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      The Importance of High-Pressure Tennis Tiebreakers

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      Experts say that players need to take their time to succeed. “The athlete who rushes during a tiebreak gets into trouble,” Pam Shriver says.The WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, brings together the year’s top players for one final showdown. Just because the tournament features only the game’s best doesn’t guarantee close sets — in the last two years, about as many sets have been decided 6-0 or 6-1 as they have 7-5 or 7-6.But it is success or failure in those 7-6 sets, decided by a seven-point tiebreaker, that can make or break a player’s season and their season finale.“The mind-set is the most important part of the tiebreaker,” said Pam Shriver, a Hall of Famer, ESPN analyst and coach for the 19th-ranked Donna Vekic. Shriver, who won 21 Grand Slams in doubles, said having someone by her side helped her remain calm and clear during tiebreakers. “When you take your time, things fall into place. The athlete who rushes during a tiebreak gets into trouble.”Iga Swiatek dominated Jessica Pegula 6-1, 6-0 last year in the tournament’s final, and she is also the best in tiebreakers among the elite eight: In the last two years, Swiatek is 6-2 in tiebreakers against top 10 players, which may give her a critical advantage in this tournament. (The third-ranked Coco Gauff is 4-2 and may also have an edge.)“You need to be extra focused in tiebreaks, especially on the first point because you want to start well,” the sixth-ranked Jasmine Paolini said. (She’s 2-2 in tiebreakers versus top 10 players over the past two years.)Shriver says most players include tiebreakers at the end of practice, but many don’t emphasize how to cope in those situations. However, Paolini said she did not really practice for tiebreakers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Tennis, Grigor Dimitrov Has a Renaissance

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      The tennis player turned pro in 2008 and is now back in the top 10 as he prepares for the Rolex Paris Masters.Grigor Dimitrov had just lost a grueling, two-plus-hour, three-set match to Jakub Mensik in Shanghai three weeks ago. Most vanquished players head straight to the locker room and get out of the arena quickly.But Dimitrov is no ordinary guy. One of the most well-liked and respected competitors on the ATP Tour, Dimitrov understands his role as a leader in tennis. So, here was, on the phone, answering questions, earnestly and honestly, into the later hours of the evening.At 33, Dimitrov is experiencing a renaissance at a time when many of his contemporaries are contemplating retirement. Once called Baby Fed because his stunning one-handed backhand resembled that of Roger Federer, Dimitrov ranked a career-high No. 3 in 2017. Barely in the top 30 at the start of 2023, he is now No. 9. Runner-up to Novak Djokovic at last year’s Paris Masters, Dimitrov stands just off the pace in the race to qualify for this year’s ATP Finals.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Some players have trouble staying motivated by the end of the season. Do you?When you’ve competed so many years, you really don’t think about it that much. Whether it’s going to be my last tournament or it’s going to help me get to the Finals, it’s stressful for every player, but everyone carries it differently. I always know that it’s good to finish the year on a good note.What’s the key for you to play well indoors?I like the way the surface plays out. It’s softer on the legs. It’s basically like playing on wood, and I grew up [in Bulgaria] playing on wood so I can relate to it very nicely, and it brings back good memories.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Not All Tennis Balls Are the Same

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      Players must adjust to the differences, and that has led to complaints about consistency. The ATP is trying to solve the problem.Yellow felt and a rubber core. A tennis ball seems so simple. But reality is more complicated, at least on the pro tours where manufacturers can make balls that fit into a range of specifications. And in recent years, with players forced to adjust to different balls at so many tournaments, they have begun complaining about the consistency and the quality of the balls as never before.Novak Djokovic spoke out. So did Rafael Nadal. And Taylor Fritz, Daniil Medvedev, Stan Wawrinka and Andrey Rublev. The varying balls not only harmed the quality of play, according to players and coaches, but the athletes blamed them for the increase in shoulder, elbow and, especially, wrist injuries.“The quality of even the best balls has come down in the last few years,” said Craig Boynton, who coached Hubert Hurkacz. “They should not just be picking the ball that will pay the most money to be associated with a tournament, but what is the actual best ball.”Lower-quality balls can feel like rocks early in a game then “get fluffed-up like little kittens” after a few games, Boynton said. When that happens, “players trying to muscle the ball more” by swinging with more force to make up for what the ball is lacking can get injured.But that’s only half the story, Boynton said. Wayne Ferreira, Frances Tiafoe’s former coach, said that even when the balls were high quality, there were too many different ones in play. Players often saw different brands each week.“Some are heavier and some are lighter, and making that adjustment all the time is difficult,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Playing Tennis Is Tough. So Is Being the Director of a Tournament.

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      Former players often run big events, and they have to deal with such requests as better food and accommodations. “As tournament director you know that not everyone is going to be happy,” one said.If Frances Tiafoe has his way, every player lounge at an ATP Masters 1000 tournament will have table tennis and video games. There will be top-shelf food, “Not some dry chicken, but quality stuff that doesn’t taste like cardboard,” Tiafoe said in an interview in September, and tournament directors will loan players luxury cars for the week rather than forcing them to rely on tournament transportation.Most important, Tiafoe, a U.S. Open semifinalist this year, wants the scheduling of matches to be fair and equitable for all, not just the game’s stars.Casper Ruud, the eighth-ranked player in the world, agrees with Tiafoe about the food, but he cares more about having a spacious gym on site for the players to warm up and cool down.“Some players like to eat pasta, others like more meat, and some like to eat rice, so having good chefs who can cook fresh food that’s something the players really appreciate,” Ruud said during the Laver Cup in Berlin last month.Masters 1000s are the highest-level tournaments on the ATP Tour, offering the most prize money and ranking points outside of Wimbledon and the Australian, French and U.S. Opens. There are nine such events, including the Rolex Paris Masters, which begins Monday. More than half of those tournaments — Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid, Rome and the Rolex Paris Masters — are run by former touring pros who have become tournament directors.Two former female world No. 1s, Amélie Mauresmo and Garbiñe Muguruza, also are tournament directors, Mauresmo for the French Open and Muguruza at the WTA Finals, which begin Nov. 2. All offer a unique perspective on players’ wants and needs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robert Lansdorp, Prominent Coach of Tennis Champions, Dies at 85

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      His students, including Tracy Austin, Maria Sharapova, Pete Sampras and Lindsay Davenport, developed their ground strokes through his regimen of intense repetition.Robert Lansdorp, an influential tennis coach whose intense focus on developing ground strokes through ceaseless repetition helped turn four of his students — Tracy Austin, Pete Sampras, Lindsay Davenport and Maria Sharapova — into No. 1-ranked players in the world, died on Monday in West Carson, Calif. He was 85.Stephanie Lansdorp, his daughter, said his death, in a nursing facility, was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest.Lansdorp, who was based in Southern California, worked one on one, mostly with young players — Austin started lessons with him at 7, Sampras at 10 — to build their muscle memory by relentlessly drilling them on their forehands, backhands and other strokes and on their footwork.“He wanted to do it over and over and over again, and he had methods to get there — he had a knack,” Austin said in an interview. “You knew if Robert was pushing you, it meant that he knew there was more to you. He was tough, but there was a soft side to him. He thrived on making people better.”When Austin won the women’s singles title at the U.S. Open at age 16 in 1979, she became the youngest women’s champion in tournament history and the first Grand Slam champion tutored by Lansdorp.“We made our names together,” she said.After Austin’s victory over Chris Evert, Lansdorp told reporters: “There’s room for improvement. There’s only one way to go — up.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Laver Cup and Its Growing Tradition

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      Roger Federer, who helped create the team event in 2017, said “the first year was definitely a highlight.” The cup is now in its seventh year.Roger Federer was in a bit of a panic. He knew how high the stakes were as he took the court at Prague’s O2 Arena in September 2017 for a Sunday afternoon match against Nick Kyrgios.Not only was Federer a founder of the Laver Cup team competition that made its much-ballyhooed debut that year, but he and Tony Godsick, his longtime manager, had worked to design rules that would likely result in a down-to-the wire finish between the team from Europe and the one representing the rest of the world. Federer got what he wanted, but now he had to deliver.“I knew that if I lost against Kyrgios — and I was down match point — it would come down to a one-set super tiebreaker in doubles for the whole Laver Cup, and it would have been Rafa [Nadal] and me against Kyrgios and [Jack] Sock,” Federer said by phone last week. “It would have been insane. I was so happy that by beating Kyrgios I didn’t have to go through that.”Federer spoke last week as he prepared to leave for Berlin and this year’s Laver Cup. Earlier in the day he played tennis for half an hour, a luxury these days, but one he still described as “so much fun.” As he reminisced about his favorite Laver Cup memories his voice rose with enthusiasm.“That first year was definitely a highlight,” said Federer, who won 20 major singles titles, including eight at Wimbledon and five at the U.S. Open. “And, of course, walking out to play doubles with Rafa, there was such high expectation that had never happened before. That was magical.”Federer, seated left, and Rafael Nadal after their 2022 doubles match in the Laver Cup in London against Frances Tiafoe and Jack Sock. It was Federer’s final tournament before his retirement.Tom Jenkins/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Laver Cup: A Busy Taylor Fritz Embraces Team Competition

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      “It’s amazing I’m going to get to go play just a really fun event that I enjoy with all of my friends,” he said.After playing at home and hearing the roars as he reached his first Grand Slam final at the U.S. Open, Taylor Fritz is back on the road after a trans-Atlantic journey.The tennis world moves on very quickly.“I mean it’s one week off and then right after it again,” said Michael Russell, one of Fritz’s coaches. “There’s just not a lot of time off.”The risk of a letdown is real, but this is a road trip to Berlin that Fritz has been looking forward to. He fell hard for the Laver Cup when he made his debut in 2019, and the team event, dreamed up by Roger Federer and his agent, Tony Godsick, remains one of Fritz’s favorite events, even in an overstuffed Olympic season like 2024.“Being so mentally locked in for these two weeks, it would be really tough to go play an individual tournament that’s not going to have the same, like, just energy,” Fritz said at the U.S. Open earlier this month. “So it’s amazing I’m going to get to go play a really fun event that I enjoy with all of my friends. Because it’s pretty impossible for me to not be fired up playing a match when I have all these guys on the bench kind of going crazy for me.”The Laver Cup, running Friday through Sunday, is an annual men’s competition between six-player all-star teams, inspired by golf’s Ryder Cup. In that tournament, it is Europe against the United States. In the Laver Cup, it is Team Europe against Team World. It is not the most natural rivalry. Who instinctively roots for “the world minus Europe?”Fritz, center, and Tiafoe, left, and their fellow players on Team World celebrating a victory over Team Europe during the Laver Cup in September 2022 in London.Julian Finney/Getty Images for Laver CupWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Laver Cup: Tennis Players Love the Team Spirit

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      The Laver Cup pits Europe against the rest of the world, and players love being picked for one of its teams.There is an adage that says there is no “I” in “team.” It implies that those who compete in group sports are expected to forsake their independence for the greater good.In tennis, the “I” means individual, as in “individual sport,” which tennis surely is. There is only one singles winner at every tournament or, in the case of the recent U.S. Open, one man and one woman out of an original field of nearly 500 competitors in the qualifying and main draws.But in many ways, tennis has also become a team sport. Team competitions, like this week’s Laver Cup in Berlin, take solo performers and thrust them together for a week, enabling them to become practice compatriots, doubles partners and, most important, cheerleaders.“I think it’s special having the best players on the planet on the same team or competing against each other, especially when you don’t want to let each other down,” said Alexander Zverev in an interview on the eve of the U.S. Open. “That’s what makes Laver Cup unique and that’s why you see everybody compete so hard.”John McEnroe, far right, and other members of Team World celebrate the victory of their player Frances Tiafoe over Team Europe’s Stefanos Tsitsipas at the 2022 Laver Cup.Julian Finney/Getty Images for Laver CupZverev is the lone German on Team Europe alongside Carlos Alcaraz from Spain, the Russian Daniil Medvedev, the Norwegian Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas from Greece and Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, who takes the place of Rafael Nadal who withdrew last week because he is still rehabilitating from injuries. Team World comprises the Americans Taylor Fritz, Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton, as well as the Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis, Alejandro Tabilo from Chile and Francisco Cerúndolo from Argentina. Kokkinakis and Cerúndolo are late replacements for two injured players, Tommy Paul and Alex de Minaur. The captains, former rivals Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, are in their final year leading Team Europe and Team World.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More