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

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

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      At Wimbledon, Players Must Deal With the Challenge of Grass

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

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      Wimbledon: For Marketa Vondrousova, Winning the Title Was a Family Affair

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      Last year, she became the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the event’s women’s singles title. A celebration ensued.It was past dusk when Marketa Vondrousova and her coach, Jan Hernych, made it back to their rented house near the Southfields Underground Station, almost a mile from the All England Lawn Tennis Club. Hours earlier, Vondrousova had beaten Ons Jabeur, 6-4, 6-4, to become the first unseeded player in the Open era to win the Wimbledon women’s singles title.Waiting for Vondrousova at the house were family members, coaches and close friends. Many of them were inebriated from a combination of champagne and beer, including Hernych.“I just went for the press and after two hours I came back and they were all drunk,” said Vondrousova during a phone interview in late May. It is her fondest memory of that Wimbledon win and what she thinks about most often as she begins the defense of her title on Centre Court this Tuesday.“I always think about my family and the celebration with my box,” said Vondrousova, who marked the occasion by adding a tattoo of the numbers 150723, the date of the final, to a body already dotted with tattoo artistry. “That was the main thing that I wanted to do since I was playing in the final.”Vondrousova’s career has been a series of spirals. The Czech, who turned 25 last week was the top-ranked junior in the world and won her first career title, in Biel, Switzerland, when she was 17. She also reached the final of the 2019 French Open, losing to Ashleigh Barty, 6-1, 6-3, and captured a silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.Vondrousova has also been injured. She has had two wrist surgeries that sidelined her for more than six months shortly after her 2019 run at the French Open.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Federer: Twelve Final Days’ Review: Roger, Over and Out

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      A new documentary follows the Swiss tennis star from his 2022 retirement announcement to his final match.Roger Federer retired from tennis at 41 having achieved everything there was to conquer: 20 Grand Slam titles and a reputation so sterling that his home country of Switzerland minted his face on a coin. (He was even once voted the second most admired person in the world after Nelson Mandela.) “Federer: Twelve Final Days,” a polite documentary by Asif Kapadia and Joe Sabia, follows the living legend throughout September 2022, from his goodbye announcement to his last professional match. The camera stays at a respectful distance as Federer exits private planes and cars and navigates news conferences where, as every sports fan knows, candid feelings are as rare as talent like his.Federer’s gravity-flouting litheness has always made a striking contrast against his grounded disposition. In his farewell match, playing doubles alongside longtime rival Rafael Nadal, his expressed hope is simply to “to produce something that’s good enough.” Federer describes himself as an emotional guy, but with the international press and his management team nearly always on the sidelines, there’s little privacy to get personal. One of the more vulnerable moments the film manages to capture comes when Federer wears the wrong dress shirt to a photo call.To deliver sentiment, the film instead relies on a score that sniffles as though a racehorse is being taken out to get shot. Yet, athletes do witness their own wakes. Flickers of spliced-in footage from Federer’s youth eulogize the grace that will forever outshine his four brutal knee surgeries. When he flubs a shot at his last match, the spectators look funereal — and the colleagues in attendance, from Björn Borg to Novak Djokovic, appear to recognize that this tragedy, this mass bereavement for an aging superhuman, has happened to them. Or it will.Federer: Twelve Final DaysRated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on Prime Video. More

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      ‘The Interview’: Serena Williams’s Next Challenge

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      A lot of people reach middle age having achieved some career success and ask themselves: Well, now what? Apparently this happens even if you’re Serena Williams.Williams, who’s now 42, retired from competitive tennis a little under two years ago. She won 23 Grand Slam tournaments, more than any woman in the Open era and one shy of the record. Her level of fame and achievement — both on and off the court — broke boundaries for Black women and female athletes in general. She is, by most accounts, the best ever at what she did.Listen to the Conversation With Serena WilliamsThe greatest women’s tennis player of all time is trying to find her new normal in retirement.Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Amazon Music | NYT Audio AppSince retiring, Williams has directed that drive at new projects. She has a venture-capital fund, which mostly invests in founders who are women or people of color, and she just started a makeup line. She and her husband, the Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, also have two small girls: Olympia, who is 6, and Adira, who will turn 1 this summer. So it’s not exactly like Williams has been idle. But the tennis court still calls.She has gone back to it, in a way, with a new eight-part documentary called “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” which will stream next month on ESPN+. She told me that revisiting her career through the series has really been the first chance she has had to sit back and take in all she has accomplished.One thing that I was thinking about while watching the documentary is really the kind of amazing competitive spirit that you had, and I’m curious about where that competitive spirit goes or how it changes once you’re no longer playing sports. You’re doing the different projects: the venture-capital fund, the makeup line, you’ve written a children’s book. Did you feel as if you had to find a new outlet for it? For me, it was a necessary thing. I needed to not be done and sit down and wake up and be like: “Oh, my God. What just happened?” It was definitely too fast to throw myself full-heart, full-body into everything, but that’s kind of what I needed to do to survive after I’ve been playing tennis all my life. More

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      French Open: 50 Years Ago, Chris Evert and Bjorn Borg Changed Tennis

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      As teenagers, they brought the two-handed backhand to the sport — and to their first major championships, both at the French Open.When Chris Evert arrived in Paris for the 1973 French Open, she was an 18-year-old making just her second trip out of the United States. So she is still baffled as to why Philippe Chatrier, then the president of the French Tennis Federation, decided to take her and her mother, Colette, to Le Lido, the legendary burlesque theater on the Champs-Élysées.“He took us to dinner, and it was a dance club with half-naked women,” Evert said by phone from her Florida home in April. “They had their breasts showing. My eyes were like saucers. I had never been exposed to anything so sophisticated like that.”For Bjorn Borg, the ultimate Paris experience was celebrating his first French Open championship in 1974 with a private dinner in the Eiffel Tower.It has been more than a half century since Borg and Evert first played the French Open, but this year marks the 50th anniversary of their winning their first major championships in Paris. Evert went on to capture 18 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record seven at the French Open, six at the United States Open, three at Wimbledon and two at the Australian Open. Borg won six French Opens from 1974 to 1981 and five consecutive Wimbledons from 1976 to 1980.Borg was just days shy of his 17th birthday when he lost to Adriano Panatta in the round of 16 at the French Open in 1973, only his second appearance at a major after a first-round loss at the 1972 U.S. Open.Bjorn Borg playing Jean-François Caujolle in the first round of the French Open in 1974.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Tennis Stars Like Andy Murray and Gaël Monfils Handle Aging

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      They consider their bodies and the results on the court to determine when to hang it up.For two decades, men’s tennis pretty much meant Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.Now, Federer is retired and a hobbled Nadal is nearing the end. Djokovic won three Grand Slam events last year, but at 36 he is suddenly struggling, even as he heads into the French Open ranked No. 1.But below Mount Olympus, life is different for tennis mortals. Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Marin Cilic all won Grand Slam events and are still playing, as are Gaël Monfils, Richard Gasquet, Fabio Fognini, Roberto Bautista Agut and Kei Nishikori, players who once cracked the top 10.These players still scuffle along in reduced circumstances, far lower in the rankings than during their halcyon days. These old men of the court — all 34 to 39 years old — win a few matches here and there without much chance of regaining their former glory, yet they keep grinding.Gaël Monfils, 37, celebrating after a win at the 2024 BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. “Every day I ask myself why I’m still doing this,” he said, before citing his “passion for the game” as his motivation.Michael Owens/Getty ImagesNow, only Monfils, ranked 36th, is even in the top 50. Murray is 75th, while Bautista Agut, Wawrinka, Fognini and Gasquet are from 80th through 124th. Cilic has fallen to 1,063rd but just had a second knee surgery in the hopes of coming back, while Nishikori is ranked 347th and still striving to get back on the court. (The miraculous inverse to all this is Adrian Mannarino, who suddenly at 35 cracked the top 20 for the first time this year.)“Every day I ask myself why I’m still doing this,” Monfils said with a laugh, before citing his “passion for the game” as his motivation. (He has extra incentive: His wife, Elina Svitolina, who is 29 and still in the WTA’s top 20, “pushes me quite a lot.”)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      French Open: Hsieh Su-Wei Is a Dominant Force in Doubles

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      She has won seven majors, including the French Open twice.When Hsieh Su-Wei walked on the court to play doubles at the Miami Open in March with her partner, Elise Mertens, she wasn’t burdened by a cumbersome tennis bag holding half a dozen rackets, an assortment of snacks and multiple changes of clothes and shoes.Despite being No. 1 in the world in doubles, Hsieh, 38, wore an outfit that she bought off the rack and that bore none of the logos associated with lucrative sponsorship deals that many of her colleagues on the WTA Tour have. Until recently, Hsieh had no manager, requiring her to sell herself to sponsors. Her efforts so far have been unsuccessful.“It’s not an easy job dealing with the sponsorship when the people are not sure if they are going to have you or not,” said Hsieh, who typically competes with just two rackets, which she said was no problem since she had never broken one and could not remember the last time she even popped a string. “I don’t want to waste the time to do it. I just want to focus on my tennis.”Hsieh has never been consumed by the trappings of her sport, preferring to travel her own circuitous path. An accomplished singles player, she ranked a career high No. 23 in 2013 but has never gone beyond the quarterfinals at a major. She first ascended to No. 1 in doubles in 2014, winning Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014, both with Peng Shuai. She won her second Wimbledon in 2019 with Barbora Strycova and her third with Mertens two years later.Hsieh and her partner, Barbora Strycova, celebrating after winning the final of the women’s doubles at Wimbledon last year. Strycova retired after last year’s U.S. Open. Hsieh will partner with Elise Mertens at this year’s French Open.Alastair Grant/Associated PressAfter leaving the tour for nearly 18 months at the end of 2021 to heal a nagging muscle strain in her leg that had her contemplating retirement, Hsieh returned in April of last year and has now won three of the last four majors, each with a different partner. At last year’s French Open, she paired with Wang Xinyu, who is nearly 16 years her junior, to win the championship. Hsieh then captured Wimbledon with Strycova.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More