitova is the top-ranked left-handed player on the WTA Tour.Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images“Everybody doesn’t like to play lefties because it takes more thinking,” added Petra Kvitova, a two-time Wimbledon champion and the top lefty on the women’s tour. Even she gets thrown off when facing a fellow southpaw. “It’s a bit weird, because you want to hit to the backhand and suddenly their forehand is there,” she said.Filip Krajinovic said he faced lefties once every month or two and had trouble with the adjustment. “It’s harder to play a lefty,” he said. “They have a different style of play, and it’s a little harder for me when they play their cross-court forehand high to my backhand, so I have to focus more on that side and really hit it deep cross court.”There are exceptions, like Cristian Garin, who said: “I really like to play lefties. I think my serve is better against them.”It is difficult to prove statistically whether lefties truly benefit — most righties would lose to Nadal simply because he is better, and most lefties would have the same fate against Federer or Novak Djokovic. But lefties do attain disproportionate success, especially on the men’s tour where the serve is such a vital weapon.While lefties are about 10 percent of the world’s population, three of the Top-10 winners of Grand Slams in the Open era are men (Nadal, Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe), which does not even count Rod Laver, who won the final four of his 11 majors in the Open era.John McEnroe, a left-handed player, won seven Grand Slam singles titles.Adam Stoltman/Associated PressIn doubles, the four men’s teams with the most Grand Slam wins in the Open era all had one lefty. On the current ATP Tour, there are 15 lefties in the Top 100 and seven in the Top 50. Two of the greatest Grand Slam champions among women — Martina Navratilova and Monica Seles — are lefties, but the 10 lefties in the WTA Top 100 are in balance with the overall demographic.Most lefties are not Nadal, of course, yet facing a southpaw still requires a little something extra.“You have to plan for the match differently — there are different spins and different angles you have to play,” said Elena Svitolina, who recently beat the lefties Angelique Kerber and Kvitova back-to-back in Stuttgart, Germany, but then was upset by another lefty, Jil Teichmann, in Madrid.Some players are more blasé about it then others. Svitolina said the major issue before facing a lefty was practicing return of serve, but Ashleigh Barty said that while she would seek out a lefty in practice before a match against a lefty, years of partnering in doubles with the lefty Casey Dellacqua meant returning “millions of her left-handed serves, so it’s not something that really concerns me.”The left-handed player Martina Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles.Eamonn McCabe/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesWhen Jan-Lennard Struff is not playing in a tournament, he tries mixing in practice against a lefty once a week. Garin’s coach is a lefty, which helps him practice serve returns, but if Garin has a lefty opponent coming up he will seek out another lefty from the draw to practice with or ask the tournament to find a sparring partner.“It can be difficult to find someone, but you can usually access a hitting partner provided by the tournament,” the player Caspar Ruud said.Service returns may be the biggest challenge, but Struff said that overall, “You need to adjust your patterns to play lefties.”Dominik Koepfer, who is a lefty, said, “What I usually do against righties doesn’t work against lefties, so I need different tactics.”Even as they make adjustments, the players said they tried not to get too caught up in the shift. “You do have to change up your game a little, but you can’t be too frightened to play to their forehand,” Ruud said.Berrettini said he ultimately wanted to play to his strong suits. “I try playing to the weakest stroke of the opponent, but if I want to serve to the T on the deuce side where it’s a lefty’s forehand, I’m going to trust my weapon,” he said about serving down the middle of the court where the service box lines intersect.Denis Shapovalov, the highest-ranked men’s left-hander not named Rafa, said, “I just play my game and go for my shots, so it doesn’t really matter, lefty or righty.”But there are lefties, then there is Nadal, and there is Nadal at Roland Garros, where he has lost only twice. Even for someone as confident as Shapovalov, that can be intimidating. “I’ve never had to play Rafa there, but I imagine it’s not too much fun,” he said.Krajinovic said he hoped that he would not get assigned to play Nadal at the beginning of the tournament.“If I see him in the draw I will not be happy,” Krajinovic said.Koepfer would like the challenge, but only under certain circumstances. “I hope it’s not the first round. I’d like to play righties in the first three rounds before playing Rafa.”For anyone who has the misfortune of matching up with Nadal, Ruud suggested calling Robin Soderling or Djokovic, the only players to have beaten him at Roland Garros, for advice. “And then you just pray he doesn’t have his best day.” More

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    This Andrey Rublev Is a Master With a Racket

    Andrei Rublev was a renowned 15th-century icon painter, but the tennis player is an artist in his own way.Andrey Rublev of Russia is familiar with his eponym, the 15th-century artist responsible for the Trinity icon. The two Rublevs have something in common — they have created masterpieces.Though just 23, Rublev has risen from outside the world’s Top 20 last January to a career-high No. 7 heading into the French Open, which starts Sunday with the main draw and runs through June 13. Despite the curtailed season in 2020, he won an ATP Tour-leading five titles. Since the beginning of last year he has won 70 singles matches, more than anyone else on tour.Rublev won a tournament in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in March, where he beat the former No. 1 Andy Murray and the Australian Open semifinalist Stefanos Tsitsipas; reached three semifinals, including at the Miami Open; and upset Rafael Nadal en route to the final in Monte Carlo. He also reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open, and he and Daniil Medvedev led Russia to the World Team Cup in February.Armed with a monstrous forehand that he can place anywhere on the court and a work ethic that makes many other players look lazy, Rublev has also beaten Roger Federer and Dominic Thiem, last year’s United States Open champion. He won the Roland Garros junior championship in 2014, and last year reached the quarterfinals of the main draw before losing to Tsitsipas.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What do you know about the artist Andrei Rublev?I know that he was one of the greatest painters in churches. I have the most famous icon in my home. They call it the greatest trio. We keep it in a religious corner. Sometimes you put a little light to make it special.You won the Junior Championship at the French Open when you were just 16, but it took another six years for you to win a main draw match there. What happened?My level was not good enough in general. I needed to raise my game to compete against great players. And then when I became Top 30 in the world I was injured and not able to play Roland Garros for two years. Only last year was I able to play.Andrey Rublev defeated Rafael Nadal in their quarterfinal match in Monte Carlo in April.Sebastien Nogier/EPA, via ShutterstockA lot of players have said that you work harder than anybody else on tour and that you’ve been doing that ever since you were a child. Is that true?I don’t know, to be honest. Everything is personal. Maybe for another player the things that I’m doing is not going to fit. Maybe he will start to feel much worse or say, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” In my case it’s just the way I was in the beginning, and it makes me comfortable. I don’t know any other way.As a child, you threw a lot of temper tantrums on court. Did you really eat red clay from the court?I never ate it full, but, yes, I put it in my mouth. I just spat it away or took water to clean my mouth. I did some stupid things, for sure.You also slept with your racket as a child?Yes, a couple of times.Tennis can be a lonely sport, especially during the pandemic when you are allowed to go only from the hotel to the courts and back.Yes, but it depends on which side you see it. I’ve been lonely, but I’m also a bit lucky because I have so many people around me for support, and we’re looking at things the same way. They give me a lot of energy. When I’m playing, I feel that they’re with me, and it helps a lot.You have had unusually solid results against top-10 players. You don’t fear them the way others do?I am afraid. And I’m OK to say it. When I go on the court, of course I’m afraid, especially against some Top-10 players. But I accept this. I’m not going to say I don’t feel tension. I’m very open. I’m human, and I feel tight sometimes. But, in the end, I want to win, and I’m going to do my best to do that. More

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    The French Open Gets Closer to Normal

    The tournament returns to its spring roots after the pandemic forced the event to be held last fall.It has been less than eight months since Rafael Nadal beat Novak Djokovic in straight sets to claim his 13th French Open singles title. The pandemic had pushed the tournament from the spring to the fall, and trees had begun to turn shades of ruby.The event now returns to its spring roots, but while the weather may be warmer and the red clay courts a little firmer and faster, there is little to suggest that professional tennis has returned to the way it was — even for Nadal.“The conditions last year of Roland Garros probably have been the tougher conditions ever for me, for my style of game,” he said, as he warmed up for this year’s tournament by beating Djokovic at the Italian Open in Rome almost two weeks ago. “I played a very good tournament. I didn’t lose a set. But if you ask me what I prefer, I prefer to play under normal circumstances than last year without a doubt.”This year’s French Open, with the main draw beginning Sunday, will look a little more normal with 1,000 fans per day allowed on each of the three show courts and 35 percent of capacity permitted on the smaller courts. Beginning with the quarterfinals on June 9, a maximum of 5,000 spectators, or no more than 65 percent capacity, will be able to watch on Court Philippe Chatrier, one of which will be the tournament’s first-ever night session.Ever since the ATP and WTA Tours returned to official competition last summer, they have struggled to maintain equilibrium. Tournaments are routinely canceled or rescheduled, and draw sizes have been altered and prize money allocations thrown into disarray because of modified spectator allowances at venues around the world. In almost every city, the athletes are forced to enter into a bubble, limited in their movements to between the hotel and tournament site, unable to even eat meals in public restaurants.Karolina Pliskova during her semifinal match against Petra Martic at the Italian Open.Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor the former world No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, who has performed spottily since the resumption of play late last year, the rules and regulations have taken a toll.“It starts to be tough, believe me, like after a couple months to always be in the same circuit, breakfast, lunch, dinner, always the same people,” she said. “It starts to be like a bit mentally tough.” Pliskova reached the final in Rome before losing 6-0, 6-0 to Iga Swiatek, last year’s French Open winner.Tennis players are creatures of habit who often plan their entire seasons months, if not a full year, in advance. Since tournaments are played nearly year-round, indoors and out, on vastly different surfaces, sudden changes can throw off an athlete’s sense of order, not to mention his or her ranking.Already this season, the Australian Open was postponed by nearly a month, the BNP Paribas Open was moved from March to October, and men’s tournaments in New York; Houston; Marrakesh, Morocco; and Budapest have been shelved. Instead, venues like Melbourne, Australia; Charleston, S.C.; and Belgrade, Serbia, are hosting multiple events back-to-back to reduce travel. The WTA played two tournaments in Charleston in April.Even the tournaments that have gone on as planned are struggling. In 2019, the Miami Open moved from Key Biscayne to the Hard Rock Stadium and offered more than $9 million in total prize money. This year, with just 20 percent of fan capacity allowed, the total prize money was reduced to about $4.3 million. The winners each received $300,110, less than a quarter of what they got two years ago.“ATP is a broken system,” John Isner said on Twitter after the Miami cuts were announced. “Players and tournaments as ‘partners’ need to work together, but 60% cut and 80% champions cut in one of our biggest events that has TV, Data, sponsorship, and newly approved gambling revenue intact, isn’t a partnership at all.”John Isner complained on Twitter about the reduced prize money for players at this year’s Miami Open.Mark Brown/Getty ImagesThe winners of the Miami Open in March each received $300,110, less than a quarter of what they got in 2019.Mark Brown/Getty ImagesBut while the money at the top was severely affected, early-round losers — the lower-ranked players — had less drastic cuts.“We have adjusted the prize money distribution models, with input from the players, so that prize money levels in qualifying and early rounds remain consistent to where they have been,” Amy Binder, a WTA spokeswoman, said.While both tours have altered their ranking regulations to reflect players who have been unable, or unwilling, to travel, some players have reacted better than others to the time off and the resumption of play.Isner opted to skip the Australian Open and has played only four tournaments this year. By May his ranking had dropped to No. 34.Sofia Kenin, who won the Australian Open last year and then reached the final of the French Open, has won just two of her last six matches headed into Roland Garros, which prompted her to dismiss her father, Alex, as her coach.Alexander Zverev is well prepared on clay, having beaten Nadal, Dominic Thiem and Matteo Berrettini en route to the title at the Masters 1000 in Madrid. Thiem, who won his first major at last year’s United States Open, was so burned out that he took a nearly two-month break from the tour from mid-March to early May.For some players, adapting their footwork and their power games to slow red clay courts makes the thought of returning to Roland Garros so soon even less enchanting.Naomi Osaka has said she gets frustrated playing on clay. “Mentally, clay is a bit more taxing for me because you have to structure the points differently.”Adam Pretty/Getty ImagesThat is especially true for Naomi Osaka, who has barely competed other than at the two majors she won since the resumption of play — last year’s U.S. Open and this year’s Australian Open. Osaka has played just three matches on clay since the 2019 French Open, and one of them was a loss to Jessica Pegula in Rome three weeks ago.“Mentally, clay is a bit more taxing for me because you have to structure the points differently,” Osaka said. “I also think there are bad bounces and stuff. I get quite frustrated.”On Wednesday, Osaka announced on social media that she would not attend news conferences during the French Open, saying they can be damaging to the mental health of players.And then there is the world No. 2 Daniil Medvedev. He has won just one of his last nine matches on clay. During a loss to Aslan Karatsev in Rome, he implored the tour supervisor to default him for a verbal obscenity, shouting: “How can I not swear? If you like to be in the mud like a dog, good for you.”For Medvedev, his issues with clay are mental and physical.“About clay, it’s everything,” said Medvedev, who has failed to win a match in four attempts at Roland Garros. “I don’t know how to adjust my shots that work on hard courts to make them work for clay. I’m never going to be like some Spanish players that from since they are young, they know, OK, I turn around on the forehand, I spin the ball, I play high over the net, I make the ball bounce close to the line.”Djokovic said there was an art to mastering clay.“We all know the clay is a slower surface in the sport,” he said. “It requires more physical energy from a player, but more mental and emotional energy as well. I think you have to train on clay more than any other surface to really get yourself comfortable playing on it.”The one player who seems totally unfazed on every surface is the world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty. She reached the semifinals at the Australian Open last year and then skipped the rest of the season, returning this year to win three tournaments — the Yarra Valley Classic in Melbourne and the Miami Open on hard courts and the Porsche Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, on clay — and reached the final in Madrid on clay. Grass, she maintains, is still her favorite surface. The perennially positive Barty has a theory.“Everyone has a different approach as to how they form their career,” she said. “Not playing last year, I’m as motivated, as driven, as hungry as I have ever been to challenge myself against the best in the world. Any time I do that puts a smile on my face.” More

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    Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty Are Top Seeds at the French Open

    Djokovic, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, who is a heavy favorite to win for the 14th time in Paris, are all in the top half of the draw. Naomi Osaka is the No. 2 seed and Serena Williams No. 7.Rafael Nadal, the 13-time French Open champion who is seeking a fifth consecutive title at Roland Garros beginning Sunday, bears an ill-fitting label in the men’s singles draw this year: the No. 3 seed.Nadal, whose indomitability on the clay in Paris has been all but inevitable, was placed into the top half of the draw, meaning that a match against top-seeded Novak Djokovic would come in the semifinals.Nadal will be a heavy favorite in every match he plays at Roland Garros, where he has a 100-2 record, but his path to a 14th title does include some hurdles. If he beats 62nd-ranked Alexei Popyrin in the first round, Nadal will face a Frenchman, either the veteran Richard Gasquet or the wild card Hugo Gaston. Gaston, 20, made a surprise run to the fourth round of the French Open last year, beating Stan Wawrinka before losing in five sets to Dominic Thiem.Nadal could face seventh-seeded Andrey Rublev, whom he lost to at the Monte Carlo Masters in April, in the quarterfinals before what would be a highly anticipated match against Djokovic in the semifinals.Nadal beat Djokovic in the final of the Italian Open this month, and dominated to win, 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, in the previous French Open final in October. Djokovic has tilted their rivalry in his favor, 29-28, by not losing a match to Nadal on hardcourts or grass courts since the 2013 United States Open final, but Djokovic lost their last five meetings on clay.Roger Federer, who has played only three matches this season after undergoing two knee operations last year, is seeded eighth and could face Djokovic in the quarterfinals.Daniil Medvedev could prove to be a shaky second seed, having won just one of his three matches on clay this year. A hardcourts specialist, Medvedev has lost in the first round of the French Open in his previous four appearances.Medvedev faces Alexander Bublik in the first round, a player who, like Medvedev, is inclined to monologue moodily when things are not going his way.The fourth-seeded Thiem, who won last year’s U.S. Open, is the only Grand Slam event champion in the bottom half of the draw. Thiem, a three-time French Open runner-up, will arrive in Paris having lost three of his last four matches.Fifth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas, a champion at the Monte Carlo Masters in April, is in Medvedev’s quarter of the draw; sixth-seeded Alexander Zverev, a champion at the Madrid Masters this month, is in Thiem’s quarter.American men occupy the three lowest seedings in the draw, with the American Taylor Fritz seeded 30th, John Isner 31st and Reilly Opelka 32nd. Isner opens against another American, Sam Querrey.No player in the women’s draw has built up a French Open track record close to Nadal’s, but two players who won their most recent appearances find themselves in the top half.Top-seeded Ashleigh Barty, who won her lone Grand Slam event title at the French Open in 2019 but missed last fall’s edition of the tournament because of travel restrictions during the pandemic, is joined in the top half of the draw by the defending champion, Iga Swiatek, who is seeded eighth after winning the Italian Open title this month.Barty opens against the American Bernarda Pera. She could also face a tricky test in the fourth round, against either 13th-seeded Jennifer Brady, the Australian Open runner-up in February, or 17-year-old Coco Gauff, who is seeded 24th after winning her second career title last week in Parma, Italy.Swiatek, who opens against her close friend Kaja Juvan, could face 2016 French Open champion Garbiñe Muguruza in the fourth round. In the quarterfinals, Swiatek could see fourth-seeded Sofia Kenin in a rematch of last year’s final, though Kenin has struggled this season and has a difficult opening round test against the 2017 champion, Jelena Ostapenko.Serena Williams, seeded seventh, is on the bottom half of the draw, along with second-seeded Naomi Osaka. Williams and Osaka were dealt favorable draws, but neither has produced a strong result on clay this year. Each is 1-2 on the surface.Williams, who is seeking her 24th Grand Slam event title, opens against the 74th-ranked veteran Irina-Camelia Begu.Osaka announced on Wednesday that she would not participate in news conferences at the tournament, writing, “I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.” Though her confidence may be low from playing poorly on clay, her draw at the French Open proved favorable. She opens against 63rd-ranked Patricia Maria Tig, and then will face either 102nd-ranked Ana Bogdan or a qualifier in the second round. The only seeded player Osaka could play in the first week of the tournament, 27th-seeded Alison Riske, has not won a match since August.Aryna Sabalenka, seeded third, and Bianca Andreescu, seeded sixth, join Williams and Osaka on the bottom half of the draw.As is often the case, there are many high-profile women’s matches in the first round, including 10th-seeded Belinda Bencic against last year’s surprise semifinalist, Nadia Podoroska, and 15th-seeded Victoria Azarenka against the 2009 champion, Svetlana Kuznetsova.Sloane Stephens, the 2018 runner-up, will open against Carla Suárez Navarro, the Spanish veteran who is returning to competition after overcoming Hodgkin’s lymphoma. More

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    Naomi Osaka Says She Won’t Talk to Journalists at the French Open

    Citing mental health concerns, the world No. 2 wrote on Instagram Wednesday that she will accept any fines levied for not making herself available to reporters.Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam singles champion, announced Wednesday that she will not do any news conferences at the French Open because she said they can too often be damaging to the mental health of tennis players.Osaka, 23, is one of the game’s biggest stars. She made the announcement on Instagram four days before the start of the year’s second Grand Slam.Osaka said she had watched too many players break down during news conferences and leave the dais in tears. She said the process felt to her like “kicking a person while they are down.”“If the organizations think they can keep saying, ‘do press or you’re going to get fined,’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh,” Osaka wrote. She said she would accept any fines levied against her for skipping the news conferences and requested that the funds be donated to a charity dedicated to mental health.Spokespeople for the WTA, the women’s professional tennis tour, and the French Open were not immediately available for comment.Osaka made an estimated $55 million last year in prize money and endorsements.She is hardly the first athlete to decline to speak with the press. The N.F.L.’s Marshawn Lynch often refused to speak with reporters when he was a star running back with the Seattle Seahawks. He famously sat in front of microphones and refused to engage questions ahead of the Super Bowl following the 2014 regular season. He garnered tens of thousands of dollars in fines during the playoffs that year.Ted Williams, the Hall of Fame baseball player who played his entire career with the Red Sox, also had an icy relationship with the Boston media and did not grant interviews for extended periods.While some tennis tournaments have different rules, in general players must appear at a post-match news conference at a Grand Slam event if a journalist requests their presence, whether they win or lose. Fines for refusing are often little more than a few thousand dollars. In 2015, Venus Williams was fined $3,000 for skipping a news conference after a loss at the French Open. She and her sister, Serena, were fined $4,000 each in 2010 for skipping a news conference at Wimbledon.The French Open takes place on clay, which is considered Osaka’s worst surface. She is not expected to win the tournament and could be upset in an early round. She has never made it past the third round in Paris.Attending a news conference, regardless of the outcome of a match, is considered an obligation tennis players fulfill to promote their sport, which has struggled to maintain coverage in some markets in recent years as the budgets of news organizations have been slashed.Billie Jean King, the Hall of Fame player who helped create the women’s pro tour, has spoken about visiting the sports editors in the markets in which she played to beg them to send sportswriters to cover matches during the tour’s early years and the importance of players speaking with the press to promote the sport.“I like writers,” King said during a recent interview. “Always have.”Osaka’s announcement comes three months after Serena Williams left a news conference in tears following a loss at the Australian Open. Williams left the podium following an innocuous question from a veteran Australian tennis journalist about her level of play and her unforced errors after a semifinal loss to Osaka, who later won the tournament.“I don’t know. I’m done,” Williams said before abruptly leaving the room.It is not clear whether Osaka will also refuse to do television interviews on the court after her matches. Those interviews have become a staple of Grand Slam play and are generally not confrontational. Except in the finals, only the winner of the match is interviewed for television on the court.The question now is whether any players will follow Osaka’s lead and whether tennis officials will accede to her pressure and change the requirements.Osaka is one of the most influential players in the world. Last year, tennis officials suspended play at the Western & Southern Open, a United States Open tuneup, after Osaka announced that she would default her semifinal match to draw attention to the issue of police violence against Black people following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.The suspension of play, a move that several sports undertook as athletes threatened a boycott, allowed Osaka to remain in the tournament. She won her postponed semifinal match and then defaulted the final because of an injury.Days later, she began her triumphant quest to win her second U.S. Open championship. She walked to the court for each match wearing a mask with the name of a different person of color who had been a victim of racist violence.In general, Osaka has a cordial relationship with the press, though she keeps journalists, especially those she does not know, at a distance and rarely grants interviews, even to the biggest news organizations, though she has become a staple of fashion magazine covers. She said her decision to skip news conferences was not a personal attack on the French Open or the handful of journalists who have interviewed her since her younger years, “so I have a friendly relationship with most of them.” More

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    What Happened to Novak Djokovic’s Mission to Transform Pro Tennis?

    The Professional Tennis Players Association had a flashy introduction last summer, but it has done little else. The players who created the sport’s original unions have some advice.Nine months ago, a group of tennis players started an organization aimed at giving them more say in how their sport operates and divides the roughly $2 billion the game generates annually. A group of former players who brought tennis into the modern era of sports commerce have been watching their work.But since Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, gathered with the others at the United States Open for a unity photograph to introduce the Professional Tennis Players Association in 2020, it has been unclear what, if anything, has been accomplished.“I don’t think they realize how much work is involved,” said Billie Jean King, one of nine players who set up the women’s tour in 1973. “It’s tedious. It’s every day. It’s meetings. We’d have meetings at 4 a.m. after we finished playing.”The new association wants to represent the top 500 singles players and the top 200 in doubles, doing everything it can to make sure those players can make a viable living. It is a significant goal. For now, only about the top 100 players do.But Djokovic has played just three tournaments since winning the Australian Open in February. Vasek Pospisil of Canada, the world’s 64th-ranked player and Djokovic’s fellow leader in the effort, is skipping the clay-court swing in Europe. He does not plan to be back on the tour until grass-court play begins in mid-June.In terms of activism, ahead of the Australian Open, Djokovic wrote a letter to tournament organizers demanding better treatment for players who were forced into a hard lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.Pospisil had a midmatch temper tantrum at the Miami Open in March, breaking into a curse-laden tirade at the chair umpire about a confrontational meeting the previous night with the chairman of the men’s tour, Andrea Gaudenzi.There is the occasional thread on Twitter complaining about the state of the game followed by the #playersvoice hashtag. About that, King and her cohorts from the game’s last major labor movement have this to say — tweeting is not organizing.There certainly has been nothing planned along the lines of the 1973 boycott of Wimbledon, when more than 80 top players, including the defending champion, Stan Smith, left in an effort to gain the right to choose which events they played.“If the players were unified and were willing to take risks and suffer losses they could control the sport,” said Donald Dell, who played elite-level tennis in the 1960s, then became an agent and helped create the original Association of Tennis Professionals in the 1970s. “But are they willing to take the risk?”Representatives for Djokovic did not respond to requests for comment. Reached late last month in Canada, where he is nursing a back injury, Pospisil said: “We’re building out the foundation. We’re hopeful by the end of summer we’ll have an exciting launch.”Vasek Pospisil serving at the Australian Open back in February.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesPospisil declined to provide specifics about his sources of funding, who was involved, or how the association intended to achieve its goals to avoid giving ammunition to the leaders of the International Tennis Federation or the men’s and women’s pro tours, who do not want to share power with yet another entity. Then he cut short the interview and declined requests for another.Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have not signed on, choosing instead to support the ATP tour, which jointly represents players and tournament owners. The women’s tour, the WTA, has a similar structure.Djokovic and Pospisil were late to approach women about joining the organization. They say they want to include women, but it’s not clear how many women have signed on to their effort.Tennis ranks just behind soccer in popularity in many countries, especially in Europe. Add up all the people who work for the tours, the Grand Slams, tournaments large and small, and the media companies affiliated with tennis, and there are thousands who are earning a decent living off the sport. But players ranked outside the top 100 struggle to break even.Djokovic and Pospisil have their work cut out for them. Tennis may be the hardest sport in the world to organize. Players come from dozens of countries and play in scores of events across the globe over an 11-month season. The players come together en masse only four times a year, at the Grand Slams. During those events, top players like Djokovic are usually too focused on trying to win to distract themselves with politics. They rent private homes and arrive with coaches, hitting partners, massage therapists, agents and managers and do not socialize much with average players.Also, there is a natural schism between the best players, who know they are the stars of the tour and believe they should be paid as such, and the journeymen, who want more money to cover the costs of sustaining their careers in hopes of a sudden rise, like the one Aslan Karatsev, 27, of Russia has pulled off. He was ranked 114th in the world in January and is now in the top 25.Cliff Drysdale, the former player and tennis commentator who was the first president of the ATP, said he needed to find one cause that every player could unite around.For King, who organized the women’s tour, the cause was equal treatment with the men. Drysdale found his unifying cause in June 1973, when Wimbledon barred Nikola Pilic of Yugoslavia from playing because his country’s tennis federation had suspended him. The federation punished Pilic for playing in a tournament where he could make money instead of representing his country in the Davis Cup. Nearly every top player left.“It was about freedom from the control of national associations,” Drysdale said. “There wasn’t a player who didn’t agree with that.”Once the leaders of tennis saw that players were willing to walk away from the game’s crown jewel, players got their freedom and, eventually, a 50 percent say in the operation of the sport.Nikola Pilic (far left), outside the High Court in London with (left to right) tennis players Cliff Drysdale, Arthur Ashe and Jack Kramer in June 1973. They were awaiting a judgement on an application by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for an injunction seeking to lift the ban placed on Pilic by the International Tennis Federation.Leonard Burt/Central Press, via Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesStill, most tournaments do not share their financial information with the players, who have no idea what share of the sport’s overall revenues they receive and struggle to formulate an argument for what they are entitled to. King owned tournaments when she was still playing, giving her a valuable education in the tennis business and the ability to negotiate as an equal.Executives acknowledge that the players’ share is not close to the roughly 50 percent that athletes in most North American team sports receive, even if the free hotels, air travel and meals the players receive are included in the calculation, but tennis players are far more independent.Pospisil says the system fails to give players their fair share, and his goals are fairly simple: a bigger role for players on major decisions and the opportunity for more lower-ranked players, both men and women, to earn a better living.Players broadly support the first goal, but the second one is more divisive and is likely to require the grind of old-school labor campaigning. Players in the top 20 fear they will have to give up money so players ranked from No. 80 through 300 can earn more. Also, plenty of male players historically have not been keen on joining forces to lift the less lucrative women’s game, fearing it might somehow cost them.“The men always feel like they will have to give something up if they join with the women,” King said. “But the tournaments with both genders are the most valuable.”Charlie Pasarell, another former player and founding member of the ATP said a new organization to represent players might even be a step backward.“They say they want more money and a bigger cut,” said Pasarell, who owned and operated a tournament in Southern California after his playing career. “Well, they are at a table right now where they can negotiate that. Let’s figure out a formula.” More

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    Coco Gauff Wins Two Titles in One Day

    A rare double championship made for a great day on clay. It also was a good sign for Gauff a week before the French Open.It had been a year and a half since Coco Gauff won a tennis title. On Saturday, she won two in only a few hours.Gauff, the 17-year-old from Delray Beach, Fla., secured the singles title first, defeating Wang Qiang, 6-1, 6-3, with a poised and powerful performance at the WTA Tour’s Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma, Italy.After a trophy ceremony and a short rest, Gauff returned to center court with her doubles partner, Caty McNally, and won that title, too, rebounding from a slow start to defeat Darija Jurak and Andreja Klepac, 6-3, 6-2.“Two titles in one day — not bad,” Gauff said as she thanked her father and coach, Corey, and the rest of her team. Her victories came just over a week before the start of the French Open in Paris.The education of Gauff as a tennis player continues, and she has been a star student on Europe’s red clay so far this spring. After defeating Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka earlier this month to reach the semifinals of the Italian Open in Rome, Gauff traveled north to Parma to play in a new WTA 250 event where Serena Williams, a late wild-card entry, was the main attraction.But Williams, 39, lost to Katerina Siniakova in the second round, and showed that she was still struggling to find her fitness and her form. Gauff, meanwhile, won five straight matches to collect her second WTA singles title.The first came indoors in Linz, Austria, in October 2019, when she was still 15 and won a tough three-set final against Jelena Ostapenko.“I feel like in Linz I was really nervous closing the match, and I hadn’t been in that moment before,” she said when asked to compare her emotions after each victory. “Linz was definitely more a sigh of relief, because I think I was up in that third set and lost a couple of games before I was able to close it out. Whereas here, I said I was just going to go for it and trust myself and trust my decisions, and that’s why I felt like here it felt more like it was meant to be and not relief.”Gauff will be ranked 25th on Monday, a new career high. That guarantees her a seeding for the first time in a Grand Slam tournament when the French Open begins on May 30.“I feel really good about going into the French, and I hope I can continue to build and get better,” said Gauff, who beat McNally to win the French Open girls’ championship in 2018. “I have a week and a day to get ready. I feel like I’m hitting good, moving good. My body feels good, my mentality. Emotionally I feel good, so I think it will be a good tournament for me.”Gauff did not have to deal with the WTA elite this week in Parma. She faced no players ranked in the world’s top 30, and no former major champions. Her highest-ranked opponent was No. 40 Amanda Anisimova, a powerful but erratic American whom Gauff defeated, 6-3, 6-3, in the quarterfinals before beating Siniakova in three sets and China’s Wang in a hurry.Wang, 29, had thrived in long rallies throughout the week, defeating Petra Martic and Sloane Stephens in tight matches. But she struggled from the start to control the flow of play against the fast and consistent Gauff.“She’s a very good player now, and she can be a really great player,” Wang said.That remains the consensus on Gauff. She became a star in a hurry by reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon, her first Grand Slam tournament, in 2019. But she has not rocketed quickly to the very top like the former prodigies Monica Seles and Martina Hingis.The pandemic has certainly been a factor. Gauff did not play a tournament for more than six months in 2020, and she then lost in the first round of the United States Open and the second round of the rescheduled French Open when she did return.Though her two-handed backhand and her court coverage remain her strengths, her serve and her forehand have been question marks. She has shored up the forehand and has been increasingly effective pouncing on short balls and hitting winners with that stroke. But double faults have been a recurring issue. Last month, she had 13 in a straight-sets loss to Ons Jabeur in the quarterfinals of an event in Charleston, S.C., and 12 more in a three-set defeat to Karolina Pliskova in the first round of the Mutua Madrid Open.Those are big, disquieting numbers. The serving yips can be daunting to overcome, particularly in tight matches with Grand Slam titles on the line. But Gauff, with less at stake, served well through the pressure in Rome and Parma.Against Wang, she hit six double faults, but none came at critical junctures, and she did not lose a game on her serve.“That feels good,” she said. “The serve is something I’ve been working on a lot, and I can still improve on it.”Pat Cash, the former Wimbledon champion who is coaching Wang, agreed that Gauff’s serve needed work — “Sometimes she gets a bit too much spin on it,” he said — but after sitting courtside in Parma on Saturday, he said he liked her chances of playing well in Paris.“I don’t think she’s going to be that far off at the French,” Cash said. “I think Coco can get frustrated with the ball coming back time and time again. She over-hits at times, and that’s what we were hoping she would do today. We were hoping to frustrate her, but she hit God knows how many lines, baselines and sidelines, with power.“I was very impressed with her speed, and she’s a strong girl. She was a pretty skinny little thing a couple years ago, but she’s very strong on the stretch. That’s where it really counts.”Cash continued: “When she is pushed wide, instead of just floating the ball back, she can get some heat on it, and that’s crucial. A lot of the girls are not strong enough to do that. I was very impressed how Coco ran down a lot of balls and got them back with speed and depth. It’s like Rafa. He’s in trouble, and all the sudden he’s out of trouble.”For a player, any day someone draws a comparison to Nadal on clay is a good day. So is any day that you leave a tournament with two champion’s trophies after a long wait. More

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    Indian Wells Tennis Tournament Will Return This Year

    The BNP Paribas Open, one of the sport’s most prestigious events, is to be staged in October, about seven months later than usual. The 2020 version was canceled because of the pandemic.The BNP Paribas Open, which was the first major American sports event to be canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, announced its comeback on Thursday.The prestigious tennis tournament, staged annually in Indian Wells, Calif., was not held in 2020 and was postponed this year from its regular dates in March.But after extensive negotiations with professional tennis’s numerous stakeholders, the event will be held in October. The precise dates have not been determined because the men’s and women’s tours are not set to finalize their late-season calendars until June. But Tommy Haas, a former player who directs the tournament, said the BNP Paribas Open would be staged with full prize money. The figures for this year aren’t set, but the 2020 prize money was supposed to be $1.36 million for each singles champion.Many tennis events have reduced prize money during the pandemic because of the loss of ticket and sponsorship revenue. The Miami Open, which was held in March after being canceled in 2020, slashed its compensation. Singles champions earned $1.35 million in 2019 but just $300,000 in 2021. The drastic cuts prompted complaints from John Isner, the 2018 men’s winner, and other players about the transparency of the decision-making process.But Haas said the BNP Paribas Open was committed to maintaining prize money at its customary levels.“I think that’s something the players are going to be really, really happy about,” Haas said in a videoconference call on Thursday. “That’s how it should be. They’ve gone through obviously some hard times. Their schedule has been sort of upside down with travel restrictions and trying to be in one bubble after another. I’m hoping that things will be a little easier come October playing for the prize money that we think they deserve.”The BNP Paribas Open, owned by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, is particularly popular with players because of its desert location, extensive facilities and relaxed atmosphere. It has become the most significant tennis event outside the four Grand Slam tournaments and the season-ending championships for the ATP and the WTA.“As a German-American citizen, I’m going to call it my own little Oktoberfest this year, which is going to be great, especially since Munich already had to cancel,” said Haas, referring to the annual German festival that will not be staged this year.The 2020 BNP Paribas Open was canceled just ahead of the qualifying tournament in March after a coronavirus case was detected in the area and Riverside County, Calif., public health officials declared a state of emergency. Many players, including the Spanish star Rafael Nadal, were already on site. The decision came so swiftly that many players and officials found out through social media.“As soon as we canceled, we went to work the next day to see how we were going to bring this back,” said Philippe Dore, the tournament’s media and marketing director. “I think we’re on our Version 25 of budgets and different scenarios.”More than 450,000 spectators attended the event in 2019, and Haas said he hoped to have a large number of fans again in October. California has been loosening pandemic-related restrictions in certain counties and is aiming to fully reopen its economy next month. Tickets for the BNP Paribas Open are tentatively scheduled to go on sale June 21.“We’re going to follow all the guidelines,” Haas said. “Safety is obviously the highest concern. It comes first, and we want to make sure everyone is very, very comfortable.” More