Evelyn Reynolds

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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

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    Carlos Alcaraz toma el escenario del Roland Garros

    Carlos Alcaraz es tan bueno y tan joven, y gana tantas veces, que su éxito parece predeterminado.Por supuesto, alguien así de rápido, con manos tan suaves como las de un artesano y un físico que lo coloca justo en la zona Ricitos de Oro de los grandes del tenis moderno —ni demasiado alto ni demasiado bajo—, se convertiría en el número uno del mundo más joven en los 50 años de historia del ranking de la Asociación de Tenistas Profesionales (ATP). También tiene buenos genes. Su padre fue tenista profesional a nivel nacional en España cuando era adolescente.Así que esto estaba predeterminado para Alcaraz, el campeón de 20 años que llegó a París como el favorito inasequible para ganar el Abierto de Francia, ¿no es cierto?Quizás no.Como sucede tan a menudo en los deportes, y especialmente en el tenis, donde la exposición y el entrenamiento tempranos son esenciales, hubo un elemento de suerte que ayudó a crear al heredero deportivo de la troika conformada por Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer y Novak Djokovic y que ha gobernado el campeonato masculino durante la mayor parte de las últimas dos décadas.Esa suerte finalmente tomó la forma del logo de una compañía local de dulces, que adornaba las camisetas que Alcaraz usaba durante sus partidos desde que tenía 10 años. Todo fue gracias a encuentros fortuitos con Alfonso López Rueda, el tenista presidente de Postres Reina, una empresa española de postres y dulces conocida por sus flanes y yogures. El interés de López Rueda por Alcaraz y el apoyo que le permitió viajar por Europa y comenzar a competir contra chicos mayores en escenarios desconocidos puede ser una explicación de la forma en que Alcaraz, desde el comienzo de su corta carrera, ha mostrado casi siempre una especie de serenidad alegre, incluso cuando el escenario se hizo más grande y el centro de atención más intenso.Carlos Alcaraz ha usado el logo de Postres Reina en su camiseta durante los partidos desde antes de los 10 años.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, vía Getty ImagesEl apoyo de la empresa de dulces permitió a Alcaraz viajar por Europa a los torneos.Samuel Aranda para The New York Times“Algunas personalidades son muy buenas para eso, algunas tienen que aprender”, dijo Paul Annacone, quien entrenó a los grandes jugadores Federer y Pete Sampras, entre otros. “Él realmente parece disfrutar del ambiente (ganar, perder, lo que sea), parece aceptarlo”.Al parecer, la mayor fortuna que puede tener un aspirante a tenista es haber nacido de padres que jugaron al más alto nivel. Los rangos profesionales, especialmente en el lado de los tenistas hombres, son terribles con los nepo babies, como se les conoce a los hijos de figuras exitosas que quieren ingresar al rubro de los padres. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz y Ben Shelton son descendientes de ex jugadores profesionales. Todos ellos tenían una raqueta en sus manos a una edad temprana y acceso casi ilimitado a alguien que sabía muy bien qué hacer con ella.Para todos los demás, algo de suerte es clave.Las habilidades que requiere el tenis profesional son muy especializadas, y el proceso largo y costoso de perfeccionarlas tiene que comenzar a una edad muy temprana. Pero el sistema de desarrollo de jugadores en la mayoría de los países está fracturado y, en el mejor de los casos, es regido por la casualidad, con programas escolares que son en su mayoría limitados. O una familia decide conscientemente exponer a un niño pequeño al tenis, o el niño no juega, al menos no en serio.Así que no sorprende que tantas de las historias de creación en el tenis profesional parezcan involucrar una sucesión de eventos fortuitos e inconexos.Frances Tiafoe probablemente no terminaría como semifinalista de Grand Slam si su padre, un inmigrante de Sierra Leona, se convertía en encargado de mantenimiento en un parque de oficinas en lugar de en un club de tenis local.Novak Djokovic tuvo la suerte de conocer a Jelena Gencic, una de las mejores entrenadoras de Serbia, cuando tenía 6 años y ella dirigía un entrenamiento en las canchas cerca del restaurante de sus padres en Kopaonik, en las montañas serbias cerca de Montenegro.Arthur Ashe estaba viajando por Camerún en 1971 cuando vio a un escolar de 11 años con talento en bruto para explotar. Llamó a su amigo Philippe Chatrier de la Federación Francesa de Tenis y le dijo que fuera a echar un vistazo. Ese chico era Yannick Noah, el último francés en ganar el Abierto de Francia.Al igual que con los demás, los dones y habilidades sobrenaturales de Alcaraz jugaron el papel más importante en su buena fortuna. Cuando tuvo la oportunidad de impresionar, lo hizo, pero antes la suerte tuvo que brindarle una oportunidad.La decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz de instalar canchas de arcilla roja en un club de El Palmar resultó por jugar a favor de su nieto.Samuel Aranda para The New York TimesLa historia de esa oportunidad comienza con la decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz hace décadas de incorporar canchas de tenis y una piscina en un club de caza en El Palmar, un suburbio de la ciudad de Murcia. Hubiera sido más barato poner todas las canchas duras, pero a los españoles les encantan las de la arcilla roja, también llamada tierra batida. Entonces el abuelo Alcaraz (otro Carlos) se aseguró de incluir esas canchas en las instalaciones.Ahora avancemos hasta hace una decena de años. López Rueda, loco por el tenis, es el director ejecutivo de Postres Reina, con sede en Caravaca de la Cruz. Pero a López Rueda no solo le gusta el tenis; le gusta jugar al tenis en arcilla roja. Vive en la misma región que el clan Alcaraz, y las mejores y más accesibles canchas de tierra batida para él están en un club en El Palmar, así que juega allí, comentó José Lag, ejecutivo de Postres Reina desde hace mucho tiempo y amigo de la familia Alcaraz, quien habló en nombre de su jefe, López Rueda.En el club se hizo amigo del padre de Alcaraz y jugó como compañero de dobles de su tío. Asimismo, el hijo de López Rueda, que es tres años mayor que Alcaraz, contó con el mismo entrenador, Kiko Navarro, que no paraba de delirar con el talento de Carlitos. Un día, López Rueda accedió a ver jugar al niño y no se parecía a nada que hubiera visto antes. Carlitos lo tenía todo, pero los recursos de su familia eran limitados. Su padre era entrenador de tenis y administrador del club, y su madre estaba ocupada criando al niño y a sus hermanos menores.López Rueda accedió a prestarle a la familia 2000 euros para viajar a un torneo, pero luego empezó a pensar en grande y decidió involucrar a su empresa para apoyar a este jovencito local que ya era capaz de vencer a competidores más altos, más fuertes y mayores.Postres Reina había apoyado durante mucho tiempo a los equipos locales de baloncesto y fútbol, ​​pero el tenis era el deporte favorito de López Rueda y la empresa nunca había patrocinado a un atleta individual. Alcaraz se convirtió en el primero, luciendo el logo de la empresa en sus camisetas.El apoyo de la compañía, que duró toda la adolescencia de Alcaraz, le permitió seguir accediendo a los mejores entrenadores de su región y viajar por toda Europa para disputar los torneos más competitivos.“No se hizo con un interés publicitario”, dijo Lag. “Era solo para ayudarlo. Nunca pensamos que sería el número uno”.Alcaraz con López Rueda. Postres Reina nunca había patrocinado a un deportista individual antes de Alcaraz.Cortesía de Jose LagAl ver el éxito de Alcaraz, IMG, el conglomerado de deportes y entretenimiento, lo fichó a los 13 años, brindándole aún más acceso, especialmente a su actual entrenador, el exnúmero uno del mundo Juan Carlos Ferrero.Existe una buena posibilidad de que Alcaraz se hubiera convertido eventualmente en un jugador de primer nivel si López Rueda nunca lo hubiera visto. La Real Federación Española de Tenis, que tiene una de las mejores fuentes de desarrollo de talentos del mundo, probablemente se habría enterado de él en poco tiempo.Max Eisenbud, director de tenis de IMG, dijo que en cualquier historia de éxito en el tenis, el ingrediente más importante es una familia sólida dispuesta a tener una visión a largo plazo hacia el éxito de un chico.“Esa es la receta secreta”, dijo Eisenbud durante una entrevista reciente, pero reconoció que la asistencia financiera para una familia que la necesita ciertamente puede ayudar.Cuando un jugador avanza tan rápido como Alcaraz, pasando de estar fuera del top 100 en mayo de 2021 al número uno solo 16 meses después, se puede atribuir un papel en el resultado a cada detalle de su desarrollo.Los compañeros de Alcaraz han visto con asombro cómo ha elevado su nivel de juego en cada torneo, en una era en la que el foco de atención constante tortura a muchos de ellos. Durante los primeros meses de Alcaraz desafiando los peldaños más altos de la gira, Alexander Zverev se maravilló de su habilidad para jugar “simplemente por diversión”.Alcaraz dijo que sin importar lo que la gente viera, acostumbrarse a los ambientes cada vez más estridentes y llenos de presión tomó algún tiempo, pero aprendió rápido. Una paliza de Nadal en Madrid hace dos años ayudó, pero su mentalidad nunca cambió.“Siempre quise jugar en los grandes estadios”, dijo. Y ha parecido que realmente fue así.Alcaraz durante su derrota en los dieciseisavos de final del Abierto de Italia. Había ganado tres de sus cuatro torneos anteriores antes de una salida anticipada en Roma.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz ganó la final del Abierto de EE. UU. de 2022 para reclamar su primer título de singles importante y obtener el puesto número 1 en el ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPara Alcaraz, el tenis es principalmente una alegría, desde su primera victoria en un torneo de Grand Slam en una cancha trasera en el Abierto de Australia en febrero de 2021, hasta sus victorias consecutivas sobre Nadal y Djokovic en el Abierto de Madrid en 2022, a su enfrentamiento en la semifinal contra Tiafoe en el Abierto de Estados Unidos en septiembre pasado frente a 23.000 fanáticos y con Michelle Obama sentada en la primera fila, hasta su triunfo en la final dos días después.¿Cómo es posible? Allen Fox, campeón de la División I y cuartofinalista de Wimbledon en 1965, que más tarde se convirtió en uno de los principales psicólogos deportivos, utilizó el término que utilizan los profesionales cuando no existe una explicación racional. Describió a Alcaraz como un “genio” y una “rareza genética”.“La única forma en que pierde es cuando falta”, dijo Fox. “Juega su mismo juego de alto riesgo y nunca quita el pie del acelerador”.Matthew Futterman es un periodista deportivo con larga experiencia y autor de dos libros, Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed y Players: How Sports Became a Business. More

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    At Roland Garros, the French Get Behind Their Own

    Had you been at Roland Garros around supper time Wednesday evening and heard the crowd of nearly 10,000 fans chanting Lucas Pouille’s name at a near deafening level, you would have assumed you had just missed a triumphant performance.Not even close. Pouille, a 29-year-old Frenchman, on the court named for Suzanne Lenglen, the French tennis star of the 1920s, lost in straight sets to Cameron Norrie, a Briton to add insult to injury, in less than two hours.No matter.For 105 minutes, the French faithful had serenaded Pouille and met his every winner with rousing roars. A four-piece band with a horn and a bass drum tooted and banged away between points. If you are French at the French Open, it’s what you do.Each of the four Grand Slam tournaments has its unique charms and intangible quirks, rhythms and characteristics.Fans waited for the Frenchman Arthur Fils to sign autographs after his first-round match on Monday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFrench flags fluttered in the stands during the Fils match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThe Australian Open is a two-week summertime party held when much of the world is shivering. Wimbledon has its mystique, the sense that the grass, especially on Centre Court, is hallowed ground, and the hear-a-pin-drop silence of the most proper of crowds. The U.S. Open delivers noisy chaos, the rattle of New York’s subways and the teeming crowds that joyfully ignore the idea that big-time tennis is supposed to unfold amid quiet.Roland Garros’s signature is the near limitless abandon with which the French fans unite behind anyone who plays under the bleu-blanc-rouge as the French standard is known. There are spontaneous renditions of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” as though they are at Humphrey Bogart’s cafe in “Casablanca.”This happened after Pouille, once ranked 10th in the world and currently 675th following struggles with injuries and depression, beat Jurij Rodionov of Austria in the first round in waning light Sunday.“It made me want to keep working to get back and experience it again,” said Pouille, who stayed and listened to the serenade.When a French player is on the court — any French player, on any court — there is a distinctly louder, higher-pitched and fuller sound that rises from the stands. It’s like the crescendo of a symphony, over and over, hour after hour.Supporters of Alice Robbe of France serenaded her during a qualifying match last week.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFils enjoyed the crowd’s backing after winning a game during his first-round match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAmazingly, it keeps going on even though the French have been mostly terrible at this event for a long while — or maybe that’s why it happens. A Frenchman has not won the singles tournament since Yannick Noah in 1983, or made the final since Henri Leconte in 1988. A Frenchwoman has not won since Mary Pierce in 2000, which was also the last time the country was represented in the women’s singles final.Albert Camus, the French philosopher, famously wrote that we must consider Sisyphus, the Greek mythology figure, to be happy, even though he spends his life repeatedly pushing a rock uphill because “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”Camus would have made a perfect modern French tennis fan.The zenith of this tournament for the French came Tuesday night as Gael Monfils, whose Gumby-like athleticism and ambivalent relationship with the sport have made him a tennis folk hero, came back from the brink to beat Sebastian Baez of Argentina in five sets.Monfils, 36, who has been battling injuries and played little the past year, cramped so badly in the fifth set he could barely walk. He fell behind by 4-0, but the crowd never relented and willed him back to life. The roars at the main court, Philippe Chatrier, could be heard more than a mile away. It was obvious what was unfolding simply by opening a bedroom window.Monfils told the crowd the victory was as much theirs as his after he prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.The ecstasy ride ended 24 hours later when Monfils called a late-night news conference to announce his withdrawal from the tournament because of a wrist injury.Caroline Garcia, seeded fifth, seemed to be the French’s best hope of having their first women’s singles finalist since 2000.James Hill for The New York TimesGarcia lost her second-round match to Anna Blinkova of Russia in three sets, despite the encouragement of the crowd.James Hill for The New York TimesIt came at the end of an awful day for the French players, who dropped all their singles matches. That included Caroline Garcia, the fifth seed and the only seeded Frenchwoman.Garcia had spoken earlier in the week of trying to capture the enthusiasm of the crowd and use it to her advantage. In the past, she has experienced it as pressure that has caused her to disappoint in front of the hometown fans. She has never made it past the quarterfinals.“I try and take all of this energy,” she had said of the support. “It’s a great opportunity.”No such luck. Garcia was cruising, up a set and a break in her second-round match Wednesday against Anna Blinkova of Russia. But she tightened up and frittered away the lead. The crowd helped her draw even at 5-5 in the third set, rattling Blinkova into double faults as Garcia saved eight match points before she lost, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.“She managed the crowd very well and kept very calm,” Garcia said of Blinkova.There was more pain Thursday as French players lost their last three singles matches, but those uniquely throaty urgings were an accompaniment all the same. When the last Frenchman, Arthur Rinderknech, lost Thursday night to the ninth-seeded Taylor Fritz, the crowd booed Fritz so loudly he could not hear the questions during his on-court interview. And a year from now, the French fans will push the rock up the hill again, and again, and again.James Hill for The New York Times More

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    At the French Open, Djokovic Storms the Court and Into Controversy, Again

    In recent days, the Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic has inserted himself into the mounting international crisis in Kosovo.After everything that Novak Djokovic had put himself through over the past few years, the French Open began with the possibility, finally, of a Grand Slam tournament free of drama.But three days into the Open, Djokovic has put himself at the center of the mounting international crisis in the Balkans, where ethnic Serbs and Albanians have clashed in recent days in the conflict over Kosovo.The message that the Serbian tennis star scrawled Monday night on a plexiglass plate overlaid on a television camera lens — “Kosovo is at the heart of Serbia” — has sports officials calling for him to be disciplined, muzzled or both, and Albanian loyalists calling him a fascist.“A drama-free Grand Slam, I don’t think it will happen for me,” Djokovic said after he beat Marton Fucsovics of Hungary on Wednesday night. “I guess that drives me, as well.”The 22-time Grand Slam tournament champion struggled to find his timing early on, with the wind gusting as day turned to night. But as the light faded the wind did too, and Djokovic cruised, finishing off the steady Fucsovics, 7-6 (2), 6-0, 6-3, in two hours and 44 minutes. But as it is so often with Djokovic, what is happening on the tennis court this week is only a fraction of the story.The World Health Organization recently declared an end to the Covid-19 health emergency and the United States ended its requirement for foreign travelers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, ending discussion of Djokovic’s decision not to receive the vaccination. He was forced to skip some of the most important tournaments in tennis over the past two years, and last year was detained and deported from Australia ahead of the Open.He didn’t even have to worry about his main nemesis, with Rafael Nadal missing this year’s French Open, a tournament he has won 14 times, because of an injury. Djokovic continues his usual march toward the second week of the tournament — though the top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz may pose trouble.After Djokovic’s first-round match on Monday, like every winning player on the stadium courts at major tennis tournaments, he grabbed a marker for the traditional signing of the courtside television camera.The practice, which began in the 2000s as a way for players to connect with fans, gives them an opportunity to send an international television audience a typically cheerful message like “Vamos!” (Spanish for “Let’s go!”), wish a loved one “happy birthday” or write their child’s name.Occasionally the scrawl expresses a political opinion. In the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian player Andrey Rublev wrote “No War Please” on the lens plate.Writing in his native language and drawing a heart, Djokovic’s message followed a weekend of violent clashes between Serbian protesters and NATO forces who have been trying to maintain a tense peace in the region for 15 years.Roughly an hour later, during the Serbian portion of his post-match news conference, Djokovic, whose past political statements have been suffused with Serbian nationalism, doubled down.“I am against wars, violence and any kind of conflict, as I’ve always stated publicly,” Djokovic said, according to the widely circulated translations. “I empathize with all people, but the situation with Kosovo is a precedent in international law.” He called Kosovo, “our hearthstone, our stronghold,” and said, “Our most important monasteries are there.”Almost immediately, the statements sparked the expected reactions at the polarized ends of the conflict: hero worship from Serbs, and outrage from the ethnic Albanians who account for the overwhelming majority of the population in Kosovo but are vastly outnumbered in a handful of villages and small cities. The groups, Orthodox Christians on one side, Muslims on the other, have been fighting on an off for control in the region for hundreds of years, dating back to the Ottoman Empire.Jeta Xharra, a human-rights activist in Kosovo, said in an interview Tuesday that Djokovic’s statements represented a “medieval mentality” that she compared to the thinking that led Russia to invade Ukraine last year.“It’s appalling for a man of his stature to use sports to push a fascist mentality,” she said.The Kosovan Olympic Committee has called for the International Olympic Committee and the International Tennis Federation to take disciplinary action against Djokovic.For its part, French Open officials have opted to stay out of the conflict. There is nothing in the rule book that prohibits a player from making political statements. France’s tennis federation, the F.F.T., said it was “understandable” that players would discuss international events. However, the French sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, called Djokovic’s statement “inappropriate” during a television interview, saying it was “very activist” and “very political” and that he “shouldn’t get involved again.”Judging from Djokovic’s recent and not-so-recent behavior, that is not an option, and he said as much during his statement after his first match.“This is the least I could have done,” he said in his native language. “I feel the responsibility as a public figure — doesn’t matter in which field — to give support.”Supporters cheering Djokovic after his second-round victory at the French Open.Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Djokovic the statements have had increased impact because with the war in Ukraine garnering so much attention, few outside of the Balkans were aware of just how heightened the tensions in Kosovo have become during the past week — as heightened as they have been since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.An international military force has attempted to maintain peace in the region for decades. More than 100 countries have recognized Kosovo. Serbia and Russia have not. Ethnic Serbs who live in Kosovo boycotted local elections last month in the northern part of the country where Serbs hold majorities. That allowed Albanian candidates to win control, in their view.The five countries that control the peacekeeping force in the region — the United States, France, Italy, Germany and Britain — asked Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership not to send in security forces to take control of town municipal buildings following the elections. It did anyway, a move that the five countries condemned. The Serbs protested the takeover, sparking the violent clashes that wounded 30 members of the NATO peacekeeping force, known as KFOR (Kay-phor).“Both parties need to take full responsibility for what happened and prevent any further escalation, rather than hide behind false narratives,” Maj. Gen. Angelo Michele Ristuccia, the KFOR mission commander, said in a statement.President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia claimed that 52 Serbs were injured in the clashes, three seriously. He put the Serbian Army on high alert and sent his troops to the border.Watching events unfold from Paris as he prepared for the French Open, Djokovic searched for a way to express two emotions — a desire for peace and the belief that Kosovo is part of Serbia. He has often spoken of the traumatic experience of growing up in a war zone, with bombs falling not far from his home during the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s. He has said that anyone who has lived through that experience could never be in favor of war and violence. He used those words in January, when controversy found him at the Australian Open after his father, who was born in Kosovo, was caught on video posing with a fan of his son’s who was holding a Russian flag.In 2008, when Djokovic was a young player breaking into the sport’s elite ranks, he recorded a video expressing solidarity with protesters in Belgrade after Kosovo declared independence.“Of course, I’m aware that a lot of people would disagree,” he said as midnight closed in Wednesday. “But it is what it is. It’s something that I stand for.” More

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    Can Erika and Mirra Andreeva Become Tennis’ Next Great Sister Act?

    Women’s tennis was headlined for more than two decades by Serena and Venus Williams. On Tuesday, the teenagers Mirra and Erika Andreeva made their French Open debuts.Long day for the Andreeva family.First came an early rise to get Mirra, a 16-year-old Russian, ready for her 11 a.m. French Open debut against Alison Riske-Amritraj of the United States. Mirra was as efficient as they come, finishing her match Tuesday in 56 minutes by improvising an array of easy, smooth winners against an opponent twice her age.“I just play as I feel inside,” she said.Then came a long wait for Mirra’s older sister, 18-year-old Erika, who was last up on Court No. 14 against Emma Navarro, another American. She took the court just after 7:30 p.m. in Paris. With the sun dropping toward the banks of the Seine, she gave every ounce of energy she had to try to match her sister’s success before Navarro won in three sets, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, despite Andreeva showing plenty of promise.One family, more than a dozen hours on the grounds of Roland Garros, a 16-year-old in the second round, and an 18-year-old who came oh-so-close. So it goes for tennis’s newest sister act.If this all sounds a bit familiar, it should. Sister acts are not exactly new in women’s tennis, which was headlined for more than two decades by the American duo of Serena and Venus Williams. They won a combined 30 Grand Slam singles titles. Venus Williams, 42, still has not retired, though another major title seems unlikely.More recently, Naomi Osaka of Japan and her sister, Mari, had their moments, though Mari never got higher than 280th in the singles rankings before retiring in 2021 at age 24. Leylah Fernandez of Canada, a 2021 U.S. Open finalist, has partnered in doubles with her younger sister Bianca. This French Open main draw even had another sister duo — Linda and Brenda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic. Both lost their opening-round matches.Coaches and parents — who are often one and the same — say the reasons for sisterly success is fairly obvious: never having to look far for a practice partner. Also, the younger sibling grows up with the motivation of trying to overtake the older one. And yet the accomplishment still feels a bit astounding each time it happens, even more so when the journey starts in Siberia, as it did for the Andreevas.Mirra said her mother, Raisa, fell in love with the sport while watching Marat Safin of Russia in the Australian Open in 2005, when he won the tournament. She decided then that she wanted her children to be tennis players.As a toddler, Mirra trailed along to her sister’s tennis practices and matches. At 6, she started playing seriously herself. When the girls showed early promise the family moved from Siberia, which was not exactly teeming with tennis players or tennis friendly weather, to Sochi, Russia, with a mild climate along the Black Sea, and then Cannes, France, where they enrolled in a tennis academy.Mirra said she was about 8 years old when she competed in her first international tennis tournament, an under-12 competition in Germany, where she made the semifinals. At 12, a recruiter for IMG, the sports and entertainment firm, spotted her at a tournament for top juniors.“She was a small player but she was feisty and fighting and just running for the ball and a great competitor and that was the differentiator,” said Juan Acuna Gerard, an IMG agent. “Our recruiter said, ‘This girl is special.’ She was undersized for her age, but fiercely competitive.”The company now represents Erika, too.Erika Andreeva of Russia lost her first-round match to Emma Navarro of the United States in three sets.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesLast month, still not 16, Mirra became one of the youngest players to beat a top-20 opponent, knocking off Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil on her way to the round of 16 at the Madrid Open.She said she wasn’t nervous then, or ahead of her match Tuesday. She needed her alarm to wake her up in the morning.“I was excited but in a good way, you know?” Mirra said.The Andreeva sisters worked under the radar on a day when much of Roland Garros was buzzing about one of the biggest upsets in recent memory, as Thiago Seyboth Wild of Brazil, 172nd in men’s singles, beat Daniil Medvedev, the former world No. 1 who is the second seed at the French Open, in five sets.Medvedev, who excels on hard courts, has never been a fan of clay-court tennis or had much success at Roland Garros. But he won the final earlier this month at the Italian Open, the main clay-court tournament ahead of the French Open. It seemed like the victory might have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Medvedev, the creative Russian, and the red clay. He declared himself cautiously optimistic about his chances.But Medvedev was never comfortable on a gusty Tuesday afternoon, spraying balls in the wind, double-faulting 15 times and catching an opponent playing the match of his life.“Every time it finishes I’m happy,” Medvedev said of his clay-court season. “I had a mouthful of clay from the third game of the match.”Mirra Andreeva had no such issues. Her biggest problem of the day was that her sister’s match started too late for her to hang around to watch it. That may have been for the best. She said she gets far more nervous watching her sister’s matches than while playing her own.Tuesday evening would have caused plenty of jitters. Erika dropped a messy first set, gritted her way to draw even with a clinic in tennis defense, then surged to a 3-0 lead in the deciding set, only to watch Navarro find her groove and win six of the next seven games. Sitting in the front row, quietly urging her daughter on all evening, Raisa finally left her seat as Erika’s lead slipped away.The loss left Mirra to carry the family torch the rest of the way in Paris. She will face Diane Parry of France on Thursday, no easy task but it beats chemistry, the class that she said befuddles her in her online school.“Chemistry is so bad,” she said. “I don’t understand anything.”Tennis, on the other hand, comes much more naturally. Her coaches — she and Erika have separate ones — give her a game plan before each match. She listens, takes it in, then forgets what she was told almost as soon as she walks onto the court, playing by feel instead.“If I feel that I have to do a drop shot, even though the score is not really appropriate to do a drop shot, I will do it anyways,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain.”For the moment, she does not have to. More

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    The Agony of Playing Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic at the French Open

    Little-known players learned humbling lessons when they drew Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic in the first round of the French Open.Aleksandar Kovacevic did plenty of tossing and turning Sunday night before finally settling in for what he thought was about six hours of restless sleep.He had good reason to be nervous. Kovacevic, who is 24 years old and the world’s 114th-ranked player, had a noon tennis date in the first round of the French Open with Novak Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles.The only person with a more daunting assignment perhaps was Flavio Cobolli of Italy. Cobolli, who is 21 and ranked 159th, survived the qualifying tournament last week, only to be rewarded with an opening-round confrontation with Carlos Alcaraz.It didn’t go so well for either of the unknowns.Nine games and roughly 35 minutes into Cobolli’s match, an Alcaraz forehand sailed long and Cobolli let out a scream, swung his racket in celebration and let a smile spread across his face. He pumped his fist to the crowd as he walked to his chair. He had finally won a game against the best player in the world, who was playing like, well, the best player in the world.“I did the best I could,” Cobolli said.Alexsandar Kovacevic grew up idolizing Novak Djokovic, who defeated him in three sets on Monday.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesKovacevic, who lost to Djokovic, 6-3, 6-2, 7-6(1), had a pretty good idea of what that felt like, too, even though he lasted more than two hours on the court with a player he grew up idolizing.“There was some points, passing shots that he hits, and they’re just points where I feel like I had no chance sometimes,” Kovacevic said. “And those are definitely humbling.”It is a truism of tennis that the top players hate playing the first round of a Grand Slam. Anything but a cruise to victory is cause for concern. Also, there is always the possibility of epic failure in the form of a loss to someone few have heard of.Whatever discomfort Djokovic and Alcaraz may have felt walking onto the courts at Roland Garros on Monday, they mostly managed it with ease, especially Alcaraz. He made an early contribution to the tournament highlight reel, curling a backhand around the net post for a winner early in the second set. Djokovic had more of a workout, and even lost his serve late in his match after getting windblown clay in his eyes.It helped that the stars drew opponents with three digits in their rankings whose recent experience didn’t have much in common with their own. Kovacevic had a particularly winding journey to his date on the French Open’s center court with Djokovic.His father, Milan, immigrated to America from Serbia to pursue a doctorate in computer science from U.C.L.A. His mother is from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kovacevic grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, about 500 yards from the green clay of the Central Park tennis complex.In ninth grade, he still wasn’t good enough to play singles for Beacon High School, a public school in Midtown, even though he was spending afternoons training at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy on Randall’s Island.Things started to click after he left Beacon to train in Florida while taking classes at home. At a tournament one summer, he played a top junior who was planning to attend the University of Illinois. His opponent told him he should join him at the school, so he did, even though he didn’t have much interest in college. By the time he finished five years later, he was ranked in the low 400s and figured he would give pro tennis a shot.Since then he has mostly been playing in the tennis hinterlands, though he did win a match in the main draw of the prestigious Miami Open in March.“It has not been the most glorious over the last couple of years,” he said.“I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket,” Kovacevic said of Djokovic. “It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressOn Monday, Kovacevic made his Grand Slam debut against Djokovic on the main court at Roland Garros, Philippe Chatrier, though it wasn’t his first time meeting Djokovic.That happened at the U.S. Open when he was 6 and his Balkan-proud parents brought him to watch the 18-year-old Djokovic win an early-round match, long before Djokovic was the player he would become. And two years ago he warmed up Djokovic at the U.S. Open after coming within a point of qualifying to play.He has the pictures to prove it, and he has tried to incorporate elements of Djokovic’s game into his own. His squat as he waits for an opponent’s serve — knees wide, chest up, racket out front — has plenty of Djokovic in it, even if the rest of his game isn’t quite there yet.“Where I am in my career, like it shouldn’t be so crazy to me that I’m playing some of these guys,” he said. “But, you know, the little kid in me, I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket. It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”The way Alcaraz has started his career, he may eventually have something to say about who is the best player to pick up a racket. Everyone in tennis knows this, including Cobolli, who has also spent most of his brief career in the sport’s version of the minor leagues.He was in an elevator, still feeling good about qualifying for his first main draw Grand Slam match, when he looked at his phone and saw that his opponent was Alcaraz. He said he closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, and thought, “Oh no.”Roughly, three-quarters of an hour into the match, it was going as he dreaded it might. Alcaraz couldn’t miss and later said he felt “invincible,” like he would never lose a game. Cobolli barely had time to breathe between shots.The scoreboard said 6-0, 2-0. “He was playing incredible,” Cobolli said.Cobolli lasted just under two hours against Alcaraz.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the bright side, there is nothing the French crowd loves more — other than a French player — than rallying behind a player who is getting blitzed. And by the time Cobolli got his legs under him, knotting the third set at 5-5, the crowd of nearly 10,000 on the Suzanne Lenglen court was chanting his name. It was like he was one of their own, especially after he saved three match points and broke Alcaraz’s serve to draw even in the set.“I felt important on the court,” Cobolli said.The final score was 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, the elapsed time 1 hour, 57 minutes.Now that Cobolli has seen up close what the best looks like, he said he understands better what he must do to compete — hit the weight room, he said with a grin as he pushed in at his chest with his hand. And get better at tennis.Hope springs eternal for him as it does for so many of the Kovacevics and Cobollis in the game. Just over two years ago, Alcaraz’s ranking had three digits, too. More