Tennis

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Elina Svitolina Of Ukraine One Match Away From Wimbledon Final

      by

      Svitolina, a new mother who has said she is playing to give strength to her people back home in Ukraine, is one match away from an improbable and inspiring spot in the Wimbledon final.It is time to consider whether having a child, and spending a year away from the sport to raise money to help her compatriots back home in Ukraine, have made Elina Svitolina an even better tennis player.She says they have, and there is no reason not to believe her.Svitolina’s improbable run at Wimbledon rolled on in grand fashion on Tuesday. Two days after Svitolina, a new mother who needed a wild card to get into the tournament, beat the former world No. 1 Victoria Azarenka of Belarus in an emotional and dramatic triumph, Svitolina beat the current world No. 1, Iga Swiatek.Svitolina, playing with pluck, steeliness and a higher purpose, matched the hard-hitting Swiatek shot for shot, and then some, on the most hallowed court in the sport, sending joy through a crowd that had been with her since her first shot of a tournament that she had thought would be over for her by now.When the match was over, Svitolina put a hand over her face, hugged Swiatek from across the net and then raised two arms to the crowd in a shrug of disbelief.“I don’t know what is happening right now,” Svitolina told them moments later.Some things are hard to explain.Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine 18 months ago, Svitolina announced that she was taking a break from professional tennis because she was pregnant with her first child with her husband, Gaël Monfils, the veteran tour pro and tennis showman from France.Tennis was barely a priority then anyway. Her pregnancy was at the top of the list, and so was raising money for war relief efforts in her homeland. Her foundation has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars since the start of the war.In October, she and Monfils announced the birth of their daughter, Skai. Not long afterward, Svitolina began training and practicing for her return to the WTA Tour, in March at the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells.Svitolina, right, beat the current world No. 1, Iga Swiatek, at Wimbledon on Tuesday.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesIt didn’t go well at first, as she lost six of her first seven matches, but Svitolina — a graceful and deceptively powerful player who had been ranked as high as third in the world as recently as 2019 — slowly started to regain her feel for the ball and for the competition.And she made it clear, especially during the French Open in Paris, that tennis was no longer about money or ranking points. It was about trying to bring some joy to the people of Ukraine.She did plenty of that as she surged into the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. Still, she had made it past the second round there just twice in eight tries and had not competed on grass since 2021 until last month. Her hopes were so low that she bought tickets to a Harry Styles concert last week, assuming she would be free.She wasn’t, and after her win over Swiatek on Tuesday, she said she did not think she was going to take the pop star up on his offer to invite her to a concert anytime soon.“It was very sweet from him,” she said of Styles’s offer. “Hopefully one day I can go.”It will have to wait at least until after her semifinal match on Thursday against Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, who beat Jessica Pegula of the United States in three sets. A win over Vondrousova might very well set up a showdown in the finals with a player from Belarus (Aryna Sabalenka) or with Elena Rybakina, the defending champion, who grew up in Russia but represents Kazakhstan. Sabalenka and Rybakina play their quarterfinal matches Wednesday and are heavy favorites.That is down the road, though, and would surely bring tension similar to that in Svitolina’s fourth-round win over Azarenka. Players from Russia and Belarus were prohibited from playing in the tournament last year, and while they have been mostly warmly received, Svitolina and the other players from Ukraine have refused to shake hands with players from those countries.Azarenka was booed off the court — unfairly so, Svitolina said — after Svitolina had beaten her Sunday, even though Azarenka gave Svitolina a thumbs-up after the final point. Last year, Azarenka offered to play in a charity fund-raiser to benefit war relief efforts, though players from Ukraine told her not to. But the boos still rained down.Svitolina announced that she was taking a break from professional tennis in 2022 because she was pregnant with her first child with her husband, Gaël Monfils.Pool photo by Daniel ColeSwiatek, who is from Poland and is a staunch critic of the invasion, has done more than any player not from Ukraine to help war relief efforts.But there was no shortage of healthy tension in Tuesday’s match. Swiatek, a four-time Grand Slam tournament champion, appeared to be in control early and even served for the first set at 5-4. She then missed on a series of tentative and wild forehands and first serves. Svitolina kept making her shots on tight wires, clearing the net by mere inches, time and again for the rest of the afternoon.She won 16 of the final 18 points in the first set. As the roof closed with rain on the way, a panicked Swiatek headed to the corner of the court, begging her team for answers.“I felt like I’m making pretty much the same mistakes,” Swiatek said. “I wanted some tip, what they think I should actually focus on. Sometimes when something is not working, it’s hard to find a reason because there are maybe a few reasons.”The biggest reason of all was Svitolina, who said later that she had been playing with a different sort of inspiration. She had spent parts of the last two days watching videos of her child in Ukraine watching her matches on a phone. She knows what her victories mean and where they fit in the grand scheme of things.All of that has a power.“War made me stronger and also made me mentally stronger,” she said. “I don’t take difficult situations as like a disaster, you know? There are worse things in life. I’m just more calmer.”Have no doubt: She desperately wants to win, but her experience of the pressure has changed.“I look at the things a bit differently,” she said.After she walked off the court, she placed a call over FaceTime to Monfils, who — along with her mother and his — is taking care of their daughter at one of their homes. She said Skai hadn’t talked to her much. She was distracted by a serving of ice cream.Can she win this tournament and the biggest prize of all?She insisted, as she had after the Azarenka match, that she wasn’t meant to go this far. She isn’t letting her husband come, because he has not been here yet, and she is not messing with her routine now. Who needs him anyway, when she has another purpose and another power, especially against those opponents from Russia and Belarus?“Each time I play against them, it’s big motivation, big responsibility,” she said. “Right now it’s very, very far. It seems very close, but it’s very far from this.” More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Tennis

      Jessica Pegula Draws Inspiration From Her Mother’s Healing. It’s Mutual.

      by

      For more than a year, Kim Pegula has been recovering from cardiac arrest. Her daughter Jessica’s climb in the tennis rankings reflects the strength the two find in each other.It was already Tuesday in Sydney, Australia, but Jessica Pegula was watching “Monday Night Football” on her phone on Jan. 3 as she waited to go onto the court at the United Cup. Suddenly, she felt the same sickening fear many football fans had that day, but perhaps with more resonance.On her small device, she witnessed Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, collapsing on the turf and saw the frantic moments as paramedics attempted to revive him and bundled him into an ambulance after his heart stopped beating.She knew how critical each one of those seconds was for Hamlin, who eventually made a remarkable recovery. Her mother, Kim Pegula, who is the president and an owner of the Bills, along with her husband, Terry Pegula, went into cardiac arrest in her sleep a little over a year ago. Kim Pegula’s recovery has been a slow, difficult process, made more challenging by the loss of oxygen when it happened.Jessica Pegula was so shaken that she considered not playing in the United Cup, but she eventually did. Days later, at the Australian Open, she wore a No. 3 patch on her outfit to honor Hamlin. Coincidentally, No. 3 was her singles ranking at the time, an astonishing achievement considering everything she had been through in the previous six months.The family sat vigil at Kim Pegula’s hospital bedside for days last June. Jessica left to play at Wimbledon with a jumble of emotions but also with the knowledge that it was what her mother wanted. Riddled with worry, worn down from the previous weeks and saddled with a sinus infection, she lost in the third round.At the Australian Open, Pegula wore a No. 3 patch in honor of Damar Hamlin, a Buffalo Bills football player who went into cardiac arrest during a game in January.Hannah Mckay/ReutersBut somehow, as her mother made steady progress, Pegula continued to play the best tennis of her career at age 28 (she turned 29 in February). She reached a semifinal of the Canadian Open and, for the first time, a quarterfinal of the U.S. Open — her third major quarterfinal of the year. She won the Guadalajara, Mexico, event last October and, in January, reached another quarterfinal at the Australian Open. At No. 4 in the world, she is the top-ranked American woman.On Sunday, she checked off another quarterfinal appearance when she demolished Lesia Tsurenko, in straight sets. She has now reached the quarterfinal stage at each of the four major tournaments. But for the sixth time in six tries, her pursuit of her first Grand Slam semifinal was blocked. She fell two games short, as Marketa Vondrousova came back from a 1-4 deficit in the third set to beat Pegula, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, on Tuesday.It was as close as Pegula has come to making a major semifinal and, considering how close she was, it was crushing. But it was just tennis, and later she took comfort in reflecting on how different she felt at this Wimbledon compared with last year’s, which came just a few weeks after her mother fell ill.“A year ago when I came here, I didn’t have any warm up,” she said. “My mom basically almost died. I think a year coming around to make quarters, to see that she’s able to watch my match, was a huge success for myself and for my family.”Still, it has been difficult traveling during these last 12 months and being away from her mother, who urges Pegula to fight on, just as she has.Pegula explained how her mother, who with Terry Pegula also owns the N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres, helped shape her tennis career without being overbearing. She said her mother had mostly left the tennis to others but had helped brainstorm ideas to help her get better and to navigate the complex and unforgiving world of professional tennis. She always took inspiration from her mother’s example of hard work and independent strength. Now, she says, her mother is taking inspiration from watching her on the court.Kim Pegula, one of the principal owners of the Bills, went into cardiac arrest in 2022.Michael Ainsworth/Associated PressIn an article in The Players’ Tribune in February, Pegula first revealed the events surrounding her mother’s illness and recovery, and outlined how she was playing on for her. On Sunday, after her fourth-round win, she spoke of the strength and motivation each was drawing from the other.“She wants to watch me on TV,” Jessica Pegula said Sunday. “I think that inspires her in her recovery, as well, to see me out there still playing.”And, despite Tuesday’s loss, playing well. Now healthy after injuries disrupted her progression through the ranks, Pegula has cashed in on consistency, her current No. 4 ranking tucking her in just behind the newly crowned Big Three of No. 1 Iga Swiatek, No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka and No. 3 Elena Rybakina.Pegula expresses no outward resentment that she is not included in their ranks, but she makes it clear that she is striving to shake up the perception that the top of the women’s tour is a triad.“I would definitely love to crash the Big Three party, if possible,” she said. “That would definitely be a goal. I mean, those girls have been playing really well.”All of those women are at least four years younger than Pegula. She was asked if experience had led to her recent success, but she insisted that health had been more important. Her career has been stalled by a knee injury and hip surgery, and being in the gym rehabilitating is an experience that differs from on-court matches.Jessica Pegula reached the quarterfinals at the U.S. Open in 2022.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesShe also said her consistency was no accident. When she reached her first major quarterfinal, at the Australian Open in 2021, she was determined not to leave it all to waste in the subsequent tournament in Doha, Qatar. She was ranked 44th at the time and had to win three qualifying rounds to enter that event, and ended up capturing six consecutive matches before falling in the final to No. 4 Petra Kvitova.“I don’t want to be that person that made the quarters of a Slam and then loses first round,” she said, and added, “I took a lot of confidence from that.”She has now reached the quarterfinals in five of the last seven Grand Slam events and is only the fifth American to reach the quarters at all four majors in the last 25 years, joining Venus Williams, Serena Williams, Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys, who made a quarterfinal on Monday by beating the 16-year-old Russian phenomenon Mirra Andreeva in three sets. Keys is scheduled to face Sabalenka on Wednesday.But the semifinal stage remains elusive for Pegula, and she could not say why.“I was one game away today, almost,” she said. “I don’t really know what the answer is. I keep putting myself in good positions. But I guess it’s not enough.”A few hours after her loss to Vondrousova, Pegula lost again in her doubles match. She and Coco Gauff fell to Laura Siegemund and Vera Zvonareva, making it a perfectly miserable day. But she will return to the United States and, if time allows, see her mother. Soon enough, with the hardcourt season underway, she will be playing again, with Kim Pegula watching from home, and that is a great victory.“She wouldn’t want me doing anything else,” Pegula said of her mother. “I think she would want me to keep winning and to keep competing and putting myself out there.” More

    • 163 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      At Wimbledon, Is It Time for Hawk-Eye Live to Replace the Line Judges?

      by

      Line judges made incorrect calls in the first week that changed the trajectory of matches for Andy Murray, Bianca Andreescu and Venus Williams, among others. Is it time to give computers the job?Andy Murray was a victim.Bianca Andreescu was too.Jiri Lehecka had to play a fifth set and essentially win his third-round match twice.Hawk-Eye Live, an electronic line calling system, could have saved the players their set, even their match, but Wimbledon doesn’t use it to its full extent, preferring a more traditional approach. The rest of the year on the professional tours, many tournaments rely exclusively on the technology, allowing players to know with near certainty whether their ball lands in or out because the computer always makes the call.But when players come to the All England Club for what is widely regarded as the most important tournament of the year, their fates are largely determined by line judges relying on their eyesight. Even more frustrating, because Wimbledon and its television partners have access to the technology, which players can use to challenge a limited number of calls each match, everyone watching the broadcast sees in real time if a ball is in or out. The people for whom the information is most important — the players and the chair umpire, who oversees the match — must rely on the line judge.When the human eye is judging serves traveling around 120 m.p.h. and forehand rallies faster than 80 m.p.h., errors are bound to happen.“When mistakes are getting made in important moments, then obviously as a player you don’t want that,” said Murray, who could have won his second-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth set, if computers had been making the line calls. Murray’s backhand return was called out, even though replays showed the ball was in. He ended up losing in five sets.No tennis tournament clings to its traditions the way Wimbledon does. Grass court tennis. Matches on Centre Court beginning later than everywhere else, and after those in the Royal Box have had their lunch. No lights for outdoor tennis. A queue with an hourslong wait for last-minute tickets.Those traditions do not have an effect on the outcome of matches from one point to the next. But keeping line judges on the court, after technology has proved to be more reliable, has been affecting — perhaps even turning — key matches seemingly every other day.To understand why that is happening, it’s important to understand how tennis has ended up with different rules for judging across its tournaments.Before the early 2000s, tennis — like baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports — relied on human officials to make calls, many of which were wrong, according to John McEnroe (and pretty much every other tennis player). McEnroe’s most infamous meltdown happened at Wimbledon in 1981, prompted by an incorrect line call.“I would have loved to have had Hawk-Eye,” said Mats Wilander, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a star in the 1980s.But then tennis began experimenting with the Hawk-Eye Live judging system. Cameras capture the bounce of every ball from multiple angles and computers analyze the images to depict the ball’s trajectory and impact points with only a microscopic margin for error. Line judges remained as a backup, but players received three opportunities each set to challenge a line call, and an extra challenge when a set went to a tiebreaker.That forced players to try to figure out when to risk using a challenge they might need on a more crucial point later in the set.“It’s too much,” Wilander said. “I can’t imagine making that calculation, standing there, thinking about whether a shot felt good, how many challenges I have left, how late is it in the set.”Even Roger Federer, who was good at nearly every aspect of tennis, was famously terrible at making successful challenges.Hawk-Eye Live cameras along the outer courts at the U.S. Open in 2020.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore long, tennis officials began considering a fully electronic line calling system. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, tournaments were looking for ways to limit the number of people on the tennis court.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said adopting electronic calling in 2021 was also a part of the Australian Open’s “culture of innovation.” Players liked it. So did fans, Tiley said, because matches moved more quickly.Last year, the U.S. Open switched to fully electronic line calling. There is an ongoing debate about whether the raised lines on clay courts would prevent the technology from providing the same precision as on grass and hardcourts. At the French Open and other clay court tournaments, the ball leaves a mark that umpires often inspect.In 2022, the men’s ATP Tour featured 21 tournaments with fully electronic line calling, including stops in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Canada; and Washington, D.C. All of those sites have women’s WTA tournaments as well. Every ATP tournament will use it beginning in 2025.“The question is not whether it’s 100 percent right but whether it is better than a human, and it is definitely better than a human,” said Mark Ein, who owns the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.A spokesman for the All England Club said Sunday that Wimbledon has no plans to remove its line judges.“After the tournament we look at everything we do, but at this moment, we have no plans to change the system,” Dominic Foster said.Line judges at Wimbledon are responsible for ruling the ball in or out.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Andreescu became a casualty of human error. The 2019 U.S. Open champion from Canada, Andreescu has been going deeper into Grand Slam tournaments after years of injuries.With the finish of her match against Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in sight, Andreescu resisted asking for electronic intervention on a crucial shot the line judge had called out. From across the net Jabeur, who had been close to the ball as it landed, advised Andreescu not to waste one of her three challenges for the set, saying the ball was indeed out. The match continued, though not before television viewers saw the computerized replay that showed the ball landing on the line.“I trust Ons,” Andreescu said after Jabeur came back to beat her in three sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Andreescu explained that she was thinking of her previous match, a three-set marathon decided by a final-set tiebreaker, during which she said she “wasted” several challenges.Against Jabeur, she thought, “I’m going to save it, just in case.”Bad idea. Jabeur won that game, and the set, and then the match.Over on Court No. 12, the challenge system was causing another kind of confusion. Lehecka had match point against Tommy Paul when he raised his hand to challenge a call after returning a shot from Paul that had landed on the line. His request for a challenge came just as Paul hit the next shot into the net.The point was replayed. Paul won it, and then the set moments later, forcing a deciding set. Lehecka won, but had to run around for another half-hour. Venus Williams lost match point in her first-round match on another complicated sequence involving a challenge.Leylah Fernandez, a two-time Grand Slam finalist from Canada, said she likes the tradition of line judges at Wimbledon as the world cedes more to technology.Then again, she added, if “it did cost me a match, it would have been probably a different answer.”Andy Murray learned after his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas that his shot, called out by a line judge, was in and could have changed the outcome of the match.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is where Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion, found himself after his loss Friday afternoon. By the time he arrived at his news conference, he had learned that his slow and sharply angled backhand return of serve that landed just a few yards from the umpire had nicked the line.The point would have given him two chances to break Tsitsipas’s serve and serve out the match. When he was told the shot was in, his eyes opened with a startle, then fell toward the floor.Murray now knew what everyone else had seen.The ball had landed under the nose of the umpire, who confirmed the call, Murray said. He could not imagine how anyone could have missed it. He actually likes having the line judges, he added. Perhaps it was his fault for not using a challenge.“Ultimately,” he said, “the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.” More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Tennis

      Chris Eubanks Keeps Winning at Wimbledon and Plays Stefanos Tsitsipas Monday

      by

      The former Georgia Tech star took a long and meandering road to the round of 16 at Wimbledon. He’s OK with that, and looks more than ready.Something strange started happening to Chris Eubanks earlier this year.As he walked the grounds of the Miami Open, people kept stopping him, asking for selfies and autographs. He took time during an off day to visit a sponsor’s suite and glad-hand some executives and their guests.It’s not the sort of thing that a player in his position — a month away from his 27th birthday, having drawn little attention during his first five seasons in professional tennis — generally experiences. But just days before, a video of Eubanks choking back tears after being told that he had finally broken into the top 100 after an early-round win had gone viral in the tennis world. Now he was into the Miami quarterfinals, and seemingly everyone wanted a piece of him.“Definitely didn’t foresee this,” he said at the time, as he walked through the bowels of Hard Rock Stadium, his eyes glazed from all the attention.Four months later, Eubanks is getting used to it in a hurry.A day after beating Cameron Norrie, the top British player, in front of a packed crowd on the No. 1 court, Eubanks was at it again on Saturday, knocking out Chris O’Connell of Australia in a throwback-style Wimbledon match filled with big serves, short rallies and three tiebreak sets that all went Eubanks’s way.On Friday, the thrill came from overcoming a Wimbledon semifinalist and Norrie’s hometown crowd. During the warm-up on Saturday, Eubanks looked up at the stands and suddenly realized he was playing on the court where the 11-hour-5-minute match played by John Isner and Nicolas Mahut over three days in 2010 ended at 70-68 in the fifth set.“That was kind of cool,” said Eubanks, who allowed himself a moment to take it all in. Then he turned his mind to nailing serves, playing aggressively and ending points whenever the chance arose. “I’ve done a pretty good job of focusing in on each match individually and not really focusing on the magnitude of what’s going on.”Eubanks played a forehand shot against O’Connell. His opponents have called Eubanks’s powerful style “big game” tennis.Shaun Botterill/Getty ImagesAnd 23 aces later, Eubanks had a round-of-16 date set for Monday with Stefanos Tsitsipas, the world’s fifth-ranked player.“The whole match was on his racket and I couldn’t do anything,” a dazed O’Connell said of Eubanks when it was over. O’Connell had played Eubanks once before, at a tournament in the tennis minor leagues in South Korea last year. His opponent on Saturday was nothing like the error-prone player he faced a year ago.“He didn’t miss,” O’Connell said. “He’s riding on confidence and he’s playing some unbelievable tennis.”Eubanks’s Journey Stands OutIt can happen at Grand Slams. A journeyman catches fire and plays himself into the deep end of the tournament, just months after toiling in the minor leagues. Even by those standards, Eubanks’s journey stands out, both in its unlikelihood and, now that it has happened, in the reason it did.Go back to his teenage years, growing up in Georgia in the early 2010s. His tennis-loving father was a baptist minister, so his mother had to accompany him to most of his Sunday matches. Back then, Eubanks didn’t rate high enough with the United States Tennis Association to merit much in the way of support. That would come after college, when he received a $100,000 grant from the U.S.T.A. to help fund his pro career.The Covid-19 pandemic arrived as Eubanks felt he was beginning to figure out his game. He had qualified for the Australian Open and picked up some wins on the second-tier Challenger Tour to gain some confidence. When the tour resumed after the pandemic disruption, he felt he had to start all over.Eubanks and his agent had a heart-to-heart.“I said, ‘Listen, if I’m still 200 by next year and injuries haven’t played a part, I can do something else with my time,’” Eubanks recalled after his win over Norrie. “It’s not that glamorous if you’re ranked around 200.”That’s how Eubanks, who studied business at the Georgia Institute of Technology after starting out as an engineering major, ended up making occasional appearances in the Tennis Channel commentary booth, something he believes has helped him better analyze his own matches while he is playing them.‘Doing All the Little Things’Last year, Eubanks, who is 6-foot-7 and whose powerful style is described by opponents as a “big game,” decided to make some changes. After years of cutting corners and trying to build a tennis career on the cheap, he committed to a consistent routine, and he spent money on a full-time coach.Every practice and gym session had a plan, and mostly happened on a schedule. He started to focus on his rest and was more careful about what he ate. Even if his body felt fine after a training session or a match, he let a physiotherapist work on him.“Just making sure I was doing all the little things,” he said.The wins, sometimes four or five a week at small tournaments, started to come.Martin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the U.S.T.A., said following that routine was at once the easiest and the hardest thing for a player to learn. Anyone can focus for a week or a month, but not seeing quick results can make a player question whether diligence makes any difference.Blackman, who has known Eubanks since he was a teenager, said his upside was plainly apparent given his physical attributes and talent.“That he has been able to rise up this quickly is a surprise,” Blackman said.Eubanks is scheduled to face Stefanos Tsitsipas in the round of 16 on Monday.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEubanks had to win two qualifying rounds just to get into the Miami Open in March. Making the quarterfinals, on the hardcourts that American players are raised on, is one thing. Making the round of 16 at Wimbledon, where he has never played in the main draw and where he was so unfamiliar with the grounds he had to ask where he could find the practice courts when he arrived a week ago, is quite another.After Miami, with a ranking that would get him into the biggest tournaments and provide some financial security, Eubanks returned to the minor leagues to see if he could translate those solid few months into the life of a consistent professional. He played a series of hardcourt events in South Korea, where he continued to pick up wins and rankings points. Then he headed to Europe for a hard week of training and a clay-court tuneup for the French Open, where the slow surface did not play to his strengths and he lost in the first round. Then it was off to play on grass.He hated it. A month ago, Eubanks was telling his friend Kim Clijsters, a former world No. 1, that it was a “stupid” playing surface.She told him that someone who can serve the way he can should not fret. Bend your knees and focus on the movement. Stop planting your foot to change direction and take a few extra small steps so you’re not slipping everywhere. His coach had given him similar advice. Hearing it from Clijsters felt different.Week by week, Eubanks said, he became more comfortable and confident, especially after he captured the ATP Tour title at the grass-court tournament in Majorca the week before Wimbledon. The next day he was asking for directions to the practice courts at the All England Club.“I think it’s slowly, slowly growing on me,” Eubanks said with a grin after his win over O’Connell. “At this point I think borderline I might say it’s my favorite surface.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      How Do Wimbledon’s Grass Courts Keep Dry in All the Rain?

      by

      The court services crews at the All England Club deploy 18 tarps at a time to keep precious grass courts dry. They’re not above fetching a player a banana or a soft drink, either.High atop the outer south wall of Centre Court at Wimbledon, a small rectangle has been cut away in the lush, green ivy, revealing a digital number that few, if any, of the 42,000 spectators entering the grounds each day of the tournament ever notice.Similar to coastal warning pennants, it is a signal system — from 1 to 8 — issued from Wimbledon’s own crack meteorology department, for the tarpaulin crews to stand by or rush into action. A “1” means possible showers. A “2” means the chair umpire has the discretion to halt the match. On Saturday, when the first rain drops fell on an already rain-soaked Wimbledon, the signal clicked to “4” from “3.”Instantly, Richard “Winston” Sedgwick, standing on the last row of Court No. 3, where he could see across to the digital beacon on Centre Court, used a simple hand signal to relay the information to the crews, which rushed to action. A six-member team ran onto the court, grabbed purple cords to unwrap an 8,000-square-foot tarpaulin and hauled it over the court in about one minute, with the captains shouting out instructions heard all about the grounds, similar to rowing teams: “Three, two, one, pull,” and “Stay together. Again!”“There’s pressure to get it done properly,” Sedgwick said. “If you don’t, they can’t play. So we have to work really hard and really fast.”The members of the covering crews are arguably the most important people at Wimbledon, their swift, precise action protecting the delicate grass, allowing tennis to continue on each of the 18 courts at what is usually the rainiest Grand Slam event of the year.It is a physical job, requiring a certain degree of athleticism, and if there is a day with intermittent showers and the tarp goes on and off several times, by the end of that day, the physical toll renders the crews “shattered,” Sedgwick said.A small digital readout above Centre Court showed a “1,” which indicated all clear to the court crews at Wimbledon.George Spring, a cattle farmer in New South Wales, Australia, has been Wimbledon’s court services manager for 22 years, overseeing the entire process. It begins when his wife, Louise, recruits the several dozen university students who form the crews. In all, 200 people work on the court services crews over the two-week tournament.They train for four days before the tournament, including a pair of half days on court, where they learn and practice how to pull the tarps on, take them off, and set up the nets and the rest of the court for play once the rain stops.Movements must be in concert, and the crews rehearse their ballet well before the first ball is struck.“It’s like sporting teams,” Spring said. “If you’ve got a good captain and good leadership, you’ll be in good shape.”The crews have been especially important at this Wimbledon, where rain has interrupted five of the first six days. It has created havoc with the schedule and forced many players to work on back-to-back days, which is never the plan at a two-week event like Wimbledon. Through the first six days, 96 matches were suspended, including 34 on Wednesday and 30 on Saturday. Several doubles teams had not even played their first matches by Saturday.And this is not even the rainiest Wimbledon — not even close.“I was here in 2007, where it was famous for rain,” Spring said. “There wasn’t a day we didn’t pull a cover on the courts.”George Spring, the court services manager at Wimbledon, stayed in touch with the tournament’s meteorology department on Saturday.The two main show courts, Centre Court and No. 1 Court, have retractable roofs, but the crews still deploy even larger tarps, requiring 20 people vs. the six on the outer courts, while the roofs are closing. Centre Court is the only one with full-time Wimbledon employees on the job.The court services crews arrive at 7:30 a.m. and work until about 10:30 p.m. each day. Tarps can be slippery and heavy and people are moving fast, so occasionally a crew member sprains an ankle or tweaks a muscle.On No. 1 Court, Elinor Beazley, who grew up in Wales and played tennis for Northern Arizona University (she is transferring to Youngstown State this fall), has been pulling the tarp for two years.Last year was a mostly sunny affair, and she found herself hoping for rain just to get into the action. When it arrived, the adrenaline began to pump.“I was so nervous,” she said. “The crowd was screaming and I was getting really bubbly on my toes. It’s so exciting and such a fun experience. It’s a bit of a performance doing it in front of all those people.”When she got back to Arizona, she said, she told her teammates, “All of you need to come to Wimbledon. You watch the best tennis in the world up close, and it’s like being on a team.”The court services crews are also responsible for other tasks, like holding umbrellas over the heads of the players during changeovers and providing them with towels and drinks, but they can fulfill other unique requests, too. Spring said that a player once asked for a soft drink, which is not part of the usual sports-hydration liquids available on each court. Spring went to the concession stand, bought a soda and brought it back.One year, when the bananas kept on hand for players were too green, Spring said, he sent a crew member to a grocery store in Wimbledon town on a bicycle to procure ripe ones. Rafael Nadal, who did not play this year, likes a particular kind of dried date, which Spring gets from the commissary on the grounds. On Saturday night, there was a request for room-temperature water.But the most important job is getting those tarps on and off the courts quickly and completely. When the digital beacons (there are a few, posted on both sides of Centre Court and on the outer walls of No. 1 Court) flashes a “5,” it is the call to inflate the tarp. After a crew has secured the tarp with large clips, blowers inflate it from the corners. Within seconds a dome, 6 feet high in the center, is formed, like a giant bouncy castle. If the rain is expected to pass quickly, the tarp is not inflated at all.The tarp is inflated on Court No. 3 during a rain delay Saturday at Wimbledon.A “6” means deflate; “7” is the call to uncover and roll up the tarp, which can weigh two tons when it is wet, Spring said. When it is secured, an “8” will flash, which means it is time to dress the courts — replace the nets, set up the chairs and distribute the towels and drinks for the players.Colored cords wrapped inside the rolled-up tarp make it all much simpler. The crew members pull purple ones to unfurl the tarp in the rain and green ones to roll it back up when the skies clear. The entire uncovering process, including setting up the nets, takes roughly 10 to 15 minutes.At night, the crews put the tarps back on again. On Saturday, play was suspended on all of the outer courts because of the rain. When it stopped, the crews pulled the tarps off again, but only for less than an hour. The tarp pullers were so efficient in keeping the court dry that the grass had to be watered at the end of the day.Spring said that in all his years, there have been a few times where malfunctions caused delays of an hour or so, but never for a whole day.“That is probably why I’m still here,” he said.And at Wimbledon, so is the rain. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Has Wimbledon’s Beguiling Grass Robbed the Grand Slam of Its Magic?

      by

      Casper Ruud, the three-time Grand Slam tournament finalist, took a nontraditional approach to getting ready for Wimbledon, which is widely considered the most prestigious tournament in tennis.It included attending more concerts featuring his favorite singer, the Weeknd, than playing actual tennis matches on grass.Unsurprisingly, Liam Broady, a 29-year-old journeyman from Britain who is ranked 142nd in the world, knocked Ruud out in the second round on Thursday. Ruud, ranked No. 4 in the world, was OK with that. “He’s a much better grass court player than myself,” Ruud said of Broady.There was a time when many of the best tennis players made succeeding at Wimbledon the focus of their seasons, and some considered their careers incomplete unless they had won in the cradle of the sport. Everyone from Rod Laver to Martina Navratilova has said they came to Wimbledon to connect with the roots of the sport.Nowadays, with the growth in prominence of the other three Grand Slam tournaments and the grass court season evolving into a quirky, roughly one-month detour from the rest of the tennis calendar, many top players can’t find the time or the head space to make being good on grass a priority. If it costs them tennis immortality, so be it.Grass flew from under Andy Murray’s feet during his match with Stefanos Tsitsipas on Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesBlasphemous as it is to say, to plenty of players, even great ones, Wimbledon has become just another Grand Slam tournament.“I don’t know if winning Wimbledon is, in my view, more bigger than winning the U.S. Open or winning the Australian Open,” said Victoria Azarenka, the former world No. 1. “They’re all very important tournaments.”In part, Wimbledon has itself to blame. In the early 2000s, with ever-improving racket and string technology helping players hit the ball with newfound power, Wimbledon began to sow its courts entirely with perennial ryegrass instead of the mix of ryegrass and red fescue it had used. The switch made the courts more durable and delivered cleaner, higher bounces, allowing the surfaces to play a lot more like a hard court than a ruddy ice rink.Around the same time, the French Open made its courts harder and faster, which basically caused the extinction of the clay court specialist who won in Paris but nowhere else. Within a few years, play at the four Grand Slam tournaments had become more similar than different. The same players starting winning nearly all of them, and the accumulation of Grand Slam tournament titles over the course of a career became the dominant tennis narrative, rather than who could win that august title in front of members of the British royal family in their courtside box.Still, it remains true that grass court tennis is different from all other tennis, and the All England Club continues to have plenty of fans.They include nearly all of the British players, many of whom grew up chasing tennis balls on grass at their local clubs, and Novak Djokovic, now considered the greatest player of the Open Era, which began in 1968. He marks the beginning of his tennis life with watching Wimbledon on television as a small boy. Frances Tiafoe and Sebastian Korda, both top Americans, said they wished the grass court season were longer, because it suited their styles and had a purity to it.Bob Bryan, the U.S. Davis Cup captain and the winner of four Wimbledon doubles titles, said nothing raised goose bumps like walking through the wrought-iron gates of the All England Club.Murray and Tsitsipas had to finish their second-round match, interrupted by Wimbledon’s curfew, on Friday.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It is the sport’s Holy Grail,” Bryan said. “There is nothing like it.”Yes, but that darn grass — that classic surface on which three of the four Grand Slam tournaments used to be contested — has virtually disappeared from the sport.Daniil Medvedev of Russia said he had always appreciated so much about Wimbledon — the flowers, all a perfect color and in just the right spot; the food; the plush locker rooms. But then you have to play on grass, which can make even the best of the best feel as if they are terrible at tennis.“You lose, you go crazy,” Medvedev said. “You’re like, ‘No, I played so bad.’”Stefanos Tsitsipas spent a chunk of the interregnum between the French Open and Wimbledon posting on social media from luxurious locales with his new “soul mate,” Paula Badosa of Spain, a star of the women’s tour, rather than practicing on grass.He said a win on clay, especially at the French Open, left him feeling gritty and dirty and spent in the best way. On grass, he said, it can feel clean and a bit empty, though he looked far from that Friday after he had beaten Andy Murray, one of the game’s great grass court players, on Centre Court.For the men, there is another issue. Djokovic has been so good here for so long, having won the last four Wimbledon men’s singles titles, seven overall and 31 consecutive matches — that the rest of the field sometimes figures, what’s the point?“He seems like he’s getting better,” said Lorenzo Musetti, the rising Italian, who only recently started winning on grass — somewhat to his surprise. He said he had struggled there because everywhere else he could stand up and whale away on the ball. At Wimbledon, even with the new grass, the ball stays low enough to make players essentially hold a squat for three hours and use their feet and their calf and thigh muscles to drive their movements, like ski racers coming down a slope. That may be one reason Djokovic excels — he was a standout skier before he went all in on tennis — and many tall players have no use for the demands of grass.Women struggle, too. Iga Swiatek — the world No. 1, who has never made it past the fourth round at Wimbledon — said her deep runs at the French Open, which she has won the past two years, prevented her from having enough time to rest and play enough matches to acclimate to the unpredictable bounces on grass. She said she had considered training on grass in the off-season in November and December but had decided it would leave her unprepared for the Australian Open in January.Iga Swiatek slipped during her first-round match against China’s Zhu Lin on Monday.Hannah Mckay/Reuters“Throughout the whole year, I’m not really thinking about that,” she said of grass prep.Alexander Davidovich Fokina, a Spaniard who is promising and dangerous on clay and hardcourts, said he struggled with his confidence as soon as he stepped on grass.“Just very, very hard,” he said.Then there is Andrey Rublev, another Russian, who described grass as a maddening, anxiety-provoking form of tennis, with short rallies and results that could seem illogical.“You feel so confident, and then you go on court and the guy, he makes four aces, two returns, unreal — out of nowhere, he breaks you, and the set is over,” Rublev said. “And maybe sometimes you feel super tight, like, I cannot move, I cannot put one ball in the court. And then the guy does two double faults, and the ball hits the frame of your racket and goes in, you break him, and then you win a set.”Medvedev doesn’t even think playing the preparatory grass tournaments makes much of a difference, because grass is different in Germany, the Netherlands and the various locales in England. He said that the field courts at the All England Club played extremely fast and that the stadium courts were slow.Will he ever feel at home on the grass? After his second-round win on Friday, he said he might be getting closer.“Maybe at the door,” he said. “Not inside, but at the door.”As for Ruud, he said after his loss that he would keep trying but that winning Wimbledon might not be in the cards. Every time he cuts loose on his lethal forehand, he feels as if he is going to tumble and get injured because of how he lands and then has to push off to chase the next shot.He did enter the men’s doubles tournament, which would allow him to stick around for a bit before he gets back to some clay court tennis in Europe later this month, but he pulled out on Saturday citing shoulder pain.Now he has more free time on his hands, with The Weeknd playing two concerts in London this weekend.A worn patch of grass near the center of the baseline at Centre Court.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Tennis

      French Open Doubles Champion Austin Krajicek Goes For a Repeat at Wimbledon

      by

      After years of frustration in singles, Austin Krajicek nearly quit tennis. Then an old friend asked him if he wanted to give the sport one more shot.The last time Austin Krajicek stormed through the front door, threw his tennis bag into a closet and announced that he was done with the sport for good, his wife, Misia Kedzierski, thought he might actually be serious.Krajicek, a big-hitting lefty from Florida who had been a champion as a junior and in college, had spent seven years toiling on the professional tennis tour, breaking into the top 100 in singles a couple times, even winning a couple of matches in Grand Slam tournaments. But as the summer of 2018 approached, the losses piled up and his singles ranking tumbled into the 300s.He and Kedzierski had been living in a cheap apartment in Chicago that summer, with a mattress on the floor, some old furniture from her parents’ house, a few dishes and their dog. She never questioned his tennis pursuits, but she was also covering most of their expenses, as Krajicek’s tennis career was costing him more than he was bringing in.“It’s like that awkward time where you don’t want to talk about money necessarily,” Kedzierski, a data analyst for the restaurant industry, recalled recently. “But then you get to a point where you’re like, ‘Well, if we can’t pay rent, then should we keep doing what we’re doing right now?’”Krajicek after missing a return in a second-round match at the Japan Open in 2015. He continued to struggle year after year.Toru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKrajicek didn’t think so.“It’s a brutal sport, and you have to be a little bit insane to keep going,” he said during a recent interview from his home in Allen, Texas, north of Dallas.Tennis seemed to be telling Krajicek to give up on the dream of competing for the biggest titles in the sport that had largely defined his life since he was 6 years old. At 28 he was no longer a kid, and he was a few credits short of finishing his degree in psychology from Texas A&M. He was getting his license to sell insurance. He was ready for Plan B.Then he got a call from a buddy from his college tennis days. Did he want to travel to England to play doubles in some minor league tournaments?Krajicek got his tennis bag out of the closet.One last shot.Playing for His Next MealKrajicek, who is a distant relative of the 1996 Wimbledon men’s singles champion, Richard Krajicek, began his tennis journey when he was 5, asking his father, a former college basketball player who had taken up tennis at a club near Tampa, if he could tag along. Soon he was training several days a week with the club professional, and soon after that, the club pro told Austin’s father he needed to find his son a better coach.At 14, Krajicek enrolled in the IMG Academy in Bradenton, where Nick Bollettieri famously churned out future champions under the often stifling Florida sun. At 18, Krajicek won the U.S. national junior championship in Kalamazoo, Mich., and flirted with turning professional. He opted instead to attend Texas A&M, to give his body and his game a few more years to develop. In 2011, he won the N.C.A.A. men’s doubles title.Then it was time to start playing for his next meal.The journey to the tennis big leagues has a few stops in grand world capitals like Paris and London, but players can spend far more nights in destinations like Binghamton, N.Y; Aptos, Calif.; Rimouski, Quebec; and Gimcheon, South Korea. There are terrible hotels, a lot of bad meals, and plenty of empty bleachers. Or no bleachers at all.Krajicek was a newly minted pro playing in a minor tournament in Champaign, Ill., when he met Kedzierski, a senior tennis player at the University of Illinois. A friend of Kedzierski’s had a crush on Krajicek but was too nervous to reach out. Kedzierski got his number and texted him on her friend’s behalf only to learn that Krajicek was interested in Kedzierski.They had their first dinner two months later in Maui, when they realized they were both there for tennis competitions. Nice guy, she thought.After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles to work for a stylist in the entertainment business. Krajicek, a master couch surfer who often stayed in the vacation homes of wealthy tennis boosters, was using Los Angeles as a training base. He started staying at Kedzierski’s place, showing up with his tennis bag and a suitcase, training for a week or two, and then heading back out on the road.Krajicek in his second-round match at the Australian Open in 2016. He would lose in straight sets to Kei Nishikori.Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesPretty quickly, Kedzierski discerned that Krajicek didn’t actually have a home. She told him he could leave a pair of shoes at her place if he wanted. He said no thanks — he was fine living out of the suitcase.She went about her career and got a master’s in marketing at Texas A&M.And he went about his, such as it was. In 2018, seven years into his pro career, Krajicek was winning just 38 percent of his singles matches. That was when Kedzierski began to see her boyfriend toss his tennis bag into the closet and swear off the sport a little more often.Tennis Wasn’t the ProblemFor all but the best tennis players, the fleeting nature of top form is often a mystery.“Anyone in the top 250 can make a good week,” Daniil Medvedev of Russia, one of the game’s best players and its top player-pundit, has said, over and over. No one disagrees with him.Krajicek found his form once more when he headed to England with Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan. Maybe it was the comfort of playing with an old friend. Maybe it was because he had reached the point where he was ready to let it all go.Whatever the reason, he and Nedunchezhiyan quickly made the final of a tournament in Nottingham. The next week, they won a tournament in Ilkley in northern England. The week after that, they won two matches and qualified for the main draw at Wimbledon, where they lost in the first round in a third-set tiebreaker.Krajicek flew back to Chicago to the cheap apartment with the mattress on the floor. The next week, there was a small pro tournament just up the road in Winnetka, Ill., a 20-minute drive. He and Nedunchezhiyan figured, why not enter? They won it, sharing $4,650 in prize money.This was beginning to get interesting.In addition to his size and power, Krajicek had something that most doubles players do not. He is left-handed, which can instantly turn a quality team into a dangerous one because opponents have to adjust to different angles and spins of the ball. The usual weak spots for teams with two right-handed players aren’t there.Krajicek and Nikola Mektic teamed up during the Paris Masters in 2018.Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesTennys Sandgren, another old friend who had climbed into the top 70 in singles, asked Krajicek to be his partner at the U.S. Open. They reached the quarterfinals. Rajeev Ram, who was on his way to becoming one of the top doubles players in the world, asked him to play an ATP event in Moscow. They won.That was when Krajicek concluded tennis wasn’t the problem. Singles was.“I was over it,” he said.Doubles became the only mountain he would attempt to climb.A Turning PointKrajicek’s productive summer and fall had made tennis financially sustainable. Now he was qualifying for ATP Tour events, where the prize money was significantly higher than on the lower-level tour. By 2021, he had made the U.S. Olympic team, but it was clear that he still needed to improve to make it into the top echelon of the pro game.He and Kedzierski had moved to Texas. On a hot spring afternoon, Krajicek landed on a backyard court that belonged to a friend of Phil Farmer, a highly regarded coach. Farmer had worked with top Americans, including John Isner, Sam Querrey and the Bryan brothers, one of the sport’s great doubles duos. A player Farmer was coaching at the time had told Farmer he had to check out his hitting partner.He obliged. Running Krajicek through a series of drills, he immediately saw a player with a huge serve who could nail targets down the line and crosscourt with both his forehand and his backhand. Krajicek also had soft hands and a stinger of a forehand volley.“I could really envision where his game was and where it needed to go,” said Farmer, who has been coaching him ever since.There was room for improvement — he needed to be more aggressive with his returns, and serve to the whole service box, rather than just his favorite spots. His low volleys needed work.Krajicek training with Phil Farmer at Wimbledon.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesHe also needed a permanent partner. Then Ivan Dodig of Croatia, a mainstay of the doubles tour with a chess master’s understanding of the game, was suddenly free.He and Krajicek began their partnership in Belgrade, Serbia, in April 2022. By early June, they had reached the French Open final. Kedzierski, who had married Krajicek the previous December, caught a last-minute flight to Paris. She was watching courtside as Krajicek and Dodig squandered three championship points and lost in three sets.“That was not the match to watch,” she said.The next day, she and Krajicek delayed their return flight for 24 hours and rode rented bicycles all over Paris.Back at home, their friend Terry Brush had been keeping a bottle of Old Forester Birthday edition bourbon ready for when Krajicek won his first Grand Slam. He and Farmer, both bourbon lovers, had signed the label, pledging to open it only when they got that victory.Catching up at home after Paris, Brush asked Krajicek if he wanted to open it. They had come so close.Not a chance, Krajicek told him.In a Good RoutineA year later, Krajicek and Dodig were back in Paris, making their way through the French Open draw, but barely. Three of their first four matches went to deciding third sets as they vanquished a couple of Argentines, a Swiss and a Chilean, a Portuguese and a Brazilian, a pair of Germans, and a Spaniard and another Argentine.From 5,000 miles away, Kedzierski could tell that with each win, Krajicek’s routine was becoming more precise.Austin Krajicek and Misia Kedzierski.Matt SachsHe was eating the same meal (Chipotle delivered to his room) at the same time each day (around 6 p.m. so he could finish eating for the day by 7, which helped him get a good night’s rest). Then he watched videos of his opponents’ matches and went to sleep. Even his text messages to her came at the same time each day, including his check-ins about their two golden doodles, Tucker and Moose.When Krajicek made it to the finals, he asked her if she was coming to Paris. Not doing it, she told him.“He was in such a good routine,” Kedzierski said. “There was no way I was going to mess that up.”The final matched Krajicek and Dodig against Sander Gillé and Joran Vliegen of Belgium. Krajicek and Dodig seized control at the start and never gave it up. Watching from home with a few friends, Kedzierski saw Krajicek’s last blistering forehand clinch the title and, for the next week, the No. 1 ranking. She Facetimed him as soon as the ball landed so that when he looked at his phone, he would see she had called. Fifteen minutes later, from a tunnel under the stadium, he called her back.She told him how proud she was of him. He reminded her of all the times he had wistfully said he was going to get to the top.The next day, Krajicek crammed into an economy seat for the flight home to Dallas, even though he had to return to Europe five days later for the grass season and Wimbledon. The emergency exit door was sticking out in front of his seat, forcing him to angle his legs for the better part of 10 hours, leaving his frame a little cockeyed and sore by touchdown.Kedzierski was waiting for him. So was that bottle of bourbon.Krajicek, left, and Ivan Dodig after winning the French Open men’s doubles title.Caroline Blumberg/EPA, via Shutterstock More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      Andy Murray’s Run at Wimbledon Is Short and Bittersweet

      by

      In a punishing second-round match played over two days, Stefanos Tsitsipas outlasted Wimbledon’s favorite son over five sets.Streams of glum British tennis fans filed quietly out of Centre Court on Friday, moments after their Scottish hero had himself departed with a quick two-handed wave before disappearing from their sight.Andy Murray, a two-time Wimbledon champion who has extended his career to age 36 after two hip surgeries, was battling to extend his run at the All England Club into the third round, and was carrying most of the 15,000 fans in the stadium along for the ride.As the match against Stefanos Tsitsipas played out over two days, Murray’s supporters shrieked at his better moments, sat hushed for the lesser ones and cheered supportively ahead of critical points, hoping to provide him with the emotional lift needed to propel his weary body onward, knowing there is always a chance they may never see him compete at Wimbledon again.But the task over five punishing sets was too formidable, and the result cast a gloom over an otherwise glorious day of sunshine and tennis at Wimbledon.Murray, still striving to regain the consistently elite form he once possessed, fell to No. 5 Tsitsipas, 7-6 (3), 6-7 (2), 4-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, in a match so close that Murray outscored his Greek opponent in overall points, 176-169.“I’m obviously very disappointed right now,” he said in a news conference about 25 minutes after the match had ended. “You never know how many opportunities you’re going to get to play here.”Murray’s dreary mood was reflected all around the grounds on a difficult day for British players and their fans on Friday. The 12th-seeded Cameron Norrie, Britain’s current No. 1 player, lost to the unseeded American Chris Eubanks, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, 7-6 (3), on Court No. 1, and Liam Broady, the British No. 2, fell to the Canadian Dennis Shapovalov, who won 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, 7-5.But with Murray, it is different. For two decades, British tennis supporters have watched while he converted the promise of his junior career into glory when, under great pressure in 2013, he became the first British man in 77 years to win Wimbledon, Britain’s home tournament and the premier event on the tour. Three years later, he did it again, to add to the U.S. Open title and the Olympic gold medal he had won in 2012, the latter also on Centre Court.Stefanos Tsitsipas hugged Murray after their match.Shaun Botterill/Getty ImagesHe has been No. 1 in the world, and good enough for long enough to have earned membership among the “Big Four” of men’s tennis that also included the now-retired Roger Federer, the currently injured Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic, the current No. 1, who beat Stan Wawrinka on Friday on Centre Court, 6-3, 6-1, 7-6 (5).Murray’s presence on the lush green lawns of Wimbledon could barely have been expected four years ago. He underwent hip surgery in 2018 that did not take, and it appeared his career was done. But a year later he underwent hip-resurfacing surgery that allowed him to play on. It has not been easy. He has toiled on tennis’s minor league Challenger circuit and worked his world ranking to No. 40 going into Wimbledon. But recent losses in the first rounds of most of the top-flight tournaments he entered have raised doubts.Still, his public held out hope, and did its part, beginning Thursday night, when Murray and Tsitsipas began the match. When Murray won the second set in a tiebreaker, fans erupted, and optimism was rebooted. An energized Murray then had a set point in the third set, but fell to the grass in pain, yelling and clutching at the top of his right leg. It appeared serious, but he struggled to his feet, danced it out at the baseline and then served a winner to take the set as the crowd erupted.“It’s like sort of a jarring of the joint,” he said. “Can be a little bit sore.”It was 10:40 p.m., under the lights. As Murray and Tsitsipas went to their chairs for the changeover, they were informed that the match would be suspended because of the 11 p.m. curfew. Murray was riding a locomotive of momentum, but he could not argue — even though, before the tournament began, he had requested not to be scheduled for late matches.In a post-loss moment of magnanimity that many other professionals could not have mustered, Murray did not fault the decision, noting the grander implications.“The players shouldn’t necessarily just be able to make requests and get what they want,” he said. “There’s many, many factors that go into it.”On Friday, some conditions were completely different. The roof was open; the sun shone in. But the crowd was still as vociferous, both in the stadium and on Henman Hill, where many hundreds of fans baked in the sun to watch on the large video screen.Murray arrived at Wimbledon hoping it would be his breakthrough event, and he would make a bold run into the second week. With so few opportunities left to play in this hallowed venue, Murray was asked if the loss hurt even more, after all the struggles he has been through to get here. He paused and thought.“Yeah, the defeats maybe feel a bit tougher,” he said. “But, to be honest, every year that Wimbledon has not gone how I would like, it’s been hard.”He has given no indication that he intends to retire in the coming months. But decisions are sometimes made in the wake of a particularly dispiriting loss, and Murray, in his low, brooding tone, said he could not be certain.“Motivation is obviously a big thing,” he explained. “Continuing having early losses in tournaments like this don’t necessarily help with that.” More