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

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      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

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

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      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

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

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      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

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      Andy Murray’s Run at Wimbledon Is Short and Bittersweet

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      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

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      At Wimbledon, Sofia Kenin Rediscovers Her Fighting Form

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      With her straight-sets win over Xinyu Wang on Thursday, Kenin had won a second consecutive match for only the fourth time all year.It has been three and a half years since Sofia Kenin put both hands to her face and teared up in Melbourne. That night, she had just won the Australian Open at 21, highlighting to the world her ferocious will to fight for every point, every shot.When her hands came down, she was not even smiling, her concentration apparently on maintaining composure as she soaked in the moment of a lifetime.To this day, Kenin says, reflecting back on that triumph requires a bit of a mental blockade.“I try not to think about it too much, because I might get a bit emotional,” she said on Thursday after her biggest win in over two years. “I mean, it happened, and I definitely believe that I can get there again.”Over the last couple of years, that possibility had seemed extremely remote for Kenin, the Moscow-born American player. But in the first week of Wimbledon, she has shown some of the skill and tenacity that once took her to the summit of women’s tennis.On Monday, she beat Coco Gauff in the first round. On Thursday, she defeated Xinyu Wang, 6-4, 6-3, to plow into the third round of a major tournament for the first time since she reached the fourth round of the 2021 French Open.She is still at the earliest stages of a campaign to claw her way back to relevance. She knows there are skeptics wondering if she can, and she said on Thursday she was motivated to prove those people wrong.“I just had to find my way,” she said. “I have been fighting. I just hope that I can keep it going.”To do so would mean upending Elina Svitolina, the 76th-ranked player on tour, in the third round on Friday.Kenin arrived at Wimbledon ranked 128th in the world and had to win three matches in the qualifying rounds just to get into the main draw. That might be beneath some former Grand Slam tournament champions, but Kenin approached the task with determination, humility and a bit of humor, saying that if she had known that entering the so-called quallies would ensure her advancing into the third round of the main draw, she would do it regularly.But there was a time when she expected to receive a high seeding at every tournament she entered. After Kenin won the Australian Open in 2020 by beating Garbiñe Muguruza, her ranking rose to No. 4 in the world, and her future appeared so promising.The ensuing three years, however, turned into a desperate struggle. Among the obstacles littering her way, Kenin suffered a grade-three ankle tear; underwent an emergency appendectomy; publicly split with her father and coach, Alexander Kenin; and contracted the coronavirus. A year ago, her ranking had plummeted to No. 426 in the world, and as recently as January it was No. 280.Kenin reunited with her father in the autumn of 2021, eight months after she had announced on social media that she had fired him. He was in the audience on Thursday, watching closely as Kenin dismantled Wang on little Court No. 4, an outer court with a capacity of only a few hundred, in the shadow of Centre Court. Kenin has worked with several coaches in recent years, but her father is back as part of the team, a constant presence again, and Kenin said he had been part of her recent success.“I definitely think things are clicking,” she said, “Obviously, with all the practices and just doing everything right. I’m working really hard, and he’s just been there for me, and I’m really grateful for that.”On the court, she dominated Wang, deploying a deft slice that is so effective on grass, and especially so with the taller Wang, who often had difficulty getting low enough to hit through the ball and fire back effectively. Kenin also relied on her improved serve and repeatedly tucked balls inside lines on all sides of the court, just as she had done against Gauff.Kenin with her father, Alexander, at the All England Club.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesIn both matches, and in the qualifying stages, she demonstrated her indisputable competitive zeal.“Obviously, she won a Grand Slam, but she’s in a tough spot in her career,” Gauff said after their match. “I knew coming in she would play with a lot of motivation.”Kenin’s victory Thursday was only the fourth time all year that she had won two matches in a row. But she credited a loss for helping her change her fortunes this year, when at Indian Wells in March she lost in straight sets to Elena Rybakina, last year’s Wimbledon singles champion. Both sets, however, went to tiebreakers, and Kenin soaked up the experience, converting it into a driving confidence.Rybakina had reached the Australian Open final in January, and Kenin used the match to measure her progress and her ability to hang with the best.“I felt like that was a little bit of a turning point for me,” she said.She then won two matches at the Miami Open before falling to Bianca Andreescu and has gone 9-6 since then, including the Wimbledon qualifying rounds.She has a long way to go, in terms of both ranking and consistency. But for the first time in two years, she is back in the fight.“I knew if I put in the work and do the right things, eventually it’s going to click,” she said, “and I’m super happy it’s clicking here.” More

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      The Tennis ‘Pilgrimage’ to the Wimbledon Queue

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      Thousands are waiting, even camping out, in rainy England for a chance to see one Wimbledon match. For some, it is an annual ritual, a pilgrimage for the love of tennis.Tom O’Neill and Roz McArdle stood in Wimbledon’s famous ticketing queue with barely a hope of getting inside the grounds. It was 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, there were 4,000 people ahead of them, and they were told by a steward that it was “enormously unlikely” they would get inside.But they, and hundreds of others, clinging to the tiniest flicker of hope that they might get to see at least one match in the citadel of tennis, persistently inched along the snaking line.“We might as well give it a shot,” McArdle said. “We left work around 4 and got here about 5. If we don’t make it, maybe we’ll come back on Friday.”They were doing what people have done for more than a century, joining a line that weaves through an adjacent golf course and down Church Road to a ticket office, where each person, some of whom wait in line for over 24 hours, can purchase one ticket, for that day only, to attend the most famous tennis tournament in the world.Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and residents who live near the All England Club.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It’s totally worth it,” said Shreyas Dharmadhikari, a defense lawyer from Jabalpur in central India. “It is a pilgrimage you make for the love of tennis, for the love of Wimbledon.”With a capacity of roughly 42,000 for the grounds, Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and people who live near the All England Club, and through other select means. It is among the hardest tickets to get in sports, but the tournament does provide thousands of daily tickets to the public, if they are willing to wait hours for one.The queue is one of the longest, old-fashioned box office lines in the world, the sports equivalent to the infamous Studio 54 line, but a lot older.Roz McArdle and Tom O’Neill hoped they would get inside for at least one match on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesShreyas Dharmadhikari and his son Arjun waited 5 ½ hours to get inside.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Dharmadhikari brought his son, Arjun, who wore a sticker given out by stewards that read, “I queued in the rain.” They were given holding cards with Nos. 11,466 and 11,477, waited five and a half hours to get inside and were delighted to see several matches and eat strawberries and cream.But on Monday, some people waited nearly twice that long under periodic bursts of persistent rain on a disastrous opening day for the queue. Tournament organizers blamed the delays, which slowed the pace of the line to a crawl, on heightened security searches due to the threat of a climate protest.A protester threw confetti during a match between Sho Shimabukuro and Grigor Dimitrov on Court 18 on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe ball crew picked up confetti and jigsaw pieces that had been thrown on the court.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockThe threat became reality on Wednesday when two protesters ran onto Court No. 18 and flipped over a box of orange confetti. The protesters were led away rather quickly and the match resumed — but only after another rain delay in a tournament plagued by them. After weeks with virtually no precipitation in London, it rained intermittently during the first three days of the tournament, causing havoc within the schedule and in the soggy queue.But even without special circumstances, the queue can be a long (sometimes over a mile), tiresome, adventurous, wet, fun and uniquely British institution.Two schoolboys, Simon, 10, and his brother Stefano, 8, calmly read comic books as they waited on Wednesday, hoping to see their favorite player, the Italian 21-year-old Jannik Sinner, who beat Diego Schwartzman of Argentina in straight sets on Court No. 1.“We have been waiting for maybe two hours,” Simon said, and his brother asked, “Do you think we will make it?”Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesStewards helped organize the queue on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesAbout an hour later, a steward announced to a group somewhere in the middle of the line that there were 1,600 people ahead of them and that he was informed by a ticket manager only 250 more tickets would be released. Gasps of incredulity and disappointment rang out from the group, but no one immediately left.“How you receive this information is entirely up to you,” said the steward, who did everything short of ordering everyone to go home.That would not have been easy for Danielle Payten and her husband, David Payten, who flew from Sydney, Australia, with their three children. They took no chances of being shut out from the daily queue by doing what hundreds do daily. They camped overnight in tents.David Payten, top center, flew from Sydney with his family and camped overnight in tents.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe tent area, where spectators spend the night to ensure they’ll have a good spot in line the following day, is the more festive area of the queue: People play soccer, cards, cricket or read and sip cocktails. The sun broke out Wednesday afternoon, prompting young men in the line to remove their shirts for some spontaneous sunbathing.“It’s like a carnival atmosphere,” said one steward, who asked not to be named because they are not permitted to speak to reporters.The Paytens arrived at 3:30 p.m. and met some folks from the neighboring tents, one of whom had a dog. They chatted, ate and drank as they prepared for a cricket game on a patch of flat grass later that evening. Danielle’s brother, Chris Kearsley, who lives in London, arrived early to set up three tents for them (only two people per tent are given tickets). His daughter, Eliza Kearsley, lives a 15-minute walk from the same mystical venue that her relatives traveled 10,000 miles to see.She popped over just to see her relatives, for neither she nor her father planned to camp out and attend the next day’s matches.“If I stayed overnight, I’d been too drunk to go inside,” Chris Kearsley joked.But with only about 200 people in front of their group, the Australian cousins were virtually guaranteed entrance for Thursday’s matches.“It’s well worth it,” David Payten said. “It’s an adventure.”One traveler from Japan, who planned to stay for most of the two weeks of the tournament, brought a portable, solar powered clothes washer.Maria Balhetchet, a professional violinist from Dorset in southern England, and Felix Bailey, her tennis-playing son, arrived at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, aiming for Thursday’s action. They were given card No. 101, meaning only 100 people were ahead of them. Balhetchet camped out last year with her other son, and even though they scored third-row tickets to an explosive match between the eventual men’s singles finalist Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas, the experience was generally exhausting. Moisture infiltrated the tent, she did not get any sleep and she vowed never to do it again.But there she was on Wednesday.“It’s like giving birth,” she said. “You go through it and say, ‘Never again,’ but then of course you want to.”They were prepared to awake at 6 a.m. Thursday (after being in line almost 18 hours). Campers are given 30 minutes to dismantle their tents and put them in daily storage, then get into the line and wait — wait for it — for four more hours until the gates open. Some people, after watching the tennis, go back to the park, pick up their tents and queue up all over again — hence the need for the washing machine.Among those still hoping to get in on Wednesday was a group of teenage tennis players from the Time to Play Tennis Academy in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Their coach, Doug Robinson, said the group flew from Harare to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and then to London, where they hoped to see Wimbledon live, and then play some matches around England.Late Wednesday afternoon they were still far back in the queue. The kids sat on the ground chatting, and Robinson sized up the situation.“It’s not looking too good from here,” he said. “But it’s Wimbledon. You have to take the chance.”Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More

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      Bum Knees, Stress Fractures and Mental Anguish. Oh, Canada.

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      Canada has been striving to become a top tennis nation for two decades, and with two Wimbledon finals appearances and a U.S. Open title it seemed to be working. Then things quieted down.It may be a little hard to remember, with all the injuries, career detours and mystifying losses, but there was a time when everything seemed possible for Canadian tennis.Every time a tennis fan looked up, it seemed, another wildly talented or gritty Canadian had made a Grand Slam final. Bianca Andreescu even won one, beating Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open when she was still a teenager, playing with a style so creative she left tennis aesthetes drooling.Lately, with all the bum knees (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime), stress fractures (Leylah Fernandez) and the mental anguish (Milos Raonic and Andreescu) that so many players struggle with these days, even Fernandez’s improbable run to the 2021 U.S. Open final can feel like it was a long time ago.And then there was a day like Wednesday at Wimbledon, with the rain finally going away long enough for outdoor tennis to happen, for Shapovalov and Raonic to show why there had been so much fuss in the first place. Both came back from a set down to win in four sets, giving Shapovalov a chance to reminisce about what it had meant to him to be a junior player from a country known mostly for its prowess in sports with ice (hockey and curling) and watching Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard nearly go all the way on the Wimbledon grass.“It kind of put a real belief in mine and Felix’s eyes that it’s possible as a Canadian,” Shapovalov said, after beating Radu Albot of Moldova 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in a match that began on Monday. “And I’m sure with the generations, you know, following me, Felix, Bianca. Leylah, I’m sure there’s much more belief in the country, that it is possible even if the country is cold or is mostly wintertime.”Apparently, Canadians missed the string of champions that Sweden, hardly a temperate locale, produced during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, such as Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg.Shapovalov and Raonic, who played and won his first match at a Grand Slam tournament in two and a half years Monday, beating Denis Novak of Austria, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-1, will be back at it on Thursday. Both men will play second-round matches, as will Fernandez. Andreescu will be out there, too, finally playing her first-round match against Anna Bondar of Hungary.Leylah Fernandez will play Caroline Garcia of France in the second round.Adam Davy/Press Association, via Associated PressAuger-Aliassime, who has been dealing with a sore knee all year, lost in the first round at the All England Club for a second consecutive year. The nagging injury and the latest loss count as major disappointments for Auger-Aliassime, who broke out in his late teens and whose powerful serve and movement should allow him to excel on grass.But a Wimbledon schedule filled with Canadians is what the nation’s higher-ups in the sport were shooting for when they set out to make Canada a top-level tennis country nearly 20 years ago. Other than long, cold winters, Canada seemed to have everything a country needed to achieve big things in tennis — wealth, diversity and a commitment to spend money on building facilities and importing top coaches.It built a tennis center in Montreal and satellite facilities in other major cities and began to focus on developing young children and teenagers. It hired Louis Borfiga, a leading tennis mind from France who was Borg’s hitting partner, to oversee player development.Blessed with the good fortune of players with natural talent and parents willing to support it, Canada had Bouchard and Raonic rolling by the mid-2010s and Shapovalov, Andreescu and Auger-Aliassime tearing up the junior rankings, with Fernandez not far behind.The success — last year Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime led Canada to its first Davis Cup title — and the struggles have bred a camaraderie among the players. They know when the others are playing even when they are not in the same tournament.“I’m guilty of following the results of all my fellow Canadians,” said Fernandez, who remembers just a few years ago seeing Auger-Aliassime training a few courts down from her in Montreal and thinking, “Oh, this is inspiring.”When Fernandez was injured last year, one of the first texts she received was from Andreescu, who has been battling all sorts of ailments seemingly since she won the 2019 U.S. Open. Andreescu told Fernandez that she was there for her whatever she needed and that Fernandez was headed for a tough time, but would get through it.Earlier this year, when Andreescu rolled her ankle and suffered what looked to be a devastating injury at the Miami Open, Fernandez sent the support right back. “I was like, ‘Bianca, you’re strong, you’ll get back, you’re a great tennis player, and a great person.’”Rain forced Denis Shapovalov to play his first-round match over two days.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressOn Wednesday, Shapovalov and Raonic found each other in the locker room, trying to manage the rain delays that have disrupted the tournament all week.Raonic said he had forgotten his old routine because it had been so long since he had dealt with something like that. At first he tried to keep moving to stay loose, but then thought he might have been burning too much energy.He sat down for a bit with Shapovalov, who was passing the time with his coach by answering animal trivia questions. Raonic jumped into the game and said everyone was entertained to learn which sea animal can breathe through its rear end. (Turtle). There was also a spirited argument about the killing power of a mosquito versus that of sharks. Shapovalov was firmly on the side that sharks are scarier than a malaria-carrying insect.Eventually, the rain subsided along with the zoology debate. Then it was time for Raonic to head back to the court and deliver the sort of victory that once happened all the time, wearing down Novak with his blasting serve and big forehand. Later in the afternoon, when Shapovalov found his rhythm on those smooth, graceful strokes, Albot never had a chance.In a symbol of how tenuous Canada’s tennis efforts have become, both Shapovalov and Raonic easily might not have been at the All England Club this year.Shapovalov has been limping on and off in recent months and had to cut his practices short on grass when the pain grew too intense.Raonic said through his injury struggles during the past few years he had come to terms with the idea that his life after tennis had begun. But he drove by a tennis court each day near his home in the Bahamas, or would see tennis on television while he worked out at a local gym, and he figured he might as well give it another shot.On Wednesday, he said he was annoyed with himself for not enjoying the moment more, being back at the All England Club, playing in the Grand Slam where he had his greatest success and helped make Canada believe. In his words, it was easy to detect a larger message about the often fleeting nature of success, on a single day, or during an era.“You just get caught up with the whole process of competing and trying to find a way to win and that passes by really quickly,” he said. “Then you don’t really get to enjoy the match.” More

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      At Wimbledon, Everyone’s Chasing Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina

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      Expect the three top-ranked women to dominate the tournament. But at least one, the defending champion Elena Rybakina, says she isn’t taking any opponent for granted.LONDON — Elena Rybakina was nervous. She was embroiled in her first match on Wimbledon’s Centre Court as defending champion. She was facing a tough opponent in Shelby Rogers. The roof was closed and she was recovering from a virus.Even more daunting, one of the greatest players ever to walk that court, Roger Federer, was now sitting just a few feet behind her, in the royal box, watching her struggle.“Yeah, maybe that’s why I was nervous,” Rybakina said after she recovered to beat Rogers on Tuesday, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2.Federer, now retired, was back at Wimbledon for a visit. As a player, he was a member of the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis, along with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. As a spectator, he was watching a player whom some experts, including Chris Evert, believe is part of an emerging big three of women’s tennis.Rybakina, the third-ranked player in the world, along with No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, comprise the top of the women’s tennis pyramid. Together, they have won the last five major tournaments, and the eventual winner of this year’s Wimbledon is expected — but obviously not guaranteed — to come from their elite group, as well.Those who think it is premature to crown a triumvirate of women’s tennis will find the 24-year-old Rybakina in agreement.“I think it’s too early to say anything about just three players because it’s not like it was Roger or Djokovic,” Rybakina said. “It’s still too far.”All three players are under 26, and all have the necessary tools to win multiple tournaments and remain at the top of the rankings. Left out of the grouping are players like Jessica Pegula, ranked No. 4. But Pegula said she agrees that the top three are the class of the women’s game and deserve the recognition, even if she would like to expand the number to four someday.“I think it’s exciting to have something for us to talk about and for fans to get involved in and hopefully be excited to watch them battle it out,” Pegula said on Saturday. She beat Lauren Davis in the first round on Monday. “But I hope I’m part of that conversation at some point. I guess that’s all I have to say.”Ons Jabeur looked to repeat as a Wimbledon finalist again this year, but with a different outcome.Andrew Couldridge/ReutersOns Jabeur, who lost to Rybakina in last year’s Wimbledon final and to Swiatek in the U.S. Open final, is a solid grass court player, who could also stake a claim to this year’s Wimbledon title. Jabeur is another who believes that Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina have set themselves apart.“For me it’s inspiring to see them doing great,” Jabeur said. “You can learn a lot from them.”Coco Gauff, who is only 19 and ranked No. 7, could also intrude into the mix one day. But not yet, not after she lost to Sofia Kenin, a former No. 4 player who is 24, in the first round on Monday.As Rybakina said on Tuesday, “anyone can still beat anyone.”As Wimbledon opened under rainy skies, each one of the three top players had at least one question to answer on court before she could lift the trophy. Swiatek, 22 and from Poland, has struggled on grass and never made it past the fourth round in her three attempts here.She demonstrated good form at Bad Homburg, a grass-court tournament before Wimbledon, but became ill and had to withdraw after winning a quarterfinal match. She looked fully recovered in her first-round win over Lin Zhu on Monday and a title here would give her three of the last four majors.Rybakina won Wimbledon last year with an amazing run of confidence and form, defeating Jabeur in three sets for her first Grand Slam title. But her conditioning remains in doubt. A virus forced her withdrawal from the French Open last month, and she said the condition worsened afterward. She is OK now, she said, but she had to lighten her workouts leading up to Wimbledon.Sabalenka did not even play at Wimbledon last year. She is from Minsk, in Belarus, and the tournament banned all players from Russia and Belarus from competing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s cooperation with that military incursion.The amiable Sabalenka opened her news conference on Saturday, before the tournament started, by saying she would not answer questions about politics because she had already done so several times. (Rybakina was born in Moscow but plays for Kazakhstan).Aryna Sabalenka hit a between-the-legs shot with her back to the net against Panna Udvardy.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSabalenka said she could barely even watch the tournament last year during her impromptu staycation.“I didn’t watch Wimbledon a lot,” she said. “I felt so bad, and I just couldn’t watch it. Every time if Wimbledon would be on TV, I would cry.”Hence, she has played only eight matches on grass the last two years, including only two this year leading up to Wimbledon, and has gone 5-3. Perhaps more concerning than the surface was her devastating loss at the French Open last month. Serving for the semifinal match at 5-2, she allowed Karolina Muchova to come back and win.Sabalenka, 25, who won her first major tournament at this year’s Australian Open, was asked this week about her level of confidence on grass, and said, “I don’t like to speak about confidence.”She continued, “For me it’s a little weird. I just want to say that I have strong belief that I can do well on grass. I already did it. I feel good on grass.”She certainly played well on it in her first-round victory on Tuesday. Federer left after Andy Murray won and missed seeing Sabalenka hit a masterful between-the-legs shot from the baseline, with her back to the net. Her opponent, Panna Udvardy of Hungary, was ready at the net to volley it away for the point. Sabalenka smiled and raised her fist to salute the artistic rally, on her way to a straight sets victory, 6-3, 6-2.“I missed this place a lot,” she said on court afterward, “that’s why I played my best tennis today.” More