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      Tennis Injuries Present Top Players with Serious Challenges

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      Getting hurt is part of the game, but sometimes it can take years for top players to return to form.It didn’t take long for Alexander Zverev to realize his situation was dire.After hours of scintillating shot-making, Zverev and Rafael Nadal were set to begin a second tiebreaker in their semifinal match at last year’s French Open.But suddenly, Zverev ran wide for a forehand, rolled his right ankle on its side and let out a bellow. He stumbled to the ground, red clay caked to the back of his black sleeveless top, and cupped his ankle in his hands.“I knew immediately that I was done because my ankle was basically three times the size it normally is,” said Zverev by phone of the injury that took him from tennis for the rest of 2022 and dropped his ATP ranking from No. 2 to outside the top 20. “It wasn’t a nice feeling.”Zverev is hardly the first player to be forced into an extended layoff because of a serious injury.His opponent that day, Nadal, hasn’t played a tour match since he hurt the psoas muscle between his lower abdomen and upper right leg during the Australian Open in January. After repeated attempts to rehab the injury over the last four months, Nadal — who has also suffered from chronic foot pain, a cracked rib and a torn abdominal muscle in the last 18 months — withdrew from the French Open on May 18. He is the 14-time Roland Garros champion and has played the tournament every year since 2005. He also indicated that he does not plan to play Wimbledon and that 2024 will likely be his last year on the professional tour.Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in January, where he injured his psoas muscle. He recently announced that he will not compete in the French Open. Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEmma Raducanu, who won the 2021 United States Open, has been frequently injured ever since, and recently underwent surgery on both of her wrists and one ankle. Andy Murray, a Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion, announced before the 2019 Australian Open that he would retire after the tournament, only to come back, first playing doubles, then returning to singles following a successful hip resurfacing surgery.Bianca Andreescu, who beat Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open, has suffered injuries to her adductor, ankle, foot, back, and right shoulder, causing her to question whether she should stop competing. And Stan Wawrinka, a three-time major champion, contemplated retirement following multiple surgeries on his knee and ankle. Once ranked world No. 3, Wawrinka is now fighting to stay in the top 100.Injuries, surgery and rehab are dreaded words in any athlete’s vocabulary. For professional tennis players, who are not protected by a team sport’s comprehensive rehabilitation coverage but are instead treated as independent contractors, working their way back onto the ATP and WTA Tours can be grueling physically, mentally and even financially.“I had never experienced an injury from the time I started, and I played with high intensity every day,” said Dominic Thiem by phone. Thiem, who beat Zverev to win the 2020 U.S. Open, suffered a debilitating wrist injury in June 2021 and was sidelined for months. Once ranked No. 3, Thiem lost seven straight matches when he first returned to the ATP Tour, and his ranking plummeted to No. 352, forcing him to play lower-level Challenger tournaments.“With an injury, the whole system comes to a stop,” said Thiem, who is now ranked just inside the top 100. “You can’t do your job, and you no longer have a clear plan. After I returned, it was like never before. You have to lower your expectations, but that’s very tough because for all those years you set for yourself a certain standard, not only from the tournaments you play, but also how you feel the ball. Basically, everything changes.”The process of returning from a layoff can be just as difficult as the injury itself. Readjusting to the rigors of constant travel and the pressure of playing matches at all hours of the day and night, along with worrying about the possibility of reinjury, can impact a player’s recovery.Andreescu knows that. Plagued by back troubles through much of 2022, she had finally begun to rebound at the Miami Open in March. But during her fourth-round match against Ekaterina Alexandrova, Andreescu tumbled to the court, clutching her left leg and screaming in agony.“I’ve never felt pain like that,” Andreescu said by phone as she prepared to return to the tour three weeks later in Madrid. “The next morning I knew what happened, but I was just hoping that I was waking up from a bad dream. Then I felt the pain, and I knew this was real.”Andreescu has rehabbed her body many times before, but she is also convinced that the mind-body connection is just as important.Bianca Andreescu at the 2023 Miami Open. Andreescu has suffered multiple injuries since beating Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I believe that everything starts in the head and that we create our own stress and, in a way, our own injuries,” she said. “There can be freak accidents, but if you can get your mind right, then it’s easier to come back from those injuries.”The WTA takes injury prevention and rehabilitation seriously. The tour has programming and staff devoted specifically to athletes’ physical and psychological well-being. According to Carole Doherty, the WTA’s senior vice president, sport science and medicine, all its players receive comprehensive medical care, with services that include cardiology, checkups with dermatologists, bone-density exams, and nutrition and hydration advice.When a WTA player is out injured, or pregnant, for at least eight consecutive weeks, she can apply for a Special Ranking, which means that upon her return she will be ranked where she left off and can enter eight tournaments over a 52-week span with that ranking. The ATP has a similar protocol called Protected Ranking.Becky Ahlgren Bedics, the WTA’s vice president of mental health and performance, is keenly aware of the psychological toll an injury can take.“Injuries take you out of training and competition and force you to regroup and prioritize your life differently,” said Bedics, who encourages players who are off the tour to delete WTA rankings from their phones, so they won’t see where they stand as compared with their peers. “It’s tough for an athlete whose only thought is, ‘How can I get back, and what happens if I don’t?’”Bedics and her mental health team encourage players to manage their expectations upon their return to play.“There are so many stressors in this game, including financial ones,” Bedics added. “Our athletes are typically very young and not going to be doing this for 50 years. Sometimes they are supporting their families. So, what we help them do is listen to ‘what is,’ not ‘what ifs.’ We want them to look forward, but also to look backward to see how far they’ve come.”Daria Saville tore her ACL while competing in Tokyo last September. “Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” she said.Kiyoshi Ota/Getty ImagesDaria Saville understands the play-for-pay nature of tennis. She has suffered from repeated Achilles’ tendon and plantar fasciitis issues since 2016. She had surgery after the 2021 Australian Open, which kept her from playing for nearly a year. Then, while competing in Tokyo last September, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, requiring more surgery.“Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” said Saville, who also had ACL surgery in 2013. “On tour, life is not so hard. Everything is done for you, so you don’t have to overthink. The worst thing that happens is you play bad and lose a match.”Fortunately, for Saville, the financial burdens have been lessened by the support she receives from her national federation, Tennis Australia, which pays for her physiotherapist and strength and conditioning coaches. She also gets pep talks from her coach, the former tour player Nicole Pratt.When Thiem thinks back on his wrist injury, he connects the dots to when he won the U.S. Open. Having achieved that goal, Thiem said, he suddenly lost his passion and motivation to play, prompting him to practice with a decreased level of intensity, ultimately leading to the injury. Trying to come back has been difficult.“I can’t forget,” Thiem said, “that all the time when I didn’t play, the other players were playing, they were practicing and improving and moving ahead of me. That makes it even harder to come back.” More

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      Coaching Is Now Allowed During Tennis Matches, but How Useful Is It?

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      The practice was long banned, but a change in the rules has permitted hand signals and some talking.At the new United Cup tournament that began the 2023 season in Australia, Cam Norrie and Taylor Fritz split the first two sets and were locked in a close battle for the final set.But Norrie’s coach, Facundo Lugones, had some choice information to pass on: Norrie wasn’t getting enough of Fritz’s serves on the deuce (or right) side back in play and needed to back up, Lugones recalled. And when Norrie was serving, Lugones saw Norrie was winning all his on the deuce side when he served the ball wide to Fritz’s forehand, so he urged him to do that more.The 13th-ranked Norrie won 6-4 in the third set. It’s impossible to call coaching the decisive factor — the players had to make their shots — but it added an extra wrinkle for the players and the fans.The WTA began allowing coaching during matches in 2020, while the ATP debuted coaching last summer, making this French Open just the third Grand Slam tournament to allow it for men’s tennis.Exchanges are limited: While hand signals are now permitted, players and coaches may only talk during the 25 seconds between points when the player is on the side where the coach is sitting. (Outside of Grand Slams, the WTA allows female players one longer conversation per set during a changeover.)Still, many players, including the ninth-ranked Fritz, criticized the change, calling it a “dumb rule” that violated the idea of an individual sport. Lugones said Norrie was also “not a big fan of on-court coaching — most players love the one-on-one battle.” When things are going well, he said, he doesn’t say much.Zhang Zhizhen worked with his coach, Luka Kutanjac, on the practice courts during the BNP Paribas Open.Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports, via ReutersZhang Zhizhen climbed from 99th to 69th in Madrid this month by beating Denis Shapovalov, Norrie and Fritz in a week when he left his coach back home. “I don’t like when my coach talks to me. It makes me feel confused and makes things complicated,” Zhizhen said. “Sometimes I will say, ‘Stop, you are talking too much.’”Many players want at least some outside advice and encouragement.“Watching from the outside you can see more, so a coach can really help with the small changes. If I’m missing forehand returns, he’ll tell me whether I need to step back or stay low, which can make a difference,” said Rohan Bopanna, who is ranked 11th in doubles.While the forced brevity is limiting, live coaching can be effective, said the third-ranked Jessica Pegula. “You can change your game plan a little quicker now.” Both she and Jan-Lennard Struff, who is ranked 28th, said that in tough matches, a psychological push was just as important. “Then it’s about the positive energy and good vibes,” Struff said.Fifteenth-ranked Hubert Hurkacz agreed that “big-picture strategy” and a psychological boost could really help, but he added that occasionally, he will shut down communication. “Sometimes I can say, ‘I got this,’ and focus on myself,” he said. Even Fritz communicates regularly during matches. His coach, Michael Russell, said 70 percent of their exchanges were about the mental game — “stay positive, one point at a time, keep your feet moving” — and 30 percent was more tactical and strategic.“A player can be so hyper focused, they can’t see the bigger picture,” Russell said, adding that his suggestions often reinforced their pregame planning while responding to trends Russell had noticed. “There are matches where Taylor gets too comfortable hitting the backhand crosscourt and just extending the rally. If he’s not being aggressive enough and using the backhand down the line, I’ll tell him to do that to hurt his opponent more.”But Russell said his advice was in broad strokes, not telling Fritz where to serve on the next point.“It’s better not to be specific because if it doesn’t work on that next point, you’re setting him up for negativity,” Russell said. He also won’t make technical adjustments, like saying his toss is too low, unless it’s a blatant issue because he doesn’t want Fritz overthinking things.Because of a change of rules, Facundo Lugones, shown at the BNP Paribas Open, was able to offer coaching tips to Cam Norrie during Norrie’s match with Taylor Fritz at the new United Cup tournament in Australia this year.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesLugones said that being limited to perhaps five words — often at a distance in a stadium filled with screaming fans — restricted the amount of actual coaching possible. While Norrie will seek more advice during certain matches, the consultations are quite brief.“You can’t fully explain a change of patterns, and if the player doesn’t hear you or understand you, it can backfire,” he said. “That’s why the coaching during matches is often more mental than tactical.”That’s especially true for the men at Grand Slams, where matches can go five sets and last four or five hours.“The Slams are like a roller coaster — you have to remind your player there are lots of momentum shifts and whoever handles that better will win the match,” Lugones said. “Stay patient and remember you have time to change things.”Russell added that as the match grinds on, he’ll remind Fritz about nutritional and caloric intake and not rushing through points when fatigue sets in. But sometimes when a player is tiring, the best move is to growl encouragement like Mickey, the trainer in the movie “Rocky.”“Make sure he can see the light at end of the tunnel,” Russell said.In that Norrie-Fritz match at the United Cup, the coaches had access to livestreaming data, which Lugones said was helpful in confirming the patterns he had picked up with his eyes. “It’s especially good to have during the long matches,” he said.He would like to see data used more during matches, but he would also like to see the men’s tour amend the rule that allows one real conversation a set during a changeover. “You would have more time to explain your tactics and make sure the player hears,” he said.Lugones would even be open to letting the TV audiences listen in, the way other sports often attach microphones to coaches. “If it’s better for the sport and will attract more fans,” he said, “that’s fine.” More

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      The Not-So-Genteel Side of Tennis Is in the College Playoffs

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      It took roughly an hour for the last rounds of the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s tennis championships to get real.The top doubles teams from Virginia and Kentucky were locked in an epic tiebreaker to decide who would take the often crucial doubles point into the singles portion of their matchup. The Cavaliers and the Wildcats took turns saving match points with clutch volleys and gutsy passing shots, as their teammates and fans howled and taunted after every winner and error.One last Virginia forehand sailed long and wide, giving Kentucky the tiebreaker, 11-9, and the early advantage in the team competition. The howls got louder and the taunts more rowdy. The All England Club this was not.The college version of this supposedly genteel sport — especially the competition that unfolds in the final segment of the N.C.A.A. championships — is where tennis morphs into something more like the spectacle of pro wrestling.Players roar after nearly every point. Coaches regularly wander across the courts mid-game for quick pep talks and to give strategy tips. The crowds cheer double faults and mis-hits, and the fans scream for action on one court when someone is about to serve on another court just a few feet away. The school colors pop off the courts — Texas Christian purple, Texas Longhorn burnt orange, North Carolina baby blue, Stanford cardinal — and provide a welcome respite from the corporate apparel seen throughout the pro game.North Carolina women’s players practicing before their match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesClaremont-Mudd-Scripps players using tubs with ice water for recovery after practice.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesIt is tennis with the volume turned up to 11, something the often staid and stale pro tours could learn from.“No place else I’d rather be,” said Fiona Crawley, a junior at the University of North Carolina, who is the top-ranked woman in the country playing for the top-ranked team. “This is my life.”Crawley, from San Antonio, is majoring in English and comparative literature. Her plan after graduation involves getting her “butt kicked on the tour for two years because I love to travel,” then becoming a teacher.The top-ranked University of Texas men’s team also has the No. 1 player on its side of the sport, with junior Eliot Spizzirri leading the top-ranked Longhorns into the final eight. He is thrilled to not be grinding the back roads of the pro circuit just yet.“It almost feels like a different sport,” Spizzirri said of college tennis. “You look to your left and your right and your best friends are competing right next to you and you don’t want to let them down.”An ocean away from all of this, Madrid, Rome and Paris are serving as the hot spots in the pro game this month during the European clay court swing. Yet for pure, high-octane intensity from the first ball to the last, it is hard to beat what is unfolding here on the steamy courts of the U.S.T.A. National Campus.Eliot Spizzirri of Texas during a doubles match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesThis year the U.S.T.A. is hosting the final rounds of 14 major collegiate championship competitions from Division I, II and III. It’s part of a pitch the U.S.T.A. is making to the N.C.A.A. to make the training center in Orlando the permanent home of the final phase of the Division I tournaments, which means the quarterfinals onward for the teams, plus separate singles and doubles competitions.The idea is to make getting to Orlando for tennis akin to getting to Omaha for the men’s College World Series, a yearly destination for Division I baseball teams since 1950.“This is an opportunity to enhance the college game,” said Lew Sherr, the chief executive of the U.S.T.A.One argument for the sprawling campus is its seating for spectators, which cuts through the spine of the courts and makes it easier to watch simultaneous matches that have implications for one another.But a hurdle may be the weather. Playing tennis in Orlando in May can sometimes feel like playing on the surface of the sun, and matches have been suspended because of rain. A thunderstorm on Thursday meant the suspension of Division I play for the night, and there aren’t enough indoor courts to offer a backup plan.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesNo matter the venue, though, college tennis has been having a bit of a moment lately within the sport, making a case as a viable option for young prospects.Cameron Norrie, who played at Texas Christian, is ranked 13th in the world. Ben Shelton, an N.C.A.A. champion last year, wowed at the Australian Open. Jennifer Brady (U.C.L.A.) and Danielle Collins (Virginia) have made the Australian Open singles final in recent years.The ATP top 100 includes a dozen former college players, and the men’s tour even joined forces with collegiate tennis to guarantee top-ranked college players spots in lower-tier pro tournaments.This season, North Carolina State has featured Diana Shnaider, a 19-year-old Russian who made the second round of the Australian Open. She has already won a small WTA tournament.Attending college, if only for a year, was Shnaider’s hedge against professional tennis potentially banning Russians from competing because of the war in Ukraine. It was also a lot cheaper than paying for coaching and court time in Moscow. After the team finals, she will turn professional and head to Paris for the French Open.“It’s made me better,” Shnaider said of the college tennis experience.Still, much of the tennis establishment has long looked down at its version in college sports, an institution that is big in the United States but not in other countries. For critics, campus life that can include parties and papers and exams can distract from the focus on the sport, softening players compared with the rigors of the minor leagues of the pro game.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York TimesDavid Roditi, a former tour pro who has coached Texas Christian the past 13 seasons, said college tennis has a uniquely rowdy and pressurized proving ground that players can only understand with experience. Plus, most players don’t peak until their 20s anyway, he said, so what is the rush to go pro? He’s seen too many players burn out on the lonely tour life long before their prime.“They quit before they can find out how good they could be,” Roditi said. “In college you get four years of safety.”There are limits to scholarships, of course, and the competition is generally not as rigorous as on the pro circuits. Still, Roditi has been successfully selling the ideals of college athletics abroad for several years. His team has players from Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Jacob Fearnley, his top player, grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland.Fearnley said he was small as a teenager and needed time to develop and get stronger. Turning professional after high school would have been foolish, he said. Spizzirri, the Texas star, has a similar tale. Both are now long, lean and powerful.Fearnley said he has played low-level pro tournaments that were a snooze compared with what he has learned to deal with in college. During an early road match against Michigan near the beginning of his college career, the crowd yelled at him after every double fault and told him he was a hopeless tennis player. He crumbled then, but not anymore.“It’s just noise,” Fearnley said the other day ahead of another showdown with Michigan. “That’s what our coach tells us. You learn the only thing that matters is you and your opponent and what’s happening on the court.”Cleeve Harper of Texas cheering on his teammates.Jacob Langston for The New York Times More

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      Even as He’s Out, Rafael Nadal Will Always Be a Part of the French Open

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      Nadal’s reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport.In case, in this distracted era, you only have time to read the first paragraph on your phone, here is the essential from Rafael Nadal: No French Open this year for the first time since 2004; no retirement just yet.But there is, of course, much more to Nadal’s story, particularly at Roland Garros, the Grand Slam tournament he has dominated like no player has dominated any tennis major.His 14 singles titles still look like a typo even for those like me who have watched him build that probably unbreakable record, red brick by red brick.“When you play Roland Garros 14 times you tell yourself you had a good career,” the French veteran Nicolas Mahut said in an interview with L’Équipe. “When you win 14 matches there, that’s not too bad at all. When you get to the second week 14 times you are one of the great players. And when you win the title 14 times, there is no way to comprehend that. There are no words.”Though Nadal is Spanish, even the French Open organizers buckled under the weight of all the hardware and erected a shimmering, larger-than-life statue of Nadal just inside the main entrance of the tournament grounds.His reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport, and though a 15th title is a long shot at this late stage, all we know for certain is that Nadal will not be winning it this year.He announced his withdrawal from this year’s French Open at a news conference on Thursday in his home city of Manacor at his eponymous academy: another monument to his tennis excellence.Dressed in jeans and a white, short-sleeved shirt, Nadal, who will turn 37 on June 3, explained calmly and at length that he had lost his latest race against time: failing to recover sufficiently from a core muscle injury he suffered in January at the Australian Open to play.“It’s not a decision that I made, it’s a decision that my body made,” he said.Nadal, still interested in playing only when he has a chance to win, will stop practicing through the pain for an extended period, likely several months. He did not rule out returning to competition later in 2023 — mentioning the Davis Cup Finals that will be held in Malaga, Spain, in November — but above all he is aiming to return for what he said was “probably” going to be his final season in 2024.“I don’t want to put myself in a position to say one thing and then do another thing, but my goal and my ambition is to try to stop to give myself an opportunity to enjoy next year,” he said, sighing audibly midsentence as if he was fighting himself to talk about the finish line.John McEnroe, a more combustible tennis champion, used news conferences as therapy, working through his issues and setbacks via the question-and-answer game. Nadal, left eyebrow arching, did some of the same on Thursday and did it, unlike McEnroe, in Spanish, English and Mallorcan, the dialect of Nadal’s home island and the lingua franca of the Nadal family.“It’s not a decision that I made, it’s a decision that my body made,” Nadal said on Thursday.Francisco Ubilla/Associated PressWhatever the language, the message was the same: Nadal has had enough of gritting his teeth through practice sessions but he craves a happier ending.There are no guarantees considering that his body has been failing him at an accelerating rate. Oft-injured even in his youth, he is breaking down in new places in his tennis dotage: a fractured rib and abdominal injury in 2022 and the hip injury in 2023, sustained midmatch in his straight-set defeats to Mackenzie McDonald in the second round in Australia.Perhaps Nadal should not have played through that pain, but he is as gritty as the red clay that suits his game best. And even if newly married and a new father with a fancy yacht and an impressive golf handicap, he is not yet ready to join Roger Federer, his friend and former archrival, in gilded retirement.“I think I don’t deserve to finish like this, in a press conference,” Nadal said. “I want a different ending and I am going to do my best to make that happen.”He added: “I don’t know if I can be competitive to win a Grand Slam. I’m not an irrational person. I am aware of the difficulty of the situation. But I’m not a negative person either. I want to give myself the opportunity to come back and compete.”Farewell tours have their own perils. Stefan Edberg, the former world No. 1 and six-time Grand Slam singles champion from Sweden, announced well in advance that 1996 would be his final season and ended up regretting it, worn out by the post-match ceremonies and glad-handing. When Edberg coached Federer, he advised him to keep it shorter to make it sweeter, and Federer listened: bowing out at age 41 last September on short notice by playing doubles with Nadal at the Laver Cup team event in London.It was a poignant scene that packed quite a punch with both champions — and plenty of observers — in tears as Federer called it a career. Most other tennis greats — from Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to Steffi Graf and Serena Williams — have kept their goodbyes compact. In Sampras’s case, he avoided the farewell tour altogether, and won his final tournament, the 2002 U.S. Open.But Nadal is certainly accustomed to bearing the weight of others’ expectations and to politely handling the limelight. He has been a star at home since helping Spain beat the United States to win the Davis Cup at age 18 in 2004 and has been a global star since winning the French Open at age 19 in 2005, his debut in the field.He would likely have won Roland Garros even earlier if he had not been forced to miss the event in 2003 and 2004 because of injuries. But despite all the physical challenges he has faced, he managed to play his signature tournament 18 years in a row, retiring mid-tournament just once in 2016 because of a wrist injury.He has become as much a part of the Roland Garros landscape as the red clay beneath everyone’s feet, but it will be someone else’s domain this spring.Novak Djokovic, who turns 36 on Monday, is the only player to beat Nadal twice at the French Open and remains tied with Nadal for the men’s record with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. But though Djokovic is built to last with his elastic limbs and centenarian’s diet, he has been struggling with elbow pain and has looked far from irresistible on clay this season.The younger set looks like the slightly better bet. Carlos Alcaraz, 20, is back at No. 1 and already a Grand Slam champion after winning last year’s U.S. Open. Holger Rune, 20 as well, beat Djokovic in Rome this week and has elastic limbs of his own. You can add Stefanos Tsitsipas, Casper Ruud, Jannik Sinner or even Daniil Medvedev, formerly allergic to clay, to the short list without ruling out a bigger surprise.Nadal, absent from the draw for the first time nearly two decades, said he won’t watch it all from afar, but he will be keeping tabs.Last year, he drew some criticism from pro-Djokovic quarters for emphasizing that no tournament is bigger than any single player when Djokovic missed the 2022 Australian Open after arriving in Melbourne unvaccinated for the coronavirus and was deported.“The Australian Open will be great Australian Open with or without him,” Nadal said before winning it himself.But he was clearly eager to be consistent on Thursday.“My speech is not going to change,” he said. “Roland Garros will be always Roland Garros with or without me without a doubt.”He continued: “Players stay for a while, and they leave. Tournaments stay forever.”That is true and will seem truer still when some other man with red-stained socks is crowned champion next month in Paris. But there can also be no doubt that Nadal and Roland Garros will be linked as long as there is a Roland Garros. More

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      Injured Rafael Nadal Withdraws From The French Open

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      Nadal, the Spanish star, has battled a core muscle injury since January. He said that next season “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open men’s singles champion, will not compete in this year’s edition of the event that has defined his career because of an injury that has sidelined him for months.Nadal, who has competed in Paris every year since 2005 and has an astonishing record of 112-3 at Roland Garros, made the announcement in a news conference Thursday at his tennis academy on the Spanish island of Majorca.Nadal said he would further extend his break from the game to try to get healthy and then attempt to play next season, which he said “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”“That’s my idea,” he said. “Even that, I can’t say that 100 percent it’s going to be like this because you never know what is going to happen, but my idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career.”His withdrawal from the French Open, which is scheduled to begin on May 28, was not a surprise. He has not played since suffering an injury to his lower abdomen and right leg at the Australian Open in January. But the reality of the announcement, and his approaching absence from the red clay he has ruled for so long, jolted the tennis world.“I was working as much as possible every single day for the last four months and they have been very difficult months because we were not able to find the solution to the problem I had in Australia,” Nadal said. “Today I am still in the position where I am not able to feel myself ready to compete at the standards I need to be to play at Roland Garros.”Nadal won last year’s French Open to claim his 22nd Grand Slam singles title, and he has repeatedly called the tournament, the year’s second major, the most important of his career. His absence will create a massive void that the statue of him just steps away from the main stadium ensures will be a theme throughout the event.Nadal made it clear that he did not want to play the tournament with no realistic chance of being truly competitive.“I am not a guy who is going to be at Roland Garros and just try to be there and put myself in a position I don’t like to be in,” he said.“My idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career,” Nadal said on Thursday.Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNadal said that after pushing himself through pain to try to get ready for the French Open, he will now take an extended break from practice in an attempt to get healthy.“I don’t know when I will be able to come back to the practice court, but I will stop for a while,” he said. “Maybe two months. Maybe one month and a half. Maybe three months. Maybe four months. I don’t know. I’m not the guy who likes to predict the future but I am just following my personal feelings and just following what I really believe is the right thing to do for my body and for my personal happiness.”For weeks, as the pro tennis tour has meandered through the European clay season, which he has dominated throughout his career, Nadal’s health and his halting rehabilitation process have been some of the game’s main plot points. The conversation has gotten louder each week his withdrawals — from tournaments in Monte Carlo, then Barcelona, then Madrid — mounted.His most expansive comments before Thursday came in a video posted on social media last month in which he explained that his ongoing battle to recover from the tear in his psoas muscle in his lower abdomen and upper right leg had not gone as planned. Nadal suffered the injury in January during the second round of the Australian Open, the year’s first major tournament, where he was attempting to defend his title.In the days following Nadal’s injury in Australia, his team stated that it expected him to miss six to eight weeks, a timetable that would have allowed Nadal to return in time for the spring clay court season in Europe.The announcement at the beginning of this month that Nadal would not play in Rome, where he has won a record 10 times, sounded major alarm bells. The conditions there are closest to those at the French Open. Over the weekend, the organizer of a challenger event on red clay in France next week said Nadal had not sought entry into that tournament. That meant his opening match at Roland Garros would have to be his first real competition in more than four months.Nadal had said last month that he planned to seek additional treatment for the injury but did not specify what that treatment entailed and said he had no idea when he would be able to compete again. Throughout a record-setting but injury-plagued career, Nadal has mainly relied on a group of medical specialists in his native Spain, including Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro.It is not unheard-of for Nadal to enter a Grand Slam tournament without having played a tuneup on the corresponding surface. Nadal entered Wimbledon last year without having played a competitive match on grass since the middle of 2019. He made the semifinals but had to withdraw because of an abdominal injury.The psoas muscle injury is the latest in a string of ailments over the past 18 months — the flare-up of a chronic foot injury, a cracked rib and a pulled abdominal muscle — that have caused Nadal, who turns 37 on June 3, to miss many of the tournaments that are usually on his schedule. It comes at a time in his career when retirement has begun to feel less conceptual and more like a looming reality with each passing week.Nadal won his 14th French Open men’s singles title in 2022.James Hill for The New York TimesMaking matters worse, tennis punishes inactivity in a way that can make coming back from long layoffs especially difficult. If Nadal misses the entire clay court season, he will experience a calamitous drop in the world rankings unlike anything he has been through during the past two decades.In March, Nadal dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in 18 years. By missing the French Open, he is likely to drop out of the top 100 for the first time since 2003. While he will still be able to gain entry into any tournament by requesting a wild card, depending on how long he is sidelined and whether his ranking will qualify for protection, he may not be seeded and is likely to face top players far earlier than he usually would.That will present a special challenge for Nadal, who has often talked about needing to play himself into form and finding his rhythm with a series of wins against lesser competition. That opportunity will not be available without a higher ranking, and winning matches is the only way to achieve a higher ranking. Andy Murray of Britain, who turned 36 on May 15, is a two-time Wimbledon champion who climbed to No. 1 in 2016 and has been battling this dynamic since his return from major hip surgery four years ago.Nadal’s absence figures to leave the door wide open for Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish sensation who turned 20 earlier this month and last year became the youngest man ever to achieve the world’s top ranking after winning the U.S. Open; or Novak Djokovic, who is tied with Nadal with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic has had his own injury problems during the clay court season, though he has appeared to be in solid form this week in Rome at the Italian Open.When he rejoined the tour in April, he aggravated an elbow injury in Monte Carlo and Barcelona. Then he withdrew from Madrid so he could rest for Rome, where he has won six times, and Roland Garros, where he has won twice, most recently in 2021.Djokovic, the world No. 1, missed two important hard court tournaments in the United States in March because he could not gain entry into the country without being vaccinated against Covid-19. The Biden administration has ended that requirement, meaning Djokovic will be able to play in the U.S. Open. More

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      Owen Davidson, Who Won 8 Grand Slams With Billie Jean King, Dies at 79

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      In the 1960s and ’70s, he and King dominated mixed doubles tournaments. He was also known for his congeniality, sportsmanship and skill at the net.Owen Davidson, an Australian tennis player who formed a dominant mixed doubles team with Billie Jean King in the 1960s and ’70s, winning eight Grand Slam titles with her, along with five doubles titles with other partners, died on Friday in Conroe, Texas, a suburb of Houston. He was 79.The cause was cancer, his longtime friend Isabel Suliga said.Davidson came of age during a heyday for Australian tennis, with peers like Rod Laver, Ken Rosewall, Roy Emerson, John Newcombe and Margaret Court.Unlike those players, Davidson did not have significant success in singles tennis, never advancing beyond the semifinals of a Grand Slam tournament. But his congeniality, sportsmanship, lob-inducing serve and adroitness in volleys made him one of the sport’s strongest doubles players.From 1965 to 1974, he won 11 major mixed doubles titles and two men’s doubles titles. In 1967, he swept every major mixed doubles event, winning the Australian Open with his countrywoman Lesley Turner Bowrey and then winning the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open with King.Davidson and King trained together starting in 1964 in the suburbs of Melbourne with the Australian great Mervyn Rose. On her first day in camp, King felt sent around the court “like a pinball” fielding shots from Davidson, she recalled in her 2021 autobiography, “All In.”“I’ve always said the Australian men made me No. 1, and those sessions were an important part of it,” she wrote.The duo won their first Grand Slam in 1967 at the French Open.“I played mixed with so many great players, but I couldn’t win with the others,” King recalled in a phone interview, mentioning leading men she had partnered with, like Newcombe and Dennis Ralston.She and Davidson, conversely, struck a harmonious balance between her optimism and competitiveness and his steadiness and modesty. “He wasn’t Mr. Exuberant,” she said. “He’s more Steady Eddy.”Davidson competing in 1966 against Tom Okker of the Netherlands at Wimbledon. Davidson went on to reach the semifinals.PA Images, via Getty ImagesDavidson’s athletic strengths included his powerful overhead on his weak right side; his serve, which King compared to a cricket bowler’s delivery; and his team play at the net.“He let me take a lot of volleys that most guys would not,” King said. “They would get in and try to take the volley first.”That was particularly useful during the duo’s epic face-off against Court and Marty Riessen at Wimbledon in 1971.Davidson and King lost the first set 3-6 and won the next one 6-2. The final set remained undecided after 27 games.“We all four would be at net, just pounding away at each other,” King said.Wimbledon’s rules then stipulated that a final set had to be won by two games. King saw the sun beginning to set, threatening to delay the conclusion of the match to the next day.“I said to him, ‘Owen, we have to finish this, we cannot wait until tomorrow,’” King recalled. “I’m kind of the cheerleader. He said, ‘OK. Let’s go.’”Davidson and King won the final set 15-13.Owen Keir Davidson was born on Oct. 4, 1943, in Melbourne.As a singles player, he won the first game of the so-called Open Era, when the major tennis tournaments welcomed both amateurs and professionals.In that game, in April 1968 at the West Hants Tennis Club of Bournemouth, a town on the coast of southern England, Davidson, who was a pro, beat the British amateur John Clifton, 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 8-6. He lost in the quarterfinals to Rosewall.He also reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 1966, upsetting Emerson but losing to the Spanish player Manuel Santana.Davidson in 2011 with a statue of himself. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame the year before.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesDavidson’s first marriage, to Angie Davidson, ended in divorce. His second marriage, to Arlene Davidson, lasted about 20 years, until her death about a decade ago.He is survived by his son from his first marriage, Cameron, and a brother, Trevor. He lived near Conroe in The Woodlands, a planned community whose country club Davidson had worked at as a tennis pro on and off since 1974.With King lobbying on his behalf, Davidson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2010.Every time King called Davidson, he seemed to be watching Tennis Channel. “What do you think of this player or that player?” she recalled him asking. He had, King said, “a good eye for who was going to do well and who wasn’t.” More

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      Pickleball vs. Padel: A Match Between Americans and Everyone Else

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      Americans, bewitched by pickleball, are late to a global sports craze.SANTIAGO, Chile — There are only a handful of places to play pickleball here in Chile’s capital. Next month, there will be one fewer.In its place, a padel court will rise.“There’s just not enough people for it to be a profitable business right now,” said Nicolas Flores, 34, a founder of the Chile Padel Academy, said. “It was a no-brainer.”The two sports took off during the pandemic as people turned to socially distanced activities. They’re on parallel tracks. Pickleball is one of the fastest-growing sports in the United States, while padel (pronounced PAH-del) is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world.The schism is yet another example of American sports exceptionalism. If pickleball is Fahrenheit, padel is Celsius. It’s the centimeters to our inches, the football to our “football.”“The U.S. is very particular,” said Lisandro Borges, the chief executive of the World Padel Tour in Latin America. He pointed to the Super Bowl, to basketball, to baseball. “It’s like another planet.”There are marked similarities between pickleball and padel. Both are known as doubles games, though both can be played one-on-one. Both are easy to learn.But while pickleball looks a lot like tennis, padel, like squash, has walls. Good players can turn to slam the ball off the back wall or scoop it over the net. They dance across the tight court, teasing each other with shots close to the wall. It’s volley as flirtation, a tarantella.Both are easier than tennis, but padel is the faster and more physically demanding of the two. There’s a lot more running, and the ball moves faster. It’s not a retirement-community sport, no matter the level of skill.“Padel is legit,” said Caitlin Thompson, publisher and co-founder of the tennis magazine Racquet. “Pickleball gets all the hype, but actually, padel is what to watch.”The sport, which started in Mexico in 1969, has been played for decades in Spain and Argentina.During the pandemic, interest in padel boomed in countries across Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. According to Matchi, a platform that people use to reserve time on courts for racket sports, there were an estimated 25 million regular players worldwide last year.Matchi estimates that about six million regular players are in Spain, the most established market in Europe. In France, padel has been one of the fastest-growing sports since 2020. During the pandemic, it grew so fast in Sweden that the building of courts soon outstripped demand.Padel requires a special court with walls, so, unlike pickleball, it can’t just be played on a tennis court.via Chile Padel AcademyPadel and pickleball are both more about strategy and technique than speed or strength, which means they are fun to play, even with a mixed-ability group.Nicolas Maeterlinck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn Chile, padel is becoming a national obsession. There are about 600 clubs across the country, and new ones are emerging, Mr. Borges said. In March, he oversaw Chile’s first international tournament, part of the World Padel Tour.“Postpandemic,” Mr. Borges said, “it was like an explosion in Chile.”In Santiago, many sports stores in the Costanera Center, a major mall, display padel equipment in their front windows. The city’s existing courts are often fully booked after work hours. More are being built, as interest in the sport continues to grow.On a recent evening, a padel club here was full, as friends played under floodlights.One devotee, Patricio Guzman, started during the pandemic. Mr. Guzman, 38, never played tennis, but now plays padel four times a week — sometimes five, if he competes in a tournament.“I’m addicted to it,” he said.Several players had never heard of pickleball. Three brothers in their 50s, who gathered to try padel together for the first time, toweled off after a match. “It’s like tennis?” Jorge-Andrés Quevedo asked.A day later, at the Chile Padel Academy across town, Tomás Bachmann, the head of Pickleball Chile, sipped a sports drink after winning a match. Mr. Bachmann, 34, discovered pickleball from his brother, who used to live in North Carolina. He decided to try to bring the sport to Chile about two years ago.But so far, he has sold only about 30 nets and 80 paddles. A group chat for enthusiasts in Santiago, a city of almost seven million people, has about 85 members.“I don’t see a boom with pickleball here,” said Sebastián Varela, a Chilean journalist and founder of Clay, an international tennis magazine. “Why would we need this pickleball thing if we are having so much fun with padel?”Last year, about nine million Americans played pickleball, said Stu Upson, the chief executive of USA Pickleball. That’s almost double the players of the year before. A spokeswoman for USA Pickleball said the organization counted over 45,000 courts in the country, which does not include the driveways or the taped-over tennis and basketball courts, where the game flourishes.But today there are only about 240 padel courts nationwide, according to the United States Padel Association, the country’s governing body for the sport.Geography is a major factor, as is word of mouth. Padel was popular in Spanish-speaking countries long before the pandemic. (It made its way to Sweden only because so many Swedes vacation in Spain, or so the theory goes.)Pickleball, by contrast, is American, born and raised. And many Americans like things that are “Made in the U.S.A.”Mr. Upson estimates that more than 95 percent of the world’s players are in the United States and Canada. As for padel, he said, “It’s on our radar, but we don’t see it as a threat.”In the United States, despite the country-club myth, there’s a strong history of public tennis. Free or discounted courts bloomed nationwide throughout the 20th century, and Americans typically expect racket sports to be free and accessible.“We don’t join basketball clubs, do we?” said Joel Drucker, a tennis historian and writer for Tennis.com. “We don’t join Frisbee clubs. We don’t join jogging clubs. We go to some park or some rec center, and we explore.”When it comes to padel, the sport is growing in the United States, even if it is still mostly at private clubs. The number of courts in the country is expected to double to 500 from 240 in the next 12 months, said Marcos del Pilar, the president of the United States Padel Association. Dozens more courts are planned in California, North Carolina and Florida, where regular players say it’s already hard to book court time. And in Texas, the sport is gaining popularity.There are also professional tours, which are planting their respective flags. (Pickleball already has professional tournaments, although it is trying to convince people to watch them.) This weekend in Florida, the Pro Padel League will start its inaugural season in the Tampa area.Mr. del Pilar, who is also the commissioner of the Pro Padel League, rejected the idea that padel was on the horizon. “Saying that it’s ‘coming’ is talking about three or four years ahead,” he said. “It’s already here.” More

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      It’s Tennis vs. Pickleball vs. Padel. Or Is It?

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      SAN DIEGO — The official name of the facility is the Barnes Tennis Center, but once through the front doors, it quickly becomes apparent that it might want to consider expanding its branding.“What are you playing today?” a receptionist at the front desk asked of a father and his adult daughter dressed in what could pass for traditional tennis clothes.“Pickleball,” answered the daughter.“Have you tried padel yet?” asked the receptionist.“No, but it’s on the list,” she said. “I hear it’s addictive.”Such conversations and choices, which have been standard in other parts of the world for several years, remain rare in the United States. But they will become more common soon. The Barnes Center, with its menu of racket-sport offerings, looks like a template for the future as private clubs and public facilities strive to be more things to more people, protecting themselves economically from shifting tastes while trying to defuse some of the rising tension between the grand old game of tennis and fast-growing newcomers like pickleball.“I have a good friend who calls this the Disneyland of racket sports,” said Ryan Redondo, chief executive and general manager of the Barnes Center.The coronavirus pandemic, by increasing demand for outdoor activities, gave some racket sports a boost. But that unexpected surge seems to have staying power, which is giving some in the industry hope.The new arrival is padel, a fast-paced hybrid of tennis and squash contested on a glass-walled court that already has an estimated 20 million players worldwide.Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times“People get fearful, but I do think overall, we will find that this is good for the industry and will lift all racket sports,” said Joe Dudy, president and chief executive of Wilson Sporting Goods. “I’m not saying people won’t be worried, but I don’t think they should be. There was a big battle between tennis and pickle when pickle started the growth momentum, and there are more tennis players now than when that momentum started.”Tennis participation has indeed continued to grow in the United States after years of stagnation and was up to 23.6 million players over the age of 6 in 2022, according to a report by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Pickleball, once a regional oddity with a quirky name, is booming and not just among the gray-haired set as it continues to expand its reach into schools. It had 8.9 million players in 2022 according to the organization — way up from 4.8 million in 2021 — with other studies showing significantly higher numbers.The new arrival is padel, a fast-paced hybrid of tennis and squash contested on a glass-walled court that already has an estimated 20 million players worldwide, according to figures provided by Wilson.Developed in the late 1960s and early ’70s in Mexico, padel has much in common with platform tennis, which was invented in Scarsdale, N.Y., in 1928. Both use perforated paddles and are generally doubles games, but platform tennis is primarily a cold-weather game played on a gritty, elevated surface that can be heated from below to melt snow and ice.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesPickleball, once a regional oddity with a quirky name, is booming, and not just among the gray-haired set.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesPadel first became popular in Spain and Argentina and is now growing quickly in other parts of Europe, including traditional tennis strongholds like France, Italy and Britain.Though there are only about 200 padel courts in the United States — most of them in private residences — the sport has begun to attract significant investment, and the pace of court construction has accelerated with facilities opening in Florida, California and the New York area. Redondo projects that there could be as many as 40,000 courts in the country in 10 years.“It’s a rackets world,” said Dan Santorum, chief executive of the Professional Tennis Registry, which certifies teaching professionals, who are increasingly seeking certification in multiple racket sports. “A lot of the search firms are looking for triple threats when they are looking for teaching pros for clubs. It’s no longer just a director of tennis. It’s a director of rackets.“I think what’s going to happen is the triple threat in the North is going to be tennis, pickleball and platform tennis, and in the South, it’s going to be tennis, pickleball and padel, although you will see some indoor padel as well in the North.”Both padel and platform tennis use perforated paddles and are generally doubles games played in spaces considerably smaller than tennis courts.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesSome major projects are in the works: none bigger than Swing Racquet + Paddle in Raleigh, N.C., which is set to build 28 tennis courts, 25 pickleball courts, 16 padel courts and three beach tennis courts on a 45-acre plot of land with a 100-year lease from the city. Swing has signed deals with Wilson and Sweden’s Good to Great Tennis Academy, which will provide instruction on the Swing campus and whose leadership includes Magnus Norman, a former No. 2 in the ATP rankings who has coached leading players Robin Soderling and Stan Wawrinka.Rob Autry, Swing’s founder and chief executive, said ground has been broken on the campus, which is set to open to the public next year to a projected one million visitors annually for tournaments and other events, including concerts.“The idea is to bring in all these racket and paddle sports under one roof and really democratize all these sports and lean into their differences and their own cultures and give them their own little neighborhood,” Autry said in a telephone interview.If it works, the plan is to open more modest multisport Swing facilities in other locations, primarily in the Sun Belt to start.In the meantime, the Barnes Center is running on 16 acres in San Diego. A public facility, it is still tennis-centric with 25 courts and is a hub for juniors. Last year it was the site of an ATP 250 tournament and a WTA 500 event that attracted a top-tier field.“I have a good friend who calls this the Disneyland of racket sports,” said Ryan Redondo, chief executive and general manager of the Barnes Center.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesBut the center also has four new lighted pickleball courts and seven new padel courts built on the edge of the property that was not suitable for tennis courts.That is a best-case scenario at a moment when tensions elsewhere over the use of available space continue to rise between tennis and pickleball players. Similar turf battles have been waged in Spain in urban areas between tennis and padel. Though pickleball and tennis can coexist on the same courts with blended lines, that often leaves both communities dissatisfied. But the alternative, for tennis, often means losing ground, particularly when clubs can fit four pickleball courts on one tennis court and often generate more revenue.The United States Tennis Association, under its former executive director, Gordon Smith, showed no interest in an entente cordiale.“Back when Gordon was there, pickleball was Satan,” said Stu Upson, the outgoing chief executive of USA Pickleball, in a 2021 interview.Smith said he had only one issue with pickleball. “Losing real estate,” he said. “If someone wants to build pickleball courts, great, but if someone has four tennis courts and wants to make them into pickleball courts, that’s different.”Since Smith’s 12-year tenure ended in late 2019, the U.S.T.A. has softened its approach, building bridges with USA Pickleball and, more symbolically, building eight pickleball courts and four padel courts at its sprawling national campus in Orlando, Fla.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York Times“The pressures that tennis facilities are under to be able to diversify their offerings to generate more revenue are, I think, very real,” said Craig Morris, the U.S.T.A.’s chief executive for community tennis.Morris, like Autry, is convinced that this is not a zero-sum game: that one racket sport can lead to another as long as there is ample court space available for all the options. But Morris said the U.S.T.A. was involved in research on skill acquisition with Michigan State University to see if pickleball or padel, with their shorter swing arcs, were effective pathways to tennis.Redondo, a former all-American tennis player at San Diego State who now plays much more padel than tennis, is seeing crossover and is also invested in padel as a part owner of the San Diego Stingrays, a franchise in the new Pro Padel League set to start play this month.“Our padel players are often on the tennis courts right before or right after they play padel, so there’s a really good mix and synergy there,” he said. “My belief is that pickleball and padel will start doing that as well and then you will start to have this circulation of these racket sports that can thrive together without taking tennis courts away.”To test out the vision, Redondo and I played all three sports in 90 minutes last month: starting with padel, continuing with pickleball and finishing with tennis, by far the best suited to singles.Tennis participation has continued to grow after years of stagnation and was up to 23.6 million players over the age of 6 in 2022.Sandy Huffaker for The New York TimesThe sounds are distinct:from the high pitch of a lightweight paddle meeting a plastic whiffle ball in pickleball to the percussive pop of a denser paddle meeting a decompressed tennis ball in padel to the more familiar thwock of strings driving a ball in tennis.The swing lengths, like the court lengths, vary. A tennis swing is more rotational: loading the legs and then turning the hips with the shoulders following. Padel is routinely more acrobatic, with 360-degree turns and the need to adjust to the different spins off the glass. Pickleball feels more static with compact swings but also more manic at times with its abrupt changes of pace that demand both deft, considered touches and fast-twitch reactions near the net.“But the contact point, the pure sweet spot, felt pretty much the same in all three sports,” Redondo said.Tennis, the oldest of the three, does have one major element the others do not allow: an overhead serve. I finished our 90-minute tour with an ace, which was more down to Redondo being a good host than to my power and precision but, in a world of racket-sports change, felt reassuring just the same. More