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    French Open: Hsieh Su-Wei Is a Dominant Force in Doubles

    She has won seven majors, including the French Open twice.When Hsieh Su-Wei walked on the court to play doubles at the Miami Open in March with her partner, Elise Mertens, she wasn’t burdened by a cumbersome tennis bag holding half a dozen rackets, an assortment of snacks and multiple changes of clothes and shoes.Despite being No. 1 in the world in doubles, Hsieh, 38, wore an outfit that she bought off the rack and that bore none of the logos associated with lucrative sponsorship deals that many of her colleagues on the WTA Tour have. Until recently, Hsieh had no manager, requiring her to sell herself to sponsors. Her efforts so far have been unsuccessful.“It’s not an easy job dealing with the sponsorship when the people are not sure if they are going to have you or not,” said Hsieh, who typically competes with just two rackets, which she said was no problem since she had never broken one and could not remember the last time she even popped a string. “I don’t want to waste the time to do it. I just want to focus on my tennis.”Hsieh has never been consumed by the trappings of her sport, preferring to travel her own circuitous path. An accomplished singles player, she ranked a career high No. 23 in 2013 but has never gone beyond the quarterfinals at a major. She first ascended to No. 1 in doubles in 2014, winning Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014, both with Peng Shuai. She won her second Wimbledon in 2019 with Barbora Strycova and her third with Mertens two years later.Hsieh and her partner, Barbora Strycova, celebrating after winning the final of the women’s doubles at Wimbledon last year. Strycova retired after last year’s U.S. Open. Hsieh will partner with Elise Mertens at this year’s French Open.Alastair Grant/Associated PressAfter leaving the tour for nearly 18 months at the end of 2021 to heal a nagging muscle strain in her leg that had her contemplating retirement, Hsieh returned in April of last year and has now won three of the last four majors, each with a different partner. At last year’s French Open, she paired with Wang Xinyu, who is nearly 16 years her junior, to win the championship. Hsieh then captured Wimbledon with Strycova.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Zendaya, Luca Guadagnino, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist on ‘Challengers’

    Can trash talk be a love language?It is in the world of Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Challengers,” which pits two best-friend tennis players, Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), against each other in a bid to win the heart of the superstar Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). What begins as innocent teasing becomes more charged once an injury cuts short Tashi’s career: Forced to pivot to coaching, she weds Art and goads him to demolish her former lover Patrick on the court, though both men continue to nurse their own hidden agendas.“I find them all really likable and charming — and terrible also,” Zendaya said with a grin. The complicated adult stakes of “Challengers” offer a new pursuit for this 27-year-old actress, who shot to fame as a teenager on the Disney Channel and is now best known for her Emmy-winning role on HBO’s “Euphoria” and the big-budget movie franchises “Spider-Man” and “Dune.” Though she is aware that “Challengers” will test her box-office draw as a solo star, she didn’t overthink her decision to make the movie, which comes out in theaters on Friday.“I wanted to do it because it’s brilliant,” she said. “It’s not like I sat in my room and had this master board: ‘OK, this is how I’m going to make my big transition for my first lead theatrical role.’”Last week at a Beverly Hills hotel, I met Zendaya, her co-stars O’Connor (“The Crown”) and Faist (“West Side Story”), and Guadagnino for an hour of freewheeling conversation about “Challengers” and the pressure of forging a life and career in the public eye. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.“The triangle is not just two people after one,” Luca Guadagnino, the director of “Challengers,” said, “but the corners touch together all the time.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThis movie poses a lot of questions about ambition and drive. Zendaya, has your relationship to your own ambition changed over time?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Here Comes Padel, the Newest Racket Sport Taking Up Game Courts

    I first learned about padel last summer, when my partner sent me a photo from a small court during a visit to Germany.What is that? I wondered.“Padel. A childish version of tennis,” he texted, anticipating my question.As an enthusiastic tennis player, I was not very interested.A few months later, while biking in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I noticed a large building with a sign that read “Padel Haus,” which billed itself as the first padel club in New York City. This sport wanted my attention, so I invited Victor Mather, a veteran sports reporter, to join me for a lesson.Victor was willing to try. “I am a reasonably fit guy,” he said. But he was turning 60, he said, and added: “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, I haven’t played tennis since prep school, and I have never played squash or racquetball.”I was just happy to be on a court with a racket in hand because it isn’t easy to book a tennis court in the city.Here’s what we learned.First, what is padel?Padel is a racket sport that has been growing in popularity in parts of the United States and other countries. Christian Rodriguez for The New York Times

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:nth-child(4){grid-column:2;grid-row:3 / 5;}.css-5h54w2 > :nth-child(5){grid-column:2;grid-row:5 / 7;-webkit-align-self:end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:end;}.css-rrq38y{margin:1rem auto;max-width:945px;}.css-1wsofa1{margin-top:10px;color:var(–color-content-quaternary,#727272);font-family:nyt-imperial,georgia,’times new roman’,times,Songti TC,simsun,serif;font-weight:400;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:1.125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1wsofa1{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;}}@media (max-width:600px){.css-1wsofa1{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}Martin Sweeney, the president of the U.S.P.A. said that “Padel is very much in its infancy in the U.S.A. in comparison to most, certainly Europe and South America.”

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    Australian Open: Ben Shelton, the American With the Blinding Serve, Returns

    He made a splash at last year’s event, reaching the quarterfinals, and went on to have a breakout season.It all started with a simple text message that, if Bryan Shelton’s memory serves him, went something like this:“That coulda got really interesting,” wrote his then-20-year-old son, Ben, moments after he won a fifth-set tiebreaker against Zhizhen Zhang at last year’s Australian Open, clinching that first-round match.Had it not been for that win, in a match that began in the morning and ended at night under the lights, during which Shelton survived a heat postponement, a rain delay and a match point, he might never have had the breakout season that he had last year.“Not sure I remember it that way, because it did get kind of interesting,” said Shelton by phone shortly after he and his father traveled to Brisbane, Australia, from their Florida home in late December to begin the 2024 season with a pre-Australian Open warm-up tournament. Shelton did, however, recall the unreturnable serve he hit at 4-5, 30-40 down in the fifth set.Shelton left last year’s Australian Open, his first trip abroad, as a quarterfinalist after succumbing to his friend and fellow American Tommy Paul. By season’s end, Shelton had reached the semifinals at the United States Open alongside the world’s top three players — Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev — and cracked the ATP’s top 15. The young American had begun 2023, his first full year on tour, ranked barely inside the top 100.Shelton is still very much a work in progress. Despite a serve that topped out at 149 m.p.h. at last year’s U.S. Open, he struggled trying to adapt to clay and grass courts. It is something that he and his father, who left as head coach at the University of Florida last spring to coach his son full time, have worked on diligently during the off-season.“The biggest thing for him is movement,” said Bryan Shelton, a tour player mostly in the 1990s. “It’s efficiency, being more balanced. The men’s game today is all about the serve and return and creating opportunities to come forward, which Ben can do.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    The Notable Comebacks at the Australian Open

    After extended layoffs, Naomi Osaka, Angelique Kerber and others are back on the court.A comeback provides no guarantee of success, but few sports provide more comebacks than professional tennis.They are arriving wave after wave, particularly in the women’s game, where returning to action after maternity has become more common.After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki came back last season, the trend is continuing in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, both former No. 1 players and multiple major champions.Both are new mothers who have been out of the game for more than a year and both will be in the draw as the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, which Kerber won in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    For the WTA and ATP, 2024 Could Be a Year of Formative Change in Tennis

    Tennis is trying to reposition itself by altering tournaments and spreading more money around.Steve Simon was feeling optimistic.Despite a 2023 season that ended with an avalanche of grumbling following the WTA Finals in Cancún, Mexico, which featured bad weather, a potentially dangerous center court and unrelenting complaints from the players, Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the women’s tour, was doing everything he could to move forward into 2024.“The WTA is very fine,” Simon said by video call in mid-December, just after it was announced that the WTA will soon separate the roles of chairman and chief executive, with Simon becoming executive chairman. He no longer will be in charge of day-to-day operations and instead will be tasked with, as he said, “working on strategic geopolitical issues, which are now very prevalent and affecting our business in many different ways.”There are formative changes coming to the WTA and ATP this year. The ATP has put into place its OneVision strategic plan designed to align the interests of players and tournaments with an eye toward enhancing the fan experience while also creating more lucrative media contracts.Part of the plan involves increasing the duration and draw size at several ATP tournaments. Madrid, Rome and Shanghai all went from one-week, 56-player-draw events to 12-day, 96-draw tournaments in 2023. Canada and Cincinnati will do the same in 2025. Indian Wells and Miami are already staged that way.All are Masters 1000 tournaments, the highest level in terms of prize money and ranking points other than the four majors — the Australian, French, and United States Opens and Wimbledon. Several of the tournaments are combined men’s and women’s events. Other tournaments, like ones in Dallas, Munich and Doha, Qatar, are increasing in value while still others, including Atlanta and Newport, R.I., are falling off the calendar after this year.Daniil Medvedev after winning the Qatar Open in Doha last year. The tournament is one of several ATP events increasing in value this year.Mohamed Farag/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    In Tennis, Bookends of Drama in 2023

    The year was full of unlikely winners and exciting team competitions.There was no champagne courtside. So, as Matteo Berrettini embraced Jannik Sinner after Sinner’s victory over Alex de Minaur last month to clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years, their teammate, Matteo Arnaldi, did the next best thing: He shook a water bottle and poured it over Sinner and Berrettini.Sinner, 22, ended the season with his 20th win in his last 23 matches. This year, he had a 64-15 record, won four tournaments, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up at the ATP Finals in Turin, Italy. He had wins over the three top-ranked players — Novak Djokovic, whom he beat twice in two weeks, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev. Starting 2023 at No. 15, he ended it at No. 4.Djokovic sorely wanted to lead Serbia to just its second Davis Cup title. But in the semifinals, he fell to Sinner after squandering three match points and then teamed with Miomir Kecmanovic to lose the deciding doubles match to Sinner and Lorenzo Sonego. The loss sent Italy into the final, where it beat Australia.Jannik Sinner helped clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years this year. He also had a 64-15 record and won four tournaments.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic was devastated by the defeat.“For me, personally, it’s a huge disappointment because I take the responsibility, obviously having three match points, being so close to win it,” he said after the match. “When you lose for your country, you know, the bitter feeling is even greater.”It is ironic that the season began and ended with exciting conclusions at the men’s and women’s team competitions. The Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup have been under siege in recent years as many of the game’s top players, including Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, shunned the historically heart-thumping, pride-producing finals because of scheduling conflicts. The U.S. women lost early in the finals, and the U.S. men didn’t even qualify as one of the top eight teams.Still, despite the player defections and a merry-go-round of format changes, both competitions provided some of the most striking moments of the year.Leylah Fernandez’s five wins helped lead Canada to its first-ever Billie Jean King Cup.Raul Caro/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah Fernandez rode a wave of patriotic passion, winning five matches to lead Canada to its first Billie Jean King Cup. Her teammate, then-18-year-old Marina Stakusic, who had never won a WTA Tour match, became an overnight star when she won three matches against opponents ranked in the top 70.If 2022 was billed as the season of King Carlos when Alcaraz went from No. 32 to No. 1 on the strength of his U.S. Open championship, then this season mostly belonged to Djokovic.He is considered by many in the game as the greatest player ever. The statistics prove it.At 36, Djokovic had one of the best seasons of his career. For the third time since 2015, he reached the finals at all four majors, falling just shy of attaining the Grand Slam.In January, a year after being removed from Australia because of his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, Djokovic returned to Melbourne Park and captured a record 10th Australian Open title by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final. With the 14-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal injured for most of the season, Djokovic won his third French Open in June by beating Alcaraz and Casper Ruud.After falling to Alcaraz in a scintillating five-set Wimbledon final, Djokovic bounced back and beat Medvedev at the U.S. Open to earn his 24th major, surpassing Serena Williams. He is now just one win away from breaking the men’s and women’s major record held by Margaret Court for 50 years.Djokovic captured his record 10th Australian Open by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesIn all, Djokovic played just 12 tournaments in 2023 and he won seven of them. He did not lose from mid-July until mid-November, when he fell to Sinner during the round-robin portion of the ATP Finals. He then beat Sinner in the final after assuring the year-end No. 1 ranking for a record-extending eighth time.Alcaraz, who won six titles in 2023 on three different surfaces and reached the semifinals at the French and U.S. Opens, in addition to his Wimbledon win, ended the year ranked No. 2. But he was candid after he lost to Djokovic in the semifinals in Turin.“I am not at his level on an indoor court,” Alcaraz, 20, said in November. “He has shown why he is the best player in the world. I have to practice more to be a better player.”With his 66 wins, Medvedev led the ATP in match victories. He won 19 straight, and reached the finals at Indian Wells and the Miami Open, which he won. He also won at Rome and reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up to Djokovic at the U.S. Open. He ended the year ranked No. 3.Two upstart players — the Americans Ben Shelton and Chris Eubanks — used their wide grins and whopping forehands to envelop the sport in a giant bear hug. Shelton, about two years away from leading the University of Florida to an N.C.A.A. championship, reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open. He then reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open before falling to Djokovic. Eubanks, another former collegian, upset Cameron Norrie and Tsitsipas to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.There was no shortage of compelling story lines among the women. Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka spent the season battling for tour supremacy.Sabalenka, only a year removed from serving woes so severe that she resorted to serving underhand during matches, won her first major at the Australian Open, a day she called the “best of my life.” She grabbed the No. 1 ranking after reaching the U.S. Open final.“It was amazing to see Sabalenka, who was basically laughed off that same court a year earlier, confront those demons and take responsibility,” Lindsay Davenport, three-time major winner and former No. 1, said by telephone last month.Swiatek took her third French Open and won six titles. But she faltered at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open before regrouping by the WTA Finals, snatching the year-end No. 1 from Sabalenka by beating her and Pegula to take the title. Pegula, for her part, was one of just two players, along with No. 4 Elena Rybakina, to notch multiple wins over Swiatek this season.Marketa Vondrousova, who endured long stretches away from the game because of two wrist surgeries, became the first unseeded women’s Wimbledon winner when she beat Ons Jabeur in the final.Coco Gauff, 19, beat Aryna Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBut it was Gauff and her wise-beyond-her-years attitude who transcended the sport in a way that only Williams has done. When Gauff, 19, beat Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open, the nontennis world, including the former first lady Michelle Obama, went wild. In her acceptance speech, Gauff, who had struggled early in the season, addressed her doubters.“Thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” Gauff said. “To those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you were really adding gas to it.”It was the kind of bold statement that left even former major winners stunned. One of them was Davenport, who admitted to having tears run down her face while she did match commentary on television.“To me, the story of the year was Coco,” Davenport said. “Players come along once in a generation. When you have all the expectations on you at 12 and 15 years old and you are able to handle everything and then elevate your game to win, then you really are truly something special.” More

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    Novak Djokovic Enters ATP Finals as Top Seed

    He had his breakout year in 2008 and now, at age 36, is still ranked No. 1.For Novak Djokovic, his 2008 season, just a few years after he turned pro, was great by any measure. It was his breakout year.He not only won his first of six ATP Finals, but he began 2008 taking the Australian Open, the first of his 10 titles there and what would become 24 major championships overall.In the semifinals he upset the top seed, Roger Federer, and beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the final. Djokovic also reached the semifinals at the French Open, where he fell to Rafael Nadal, and the United States Open, where he lost to Federer, also in the semifinals. Djokovic was just 21 at the time.By season’s end, Djokovic had won two other tournaments, including Masters 1000s in Indian Wells and Rome. That year solidified Djokovic as a bona fide member of what was to become known as the Big Three, alongside Federer and Nadal.“He played like a beast,” Nikolay Davydenko, who lost to Djokovic, 6-1, 7-5, in the 2008 final in Shanghai, said by email last month. “He’s a good runner, had good control and the best concentration on the tour. I had no chance.”Now, 15 years later, Djokovic, 36, is still leading the sport and enters the Finals as the top seed. This year has once again been one of his best. For the fourth time in his career he won three of the four majors and heads into the ATP Finals with a 51-5 record. Last Sunday, he captured his seventh Paris Masters championship and 40th career Masters 1000 title with a straight-sets win over Grigor Dimitrov.Djokovic beat the American Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in September. He won three of the four majors in 2023 for the fourth time in his career.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe ATP Finals begin Sunday at the Pala Alpitour in Turin, Italy, where Djokovic will try to win the event for a record seventh time. His chief competition is the second seed, Carlos Alcaraz, who spoiled Djokovic’s chance to become the third man to attain the Grand Slam when Alcaraz beat him in the final at Wimbledon in July.But Alcaraz has not won a tournament since the summer and was forced to pull out of an ATP event in Basel, Switzerland, last month because of foot and lower-back problems. He was then upset in his opening match at the Paris Masters by the qualifier Roman Safiullin.The six other singles players in the round-robin competition are Daniil Medvedev, Jannik Sinner, Andrey Rublev, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev and Holger Rune. Djokovic is the defending champion, having beaten Casper Ruud in the final in 2022.“I obviously had a fantastic year so far,” Djokovic said just before the start of the Paris Masters last month. “I couldn’t ask for a better season. One match away from winning all four Slams is something I would sign [up] right away at the beginning of the season if someone told me that would be the case.”Djokovic in his Wimbledon final match against Carlos Alcaraz in July. Alcaraz won, spoiling Djokovic’s chance to become the third man to attain the Grand Slam.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic enters the ATP Finals as the all-time leader in weeks ranked No. 1 with 398. He could reach a milestone 400 weeks the day after the event ends. He has ended the year at No. 1 seven times, one more than Pete Sampras, who did it from 1993-98. All he has to do is win one round-robin match at the Finals to become this year’s No. 1, ahead of Alcaraz.In three of the six years that Djokovic has won the ATP Finals he ended the year top ranked. The only time his year-end No. 1 ranking came down to the championship match at the ATP Finals was in 2016, when he lost to Andy Murray, who took the year-end No. 1.These days, Djokovic stays motivated by the majors and by retaining his ranking. Stan Wawrinka, who has played Djokovic almost 30 times, knows the vagaries of competing against Djokovic at the year-end championships.“For me, it was something special to play Novak in the world tour finals,” Wawrinka said from the Paris Masters. “Playing him indoors, when he’s really focused and motivated, was always a big challenge. His game is amazing on all surfaces, but I would say indoors, that’s where he’s at his best.” More