Tennis

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      U.S. Open: The Tennis Player Emma Navarro Is Getting Someplace Fast

      by

      Navarro, 23, has been steadily climbing up the tennis world rankings and will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.As speedy as Emma Navarro is on the tennis court, she is never in a rush.By her own admission, Navarro isn’t very good at time management. But she defends herself by explaining that her most enduring trait, one of the reasons she has catapulted from playing low-level challenger tournaments to being ranked just outside the world’s top 10, is that she makes it a point to stay in the here and now.“I’m naturally very present, which makes it hard to plan ahead,” Navarro, 23, said by video call from Toronto earlier this month. “But I think it helps with just taking one thing at a time and feeling like I’m not in any rush to be anywhere that I’m not yet.”Navarro has been one of the biggest surprises in women’s tennis over the last 16 months. In January 2023, she was ranked 149th and playing in a $25,000 tournament in Naples, Fla., which she won. Now she is ranked 13th. She will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.Navarro has never advanced beyond the first round of the main draw at the U.S. Open and has won only one match, in the junior tournament in 2019. Last year she lost in the first round to Magdalena Frech.She was born in New York City, and her family left Manhattan for Charleston, S.C., shortly after 9/11. It was there, at age 14, that Navarro began working with Peter Ayers, who remains her coach.Navarro lost to Amanda Anisimova in a semifinal game at the National Bank Open in Toronto earlier this month.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressWe 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

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      U.S. Open: A Super Saturday When the Big Stars Played On and On

      by

      Throughout its 143-year history, the U.S. Open has produced memorable matches and compelling story lines.There was the five-set semifinal victory for Manuel Orantes over Guillermo Vilas in 1975 in a late-night match in which Orantes saved five match points and then returned hours later to beat Jimmy Connors for the title.There was the final in 1995 between Steffi Graf and Monica Seles that Seles lost in three sets after more than a two-year hiatus following a stabbing attack by a Graf fan. And then there was the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi quarterfinal in 2001 where Sampras prevailed in four tiebreakers after midnight.There was also the quarterfinal in 2008 between Venus and Serena Williams when Serena won 7-6 (6), 7-6 (7). And the five-set semifinal in 2011 between Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic during which Djokovic rallied from two sets down and then saved two match points in the fifth before winning four straight games for the victory.Fans had reason to clap during the finals match between Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova, which went to three sets.Jose R. Lopez/The New York TimesBut no day in U.S. Open history carries more cachet than Super Saturday on Sept. 8, 1984. That day, fans and television audiences were treated to more than 12 hours of play in which each match stretched to the limits of durability and drama. For a single admission price, spectators got to see 16 sets, 165 games and 979 points.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

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Micky Lawler, a Longtime Tennis Executive, Turns to Basketball

      by

      She was a force at the WTA and is now the commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league.Micky Lawler knows a thing or two about starting over.As a child, Lawler, whose father was an executive with a Dutch electronics company, lived in seven countries: the Netherlands, where she was born, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, France and Belgium.But the move that impacted Lawler the most came when she was 24 and returning to the Netherlands after finishing graduate school in Delaware.“As the plane pushed back, I could see my friends, who had come to the airport to say goodbye, standing by the gate, and I realized that I would miss them much more than they would miss me,” Lawler, now 63, wrote in an email last month. “For me, this departure entailed closing a very important chapter and leaving behind everyone I held so dear.”Lawler felt the same chapter-closing emotions when her position as president of the Women’s Tennis Association was eliminated last December, months after the WTA announced its partnership with the venture capital firm CVC Capital Partners. That ended a 38-year career in tennis, during which Lawler was instrumental in overseeing the growth of tournaments, sponsorship, marketing and broadcast deals for the largest women’s sports entity.But Lawler has already moved on. In June, she was named commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league to debut next January.Unrivaled is designed to be a complement, not a competitor, to the W.N.B.A. It was founded by, among others, Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty forward, and her United States Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier, a forward with the Minnesota Lynx. The league features three-on-three play on a court that is about 70-feet long, two-thirds the size of a traditional basketball court. Each hourlong game consists of four seven-minute quarters designed to attract the devotion of younger, goldfish-attention-span fans. Media rights deals are still being worked out.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

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Catherine, Princess of Wales, in Purple, Is a Wimbledon Winner

      by

      In her second public appearance since her cancer diagnosis, the princess once again made a considered choice.Carlos Alcaraz may have won the men’s Wimbledon final in relatively short order, Barbora Krejcikova may have surprised everyone by taking home the woman’s trophy, and Henry Patten and Harri Heliovaara may have survived a tiebreaker to claim an upset victory, but the off-court champion of the tournament was unquestionably Catherine, Princess of Wales.Making only her second public appearance since revealing her cancer diagnosis and treatment earlier this year, and her first solo appearance, the princess arrived on Sunday, the final day of the event, to assume her role as the royal patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, dressed in royal — and Wimbledon tennis club — purple.Coincidence? Doubtful. She was on center court, after all. The princess has long understood her role as a symbol of continuity and the future of the royal family, and she dresses for it. Her illness and subsequent retreat from public view, and the relatively small drip of information about her condition, have only heightened the import of each step back into the spotlight. She would know the image would be picked over, disseminated and analyzed for any clue to her prognosis.This is particularly true at Wimbledon, where what the attendees wear is given almost as much attention as what happens in the games. See, for example, Zendaya, who modeled Ralph Lauren jackets and ties to both finals, and Margot Robbie, who unveiled her take on pregnancy fashion in polka-dot Alaïa.To that end, Catherine’s dress, a graceful midi-length crepe style by Safiyaa that looked to be a version of the label’s Cecilia style, only appeared simple.But no choice in such a freighted moment is unconsidered. And Safiyaa, one of Catherine’s go-to labels, is a female-founded British brand that makes all its products to order, in part to avoid the issue of overstock. (See the alignment with the Prince and Princess of Wales’s sustainability efforts, which include Catherine’s very public shopping of her own closet.) She last wore a caped look from Safiyaa to the Royal Variety Performance in December, before stepping back from the public eye.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

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Vic Seixas, Winner of 15 Grand Slam Tennis Titles, Dies at 100

      by

      Once declared “the face of American tennis,” he was ranked among the leading players in the United States from the 1940s to the ’60s.Vic Seixas, who won 15 Grand Slam tennis tournaments in the 1950s, died on Friday. The oldest living Grand Slam champion, he was 100.His death was announced by the International Tennis Hall of Fame, which did not say where he died.“From 1940 to 1968 Vic Seixas was the face of American tennis,” the Hall of Fame declared when he was inducted in 1971.At 6-foot-1 and about 180 pounds, Seixas (pronounced SAY-shuss) was known for his superb conditioning and endurance and was frequently ranked among the top 10 players in the United States. The renowned Australian tennis figure Harry Hopman regarded him as the world’s No. 1 amateur of 1954.Seixas won two Grand Slam singles championships, eight mixed doubles titles and five men’s doubles championships. He captured his first men’s singles title when he bested Kurt Nielsen of Denmark at Wimbledon in 1953 and defeated Rex Hartwig of Australia in the 1954 singles final of the U.S. Nationals at Forest Hills, the forerunner of the U.S. Open.Seixas, who remained an amateur throughout his career, played in 28 U.S. championship tournaments at Forest Hills between 1940 and 1969. He missed the event only when he was serving in the military during World War II.“Even when he was off form, he pulled out big matches by persevering long after most men would have given in and then, quite miraculously, forcing his way out of the slough of despond with a sustained streak of brilliant volleying,” Herbert Warren Wind wrote in Sports Illustrated in 1958.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

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      The Tennis Podcast that Champions, and Hosts, Black Pros

      by

      Black Spin Global found an audience with its cheeky coverage of the growing number of ranked Black tennis players. It also offered them a forum.Eugene Allen was an 8-year-old Black boy growing up in southwest London when he first started to nurse hopes of one day playing professional tennis. It was 1997, and there were no Black men ranked in the top 100 on the ATP Tour. Venus Williams had just made her U.S. Open debut that year, and she and Chanda Rubin were the only Black women ranked in the top 50 in the world; Serena Williams was at No. 99.About 10 years later, Allen put down his rackets to focus on his education. The costs of the game — coaching sessions, travel to tournaments, equipment — were piling up. His family could no longer afford to help him prepare for the pro circuit.“I kind of fell out of love with it,” he said. “There was almost a resentment.”Now, Allen is the center of an online community focusing exclusively on Black tennis players worldwide, at a time when there are more pros and juniors on tour than ever before. As of July 1, there were five Black men ranked in the top 50: Ben Shelton (No. 14), Felix Auger-Aliassime (No. 17), Frances Tiafoe (No. 29), Gael Monfils (No. 33) and Arthur Fils (No. 34). On the WTA Tour, there were four women: Coco Gauff (No. 2), Jasmine Paolini (No. 7), Madison Keys (No. 13) and Sloane Stephens (No. 50).Since 2019, Allen has run Black Spin Global, a digital media brand that encompasses a podcast, blog and social media accounts where he and Lucy Tezangi delve deep into the tennis universe. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, they won,’” she said. “It’s match updates, breaking news, coach updates, player updates and so on.”Allen, 35, was lured back to the sport in the mid-2010s, when both Williams sisters were routinely ranked in the top 20 and James Blake, Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga were fan favorites breaking through on the men’s tour.Since leaving high-level competition, Allen had majored in journalism and taken jobs at The Daily Mail Online and The Telegraph, while writing freelance soccer articles. He founded Pitching It Black, a website dedicated to covering Black soccer players in Europe, in 2016 and thought, what if he did something similar for tennis?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

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      Wimbledon: Andy Murray, Battling Injuries and Age, Faces Final Call

      by

      He is the last British man to have won this very English tournament. He did it twice, along with grabbing two Olympic golds.“I guess I’ll just need to win Wimbledon to shut everyone up.” — Andy Murray to The Daily Telegraph in June 2004Mission accomplished, although it took nearly a decade for Murray to manage it. He had to scrap and scream through all sorts of tennis trouble before finally putting a halt to all the annual chatter about when a British man might finally win Wimbledon again.Now, at 37 and at the end of his career — win or lose (or forced to withdraw because of recent back surgery) — he is saying goodbye to a tournament he conquered not once, but twice. Three years elapsed between his first victory in 2013 and his second in 2016, when his proud country rewarded Murray with a knighthood. In that same year, he won his second Olympic gold.For more than 70 years, the hope that a British man would win Wimbledon had become a tradition in a country that still likes its tradition: a part of the landscape at the well-tended All England Club where Fred Perry had won the men’s singles in 1936, but had long gone without a British successor.Tim Henman was still the local focal point when Murray emerged in 2005. Henman had reached four singles semifinals by rushing the net, but had always fallen short, handling each setback with a firm handshake and a dignified demeanor.Murray — a scruffy shock-absorbing baseliner from Scotland — managed the pressure and the project quite differently: muttering, moaning and sometimes swearing between points. But above all, he embraced the challenge as he trundled about the grass with a heavy gait only to move with astonishing quickness once the ball was in play.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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Tennis

      At Wimbledon, Players Must Deal With the Challenge of Grass

      by

      Fewer and fewer events are held on that surface. It can be tricky, and injuries are common.For Debbie Jevans, a seat on Centre Court at Wimbledon requires no more than a left turn out of her office, then a right turn past the trophies honoring past champions. A few short steps further, the same steps taken by the competitors on finals day, and Jevans finds herself on hallowed grass.“Centre Court is such a special place,” said Jevans, the first female chair of the All England Club, by video call last month. “The court is pristine, the flowers look amazing, the overviews of St. Mary’s Church in the background. I feel an enormous sense of pride and thanks to the hundreds of people who have got us to this point.”Seeing the elegance and lush lawns on opening day at Wimbledon is, for players and fans, like stepping back in time. One of the biggest reasons is because professional play on grass is as elusive as a Wimbledon title itself.Wimbledon groundskeepers work most of the year to maintain the rye grass courts, which allows the ground underneath to remain dry and firm.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesIga Swiatek has played 23 WTA grass-court singles matches out of almost 400 total in her career. Swiatek, the world No. 1, has not advanced beyond the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.Jannik Sinner, the newly named world No. 1 in men’s tennis, enters Wimbledon having played just one ATP grass-court tournament this year — which he won over Hubert Hurkacz in Halle, Germany, on June 23 — and only nine in his career. One of those matches was a five-set Wimbledon quarterfinal loss to Novak Djokovic in 2022.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