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    At the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic Wins But Andy Murray Loses

    The aging stars were both playing hurt at the Australian Open. Only Djokovic managed to move on, beating Grigor Dimitrov in straight sets.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was a little after 7 p.m. in Melbourne on Friday night when Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray limped, hobbled and creaked onto their respective courts for their third-round showdowns.In Djokovic’s way stood Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian once nicknamed “Baby Fed” for his flowing, graceful style, and in Murray’s path was Roberto Bautista Agut, part of the talented generation of Spaniards led by Rafael Nadal. There was also so much wear and tear accumulating for the two limping lions of the sport — one who is arguably the greatest player ever, and Murray, the former world No. 1 and fourth member of the vaunted Big Four.Djokovic, a nine-time winner of the Australian Open, has been battling a sore left hamstring that has limited his movement and those trademark sliding stretch shots. On Rod Laver Arena, his assassin’s glare has been replaced with the worried look of a man who keeps hearing the same grave diagnosis no matter how many physicians he asks for an opinion.Murray, whose rocking pigeon-toed walk has never been pretty, played for nearly 11 hours over 10 sets in his first two matches, the second of which finished after 4 a.m. on Friday. He fell asleep for three hours as the sun was rising, having pulled off a finals week-style all-nighter. Then he returned to Melbourne Park to have seven or eight blisters on his foot drained.Murray also has a metal hip following a resurfacing surgery in 2019 that some doctors told him would allow him to do little more than rally with his children.If you have ever watched a friend who has run a marathon try to descend a flight of stairs the next morning, you have a good idea of what Murray looked like during the first set on Friday night, when he lost 6-1 within half an hour. He looked like the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” his joints desperately in need of oil.Serving in the third game of the second set, he double-faulted to give Bautista Agut the crucial break and let out a primal grunt that sounded like some combination of frustration and hopelessness. The craftiness and power, the unmatched ability to scramble and extend points that are supposed to be long over, had to be somewhere inside that 6-foot-3-inch frame, but somehow those parts of him would not come out.“My legs were actually OK,” Murray said after Bautista Agut had sent him packing in four sets. “I was struggling with my lower back. That was affecting my serve.”Andy Murray during his match against Roberto Bautista Agut.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockTo sit close and watch Murray fully engaged in the kind of battle he relishes usually means bearing witness to a running internal dialogue. He assumes the role of the lead character in the drama, an unflinching critic, cursing himself for his mistakes, pumping his fist and shaking his racket in determination when he smacks a winner. And, of course, there is the hourslong one-way conversation with his coach and his mother sitting courtside.There was almost none of that for the first hour on Friday night. What was the point of all that angst and self-punishment if this was all for naught? On this night, he was going to need something else.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Caroline Garcia: The top-five player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. She is at the Australian Open chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches in professional tennis stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.He found it in two corners of Margaret Court Arena, far away from where his coaches sat, where two groups of Murray fans huddled around a Scottish flag, screaming to urge the Murray of old, or even the Murray of early Friday morning, out of him. They were the ones on the other side of his fist pumps and self-talk.Slowly, Murray came alive, climbing out of the hole and then lacing a running backhand to save his serve at 5-5 in the second set after he had already lost the first and was staring at doom. Then came the great escape tiebreaker.The hole at 2-5 brought out the swinging forehand volley winner and an untouchable crosscourt backhand to get him within a point. Getting out of the hole at 4-6 required surviving one of those long, nervy rallies and a ripping forehand drop-shot combination to draw even.At 7-7, a jumping backhand return of serve gave him the edge. When Bautista Agut smacked a ball into the net on the next point, Murray stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the Scottish faithful with the flag in the corner.This is what it looks like to go kicking and screaming into the twilight.Murray won the second set as fans cheered him on with a Scottish flag.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMeanwhile, across the entry plaza that the two feature courts share, about 100 yards away on Rod Laver Arena, Djokovic managed his ailments like a guy whose old car has a clutch and choke that needs to be handled just so to get from here to there.After prevailing 9-7 in a first-set tiebreaker, an ill-advised split to reach a Dimitrov overhead early in the second set had Djokovic grimacing and leaning over.A game later he was back to business, that steady drumbeat of backhands and forehands targeted at Dimitrov’s shoelaces over and over until Dimitrov just couldn’t move quickly enough to get them back anymore, much less get Djokovic on the run, which was his only hope.Djokovic has said his leg generally feels fine at the start of the matches, but then a bad move tweaks it and things go downhill from there.“Pills kick in, some hot cream and stuff, that works for a little bit, then it doesn’t, then works again,” he said. “It’s really a roller coaster, honestly.”It’s all eerily reminiscent of a moment two years ago, when Djokovic tore an abdominal muscle during his third-round match, then figured out the right combination of rest, painkillers and match management to cruise to his record ninth singles title in Melbourne.Djokovic’s night was over just as Murray was trying one last escape, this time after dropping the third set. He surged to an early fourth-set lead but could not hold it.In almost every tennis match, a player’s feet are the ultimate tell, and as the fourth set wore on, Murray’s feet barely lifted off the ground on his serve. When he ran, he looked like he was stepping on hot coals. The flow was gone and it wasn’t coming back, and soon his shots were flying long and wide or, like his last one, into the net.He said he was proud of his efforts this past week. “That is really, in whatever you’re doing, all you can do,” he said. “You can’t always control the outcome. You can’t control how well you’re going to play or the result. You can control the effort that you put into it, and I gave everything that I had the last three matches.”A few minutes later, he limped down three stairs. It was time to rest. More

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    Why Tennis Matches at the Australian Open Never Seem to End

    Andy Murray’s second-round match at the Australian Open didn’t end until after 4 a.m. As matches more often go into the early morning hours, some players say it is harming their physical and mental health.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was 4 o’clock on Friday morning at the Australian Open, and Andy Murray and Thanasi Kokkinakis were still playing tennis.It was not a particularly rare marathon match or a vagary of the tournament’s distant time zone. At the U.S. Open last September, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner were still playing at nearly 3 a.m.Professional tennis is the only major sport that puts athletes through all-night competitions and requires them to return less than 48 hours later and put their minds and bodies back on the line.It is a longstanding problem. But as matches stretch later into the morning hours, increasingly players are pushing back, citing concerns for their physical and mental health, and performance. Not to mention fans who are falling asleep in the stands or on their sofas around the world.“It’s crazy,” Jessica Pegula, the American women’s star, said on Friday.Murray’s 5-hour, 45-minute victory over Kokkinakis in the second round ended at 4:05 a.m. It was the third-latest recorded finish in the history of professional tennis, surpassed only by Alexander Zverev’s victory over Jenson Brooksby in Acapulco, Mexico, last year that ended at 4:54 a.m., and by Lleyton Hewitt’s victory over Marcos Baghdatis at the 2008 Australian Open that ended at 4:34 a.m.It will be one of the highlights of the 35-year-old Murray’s late career. But he experienced it, unnecessarily, with mixed emotions.“If my child was a ball kid for a tournament, and they’re coming home at 5 in the morning, as a parent I’m snapping at that,” Murray said. “It’s not beneficial for them. It’s not beneficial for the umpires, the officials. I don’t think it’s amazing for the fans. It’s not good for the players.”He added later, “Rather than it being like epic Murray-Kokkinakis match, it ends in a bit of a farce.”It has been a particular challenge at the Australian and U.S. Open, where both a men’s and women’s singles match are scheduled in each night session, a great move for gender equality, ticket sales and star power.In 2008 when Hewitt finally defeated Baghdatis at the Australian Open in a match that started just before midnight and ended not long before sunrise, Hewitt’s post-match news conference didn’t begin until 5:30 a.m.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.“Obviously, going on that late is not easy for anyone, any players, because it does throw your whole rhythm and clock out quite a bit,” Hewitt said at the time.The toll is heavy on athletes, support staff and spectators with regular jobs, even though a very informal poll of fans coming out of the Murray match at 4:15 a.m. did not reveal any outrage.“We would never leave early,” said Kathie Griffith from Canberra, Australia. “Fantastic tennis.”Australian Open tennis player Alexei Popyrin after his five-set victory over Taiwan’s Chun-Hsin Tseng. The match finished at 2.30 a.m. in front of a small but vocal crowd.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesA small crowd watched a late-finishing match on Margaret Court Arena at 12:22 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesRequiring play into the middle of the night seems contradictory to the sport’s increased focus on supporting players’ mental health. Nick Kyrgios, the Australian star, said his series of late matches at last year’s U.S. Open were particularly draining.“I was always last match, going on court at 10 p.m., finishing matches around, like 1 a.m., then doing media and treatment and eating,” Kyrgios said. “I was not going to sleep before 4 a.m. every night. And I felt as if, you know, I was going out night-clubbing or something. It was like I’m not even getting enough sleep to go and perform the next day.”Decompressing from a late match is a challenge.“I’m staring at the room,” Kyrgios said. “You’ve got so much adrenaline, and it’s incredibly hard to wind down and to do it on a daily basis potentially seven times to win a Grand Slam. It’s exhausting, for sure.”The sport has never had a formal collective discussion about a better, saner approach but it could be coming. On Friday, the Professional Tennis Players Association, the player group recently co-founded by longtime men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic, released a statement saying that “we look forward to exploring alternate means to scheduling that put fans and players and their well-being first.” There are guidelines on both the men’s and women’s tours about not starting matches after midnight, but that still does not preclude long-after-midnight finishes. And while the men play best-of-three sets on the regular tour, they continue to play best-of-five at the four majors in part because that remains a point of separation for the Grand Slam tournaments.Switching to best-of-three for the men (the women already play best-of-three everywhere) would be one of the most effective ways of controlling finish times. But there are less extreme measures available, including starting play earlier, establishing a curfew or playing one singles match in a night session instead of the customary two.After a long night of tennis, David Reyes, 32, waited for his phone to charge so he could figure out how to get home at 1:30 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesTennis fans waited for cabs outside Melbourne Park after the last match finished at 2:30 a.m. With no public transportation available at that time, the small number of fans that stayed to watch the final point must catch rideshares or taxis home.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesLong matches are becoming more common, and there are multiple factors. Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, said the institution of the 25-second shot clock, intended to speed up play, has not necessarily worked that way. “A lot of players are taking full time now between points because they can see the time,” he said. “There’s also the equity of play with so many good players.”Nicolás Pereira, a coach and television analyst, thinks the recent widespread use of analytics in professional tennis may also have made matches more even.Tiley said the sport should consider changes like reducing changeover times or cutting the time between points to 20 seconds. But the biggest obstacle still seems to be that the Australian Open and U.S. Open schedule a men’s singles match and women’s singles match in each night session. That is for gender equality in a sport that was a front-runner in that area but also for entertainment value. If one match is a rout or ends early because of an injury, the other could still be a classic.Tiley said that market research showed that offering just one match on a court in an evening session would be risky.“I think you lose a lot with broadcasters and with fans who would be buying a ticket to risk seeing one match where one player can potentially blow out another player,” he said on Friday in an interview. “All the data and research we have on that indicates that it’s an option that would have a significant impact on the success of the event. We have a number of examples where our first match has gone 56 minutes and if that was your only match that night, I think you start to run a risk in terms of the value you provide.”The French Open, which started night sessions in 2021 that featured only one match, has sparked complaints about gender inequality by scheduling mostly men’s matches in that slot (best-of-five generally gives you more content than best-of-three). But with an 8:45 p.m. start, there have been some late finishes in Paris, too, leaving spectators without public transport and players with the too-familiar late-night routine.Another option in Melbourne and New York would be to schedule one singles match each night, alternating men and women, and pair that match with a doubles match that could be moved to another court if the singles match turns into a marathon.Tiley said the problem is that the doubles events do not start until several days into the tournament. “You’d miss the first three or four nights with that,” he said, also expressing resistance to the idea of scheduling an exhibition doubles match to supplement the main singles match.“I think you would erode interest and the data shows us that,” he said.Fans watched Frances Tiafoe and Carlos Alcaraz late into the night from the plaza outside Arthur Ashe Stadium at the 2022 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran/The New York TimesFans leaving Roland Garros after a night match at the French Open in 2022.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesPlaying a compelling match in the middle of the night does not help local viewing figures. But because of the global audience, it could paradoxically generate bigger audiences elsewhere. When it was 4 a.m. in Melbourne, it was noon in New York and 6 p.m. in Paris. “I am more concerned about the well-being of the athletes playing that late than concerned about who is watching in different parts of the world,” Tiley said. Tiley, like Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, agrees that late finishes like Alcaraz’s in New York and Murray’s in Melbourne are problematic. “Finishing that early in the morning is not ideal,” Tiley said. “I completely empathize with anyone who has to be there that late.”Tiley said the Australian Open could be open to a curfew like the one at Wimbledon, which because of a town edict requires matches played under the lights to be stopped by 11 p.m. But Tiley said players traditionally have been resistant to the idea of stopping a match for the night once it begins.That was once routine at the French Open and Wimbledon when there were no lights and certainly seems a better solution than testing players’ limits and reducing their chances of recovering well for subsequent matches. Alcaraz did manage to win last year’s U.S. Open after beating Marin Cilic and Sinner in matches that finished after 2 a.m., but that is an exception, and that draining effort could have contributed to Alcaraz’s recent struggles and injuries.“If the players want to have a curfew, fine we’ll have it,” Tiley said. “We are open to anything, and we always have been. It’s not a new thing. We’ve always made adjustments.”The Australian Open did recently move up the start of the night sessions to 7 p.m. from 7:45 p.m. But that clearly was not enough change to avoid, in Murray’s words, a “ridiculously late” finish.Matthew Futterman More

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    Andy Murray Wins Australian Open Thriller at 4 A.M.

    Murray’s stirring five-set comeback against Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia ended a day that also saw the men’s singles favorite Novak Djokovic win while playing with a hamstring injury.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was a night worthy of a knight, and Sir Andy Murray’s stirring comeback victory from two sets down against Thanasi Kokkinakis at the Australian Open also turned into one of the latest nights in tennis history.That is saying something in a sport that is often, too often, played into the wee hours of the morning, but Murray, a stouthearted Scotsman now playing tennis with an artificial hip, needed 5 hours 45 minutes to find a way to prevail against Kokkinakis, a big-serving Australian nearly 10 years his junior.Murray’s win, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-5,  began Thursday and finished Friday at 4:05 a.m. with several thousand die-hard fans still making plenty of noise in Margaret Court Arena as some waved British flags for Murray and Australian and Greek flags for Kokkinakis.The end finally came with the 35-year-old Murray breaking serve at 5-5 and then holding his own to finish off the longest match of his career and earn, truly earn, a spot in the third round.The Australian Open has brought him plenty of heartache — he has lost in the final a record five times — but it is bringing him plenty of fulfillment this year.In the first round on Tuesday, he saved a match point and upset the No. 13 seed, Matteo Berrettini of Italy, prevailing in a fifth-set tiebreaker after 4:49.The duel with Kokkinakis, a 26-year-old wild-card entrant ranked 159th in the world, lasted nearly a full hour longer. But the quality and tenacity of play was often extraordinary down the stretch despite all that time on the court.“I just rely on that experience and that drive and my love of the game and competing and my respect for this event and the competition,” Murray said. “That’s why I kept going.”This was the third-latest recorded finish in the history of professional tennis, surpassed only by Alexander Zverev’s victory over Jenson Brooksby in Acapulco, Mexico, last year that ended at 4:54 a.m., and by Lleyton Hewitt’s victory over Marcos Baghdatis at the 2008 Australian Open that ended at 4:34 a.m.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.It is a dubious honor to be on that list, but Brooksby, a 22-year-old Californian, at least got to play in the daylight on Thursday. He recorded the most significant victory of his career by upsetting the No. 2 seed Casper Ruud of Norway, 6-3, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2, in Rod Laver Arena in the second round.That came less than 24 hours after Mackenzie McDonald, 27, another unseeded Californian, upset the injured Rafael Nadal, the No. 1 seed and the reigning champion, on the same court.Jenson Brooksby won Thursday against Casper Ruud, 6-3, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2, at the Australian Open.Carl Recine/ReutersIn all, eight American men reached the round of 32 in Melbourne, the most at this Grand Slam tournament since 1996 when Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi were still in their primes.“First and foremost, Casper is a warrior,” Brooksby said. “I knew it would be a great battle out there. I was pretty confident with my level and just wanted to have fun competing.”Nadal, however, will not compete for at least a few weeks. He announced on Thursday that he had undergone a magnetic resonance imaging scan that showed an injury of the iliopsoas muscle in his left inner hip.Nadal, 36, will return to Spain for treatment and, according to his team, “the normal time estimated for complete recuperation is between six and eight weeks.” That would likely mean that Nadal will miss the next block of hardcourt events, including the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. But if he recovers, Nadal could be ready to compete during the clay-court season. He has dominated on clay for close to two decades and could aim for a 15th singles title at the French Open.But Novak Djokovic, Nadal’s longtime rival who is chasing his record of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, remains in contention in Melbourne despite his own injury challenges. Djokovic, a nine-time Australian Open champion, started the tournament with a nagging left hamstring injury. He aggravated it on Thursday night in his victory, 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-0, over Enzo Couacaud, a French qualifier ranked 191st who sprained an ankle early in the match but managed to continue.Late in the second set, Djokovic, with his left hamstring tightly wrapped, began wincing and landing awkwardly on some shots, looking far from eager to slide into his signature defensive splits. He even limped and pulled up as he ran to his left for a backhand at one stage.With a third-round matchup against Grigor Dimitrov scheduled for Saturday, Djokovic conceded that his situation going forward in the tournament was “not ideal.”“I am worried,” he said of his injury. “I mean, I cannot say that I am not. I have reason to be worried. But at the same time, I have to accept the circumstances and try to adjust myself with my team.”Djokovic said he was minimizing or eliminating practice sessions on days between matches. In 2021, he won his ninth Australian Open after tearing an abdominal muscle in the third round.“Somehow I pushed it through and won the tournament,” Djokovic said. “But it’s different now, obviously. I don’t know how my body’s going to react. I hope for the best. I hope for the positive outcome. I’ll take it day by day, match by match and see how it goes.”Novak Djokovic stretched during his second round-match. “I am worried,” he said later of his hamstring injury.Loren Elliott/Reuters Earlier in the day, Ruud, the affable Norwegian star who reached the French Open and U.S. Open finals last year, could not solve the riddle of Brooksby’s unconventional game.Theirs was a grinding match, full of rallies whose shot count extended into double digits. Though Brooksby won the vast majority of those — quite an achievement against a baseliner as accomplished as Ruud — he could not convert any of the three match points he had on his own serve at 5-3 in the third set.Distraught, Brooksby sat in his chair on the changeover shouting “How, how how?”Ruud won the third set in a tiebreaker, which could have been the cue for Brooksby to fold. Instead, he walked back onto the court after a break in the locker room and broke Ruud twice in a row to take a 3-0 lead. Then, after losing his serve, he broke Ruud again at love to reclaim full command of the match.“I’m just really proud of my mental resolve there, after the third-set battle didn’t go my way, to turn it around,” Brooksby said.It was the standout victory of Brooksby’s career, and it was a bad day all around for No. 2 seeds. Ons Jabeur, the No. 2 seed in the women’s singles tournament, was defeated after midnight, 6-1, 5-7, 6-1, by Marketa Vondrousova, an unseeded Czech lefthander.Tennis is a draining, mood-swinging sport, full of surprises, and the bottom quarter of the men’s singles draw is now a zone of great opportunity for outsiders, including the 66th-ranked Murray and five unseeded Americans: Brooksby, Ben Shelton, J.J. Wolf, Michael Mmoh and Tommy Paul.The surprise is that the American men’s surge in Melbourne does not include their leader: the No. 8 seed Taylor Fritz, who was upset on Thursday in five sets, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-2, by Alexei Popyrin, another Australian wild-card entrant.Popyrin will now face Shelton, the 20-year-old son of the former tennis pro Bryan Shelton. Ben Shelton turned professional last year after winning the N.C.A.A. men’s singles title for the University of Florida, where his father is the coach, and is making his first trip outside the U.S.Brooksby will face Paul, and Wolf will face Mmoh, who made it into the main draw as a lucky loser after a withdrawal. Murray, meanwhile, was wondering if he was ever going to get to sleep.“Thanks so much to everyone for staying,” he said to the crowd after his victory. “It’s ridiculously late.” More

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    Frances Tiafoe’s Life Goes Technicolor

    A thunderous run to the semifinals at the 2022 U.S. Open changed Tiafoe’s life. Now the rising American tennis star wants more.MELBOURNE, Australia — Let’s start with the outfit, that abstract-art-meets-silk-summer-pajamas-meets-Nike-tennis get-up that Frances Tiafoe is wearing at the Australian Open.“They just told me it’s going to be outgoing and sleeveless, and I was like, ‘cool,’” Tiafoe said earlier this week after winning his first match in a rather nontraditional tennis kit. “And a lot of colors and mixing action. They were like, if anyone can pull this off, it’s me, so I was like, ‘Cool, let’s do it.’”There are also the Calvin Klein underwear shots. And there is his evolution into the de facto alpha dog of American tennis even if several players are ranked higher and have lasted longer or even won major tournaments. That became especially apparent earlier this month when he helped lead the United States to victory in the inaugural United Cup, a rare mixed team event.“You locked?” he would ask his teammates before every match in that competition. Now it’s their catch phrase, the word they say to each other as they prowl the hallways and plazas at Melbourne Park before their matches and lead a wave of American success that seems to grow with each Grand Slam.In the months after the U.S. Open, Tiafoe bumped fists with LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, and hobnobbed with the top names in fashion. His new agents at IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that signs only athletes it views as potential marketing juggernauts, have helped with that, but mostly it’s because of a few magical hours back in September at the U.S. Open.“That day definitely changed my life,” Tiafoe said Wednesday, after plowing into the third round with a straight sets win over Shang Juncheng, a 17-year-old Chinese whiz kid with a seemingly sparkling future.Tiafoe upset Rafael Nadal at the U.S. Open, becoming the first American man to beat Nadal in a Grand Slam in nearly two decades.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times“That day” was Sept. 5, when Tiafoe upset Rafael Nadal at the U.S. Open, becoming the first American man to beat Nadal in a Grand Slam in nearly two decades. Four days later, with the former first lady Michelle Obama, a roster of A-list celebrities and more than 20,000 fans screaming for him in Arthur Ashe Stadium, he lost a five-set thriller to Carlos Alcaraz, the eventual champion and world No. 1.Nothing has been the same since for the man known as “Big Foe,” who is seeded 16th in this tournament.“You come so close to doing something so special, and to see everything that happened after that,” Tiafoe said Wednesday. “I want more of those moments and better.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.Tiafoe, who plays Karen Khachanov of Russia, on his 25th birthday on Friday, has been, if not here exactly, then somewhere like this before. Three years ago, he made the quarterfinals of this tournament, and his ranking soon shot up to No. 29 in the world. He figured his tennis life would simply continue the upward trajectory that began when he picked up a racket as a small child at the club where his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, was a maintenance worker, and began hitting balls against a wall.He quickly caught the eye of tennis coaches there, and later the United States Tennis Association, which helped fund his development through his teenage years. But that breakthrough at the 2019 Australian Open resulted in complacency rather than hunger. He practiced and trained hard only when he felt like it, or skipped it altogether. He paid little attention to what he ate.He lost more often than he won and fell out of the top 80.Wayne Ferreira, a former pro from South Africa who started coaching Tiafoe in 2020, said in September that Tiafoe might have suffered from having it all come so easily.“I think I helped him because I played and I went through the issues of being relatively talented and being lazy,” Ferreira said in September. “Food intake was terrible at the beginning. The effort on the practices and on the court wasn’t good enough. It’s taken time for us to get gradually to where we are today.”Tiafoe said he was virtually unrecognizable from the person and the player he was three years ago, the one who suddenly found himself playing challenger tournaments on the sport’s back roads.“They just told me it’s going to be outgoing and sleeveless, and I was like, ‘cool’,” Tiafoe said about his outfit.Anthony Wallace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“You lose confidence, and then by the time you know it, people start figuring it out,” he said. At that point, he said, you wonder, “Where did it all go?”Now Tiafoe must figure out how to regulate two seemingly contradictory forces within his personality. There is the laid back, easygoing jokester with an electric smile, and the intense competitor who desperately wants to fulfill the potential that he and everyone around him knows he has.“Frances has always had his way,” said Tommy Paul, who has trained and competed with Tiafoe since they were among the country’s top 9-year-olds. “He’s calm somewhere, but he’s Frances. It’s different.”That it is.Tiafoe’s courtside chair and its surroundings are usually a disorganized mess of towels, water bottles, rackets, tape and other equipment. He operates on his own schedule, which may or may not help him get a watch sponsorship, depending on a manufacturer’s perspective.At the Laver Cup in September, where Tiafoe teamed up with Jack Sock to play Nadal and Roger Federer in Federer’s last competitive match, Tiafoe ran to the other side of the court to slap Nadal’s hand in the middle of the game after Nadal hit a masterful winner. After Team World beat the Europeans, he showed up characteristically late to the news conference, where he took out a bottle of water and a Budweiser from his jacket.He was late again after the United States clinched the United Cup earlier this month in Sydney. His teammates, Taylor Fritz, Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys, sat at a table, waiting and shaking their heads.“Oh, Frances,” Keys said, trying to hold in her laughter.The casual approach has its benefits. Pegula and Tiafoe bonded at that United Cup in a way that male and female players rarely do, warming each other up before each match, a routine that they have continued during this tournament.Pegula, who is ranked third in the world, said she and Tiafoe had a kind of yin-and-yang energy in the hours before they compete. She comes onto the court a bundle of nerves, especially if she is not hitting well. He comes out “just so happy-go-lucky, the biggest hype person ever,” she said.Tiafoe said hitting with Pegula had allowed him to soak up everything he could from someone who is playing the best tennis of her life.Brett Hemmings/Getty Images“I’m a little bit more focused, which he needs,” she added. “He says he feels like the best player in the world when he hits with me.”Tiafoe said hitting with Pegula had allowed him to soak up everything he could from someone who is playing the best tennis of her life.“You can learn from greatness,” he said. “You can learn from people doing stuff at a high level.”He knows his recent success has wrought expectations that are higher than ever. In his case, though, they carry a different sort of pressure. A player who goes toe-to-toe with the best players in the world with an irreverent attitude, a messy changeover area, a penchant for tardiness and eye-popping clothes is colorful. But do all those things and lose in the first week and you are seen as unserious, sloppy, tardy and with questionable fashion sense. Nadal’s famous clam-diggers only worked because he won armloads of trophies while wearing them.During the interview Monday, Tiafoe said he was on a mission. Gone are the days when he was happy to make the fourth round. He wants to beat the best players in the world, in the biggest stadiums, in the most important tournaments.If he can do that, his journey really will be the stuff of Hollywood movies, and maybe someone will make one about him someday.But as Ferreira pointed out during his U.S. Open run, “You only get movies if you do well.” More

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    A Decade After U.S.T.A. Sidelined Her, Taylor Townsend Is Moving On

    When Townsend was the world’s top junior player, the leaders of tennis in the United States told her to hit the gym. A decade later, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.MELBOURNE, Australia — Taylor Townsend is getting very good at moving on.It is happening more and more these days in tennis tournaments, including this year’s Australian Open, where in the first round Townsend destroyed Diane Parry, a promising French 20-year-old, in every possible way. And she has moved on from the body-shaming and benching by the United States Tennis Association a decade ago, when she was just 16 years old.Townsend, a 26-year-old mother of a toddler, lost, 6-1, 2-6, 3-6, in the second round Thursday to Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia, the No. 19 seed. But on Tuesday, she delivered a thorough and merciless beating to Parry during a 67-minute, 6-1, 6-1 rout. Her powerful serve topped out at 116 miles per hour, and her lacing backhand painted the lines; Parry never figured out how to handle Townsend’s whipping forehand and could not reach the precise volleys. The win was her first in the main singles draw of a Grand Slam tournament in three years, and the first since Townsend, ranked 135th in the world, became a mother in March 2021.And she’s not done in Australia; her women’s doubles tournament starts later this week.“Taylor is a top-20 player who right now is not in the top 20,” John Williams, Townsend’s coach, said moments after she finished off Parry with her seventh ace. “If you’re that kind of player, you should do top-20 things, like she did today.”Townsend has been the best of the best before, on the junior level. But then she — and her still-developing teenage body — became an early flash point in the debate about what top athletes are supposed to look like, and how much coaches should push their own definitions of fitness on young women.In 2012, Townsend, a star of the U.S.T.A.’s then four-year-old development program, was the No. 1 junior player in the world. That January, she was the girls’ singles champion at the Australian Open. In July 2012, she won the girls’ doubles title at Wimbledon with Eugenie Bouchard of Canada.But just weeks later, as The Wall Street Journal revealed, after a loss in the first round of qualifying at a lower-tier professional event in Canada, coaches at the U.S.T.A. decided the 16-year-old Townsend needed to work on her fitness. They requested her to pull out of the national girls championships and sent her back to their training center in Boca Raton, Fla.Townsend was the girls’ singles champion of the Australian Open in 2012.Lucas Dawson/Getty ImagesThey turned her down that August when she asked for a wild-card entry into the main draw of the U.S. Open, a spot she could have earned had she won the national girls title. They refused to cover her expenses to play in the U.S. Open girls tournament. She paid her own way, made the quarterfinals of the singles tournament and won the doubles.Flash forward a decade, to last September. Townsend is standing at midcourt in Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open, accepting the runner-up trophy in the women’s doubles tournament with her partner, her fellow American Caty McNally.The master of ceremonies for the trophy presentation is Patrick McEnroe. Ten years ago, he was the general manager of the U.S.T.A.’s player development program, the guy who sent Townsend back to Boca Raton.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.“I’ve put in the work, I’ve earned my way to be here, and I think everyone sees that,” Townsend said that day, wearing a body suit without a sponsor name in sight that has become her signature outfit of choice. “And I’m going to continue to put my head down and grind, and this is going to motivate me to go even harder. So watch out for 2023.”Townsend said Tuesday that, until it was pointed out to her, she was not aware of the moment’s awkwardness, her steely stare while on the podium and the seeming chill between her and McEnroe. What she said in that trophy presentation was about making one thing clear to herself and anyone listening.“I’m coming,” she said, sitting on a couch in a lounge above a steamy Melbourne Park after her first-round win. “Everything that I’m working for, all of the goals and everything that I’m doing, is slowly aligning, and I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m coming, and you know to be ready and to be on the lookout because I know inside of myself what I can do and I know, that you don’t know the timing. I believe that things will happen.”Townsend and her doubles partner, Caty McNally, were interviewed on the court at the U.S. Open by Patrick McEnroe, who was the general manager of the U.S.T.A.’s player development program 10 years ago.Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIn a text message from Connecticut, where he is working as part of ESPN’s television coverage of the Australian Open, McEnroe said all he had ever wanted for Townsend was success at the highest level. Asked whether his perspective on the fitness issue had changed, McEnroe said:“I could not be happier to see Taylor back on the courts, and continuing to do well. I have always, and will always, continue to wish her nothing but the best on and off the court.” That, he said, has always been his perspective on the issue.Every tennis journey is unique. The sport can seem like a conveyor belt of prodigies who survive the gantlet of development programs and academies followed by years of dues-paying and ropes-learning in the hinterlands, and finally the promised land of the pro tours and the Grand Slam tournaments. Each one has its own bends and twists, setbacks and injuries.Townsend’s, though, is as different as they come. A childhood in Chicago; the pinnacle of junior tennis and the birth of her pro career as a teen in Florida, despite the body-shaming; then several years of struggling to figure out what kind of player she was during the first part of her career; a mother at 24; a stint as a television analyst during her maternity leave; a rise to the top echelon of doubles; and now a slow and steady re-emergence as a singles player. Her goal, she said, is to be better than she was before she left the sport to have her baby.She is getting closer. Last year, Townsend won two tournaments at the International Tennis Federation level, the sport’s third tier. She also made the round of 16 at the Silicon Valley Classic.Williams said Townsend has achieved “clarity” in the last year about who she is on the court. She is an all-court player with a big serve and a powerful forehand that can be especially dangerous since it comes off her left hand and punishes right-handed backhands when she fires it across the court.“The quality of her ball was hard to control,” Parry said Tuesday.As a top doubles player — she and the American Asia Muhammad are seeded 12th in Melbourne — Townsend can come forward when she needs to, as well. In every match, she wants to be the one to dictate the play.Townsend and McNally were runners-up at the U.S. Open in September.Al Bello/Getty Images“She got away from that for a little while,” said Williams, who first worked with Townsend in 2009.Townsend represented the United States at the Billie Jean King Cup last year, enjoying the full embrace of the U.S.T.A. The organization has offered her and Williams whatever resources it can provide to assist in her continuing evolution.Kathy Rinaldi, the national coach for women’s tennis at the U.S.T.A., calls or texts Townsend after all her matches. She has noticed Ola Malmqvist, the organization’s director of coaching, watching her play. Townsend said she has no hard feelings. She wanted to take control of her narrative the same way she tries to take control of matches, to make it mean what she wanted it to mean, and she did.“We’re seeing people succeed who look totally different than the normal, from all industries, from athletics, sports, entertainment, acting, everything,” she said. “The fact that I could be a part of that and to live it and just to be an example for people, that’s the biggest thing for me.” More

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    Gauff and Raducanu Deliver at the Australian Open, but Only One Advances

    Coco Gauff, 18, prevailed against Emma Raducanu, 20, in a prime-time match. “I think that we’re going to be playing each other many times in the future,” Raducanu said.MELBOURNE, Australia — Coco Gauff versus Emma Raducanu sounded like quite a tennis match for a new age. The Australian Open organizers clearly agreed and gave the youngsters top billing: 7 p.m. in Rod Laver Arena to open the night session Wednesday.“I’m glad we got the prime spot,” Gauff said. “I hope we delivered.”After a shaky, error-strewn start, their first career meeting had its moments. Above all, it had some extended, tight-to-the-baseline rallies with Raducanu throwing her body into her shots and Gauff using her speed and anticipation to chase down balls that few others could have reached.It was high-velocity entertainment, punch against counterpunch, Raducanu’s fluidity and full-cut returns versus Gauff’s more explosive movement and powerful serve.That Gauff prevailed, 6-3, 7-6 (4), was no big surprise, even if she had to save two set points in the second set. She, for now, is the more accomplished and consistent player. She is the one in the top 10, the one with multiple tour titles in singles and doubles, the one who has been competing regularly on the circuit since 2019.And yet Raducanu, despite being ranked just No. 77 at the moment, has already acquired what Gauff is chasing: a Grand Slam title. At the 2021 U.S. Open, Raducanu became the first singles qualifier to win a major in what felt more like a fairy tale than a sporting event.She did not lose a set in 10 matches in New York, becoming a global star at age 18. Gauff, who beat Venus Williams at age 15 on her way to reaching the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2019, can relate, but only to a degree.“I feel like she experienced it on a much bigger level than I did,” Gauff said of becoming a public figure. “But coming on tour young, it’s a different life from juniors, playing in small events, to all of a sudden people knowing your name, people expecting you to win all the time.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.It quickly became apparent that Raducanu was not going to win all the time, that she had somehow gotten into the zone very early and might not find her way back again for quite a while, if at all. She has yet to win another tour title or get past the second round in another major, and she has cycled through coaches and nagging injuries like the ankle she sprained badly less than two weeks before the start of the Australian Open.“We just did absolutely everything we can,” Raducanu said. “We had pretty much, like, 10 days before the tournament, and Day 1, I was on crutches and doing pool rehab. To get onto the court from there has been a massive effort.”Meanwhile, Gauff opened her season in Auckland, New Zealand, by winning the title and arrived in Melbourne with momentum.She will face another American, Bernarda Pera, in the third round Friday and is playing doubles with Jessica Pegula, who also advanced to the third round in singles on Wednesday by defeating Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus in straight sets.Though she broke through to reach her first Grand Slam singles final at the French Open last year, losing to No. 1 Iga Swiatek, Gauff finished the season on a downbeat: hitting the wall after her first full year on tour and losing all three of her matches at the WTA Finals in Fort Worth and losing again after crossing the Atlantic to Glasgow for the Billie Jean King Cup Finals team event.Her forehand, traditionally her less reliable stroke, kept breaking down under duress, and shoring it up was again a point of focus for her and her team during the off-season.Improving it and her belief in it will be critical to achieving her Grand Slam goal, and it held up well for much of the match Wednesday only to get shakier down the stretch in the second set as Raducanu targeted it repeatedly.“I’m just happy that, I guess through the work that I did in the preseason, that it’s working out,” she said. “I know it’s one of the things that I needed to work on. I feel like it’s improving every match, every week.”Emma Raducanu had two set points in the second set.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesShe certainly defended well off both wings Wednesday night, extending rallies and ultimately forcing Raducanu to go for too much.“It’s difficult,” Raducanu said. “She is a great mover, great athlete — puts another ball in play, so you feel like you have to squeeze it closer to the line and then she kind of teases errors out of you that way.”When Gauff served at 4-5 in the second set, Raducanu had command of both of the set points, dictating the patterns and terms of engagement only to miss when it came time to seal the deal.Her backhand drop shot on the second set point would have clearly been a winner if it had crossed the net, but it hit the tape and fell back on Raducanu’s side of the court. In the tiebreaker, she lost three more key points when she was the one setting the tempo.“I think 13 days ago if you would have told us, ‘Hey, you’re going to be in the draw and win a round,’ it would have been a massive effort for sure,” Raducanu said. “Saying that, I still think I didn’t necessarily play my best today. Although in the second set I had chances and we were pushing it, I still felt like I could have done better. But props to her.”Raducanu and Gauff had never even practiced together, but when it was over Wednesday, the handshake gave way to a friendly embrace at the net. They are based an ocean apart: Raducanu in Britain; Gauff in Florida. But they are both bright and personable with a growing list of sponsors and commitments.“I think that we’re going to be playing each other many times in the future as we’re both young and coming,” Raducanu said. “We’re going to be the next generation.”Both would embrace more matches against each other. The men’s game has been awash in transcendent rivalries for decades: from Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe to Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. But the women’s game has often lacked that sort of anchor, and Ashleigh Barty’s sudden retirement last March at age 25 and while ranked No. 1 will only make it more challenging to develop.Gauff, who is wise beyond her 18 years, is focusing on the long view after suffering from putting too much emphasis on the short term.“For me, last year was my first full year on tour. I think last year was her first year as well,” she said of Raducanu. “I think it’s something people need to remember and be reminded of.”She hopes people give her at 18 and Raducanu at 20 more time and room to ride the learning curve, and she acknowledged that she needed to find more joy in the process.“I feel like I’ve been on the opposite spectrum where I forget my age,” she said. “I almost put too much pressure on myself, wanting things now, now, now. I think I’ve taken a step back. I felt like I didn’t ever want to use my age as an excuse for losing or why I’m not accomplishing things. But I think it was putting too much pressure on myself.” More

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    Rafael Nadal Loses at Australian Open After Injury

    Nadal, who has won 22 Grand Slams, lost in the second round to Mackenzie McDonald, an American who has never cracked the top 40 in the world rankings.MELBOURNE, Australia — The end came all at once for Rafael Nadal, and then it happened slowly.Down one set and on the ropes against Mackenzie McDonald in the second round of the Australian Open on Wednesday, Nadal injured his hip while chasing down a shot in the eighth game of the second set. His eyes, filled with concern, immediately turned to his coaches seated courtside at Rod Laver Arena. He then crouched in the corner to catch his breath. Moments later, he returned to continue, because for Nadal, the one thing worse than losing is quitting.Knowing his day and his tournament were all but done, he watched two aces blaze by, bringing him to the brink of going down two-sets-to-love against McDonald, a 27-year-old American who has never cracked the top 40 in the world rankings. McDonald had played the match of his life for nearly two sets, then did what he needed to do to close out a 6-4, 6-4, 7-5 victory over an ailing Nadal, who hobbled around the court for nearly another hour like a wounded deer.Nadal’s injury came after McDonald, a former U.C.L.A. player, had spent more than 90 minutes pasting the lines with his shots when he needed to most. Nadal, the No. 1 seed, called for a trainer, left the court to receive medical treatment for what appeared to be an injury to his midsection, near his right hip, then returned and played on.Nadal receiving medical treatment on the court at Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday.Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesThe 36-year-old Nadal struggled to move and chase after balls with the abandon that has always been the hallmark of his game. He could barely generate power from his backhand. He somehow stayed even with McDonald through the first 10 games of the second set, hobbling around, taking wild cuts to try to end points quickly. But McDonald put just enough shots out of Nadal’s reach to break his serve in the 11th, then clinched the match when Nadal netted one last backhand return.When it was over, Nadal left to a rousing ovation, taking an extra few moments to turn and wave to the crowd.In a news conference 45 minutes later, the defending Australian Open champion said his disappointment was unimaginable, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke about suffering yet another injury in a career, despite all of its success, that has been filled with them.“I can’t say that I am not destroyed mentally this time because I would be lying,” he said.The loss was the latest in a string of defeats that have plagued him recently as he has battled injuries and a wounded psyche. He also has had to adjust to fatherhood after the birth of his first child, a son, in October.Nadal had lost six of his previous seven matches coming into the tournament, with several of those coming against a younger generation of players. Once they would have been awed playing against a nearly unbeatable opponent. Now, they walk onto the court knowing that Nadal, whose body is banged up from playing an incredibly physical style over his career, is as vulnerable as he has been at any point in his career.“He’s an incredible champion,” McDonald said of Nadal after the match. “He’s never going to give up.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.McDonald’s win was the latest in a string of successes by Americans against Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam champion. For nearly two decades, they could barely touch him, especially in Grand Slam tournaments. That changed in September at the U.S. Open, when Frances Tiafoe, 24, knocked him out in the fourth round. Tommy Paul and Taylor Fritz beat Nadal later in the fall in other tournaments, when the Spaniard was trying to return late in the season from an abdominal injury.Wednesday, it was McDonald’s turn, in a scene that was eerily reminiscent of last year’s Wimbledon quarterfinals, when Nadal tore an abdominal muscle while playing Fritz. On that day he somehow prevailed in five sets, even as his coaches and relatives urged him to quit. Those discussions didn’t materialize Wednesday. His wife, sister, father and coaches sat mostly silent, letting the match reach its inevitable end.McDonald met Nadal’s power and topspin with his own during the match.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNadal said he had felt discomfort in his hip in recent days but nothing like what he felt in that crucial moment late in the second set.“I don’t know what’s going on, if it’s muscle, if it’s joint,” he said. “I have history in the hip. I had to do treatments in the past, address a little. It was not this amount of problem. Now I feel I cannot move.”Before the injury, McDonald stood on the baseline and beat Nadal at his own game, meeting Nadal’s power and topspin with his own flatter version of it, curling forehands just above the net and sending Nadal chasing the ball from corner to corner. When Nadal hit harder, so did McDonald. He broke Nadal’s serve early in the first and second set and kept Nadal under pressure all day, then remained steady as Nadal played through the pain.The defeat marked Nadal’s earliest exit from a Grand Slam tournament since he lost in the first round of the Australian Open seven years ago.McDonald caught a break from the inclement weather that has plagued the tournament since Tuesday, drenching Melbourne with rain. The rain on Wednesday had forced the closure of the roof, which the players say slows down the pace of the ball. Throughout the match, Nadal struggled to hit through the back of the court, his ball slowing just enough to allow McDonald to catch up to it and take his best rips.Nadal has experienced all the highs and lows of the sport during the last 18 months. He missed most of the second half of 2021 because of a series of injuries, then ventured to Melbourne a year ago, just seven weeks after being on crutches. With his foot chronically injured, he thought then it might be his last opportunity to play in Australia.He quickly returned to form and won the final in Melbourne after being two sets down against Daniil Medvedev of Russia. For the first time in 13 years, he was the Australian Open champion.At the French Open, he received injections to numb the pain in his foot before every match. Nevertheless, he rolled to his 14th title at that tournament, but left on crutches.For Nadal, the loss was the latest in a string of defeats that have plagued him recently as he has battled injuries and a wounded psyche.Loren Elliott/ReutersHe entered Wimbledon, his first official match on grass in three years, without playing a warm-up tournament. He won all five matches he played but had to withdraw before the semifinals because of the torn abdominal.He played just one hardcourt match before the U.S. Open and lost to Tiafoe in four sets in the fourth round. Tiafoe was the first American-born player to beat Nadal at a Grand Slam in nearly two decades.In late September, Nadal partnered with Roger Federer in the Swiss champion’s final competitive match. Nadal tried to get healthy for two late-season indoor tournaments, neither of which went well.Nadal arrived in Australia in December to play for Spain in the inaugural United Cup, a rare competition with both men and women. He lost both of his matches, extending one of the roughest stretches of his career.At other moments of disappointment, Nadal has been able to appear philosophical, expressing thanks for the good fortune of his life. Wednesday was different, he said, as he struggled to do that.“Can’t come here and say, lying, that the life is fantastic and staying positive and keep fighting,” he said. “Not now. Tomorrow starts another day. Now it’s a tough moment. It’s a tough day, and you need to accept that, and keep going. You know, in the end, I can’t complain about my life at all. So just in terms of sports and in terms of injuries and tough moments, I mean, that’s another one. Just can’t say that I am not destroyed mentally at this time.”Nadal will likely take a break to get healthy again, then, if he can, turn his focus to the spring clay-court season and the French Open. It is a tournament he has won 14 times, and he calls it the most special of his career.“I like playing tennis,” he said. “I know it’s not forever. I like to feel myself competitive. I like to fight for the things that I have been fighting for almost half of my life or even more.All that success will mean nothing, though, if Nadal can’t maintain his health, something that only gets harder as athletes age.Ultimately, that may be the one opponent that proves too tough, even for Nadal, but if there is any chance of delaying the inevitable a little longer, he will take it, regardless of the sacrifice.“When you like do one thing,” he said. “Sacrifices always make sense. More

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    Caroline Garcia Has Been Rethinking Her Approaches to Tennis and Eating

    Garcia is one of the world’s top players and poised to rise in the rankings. She started her season by publicly discussing her troubles with binge eating.MELBOURNE, Australia — The 2022 women’s tennis season was, on balance, Iga Swiatek’s campaign, but the finish belonged to another thoughtful star, one who likes to rip her groundstrokes at work and read in her spare time.Caroline Garcia, an acrobatic French polyglot, found her bliss last year: solving a chronic foot condition, addressing mental-health issues and committing to playing an all-out attacking style that not only made her feel complete and eager to compete but also paid off handsomely.In August, she became the first qualifier to win a WTA 1000 event, prevailing at the Western & Southern Open in Mason, Ohio. In September, she reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open, and in November she capped the season by winning the elite WTA Finals in Fort Worth.It was her best season but also, behind the scenes, a trying season. When Garcia took a solo vacation to Bali, Indonesia, she felt the desire to share some details in a long, open letter on Instagram to her followers. “I’ve had sleepless nights, binge eating, cried in my hotel room, cried on tennis courts, been on crutches, swore, relearned to walk,” she wrote. She continued: “But I also learned from every moment, every difficulty.”When she returned to France, Garcia gave an interview to the sports publication L’Équipe in which she spoke openly about her struggles in recent years with her eating disorder and melancholy on the circuit.“I found refuge in food. These were moments of crisis. You feel so empty, so sad, that you need to fill yourself up. It was the distress of not being able to do what I wanted to on court, to no longer win and to suffer physically,” Garcia said. “Eating gave me peace for a few minutes. We all know it does not last, but it was an escape. It was uncontrollable.”Garcia feels better now, as she made clear upon arrival in Melbourne for the Australian Open to chase the next goal on her list: a first Grand Slam singles title.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Missing Stars: Carlos Alcaraz, Naomi Osaka and Nick Kyrgios have all pulled out of the tournament. Alcaraz’s withdrawal means that the Australian Open will be without the men’s No. 1 singles player.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Holger Rune’s Rise: Last year, the 19-year-old broke into the top 10, but not without some unwanted attention. We spoke to the young Dane ahead of his second Australian Open.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.But she said she was surprised by the impact of her comments, not realizing that her new status as a top-five player would generate more interest in them.“I didn’t think it would be reported so widely,” she said last week, adding: “I felt comfortable to say it, but it’s true that after I saw so many things written about it, I felt a bit less comfortable than I had at the beginning.”The atmosphere and dialogue are indeed changing in elite sports, especially in pro tennis with stars like Naomi Osaka opening up about their psychological struggles and the emotional rigors of the tour. “Break Point,” the new fly-on-the-wall documentary series from Netflix, focuses heavily on the mental rigors of the sport, through leading players like Nick Kyrgios and Paula Badosa. “So much happens behind the scenes,” Garcia said. “So much more than people know.”Garcia said on Tuesday, after her convincing 6-3, 6-0 first-round victory over the Canadian qualifier Katherine Sebov, that Netflix had recently contacted her team to explore the idea of her taking part in the series.She remains undecided. “You have to weigh the pros and cons,” she said. “Because the process is rather intrusive, the way they film, and if you are not at ease with that, it serves no purpose to do it.”But Garcia, despite her uneasiness over the reach of her comments about eating, does think it has been helpful to share her story, not necessarily with the general public but with those close to her. She said her condition is bulimia, which often involves forced vomiting after a binge. Garcia said she did not vomit but took other extreme measures associated with bulimia, like fasting to avoid putting on weight after a binge.“I had accepted it and learned to cope with it,” she said. “My close people and my family and my team were totally aware. That’s the most important thing. You don’t necessarily need for the whole world to know to live with it well.”Alizé Cornet, a veteran French player and friend of Garcia’s, said she was unaware of Garcia’s troubles but said that many players go through “some form of depression” while on tour.“I feel like it’s almost obligatory process: to be able to bounce back and to know oneself and to get some distance from things,” Cornet said on Tuesday. She added: “I’m sad for her that she had to go through that, but when I see how she’s grown, it was perhaps something that was useful after all.”Garcia, 29, was pegged early for tennis greatness when the British player Andy Murray watched her win a set against the Russian star Maria Sharapova at the 2011 French Open and tweeted that Garcia was “going to be number one in the world one day.”Though Garcia has surged to No. 4 on two separate occasions (2018 and 2022), fixating on numbers and results played a role in her malaise. The nomadic life on tour made it easier to feel isolated and seek solace in food.“When you are alone, it’s harder to control,” she told L’Équipe. “And in tennis, we spend quite a bit of time alone in our room.”She added: “Sometimes it’s simply fatigue that makes your body crave sugar. Sometimes it’s unexplainable. I needed to fill myself up to compensate for the defeats and the suffering.”Garcia had a losing singles record in the 18 months before her run as a qualifier in Ohio, but she is flying as high as her signature airborne victory celebration now, despite the unexpected split with her coach Bertrand Perret in October, shortly before the WTA Finals.On her Instagram account, Garcia posted 10 photographs that, for her, encapsulated her 2022 season. One of the pictures was a close-up of her in tears that was taken in Mexico shortly after Perret’s decision to quit.“This photo was one of those numerous moments of doubt and sadness,” Garcia told L’Équipe. “There were others, but I did not take pictures of them.”Garcia is ranked No. 4 this week behind No. 1 Swiatek, No. 2 Ons Jabeur and No. 3 Jessica Pegula.For now, Swiatek’s position at the top remains formidable. Swiatek, who won eight singles titles in 2022, has more than double the points of Jabeur. But Garcia could close the gap as she has few ranking points to defend until August.Her main tennis goal is elsewhere, however. No Frenchwoman has won a major singles title since Marion Bartoli won Wimbledon surprisingly in 2013.At this stage, a Garcia victory in Melbourne would hardly be a shock, even if her ultra-aggressive, net-rushing style can certainly leave her more vulnerable to errors than others. She said she realizes that her bold, flashy game does not match her personality off the court. Despite her ranking, she said she was surprised to be scheduled on Rod Laver Arena, the Australian Open’s main court, on Tuesday. “Maybe it’s modesty,” she acknowledged. “But I didn’t expect it.”Her next center-court challenge on Thursday: a tricky second-round match with Leylah Fernandez, the plucky counterpunching Canadian who made the 2021 U.S. Open women’s singles final as a teenager.Cornet, beaten by Fernandez on Monday, likes Garcia’s chances on Wednesday and beyond.“It’s coming together, the pieces of the puzzle are in place,” Cornet said. “She’s 29 and mature and has gone through challenges and knows why she is here. She enjoys her time on the court more, and we can sense she’s a lot happier since last year. The stars are aligned. All she has to do is go chase that Grand Slam.” More