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    Billie Jean King Supports Talks With Saudi Arabia on Women’s Tennis Events

    The LatestBillie Jean King, the leading architect of women’s professional tennis who is widely regarded as the first female athlete-activist, said Friday that she supported talks between the women’s tour and Saudi Arabia on holding competitions in the kingdom, despite its abysmal record on human rights.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” King said Friday at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WTA, the women’s professional tour. “I would probably go there and talk to them.”After King’s comments, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said women’s tennis was seriously evaluating partnerships with Saudi Arabia. He suggested that potentially holding events there would be a way to support “progress” for women, while the country is trying to become a destination for major sports.“Sometimes when you are in the position we are in, you need to support the change,” Simon said, referring to the tour’s commitment to gender pay equity and its loss of revenue during the pandemic and an 18-month suspension of operations in China over Peng Shuai.He said Saudi Arabia had “a long way to go,” especially in its laws banning homosexuality, but that change was underway in the country. “You want them to do what they are doing” and support that, he added.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” Billie Jean King said Friday.Kin Cheung/Associated PressWhy It Matters: Saudi Arabia continues to expand its footprint in sports.The comments from King and Simon were the strongest signal yet that Saudi Arabia is expanding and accelerating its efforts to become a part of not just men’s tennis but also women’s, among other sports like soccer, Formula 1 and golf. The Saudi wealth fund’s LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour after an acrimonious rivalry that included litigation and the loss of a handful of the tour’s biggest stars to the upstart league.Looking to avoid that scenario and always on the hunt for new investors, tennis executives have spoken openly of their ongoing discussions with Saudi officials about holding tournaments there as soon as this year. Saudi Arabia is bidding to become the host of the Next Gen Finals, a men’s event for 21-and-under players scheduled for December. Saudi Arabia’s bid includes the option of holding a women’s Next Gen event there as well.Simon traveled to Riyadh in February with other WTA executives and players for meetings with Saudi officials.Background: Players have expressed concern for their safety.The issue is especially complicated for the women’s tennis tour in part because there are a number of openly gay players, including Daria Kasatkina of Russia, who is ranked No. 11 in the world and often travels with her partner. The men’s tour does not have any players who are openly gay.Sloane Stephens, a member of the WTA Tour Players’ Council, said it was important for L.G.B.T.Q. players to feel safe while competing in Saudi Arabia.“That is part of the evaluation,” Stephens said. “We want to make sure everyone is safe and comfortable and feels supported.”King is openly gay as well, but she cited the WTA’s decision to play in Doha beginning in 2008 as a precedent for supporting countries who say they want to become more progressive. Simon said that, during his visit to Riyadh, he had noticed some of the same changes that Doha had said it wanted to make 15 years ago when women had “zero rights” and there were concerns about whether the players would be safe wearing short, sleeveless tennis outfits.“It’s about celebrating the betterment of women, that there is change coming,” Simon said. “I’m not Saying Saudi Arabia is a place we should be doing business with. They have a long way to go, but they are making changes.”What’s Next: The timetable is uncertain.Simon said there was no timetable for making a decision about the WTA going to Saudi Arabia. However, the tour has yet to announce a location for its season-ending Tour Finals. The tour and the Chinese government are currently negotiating the future of that event. The WTA suspended its operations in China for 18 months after player Peng Shuai was seemingly silenced after she appeared to accuse a former top government official of sexually assaulting her and the tour was unable to contact her. More

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    Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

    The WTA Tour approved a plan to achieve pay equity at its biggest tournaments. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2033.The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years.The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even in tournaments where they play the same best-of-three-sets format.In Rome, in May, the men competed for $8.5 million while the women competed for $3.9 million. The Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open, paid men $6.28 million while women competed for $2.53 million. The National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women.“More and more players have been getting restless with this,” said Jessica Pegula, the world’s fourth-ranked player and a member of the WTA Players’ Council. “Equal pay started with the Slams, and I think a lot of people thought that meant every tournament.”Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. As part of this deal, organizers of the next two tiers of tournaments — the 1000-level tournaments, which are the biggest competitions outside of the Grand Slams, and the 500-level tournaments — have committed to pay equity as well.All events featuring both men and women at those two levels will pay prize money equal to that on the men’s tour, the ATP, beginning in 2027. By 2033, all events at those two levels will offer the same prize money.Tour executives and tournament officials say the phased-in approach is essential for raising the additional revenue to fund the pay increases, but that has not sat well with all players.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain, who has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, said last month.Sloane Stephens, another Players’ Council member, said she understands the impatience of players who don’t want this benefit to kick in only after they have retired, but there are many existing contracts that prevent an immediate shift.“It may not be the fastest pathway, but we will get there,” she said. “If I wasn’t on the council, it would be hard for me to understand. This process takes time.”In an interview this spring, Steven Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the time frame is necessary to allow the market to catch up with player sentiment, as the tour expands its marketing and renegotiates existing media contracts. Tournament organizers will also be able to take advantage of new rules that will make player attendance essentially mandatory at the biggest tournaments. Tournament organizers have long used the lack of a mandatory attendance requirement and a slight difference in the number of rankings points that players received as excuses for not providing equal pay. All of the tournaments with men and women will also now offer the same rankings points for both, making the competitions equal in every way and less confusing for fans.But while the pay equity deal offers an eventual solution to an old problem for tennis — and in all sports — it is hardly a panacea. With Wimbledon set to begin on Monday, women’s tennis continues to grapple with challenges.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa has said about the gap between men’s and women’s prize money at most tournaments.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockMost immediately, the tour has yet to announce the location of its season-ending tour finals in November. That issue was supposed to have been settled after the tour announced earlier this year that it would end its 18-month suspension of operations in China over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai. In a social media post in 2021, Shuai accused a government official of sexually assaulting her, and tour officials were subsequently unable to contact her.Simon said its boycott proved ineffective. But when the tour released its fall calendar earlier this month, it gave no location for the finals, though it included several tournaments in China. Tour officials have said they intend to hold the event there, but negotiations are continuing with the Chinese over the details of its existing 10-year deal that guaranteed nearly $150 million in prize money.There is also the larger issue of whether the WTA Tour will be able to further unify with the men’s tour, a move that experts say is vital for maximizing the potential of pro tennis. And looming over all of this is what role, if any, Saudi Arabia may play in the sport.Saudi Arabia, whose LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour, already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, but so far it has shown an inclination to grow its investments in tennis without the acrimony and litigation that accompanied its aggressive push into golf.Saudi Arabia is a leading candidate to become the host of the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending 21-and-under tournament that has been held in Milan since its inception in 2017, according to people with knowledge of the bidding process. The proposal to stage the competition, beginning later this year, includes a plan to launch a similar women’s event.The WTA has yet to commit to that or to staging any competitions in Saudi Arabia, where women only recently gained the right to drive and where an abysmal human rights record includes the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Simon traveled to the kingdom earlier this year for talks with government officials, though it’s not clear whether the WTA’s idea of further unification with the ATP includes a new tournament in Saudi Arabia.For now, erasing the pay gap is the first step, though some players do not understand the slow pace of change.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, who is ranked No. 6, said recently.In response, Simon has pointed to the deal the tour struck earlier this year with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. Much of the investment will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts at a time when many of its players remain unknown to casual sports fans.Doing that may require some work on the part of the tournaments that goes beyond giving women more money.“We have to build these personalities,” Simon said.Women in tennis have also been increasingly vocal in recent months about the disparate treatment they have received. At the French Open, organizers put a men’s match in the featured prime-time slot on nine of 10 nights.The mixed tournaments almost always conclude with the men’s final on the last Sunday — an implicit peak — with the women’s final played the day before. At the Italian Open in May, Elena Rybakina and Anhelina Kalinina took the court at 11 p.m. local time in a largely empty stadium after rain and the men’s semifinals delayed their match for hours.After Tuesday’s announcement, at least the money will be equal — eventually.“It’s time for change,” Simon said. “The pathway is now there.” More

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    Novak Djokovic Captures the French Open and a 23rd Grand Slam Title

    Djokovic beat Casper Ruud to win the men’s singles championship, passing Rafael Nadal for the most major tournament titles in the Open era.Novak Djokovic began his day picturing how it would end, holding his children in his arms, raising another Grand Slam tournament trophy above his head and singing his national anthem as Serbian fans chanted and danced and celebrated his third French Open men’s singles title and much more.On Sunday at Roland Garros, Djokovic defeated Casper Ruud, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5, to capture a record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, continuing a stunning turnaround from a year and a half ago, when he was deported from Australia ahead of the first Grand Slam tournament of 2022, a dire harbinger of the year to come. After Ruud’s final forehand sailed off the court, Djokovic dropped his racket and collapsed onto his back on the red clay. It was easy to appreciate the drama.“The toughest one for me to win,” Djokovic said of the French Open.Moments later, after a congratulatory hug from Ruud, Djokovic knelt in prayer in the middle of the court, then headed for the stands to embrace his family and his coaches. When he came back onto the court moments later, he was wearing a jacket with “23” emblazoned under his right shoulder.Family ❤️#RolandGarros | @DjokerNole pic.twitter.com/Qy42UKC0yQ— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) June 11, 2023
    Djokovic, 36, has spent most of the last two decades chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two other giants who have defined this era of modern tennis. That race has come to an end, at least for now.“Those two guys, the past 15 years, were occupying my mind quite a lot,” Djokovic said as he sat next to the championship trophy.Djokovic surpassed Federer last summer, just a few months before Federer’s retirement, winning his 21st Grand Slam title at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on the grass that Federer had ruled for so long. In January at the Australian Open, Djokovic won again. That 22nd title tied Nadal, the Spanish champion who missed this year’s French Open with an injury.With a cast of stars on hand for the occasion, he made his history on the red clay of the Philippe Chatrier court at the French Open, which Nadal has won an astonishing 14 times. A silver statue of Nadal bullwhipping his forehand stands just hundreds of yards away.The retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady sat next to Djokovic’s wife, Jelena. The French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a few rows above the court. The American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the tennis icons Stan Smith and Yannick Noah, and many French actors, singers, businessmen and athletes were also among the spectators.This was a momentous step in a journey filled with self-inflicted crises, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the court, and early and midcareer fallow seasons, some because he was injured and some when he missed tournaments because he would not waiver from principles that kept him a staunch opponent of the Covid-19 vaccination. His most seemingly impossible task has been winning the hearts of tennis fans who long ago pledged them to the first two members of the so-called Big Three.At the end of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 years old and five years past competing in his first major tournament, Federer had already won 16 Grand Slam titles to Djokovic’s one.But in 2011, Djokovic began to storm the sport, winning the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon. He put together a 41-match winning streak and a 10-1 record against Federer and Nadal. Tennis has never been the same.Djokovic moments after his 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5 victory against Casper Ruud.Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMaybe it was his new, gluten-free diet, or forsaking alcohol, or the time spent in a pressurized chamber. Maybe it was the stretching and calisthenics routine that turned Djokovic into a racket-wielding rubber band and has him “still moving like a cat,” as his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, said Sunday evening.The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder, which Djokovic has said he has carried since growing up during the war in Serbia, hasn’t hurt either.Ivanisevic, a Croat, has described a Balkan fighting spirit in Djokovic’s DNA that no one who has come from outside the region can match in the biggest matches.Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for three years, has said that Djokovic needed to stop punishing himself for an indiscretion that neither Djokovic nor Becker has ever talked about in detail. Once he did that, Becker said, he became liberated, and began winning with abandon.The numbers since then defy simple explanation. With his win Sunday, Djokovic regained the world’s top ranking for a record 388th week. In addition to the record for Grand Slam tournament titles, he also holds the record for Masters 1000 titles. In case any Nadal or Federer fans want to fault him for being a mere compiler, Djokovic has a winning record against both of them.Feeling worn out from his semifinal win over Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic skipped practice on Saturday and searched for tranquillity on a walk in the woods. It was a good decision.Any hope that Ruud, 24, a steady and determined Norwegian playing in his third Grand Slam final in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into something other than a coronation dissipated at the end of a grinding first set that concluded in Djokovic’s signature fashion. Across all these years and hundreds of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has lost only five times after winning the first set.Andy Roddick, a former world No. 1, famously said of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”Ivanisevic added to that assessment Sunday: “Then he digs your grave and you have a funeral and you’re dead. Bye-bye. Thank you for coming.”That was about what Djokovic did to Ruud early on Sunday, on his way to history.Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to start the match and surged to an early lead as Djokovic played a shaky first few games, muffing overheads and pushing balls off the court as Ruud played the mostly error-free and deceptively dangerous tennis that has characterized the best moments of his career.But then the Djokovic that the tennis world has come to know and fear the past dozen years emerged. With Ruud serving at 4-2, close enough to sniff the first-set finish line, Djokovic indulged in one of those classic grinding rallies, running from corner to corner, forward and back, keeping the point alive long after it should have been over. It ended the way it often does — with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the net.“A bit devastating,” Ruud said.In most tennis matches, when a set moves to a tiebreaker, the outcome comes down to a flip of a coin. That is not how it works with Djokovic.Last week, he explained that when a tiebreaker begins, his mind moves to a state of hyper concentration to “stay in the present,” play each point on its merit and give nothing away.He started this one with a lunging forehand winner down the line, and finished it seven points later with another blasted forehand that Ruud didn’t even bother making a run at, not that it would have mattered. When it was over, Djokovic had played 55 points in tiebreakers during this tournament and had yet to make an unforced error.Djokovic soaking in his victory.Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor an hour and 22 minutes, Ruud had gone toe to toe with Djokovic, matching him sprint for sprint and shot for shot for long stretches, and he had nothing but a rubbery set of legs and a damaged psyche to show for it. Ruud stuck around for the scrap, pushing the match past the three-hour mark. But after that first set, it was just a matter of time.In the fog of all this winning, it can be difficult to remember Djokovic’s stretches of strife, even the more recent ones. There were those days when he was in custody in Australia last year as he awaited his deportation hearing. But there was also that ugly time in 2020, when he accidentally swatted a ball into the throat of a line judge and was tossed out of the U.S. Open. The next month, Nadal destroyed him in straight sets in the final of a French Open delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Djokovic appeared headed for another walk in the wilderness.Instead, he came within one match of achieving a Grand Slam, nearly winning all four Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, toppling Nadal at Roland Garros along the way.He has won the first two Grand Slam events this year.“The journey is still not over,” Djokovic said. “If I am winning Slams, why even think about ending the career?”He may be alone with 23 Grand Slam titles, but in his eyes, there is more history to play for.“I wish you win against anybody except me,” Djokovic told Casper Ruud after the match.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images More

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    Thousands of Bylines to His Name, and One That’s Not

    A sports reporter reflects on his 30-year career and the mistake that started it all.It was the day after Christmas in 1991, and as a young journalist, I received quite a gift: my first byline in The New York Times.There was one — and only one — downside: They misspelled my name.I use “they” because as I leave The Times’s Sports desk this month to become a full-time author, I still don’t know who got it wrong or how the mix-up happened. That is because I never asked for a correction. At 26, I had just fulfilled a childhood dream and was new in the freelance reporting rotation. Rightly or wrongly, I had no desire to make waves or do anything other than write more Times articles.Thirty-two years later, the mishap seems, above all, amusing. There was no changing the misspelling, anyway. There was no online version to fix; The Times did not launch its website until 1996. There was no way to update a page after it printed. Had The Times published a correction, it would not have changed the fact that my surname was spelled “Clary” instead of “Clarey” in the Dec. 26, 1991, newspaper.Mr. Clarey’s surname was misspelled “Clary” on his first New York Times article.The New York TimesThe error, I should note, did not stop my proud parents from sending copies of the article to a fair share of their Christmas card list. Though I remember feeling a certain sense of disappointment — akin to getting an indelible smudge on a pair of shoes, fresh out of the box — I also saw the incident as a reminder that nobody was perfect in my chosen profession. Certainly not me, and not even The Times.It will humble you, this business, and that is surely a good thing. Today, the scoop might be yours, but tomorrow, it will be your competitor’s. Stop hustling for long, and you will pay the price. Start relying on memory instead of double-checking the facts, and you will soon screw up.There were many nights when I was startled out of sleep by my subconscious, which had somehow registered that a fact was wrong in an article I had filed a few hours earlier; that Roger Federer actually won his first Wimbledon in 2003, not 2002. (Maybe I did not ask for a correction that December, but I’ve had my own share of corrections over the years.)Yet however flawed we, and journalism, may be, this churning, round-the-clock quest to get things right remains a worthy endeavor, especially when a powerful person does not want us to look into those things.It can also be, if you’ll allow me a moment of complete candor, a hell of a lot of fun.In 1991, I took a big chance: I left a solid staff job at The San Diego Union and moved to Paris to marry a Frenchwoman. I had very little in the bank, no matter the exchange rate, and spoke the kind of French that only an American mother could love.My hope was to write about international sports. There were a few what-have-we-done moments as I searched for freelance work, but it was above all a heady time. We were in love and starting anew; I was conjugating verbs and riding my bike around Paris, rolling by the Eiffel Tower and, in an age without quite so many rules, riding circles around the glass pyramid of the Louvre at midnight.It was a late night, too, when the phone in our apartment rang. I was surprised to find Bill Brink from The Times’s Sports desk on the other end of the line. He asked, in a hushed voice (I swear it was hushed), if I might be able to get to Germany on short notice to report an article on Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay, a brother-sister team of ice dancers poised to be one of the biggest draws of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.(Unbeknownst to me, Barry Lorge, my former boss in San Diego, had sent a letter about my move to Neil Amdur, then The Times’s Sports editor.)I don’t recall exactly what I said on the phone, but I do remember shouting “Yeeeeessssss!” in a thoroughly undignified fashion after I hung up.Off I went. I took the night train to Oberstdorf, Germany, reporter’s notebooks, ballpoint pens and a micro-cassette recorder in tow. There was not much sleep to be had in the sleeper car, but no matter. As with many a fulfilling journey, the anticipation was every bit as sweet as the trip itself.I spent a day with the Duchesnays, learning about their choreography and the Olympic pressure. I filed the article, and in a few days it was published, “By Christopher Clary” sitting under the headline.I have filed several thousand more articles over the past 30-plus years — under the right name. I have written about soccer from Cameroon, badminton from Indonesia, skiing from Switzerland, yachting from New Zealand, golf from Scotland and bullfighting from Spain. I have covered 14 Olympic Games, 10 Ryder Cups, nine world track and field championships, six soccer World Cups, five America’s Cups, one Masters and a whole lot of tennis tournaments. As I leave The Times, I am grateful not only for the passport stamps, but also for the people who have crossed my path in so many places, including The Times’s newsroom.As a parting gift, and in the true spirit of our daily quest to get things right, perhaps the time has finally come to correct that first byline. More

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    Swiatek Overcomes Muchova to Win Another French Open

    Swiatek was drawn into a tight match with Karolina Muchova, and emerged with her third singles championship at Roland Garros in four years.Iga Swiatek is once more the queen of clay.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, beat Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic to claim the French Open women’s singles championship on Saturday.Muchova, whose smooth and athletic game has been one of the sport’s best kept secrets for years, struggled with errors early but found her form and gave Swiatek the final of her life, forcing her to use every bit of the clinical, relentless approach that had made her the world’s top player — and then some — for more than a year.Swiatek outlasted Muchova, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 in a breathtaking, up-and-down battle that met the moment of one of the grandest stages in the sport. When Muchova’s second serve tumbled into the net on Swiatek’s first match point, Swiatek dropped her racket and brought her hands to her eyes, as Muchova came around the net for a well-earned congratulatory hug.Soon there was the increasingly familiar sight of Swiatek emerging in the stands for a celebratory huddle with her team and a few quiet words with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, who started working with her when she was a shaky teenager and helped mold her into a steely champion.“A big challenge,” Swiatek said of her triumph in the understatement of the day. “Really proud of myself that I did it.”Swiatek has been virtually unbeatable at Roland Garros since 2020. With Saturday’s win, she captured her third French Open singles title in four years. Since 2019, her record in the tournament heading into the final was 28-2, which may not rival the 112-3 record of Rafael Nadal, but give her time. Swiatek just turned 22 last week and has given few hints that she will be slowing down.Other than the occasional battle with her psyche, she seems to be getting better each year, especially at the French Open, a tournament she loves more than any other.For Muchova, the final capped a remarkable comeback from a year ago, when she sprained an ankle in a third-round singles match at Roland Garros and had to withdraw. The injury was the latest in a series of ailments that had long kept her from realizing the potential that so many of the game’s coaches, players and experts have seen in her for years.That loss sent her spiraling out of the top 200, forcing her to play a series of smaller tournaments to regain her standing. She entered this tournament ranked 43rd in the world, though few in tennis believed there were 42 women better than Muchova.Muchova plays a backhand against Swiatek.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesBut playing in a Grand Slam final for the first time is a challenge for any player, especially against the best in the world. Swiatek had cruised through her first five matches of the tournament. She won four of her first six sets without conceding a game. Then she lost just seven games across her next two matches.Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil made Swiatek uncomfortable for a bit in the semifinal, pushing her around the court and into a tiebreaker in the second set, but she arrived in the final with every reason to believe she would be lifting the trophy at day’s end.That faith grew stronger in the first minutes of the match, as the fluidity and mix of power and finesse that Muchova plays with on her best days were nowhere to be found. She sprayed balls wide and long, banged easy shots into the middle of the net, and gave Swiatek too many free points.There is no clock that regulates the length of a tennis match, but much of the sport is about controlling time, that is, finding a way to make an opponent feel rushed, like she has no chance to get to the ball, while figuring out how to give yourself all the time in the world. For more than a year that has been Swiatek’s signature, and it’s exactly what she did to Muchova on Saturday.There was a time two years ago when she was among the most creative players in the world. Her game featured squatting backhands and a repertoire of forehands with six different kinds of spin. There was an artistry to it all, but she didn’t win nearly as much.Now Swiatek doesn’t build winning points as much as she seizes them, going for winners with her big, rolling forehand at the first opportunity. The shorter the point, the less she has to think.She never eases her way into a match. She seeks to dominate from the start. When a point ends she hustles to start the next like she’s rushing to catch a train, plowing through sets and matches as though she’s got tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.For Muchova to have a chance, she was going to need to control the clock by extending points and find enough time to get comfortable on the biggest stage of her career.Swiatek had her first break of Muchova’s serve and the lead after just seven minutes. She led 6-2, 3-0 after an hour, while Muchova was still trying to find her footing.“The balls are coming fast,” Muchova said of the experience of facing Swiatek. “If you have a chance you have to take it because there may not be another.”And then she did. Shot by shot, point-by-point, game-by-game, she did. The strokes grew crisp and precise, the points stretched out, she slid into her shots so gracefully at moments it looked like she was dancing. Her volleys stung as the packed crowd of more than 15,000 fans chanted her name, urging her on.Swiatek wobbled, and as the match moved to the two-hour mark it was all even at a set apiece. Two minutes later, Muchova broke Swiatek’s serve for a third straight time and had her first lead of the day.Muchova and Swiatek had not played a competitive match since 2019, before either of them had established themselves at the top of the game. But they have practiced many times since then, and Swiatek has raved about Muchova’s talents.“Great touch,” Swiatek said of her competitor. “She can also speed up the game. She plays with that kind of, I don’t know, freedom in her movements. And she has a great technique.”All of it was there Saturday on one of the sport’s biggest stages, in one of the great Grand Slam finals in recent memory. Swiatek, who had sprinted to a seemingly insurmountable lead, wobbled as Muchova found her form, then battled from a service break down twice in the deciding set and found the answers and shots she needed.Swiatek had never lost a Grand Slam final and won all of those matches in straight sets. One of the few lingering questions was how she would respond if pushed into the crucible of a third set with everything on the line.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAt first, it didn’t look good. She double-faulted to give Muchova yet another break of serve to start the deciding set and looked finished as Muchova surged to a 2-0 lead.Mary Carillo, the longtime tennis commentator, likes to divide players into two groups — those who have fangs and those who do not, those who don’t just win from the front but relish the chance to brawl and fight to the final ball and those who pack it in.Muchova had shown her fangs in the semifinal and in mounting her comeback on Saturday. Now it was Swiatek’s turn. She won 12 of the next 14 points to take back the lead only to watch Muchova bite once more, turning the third set into a roller coaster.She charged forward behind deep balls that had Swiatek on the run and finished points with touch or a blast or a line-pasting swipe, holding her own serve and breaking Swiatek’s for a 4-3 advantage.“After so many ups and downs I stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition.”That worked. Muchova’s lead lasted seven minutes, until an ill-timed drop shot settled to the bottom of the net and Swiatek was even once more and hearing the deafening chants of her name to the beat of a bass drum.“Iga is No. 1 in the world and I was so close,” Muchova said.With Muchova serving to stay in the match, Swiatek took dead aim on her returns at Muchova’s feet and nailed her targets, putting Muchova on her heels and in a quick hole. Double match point arrived as Muchova pulled a forehand wide. With a double-fault from Muchova, Swiatek had her crown, the queen of clay for another year.“Sorry for being so difficult,” she told her team during the awards ceremony.Four Grand Slam finals. Four championship trophies. Tops in the world. Swiatek doesn’t seem that difficult at all. More

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    Novak Djokovic Moves to the Precipice of Tennis Supremacy

    Djokovic seized a spot in the French Open final with a win over a struggling Carlos Alcaraz. In the final on Sunday, Casper Ruud stands in the way of Djokovic’s 23rd Grand Slam singles title.The Philippe Chatrier Court at Roland Garros has long been Rafael Nadal’s second home.He has won 14 French Open men’s singles titles. His record at Roland Garros is 112-3, and a silver statue of him sits on the grounds.So maybe it’s fitting that Novak Djokovic has a chance for a career-crowning moment on Sunday — a 23rd Grand Slam singles title, one more than Nadal — on the very court where his rival has dominated this generation.If Djokovic, the 36-year-old Serbian champion, can pull that off — and he will be a heavy favorite to do so against Casper Ruud of Norway — it will be the tennis equivalent of Djokovic barging into Nadal’s house, raiding his refrigerator and plopping down on his living room couch to watch a “Godfather” marathon.“There is history on the line,” Djokovic said after his four-set win over Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, on Friday. “I like the feeling.”In Ruud — who dominated Alexander Zverev, 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 — Djokovic will face someone who has made three of the last five Grand Slam finals but who lost in his previous two finals. Ruud has yet to take a set from Djokovic across four head-to-head matches, which puts Djokovic in prime position to eclipse Nadal.Whether tennis fans outside Serbia like it or not, Djokovic has been managing this sort of feat for the better part of 15 years, and he shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. It started when he transformed elite tennis into a three-way battle for supremacy from its previous existence as a binary rivalry/love fest between Nadal and Roger Federer. With a win on Sunday, Djokovic would be the only player among that trio with at least three singles championships at each Grand Slam.Two years ago, he became the only man to beat Nadal twice at the French Open. The Federer faithful have long clung to the notion that their man will always be the ruler of the sport’s most hallowed ground: Centre Court at Wimbledon. Djokovic won his seventh Wimbledon singles championship last year and can draw even with Federer next month at the All England club.On Friday afternoon at Roland Garros, he was up to his old tricks once more against Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spaniard and top seed who was looking to move one step closer to completing his takeover of the sport. Djokovic and Alcaraz had shown themselves to be a level better than anyone else during the past year as they took turns winning Grand Slam titles and clamoring for the world’s top ranking.The match had figured to be one for the ages, a clash of generations and a potential torch passing — or really a torch-seizing — moment for the sport.Instead, Djokovic scored a victory for the old guard, registering a kind of technical knockout against a cramping Alcaraz. Djokovic prevailed in four sets, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, as Alcaraz crumbled in the face of the magnitude of the moment.It was a victory of wisdom and experience on a day when Alcaraz, in a moment of raw frankness, said he had been overcome by the idea of facing Djokovic on this giant stage. The cramps had nothing to do with fatigue or nutrition, he said. They were all about the stress of playing in just his second Grand Slam semifinal, against someone playing in his 45th.Carlos Alcaraz said he had been nervous playing against Djokovic in a late stage of the tournament. James Hill for The New York Times“Being in one of the greatest tournaments of the world, maybe for the first time in his career, he was expected to win,” Djokovic said. “He was maybe not an underdog chasing the title and trying to win.”Alcaraz started the match as nervous as he had ever been, he said, and the tension built from there into something he had never felt on a tennis court before.“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Alcaraz said of the cramps after the match. “The main thing, it was the tension.”Djokovic said he could easily relate to what Alcaraz had experienced. Early in his career, in the late rounds of the biggest tournaments, sometimes with championships on the line, his body failed him, for no other reason than the stress of what was unfolding around him.“It’s a part of the learning curve,” he said.Alcaraz said he had felt cramps before, but nothing like this. His right arm tightened in the first set, and by the third set the cramps had spread throughout his body. He knew exactly why.“If someone says that he gets into the court with no nerves playing against Novak, he lies,” Alcaraz said. “Playing a semifinal of a Grand Slam, you have a lot of nerves, but even more with facing Novak.” The next time he plays Djokovic might be different, he said, “but the nerves will be there.”For more than two hours, it had looked as though it might be the match for the ages. Djokovic played nearly perfectly in the first set, only for Alcaraz to showcase his power and his magical shotmaking in the next one.That included a mouthwatering winner on a full sprint toward the back of the court, during which he spun 180 degrees around the ball and then suddenly knifed a crosscourt forehand that skittered on the sideline tape. It sent the crowd into a frenzy and had Djokovic clapping his racket. After they had split sets, there was every reason to believe that the showdown would go five sets and last more than four hours, like so many classic matches Djokovic has played during his storied career.It didn’t. Not even close.Alcaraz began cramping up in the third set against Djokovic.James Hill for The New York TimesIn the third set, Djokovic quickly pushed Alcaraz into the most taxing tennis he had had to play in the tournament. Alcaraz, barely able to walk, headed for his chair after two games and asked for treatment from a trainer. The move cost him the next game, one in which he would have served, because the request did not occur during a scheduled changeover.That hardly mattered, though, because Alcaraz still had trouble moving when he returned to the court. He quickly lost the next four games and left the court for another break. He came back slightly stronger, but the lightning-quick movement that is one of the hallmarks of his game remained missing in action.The outcome became a mere matter of time, which was fitting, because in a sense, Djokovic had made it that way from the start of the afternoon.Sunday will be Djokovic’s 34th Grand Slam singles final. Not long ago, one might have guessed he would be facing Nadal on the other side of the net. But Nadal pulled out of this tournament with hip and leg injuries, leaving a grand stage for Djokovic.With Alcaraz out of the way, and with few expecting Ruud to be a tougher challenge, the pressure will fall squarely on Djokovic. That is exactly how he likes it.“I’m very happy to be in this position to write history of this sport, but I’m just thinking about winning the next match,” Djokovic said.Usually, he does. More

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    Karolina Muchova to Face Iga Swiatek in the Women’s French Open Final

    The tennis world has been waiting for Karolina Muchova to be healthy. Now she gets a shot at Iga Swiatek with a Grand Slam title on the line.There is a woman in professional tennis who has long sparked a wistfulness among her fellow players, current and past.They rave about her buttery smooth strokes, her deceptive power, that sublime balance, the sculpted physique and the seemingly effortless movement that make it so easy to imagine her running the offense on her nation’s basketball team, or playing center midfield on its soccer team.She is like that great indie singer whose occasional sets after midnight at the venue in the cool part of town have been caught for years by those in the know.If Karolina Muchova can ever stay healthy, they say, watch out.Noted.Muchova, a 26-year-old from the Czech Republic, will take on Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1, in a tantalizing French Open final Saturday after upsetting Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus on Thursday in the match of the tournament, 7-6(5), 6-7(5), 7-5.Every bit of Muchova’s repertoire was there on a steamy afternoon at Roland Garros. Lunging returns that floated down just inside the baseline. Banging forehands followed by dying drop shots. The ability to filet the hardest of Sabalenka’s forehands, which come off her racket as hard as any shot in women’s tennis, with cutting volleys that showed off the unteachable touch of a billiards shark.She needed it all — and some guts, too.“It’s kind of a little bit tricky to build a point against her,” Aryna Sabalenka said about Muchova.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersDown a match point while serving at 2-5 in the deciding set, Muchova saved her tournament with a crisp forehand down the line and won 20 of the final 24 points to reach her first career Grand Slam final, as Sabalenka’s old errors re-emerged down the stretch.“A little bit out of radar, but she always plays great tennis,” said Sabalenka, who said she lost her rhythm after match point escaped her. “It’s kind of a little bit tricky to build a point against her.”A major final is where so many have thought Muchova should have been for so long. A late-ish bloomer by the standards of the Czech Republic, which seems to churn out a new collection of teenage phenoms every year despite its population of just 10.5 million, Muchova began battling injuries in her late teens, when a growth spurt pushed her height to 5-foot-11 but also spurred back and knee troubles.She overcame those to make the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2019 and the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2021, stunning the world No. 1, and local favorite, Ashleigh Barty — an admittedly massive Muchova fan, by the way. But a series of nagging injuries, including a sprained ankle just as she was catching fire in the third round of last year’s French Open, sent Muchova spiraling to 235th in the world rankings, far from her peak of 19th in 2021.“Many lows, I would say, from one injury to another,” she said after her win Thursday. “Some doctors told me, you know, maybe you’ll not do sport anymore.”She tried to stay positive, though, grinding through one rehabilitation after another even as she struggled through small tournaments in places like Concord, Mass.; Shrewsbury, England; and Angers, France.Things happen quickly in tennis. She entered the French Open ranked 43rd, the kind of dreaded unseeded opponent no one wants to draw. She beat the eighth-seeded Maria Sakkari of Greece in the first round and dropped just one set in her first five matches. Just like that she was playing the tightest of third sets in front of 15,000 people in a Grand Slam semifinal. She could hear the trumpets and the throngs chanting her name as she tried to stay calm.“Here and there I had to let it out and scream a little bit,” she said, adding: “It was crazy out there.”It may very well get crazy once more on Saturday against Swiatek, who won this tournament in 2020 and 2022 and has won 13 consecutive matches at Roland Garros.Iga Swiatek hasn’t dropped a set at this French Open.Julien De Rosa/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSwiatek, who turned 22 last week, has enjoyed a career that has been the polar opposite of Muchova’s. She won her first Grand Slam title when she was 19 years old, and she became the world No. 1 at 20 in April 2022, after Barty suddenly retired at age 25.And while Swiatek initially played the kind of varied, all-court style that has garnered Muchova the lusty praise from tennis aesthetes, she largely abandoned it early last year in favor of a simpler, more aggressive approach built around taking every opportunity to blast her forehand and pound opponents off the court.It works. Swiatek can be downright lethal, finishing so many sets with scores of 6-0 (a “bagel” in tennis parlance) or 6-1 (a “breadstick”) that Twitter often lights up with chatter about “Iga’s Bakery” when she is on the court. She does not like that all that much, saying it is disrespectful to her opponents.Swiatek was less than clinical Thursday against Beatriz Haddad Maia, a tough and determined lefty from Brazil who, especially in the second set, moved Swiatek back and forth across the baseline and took Swiatek out of her rhythm. Uncharacteristically, Swiatek had more unforced errors than winners — 26 to 25.Playing in front of a small but throaty cohort of chanting Brazilians, Haddad Maia, the 14th seed, got Swiatek on the ropes. She was up a break of serve early in the second set and came within a point in the tiebreaker of forcing a third.Then Swiatek once more became the Swiatek that the world has gotten used to, especially on the red clay of Roland Garros. She curled a magical backhand on the tightest of angles to stay in the tiebreaker and finished off the match with a big forehand far out of Haddad Maia’s reach.“Pretty excited for Saturday,” Swiatek said moments later.Swiatek said earlier this week that as a Grand Slam moves into the later rounds, she often grows calmer.Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressIf contrasts in styles are the not-so-secret sauce of great tennis matchups, then the final between Muchova and Swiatek holds the potential to be special. Swiatek will look to dig in and bang away. Muchova will look to use every weapon she has, keeping Swiatek guessing about what will come off her racket next — slices, killer topspin, floating moonballs that drop inches from the baseline.For a while last year, the conventional wisdom was that the only player who could beat Swiatek was Swiatek herself. She has spoken of struggling with her nerves and having to force herself to play to win rather than not to lose.Earlier in the week, after her quarterfinal win over the 19-year-old American Coco Gauff, Swiatek said she often grows calmer as a Grand Slam tournament moves into the later rounds. The early tightness lifts, and she can take a moment to enjoy what she has accomplished.A Grand Slam final, though, is another matter, and so is Muchova. The two have played just once, four years ago, before either one was the person or the player she is today. For what it’s worth, Muchova won that match in three sets, on clay, in front of a home crowd in Prague when Swiatek was ranked 95th in the world.The two have practiced together many times since then, said Swiatek, who, like Barty, counts herself among the Muchova faithful. She often finds herself watching Muchova’s matches.“She can do anything,” Swiatek said.Their one match may be a sample size too small for drawing any conclusions, but this stat may be more telling: Muchova has played five matches against players ranked in the top three, and she has won every time.“It just shows me that I can play against them,” she said Thursday. “I can compete.”Indeed she can. Her competitors have known that for a while now. More

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    Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic to Meet in French Open Semifinals

    Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic, who have played each other only once, will finally do so again on Friday in the French Open semifinals. Can the ultimate young talent beat the ultimate tennis mind?A moment arrives nearly every time a younger player seizes the advantage over Novak Djokovic, with designs of toppling him from his perch at the top of tennis.It doesn’t matter how deep a hole Djokovic has dug for himself, or how well the whippersnapper on the other side of the net might be playing.Maybe Djokovic is down by two sets, as he was against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the French Open final two years ago and against Jannik Sinner in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon last year. Perhaps Djokovic is hobbling around the court with an injury after letting his opponent draw even, as he was after four sets against Taylor Fritz at the Australian Open in 2021, when he had torn an abdominal muscle and coughed up a two-set lead.Then the other guy begins to think he might actually be on the verge of something grand, just as Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish sensation, might do on Friday at the French Open in his semifinal showdown with Djokovic, a match the sport has been yearning for since the spring of 2022.The racket becomes a little heavier, the elbow a little tighter, as Djokovic’s foes start to imagine pulling off the win. After all these years, all these matches in the deep end of a Grand Slam tournament, Djokovic, 36, can spot it from a mile away.He doesn’t have to. Djokovic, a 22-time Grand Slam champion, is within 80 feet, and he believes in his heart that everything is about to go his way.It happened again on Tuesday after more than two hours of struggle against Karen Khachanov in the quarterfinals. Khachanov, the big, burly Russian with a hammer-like serve and forehand and nearly a decade less mileage on his legs, had taken the first set and forced a tiebreaker in the second. He had his opening.“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” said Karen Khachanov, who lost to Djokovic on Tuesday though he won the first set. “He always tries to find a way.”James Hill for The New York TimesOr not. A perfect, 7-0 tiebreaker drew Djokovic even. A break of serve in the first game of the next set put him ahead. Khachanov was finished.“The energy of the court shifted to my side,” Djokovic said after dispatching Khachanov.But when Djokovic faces Alcaraz, who has taken the No. 1 ranking from him twice in the past nine months, it will be a test against youth unlike anything Djokovic has faced before. The two have played only once, in May 2022, in Madrid; Djokovic and Alcaraz kept missing each other for one reason or another in the 13 months since.“A complete player,” Lorenzo Musetti, 21, of Italy, an Alcaraz victim this week in the fourth round, said of the player he came to know on Europe’s junior circuit.Singular moments when one generation takes over from another can feel like the shifting of tectonic plates. Every so often, men’s tennis delivers a torch-passing match: Pete Sampras tearing through John McEnroe at the 1990 U.S. Open; Roger Federer beating Sampras on Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2001. Is another one at hand?Daniil Medvedev, the world’s second-ranked player, and the only player currently in his 20s to beat Djokovic in a Grand Slam final, said not long ago that it is nearly impossible to beat Djokovic until you have first lost to him several times. Opponents need to get used to his shot patterns and his relentless ability to make them hit one more ball after they think they have ended the point.Not so for Alcaraz. Alcaraz beat Djokovic in their lone meeting, in a deciding-set tiebreaker no less (albeit in a best-of-three-sets match). So far Alcaraz has exhibited none of the fragility displayed against Djokovic in big moments by his contemporaries, or even the players a few years older than he is who were supposed to be the next generation of tennis stars.“I really want to play that match,” Alcaraz said late Tuesday after he blasted through Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals to lock in the showdown with Djokovic. “I’m going to enjoy it.”Maybe.One of the age-old adages about sports in general and tennis in particular is that by the time athletes have gained the wisdom and experience necessary to truly crack their sport’s code, their bodies have betrayed them. Djokovic has been giving this idea a run for its money.That is not accidental. He almost never drinks alcohol. He tries to sleep eight and a half hours a night, with a focus on his prime R.E.M. sleep hours. His postmatch gym and stretching routine sometimes looks as hard as a normal person’s workout.It is also difficult to argue that there is a sounder, more developed brain in tennis. Djokovic long ago redrew the angles of the game, finding new shots to hit and new ways to win matches and titles, becoming the world’s top-ranked player in an era when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray were making that as hard as it had ever been. These days, he changes the pace and rhythm of points with ease, like a baseball pitcher mixing in fastballs, curveballs, sinkers and changeups in every at-bat. And then he uses a serve-and-volley like a player from the 1980s, just to make sure everyone knows he can do that, too.He has spent years trading notes on mental fortitude with superstar athletes in tennis and other sports — Boris Becker, Kobe Bryant, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, to name a few. He meditates. He knows how to focus when he needs to like no one else. He has played five tiebreakers in this tournament without making an unforced error.Approaching his 45th Grand Slam semifinal, Djokovic has become a master of the five-set format, its almost inevitable emotional dips and swings. He seems to spend the first set gathering information about his opponent. If he loses that set, as he did in the last two Wimbledon finals, or even the next one, no big deal. There’s still plenty of time.“He’s always there, you know, he’s always pushing,” Khachanov said. “He always tries to find a way.”Whether that will work against Alcaraz is Friday’s great mystery. Alcaraz has so far shown so many of the benefits of youth — speed, strength, power, the optimism of a player who has scarcely any bad days — and so few of the pitfalls. He plays with a kind of limitless joy and freedom that other players struggle to comprehend, in the same way they struggle to handle the velocity of his forehand and his unmatched improvisational shotmaking.“He is able to make any shots on the court,” said Juan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach.James Hill for The New York TimesJuan Carlos Ferrero, Alcaraz’s coach, said he has always wanted to surge a step ahead. When he was playing Futures tournaments, in the sport’s third tier, he believed he was ready for Challengers, the second tier; when he was playing Challengers, he believed he was ready for the main tour.“He is able to make any shots on the court,” Ferrero said. “If you ask him to go to the net in a match point, he is able to do it. Or if I ask to return and go to the net, he is able to do it and make the drop shot.”He can play long points or short ones. Whatever the moment calls for.After Tuesday night, Tsitsipas had lost to both Djokovic and Alcaraz on the court where the two will face off Friday. Like everyone else, Tsitsipas said he had sized up the match as a showdown between the game’s most advanced brain, a player who seeks to maneuver his opponent and control every shot, and the game’s purest and fastest of talents.“One has experience, the other one has legs and moves like Speedy Gonzales,” Tsitsipas said. “One can hit huge, super big shots; and the other one prefers precision, to apply pressure and make his opponent move as much as possible.”Who will win?“I root for the kids,” Tsitsipas said.Against Djokovic, they need all the help they can get. More