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      Wimbledon Boycott in 1973 Changed the Tennis World

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      The walkout was the result of the tennis federation banning Nikola Pilic, an instance of player unity that is still felt today.Stan Smith’s 1972 Wimbledon cup sits alongside his 1971 United States Open winner’s prize in a trophy case inside his Hilton Head Island, S.C., home. Smith had hoped to defend his title in ’73.“I was playing the best tennis of my life,” said Smith, who had lost in the Wimbledon final in 1971 to John Newcombe in five sets and then went on to beat Ilie Nastase in the 1972 final, also in five sets. “Once you’ve won it you always want to win it again.”But in 1973, Smith decided not to play. Instead, he and 80 other players voted to boycott the tournament just before the first matches in support of the player Nikola Pilic. Pilic had been barred from the tournament by the International Lawn Tennis Federation, now the I.T.F., the world governing body of tennis that runs all the Grand Slam tournaments, for refusing to play a Davis Cup match for his native Yugoslavia a month earlier. “It was really difficult,” said Smith in a phone interview.This year, as the Women’s Tennis Association celebrates the momentous meeting at Wimbledon 50 years ago in which Billie Jean King encouraged her fellow players to form that organization, the Association of Tennis Professionals is also remembering a watershed moment in its own history. It was when its members banded together, flexed their muscles and walked out on the most prestigious tournament in tennis, with ramifications that are still being felt today. Among them: greater communication between the players and the tournaments, and wider distribution of prize money at all levels of the pro game.“This was the beginning of the ATP and players coming together because it was really testing the relationship,” said Andrea Gaudenzi, the current ATP chairman, who was born one month after the boycott, by video call. “Everybody was surprised of the support that Niki got. And that made the players think that if we get together, we are powerful and can do something. That was a very important milestone.”While the male players group had been started a year earlier, the men were still enduring power struggles between its members and the tournaments. Many of the top players were committed to World Championship Tennis, a professional circuit founded in 1968 that was backed by the Texas businessman Lamar Hunt. The tour competed with the International Lawn Tennis Federation.The ATP’s initial group of players, called the Handsome Eight, included Cliff Drysdale, Pilic and Newcombe. Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall soon signed on.In 1971, the federation, laboring to maintain control over players, voted to ban all competitors from the rival World Championship Tennis from the federation’s major events for 1972, including the French Open and Wimbledon. The ban lasted just one year, and created animosity with players.Pilic, shown playing in the men’s singles at Wimbledon in 1970, chose to compete in the doubles at the 1973 WCT Masters rather than the Davis Cup quarterfinal for Yugoslavia, his native country. Yugoslavia wasn’t happy.Ted West/Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesPilic and his doubles partner, Allan Stone, qualified for the 1973 WCT Masters, but the event coincided with a Davis Cup quarterfinal tie between Yugoslavia and New Zealand. Pilic opted to play the World Championship Tennis event, infuriating Yugoslavia, which went on to lose to New Zealand.The Yugoslav Tennis Federation asked the International Lawn Tennis Federation to act against Pilic. The federation suspended him for nine months, but that was reduced to one month, just long enough for him to miss Wimbledon.“Probably if I had played we would have won easily,” Pilic said by phone from his home in Croatia about the Davis Cup. “There was a big fight with the [Yugoslav] federation” and then with the lawn tennis federation. “They could do whatever they wanted. We had no control over the sport. We had to do something.”When the players gathered in London for Wimbledon, there were countless discussions and late-night meetings. Laver, the four-time champion, said he wouldn’t compete. So did the three-time winner Newcombe, as well as Smith, Rosewall and Ashe.“We needed to take the pulse of the players,” said Drysdale, the ATP’s first president, by phone. “We were professionals, and we wanted to stay that way. Niki had the right to play wherever he wanted to. There was no opposition to what we were doing. We never wrung our hands wondering if we were doing the right thing.”On the morning of the first day of play, Drysdale phoned the tournament referee, Mike Gibson, at 9, asked him if he had a pen and paper and began reading aloud the names of the 81 men who would no longer be competing, including 12 of the 16 seeds. By the time play began hours later there were 29 qualifiers in the draw and 50 lucky losers, men who had lost in the qualifying tournament but were suddenly awarded spots in the main draw.To show the extent of the players’ solidarity, Ashe held up a list of all the male Wimbledon competitors, with check marks next to all those who were boycotting the 1973 championship. Getty ImagesThere was some opposition to the players’ plan to withdraw. Nastase, who had been runner-up to Smith the year before, opted to compete. So did Roger Taylor, whom Pilic said he refused to speak to for a year afterward.Jimmy Connors also played, and Bjorn Borg, then just 17, did too, his first Wimbledon.Jan Kodes, a two-time French Open champion from Czechoslovakia, also opted to play and won his only Wimbledon. He beat Alex Metreveli of Russia in the final.“No one even asked me to support the boycott,” Kodes said via email. “I was not an ATP member, so I was not in the room. No one believed that this would happen. In my opinion it was pushed by the newly established ATP to show and increase the players’ power.“I’m not sure if the boycott was really necessary,” added Kodes, who went on to reach the final of the U.S. Open two months later. “There are many controversial situations and problematic decisions in tennis.”Drysdale, the former player, said the boycott had a long-lasting effect.“It changed the game forever because no one has ever forgotten what happened that year,” he said. “And we are all aware that it could happen again, depending on how the players are treated.“Everyone knows that the players walked out once on one of the most important tournaments in the world and no one will ever be sure that they wouldn’t do it again.”Gaudenzi said he believed that player unity was important to the growth of the game. What he would like to see now is greater synergy between the ATP, the WTA, the I.T.F. and the Grand Slam tournaments.“We need to come together and collaborate a lot closer,” said Gaudenzi, who stopped short of saying there should be one commissioner for the men’s and women’s tours. “I want tennis to be bigger. I want tennis to be relevant vis-à-vis other sports and other entertainment. We need to adapt to the new generation, the new technology, the new way fans are consuming the content and the competition. So we need to step up our game, and the only way to do it is to get together.”Pilic, now 83, still marvels at the tremendous sacrifice his fellow players made for him.“In that time I thought, maybe Niki Pilic is not that important,” he said. “But we were the products, and you cannot have the tournament without the products. People could not believe that we did it. But we proved in that moment that we were a very strong group. We lost that year, but the war was won.” More

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      Cameron Norrie Goes to Wimbledon as Britain’s Top-Ranked Player

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      He is the top-ranked British player at the tournament. Seven years ago when that was Andy Murray, he won.Cameron Norrie has had two mystical moments at Wimbledon. Both took place on Centre Court, the most revered venue in the sport.The first occurred in 2021 when Norrie faced Roger Federer in what turned out to be the eight-time champion’s last Wimbledon and the final singles tournament of his career.“Playing Roger on Centre Court at Wimbledon with my home fans there was surreal,” said Norrie of Britain, who had chances to break serve and send the match into a fifth set before losing 6-4, 6-4, 5-7, 6-4. “Obviously they love him there as well. I think they supported him more than they supported me that day.”The second moment happened last year, when Norrie reached his first major semifinal at Wimbledon. He became only the fourth British man in the open era — behind Roger Taylor, Tim Henman and the two-time champion Andy Murray — to reach the semifinals there.Murray won in 2016 when he was ranked No. 2 in the world; he is the last British man to have taken the tournament. This year, Norrie will be playing Wimbledon as his country’s top-ranked singles player.“There was already expectation to do well because I am the British No. 1,” said Norrie, 27, who won the first set from Novak Djokovic before falling in four sets last year. “Obviously you feel a lot of pressure. But the only way to go in is to embrace all of that. If you just run and hide from it, you’re going to get eaten alive on the court.”Norrie, who was ranked a career-high No. 8 last year and now sits at No. 13, already has wins this year over Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, whom he upset to win a clay-court title in Rio de Janeiro in February. Last year, he also won two Association of Tennis Professionals tournaments.Cameron Norrie played a backhand return to Jordan Thompson during their round of men’s singles at the Cinch Championships in June.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs a junior player, Norrie was ranked No. 10 in the world. But instead of turning pro, he opted to go to college at Texas Christian University. There he met Facundo Lugones, who was a senior when Norrie was a freshman. The two would often share sideways glances as they destroyed their respective opponents. They became close friends. Now, Lugones is Norrie’s coach.“College was so valuable and so much fun for me,” Norrie said. “As a tennis player, you have to sacrifice a lot, and it’s not a normal life. I wasn’t ready for this lifestyle when I was 18 years old. I made a lot of mistakes at college that don’t really cost you so much. I enjoyed myself more than I should have. If I was doing that on tour, I would be ranked nowhere.”Norrie admits to being undisciplined in the sport during his first year at college. He showed up late for practice, scrapped his team uniform and didn’t give all of his effort. A few indoor losses caused him to be dropped in the lineup from No. 1 to No. 3.Lugones said the coaches gave Norrie an ultimatum when he came back his sophomore year. “After that, you could tell he was a different player,” Lugones said.Norrie’s on-court strength is his ability to compete on all surfaces and to fight until the end. He’s left-handed, which aids him in hitting his favorite shot: a low, flat, short backhand from the right side of the court.“He reminds me a little bit of a left-handed version of David Ferrer,” said Jim Courier, a former world No. 1. “He’s very difficult to beat, doesn’t get tired and doesn’t beat himself often.”Norrie earned the ire of Djokovic in Rome in May by taking aim on a powerful short overhead shot and hitting Djokovic in the leg when his back was turned. While Norrie apologized at the time, he has no regrets about the shot.“I wanted to win,” said Norrie, who lost the match in straight sets. “It was in the heat of the moment for me to break [serve], and I was trying everything. I was competing as hard as I could.”Lugones said Norrie’s greatest strength is his mind game.“His mental skills are different from everybody else’s,” Lugones said. “He smells blood early and then raises his level. You can’t teach that skill.” More

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      Billie Jean King Supports Talks With Saudi Arabia on Women’s Tennis Events

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      The LatestBillie Jean King, the leading architect of women’s professional tennis who is widely regarded as the first female athlete-activist, said Friday that she supported talks between the women’s tour and Saudi Arabia on holding competitions in the kingdom, despite its abysmal record on human rights.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” King said Friday at an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the WTA, the women’s professional tour. “I would probably go there and talk to them.”After King’s comments, Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said women’s tennis was seriously evaluating partnerships with Saudi Arabia. He suggested that potentially holding events there would be a way to support “progress” for women, while the country is trying to become a destination for major sports.“Sometimes when you are in the position we are in, you need to support the change,” Simon said, referring to the tour’s commitment to gender pay equity and its loss of revenue during the pandemic and an 18-month suspension of operations in China over Peng Shuai.He said Saudi Arabia had “a long way to go,” especially in its laws banning homosexuality, but that change was underway in the country. “You want them to do what they are doing” and support that, he added.“I’m a huge believer in engagement — I don’t think you change unless you engage,” Billie Jean King said Friday.Kin Cheung/Associated PressWhy It Matters: Saudi Arabia continues to expand its footprint in sports.The comments from King and Simon were the strongest signal yet that Saudi Arabia is expanding and accelerating its efforts to become a part of not just men’s tennis but also women’s, among other sports like soccer, Formula 1 and golf. The Saudi wealth fund’s LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour after an acrimonious rivalry that included litigation and the loss of a handful of the tour’s biggest stars to the upstart league.Looking to avoid that scenario and always on the hunt for new investors, tennis executives have spoken openly of their ongoing discussions with Saudi officials about holding tournaments there as soon as this year. Saudi Arabia is bidding to become the host of the Next Gen Finals, a men’s event for 21-and-under players scheduled for December. Saudi Arabia’s bid includes the option of holding a women’s Next Gen event there as well.Simon traveled to Riyadh in February with other WTA executives and players for meetings with Saudi officials.Background: Players have expressed concern for their safety.The issue is especially complicated for the women’s tennis tour in part because there are a number of openly gay players, including Daria Kasatkina of Russia, who is ranked No. 11 in the world and often travels with her partner. The men’s tour does not have any players who are openly gay.Sloane Stephens, a member of the WTA Tour Players’ Council, said it was important for L.G.B.T.Q. players to feel safe while competing in Saudi Arabia.“That is part of the evaluation,” Stephens said. “We want to make sure everyone is safe and comfortable and feels supported.”King is openly gay as well, but she cited the WTA’s decision to play in Doha beginning in 2008 as a precedent for supporting countries who say they want to become more progressive. Simon said that, during his visit to Riyadh, he had noticed some of the same changes that Doha had said it wanted to make 15 years ago when women had “zero rights” and there were concerns about whether the players would be safe wearing short, sleeveless tennis outfits.“It’s about celebrating the betterment of women, that there is change coming,” Simon said. “I’m not Saying Saudi Arabia is a place we should be doing business with. They have a long way to go, but they are making changes.”What’s Next: The timetable is uncertain.Simon said there was no timetable for making a decision about the WTA going to Saudi Arabia. However, the tour has yet to announce a location for its season-ending Tour Finals. The tour and the Chinese government are currently negotiating the future of that event. The WTA suspended its operations in China for 18 months after player Peng Shuai was seemingly silenced after she appeared to accuse a former top government official of sexually assaulting her and the tour was unable to contact her. More

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      Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

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      The WTA Tour approved a plan to achieve pay equity at its biggest tournaments. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2033.The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years.The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even in tournaments where they play the same best-of-three-sets format.In Rome, in May, the men competed for $8.5 million while the women competed for $3.9 million. The Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open, paid men $6.28 million while women competed for $2.53 million. The National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women.“More and more players have been getting restless with this,” said Jessica Pegula, the world’s fourth-ranked player and a member of the WTA Players’ Council. “Equal pay started with the Slams, and I think a lot of people thought that meant every tournament.”Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. As part of this deal, organizers of the next two tiers of tournaments — the 1000-level tournaments, which are the biggest competitions outside of the Grand Slams, and the 500-level tournaments — have committed to pay equity as well.All events featuring both men and women at those two levels will pay prize money equal to that on the men’s tour, the ATP, beginning in 2027. By 2033, all events at those two levels will offer the same prize money.Tour executives and tournament officials say the phased-in approach is essential for raising the additional revenue to fund the pay increases, but that has not sat well with all players.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain, who has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, said last month.Sloane Stephens, another Players’ Council member, said she understands the impatience of players who don’t want this benefit to kick in only after they have retired, but there are many existing contracts that prevent an immediate shift.“It may not be the fastest pathway, but we will get there,” she said. “If I wasn’t on the council, it would be hard for me to understand. This process takes time.”In an interview this spring, Steven Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the time frame is necessary to allow the market to catch up with player sentiment, as the tour expands its marketing and renegotiates existing media contracts. Tournament organizers will also be able to take advantage of new rules that will make player attendance essentially mandatory at the biggest tournaments. Tournament organizers have long used the lack of a mandatory attendance requirement and a slight difference in the number of rankings points that players received as excuses for not providing equal pay. All of the tournaments with men and women will also now offer the same rankings points for both, making the competitions equal in every way and less confusing for fans.But while the pay equity deal offers an eventual solution to an old problem for tennis — and in all sports — it is hardly a panacea. With Wimbledon set to begin on Monday, women’s tennis continues to grapple with challenges.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa has said about the gap between men’s and women’s prize money at most tournaments.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockMost immediately, the tour has yet to announce the location of its season-ending tour finals in November. That issue was supposed to have been settled after the tour announced earlier this year that it would end its 18-month suspension of operations in China over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai. In a social media post in 2021, Shuai accused a government official of sexually assaulting her, and tour officials were subsequently unable to contact her.Simon said its boycott proved ineffective. But when the tour released its fall calendar earlier this month, it gave no location for the finals, though it included several tournaments in China. Tour officials have said they intend to hold the event there, but negotiations are continuing with the Chinese over the details of its existing 10-year deal that guaranteed nearly $150 million in prize money.There is also the larger issue of whether the WTA Tour will be able to further unify with the men’s tour, a move that experts say is vital for maximizing the potential of pro tennis. And looming over all of this is what role, if any, Saudi Arabia may play in the sport.Saudi Arabia, whose LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour, already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, but so far it has shown an inclination to grow its investments in tennis without the acrimony and litigation that accompanied its aggressive push into golf.Saudi Arabia is a leading candidate to become the host of the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending 21-and-under tournament that has been held in Milan since its inception in 2017, according to people with knowledge of the bidding process. The proposal to stage the competition, beginning later this year, includes a plan to launch a similar women’s event.The WTA has yet to commit to that or to staging any competitions in Saudi Arabia, where women only recently gained the right to drive and where an abysmal human rights record includes the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Simon traveled to the kingdom earlier this year for talks with government officials, though it’s not clear whether the WTA’s idea of further unification with the ATP includes a new tournament in Saudi Arabia.For now, erasing the pay gap is the first step, though some players do not understand the slow pace of change.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, who is ranked No. 6, said recently.In response, Simon has pointed to the deal the tour struck earlier this year with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. Much of the investment will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts at a time when many of its players remain unknown to casual sports fans.Doing that may require some work on the part of the tournaments that goes beyond giving women more money.“We have to build these personalities,” Simon said.Women in tennis have also been increasingly vocal in recent months about the disparate treatment they have received. At the French Open, organizers put a men’s match in the featured prime-time slot on nine of 10 nights.The mixed tournaments almost always conclude with the men’s final on the last Sunday — an implicit peak — with the women’s final played the day before. At the Italian Open in May, Elena Rybakina and Anhelina Kalinina took the court at 11 p.m. local time in a largely empty stadium after rain and the men’s semifinals delayed their match for hours.After Tuesday’s announcement, at least the money will be equal — eventually.“It’s time for change,” Simon said. “The pathway is now there.” More

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      Novak Djokovic Captures the French Open and a 23rd Grand Slam Title

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      Djokovic beat Casper Ruud to win the men’s singles championship, passing Rafael Nadal for the most major tournament titles in the Open era.Novak Djokovic began his day picturing how it would end, holding his children in his arms, raising another Grand Slam tournament trophy above his head and singing his national anthem as Serbian fans chanted and danced and celebrated his third French Open men’s singles title and much more.On Sunday at Roland Garros, Djokovic defeated Casper Ruud, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5, to capture a record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, continuing a stunning turnaround from a year and a half ago, when he was deported from Australia ahead of the first Grand Slam tournament of 2022, a dire harbinger of the year to come. After Ruud’s final forehand sailed off the court, Djokovic dropped his racket and collapsed onto his back on the red clay. It was easy to appreciate the drama.“The toughest one for me to win,” Djokovic said of the French Open.Moments later, after a congratulatory hug from Ruud, Djokovic knelt in prayer in the middle of the court, then headed for the stands to embrace his family and his coaches. When he came back onto the court moments later, he was wearing a jacket with “23” emblazoned under his right shoulder.Family ❤️#RolandGarros | @DjokerNole pic.twitter.com/Qy42UKC0yQ— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) June 11, 2023
      Djokovic, 36, has spent most of the last two decades chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two other giants who have defined this era of modern tennis. That race has come to an end, at least for now.“Those two guys, the past 15 years, were occupying my mind quite a lot,” Djokovic said as he sat next to the championship trophy.Djokovic surpassed Federer last summer, just a few months before Federer’s retirement, winning his 21st Grand Slam title at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on the grass that Federer had ruled for so long. In January at the Australian Open, Djokovic won again. That 22nd title tied Nadal, the Spanish champion who missed this year’s French Open with an injury.With a cast of stars on hand for the occasion, he made his history on the red clay of the Philippe Chatrier court at the French Open, which Nadal has won an astonishing 14 times. A silver statue of Nadal bullwhipping his forehand stands just hundreds of yards away.The retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady sat next to Djokovic’s wife, Jelena. The French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a few rows above the court. The American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the tennis icons Stan Smith and Yannick Noah, and many French actors, singers, businessmen and athletes were also among the spectators.This was a momentous step in a journey filled with self-inflicted crises, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the court, and early and midcareer fallow seasons, some because he was injured and some when he missed tournaments because he would not waiver from principles that kept him a staunch opponent of the Covid-19 vaccination. His most seemingly impossible task has been winning the hearts of tennis fans who long ago pledged them to the first two members of the so-called Big Three.At the end of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 years old and five years past competing in his first major tournament, Federer had already won 16 Grand Slam titles to Djokovic’s one.But in 2011, Djokovic began to storm the sport, winning the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon. He put together a 41-match winning streak and a 10-1 record against Federer and Nadal. Tennis has never been the same.Djokovic moments after his 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5 victory against Casper Ruud.Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMaybe it was his new, gluten-free diet, or forsaking alcohol, or the time spent in a pressurized chamber. Maybe it was the stretching and calisthenics routine that turned Djokovic into a racket-wielding rubber band and has him “still moving like a cat,” as his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, said Sunday evening.The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder, which Djokovic has said he has carried since growing up during the war in Serbia, hasn’t hurt either.Ivanisevic, a Croat, has described a Balkan fighting spirit in Djokovic’s DNA that no one who has come from outside the region can match in the biggest matches.Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for three years, has said that Djokovic needed to stop punishing himself for an indiscretion that neither Djokovic nor Becker has ever talked about in detail. Once he did that, Becker said, he became liberated, and began winning with abandon.The numbers since then defy simple explanation. With his win Sunday, Djokovic regained the world’s top ranking for a record 388th week. In addition to the record for Grand Slam tournament titles, he also holds the record for Masters 1000 titles. In case any Nadal or Federer fans want to fault him for being a mere compiler, Djokovic has a winning record against both of them.Feeling worn out from his semifinal win over Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic skipped practice on Saturday and searched for tranquillity on a walk in the woods. It was a good decision.Any hope that Ruud, 24, a steady and determined Norwegian playing in his third Grand Slam final in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into something other than a coronation dissipated at the end of a grinding first set that concluded in Djokovic’s signature fashion. Across all these years and hundreds of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has lost only five times after winning the first set.Andy Roddick, a former world No. 1, famously said of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”Ivanisevic added to that assessment Sunday: “Then he digs your grave and you have a funeral and you’re dead. Bye-bye. Thank you for coming.”That was about what Djokovic did to Ruud early on Sunday, on his way to history.Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to start the match and surged to an early lead as Djokovic played a shaky first few games, muffing overheads and pushing balls off the court as Ruud played the mostly error-free and deceptively dangerous tennis that has characterized the best moments of his career.But then the Djokovic that the tennis world has come to know and fear the past dozen years emerged. With Ruud serving at 4-2, close enough to sniff the first-set finish line, Djokovic indulged in one of those classic grinding rallies, running from corner to corner, forward and back, keeping the point alive long after it should have been over. It ended the way it often does — with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the net.“A bit devastating,” Ruud said.In most tennis matches, when a set moves to a tiebreaker, the outcome comes down to a flip of a coin. That is not how it works with Djokovic.Last week, he explained that when a tiebreaker begins, his mind moves to a state of hyper concentration to “stay in the present,” play each point on its merit and give nothing away.He started this one with a lunging forehand winner down the line, and finished it seven points later with another blasted forehand that Ruud didn’t even bother making a run at, not that it would have mattered. When it was over, Djokovic had played 55 points in tiebreakers during this tournament and had yet to make an unforced error.Djokovic soaking in his victory.Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor an hour and 22 minutes, Ruud had gone toe to toe with Djokovic, matching him sprint for sprint and shot for shot for long stretches, and he had nothing but a rubbery set of legs and a damaged psyche to show for it. Ruud stuck around for the scrap, pushing the match past the three-hour mark. But after that first set, it was just a matter of time.In the fog of all this winning, it can be difficult to remember Djokovic’s stretches of strife, even the more recent ones. There were those days when he was in custody in Australia last year as he awaited his deportation hearing. But there was also that ugly time in 2020, when he accidentally swatted a ball into the throat of a line judge and was tossed out of the U.S. Open. The next month, Nadal destroyed him in straight sets in the final of a French Open delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Djokovic appeared headed for another walk in the wilderness.Instead, he came within one match of achieving a Grand Slam, nearly winning all four Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, toppling Nadal at Roland Garros along the way.He has won the first two Grand Slam events this year.“The journey is still not over,” Djokovic said. “If I am winning Slams, why even think about ending the career?”He may be alone with 23 Grand Slam titles, but in his eyes, there is more history to play for.“I wish you win against anybody except me,” Djokovic told Casper Ruud after the match.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images More

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      Thousands of Bylines to His Name, and One That’s Not

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      A sports reporter reflects on his 30-year career and the mistake that started it all.It was the day after Christmas in 1991, and as a young journalist, I received quite a gift: my first byline in The New York Times.There was one — and only one — downside: They misspelled my name.I use “they” because as I leave The Times’s Sports desk this month to become a full-time author, I still don’t know who got it wrong or how the mix-up happened. That is because I never asked for a correction. At 26, I had just fulfilled a childhood dream and was new in the freelance reporting rotation. Rightly or wrongly, I had no desire to make waves or do anything other than write more Times articles.Thirty-two years later, the mishap seems, above all, amusing. There was no changing the misspelling, anyway. There was no online version to fix; The Times did not launch its website until 1996. There was no way to update a page after it printed. Had The Times published a correction, it would not have changed the fact that my surname was spelled “Clary” instead of “Clarey” in the Dec. 26, 1991, newspaper.Mr. Clarey’s surname was misspelled “Clary” on his first New York Times article.The New York TimesThe error, I should note, did not stop my proud parents from sending copies of the article to a fair share of their Christmas card list. Though I remember feeling a certain sense of disappointment — akin to getting an indelible smudge on a pair of shoes, fresh out of the box — I also saw the incident as a reminder that nobody was perfect in my chosen profession. Certainly not me, and not even The Times.It will humble you, this business, and that is surely a good thing. Today, the scoop might be yours, but tomorrow, it will be your competitor’s. Stop hustling for long, and you will pay the price. Start relying on memory instead of double-checking the facts, and you will soon screw up.There were many nights when I was startled out of sleep by my subconscious, which had somehow registered that a fact was wrong in an article I had filed a few hours earlier; that Roger Federer actually won his first Wimbledon in 2003, not 2002. (Maybe I did not ask for a correction that December, but I’ve had my own share of corrections over the years.)Yet however flawed we, and journalism, may be, this churning, round-the-clock quest to get things right remains a worthy endeavor, especially when a powerful person does not want us to look into those things.It can also be, if you’ll allow me a moment of complete candor, a hell of a lot of fun.In 1991, I took a big chance: I left a solid staff job at The San Diego Union and moved to Paris to marry a Frenchwoman. I had very little in the bank, no matter the exchange rate, and spoke the kind of French that only an American mother could love.My hope was to write about international sports. There were a few what-have-we-done moments as I searched for freelance work, but it was above all a heady time. We were in love and starting anew; I was conjugating verbs and riding my bike around Paris, rolling by the Eiffel Tower and, in an age without quite so many rules, riding circles around the glass pyramid of the Louvre at midnight.It was a late night, too, when the phone in our apartment rang. I was surprised to find Bill Brink from The Times’s Sports desk on the other end of the line. He asked, in a hushed voice (I swear it was hushed), if I might be able to get to Germany on short notice to report an article on Paul and Isabelle Duchesnay, a brother-sister team of ice dancers poised to be one of the biggest draws of the upcoming Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.(Unbeknownst to me, Barry Lorge, my former boss in San Diego, had sent a letter about my move to Neil Amdur, then The Times’s Sports editor.)I don’t recall exactly what I said on the phone, but I do remember shouting “Yeeeeessssss!” in a thoroughly undignified fashion after I hung up.Off I went. I took the night train to Oberstdorf, Germany, reporter’s notebooks, ballpoint pens and a micro-cassette recorder in tow. There was not much sleep to be had in the sleeper car, but no matter. As with many a fulfilling journey, the anticipation was every bit as sweet as the trip itself.I spent a day with the Duchesnays, learning about their choreography and the Olympic pressure. I filed the article, and in a few days it was published, “By Christopher Clary” sitting under the headline.I have filed several thousand more articles over the past 30-plus years — under the right name. I have written about soccer from Cameroon, badminton from Indonesia, skiing from Switzerland, yachting from New Zealand, golf from Scotland and bullfighting from Spain. I have covered 14 Olympic Games, 10 Ryder Cups, nine world track and field championships, six soccer World Cups, five America’s Cups, one Masters and a whole lot of tennis tournaments. As I leave The Times, I am grateful not only for the passport stamps, but also for the people who have crossed my path in so many places, including The Times’s newsroom.As a parting gift, and in the true spirit of our daily quest to get things right, perhaps the time has finally come to correct that first byline. More

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      Swiatek Overcomes Muchova to Win Another French Open

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      Swiatek was drawn into a tight match with Karolina Muchova, and emerged with her third singles championship at Roland Garros in four years.Iga Swiatek is once more the queen of clay.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, beat Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic to claim the French Open women’s singles championship on Saturday.Muchova, whose smooth and athletic game has been one of the sport’s best kept secrets for years, struggled with errors early but found her form and gave Swiatek the final of her life, forcing her to use every bit of the clinical, relentless approach that had made her the world’s top player — and then some — for more than a year.Swiatek outlasted Muchova, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 in a breathtaking, up-and-down battle that met the moment of one of the grandest stages in the sport. When Muchova’s second serve tumbled into the net on Swiatek’s first match point, Swiatek dropped her racket and brought her hands to her eyes, as Muchova came around the net for a well-earned congratulatory hug.Soon there was the increasingly familiar sight of Swiatek emerging in the stands for a celebratory huddle with her team and a few quiet words with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, who started working with her when she was a shaky teenager and helped mold her into a steely champion.“A big challenge,” Swiatek said of her triumph in the understatement of the day. “Really proud of myself that I did it.”Swiatek has been virtually unbeatable at Roland Garros since 2020. With Saturday’s win, she captured her third French Open singles title in four years. Since 2019, her record in the tournament heading into the final was 28-2, which may not rival the 112-3 record of Rafael Nadal, but give her time. Swiatek just turned 22 last week and has given few hints that she will be slowing down.Other than the occasional battle with her psyche, she seems to be getting better each year, especially at the French Open, a tournament she loves more than any other.For Muchova, the final capped a remarkable comeback from a year ago, when she sprained an ankle in a third-round singles match at Roland Garros and had to withdraw. The injury was the latest in a series of ailments that had long kept her from realizing the potential that so many of the game’s coaches, players and experts have seen in her for years.That loss sent her spiraling out of the top 200, forcing her to play a series of smaller tournaments to regain her standing. She entered this tournament ranked 43rd in the world, though few in tennis believed there were 42 women better than Muchova.Muchova plays a backhand against Swiatek.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesBut playing in a Grand Slam final for the first time is a challenge for any player, especially against the best in the world. Swiatek had cruised through her first five matches of the tournament. She won four of her first six sets without conceding a game. Then she lost just seven games across her next two matches.Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil made Swiatek uncomfortable for a bit in the semifinal, pushing her around the court and into a tiebreaker in the second set, but she arrived in the final with every reason to believe she would be lifting the trophy at day’s end.That faith grew stronger in the first minutes of the match, as the fluidity and mix of power and finesse that Muchova plays with on her best days were nowhere to be found. She sprayed balls wide and long, banged easy shots into the middle of the net, and gave Swiatek too many free points.There is no clock that regulates the length of a tennis match, but much of the sport is about controlling time, that is, finding a way to make an opponent feel rushed, like she has no chance to get to the ball, while figuring out how to give yourself all the time in the world. For more than a year that has been Swiatek’s signature, and it’s exactly what she did to Muchova on Saturday.There was a time two years ago when she was among the most creative players in the world. Her game featured squatting backhands and a repertoire of forehands with six different kinds of spin. There was an artistry to it all, but she didn’t win nearly as much.Now Swiatek doesn’t build winning points as much as she seizes them, going for winners with her big, rolling forehand at the first opportunity. The shorter the point, the less she has to think.She never eases her way into a match. She seeks to dominate from the start. When a point ends she hustles to start the next like she’s rushing to catch a train, plowing through sets and matches as though she’s got tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.For Muchova to have a chance, she was going to need to control the clock by extending points and find enough time to get comfortable on the biggest stage of her career.Swiatek had her first break of Muchova’s serve and the lead after just seven minutes. She led 6-2, 3-0 after an hour, while Muchova was still trying to find her footing.“The balls are coming fast,” Muchova said of the experience of facing Swiatek. “If you have a chance you have to take it because there may not be another.”And then she did. Shot by shot, point-by-point, game-by-game, she did. The strokes grew crisp and precise, the points stretched out, she slid into her shots so gracefully at moments it looked like she was dancing. Her volleys stung as the packed crowd of more than 15,000 fans chanted her name, urging her on.Swiatek wobbled, and as the match moved to the two-hour mark it was all even at a set apiece. Two minutes later, Muchova broke Swiatek’s serve for a third straight time and had her first lead of the day.Muchova and Swiatek had not played a competitive match since 2019, before either of them had established themselves at the top of the game. But they have practiced many times since then, and Swiatek has raved about Muchova’s talents.“Great touch,” Swiatek said of her competitor. “She can also speed up the game. She plays with that kind of, I don’t know, freedom in her movements. And she has a great technique.”All of it was there Saturday on one of the sport’s biggest stages, in one of the great Grand Slam finals in recent memory. Swiatek, who had sprinted to a seemingly insurmountable lead, wobbled as Muchova found her form, then battled from a service break down twice in the deciding set and found the answers and shots she needed.Swiatek had never lost a Grand Slam final and won all of those matches in straight sets. One of the few lingering questions was how she would respond if pushed into the crucible of a third set with everything on the line.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAt first, it didn’t look good. She double-faulted to give Muchova yet another break of serve to start the deciding set and looked finished as Muchova surged to a 2-0 lead.Mary Carillo, the longtime tennis commentator, likes to divide players into two groups — those who have fangs and those who do not, those who don’t just win from the front but relish the chance to brawl and fight to the final ball and those who pack it in.Muchova had shown her fangs in the semifinal and in mounting her comeback on Saturday. Now it was Swiatek’s turn. She won 12 of the next 14 points to take back the lead only to watch Muchova bite once more, turning the third set into a roller coaster.She charged forward behind deep balls that had Swiatek on the run and finished points with touch or a blast or a line-pasting swipe, holding her own serve and breaking Swiatek’s for a 4-3 advantage.“After so many ups and downs I stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition.”That worked. Muchova’s lead lasted seven minutes, until an ill-timed drop shot settled to the bottom of the net and Swiatek was even once more and hearing the deafening chants of her name to the beat of a bass drum.“Iga is No. 1 in the world and I was so close,” Muchova said.With Muchova serving to stay in the match, Swiatek took dead aim on her returns at Muchova’s feet and nailed her targets, putting Muchova on her heels and in a quick hole. Double match point arrived as Muchova pulled a forehand wide. With a double-fault from Muchova, Swiatek had her crown, the queen of clay for another year.“Sorry for being so difficult,” she told her team during the awards ceremony.Four Grand Slam finals. Four championship trophies. Tops in the world. Swiatek doesn’t seem that difficult at all. More

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      Novak Djokovic Moves to the Precipice of Tennis Supremacy

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      Djokovic seized a spot in the French Open final with a win over a struggling Carlos Alcaraz. In the final on Sunday, Casper Ruud stands in the way of Djokovic’s 23rd Grand Slam singles title.The Philippe Chatrier Court at Roland Garros has long been Rafael Nadal’s second home.He has won 14 French Open men’s singles titles. His record at Roland Garros is 112-3, and a silver statue of him sits on the grounds.So maybe it’s fitting that Novak Djokovic has a chance for a career-crowning moment on Sunday — a 23rd Grand Slam singles title, one more than Nadal — on the very court where his rival has dominated this generation.If Djokovic, the 36-year-old Serbian champion, can pull that off — and he will be a heavy favorite to do so against Casper Ruud of Norway — it will be the tennis equivalent of Djokovic barging into Nadal’s house, raiding his refrigerator and plopping down on his living room couch to watch a “Godfather” marathon.“There is history on the line,” Djokovic said after his four-set win over Carlos Alcaraz, the world No. 1, on Friday. “I like the feeling.”In Ruud — who dominated Alexander Zverev, 6-3, 6-4, 6-0 — Djokovic will face someone who has made three of the last five Grand Slam finals but who lost in his previous two finals. Ruud has yet to take a set from Djokovic across four head-to-head matches, which puts Djokovic in prime position to eclipse Nadal.Whether tennis fans outside Serbia like it or not, Djokovic has been managing this sort of feat for the better part of 15 years, and he shows no sign of letting up anytime soon. It started when he transformed elite tennis into a three-way battle for supremacy from its previous existence as a binary rivalry/love fest between Nadal and Roger Federer. With a win on Sunday, Djokovic would be the only player among that trio with at least three singles championships at each Grand Slam.Two years ago, he became the only man to beat Nadal twice at the French Open. The Federer faithful have long clung to the notion that their man will always be the ruler of the sport’s most hallowed ground: Centre Court at Wimbledon. Djokovic won his seventh Wimbledon singles championship last year and can draw even with Federer next month at the All England club.On Friday afternoon at Roland Garros, he was up to his old tricks once more against Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spaniard and top seed who was looking to move one step closer to completing his takeover of the sport. Djokovic and Alcaraz had shown themselves to be a level better than anyone else during the past year as they took turns winning Grand Slam titles and clamoring for the world’s top ranking.The match had figured to be one for the ages, a clash of generations and a potential torch passing — or really a torch-seizing — moment for the sport.Instead, Djokovic scored a victory for the old guard, registering a kind of technical knockout against a cramping Alcaraz. Djokovic prevailed in four sets, 6-3, 5-7, 6-1, 6-1, as Alcaraz crumbled in the face of the magnitude of the moment.It was a victory of wisdom and experience on a day when Alcaraz, in a moment of raw frankness, said he had been overcome by the idea of facing Djokovic on this giant stage. The cramps had nothing to do with fatigue or nutrition, he said. They were all about the stress of playing in just his second Grand Slam semifinal, against someone playing in his 45th.Carlos Alcaraz said he had been nervous playing against Djokovic in a late stage of the tournament. James Hill for The New York Times“Being in one of the greatest tournaments of the world, maybe for the first time in his career, he was expected to win,” Djokovic said. “He was maybe not an underdog chasing the title and trying to win.”Alcaraz started the match as nervous as he had ever been, he said, and the tension built from there into something he had never felt on a tennis court before.“It’s a combination of a lot of things,” Alcaraz said of the cramps after the match. “The main thing, it was the tension.”Djokovic said he could easily relate to what Alcaraz had experienced. Early in his career, in the late rounds of the biggest tournaments, sometimes with championships on the line, his body failed him, for no other reason than the stress of what was unfolding around him.“It’s a part of the learning curve,” he said.Alcaraz said he had felt cramps before, but nothing like this. His right arm tightened in the first set, and by the third set the cramps had spread throughout his body. He knew exactly why.“If someone says that he gets into the court with no nerves playing against Novak, he lies,” Alcaraz said. “Playing a semifinal of a Grand Slam, you have a lot of nerves, but even more with facing Novak.” The next time he plays Djokovic might be different, he said, “but the nerves will be there.”For more than two hours, it had looked as though it might be the match for the ages. Djokovic played nearly perfectly in the first set, only for Alcaraz to showcase his power and his magical shotmaking in the next one.That included a mouthwatering winner on a full sprint toward the back of the court, during which he spun 180 degrees around the ball and then suddenly knifed a crosscourt forehand that skittered on the sideline tape. It sent the crowd into a frenzy and had Djokovic clapping his racket. After they had split sets, there was every reason to believe that the showdown would go five sets and last more than four hours, like so many classic matches Djokovic has played during his storied career.It didn’t. Not even close.Alcaraz began cramping up in the third set against Djokovic.James Hill for The New York TimesIn the third set, Djokovic quickly pushed Alcaraz into the most taxing tennis he had had to play in the tournament. Alcaraz, barely able to walk, headed for his chair after two games and asked for treatment from a trainer. The move cost him the next game, one in which he would have served, because the request did not occur during a scheduled changeover.That hardly mattered, though, because Alcaraz still had trouble moving when he returned to the court. He quickly lost the next four games and left the court for another break. He came back slightly stronger, but the lightning-quick movement that is one of the hallmarks of his game remained missing in action.The outcome became a mere matter of time, which was fitting, because in a sense, Djokovic had made it that way from the start of the afternoon.Sunday will be Djokovic’s 34th Grand Slam singles final. Not long ago, one might have guessed he would be facing Nadal on the other side of the net. But Nadal pulled out of this tournament with hip and leg injuries, leaving a grand stage for Djokovic.With Alcaraz out of the way, and with few expecting Ruud to be a tougher challenge, the pressure will fall squarely on Djokovic. That is exactly how he likes it.“I’m very happy to be in this position to write history of this sport, but I’m just thinking about winning the next match,” Djokovic said.Usually, he does. More