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      At Wimbledon, American Men Are Putting on a Fourth of July Bash

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      Nearly everywhere one looked on Wednesday and Thursday, an American man was slamming or slicing or grinding his way into the final 32, and it feels like the 1990s.Taylor Fritz, left, Francis Tiafoe and Tommy Paul are three of eight American men ranked in the top 50. Shaun Botterill/Getty Images; Clive Brunskill/Getty Images; Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesWIMBLEDON, England — Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend, the American men are throwing a party on British soil.As night fell on Thursday at the All England Club, eight American men were set to qualify for the third round of the prestigious Wimbledon tournament, accounting for 25 percent of the final 32 spots. That is the most American men in the third round at the event since 1995, when nine qualified in the Sampras-Agassi-Courier-Chang heydays. It is also the most in any Grand Slam tournament since the U.S. Open in 1996.Nearly everywhere one looked on Wednesday and Thursday, an American man was slamming or slicing or grinding his way into the final 32, and one more will clinch his spot Friday. The sun has seemingly set on the era when every male American player had a big serve and a forehand and not much else.Some were familiar faces, like John Isner, bashing his way past the hometown favorite Andy Murray. But several were part of the next wave of rising Yanks in their mid-20s — the clique of Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul and Francis Tiafoe that first bonded as teenagers at a national training center in Florida. And then there were a couple from the wave after that (Jenson Brooksby and Brandon Nakashima) who are still a couple years away from needing a daily shave. Two Americans, Maxime Cressy and Jack Sock, one new to the scene, the other a veteran, were dueling for the last available spot until rain interrupted their match on No. 3 Court on Thursday.Brandon Nakashima won his second-round match against Denis Shapovalov of Canada on Thursday.Toby Melville/Reuters“It’s been a long, long progression,” said Martin Blackman, the former pro who is the general manager of player development for the United States Tennis Association.Now before anyone stateside rushes out to the liquor store to get some Pimm’s on ice for a championship celebration, it is worth noting that no one expects any of these players to actually win the men’s singles title, at least not this year. American men’s tennis is deep but light on the top.The U.S. now has eight men in the top 50 and 13 in the top 100, more than any other country. Arguably the most promising of the lot, Sebastian Korda, son of the former world No. 2 Petr Korda, had to withdraw from Wimbledon 10 days ago with shin splints.“Didn’t give me anything to fish for,” Denis Shapovalov of Canada said of Nakashima, who beat him in four sets Thursday.Despite the stampede this week, there are no Americans in the top 10 and just two in the top 20 — Fritz and Reilly Opelka. Russia and Spain each have two players in the top 10. Spain, the best tennis country of the last decade, has four players in the top 20.But for a country whose male talent stock has long been seen as fairly lacking and is without a Grand Slam tournament champion since Andy Roddick won the U.S. Open in 2003, depth represents significant progress. It also serves as a kind of motivational tool. A friendly competition has emerged between the Americans in their mid-20s, who are led by Fritz, and the ones who have just reached the legal drinking age in the United States, or are not there yet, to be the first to play into the final rounds of a Grand Slam tournament.“They’re great for us,” Paul, 25, said of Brooksby, Korda, both 21, and Nakashima, 20. “They push us.”“For tennis to grow, we’re going to need some winners on the men’s side,” he added.The U.S.T.A. knows that as well. For years, it has been trying to hone a system to help develop players that will work in a vast country with more than 330 million people and plenty of competition from more popular sports that are cheaper for good young athletes to pursue.Taylor Fritz is the highest-ranked American men’s player at No. 14.Alastair Grant/Associated PressIn Europe, especially Eastern Europe, young teenagers with promise often leave home for academies. The academic and psychological support can be thin. A “Lord of the Flies,” sink-or-swim environment persists. Despite its success there in producing some formidable talent and champions, including Novak Djokovic, that model was never going to work with American parents.Instead, over the last decade the organization has tried to create a trout farm rather than find a unicorn. It developed a three-tiered program of local, regional and national camps that bring together top talent throughout the year but also allow kids to stay home for as long as possible and work with their own coaches. Airfare to the camps isn’t included, but just about everything else is, even some money for private coaches to attend sometimes so they don’t feel squeezed out of the process as a young player gets older and better.There is no one-size-fits-all approach. During the crucial years of development between the ages of 15 and 22, some players choose to work with U.S.T.A. coaches and trainers at their training centers in Orlando, Fla., or Carson, Calif., outside Los Angeles. Fritz was a part of the U.S.T.A. program for six years, Paul for five, Opelka for four and Tiafoe for three, Blackman said.Others, such as Korda, Nakashima and Brooksby, choose to remain largely outside the system, but they still can qualify for financial support and come to the occasional camp or show up at the training center for competition.Blackman also does not want the organization to preach a certain style of play. Cressy’s serve-and-volley game is just as valued as Brooksby’s finesse, Tiafoe’s serve-and-forehand power, and Nakashima’s all-court approach.At one such camp, a national gathering in Boca Raton, Fla., a decade ago, Fritz, Paul, and Tiafoe first bonded.“It was just really boring in those dorms, nothing to do, so we didn’t have much choice,” Fritz said recently.Fritz, with his big feet and mop of hair, and the least advanced game of the group, quickly became the group punching bag, friendly punching of course.“Big, goofy guy like that, you know he was going to end up being the target,” Tiafoe said.Jenson Brooksby beat Benjamin Bonzi of France on Thursday to advance to the third round.Ryan Pierse/Getty ImagesPaul said Fritz took it well. Fritz also saw that members of his new clique were better at tennis than he was, and he began working harder to catch up. Within a few years, he had pushed ahead. He is now the top-ranked American man at No. 14 and the only one of the younger set to have won a Masters 1000 tournament, the level just below the Grand Slams, emerging at Indian Wells, Calif., earlier this year.They remain close friends and genuinely invested in each other’s success, which helps during a long season filled with travel. Paul has been on the road for nearly 10 weeks.“I’m so homesick I want to throw up,” he said Thursday.Text threads and group dinners, sometimes fancy, sometimes burgers and pizza, and lengthy bull sessions help. Tiafoe made the final at a tournament in Portugal earlier this year. As he came off the court following each win, he would find congratulatory notes on his phone from the posse.A big and extremely difficult task for the next generation and the one right behind them still lies ahead — getting into the top 10 and becoming fixtures in the last matches of the biggest tournaments, the way American women, led by the Williams sisters, have performed for years.It’s getting closer.“I expect us to do well in all of these tournaments now,” Paul said. “It’s all about winning one more match and going one round deeper.”Paul has never made the second week of a Grand Slam. On Friday, on the first day of a third round with plenty of American company, he will get another chance. More

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      At Wimbledon, Maxime Cressy’s Throwback Style Helps Him Charge Forward

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      We’re well past the glory days of the serve-and-volley style that took John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Pete Sampras to the Hall of Fame. Maxime Cressy is on a one-man revival mission.WIMBLEDON, England — “My butt is killing me.”That was Maxime Cressy, a little more than an hour after his four hour, 10 minute marathon win over Felix Auger-Aliassime on Tuesday in the fading light of the No. 3 Court, the steeple of St. Mary’s Church in sight just above the tree line. The little-known Cressy, a 25-year-old American who was born and raised in France, only recently cracked the top 50, but he has already achieved something no player ever will, and few aspire to, because, well, as Cressy said, it’s rather painful, and maybe not so smart.To watch Cressy play and win a match on the Wimbledon grass is to take a journey back in time, to the glory years of serve-and-volley tennis, to the days of John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Boris Becker, Stefan Edberg and Pete Sampras.It was a time before professional tennis became much more uniform and far friendlier to camping out on the baseline and blasting groundstrokes. Before ever-lighter and more powerful rackets and next-generation polyester strings made passing shots on the run from the deepest corners possible with a wrist-flick. It all turned rushing the net on too many points into a foolish, anachronistic mission, like stuffing 30 wooden rackets in the bag before taking the court.“They don’t really know how to volley that well, so they don’t want to come in even when invited,” Navratilova said this week of the modern generation of players.Even Reilly Opelka, who is nearly 7 feet tall and possesses one of the deadliest serves in the game, won’t consider it, despite having the wingspan of an Andean condor. Too tough to move, he explained, especially on soft grass, and especially for anyone who takes big strides like he does.Maria Sakkari is one of the most aggressive players in the game. But she has long been somewhat allergic to the net, so much so that her coach, Tom Hill, has set a goal for her to go to the net 20 times in a match, though not by serving and volleying, which she rarely practices.“Whether I can do it or not, that’s the goal,” she said.She got there 10 times on Tuesday in her straight-set opening-round win over Zoe Hives of Australia.Carlos Alcaraz is still trying to figure out how to play on grass even though he is the game’s hottest rising star and one of the fastest players. He possesses some deft touch at the net, too.He tried a bit of serve-and-volley early in his opening match against Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany. It was one of the main things he wanted to do in the match.“I lost every time,” he said. “I didn’t want to try again.”And yet, amid all this net-play pessimism, there is Cressy, all 6-foot-6 of him, plus the mop of dirty blond curls that gives him an extra inch or two. He comes in behind his first serve, his second serve and on his opponent’s serve, whenever he senses a chance. He comes in after every shortish ball he sees and even after his opponent passes him on three consecutive points. He believes in serve-and-volley with the fervor of a cult member, even if it is a cult of one.“This style can take me to the top,” he said after a first-round loss at the French Open, and when he says “the top,” he means the No. 1 ranking. After all, that loss was on clay, which has long been kryptonite to serve-and-volleyers.Cressy has been battling conventional wisdom for a decade, trying to master the serve-and-volley since he was a promising junior player in France. France’s tennis federation basically told him to cut it out, as though he were goofing off during practice. If that was the way he was going to play, they didn’t want much to do with him. Cressy would not budge.“I loved it,” he said Tuesday night after knocking off Auger-Aliassime, the sixth-seeded Canadian and a fashionable dark-horse at Wimbledon, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6 (9), 7-6 (5). He will play another American, Jack Sock, in the second round on Thursday. “If it is something I love, I might as well do it and make it as efficient as possible.”Cressy trained at an academy during his last year in high school and was recruited to play at U.C.L.A., where coaches saw some potential for him in doubles. They were correct, and he became a collegiate doubles champion in 2019.But Cressy never stopped believing in the idea that his sport was ignoring a style that could be incredibly efficient for a singles player with a big serve, an ability to move, unflappable confidence and a willingness to sprint, scurry, bend, crouch, squat and stretch for balls before they land. Hence the sore rear end after Tuesday’s match.Lately, something has clicked. In December, Cressy was ranked 112th. He played into the final 16 at the Australian Open in January, had a rough patch in the late winter and early spring, then got on a roll that has sent him up to No. 45, one of the fastest rises in the sport this year.The elevation has come after years of studying film of Sampras and McEnroe and all the other great net hounds. His three years as a professional have been a process of trial and error, especially trying to figure out how to best use his cannon-like serve. At some point, he’s not sure when, there was an epiphany — the most effective and reliable serve was not the perfectly placed, overpowering 140-mile-an-hour ace. Too often, that is a low-percentage shot.Rather, it’s the serve that produces an easy volley. His first serve averaged 123 miles an hour on Tuesday; his second 119. Many players, even the best ones, lose 20 miles per hour or more from their first to second serve. He did not lose a service game.“It’s very difficult playing someone who is basically hitting two first serves,” a frustrated Auger-Aliassime said of Cressy after the match.Cressy has experimented with different serve patterns, trying to spray them across the service box, but he ultimately settled on using just two — one wide and the other down the middle of the court, though he mainly uses the latter just to keep his opponents from focusing fully on his wide serves. Most often, he hits a high, kicking serve out wide. It goes in a lot. If it comes back, it’s often in his volleying strike zone.After the serve, he sprints to the net and instinct takes over. He never has a plan for where the volleys will go. In a split second, he sees the ball, the court and the opponent. A pulse from his brain to his hands says punch, or drive, or cut, or slice or drop volley.The ball crashes into his strings. And it goes from there. So many of his volleys land just inches from the baseline. Even the lost art of the deep volley, something lamented by many, including Dick Gould, the retired Stanford tennis coach who helped turn McEnroe into a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, lives on in Cressy.It is a lonely way to play, Cressy said: so many doubters telling him serve-and-volley is a relic and no one over his shoulder when he looks back to see if anyone will join his cause. There is, though, the joy and cockeyed logic that only the iconoclast understands and figures out how to use for his benefit.“It is a bumpy road to be unique on the tour,” he said Tuesday, “but that helps my confidence.” More

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      What’s Next for Serena Williams?

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      A second consecutive first-round exit at Wimbledon leaves the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion looking human, but suggesting she has more tennis left to play.WIMBLEDON, England — Most likely, it was not truly the end. Chances are there will be some more tennis, maybe even another major tournament at the end of the summer.It is long past the beginning of the end.What happened at Wimbledon though, where Harmony Tan of France beat Serena Williams in a third-set tiebreaker at the tournament she had won seven times, signaled the end of the Serena Williams that the world, both within tennis and outside it, has known.For the better part of two decades, Williams dominated her sport unlike anyone else. She won 23 Grand Slam singles titles — the most recent, the Australian Open in 2017, when she was pregnant — and she has won nearly $100 million in prize money.She transcended tennis as a dominant cultural figure, informing debates on gender, race and celebrity. She became a successful businesswoman and a mother. On Tuesday, she was a player trying to gut out a victory against a relatively unknown competitor a little more than half her age.When people would describe Williams as perhaps the greatest female tennis player ever, she would say, “tennis player,” to suggest that she should be compared to Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Few argued with her.The memory of that Serena Williams, now 40 years old and ranked 1,204th in singles, has remained alive for a year and half, ever since she lost definitively, decisively, but still fighting with her signature mix of power, grit and mystique against Naomi Osaka in the semifinals of the 2021 Australian Open. Conventional wisdom held that in the right tournament — say, Wimbledon — with the right draw, she could be that Serena Williams once again.She had struggled with an Achilles’ tendon injury ahead of that tournament anyway. Her fourth-round loss at the French Open to Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan came on the slow, red clay at the French Open, a surface she never cared for much. She had not won a title in Paris since 2015.Then came the hamstring tear five minutes into her opening match at Wimbledon a year ago, a freak injury.Williams had won a Grand Slam tournament during her first trimester of pregnancy. Some of the most dominant tennis anyone has ever played came after she nearly died from a hematoma and pulmonary embolism.Four times she had been a match away from winning a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title, though she long ago ended any debate about whether she was the greatest ever. That elite serve and forehand, her fist-pumps, her glare, the visceral screams that come out in a way that both inspire and terrify, all of it was still there, wasn’t it, there for her to summon when her health and the planets aligned, even after 11 months away from the game?Williams after winning a point against Harmony Tan.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressPerhaps that Serena Williams will appear once more. But Tuesday did not provide many hints that it would. The Williams that her fellow players, so many of them so much younger, speak of with awe and inspiration, is now more of an idea than an actual opponent.“If I can win one or two games that would be really good,” Tan said of her mind-set before the match, her first at Wimbledon.For certain stretches on Tuesday evening, the Williams of old appeared on Centre Court. She used her forehand to dictate parts of the match, and chased balls with the footwork of yesteryear. A feathery drop shot late in the third set showed the touch that appears infrequently now.But too often Williams looked every bit her 40 years. She had to lean on her racket to catch her breath after so many points. She hunted for the inner assassin she once summoned without notice. Williams was once so clinical against an overmatched, inexperienced opponent like Tan. That Williams is no more.That, of course, is just the tennis side of it.The Serena Williams of the past two decades has been so much more than a gifted athlete who knew what to do with 11 ounces of carbon fiber in her right hand. Even during the long periods when the rankings did not have a the No. 1 next to her name, she defined and set the bar for her sport, and for women’s sports more broadly.She was Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, Tiger Woods of the past quarter century, a one-name brand who graced the covers of sports, fashion and newsmagazines with an overall income somewhere in the mid-eight figures.“Changing the game was not something I set out to do, but somehow I did it,” Williams said late Tuesday night.That part of the Williams persona, the trailblazer, trendsetter, the voice that can say so much with few words, will go on, with new wrinkles. In addition to her usual slew of sponsors, Williams announced earlier this year that her early-stage venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million to invest in founders with diverse points of view and backgrounds.Her fund has already financed 60 companies that include Sendwave, a money transfer app; MasterClass, which offers online lessons in several topics; and Daily Harvest, a food delivery service. The fund’s limited partners include some of the biggest names in tech finance. “King Richard,” the movie based on her father that she helped produce, won Will Smith an Oscar for best actor this year.The other side though, the tennis side that started it all, a force as reliable as the heat in Australia and the cool, late summer nights of the U.S. Open, has fallen victim to what eventually overtakes all of the greatest. Ted Williams and Michael Jordan ultimately fell to the relentlessness of time, and the power of rising youth. Williams must, too, just as she did against Tan, a part of a deeper-than-ever WTA Tour where anyone can beat, or lose, to anyone else.Williams once summoned power without notice, but must now settle for flashes of it.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFew want to see Williams decline, even those who have lost to her more than they have won.“I think it’s great that we have her back,” said Maria Sakkari of Greece, who called Williams a great role model. “For me she’s the best female athlete — not tennis player — athlete in the Open era.”“Great that she’s trying to come back,” said Nadal, who has 22 Grand Slam singles titles, one fewer than Williams.Like Williams, he has battled back from potentially career-ending injuries of late. He is nearly five years younger than Williams, but is one of the few people who can understand what is going through Williams’s heart and mind.“The only thing that shows is passion and love for the game,” Nadal said of her comeback attempt. “Just being here shows that she has a lot of love for her work and for this game. And I think that’s a great example.”There were flashbacks on Tuesday. Williams surged to an early lead in the deciding set, then minutes later, she was fighting, down a game, though on serve, against the 115th-ranked player in the world, a 24-year-old who grew up watching her on television. Williams even served for the match after more than two and a half hours on the court, at 5-4. Serving comes from the legs, and Williams’s legs had lost their power. She sprayed errors wide and into the net, suddenly unable to handle Tan’s slicing strokes.She would save a match point on her serve two games later with a classic swinging forehand volley as she charged the net. But in the tiebreaker, she frittered away prosperity once more, allowing a 4-0 lead to become a 9-7 deficit. Then came one last forehand into the net at the 3-hour, 11-minute mark.Williams packed up her bags, waved to the crowd, and then, in an interview room a little while later, said the idea of playing in New York at the U.S. Open later in the summer, after some time on the practice courts, carried plenty of appeal. She, at least, still believes. Retirement, for now, did not come up.“It’s actually kind of like, ‘OK, Serena, you can do this if you want,’” she said. “Lots of motivation to get better and to play at home.” More

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      Who Is Harmony Tan, Who Beat Serena Williams at Wimbledon?

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      Tan, 24, had merely hoped to take a game or two off Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion. Instead, she won and has a chance to reach the third round of a major for the first time.The matchup seemed lopsided on paper. Serena Williams, possibly the greatest tennis player ever and the winner of the most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era, matched up with Harmony Tan, No. 115 in the world, in the first round of Wimbledon. Tan, playing in her first Wimbledon, had not advanced further than the second round in any of her six previous appearances at a major. Even Tan admitted in her on-court interview that she was “really scared” upon seeing that she was scheduled to face Williams and had hoped she could win one or two games Tuesday.Williams was asked in a news conference ahead of the match if she was disappointed that she didn’t draw a more challenging opponent.“Every match is hard; every match,” said Williams, who was competing in her first singles match on tour since tearing a hamstring in last year’s opening round of Wimbledon and retiring from the match. “You can’t underestimate anyone or any match.”Tan, 24, proved Williams’s words true, spoiling her return to tennis and quest for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title. Tan defeated Williams, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). For Williams, 40, the loss was the second of her career in the first round of Wimbledon.Tan, a Paris native with Cambodian and Vietnamese parents, said she watched Williams often while growing up. Tan turned professional when she was just 14, but this was her first matchup against Williams, and she had never faced a player with career accomplishments even approaching those of Williams.The highest-ranked player she has faced is Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, who was No. 17 in the world at the time of their matchup at this year’s Australian Open. Tan retired in the third set of the match after suffering an injury.For this matchup with Williams, Tan had a slight advantage in the form of her coach, Nathalie Tauziat.Tauziat, the 1998 Wimbledon women’s singles runner-up, who was ranked as high as No. 3 in the world, faced Williams three times, beating her once at the Paris Open final in 2000. Tan didn’t mention in her post-match interview whether or not Tauziat gave her specific pointers based on her experience against Williams. Still, she thanked Tauziat for supporting her after the win.“I’m really surprised today,” Tan said of her win in the on-court interview.She will have the opportunity to advance past the second round in a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in her career when she faces Sara Sorribes Tormo, a Spaniard seeded 32nd. The two faced each other earlier this year in Monterrey, Mexico, with Tan losing, 6-2, 6-2. More

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      Serena Williams Exits Wimbledon in the First Round, Again

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      Williams, who had not competed in singles on tour since withdrawing from Wimbledon last year with an injury, lost in three sets to Harmony Tan of France.WIMBLEDON, England — It was the 21st time that Serena Williams has played Wimbledon. It was Harmony Tan’s first time, but Tan will be the player heading to the second round at the All England Club.Tan, a Frenchwoman ranked 115th who is little-known even in her country, defeated Williams, the greatest women’s tennis champion of her era, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). Williams had not played a singles match on tour since retiring in the first round of last year’s Wimbledon in tears with a hamstring injury, but she got to play plenty of tennis on Tuesday evening on the Centre Court where she had won seven Wimbledon singles titles. Her grueling duel with Tan was a stylistic contrast that lasted 3 hours and 11 minutes. What was missing for Williams was the upbeat, reaffirming finish, and she did not hesitate when asked if she was OK with this being her final Wimbledon memory if that was the way it turned out.“Obviously not. You know me. Definitely not,” Williams, 40, said. “But today I gave all I could do, you know, today. Maybe tomorrow I could have gave more. Maybe a week ago I could have gave more. But today was what I could do. At some point you have to be able to be OK with that. And that’s all I can do. I can’t change time or anything.” She did succeed in changing the momentum on Tuesday in a match that was played under open skies for the first set and then under cover the rest of the way after the roof was closed to provide the stadium lighting necessary to continue. Williams dominated the second set but Tan fought back in the third while Williams’s level and energy dipped even if her fighting spirit did not. Though she saved a match point on her serve late in the final set and jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the super tiebreaker, which is new at Wimbledon this year, she could not hold on, missing too many crucial shots, including a forehand into the net on Tan’s second match point.“I think physically I did pretty good,” Williams said. “I think the last couple points, I was really suffering there, but I feel like in just those key points, winning some of those points, is always something mentally that you have to have, that you kind of need. I did pretty good on maybe one or two of them, but obviously not enough.”Tan’s clear-thinking poise under big-match pressure was remarkable for a player with so little experience and who was making her first appearance on Centre Court. But she said she had to struggle within herself to believe that she really could defeat Williams.“When I saw the draw I was really scared, because it’s Serena,” said Tan, 24. “She’s a legend, and yeah, I was like, ‘Oh my God, how can I play?’ If I can win one or two games, it was really good for me.”She won two sets instead, turning what could have been a feel-good story for Williams into a narrow defeat that will repose the question of how much more professional tennis Williams intends to play. She will turn 41 in September, and her quest for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title seems increasingly far-fetched. A longtime No. 1, she is now ranked 1,204th and will soon have no ranking at all. But she provided no definitive answer to whether this was her final Wimbledon appearance. “That’s a question I can’t answer,” she said. “I don’t know. Who knows where I’ll pop up?”But at least she can leave the All England Club with a less painful memory than what she took from last year’s Wimbledon, when she tore a hamstring after slipping in the first set of her first-round match with Aliaksandra Sasnovich, hobbling off Centre Court in great distress. She did not play competitively again until last week when she returned to play doubles in Eastbourne, England, with Ons Jabeur. Tuesday’s match against Tan was Williams’s first singles match in a year, and to her credit, she scrapped and hustled through the peaks and valleys.“It was definitely long, a very long battle and fight and definitely better than last year,” Williams said.It was a ragged but ultimately admirable performance as she tried to shake off the rust and solve the myriad riddles posed by Tan, who had watched Williams only from afar until their duel. “Seeing her next to me before we walked out on court was really intimidating, because she’s so imposing,” Tan said in French. “It was difficult and even at the end, when we shook hands, she was still imposing.”“When I was young I was watching her so many times on the TV,” she said in her on-court interview. “My first Wimbledon is wow!”Harmony Tan, a Frenchwoman ranked 115th, lacks pure power but understands tennis geometry.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressThat Williams came close to victory was more a tribute to her willpower than her power as she failed to dominate with her first serve or full-cut returns and instead battled her way through extended rallies and compromised situations in the third set, digging low for Tan’s crisply sliced shots and hustling into the corners. Williams served for the match at 5-4 and was two points from victory at 30-15 only to lose the next three points and her serve when she hit an unconvincing forehand approach shot that Tan slapped past her for a backhand winner. Williams and her player box full of family, friends and team members, including her new coach Eric Hechtman, were not able to celebrate. She fought off a match point when serving at 5-6, 30-40 with a forehand volley winner. She then had to navigate the tiebreaker despite the weariness in her legs and the tension in her gaze. She jumped out to a 4-0 lead before Tan reeled off the next five points by keeping Williams off balance. Tan, coached by the 1998 Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat, lacks pure power and has a puffball second serve, but she understands tennis geometry and has an unconventional tool set that is well suited to grass. She also had a good scouting report: Tauziat is 54 and long retired but she faced Williams three times in singles, defeating her in the final of an indoor tournament in Paris in 2000 on a fast, low-bouncing surface. Tauziat understood the importance of keeping Williams out of her prime hitting zones and of keeping her on the move.“Thank you, Nathalie,” Tan said in her on-court interview, looking toward Tauziat in the player box.From the start, Tan had Williams guessing and stretching, mixing often-exquisite drop shots with forays to the net; towering lobs with counterpunched backhand passing shots; sideswiping forehand slices with looped topspin.“Any other opponent probably would have suited my game better,” said Williams, who was rarely able to settle into power-baseline duels or any particular pattern of play for long.No one but Tan knew what was coming. Williams, who has lost to such variety-loving players even in her prime, often looked befuddled in the early going. She also looked as tight as piano wire, struggling to let her natural power flow and missing swing volleys and approach shots by the bunch while laboring to move laterally.That was certainly understandable in light of her long layoff, and the crowd reacted with awkward silence at first. The grand tennis theater where Williams has experienced so many highs and a few lows through the decades was nearly half empty at the start but as the match turned into a marathon, it was filled with support and emotion as Williams tried to avoid only the third first-round exit of her career in a Grand Slam tournament.She could not quite manage it, despite all her evident desire, and there may not be many more major tournaments to come, although Williams did not rule out a return to the U.S. Open, where she won her first Grand Slam singles title in 1999 at age 17.“Your first time is always special,” she said, speaking slowly and softly. “There’s definitely, you know, lots of motivation to get better and to play at home.” More

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      Matteo Berrettini Withdraws From Wimbledon With Coronavirus

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      WIMBLEDON, England — Matteo Berrettini, a finalist at Wimbledon last year, withdrew from the tournament on Tuesday after testing positive for the coronavirus.Berrettini’s announcement of his withdrawal came only about two hours before he was to take the court for his first-round match against Cristian Garín and was the latest blow to a Grand Slam tournament that was already shorter than usual on stars and that had been stripped of ranking points for this edition by the men’s and women’s tennis tours.Berrettini, who is undefeated on grass courts this season and was seeded No. 8 at Wimbledon, was one of the leading contenders for the men’s singles title. His withdrawal came one day after another player, Marin Cilic, the No. 14 seed from Croatia and a 2017 Wimbledon finalist, also withdrew after testing positive.“I am heartbroken,” Berrettini wrote on his Instagram account, echoing Cilic’s announcement on Instagram on Monday.The dual withdrawal raised the prospect of an outbreak among the player group at Wimbledon, which is missing several stars because of injury and the tournament’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players.Berrettini and Cilic have been in contact in recent weeks with many players. Both played at the grass-court tournament in Queen’s Club in London that ended on June 19, with Berrettini winning the singles title and Cilic reaching the semifinals.Both practiced at Wimbledon last week and used the locker room reserved for seeded players. Berrettini trained on Centre Court on Thursday with Rafael Nadal, the No. 2 seed. Cilic trained on Centre Court with Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 seed.Djokovic, who has said that he remains unvaccinated for the coronavirus, won his first-round match on Monday, defeating Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea in four sets. Djokovic served particularly well but was far from his sharpest in other areas, looking wan and low on energy at one stage and dousing himself with water on a changeover. On Tuesday, Nadal played at Wimbledon for the first time since 2019, beating Francisco Cerundolo in four sets in the first round on Centre Court.Wimbledon was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic and imposed strict restrictions last year, following British government guidelines. Coronavirus testing was required for players, support team members and tournament officials and employees. But with the loosening of government mandates this year, no testing is currently required at Wimbledon.In a statement, the All England Club said that its policy is “in keeping with agreed practice across all of the U.K.”The club said some health and safety measures were still in place. “We have maintained enhanced cleaning and hand sanitizing operations and offer full medical support for anyone feeling unwell,” the statement said.No masks are required at the tournament, and they are a rare sight on the grounds. But the player medical team is continuing to wear them for any consultations. The team of racket stringers on site is also wearing them. The club emphasized that Wimbledon’s health and safety policies were regularly under review and could be updated.Emma Raducanu signing autographs for fans. Masks are not required at the tournament this year.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the tournament clearly has a problem, which could get bigger.In all, five of the top 20 men were unable to play at Wimbledon because of bans, injuries or illness. No. 1 Daniil Medvedev of Russia was blocked from competing after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Wimbledon’s decision to bar Russians and their allies from Belarus led to the tours retaliating by removing ranking points from the tournament.No. 2-ranked Alexander Zverev is out for an extended period after tearing ligaments in his right ankle at the French Open.There have also been early upsets. Hubert Hurkacz, the No. 7 seed and a strong contender, was beaten Monday in five sets in the first round by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Felix Auger-Aliassime, the No. 6 seed, was beaten Tuesday in four sets by Maxime Cressy.Berrettini, a strapping 6-foot-6 Italian, missed several months of action this season because of surgery on his right, primary playing hand. But he returned for the grass-court season this month and won consecutive titles in Stuttgart and at Queen’s Club.“I have had flu symptoms and been isolating the last few days,” Berrettini wrote on social media. “Despite symptoms not being severe, I decided it was important to take another test this morning to protect the health and safety of my fellow competitors and everyone else involved in the tournament.”Berrettini and Cilic, like many of the leading players, were staying in private accommodations in Wimbledon rather than in one of the player hotels in central London. That could reduce the risk of contamination, but there is also a new sense of resignation among the player community about the virus. Many have had the coronavirus, including Djokovic, Nadal and Coco Gauff.“I’m pretty sure I had Covid, so I’m less afraid than I used to be,” Maria Sakkari, who is seeded fifth in women’s singles, said after her first-round victory on Tuesday. “We have to get back to a normal life again.”Sakkari equated getting the coronavirus to getting food poisoning, which could also force withdrawal from a tournament. Alizé Cornet, a French player, said the virus had become a “part of the landscape.”“There always have been injuries and illnesses,” she told French reporters on Tuesday, claiming that there had been numerous undeclared coronavirus cases among players at the recent French Open. “In the locker room, everyone had it, and we didn’t say anything,” she said, suggesting that some players had symptoms but did not test themselves.“We’re not going to test ourselves and put ourselves in trouble,” she said. “I saw some women wearing masks because they did not want to spread it.”Gauff said she was comfortable with testing not being mandatory for players and said she was happy that the testing was no longer “every day or every other day.”“I don’t want to go back to that,” she said. “Not being scared to be tested, but it’s also, like, a hassle. I think with the vaccines and everything, we kind of know that the viral load is low and it’s very hard to transfer if you’re a vaccinated individual.”But she said she would test if she had symptoms and encouraged her peers to do the same.Berrettini had not been on site at the All England Club since Saturday and now, despite his thunderous serve and forehand, will have to wait until next year.“I have no words to describe the extreme disappointment I feel,” he said. “The dream is over for this year, but I will be back stronger.”Cilic, 33, has also been in resurgent form, overwhelming Medvedev in the fourth round of the French Open on his way to the semifinals. With his long reach, huge serve and flat baseline power, he is dangerous on grass and was, like Berrettini, one of the players to watch closely in the bottom half of the men’s draw.Cilic could have faced Nadal in the fourth round; Berrettini could have faced him in the semifinals. But now Nadal’s path looks quite a bit less daunting, if he remains healthy. More

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      Matteo Berrettini exits Wimbledon after testing positive for the coronavirus.

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      Mr. Berrettini was seeded No. 8 in the tournament, but he was not the first player to withdraw for virus reasons.WIMBLEDON, England — Matteo Berrettini, a finalist at Wimbledon last year, withdrew from this year’s tournament on Tuesday after testing positive for the coronavirus.Berrettini’s announcement of his withdrawal came only about two hours before he was to take to the court for his first-round match against Cristian Garin and was the latest blow to a Grand Slam tournament that was already shorter than usual on stars and has been stripped of ranking points for this edition by the men’s and women’s tours.Berrettini, who was undefeated on grass courts this season and seeded No. 8 at Wimbledon, was one of the leading contenders for the men’s singles title. His withdrawal came one day after another player, Marin Cilic, the No. 14 seed from Croatia and a 2017 Wimbledon finalist, also withdrew after testing positive. More

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      Tennis’ Most Popular Podcast Is The Tennis Podcast

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      It started around David Law’s parents’ dining room table. A decade later, “The Tennis Podcast” is the conscience of the game and how the sport communicates with itself.WIMBLEDON, England — The moment Amélie Mauresmo, the French Open tournament director, said women’s tennis did not have as much appeal as men’s tennis right now, there was little doubt she was going to get an earful.Those objecting included a British woman named Catherine Whitaker, who delivered a scathing, 10-minute-35-second dressing down of Mauresmo on an increasingly influential show, “The Tennis Podcast.” Whitaker was somewhere between exasperated and aghast that a former No. 1-ranked player in women’s singles would say such a thing to explain why she had scheduled men for nine of the tournament’s 10 featured night sessions. She called out Mauresmo for possessing an “unconscious bias” against some of the world’s greatest and most famous female athletes.The next morning, a member of the French Open’s communications staff approached Whitaker with a proposition: Would she like to join a select group of journalists to speak with Mauresmo?That Whitaker’s words had gotten the attention of Mauresmo — who would later attempt to walk back her comments — might have been hard to foresee in 2012, when Whitaker and her boss, David Law, sat at the dining room table at his parents’ home to record the first episode of their podcast.“Maybe five people listened to it,” Law, a longtime tennis communications executive and BBC radio commentator, said during a recent interview. For years, the show stopped and restarted, with episodes dropping irregularly and attracting tiny audiences.A decade on, “The Tennis Podcast” regularly tops the Apple charts for the sport in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Spain. It is a favorite of the game’s luminaries and commentators, such as Billie Jean King, who has listened to the entire archive, Chris Evert, Pam Shriver and Mary Carillo. In the United States, it recently ranked 40th among all sports podcasts. In certain moments, such as during Mauresmo’s crisis, it is how the sport talks to itself.From left, David Law, Catherine Whitaker and Matt Roberts host the show. “He’s the one they all like the most,” Law said of Roberts. “I know, because I read all the emails.”James Hill for The New York Times“I’m a nerd,” Carillo said in late May, just before taping a special 10th anniversary show high above the main court, Philippe Chatrier, at Roland Garros. “These guys know their stuff. And they’re funny. You can’t fake funny.”Every sport has its handful of must-listens. Most feature hosts who came to their podcasts with established platforms or have major media companies behind them.Whitaker, Law and Matthew Roberts, who began as the show’s Twitter intern in 2015 when he was still in college, are the genre’s charming garage band that broke through, though they are not sure why. Maybe tennis debate just sounds more proper with British accents? “The Tennis Podcast” has become an interesting test case for a crowded podcast market where it’s hard to develop an audience and even harder to make a living, as the three are trying to do.Roberts, 26, still is not sure if this is a legitimate career choice.“Maybe I’ll write some more?” he wondered one evening in Paris.At big events like the little competition taking place here at the All England Club this week, the group will occasionally set up with the microphones and a pint at a picnic table, though with a growing legion of fans, especially at Wimbledon, that arrangement is becoming more problematic.On the show (and in their lives), Law, 48, plays the goofy but thoughtful father. He is clueless about most pop culture references. He often jousts with Whitaker, 36, as though she were a much younger stepsister. Roberts serves as the wise-beyond-his-years son, often settling their disputes.“And he can do that annoying, jumping backhand thing,” Whitaker said of Roberts, who played junior tennis tournaments and has a degree in modern languages.At this year’s French Open, a fan of the podcast nervously approached to praise Roberts.“He’s the one they all like the most,” Law said of Roberts. “I know, because I read all the emails.”They now earn enough to travel to all the Grand Slam tournaments, though Wimbledon is a home game of sorts. Law, who is married with two children, recently quit his day job as the communications director for the annual grass-court tournament at Queen’s Club in London, about 120 miles south of his home near Birmingham.Through newsletter subscriptions and an annual Kickstarter campaign, the hosts can sustain themselves and earn enough to travel to all four Grand Slam tournaments.James Hill for The New York TimesWhitaker, who lives in London, sent Law an email after she graduated from university telling him she was desperate to work in tennis. He hired her to assist with his work with retired players on the Champions Tour.He also liked her voice, and eventually raised the concept of a podcast. Whitaker was skeptical, but went along.Law got introduced to podcasts the same way a lot of Britons did — listening to “The Ricky Gervais Show” in the mid-aughts. As the medium grew, Law realized that each sport seemed to have a podcast that became The One, and quickly grabbed the title “The Tennis Podcast.”It was a good name, he thought. “And there were no other tennis podcasts, so it was actually true,” he said.In 2013, with the podcast muddling along with just a few hundred weekly listeners, Whitaker went to work writing news releases about crime and punishment in the press office of the Crown Prosecution Service. She knew within a month that despite her yearning for stability, she had made a terrible mistake. It took her a year to walk away and commit to the podcast, as well as a few side gigs in tennis.The venture cost Law money the first four years. In 2015 he sold a small sponsorship to BNP Paribas, the French bank.The next year, Law, Whitaker and Roberts did the first of their annual Kickstarter campaigns, which, along with subscriptions to additional content for 5 pounds per month or £50 for the year, or about $6 and $61, sustain them.They have 3,000 subscribers and roughly 35,000 weekly listeners. Their success helped Whitaker get hired to host Amazon Prime’s tennis coverage.They owe a great debt to Carillo. Five years ago, she approached Whitaker at a tournament and asked her if she was from “The Tennis Podcast.” Whitaker said she was, then found Law and told him the strangest thing had just happened.Carillo spread the word. She told King, who told Evert, who told Shriver, or something like that. No one is certain of the order. All are now dedicated listeners. King joined the show’s hosts at Whitaker’s apartment last summer for curry and to watch the European Championship soccer matches.Shriver, right, Mary Carillo and Billie Jean King are among the game’s luminaries who regularly listen to the podcast.James Hill for The New York TimesAfter Shriver went public with the revelation that her longtime coach, Don Candy, had sexually abused her as a teenager, her first interview was on “The Tennis Podcast.” Steve Simon, the head of the WTA Tour, also came on to discuss sexual abuse.Most shows have no guests. The troika chat about the latest results from Estoril, in Portugal, or Istanbul. They mock one another’s food choices or underhand serving abilities.Law said years of mistakes and research have provided valuable lessons, such as the importance of releasing a new podcast weekly, dropping it on a specific day (usually Monday), limiting the weekly shows to about an hour, and doing 45-minute daily episodes during the Grand Slams.Things went a little longer after Mauresmo stepped in it earlier this month at the French Open, allowing Whitaker the proper time for her takedown. She described Mauresmo as a product of a system “designed and upheld almost exclusively by men,” telling everyone who might believe that men’s tennis was inherently more attractive than women’s tennis to “get in the bin.”A lot more than five people were listening. More