Evelyn Reynolds

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    Tension Overshadows the Tennis Between Sabalenka and Svitolina

    Players from Ukraine do not shake hands with players from Russia and Belarus. Aryna Sabalenka waited at the net anyway.In hindsight, this French Open was probably destined to come down to a moment like the one that unfolded Tuesday.For 10 days in Paris, and for months on the women’s professional tennis tour, Ukrainian players have made it clear that they will not shake hands with players from Russia or Belarus after their matches. Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the second seed and one of the favorites to win the women’s singles championship, knows this as well as anyone. She beat Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk last week in the first round and then watched Kostyuk gather her belongs and leave the court quickly under a chorus of boos.Regardless of the hostility from the crowd, there was zero chance that Elina Svitolina, the unofficial leader of the female players from Ukraine, would behave any differently when it was her turn to face Sabalenka on Tuesday. Sabalenka dispatched Svitolina, 6-4, 6-4, with one last bullying rally and a final blasted forehand.And so, Svitolina said, as she saw Sabalenka at the net, waiting — and waiting, and waiting — and staring at her when the match was over, one thought passed through her mind: “What are you doing?”Svitolina thought Sabalenka’s move was intentional. Sabalenka said it was just instinctive.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesDid Svitolina think Sabalenka was taking advantage of the moment, knowing that the crowd at Roland Garros had previously howled at players who forsook the postmatch handshake?“Yes, I think so, unfortunately,” Svitolina said during a news conference after the match.Sabalenka later denied that she had done anything of the sort.“It just was an instinct,” she said, because that is what she always does at the end of a match.That Sabalenka was saying anything at all was news in itself. After her third-round win on Friday, Sabalenka skipped the mandatory postmatch news conference, opting instead to do an interview only with a WTA employee. She did the same thing after her fourth-round win.The tennis has often been overshadowed by geopolitics at this French Open. Novak Djokovic, the 22-time Grand Slam champion and Serbia’s biggest celebrity, proclaimed his solidarity with ethnic Serbian protesters who clashed with NATO forces in Kosovo late last month over control of the region and the status of the country, which more than 100 nations have recognized but Serbia and Russia have not. Djokovic even scrawled on a plastic plate in front of a television camera that Kosovo was the heart of Serbia, a statement that supporters of Kosovo called fascist and supportive of a philosophy that had led to ethnic cleansing.For Sabalenka, talk of politics became unavoidable after she drew Kostyuk, the rising Ukrainian, in the first round, and a journalist from Ukraine asked about her previous statements that she would end the war if she could. The journalist also raised Sabalenka’s close association in the past with President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who has allowed Russia to use his country as a staging area for its war in Ukraine. The internet has no shortage of photos and videos of Sabalenka with Lukashenko after he had arrested political opponents and used the military and the police to quash protests.After those news conferences, Sabalenka announced that she no longer felt “safe” facing the news media and opted to speak only with a WTA employee following her next two matches. The WTA and tournament organizers supported her decision, waiving the fines and threats of more serious penalties they had imposed on Naomi Osaka for doing the same thing at the French Open two years ago.“I felt really disrespected,” Sabalenka said Tuesday of those first two tense news conferences.While Sabalenka was struggling off the court, Svitolina was becoming the story of the tournament. She had spent most of the past year on maternity leave and raising money for relief efforts in Ukraine, and she thrilled crowds as she battled through her first four matches in her first Grand Slam following the birth of her daughter. The local fans have a special affinity for Svitolina, who is married to the French tennis player Gaël Monfils, who was courtside at all of her matches.Svitolina won her first four matches at the French Open, in her first Grand Slam since the birth of her daughter.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesHer victories set up the showdown with Sabalenka, which immediately felt like so much more than a match between two tennis players.This was Ukraine against Belarus, a well-loved player in the sport against a 25-year-old whom fans are still getting to know. One had become a leading figure in popular culture in war relief efforts; the other had not made it clear where her loyalties lied.Under pressure from the Ukrainian journalist, Sabalenka had said she did not support the war — “Nobody normal will ever support this war,” she said — but had not renounced her support of Lukashenko.Tennis-wise, it was a duel between a grinding retriever, Svitolina, and perhaps the women’s game’s biggest hitter, Sabalenka, and it quickly became clear that unless Sabalenka’s old erratic self emerged, this was not going to be Svitolina’s day. Sabalenka stayed steady, and Svitolina was out. Sabalenka will face Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic in the semifinals Thursday.Then came the awkward standoff at the end, and even some boos for Svitolina’s actions as she packed her bag, with Sabalenka waiting at the net, and as she left the court.“She didn’t deserve all this,” Sabalenka said of the howls.“I don’t want to be involved in any politics,” Sabalenka said at a news conference after the match. “I just want to be a tennis player.”Lisi Niesner/ReutersSvitolina said everyone might be better off if the WTA and tournament organizers made it clear to players from Russia and Belarus that as long as there was war, there would not be any handshaking. She also said one player should not get the advantage of taking a pass on the potential stress of facing the news media while everyone else had to sit in front of microphone and respond to whatever questions arise.“I faced difficulties,” Svitolina said. “I’m not escaping. I have my strong position, and I’m vocal about that.” She said she would not try to curry favor with the public “by betraying my strong belief and strongest position for my country.”When it was Sabalenka’s turn, she once more stated her opposition to the war, and when pressed — by a journalist from Poland — she attempted to add slight distance between her and Lukashenko. The Ukrainian journalist who had questioned her previously is not covering the second week of the tournament.“I don’t support war, meaning I don’t support Lukashenko right now,” Sabalenka said.She spoke of losing sleep over her decision to skip the previous news conferences and said that she had felt bad about it and that she planned not to skip any more but did not regret the decision.“I don’t want to be involved in any politics,” she said. “I just want to be a tennis player.”For the time being, and with a possible finals date coming with Iga Swiatek of Poland, who wears a pin of Ukraine’s flag when she plays, that may not be possible. More

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    The French Open’s Clay Courts Tell the Story

    “When you step out on a newly made clay court that is clean, all the lines are perfect. It makes for a very pleasing visual experience,” Stefanos Tsitsipas said.

    “But there’s also beauty when the courts are dirty and messed up and you can see all of the footwork and effort that has been put in and you have a visual of that, of how much work has been put in in order for you to succeed in what you do.” More

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    French Open Quarterfinalist Tsitsipas Takes On Doubles, With His Brother

    Tsitsipas is aiming to beat Carlos Alcaraz in Paris on Tuesday in a French Open quarterfinal, but what he really wants is to help turn his younger brother Petros into a doubles champion.Stefanos Tsitsipas already had a lot going on as he arrived at the French Open.He was trying to reach the level of the Grand Slam champions who came before him, like Novak Djokovic, who has beaten Tsitsipas in two major tournament finals, when he suddenly had to defend an attack from the sport’s young stars, led by Carlos Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard ranked No. 1 in the world. Tsitsipas, 24, has another priority, too — helping his younger brother Petros, 22, establish his own identity and become a top doubles player. They plan to play as many as nine events together this season, regardless of whether that helps Stefanos’s singles play, which Petros isn’t sure that it always does.“I don’t think I would have done this for anyone else,” Tsitsipas said last week, when his march toward his French Open quarterfinal showdown with Alcaraz on Tuesday was still two wins away. “This is our dream.”Tennis has always been the ultimate family affair for the Tsitsipas clan. The mother, Julia Salnikova Apostoli, was a top Russian player in the 1980s and was once the world’s best junior. The father, Apostolos, is also a seasoned player, though not a former top touring pro. He trained as a coach and a line judge and now coaches Stefanos, though does not meddle much when his sons are playing together.There are two other tennis-playing Tsitsipas siblings, Pavlos, 17, and Elisavet, 15.Too much family involvement can have its hazards in tennis, as the Tsitsipas family demonstrated at the Italian Open last month, when both of Stefanos’s parents were talking to him during his match against Daniil Medvedev of Russia. After Julia spoke to him in Russian, giving him instructions that Medvedev could easily hear and understand, Stefanos used some salty language and ordered her from his courtside box, which caused a mini scandal in Greece. He declined to comment on the matter upon his arrival in Paris.Stefanos Tsitsipas with his father, Apostolos, who is also his coach, after winning the Monte-Carlo Masters in 2022.Denis Balibouse/ReutersFor the moment, his relationship with Petros is far less fraught. But navigating it all with a tennis racket, especially when the activity dominates a family’s life, requires its own set of skills, particularly when one sibling’s talent evolves in a way the other’s does not, which is almost inevitably the case in tennis.Early last year, after much time and too many losses on tennis’s back roads, Petros Tsitsipas made a big decision — it was time to stop trying to make it as a singles player like his big brother and make doubles his game. There was more than tennis involved with the move. He was 21 and coming off an injury, with a singles ranking in the 700s. The time had come for Petros to forge his own identity and stop struggling through the lowest level tournaments — “making it through the jungle,” as he described it last week at Roland Garros.Doubles offered a path of less resistance. Good players who can’t hang near or with the most elite players on the tour and are game to learn doubles’ unique angles, quirks and strategies can earn a decent living. They just have to be willing to compete for far less prize money as the undercard or late-night programming at tournaments, especially when they are climbing the ladder.Petros Tsitsipas and Stefanos Tsitsipas lost their first-round doubles match at the 2023 French Open. They hop to play together at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesThis is where Stefanos comes in handy. Because of his high singles ranking (currently No. 5), the Tsitsipas brothers can get into big-time tournaments that Petros might not have qualified for with a lower-ranked partner. Also, given Stefanos’s star power, tournament organizers are more likely to offer them a wild-card entry into the doubles draw.That said, for Petros to climb the doubles rankings in a way he was not able to in singles, he has to play more than just eight or nine times a year with Stefanos, to learn the game and win as much possible. Lately, when his older brother has not been available, he has been playing in tournaments on the Challenger tour with Sander Arends, a 31-year-old from the Netherlands who never cracked the top 1,000 in singles but is ranked 98th in doubles. Last year, Petros had a different teammate nearly every week. He has climbed to 115th in the rankings, from below 400 two years ago.“It’s like learning to play chess,” Petros said.He can find an easy role model across the locker room. Jamie Murray spent years trying to be known as something besides the brother of Andy Murray, who in 2013 became the first man from Britain in 77 years to win Wimbledon.Jamie Murray said he still hears people say, “That’s Andy Murray’s brother” when he walks around the grounds of a tennis tournament, something he learned to accept years ago.“No point to fighting it,” he said.But Murray said he sensed that people stopped thinking of him as a sibling of someone better at his sport than he was after 2016. All it took was pairing with his brother to win the Davis Cup and becoming the world’s top-ranked doubles player — the same year his brother became the top-ranked singles player.Now he sees Petros trying to accomplish the same thing, to make his own way with people looking at him mostly as just someone’s brother.“It’s not easy,” he said.Andy Murray, left, and Jamie Murray had banner years in 2016, with Andy achieving a No. 1 ranking in singles and Jamie topping the doubles chart. They also won a Davis Cup together.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesWhen Petros is playing with Stefanos rather than with a specialist, doubles feels like a different game, Petros said. The specialist may be better at doubles than Stefanos but he is not nearly as good a tennis player. With a specialist, the game is all about tactics and strategy. With Stefanos — as with any great singles player — it’s all about feel and improvisation.“More freelance,” Petros said, like the difference between playing sheet music or jamming with a uniquely gifted musician who thrives on spontaneity.It used to be accepted as conventional wisdom that playing doubles improves the singles game, keeping reflexes sharp and the mind focused throughout a big tournament. Petros isn’t so sure that is always true, especially with the increasingly physical grind that singles has become and how different the quick rallies of doubles are from the baseline battles of singles.That has not been an issue at the French Open. The Tsitsipas brothers lost a heartbreaking first-round match in a third-set tiebreaker.“Trust me, it sucks,” Stefanos said the next day. “To be losing that with your brother, it sucks more than usual.”Stefanos Tsitsipas has lost only one set in singles at this year’s French Open.James Hill for The New York TimesThere is no turning back now, though. As long as Stefanos is not too worn out from a deep run at the French Open, the brothers hope to play Wimbledon, where men’s doubles will be best-of-three sets this year instead of best of five. From there, they also want to play the summer tournaments in North America, including the U.S. Open.Petros has worked so hard, Stefanos said. He wants to help him get as far as he can.“I just want to go for it,” Stefanos said.They want to represent Greece in the Olympics, and win the Davis Cup.“Doing that with your brother is probably the most beautiful thing you can witness on a tennis court,” he said.First though, he has another matter to contend with: Alcaraz in the French Open singles quarterfinals. More

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    Forty Years After French Open Win, Yannick Noah Endures as a Star

    Yannick Noah was nervous.He was on familiar and, for him, sacred ground at Roland Garros, in the stadium that has been so central to his life, where he has watched, played and won so many matches, including the biggest of his life, and served as the ultimate tennis talisman and guru for his countrymen.There was even that night after the finals, long after he had retired, and it was late, and after many drinks had been consumed, he convinced the staff to keep the lights on just bright enough and let him and his friends play some tipsy, barefoot tennis on the red clay.But he had never performed on Philippe Chatrier court like this, which is to say, never given a concert as the version of himself that has for the past three decades dominated his life: the African-pop-reggae star of sorts. But then the band was waiting on the stage, and the public address announcer was calling his name, and nerves be damned, Noah, barefoot on the court once more and pulling off pedal pushers as gallantly as any 63-year-old man possibly can, was walking across the red clay, with the microphone to his lips waving and singing his opening song.“I lived my best moment here,” he said later, during a news conference more packed than it would have been for any active player. “I have memories everywhere here, including my first kiss.”Sorry, he did not drop a name, though wouldn’t we all like to know.Books on Yannick Noah and his triumphant victory at the French Open in 1983 were on sale at Roland Garros. Yannick Noah and Caroline Garcia cut outs stood by the Philippe Chartrier court.Forty years ago Noah etched his name into the history of France, winning the French Open men’s singles title. That victory, which stands as the only title by a Frenchman at the French Open in the past 77 years, is one of those sports moments that is part of the broader French consciousness, a precursor of sorts to France winning the men’s soccer World Cup in 1998 with a team filled with stars with African heritage.Everywhere else, Noah is known as the swashbuckling and effortlessly athletic Cameroonian-French player who won that big tournament a while back. Tennis fans of a certain age smile at the mention of his name.In France, his legacy and life loom over every man who has played tennis since as something nearly impossible to live up to — French Open champion, and the winner of 23 ATP titles.Then there is his post-playing life: international music star; the winning captain at the Davis Cup, which he celebrated by leading his team in an epic version of the African conga dance that accompanies his hit song; a leader of his village in Cameroon. It’s cool stuff.Early last week, on the eve of his debut in a Grand Slam tournament, Arthur Fils, France’s 18-year-old next big thing, was told that Noah had been talking him up. He cocked his head and opened his eyes wide. Fils was born more than two decades after Noah’s magic moment, but he has spent his life watching that match point replay on French television.“Of course he is one of my idols, from a long, long time,” Fils said.Nicolas Escudé, the former top-20 player who is now the national technical director for France’s tennis federation, said he and so many French players have been struggling with the burden of Noah’s legacy for decades. No Frenchman even made the third round this year.“In my position and even before when I was a player listening to this constant, ‘Hey, you know, we need a successor for Yannick Noah,’ listening to this again and again is a pressure,” said Escudé, who is 47.Grand Slam tournaments are tennis’s version of the Star Wars bar — lousy with past champions collecting pats on the back and paychecks to do television commentary or rub shoulders with sponsors. Someone like Noah, on the 40th anniversary of one of this tournament’s biggest moments, would figure to be all over Roland Garros.Noah at a press conference at the site of his triumphant victory at the French Open.Noah held his trophy after beating Sweden’s Mats Wilander and winning the French Open in 1983.STF/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot so much.He stuck around for about 24 hours after the pretournament concert at Philippe Chatrier, where Mats Wilander, his opponent in the 1983 final, joined him for a rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” The following day he attended the unveiling of a mural at Roland Garros celebrating his title. It was a private ceremony, closed to journalists and most of the public. And then he headed off to a music festival and his other life. On Sunday he performed in Caen, a small city a few hours’ drive west of Paris. . “For me, tennis is like some other time, like another life,” he said. “Once every 10 years, you know, they remind me I was a tennis player.”Like the rest of his life, the origin story involves that magical combination of destiny, talent and fortitude. Arthur Ashe spotted Noah at a tennis clinic during a tour of Africa in 1971, then quickly called his friend, Chatrier (the guy the stadium is named for), at France’s tennis federation. He told him there was a boy in Cameroon that had the makings of a champion.Soon Noah was living in France, and by the early 1980s his huge serve, speed and grace had made him a force on the professional tennis tour. His physique — 6-foot-4 and shoulders made for rebounding — is more common in this era than his own.Then came the dreadlocks that caused a stir in the staid world of an almost entirely white sport. Ahead of a Davis Cup final against Noah and France in 1982, John McEnroe, who was not exactly a creature of the establishment, remarked that he was “more afraid of his new hairstyle” than Noah’s game.The following spring, Noah romped to the French Open championship. He playing career officially ended after the 1996 season, with more titles than any Frenchman before or since.By then he was already deep into his music career. His song “Saga Africa” had become a hit in 1991, leading to a dual focus that soon began to tilt toward music.Noah during his concert at Philippe Chartrier. Noah began his career as a recording artist even before he finished his tennis career.Noah taking some time to sign autographs.“When I was losing tennis matches, I was telling people I was a singer,” he said.He moved back and forth between Europe and the United States, appearing in the stands of basketball games while watching his son, Joakim, became a college and N.B.A. star. Noah may not be around Roland Garros much this year, but Joakim was often in the player box of Frances Tiafoe, an American who is the son of African immigrants and is one of the tour’s few highly ranked Black players.Noah spends much of his time in Cameroon now. The photo that accompanies his mobile number shows him standing in front of a turquoise sea, sipping through a straw from a full martini glass, peering out from under the brim of a baseball cap.The dark dreadlocks are gone, replaced by tidy and appropriately thinning salt-and-pepper hair. There are lines across his forehead and bags under his eyes. But the gap-tooth smile, the soft voice, his “there-is-more-to-life-than-tennis” ethos, and that combination of swagger and approachability, it’s all still there. In the middle of the concert, he took a lap through the stadium, singing into the microphone in one hand, high-fiving and embracing the crowd with the other.The growing distance between the public and tennis players troubles him, he said, especially when social media is supposed to get them closer to fans. He has little use for the game’s code of conduct, which he said stifles players, preventing them from showing emotion on the court.Those emotional outbursts from McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, and even Noah on occasion, once helped draw the common sports fan to an elite game. Also, emotions are at the core of the sport, he said. Ask the players he coached to the Davis Cup title what he talked about with them, he said. He rarely mentioned tennis, just emotions.He worries about the future of French tennis. The are no coaches who have won at the highest level, so young players have no true expert guidance. Escudé dismissed Noah’s point of view, and said he’s not so available anyway, but Noah said he is around for occasional chats.“If the players call me, I’m here. But time is passing,” he said.For whatever time Noah has left, he will always cherish June 5. He looks at the video of the winning point and imagines people watching it when he dies. People stop him every day and tell him where they were when he won. Some have said they flunked their exams because they watched the match instead of studying, but they cherished being a part of the country’s cultural history.“For them it was a day that counted,” he said. “And I was there. I was at the core of that.”Noah walking barefoot on the court, a texture he described as being “like velvet.” More

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    When Will Alcaraz and Djokovic Play Each Other at the French Open?

    If everything goes right in the quarterfinals Tuesday for Alcaraz and Djokovic, the two most dominant players on the men’s tour, the duel everyone has been waiting for will happen.Eight days ago, 128 men began competing in singles at the French Open. Pretty much everyone has been focused on two of them.Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic moved one step closer on Sunday to a potential semifinal showdown. They clinically disposed of overmatched opponents who often struggled to get points and games, much less sets, in back-to-back matches in front of a packed house on the Philippe Chatrier court, offering a look at what may be coming to that stadium before the week ends.First, Djokovic took apart Juan Pablo Varillas, a 27-year-old Peruvian who has spent the last decade beating the back bushes of the sport. He had never won a match in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament before this year’s French Open and enjoyed a storybook ride through the first week. Djokovic ended all that in 1 hour, 57 minutes, expending what energy he needed in the 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 win and not an ounce more.“I know what my goal is here,” he said, and he did not have to explain what it was.Then it was showtime, as Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, took the court against Lorenzo Musetti, an Italian who is just 10 months older and has almost as flashy a game.That one took 2:08 and had the identical score, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, for Alcaraz.“My best match of the tournament so far,” he said.For more than a year, Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, and Alcaraz, the new king of the sport who won his first major title at the U.S. Open last year, have somehow been missing each other.Sometimes one would lose before he got deep enough to face the other. Djokovic’s decision not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 forced him to miss the hard court tournaments in North America last summer and this spring. When Djokovic returned for the fall season and the Australian summer, Alcaraz was hurt. They could not connect.Now they are six sets away. Alcaraz has to beat the fifth seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, on Tuesday. They have played four matches and Alcaraz has won them all.Djokovic plays 11th-seeded Karen Khachanov of Russia. They have played nine times, with Djokovic winning eight.That Alcaraz and Djokovic will face each other in a semifinal on Friday is not a certainty. Even the best players have bad days. Both Tsitsipas and Khachanov like playing on clay more than on any other surface. Djokovic has battled a sore elbow recently. Alcaraz has shown in the past eight months that he can be prone to injury. Upsets happen.“Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game,” Novak Djokovic said.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersThat said, on Sunday Djokovic and Alcaraz delivered performances — and self-assessments about them — that lent an air of near inevitability to a coming showdown.Djokovic has long been the master of match management at Grand Slam tournaments, which require men to win seven best-of-five-set matches to claim the title and almost always separate the great from the very good. He starts playing at the level of energy expenditure, both physical and emotional, that he has decided he needs for the match, and dials it up only if the need arises.So many of his winners Sunday, hit on angles that he saw and Varillas did not, may not have had the zip he displays against other opponents. They did not have to.He was up by 4-0 before the match was roughly 20 minutes old against an opponent who had never before faced anyone at his level.“With one ball you are being aggressive, and then with one ball he turns the coin the other way and then you are defending,” Varillas said.Djokovic has been in this position before, one match away from the heavyweight duel with one of the biggest names in the sport, often Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Last year it was a quarterfinal match against Nadal, who also has 22 Grand Slam singles titles. The year before Nadal loomed in the semifinals. Those both came to fruition.Djokovic did not pretend he has not been paying attention to what will come after what comes next.“You always follow the top guys in your half, how they’re playing,” he said. “Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game.”Yes, he is focused on himself, he said, “but of course I do keep in mind what the others are doing.”The “others,” of course, means Alcaraz, who, perhaps because of his youth, comes to his matches from a vantage point other than energy conservation, looking instead to create the greatest spectacle possible.He relished the prospect of Sunday’s match with Musetti, his smile breaking out and his eyes lighting up as he spoke of playing another flashy upstart.“Really good rallies, good shots between us, and of course it’s going to be a really fun match to watch, as well,” he said.At times, that can be as important to him as winning. He almost never sees a drop shot he does not want to race to, a lob he does not think he can chase down so he can extend the rally with a shot between the legs, even if it means giving his opponent an easy overhead, which he will also try to chase. He is the one making the magic but also its biggest fan.After his win on Sunday, he confessed that sometimes, after his best shots, he wants to look up at the big screen in the stadium and drool over the replay along with everyone else in the crowd and watching on television at home.“A lot of times,” he said.Six more sets. Then, he and Djokovic will get to put on the show Roland Garros has been waiting for. More

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    Coco Gauff Has a Chance to Play the Wise Veteran at the French Open

    Gauff, now 19 and in her fifth season on the tour, took on Mirra Andreeva, who is 16 and the latest teenager to go on a tear in women’s tennis.Tennis moves fast.The veteran tennis star Rafael Nadal recently made that observation, discussing how quickly a new generation of players assumes the role of the one before. His words were never truer than on the Suzanne Lenglen court at Roland Garros on Saturday, where Coco Gauff, now in her fifth season on the tour at 19 years old, was locked in a duel with an opponent who reminded Gauff and everyone else of herself from Wimbledon in 2019.That rival was Mirra Andreeva, a 16-year-old Russian who has exploded onto the women’s tennis tour over the past five weeks.She knocks off top 20 players. She plays with an easy, smooth power, unruffled by the size of the stage and the fuss suddenly being made about her. She trades text messages with Andy Murray, the three-time Grand Slam champion. She makes sarcastic jokes in news conferences in English.A similar hype surrounded Gauff four years ago at the All England Club, beating Venus Williams on Centre Court and rolling into the fourth round, riding a hot streak, limited knowledge and the lazy anticipation that the next Serena had arrived. These days, she continues to hunt for her first Grand Slam and top-level tour title.Glass half-full: Gauff is 19 and is already ranked sixth in singles and third in doubles and still doesn’t have her grown-up strength, as she has said her mother puts it. She is also one of the game’s great athletes, with an active mind and an awareness beyond the lines of the tennis court.Glass half-empty: Gauff has accumulated some baggage in the form of disappointing losses and inconsistent results during the past few months, and she takes that hard. After her loss in the fourth round at the Australian Open, Gauff left the news conference in tears. She knows opponents pick on her forehand. Her serve can disappear in tense moments.And now she’s got talented, free-swinging younger teenagers with a nothing-to-lose attitude like Andreeva’s closing in on her potential as the next big thing.“Transitioning into adulthood,” is how Gauff described her journey in life and tennis on the eve of the French Open.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersIt is both a blessing and a curse of tennis how easy and quickly the declarations of future greatness can come. A couple of early wins, like Andreeva has managed in Paris, on the big stage at a Grand Slam tournament are often all it takes, even if those wins come by an easy draw or catching an opponent on an off day.This is especially true in women’s tennis, where fully developed raw power is less of a requirement and more girls than boys are able to gain enough of it to compete at the highest level. But tour veterans say that one of their biggest fears is playing a hot young player whose tendencies and weaknesses are still unknown.“They always win a bunch of matches because no coach has figured it out yet or broken the code,” said Sloane Stephens, 30, who had her own next-big-thing moments as a teenager.The pandemic, Stephens said, exacerbated the issue. There were so few opportunities to see the teenage prospects on the cusp of the tour because so many junior tournaments were canceled or players could not travel.There is a mental aspect to the dynamic as well. A young player often comes to the court believing she has nothing to lose, and some veterans are certain they are about to teach a lesson to the whippersnapper on the other side of the net.Daria Kasatkina said that older teens in the junior ranks are terrified of playing and losing to younger ones and that fear can extend to the tour, when the youngest players are taking on adults.“At 16, you’re not nervous,” Kasatkina said. “I would say it’s a little advantage. It’s disadvantage, and it’s advantage.”Kasatkina, who is from Russia, was high on her countrywoman, saying she was already physically strong and beating good players on her way to becoming the most talked about newcomer at the French Open.For 65 minutes Saturday, the hype was on track to grow. Andreeva was every bit the match for Gauff, especially in the tight moments.She broke Gauff’s serve when the 19-year-old was serving for the set at 6-5, and then let Gauff give her three set points in the tiebreaker with a shaky forehand and a misfired drop shot. Andreeva whacked a ball into the crowd in anger after losing two of them (“a really stupid move,” she said later), but on her third chance she hit the back of the line on her serve and put away a big forehand to put Gauff in a one-set hole.But then Gauff stopped giving away points, and Andreeva, with around 10,000 fans in attendance, started to show the lesser qualities of her 16-year-old self. She threw her racket on the court when she dropped an early game in the second set. An ugly, soft and looping second serve early in the third set gave Gauff a 3-1 lead, and it was smooth sailing from there.Andreeva later said that after she won the first set, the free-and-easy mood she had been playing with since she survived qualifying slipped away. Suddenly, she started thinking about how she was a set away from the final 16 of her first Grand Slam.“A mistake from me,” she said. “I should have just continued playing.”Andreeva was a difficult opponent for Gauff throughout the match.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesGauff said she told herself that her game plan was essentially working, that she had frittered away a set that she had basically won, but she had also learned how to read body language and to draw confidence when an opponent was growing angry. Chalk one up for age and experience.Gauff, by her own admission, is in the purgatory years of her evolution, both on the court and off.“Transitioning into adulthood,” is how she described it on the eve of the tournament, trying to figure out which qualities from adolescence she wants to hang on to and which ones she wants to discard.Gauff is on the stiffer side of the draw, with a possible quarterfinal match against Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 who beat Gauff in last year’s final in Paris, if she can get through Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. However, Gauff’s half of the draw became slightly easier Saturday after Elena Rybakina, one of the hottest players in the world this year, withdrew with a respiratory illness.Once more Gauff will be the younger player in her fourth-round match on Monday. Schmiedlova, of Slovakia, is 28 and ranked 100th in the world.She said she was long past factoring those numbers into her approach to matches, but she was highly qualified to give advice to at least one demographic in the professional ranks — the upstarts like Andreeva.“Do it for you,” Gauff said, when asked what she would tell Andreeva about how to approach everything that will, rightly or wrongly, come next after her breakout run in Paris. “Don’t do it for anyone else. When you step on the court you want to make sure it’s for you, and I think life and the game will be a lot more enjoyable that way.” More

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    The Exclusive, Elusive World of Real Tennis

    Up on the second floor, hidden behind the facade of a tall Haussmann building not far from the Arc de Triomphe, is the Jeu de Paume Club, the only active court tennis club in Paris.The members of the club, like the players at Wimbledon in England, are dressed all in white, and they call out the scores “quinze!” and “trente!” just the same as the umpires a few miles west, at Roland Garros, where the French Open is being played through June 11.Modern tennis, or lawn tennis, which was formally invented in England in the 1870s, bears many of the traces of court tennis, not least the basic vocabulary of scoring, even if no one has definitively proven if it is referenced from medieval horological sources or the paces that a player advanced when he won a point in the game of longue paume, the ancestor of most racket sports but particularly lawn tennis, which has been played in villages across France since the 13th century.Court tennis, also known as real tennis, developed 200 years later, according to Gil Kressmann, a historian and the honorary president of the Jeu de Paume Club, as cities evolved in France and walled courts replaced the large open spaces previously used for longue paume. The sport took off across Europe and Britain, where it was championed by Henry VIII.A match in the court tennis French Junior Open, in the under-17 category, played in the Palace of Fontainebleau.Matthieu Sarlangue, the top-ranked French court tennis player, is No. 10 in the world.The courts in France then, as today, were managed by professionals known as maîtres paumiers, who performed in matches, gave lessons and made the balls and rackets. As for the last requirement, Guillaume Dortu, the current club professional at the Palace of Fontainebleau, did not hide his relief that “mercifully, professionals don’t have to do that today.”But he and other club pros like Rod McNaughtan in Paris are the only people allowed to sell court tennis rackets, which are still constructed of wood. Each month, they make 100 to 150 balls, carefully weighing the hard core of cork and cotton webbing before stitching the thick yellow felt exterior by hand. They also clean the court daily.Enthusiasm for the game started to wane at the end the 17th century, and it was linked to gambling and less salubrious events such as when the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, killed an opponent on a tennis court in Rome in 1606, leading to his being banished from the city. In France, the game’s popularity suffered under Louis XIV, whose heavy physique discouraged him from playing. He was keener on billiards.Rod McNaughtan is the professional at the Jeu de Paume Club, the only active court tennis club in Paris.The French Revolution, which began in 1789, distracted from the game, though one of the revolution’s founding moments, the Tennis Court Oath, took place in the tennis court at Versailles, where deputies convened after being locked out of the palace, swearing not to disband until France had a constitution.Today, the sport is played competitively in the four countries that also make up tennis’s Grand Slam: France, where the game is known as jeu de paume; Britain and Australia, where it goes by real tennis; and the United States, home of the current men’s world champion, Camden Riviere. There are just over 50 courts in the world, and the prohibitive cost of constructing new courts is a major issue. While the game is gaining in popularity, there are only around 10,000 active players.Whatever they might lack in numbers, court tennis players make up for with enthusiasm. When asked to describe the sport, they most frequently compare it to chess and say its cerebral demands are as important, if not more so, than the physical ones.Players take pride in the esoteric nature of the game as well as its asymmetrical court with buttress, galleries, numerous nooks and crannies with odd names and the fact that no two courts in the world are exactly the same. Therein lies the challenge for players like Matthieu Sarlangue, who is ranked No. 10 in the world and is a 13-time French amateur champion. “Technically it’s very difficult and demanding,” he said. “You really have to master the tactics because there are so many options on the court.”McNaughtan makes about 120 tennis balls a month.The game is a sporting conundrum, one that Martin Village, a 70-year-old court tennis enthusiast from London and member of the Dedanists’ Society, a small group of British players dedicated to the history of the sport, explained simply.“If you wanted to design a game that was going to put people off from playing it,” he said, “you would probably design a real tennis court. But that’s why it is a source of endless fascination.”The building housing the tennis club at the Palace of Fontainebleau.The site of the tennis court at Versailles, where the Tennis Court Oath was sworn in 1789.Participants in the French Junior Open, clockwise from top left: Wandé Blanchot, 13; Hart Cordell, 10; Anatole de Beaumont, 16; and Paul Rigaud-Gérard, 11.A spectator took in a match at the French Junior Open in the under-13 category.Hart Cordell preparing for a match in the French Junior Open in the under-13 category. More

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    Sabalenka Skips French Open News Conference Citing Her Mental Health

    The Belarusian player faced questions about the war earlier in the week from a Ukrainian reporter. On Friday, with the tournament’s blessing, she did not attend her post-match news conference.Aryna Sabalenka’s day began with a routine demolition of Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia that propelled the world’s second-ranked player, who is from Belarus, into the second week of the French Open as expected.But then Sabalenka put herself, the tournament and tennis once more at the center of the debate over sports and the war in Ukraine by refusing to attend the mandatory post-match news conference. She said she had felt unsafe during a previous news conference this week when a journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka about her support of President Alexandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, which has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.“On Wednesday I did not feel safe in press conference,” Sabalenka was quoted as saying at the beginning of a transcript of her statements following her 6-2, 6-2 win over Rakhimova. “I should be able to feel safe when I do interviews with the journalists after my matches. For my own mental health and well-being, I have decided to take myself out of this situation today, and the tournament has supported me in this decision.”Cédric Laurent, a spokesman for the French tennis federation, the F.F.T., which organizes this Grand Slam tournament, one that has been dominated by geopolitics from the start, said federation officials learned after Sabalenka’s match that she would not participate in the news conference.French Open officials approved Sabalenka’s decision for Friday’s match but said no decision had yet been made about her news conferences during the rest of the tournament.Laurent said a “pool” had been selected to interview Sabalenka, but he declined to specify who was in the pool or if they were members of the independent news media or worked for the tournament or the women’s tennis tour, the WTA.A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter said that only one person — a WTA employee — asked questions in the pool interview.A person familiar with the WTA’s actions who was also not authorized to speak on the matter said the organization supported Sabalenka’s desire not to participate in the news conference and the manner in which her statements were delivered.Sabalenka’s representatives at IMG, the sports and entertainment firm that is a unit of Endeavor, did not respond to requests for comment.The decision on Sabalenka comes two years after a confrontation with Naomi Osaka over attendance at news conferences led her to drop out of the French Open. Osaka announced on social media before the start of the tournament that she would not participate in the news conferences in order to protect her mental health and would pay whatever fines she received.After Osaka skipped the news conference following her opening-round win, she was fined $15,000 by the tournament referee, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam competitions — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon — threatened that she could be expelled from the French Open and face harsher penalties if she would not fulfill her media obligations.Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s top-ranked players at the time, pulled out the next day, announcing for the first time that she had been battling depression and planned to take a break from tennis. She returned seven weeks later, but stepped away once more in the fall of 2021. She battled injuries for much of 2022, and is now pregnant with her first child, though she has said she intends to return after the birth.In Sabalenka’s case, the decision came following two tense exchanges with Daria Meshcheriakova, a part-time journalist from Ukraine who works for Tribuna, a sports publication based in the country.During the first exchange Meshcheriakova asked Sabalenka what her message to the world was about the war and why she had claimed that Ukrainian players “hate” her. Sabalenka denied having said that and then spoke as openly as she ever had regarding the war.“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody,” said Sabalenka, who lives in Miami. “How can we support the war? Nobody, normal people will never support it.”Three days later, after Sabalenka’s second-round match, Meshcheriakova challenged her about a letter she supposedly signed in 2020 in support of Lukashenko, “in times when he was torturing and beating up protesters in the street,” and about having participated in a New Year’s celebration with him.The letter that Sabalenka supposedly signed has not been made public, and her New Year’s celebration with the Belarusian president has not been independently verified, though there are many pictures of Sabalenka and Lukashenko together. In an interview Friday, Meshcheriakova, who left Kyiv for the Netherlands 10 days after the war began when missiles landed close to her apartment and whose parents still live in Russia-occupied Luhansk, said she had learned of the letter and the New Year’s celebration from prominent Belarusian journalists who had been forced to leave the country.“It’s true,” Meshcheriakova said, “and you saw how she responded.”Sabalenka said she had no comments about either question, then began to answer Meshcheriakova’s next question: “So you basically support everything because you cannot speak up? You’re not a small person, Aryna.”But Sabalenka quickly cut herself off when a moderator stated that Sabalenka had made it clear she would not comment further.“It’s all clear to us,” Meshcheriakova said to conclude the exchange.Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens on Sunday in the fourth round. Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockElina Svitolina, who is a kind of unofficial leader of the Ukrainian members of the tour, said they simply wanted to hear from players representing Russia and Belarus that they believe their countries should end the war.“I think pretty much all Ukrainians would love to hear that from their side,” Svitolina said after her three-set win over Anna Blinkova of Russia.Like the other Ukrainian players, Svitolina did not shake Blinkova’s hand after the match.“Can you imagine the guy or a girl who is right now in a front line, you know, looking at me and I’m, like, acting like nothing is happening,” Svitolina said. “I’m representing my country. I have a voice.”Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens of the United States on Sunday in the fourth round. It’s not yet clear whether she will face reporters after the match.Meshcheriakova, who works as a political analyst in addition to covering sports, said she was returning to her day job after Saturday. She said she had been using vacation time to report on the tournament and was paying her own expenses.In Osaka’s case, tournament officials said that not requiring Osaka to attend news conferences could give her an unfair advantage over other players.Stephens, who is a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said Friday that she supported Sabalenka’s decision not to attend her news conference, and that every player had a right to feel safe performing her media obligations.“Everyone needs to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing,” Stephens said. “If she doesn’t feel safe, then she doesn’t need to be there. That’s the end of that.”Meshcheriakova said she had spoken with her parents earlier in the day. Her mother, she said, had been watching the Russian media coverage of the story, in which she was described using the Russian words for a Black cross-dresser. She implored her daughter to stop covering the tournament and to leave immediately.“Of course I told her I wouldn’t,” Meshcheriakova said. “I’m a journalist.” More