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      What Happened to Novak Djokovic’s Mission to Transform Pro Tennis?

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      The Professional Tennis Players Association had a flashy introduction last summer, but it has done little else. The players who created the sport’s original unions have some advice.Nine months ago, a group of tennis players started an organization aimed at giving them more say in how their sport operates and divides the roughly $2 billion the game generates annually. A group of former players who brought tennis into the modern era of sports commerce have been watching their work.But since Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, gathered with the others at the United States Open for a unity photograph to introduce the Professional Tennis Players Association in 2020, it has been unclear what, if anything, has been accomplished.“I don’t think they realize how much work is involved,” said Billie Jean King, one of nine players who set up the women’s tour in 1973. “It’s tedious. It’s every day. It’s meetings. We’d have meetings at 4 a.m. after we finished playing.”The new association wants to represent the top 500 singles players and the top 200 in doubles, doing everything it can to make sure those players can make a viable living. It is a significant goal. For now, only about the top 100 players do.But Djokovic has played just three tournaments since winning the Australian Open in February. Vasek Pospisil of Canada, the world’s 64th-ranked player and Djokovic’s fellow leader in the effort, is skipping the clay-court swing in Europe. He does not plan to be back on the tour until grass-court play begins in mid-June.In terms of activism, ahead of the Australian Open, Djokovic wrote a letter to tournament organizers demanding better treatment for players who were forced into a hard lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic.Pospisil had a midmatch temper tantrum at the Miami Open in March, breaking into a curse-laden tirade at the chair umpire about a confrontational meeting the previous night with the chairman of the men’s tour, Andrea Gaudenzi.There is the occasional thread on Twitter complaining about the state of the game followed by the #playersvoice hashtag. About that, King and her cohorts from the game’s last major labor movement have this to say — tweeting is not organizing.There certainly has been nothing planned along the lines of the 1973 boycott of Wimbledon, when more than 80 top players, including the defending champion, Stan Smith, left in an effort to gain the right to choose which events they played.“If the players were unified and were willing to take risks and suffer losses they could control the sport,” said Donald Dell, who played elite-level tennis in the 1960s, then became an agent and helped create the original Association of Tennis Professionals in the 1970s. “But are they willing to take the risk?”Representatives for Djokovic did not respond to requests for comment. Reached late last month in Canada, where he is nursing a back injury, Pospisil said: “We’re building out the foundation. We’re hopeful by the end of summer we’ll have an exciting launch.”Vasek Pospisil serving at the Australian Open back in February.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesPospisil declined to provide specifics about his sources of funding, who was involved, or how the association intended to achieve its goals to avoid giving ammunition to the leaders of the International Tennis Federation or the men’s and women’s pro tours, who do not want to share power with yet another entity. Then he cut short the interview and declined requests for another.Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have not signed on, choosing instead to support the ATP tour, which jointly represents players and tournament owners. The women’s tour, the WTA, has a similar structure.Djokovic and Pospisil were late to approach women about joining the organization. They say they want to include women, but it’s not clear how many women have signed on to their effort.Tennis ranks just behind soccer in popularity in many countries, especially in Europe. Add up all the people who work for the tours, the Grand Slams, tournaments large and small, and the media companies affiliated with tennis, and there are thousands who are earning a decent living off the sport. But players ranked outside the top 100 struggle to break even.Djokovic and Pospisil have their work cut out for them. Tennis may be the hardest sport in the world to organize. Players come from dozens of countries and play in scores of events across the globe over an 11-month season. The players come together en masse only four times a year, at the Grand Slams. During those events, top players like Djokovic are usually too focused on trying to win to distract themselves with politics. They rent private homes and arrive with coaches, hitting partners, massage therapists, agents and managers and do not socialize much with average players.Also, there is a natural schism between the best players, who know they are the stars of the tour and believe they should be paid as such, and the journeymen, who want more money to cover the costs of sustaining their careers in hopes of a sudden rise, like the one Aslan Karatsev, 27, of Russia has pulled off. He was ranked 114th in the world in January and is now in the top 25.Cliff Drysdale, the former player and tennis commentator who was the first president of the ATP, said he needed to find one cause that every player could unite around.For King, who organized the women’s tour, the cause was equal treatment with the men. Drysdale found his unifying cause in June 1973, when Wimbledon barred Nikola Pilic of Yugoslavia from playing because his country’s tennis federation had suspended him. The federation punished Pilic for playing in a tournament where he could make money instead of representing his country in the Davis Cup. Nearly every top player left.“It was about freedom from the control of national associations,” Drysdale said. “There wasn’t a player who didn’t agree with that.”Once the leaders of tennis saw that players were willing to walk away from the game’s crown jewel, players got their freedom and, eventually, a 50 percent say in the operation of the sport.Nikola Pilic (far left), outside the High Court in London with (left to right) tennis players Cliff Drysdale, Arthur Ashe and Jack Kramer in June 1973. They were awaiting a judgement on an application by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) for an injunction seeking to lift the ban placed on Pilic by the International Tennis Federation.Leonard Burt/Central Press, via Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesStill, most tournaments do not share their financial information with the players, who have no idea what share of the sport’s overall revenues they receive and struggle to formulate an argument for what they are entitled to. King owned tournaments when she was still playing, giving her a valuable education in the tennis business and the ability to negotiate as an equal.Executives acknowledge that the players’ share is not close to the roughly 50 percent that athletes in most North American team sports receive, even if the free hotels, air travel and meals the players receive are included in the calculation, but tennis players are far more independent.Pospisil says the system fails to give players their fair share, and his goals are fairly simple: a bigger role for players on major decisions and the opportunity for more lower-ranked players, both men and women, to earn a better living.Players broadly support the first goal, but the second one is more divisive and is likely to require the grind of old-school labor campaigning. Players in the top 20 fear they will have to give up money so players ranked from No. 80 through 300 can earn more. Also, plenty of male players historically have not been keen on joining forces to lift the less lucrative women’s game, fearing it might somehow cost them.“The men always feel like they will have to give something up if they join with the women,” King said. “But the tournaments with both genders are the most valuable.”Charlie Pasarell, another former player and founding member of the ATP said a new organization to represent players might even be a step backward.“They say they want more money and a bigger cut,” said Pasarell, who owned and operated a tournament in Southern California after his playing career. “Well, they are at a table right now where they can negotiate that. Let’s figure out a formula.” More

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      Coco Gauff Wins Two Titles in One Day

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      A rare double championship made for a great day on clay. It also was a good sign for Gauff a week before the French Open.It had been a year and a half since Coco Gauff won a tennis title. On Saturday, she won two in only a few hours.Gauff, the 17-year-old from Delray Beach, Fla., secured the singles title first, defeating Wang Qiang, 6-1, 6-3, with a poised and powerful performance at the WTA Tour’s Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma, Italy.After a trophy ceremony and a short rest, Gauff returned to center court with her doubles partner, Caty McNally, and won that title, too, rebounding from a slow start to defeat Darija Jurak and Andreja Klepac, 6-3, 6-2.“Two titles in one day — not bad,” Gauff said as she thanked her father and coach, Corey, and the rest of her team. Her victories came just over a week before the start of the French Open in Paris.The education of Gauff as a tennis player continues, and she has been a star student on Europe’s red clay so far this spring. After defeating Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka earlier this month to reach the semifinals of the Italian Open in Rome, Gauff traveled north to Parma to play in a new WTA 250 event where Serena Williams, a late wild-card entry, was the main attraction.But Williams, 39, lost to Katerina Siniakova in the second round, and showed that she was still struggling to find her fitness and her form. Gauff, meanwhile, won five straight matches to collect her second WTA singles title.The first came indoors in Linz, Austria, in October 2019, when she was still 15 and won a tough three-set final against Jelena Ostapenko.“I feel like in Linz I was really nervous closing the match, and I hadn’t been in that moment before,” she said when asked to compare her emotions after each victory. “Linz was definitely more a sigh of relief, because I think I was up in that third set and lost a couple of games before I was able to close it out. Whereas here, I said I was just going to go for it and trust myself and trust my decisions, and that’s why I felt like here it felt more like it was meant to be and not relief.”Gauff will be ranked 25th on Monday, a new career high. That guarantees her a seeding for the first time in a Grand Slam tournament when the French Open begins on May 30.“I feel really good about going into the French, and I hope I can continue to build and get better,” said Gauff, who beat McNally to win the French Open girls’ championship in 2018. “I have a week and a day to get ready. I feel like I’m hitting good, moving good. My body feels good, my mentality. Emotionally I feel good, so I think it will be a good tournament for me.”Gauff did not have to deal with the WTA elite this week in Parma. She faced no players ranked in the world’s top 30, and no former major champions. Her highest-ranked opponent was No. 40 Amanda Anisimova, a powerful but erratic American whom Gauff defeated, 6-3, 6-3, in the quarterfinals before beating Siniakova in three sets and China’s Wang in a hurry.Wang, 29, had thrived in long rallies throughout the week, defeating Petra Martic and Sloane Stephens in tight matches. But she struggled from the start to control the flow of play against the fast and consistent Gauff.“She’s a very good player now, and she can be a really great player,” Wang said.That remains the consensus on Gauff. She became a star in a hurry by reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon, her first Grand Slam tournament, in 2019. But she has not rocketed quickly to the very top like the former prodigies Monica Seles and Martina Hingis.The pandemic has certainly been a factor. Gauff did not play a tournament for more than six months in 2020, and she then lost in the first round of the United States Open and the second round of the rescheduled French Open when she did return.Though her two-handed backhand and her court coverage remain her strengths, her serve and her forehand have been question marks. She has shored up the forehand and has been increasingly effective pouncing on short balls and hitting winners with that stroke. But double faults have been a recurring issue. Last month, she had 13 in a straight-sets loss to Ons Jabeur in the quarterfinals of an event in Charleston, S.C., and 12 more in a three-set defeat to Karolina Pliskova in the first round of the Mutua Madrid Open.Those are big, disquieting numbers. The serving yips can be daunting to overcome, particularly in tight matches with Grand Slam titles on the line. But Gauff, with less at stake, served well through the pressure in Rome and Parma.Against Wang, she hit six double faults, but none came at critical junctures, and she did not lose a game on her serve.“That feels good,” she said. “The serve is something I’ve been working on a lot, and I can still improve on it.”Pat Cash, the former Wimbledon champion who is coaching Wang, agreed that Gauff’s serve needed work — “Sometimes she gets a bit too much spin on it,” he said — but after sitting courtside in Parma on Saturday, he said he liked her chances of playing well in Paris.“I don’t think she’s going to be that far off at the French,” Cash said. “I think Coco can get frustrated with the ball coming back time and time again. She over-hits at times, and that’s what we were hoping she would do today. We were hoping to frustrate her, but she hit God knows how many lines, baselines and sidelines, with power.“I was very impressed with her speed, and she’s a strong girl. She was a pretty skinny little thing a couple years ago, but she’s very strong on the stretch. That’s where it really counts.”Cash continued: “When she is pushed wide, instead of just floating the ball back, she can get some heat on it, and that’s crucial. A lot of the girls are not strong enough to do that. I was very impressed how Coco ran down a lot of balls and got them back with speed and depth. It’s like Rafa. He’s in trouble, and all the sudden he’s out of trouble.”For a player, any day someone draws a comparison to Nadal on clay is a good day. So is any day that you leave a tournament with two champion’s trophies after a long wait. More

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      Indian Wells Tennis Tournament Will Return This Year

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      The BNP Paribas Open, one of the sport’s most prestigious events, is to be staged in October, about seven months later than usual. The 2020 version was canceled because of the pandemic.The BNP Paribas Open, which was the first major American sports event to be canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, announced its comeback on Thursday.The prestigious tennis tournament, staged annually in Indian Wells, Calif., was not held in 2020 and was postponed this year from its regular dates in March.But after extensive negotiations with professional tennis’s numerous stakeholders, the event will be held in October. The precise dates have not been determined because the men’s and women’s tours are not set to finalize their late-season calendars until June. But Tommy Haas, a former player who directs the tournament, said the BNP Paribas Open would be staged with full prize money. The figures for this year aren’t set, but the 2020 prize money was supposed to be $1.36 million for each singles champion.Many tennis events have reduced prize money during the pandemic because of the loss of ticket and sponsorship revenue. The Miami Open, which was held in March after being canceled in 2020, slashed its compensation. Singles champions earned $1.35 million in 2019 but just $300,000 in 2021. The drastic cuts prompted complaints from John Isner, the 2018 men’s winner, and other players about the transparency of the decision-making process.But Haas said the BNP Paribas Open was committed to maintaining prize money at its customary levels.“I think that’s something the players are going to be really, really happy about,” Haas said in a videoconference call on Thursday. “That’s how it should be. They’ve gone through obviously some hard times. Their schedule has been sort of upside down with travel restrictions and trying to be in one bubble after another. I’m hoping that things will be a little easier come October playing for the prize money that we think they deserve.”The BNP Paribas Open, owned by the American billionaire Larry Ellison, is particularly popular with players because of its desert location, extensive facilities and relaxed atmosphere. It has become the most significant tennis event outside the four Grand Slam tournaments and the season-ending championships for the ATP and the WTA.“As a German-American citizen, I’m going to call it my own little Oktoberfest this year, which is going to be great, especially since Munich already had to cancel,” said Haas, referring to the annual German festival that will not be staged this year.The 2020 BNP Paribas Open was canceled just ahead of the qualifying tournament in March after a coronavirus case was detected in the area and Riverside County, Calif., public health officials declared a state of emergency. Many players, including the Spanish star Rafael Nadal, were already on site. The decision came so swiftly that many players and officials found out through social media.“As soon as we canceled, we went to work the next day to see how we were going to bring this back,” said Philippe Dore, the tournament’s media and marketing director. “I think we’re on our Version 25 of budgets and different scenarios.”More than 450,000 spectators attended the event in 2019, and Haas said he hoped to have a large number of fans again in October. California has been loosening pandemic-related restrictions in certain counties and is aiming to fully reopen its economy next month. Tickets for the BNP Paribas Open are tentatively scheduled to go on sale June 21.“We’re going to follow all the guidelines,” Haas said. “Safety is obviously the highest concern. It comes first, and we want to make sure everyone is very, very comfortable.” More

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      Roger Federer Takes an Uncertain Step in His Comeback

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      Losing in his first match since March 11 to the 75th-ranked Pablo Andújar, Federer appeared fit but rusty. Most troubling was the fact that he admitted to lacking confidence.The last time Roger Federer played in Geneva, 80,000 fans cheered him on at work over three days, filling the Palexpo Arena to the brim as he led Team Europe to victory in the Laver Cup.That was in September 2019.On Tuesday, only 100 fans were in attendance at the cozy Tennis Club de Genève as Federer faced off against Pablo Andújar.So much is different now as the world and the tennis tour continue to grapple with the pandemic, and as Federer, 39, is coming off his latest long layoff.This was his first match since March 11 and only his second tournament since February 2020. The rust showed at times, with mis-hits and missed first serves under duress, but Federer also flicked a fabulous forehand passing shot to break serve and zipped through his service games for much of the second and third sets.Until Tuesday Andújar, a 35-year-old Spanish veteran, had never faced Federer, but with the match on the line, he was the more precise and reliable player. Andújar swept the last four games on the red clay to win, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, in the round of 16 at the Geneva Open.“He deserved it because he was more stable than me,” Federer said.At the start and down the stretch, Federer was too often on the defensive, too often reactive instead of proactive.“Roger looked healthy, fit, and moved fine for his first match on clay,” said Darren Cahill, the veteran coach and ESPN analyst. “He just looked very rusty against a guy who knows his way around a clay court really well.”Andújar also knows as much about comebacks as Federer does at this stage. Andújar has worked his way back from multiple elbow surgeries, just as Federer, once remarkably injury-free, has had to work his way back from three knee surgeries — the first in 2016 and two more in 2020.He came back in 2017 to win three more majors and regain the No. 1 ranking, but another renaissance is far from guaranteed.“I think this is way different from four years ago, and 35 is way different than closing in on 40,” said Paul Annacone, Federer’s former coach.Federer has endured long enough to see his most prestigious records matched or broken. During his layoff from February 2020 to March 2021, Rafael Nadal equaled him by winning a 20th Grand Slam singles title, and Novak Djokovic surpassed him by holding the No. 1 spot for a 311th week.Federer has also endured long enough to see new talent emerge in his homeland. Dominic Stricker, a Swiss 18-year-old who won the French Open junior title last year, made his ATP Tour debut on Tuesday in Geneva and upset Marin Cilic, the 2014 United States Open champion.Federer, who has trained with and mentored Stricker in Dubai, could not follow Stricker’s lead, even though Andújar is ranked 75th in the world, had not beaten a top-10 player in six years and had lost in the first round in four of his last five tournaments.Federer, ranked eighth, had Andújar on the ropes and let him escape, playing a shaky service game at 4-3 in the third and then dropping his serve again at 4-5 after saving two match points.Federer said after the match that he had lacked confidence in his ability to close out a win.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe fourth point of the final game was telling. He hit a strong, high-kicking serve that earned a short return. The court was wide open, but Federer slapped a tight, midcourt forehand into the net, and later he missed two more whipping forehands off deep shots on the final two points.“I started really hitting through my shots for a while, but at the same time I told myself that it was going to be difficult to keep that up for two sets,” Federer said. “And that’s down to a lack of confidence. I couldn’t say to myself, ‘Yes, you’re going to close out this match.’”Even for all-time greats, confidence is essential and ephemeral. Federer looked slightly apologetic as he shook hands and exchanged post-match pleasantries with Andújar. He had not expected to be in top form this week, but he had hoped to play more than one match on home clay. Only 100 spectators were allowed on site, but a few more than that were watching in person. Some Swiss fans had managed to sneak into the woods next to the club.But this was not vintage Federer they were watching through the trees, and for all his tennis genius, it is no sure thing that a vintage Federer will reappear.What is clear is that the French Open, which begins on the red clay in Paris on May 30, is not his main goal. The big target is Wimbledon, which begins on June 28 at the All England Club, the grassy tennis temple where he has won eight titles and where he held two match points in the 2019 final before losing to Novak Djokovic.“I think Paris is going to be really challenging for him,” Annacone said. “But if the body sustains itself and maintains good health and he gets enough reps, Roger’s not going to go into the grass season not thinking he can win Wimbledon. He’ll say all the right stuff, but in his heart of hearts, he knows he can win that tournament. But the less dominant you are, the more that aura of invincibility starts to dissipate just a tad, and it only needs to dissipate a tad to make a difference. The locker room antenna is up.”It is not up just for Federer. Tuesday was a tough day on clay all around for 39-year-old tennis legends. Serena Williams, returning to action this month after not playing since February, struggled in Parma, Italy, at the same time Federer was struggling in Geneva.Williams lost, 7-6 (4), 6-2, in the second round to the 68th-ranked Katerina Siniakova, double-faulting at key moments and dropping 16 of the last 18 points.It was striking to see two of the planet’s main attractions performing in such small venues: Think Bruce Springsteen or Lady Gaga playing your local bar. But Federer and Williams, so often in sync, are serious about working their way back one more time against the odds and the ticking clock.“The expectations for both of them are so rough,” Annacone said. “As soon as there’s a loss, there are all these sweeping conclusions. They are at the peril of their own brand, so to speak. They can definitely still be great, but I’ll be interested to see if they can stay great for a whole match, a whole tournament.” More

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      Serena Williams Loses First Match at Italian Open

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      Her 1,000th career singles match, against Nadia Podoroska at the Italian Open, was a frustrating reminder of what is left to accomplish, and how hard it will be.Serena Williams has come a historically long way since she made her WTA Tour debut at age 14. She has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles and 50 other tour titles; occupied the No. 1 ranking for 319 weeks; and become one of the cultural touchstones of her time and one of the greatest athletes of any time.There is, at this advanced stage, much to celebrate in her singular journey. But her 1,000th career singles match, played on Wednesday on a breezy afternoon at the Italian Open, was an often-frustrating reminder of just how far she has to go to resume winning the game’s biggest prizes, against the odds, at age 39.Seeded and ranked eighth, Williams has turned into a part-time tennis pro. She makes intermittent appearances on the circuit while her younger rivals continue to grind away and improve day by day and round by round, even in the midst of a pandemic.Wednesday’s loss in Rome against Nadia Podoroska was Williams’s first match in nearly three months. Her desire has not dimmed, as her shrieks, grunts and clenched fists made clear. But her power to intimidate has diminished, and though Podoroska had never faced Williams, she stared down the challenge to win, 7-6 (6), 7-5, in the round of 32.“It’s an honor to play against her,” Podoroska said. “I saw her playing since I was a child.”She missed Williams’s first match on tour, however. Podoroska, an unseeded 24-year-old Argentine, was not yet born when Williams played in the qualifying tournament in Quebec City, Canada, on Oct. 28, 1995, losing to another American teenager, Annie Miller.Miller won, 6-1, 6-1, in less than an hour.“I didn’t play like I meant to play,” Williams said then.More than 25 years later, the same sentiment surfaced in Rome, one of Williams’s favorite cities. Her signature shot — her fearsome first serve — failed her repeatedly. She put only 48 percent of her first serves in play, forcing the issue under pressure and casting increasingly exasperated looks at her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, and her husband, Alexis Ohanian, in the nearly empty stands on center court.Even when Williams did make a first serve, she won just 62 percent of the points — an ominously low figure for her and a tribute to Podoroska’s solid returns and remarkable defensive skills on clay.“It was definitely kind of good to go the distance and try to be out there, but clearly I can do legions better,” Williams said.Podoroska grew up playing on clay in Argentina, and it showed as she slid expertly into groundstrokes and changed direction quickly. She understands how to construct points on clay, and her kick serve and heavy topspin forehand are well suited to the game’s grittiest surface, as she proved last year with a surprise run to the semifinals at the French Open.“Of course, that helps me,” Podoroska said of that breakthrough. “I feel a lot of confidence playing on clay courts.”But Williams, in her prime, overwhelmed many a clay-court specialist, breaching defenses with full-cut forehands off short returns and juicy second serves. She could not get the timing or formula quite right on Wednesday, even if Podoroska dropped hints that she might not be ready to beat the best women’s player of the 21st century.Podoroska served for the first set at 5-4 and was broken. She then lost a 6-3 lead in the tiebreaker as Williams saved three set points, but at 6-6, Williams steered an edgy, off-balance forehand just wide down the line. Podoroska closed out the set with a good serve and a forehand winner.In the second set, Podoroska served for the match at 5-3 and was broken at love, making three unforced errors. Williams then held at love to 5-5. Those who have followed her know what this sort of scenario typically means: a ferocious fight back to a three-set victory.Podoroska, right, grew up playing on clay, and it showed against Williams.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesBut these are different days. Podoroska won a great scrambling point with a backhand reflex volley and went on to hold serve. With Williams serving to stay in the match, Podoroska hit a bold and precise forehand inside-out winner from deep to go up by 0-30. Williams lost the next two points with glaring errors: an ill-judged low forehand swing volley and a tentative forehand unforced error.How often has Williams been broken at love in the final game of a match?Answer: Not often.“I’ve been training for months, but it feels different on clay to make that last adjustment,” she said. “Finding the rhythm, even sliding and confidence with that, with movement, and just not wanting to break my ankle when I moved. That’s always like a little struggle in the first two matches, and then I’m raring to go.”The trouble is, she played only one match in Rome. A bigger problem is that there are so many hungry young players full of talent and dreams who no longer wilt in the face of Williams’s power and presence.She last competed in February, losing to a 23-year-old Naomi Osaka in a semifinal of the Australian Open, another match in which Williams’s first-serve percentage dipped precipitously.She had expected to play more on hardcourts in March. But the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., was postponed, and she withdrew from the Miami Open, citing unplanned dental surgery.“Maybe I do need a few more matches,” Williams said. “I’m going to try and figure that out with my team and my coach and see what we would like to do.”Her next move is probably accepting a wild card into the WTA event in Parma, Italy, next week, which would give her more competition before the French Open, which begins May 30 in Paris. For now, she has played just three tournaments in the past eight months.That might have been enough at one stage, given the gap between Williams and the field. But the gap is gone, and a busier tennis schedule is essential if she is truly committed to playing (and winning) into her 40s. It took her less than two years to get from 800 career singles matches to 900. It took nearly five years to get from 900 to 1,000.Her 851-149 career record remains a work of art, but nothing in sports is eternal, even in Rome, the Eternal City. More

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      Roger Federer on His New Gig: Swiss Tourism Spokesman

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      In his new role, the tennis champion and avowed chocolate lover, shares favorite places to hike, play tennis and eat in his home country.Roger Federer, the Swiss 20-time Grand Slam champion, recently became an unpaid spokesman for Switzerland Tourism. In a Zoom call from his home in Switzerland’s Graubünden canton, he explained why travelers should visit his country when it reopens.Mr. Federer has had plenty of time to rediscover his own backyard during the pandemic, and reflect on how much his country means to him while he recovered from knee injury. (He will return to the ATP Tour in Geneva later this month.) During a 30-minute interview, he held court on his favorite hiking trails, some under-the-radar Swiss getaways and his love of Swiss chocolate, among other topics.The following interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.Many tennis players live in Monte Carlo for the tax benefits, but you’ve stayed in Switzerland. And now you’re promoting Swiss tourism. Why?It’s good timing for me to do this now. I feel like I’ve always represented Switzerland and I’ve done my fair share to be an ambassador for the country. But for me to do it in an official mission is a nice thing to do. I feel like I had to be a bit older to do this, At around 40 years old, I’ve been to maybe 60 countries. I live in Switzerland now and I will continue to live in Switzerland.I know tourism here very well; I know the restaurants and hotels here very well. And I know how everyone is hurting right now. It’s a good time for me to be able to step up to the plate and help the country as we’re hopefully going to open again soon.On Switzerland’s tourism website, you’ve outlined some of your favorite hiking trails. Tell us about a few of those and also where you like to cycle.I’ve been told there’s something like 65,000 kilometers of cycling trails in Switzerland. Hiking and cycling are the go-to things for everyone to do in Switzerland. Some of the most spectacular hiking trails I like are by Gstaad in the Bernese Alps. It’s not so brutally up and down, it’s more of an even slope, which is great for hiking.The same goes for Appenzell, which is a very nice place that is not so famous. It’s also where I always went hiking when I was a boy. When I was hurt in 2016, I spent a lot of time on the hiking trails in Gräubunden, where I live now. We have the Swiss National Park over there — that whole area is incredible for hiking. Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland has some amazing places, little valleys and canyons and such.One of my goals when I retire is that I’ll have time to explore our mountain bike trails. Mountain biking has become really big in Switzerland, because we want to make the mountain regions year-round destinations.Can you give us a few off-the-beaten-path recommendations?We Swiss people go to the less famous places, just like Americans would in your country. But even we Swiss like to visit the classics, like the Chapel Bridge in Lucerne, the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen, the Rhine, the Old Town of Bern. You can base yourself in one of the cities and take nice day trips into the mountains from almost anywhere. Even in Zurich or Geneva, you drive 20, 30 minutes max and you are in the countryside. That’s the beauty of Switzerland.It’s also interesting because we have four separate languages here in Switzerland, which makes very different cultures. I’m from Basel and I have a Basel accent, but if you drive a half-hour away from there, the accent changes and the people are a bit different, too. I think the trails in Ticino are not as well known and they are very beautiful.I love to walk through small villages where life is still normal. Small places where people are driving tractors and there is one baker, one church. The people in these places aren’t multitasking. They go about their days in a normal way. Someone shows up and they want to know, “Hey, what brought you here?” It’s very friendly, so you can always have a chat with people.Tell us about some of the Swiss tennis clubs where visitors can have a great meal and play some tennis.Tennis club life in Switzerland is important. This is how I grew up. There are many scenic places where you can play tennis in Switzerland. Tennis Club Geneva, where the Geneva Open tournament is played is very beautiful. Tennis Club de Genève Eaux-Vives is also really nice. The clubs in Basel where I played growing up in the Interclub competition are quite nice.There was a boom building tennis clubs when I was growing up, so every second village has its own club. We have to protect this tennis culture we have. The restaurants at the tennis clubs are very important. A lot of the clubs where I’ve played, they have really good chefs, really good service and very high quality. People spent a lot of their time at the clubs, so the food has to be good and it’s usually at a good price, too.When you come back to Switzerland from abroad, what are the Swiss dishes or treats you crave? And if that includes chocolate, are you more of a milk chocolate guy or a dark chocolate guy?I mean, chocolate, hello, you have to love chocolate if you’re Swiss. I used to be white, then I was milk, and now I even like going dark. I like it all. Then I like the Bündner Nusstorte, which is like a nut tart from the region of Graubünden. That’s beautiful. And then, of course, there’s rösti, a potato fritter dish. We have a dish called Zürcher Geschnetzeltes that’s like minced meat with a mushroom sauce, and I love to eat cordon bleu — that’s beautiful, too.Play the role of travel agent for us. Where should we go if we have a week or two in your country?Fly into Zurich or Geneva and go from there. In the summer, I think you would want to visit Lucerne and Interlaken and maybe visit the Jungfrau, Basel, Zurich, Bern, the capital — its inner city is also really beautiful. We also have some incredible museums in Switzerland. The Fondation Beyeler art museum is great. I grew up visiting the Tinguely Museum, which is very interesting.In Lucerne, there is the Swiss Museum of Transport, which is still my favorite place to take my children. It’s a wonderful place where you can see old trams, trains, planes, cars, bikes, you name it.Of course, we also have a huge festival culture in Switzerland. There’s fasnacht, a Lenten carnival in Basel, in March, and we have all these jazz and film festivals. The summer music festivals in Switzerland are incredible, actually, though I don’t think they’ll happen this year. The Montreaux Jazz Festival is maybe the most famous, but there are many smaller ones as well. There’s one in Lucerne, there’s one in the Alps as well. The atmosphere here in the summer when everyone can be outside is amazing.Dave Seminara is the author of “Footsteps of Federer: A Fan’s Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 Acts.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      French Open Is Delayed a Week

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      The tournament will begin May 30, about two weeks after France is expected to ease its current national lockdown.The French Open has been postponed by one week and will be played from May 30 to June 13, the second year in a row it has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.France, which has faced a third wave of coronavirus infections, on Saturday entered a new nationwide lockdown that could last for more than a month. Nonessential shops and schools have been shut, and the authorities have maintained a nighttime curfew that has been in place for months.Organizers said on Thursday that they hoped the new dates would allow spectators to attend in a safe way and give the public health situation more time to improve. The lockdown is expected to lift in mid-May, giving tournament officials about two weeks to prepare for the Grand Slam event.“Every week is important and can make a difference,” the French Open organizers said in a statement.The two-week tournament in Paris, one of the sport’s four Grand Slam events, was supposed to begin on May 23 and run through June 6. It will now start on May 30 and finish on June 13, only two weeks before the start on June 28 of Wimbledon, which will not be delayed.The president of the French tennis federation, Gilles Moretton, also suggested fans would be able to attend the event. The delay, Moretton said, “will give the health situation more time to improve and should optimize our chances of welcoming spectators at Roland Garros.”“For the fans, the players and the atmosphere,” he added, “the presence of spectators is vital for our tournament.”The plan — an agreement with both government officials and international tennis leaders — means that for a second consecutive year the competition will not take place as scheduled. And while Wimbledon will keep to its schedule, the change in France probably will cause some shuffling of the series of grass-court tournaments that precede it.Last spring, organizers shifted the start of the French Open to late September, believing that the pandemic that ravaged western Europe in the first months of 2020 would recede over the summer. The move, made with little consultation with organizers of other tennis events, caught the sport off guard.It also ultimately helped cause several top European players, including the former world No. 1 Rafael Nadal, to skip the United States Open, which took place in early September. Players had little time to recover from a Grand Slam event played on a hardcourt and prepare for one on clay. The move paid off for Nadal, who won a record 13th French Open men’s singles title in October. Organizers limited crowds to just 1,000 spectators each day.For months, as infection rates in France have remained stubbornly high and as the European Union has struggled to distribute coronavirus vaccines, organizers of the French Open have been studying situations for once again holding the signature event in front of smaller crowds. Last week, however, President Emmanuel Macron of France enacted a third national lockdown as the rate of coronavirus infections continued to escalate, imperiling the tournament.Afterward, Gilles Moretton, the president of the French Tennis Federation, said if France’s citizens were still under restrictions next month the organization might have to consider canceling the event.“If we are told a general confinement for two months, we will necessarily have to take measures — at worst, complete cancellation, but I dare not imagine that,” Moretton told Agence France-Presse.Before the new lockdown, Macron had tried to keep France open, hoping that increasing vaccinations would help slow the spread of the virus. Instead, with the country’s death toll from Covid-19 approaching 100,000, he closed all but the most essential businesses, limited citizens to a six-mile radius from their homes, prohibited travel between regions and set a curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Professional sports are still allowed to take place, but without spectators.Rafael Nadal won his record 13th French Open men’s singles title in 2020. The tournament was played in the fall instead of its traditional spring dates.Julien De Rosa/EPA, via ShutterstockMacron has said he hopes to reopen the country by mid-May, which would leave mere days for organizers to prepare for the arrival of hundreds of players from dozens of countries, though many of them would presumably be coming from Italy after having played the Italian Open.Touring tennis players have been living for months in a series of bubblelike settings that each tournament has created with the goal of keeping players and the local populace from transmitting the virus.At the year’s first Grand Slam event, in Australia, which has all but eliminated community spread of the virus, organizers forced players arriving from overseas into a limited quarantine for two weeks before they could mix with the rest of the population, and dozens of them ended up in a hard two-week quarantine, after multiple people tested positive upon arrival.The restrictions have begun to wear on players, who are unable to travel with their usual support teams and family members and must limit their movements to their hotels and the tennis venues.“I understand the reasons for it, but from a physical and mental health perspective I don’t know if it is sustainable,” Danielle Collins, a top American player, said last week after her exit from the Miami Open. “It can be very challenging.” More

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      With Biggest Stars Absent, Miami Open Serves Up Some Chaos

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      Top men’s seeds and Naomi Osaka fell earlier than expected, but there was some normalcy: Ashleigh Barty won in women’s singles, successfully defending her title.MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — So what exactly happened at the Miami Open over the past two weeks?Other than the top-seeded Ashleigh Barty walking away with the women’s singles title, something like tennis chaos unfolded at the only significant tournament in North America until August.Where to begin? Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam event winner, lost a match for the first time in more than a year, and on a hardcourt, a surface it seemed she might never lose on again. After the men’s Big Three — Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic — skipped this tournament, Jannik Sinner of Italy and Hubert Hurkacz of Poland, close friends and doubles partners, dueled in their first ATP Masters 1000 final. Hurkacz blew past Sinner, a player experts have tapped to be an eventual No. 1, 7-6 (4), 6-4.Barty and Bianca Andreescu, who won Grand Slam events in 2019 but barely played in 2020, gave notice they were just about fully back as they met for the first time in the women’s singles final. A 20-year-old with top-class tennis DNA named Sebastian Korda, the son of the former world No. 2 Petr Korda, made the final eight and was the last remaining American.The top two men’s seeds, Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas, lost in the quarterfinals. Alexander Zverev, the No. 3 seed, lost in the second round after having a bye in the first. Andrey Rublev was the only player in the top 10 of the ATP Tour rankings to make the semifinals, where he lost to Hurkacz in straight sets.Simona Halep, the No. 3 women’s seed, and Sofia Kenin, the No. 4 seed, each won just a single match, and Maria Sakkari, the No. 23 seed, served a bagel to Osaka in the first set of her 6-0, 6-4 quarterfinal win.In short, Miami provided a glimpse of a tennis future that does not include Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Serena Williams, who withdrew from the event after oral surgery: a sport of surprise and entropy.“Everyone can win now,” Rublev said after his quarterfinal win over Korda. “It’s not about ranking.”Rublev was talking about the tournament’s final rounds, but he could have meant the sport. Djokovic and Nadal are still nearly indomitable at big events, but when they skip one, all bets are off. (Federer, 39, has played just one tournament since his two knee operations last year.)Bernard Tomic of Australia said earlier this year that there was not much difference between a player ranked 60 and one ranked 250. It sounded strange, but now seems prescient.Aslan Karatsev, a Russian qualifier, made the semifinals of the Australian Open. Juan Manuel and Francisco Cerundolo, two brothers from Argentina who are ranked outside the top 100, made the finals of tournaments in South America, with Juan Manuel winning a title. Lorenzo Musetti, 19, an Italian ranked 94th, knocked off two players in the top 16 at the Mexican Open.Musetti, though, is only the second-best 19-year-old Italian at the moment: Sinner, the son of a cook and waitress and a surprise semifinalist at the French Open last year, is staking his claim as one of the brightest young players in the game.“He has everything,” Roberto Bautista Agut, the veteran from Spain, said of Sinner after losing to him in three sets in the semifinals. “Big serve. Tall. Moves well. Very good groundstrokes. Mentally great, and he’s improving.”Sinner is 6 feet 2 inches with long arms and legs that make him seem taller, and he has that priceless ability to pivot from defense to offense from nearly anywhere on the court and when his opponent least expects it. On three occasions against Bautista Agut, it looked like Sinner was about to wither, especially when he was down a set and three break points at 3-3 in the second set. Instead, he knotted the game with two winners, including a risky, floating crosscourt backhand that nicked the outside of the line.“Every match has a story,” Sinner said after that win. Later, he said, “Sometimes a few points can decide a match.”Ashleigh Barty, above, played Bianca Andreescu for the first time on Saturday, and beat her in the Miami Open final when Andreescu retired in the second set.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressThe Miami Open was an opportunity to show on a big stage what tennis could eventually look like.“I knew when Novak, Rafa, Roger and Dominic Thiem said they were not going to play, some of the younger guys would have a chance to play really deep,” said Hurkacz, 24, a lanky, pigeon-toed big server who has won two tournaments this year.Hurkacz, who often trains in Florida, was seeded 26th here, but he beat players seeded second, fourth, sixth and 12th in five days. He came back from a set and a service break down to Tsitsipas on a brutally hot day in the quarterfinal; outslugged Rublev in a gutsy performance, on a cool night in the semifinal; then knocked off the game’s latest boy wonder on a bright and breezy Easter afternoon.Sinner served for the first set at 6-5, but Hurkacz broke him at love. Then a series of errors allowed Hurkacz to cruise through the tiebreaker. Hurkacz frustrated Sinner with a serve that kept kicking up above his eyes, and two early service breaks in the second set made the final result come fast.Before the match, Sinner had begged off anointing himself the next big thing in tennis, cautioning that a good 10 days in Miami guaranteed nothing. “The road is long,” he said. “I know that. My team knows that.”Barty, 24, and Andreescu, 20, also know that. The two young Grand Slam champions had never played head-to-head before Saturday’s final, though the showdown proved an anticlimax. Andreescu, who struggled to find her rhythm against Barty’s relentless groundstrokes, appeared to roll her foot and ankle while down, 2-0, in the second set and defaulted two games later, giving Barty her second consecutive Miami Open title, 6-3, 4-0.Barty, the world No. 1 from Australia, opted not to play when tennis returned last August, because of her country’s strict quarantine requirements for anyone returning home during the pandemic. She played little tennis in 2020 from March until October, when she began to prepare for the Australian summer of tennis. She kept her top ranking only because of a pandemic rule change that allowed players to maintain their points from 2019.She won a tuneup for the Australian Open, but lost in the quarterfinals of the Grand Slam event and in the first round of a tournament the next week. Barty has gained confidence. In Miami, she barely used the slices she tends to hit when she loses her edge. She does not plan to return to Australia until the fall so she can avoid the country’s mandatory two-week lockdown for international arrivals.“I knew eventually I would find it,” Barty said of her form and the patience with which she approached her return to the game. “I knew it might not be in the third week or the 10th week or the 20th week.”Andreescu, a Canadian, caught the injury bug shortly after winning the 2019 United States Open. It kept her from last year’s summer and fall events. In Australia, she showed flashes of her shotmaking prowess but was too inconsistent to play deep into events. In Miami, she prevailed in four three-set matches to make the final, surviving a third-set tiebreaker in the semifinal against Sakkari that finished past midnight. Then came another injury, a final twist in this strange tournament.She tried to play through the pain, but eventually gave in to her trainer, Abdul Sillah, who urged her from courtside not to risk further damage. “Abdul basically saved me from myself,” said Andreescu, who crouched and cried when she knew the end had come.With the Miami tournament over, the tours are planning to shift to the clay- and grass-court seasons in Europe, but events there are shrouded in uncertainty. Italy and France are in various stages of lockdowns as the European Union struggles to distribute the coronavirus vaccines. While organizers say the tournaments, the Italian Open and the French Open, which is the next Grand Slam event of the year, remain on track, it’s not clear whether government officials will allow them to take place.While Nadal and Djokovic will no doubt quickly attempt to restore order, Federer has yet to say how much clay-court tennis he will play. His focus, he has said, is being healthy for Wimbledon.Osaka, the winner of two of the last three Grand Slam events, has never won a tournament on those surfaces, leaving the door open for any number of her competitors to catch up to her.“I have more freedom on the clay and grass because I am still learning a lot,” Osaka said last week.In other words, expect more chaos. More