Tennis

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      For Raducanu and Fernandez, the Magical Run Goes On and On

      by

      The teenagers from Britain and Canada have advanced to the semifinals at the U.S. Open. (The run certainly surprised Emma Raducanu, who had a flight home booked after the qualifying tournament.)There they go again.For the second consecutive day at the U.S. Open — or maybe it was the fifth, or the 10th, depending on when the counting started — a teenage woman did the thing she was not supposed to do.Just as Leylah Fernandez of Canada did on Tuesday, Emma Raducanu of Britain bulldozed her way through a player who had every right to believe the day would belong to her, disposing of 11th-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, 6-3, 6-4, in 82 minutes, and giving the U.S. Open two semifinalists who are unable to celebrate their success legally with an alcoholic beverage.How absurd is all of this? Consider that Raducanu is ranked 150th in the world and played three qualifying matches just to secure a spot in the main draw. She clearly did not expect to make it: She had booked a flight home for immediately after the qualifying tournament.She continues to be as shocked by her success as anyone.“I didn’t expect to be here at all,” Raducanu said after she became the first qualifier to make it to the U.S. Open semifinals in the Open era. “Out there on the court today, I was saying to myself, ‘This could be the last time you play on Ashe, so might as well just go for it and enjoy everything.’”As impressive and surprising as Raducanu has been in her first U.S. Open, until Wednesday she had yet to beat a seeded player. Fernandez had. She entered her quarterfinal on Tuesday after beating the defending women’s champion, Naomi Osaka, and the German veteran Angelique Kerber, a former world No. 1 and three-time Grand Slam tournament champion. Fernandez, ranked 73rd, backed up those wins with a stirring three-set upset of fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina of Ukraine.Across the net from Raducanu on Wednesday stood Bencic, the recently crowned Olympic gold medalist, a smooth and powerful 24-year-old from Switzerland who has been a mainstay of the top 20 the past three years, rising as high as fourth in the world rankings in February 2020.Not a problem. Just as she did in her fourth-round match, Raducanu started with a minor hiccup, losing the first game she served and going down, 0-2, in the first set. But she had her way with Bencic from there. By the end of the sixth game she was even. By the end of the ninth, she had won the first set.She broke Bencic in the fifth game of the second set and largely cruised from there, making a game that she has had little experience with at the top level of the sport look easy. Belinda Bencic returned a shot against Raducanu during their match.Elsa/Getty ImagesUnlike Fernandez, who has specialized in a form of tennis that resembles opera — long afternoons and evenings filled with wild swings and rousing moments of drama — Raducanu’s New York experience has been a series of routine days at the office, of making players with far more experience than she has look bad at tennis.“I just wish I could have made it a little bit harder and played better or played more my game,” a disappointed Bencic said after the match.Raducanu does not do tennis attrition. She plays as though she knows the hours after her matches will be filled with signing autographs, taking selfies with a legion of fans and charming an unrelenting beast known as the British sports media. She finishes matters on the court quickly.Including the qualifying tournament, she has played eight matches on this trip to New York and has yet to drop a set. It is a bizarrely charmed run. On match point against Bencic, she smacked a one shot off the rim of her racket, then watched it loop into the back corner of the court.“She’s problem solving, adjusting her game, playing on her terms, and she has a big enough game to just beat people,” Tim Henman, the former British star who does tennis commentary for Amazon Video, said of Raducanu.On the surface, Fernandez and Raducanu might appear similar. Teenage women — they were both 18 until Fernandez turned 19 on Monday — they have spent the past 10 days capturing the hearts and imaginations of New York’s boisterous and emotional crowds with an ease that Novak Djokovic can only dream of. They have been competing in the same junior level tournaments for years.Also, both are the product of mixed-race parents — Raducanu’s father is Romanian and her mother is Chinese, while Fernandez’s father is from Ecuador and her mother is Filipino. Their families have since moved from the countries where their prodigies were born. Raducanu was born in Canada but lives in England. Fernandez spent much of her childhood in Montreal but lives and trains in Florida.The similarities largely end there.Raducanu is listed at 5 feet 7 inches, but presents as far more imposing than that. She is long and lean and glides across the court, staying low to the ground, sometimes scraping her knees on the court as she squats to rescue a backhand in the flashy style of the retired Polish player Agnieszka Radwanska.She often rifles the ball within inches of the net to near the baseline on the other side, then pushes forward, hunting for the first chance to end the point as quickly as she can. She does not hit four shots to set up the winner on the fifth one. If there is a hint of an opening she grabs it, winding up and using the fluid leverage of those long limbs to whip a shot at the corner of the court.Fernandez is listed at 5-6, but the power she generates seems like a mystery of tennis physics. She can crank her serve into triple digits, and taking her spot on the baseline, which she rarely abandons, she can fire lasers, especially off her forehand, even though she barely takes a backswing.Raducanu cannot stop saying how shocked she is by her success. Fernandez said she expected to beat Osaka as soon as she walked onto the court. After her win over Kerber she said she had long been confident that her game would bring her to this level.Raducanu serving during her quarterfinal win.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockRaducanu has spent the past years balancing school and tennis, attending the Newstead Wood School in London, and took her university admission exams earlier this year, around the same time she was making her debut in top-level tournaments on the women’s tour. She got into Wimbledon on a wild card that she earned with a couple of wins at a lower-tier tournament in Nottingham in June.Fernandez has been all about tennis for years. This is her seventh Grand Slam tournament.Raducanu’s parents work in finance. They are taking in her success from home in England, unable to travel to the United States without a special exemption that takes several weeks to process and did not seem as if it would have been worthwhile. She said she had spoken to them only sparingly lately. Raducanu joked that they “ghosted” her when she was trying to text them after her match on Monday.During the last two years she has worked with a series of coaches in the British tennis aristocracy, including Nigel Sears, the father-in-law of Andy Murray.Fernandez’s mother has been courtside at all her matches. Her father, Jorge, is also her coach, and he speaks with her every day, sending her game plans for her next match. She has developed largely without the involvement of Canada’s national tennis program.Now, it’s on to the rarefied ground of the semifinals of a Grand Slam. Fernandez will face Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, the No. 2 seed. Raducanu will face the winner of Wednesday night’s match between Maria Sakkari of Greece and Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic.After that, win or lose, the klieg lights that always follow the kind of breakout performances Raducanu and Fernandez have achieved will undoubtedly arrive, an experience that has swallowed plenty of teen phenoms whole as their lives begin to fill with obligations to sponsors and to live up to the expectations that their stirring performances have wrought.“I just really hope that everyone will protect them,” Bencic said of Fernandez and Raducanu, noting how good for tennis their success could be. “Not try to kind of, not destroy but, put so much pressure and so much hype around them so it just gets too much.”That is not how it usually goes, but for now, it’s nice to think it might. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      Lloyd Harris Plays Alexander Zverev in U.S. Open Quarterfinals

      by

      Harris, a South African player, is followed with great excitement in his home city of Cape Town, and specifically at the unique academy that helped launch his career.The WhatsApp text chain has grown to about 100 people, many in Cape Town with others spread around the globe, playing tennis and sending their congratulations and enthusiastic messages of support to Lloyd Harris.“They are all on there congratulating me,” Harris said. “It’s such a special feeling. They are like my family.”The thread includes the coaches, administrators, parents and kids that train at the Anthony Harris (no relation) academy, where Lloyd Harris developed as a professional tennis player. Lloyd Harris is their inspiration, their affirmation of success, an example that it can work. But most important to all of them, he is their academy brother.“He means so much to these kids and they all look up to him,” Anthony Harris, who has served as Lloyd Harris’s main coach since he joined the academy in 2012, said in an interview from Cape Town. “They are staying up late and talking about how he great is doing. It’s a fantastic inspiration for everyone.”What Lloyd Harris, 24, has done is barge into the quarterfinal round of the U.S. Open men’s singles draw to cap a summer that included a win over Rafael Nadal in Washington last month. When he arrived in New York, he beat three seeded players — Karen Khachanov, Denis Shapovalov and Reilly Opelka — to reach his first major quarterfinal, where he will play the No. 4 seed, Alexander Zverev of Germany, on Wednesday.“I always knew I had the ability,” Harris said. “I never had a problem beating some of the top guys. But it was consistently playing at that level, which was a little bit more challenging for me.”Harris’s rapid climb is followed with great excitement in Cape Town, his home city, and specifically at the unique academy that helped launch his career. His parents heard about the program and asked Anthony Harris if he would take their son. Lloyd Harris joined in 2012 when he was 14 years old, and quickly became the program’s most accomplished student.“I told his mum,” Anthony Harris said, “‘Your son is special. He has a chance to do something big in this sport.’ She said, ‘Let’s go for it.’”Lloyd Harris, center with Anthony Harris, right, and coach Eitan Adams, left, after winning ITF Pro Futures tournament in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in 2016.Courtesy Anthony Harris Tennis AcademyThe Anthony Harris Tennis Academy, a modest enclave tucked into the tony Bantry Bay area of Cape Town, has grown since Lloyd Harris first joined. It now boasts five coaches, three blue hard courts and one clay court. There is a small residence hall for the most financially disadvantaged students, some of whom lived in shanties before they moved in and attended for free.It is not a glamorous, corporate academy, but it helped shape Harris into the player and person he is, and both Harrises think of it as family.“I’ve never once been to the academy where it’s been a bad atmosphere or a bad vibe,” Lloyd Harris said. “It’s always positive energy, the coaches are having fun with the kids, but working hard. It’s just this really special thing.”Lloyd Harris, who is currently ranked 46th, grew up in a middle class household, but many of the students at the academy are from underprivileged backgrounds.While academics and human development are a core part of the program, tennis is at the forefront of the academy’s mission. Those who meet certain criteria, regarding their progress through the junior tennis ranks, are given funding to travel the world as they attempt to become professionals. The rest focus on getting a university scholarship.At first, there were only a handful of kids. Now there are a dozen, and the hope is to be able to accommodate about eight more. The academy has taken one child who was found rummaging for food, and another who showed promise at tennis but was kicked out of a different program for behavioral issues.“Maybe we can change their life,” Anthony Harris said. “It’s like the old fable about giving someone a fishing rod. We can’t help a thousand kids. But maybe we can help 15 or 20.”Leo Matthysen, 15, lives in Mitchells Plain, outside of Cape Town, and is the top-ranked junior boy age 15 and under in all of Africa after spending the last several years at the academy.Kelly Arends and Mikaeel Woodman, also longtime members of the academy, recently earned scholarships to play for Tyler Junior College, a Texas school with one of the premier junior college tennis programs in the United States, and they arrived there two weeks ago to begin their freshman seasons.Leo Mattysen, Robbie Arends, Mikaeel Woodman, Jordy Gerste, and Kelly Arends.Courtesy Anthony Harris Tennis AcademyWoodman, 18, also grew up in Mitchells Plain, in what he called “a really rough area.” He said had it not been for the academy, he might have ended up in a gang.“It got me off the street and changed my life,” Woodman said after his practice at Tyler Junior College on Tuesday. “I went when I was 10 and I got to watch Lloyd for seven or eight years. I really want to play professionally, one day, like him.”With Anthony Harris as the head coach on a staff of eight, tennis is seen as vehicle for success, and Lloyd Harris is their Model T.Soon after he joined up in 2012, he and the coach began traversing the continent with Lloyd playing tournaments in Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Morocco and Egypt, to name a few, and then moved on to tournaments in Europe and Asia before he turned pro in 2015.“One of the things I’m most proud of, and I told Lloyd this,” Anthony Harris said, “is that he never got one wild-card entry into a top-tier tournament. He had to work for everything he got.”Funding is always an issue for the academy. The family of Nathan Kirsh, an Eswatini billionaire businessman, is a principal contributor and Lloyd Harris is hosting a golf tournament in Cape Town in November to help raise funds for a program that is so dear to his heart.“We’ve come such a long way and from where it started, this small little program, to what it’s become now,” Lloyd Harris said. “It’s a home for so many kids from underprivileged backgrounds, who now have these amazing opportunities.”With the demands of his profession, and the difficulty of traveling to and from one of the most remote parts of the earth (at least for tennis travel), Lloyd Harris relocated to Dubai, where he now trains. He has not been back to South Africa all year because of pandemic travel restrictions. He has been working with Xavier Malisse, the former top professional player, in conjunction with Anthony Harris.But before his pandemic-induced temporary hiatus, Lloyd Harris regularly returned to the academy to practice and hit with the kids on court.Lloyd Harris, bottom left, at the Academy last year in February.Courtesy Anthony Harris Tennis Academy“You should see how they gravitate to him and how he responds,” said Dionne Harris, Anthony’s wife and the main administrator who makes the academy operate smoothly. “He brings them equipment and things and lets them return his serves. He is like the hero.”Lloyd Harris does not go that far. But he recognizes his role in the lives of all the children on that WhatsApp thread, cheering him on.“They see how I’m behaving, how I’m working but also enjoying myself on the court,” Lloyd Harris said. “I know they are watching. Hopefully, I can teach them well.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      Djokovich, Beware: Tennis History is Rife with Spoiled Slams

      by

      Don’t remember the name? Vinci was one of the greatest spoilers in tennis history, ending Serena Williams’s Grand Slam hopes in 2015.In 2015, Roberta Vinci improbably put an end to Serena Williams’s bid for a Grand Slam at the U.S. Open and called it “the best moment of my life.”Six years later, Vinci has not changed her mind.“People remember me for the Serena match, and I really appreciate that,” Vinci, 38, said in an interview from her home in Milan on Tuesday. “It still gives me a lot of pleasure. They still ask me today how I could have beaten her.”Tennis runs on upsets: the newcomer who shocks the veteran; the outsider who takes down the star. Rarely will a professional tournament go by without at least one surprise, but Vinci’s win was a genuine shock, and it was magnified by the setting and the timing. It came on the largest stage in tennis, Arthur Ashe Stadium, with the top-ranked Williams just two victories away from one of the biggest achievements in sports.Vinci was unseeded at the 2015 U.S. Open at age 32 and had never won so much as a set against Williams in their previous matches. But her 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 semifinal victory is a reminder, as the top-ranked Novak Djokovic takes aim at a Grand Slam in the same stadium this week, that nothing is a given at this level, particularly with the pressure cranked up to new heights.Spoilers lurk, and they have thwarted pursuits of Grand Slams at or near the final hurdle. The Australian players Jack Crawford and Lew Hoad both came within one match of winning all four major singles titles in the same year. Crawford lost to the British star Fred Perry in the final of the U.S. Championships in 1933, before the term Grand Slam had gained wide currency in tennis. Hoad was beaten by Ken Rosewall, another Australian, in the final of the 1956 U.S. Championships. Martina Navratilova, riding a 74-match winning streak in singles, was upset in the semifinals of the 1984 Australian Open by a 19-year-old Helena Sukova when the Australian Open was the final Grand Slam tournament on the calendar instead of the first.“I was more concerned with playing Martina than I was about the Grand Slam,” Sukova said in an interview from her home in Prague on Tuesday. “I was really a newcomer and so I was really concentrating on my own game and improving my game and I was far from thinking about any record or her breaking any record.”Sukova, a big underdog, said her goal was to win five games in a set.“I had never won more than three in any set we had played previously,” Sukova said. “I lost the first set 6-1, but when I got five games in the second set, I looked at my coach and said, ‘I achieved my goal!’”She won that match 1-6, 6-3, 7-5 before losing to Chris Evert in the final. Sukova, a tall player with big power for that era, reached three more Grand Slam singles finals, but lost all three. She and her doubles partner, Jana Novotna, did come to within one match of a Grand Slam in 1990, only to lose in the U.S. Open final to Gigi Fernandez and Navratilova.Consider that payback, but Sukova, now a practicing psychologist, said she wished she could go back and play those matches with her new skills.“I think it would have made a difference if I knew what I know now about the mind, I would have won more,” she said. “But it’s always like that, once you’re older, you’re wiser, but the body is not faster.”Unlike Sukova, Vinci was well aware of the tennis history at stake in 2015, and she believes the looming possibility of a Grand Slam helped her against Williams.“I think it played a big part in that match,” Vinci said. “To win the U.S. Open meant reaching an incredible goal for her, and I think the combination made her play with a lot of pressure.”Djokovic will most likely not face anyone as unexpected as Vinci in the final rounds at the U.S. Open, although he will meet an Italian underdog in the quarterfinals: the huge-hitting Matteo Berrettini.But Berrettini, 25, is the No. 6 seed and an established threat who already has pushed Djokovic hard twice this year in Grand Slam tournaments before losing in the quarterfinals of the French Open on clay and in the final of Wimbledon on grass.“The hammer of tennis,” Djokovic said late Monday night of Berrettini, comparing the power of his serve and forehand to that of Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion from Argentina. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Del Potro, recovering from his latest serious injury, visited the tournament grounds on Tuesday.“Next to Del Potro, he’s probably the hardest hitter of the serve and forehand,” Djokovic said of Berrettini. “If he serves well, which is his biggest weapon, he’s tough. He’s tough on any surface to play against.”Dodge Berrettini’s bullets and Djokovic will likely face No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev, the German who beat him in the semifinals of the Olympic men’s singles tournament and has been playing the best tennis of his career. Winning a potential matchup against Zverev would likely set up a duel with No. 2 Daniil Medvedev, a shock-absorbing hardcourt master from Russia, in the final.Berrettini, Zverev and Medvedev, all big new-generation talents, are not Djokovic’s customary rivals in the homestretch. Neither Rafael Nadal nor Roger Federer played in this U.S. Open. But Berrettini, Zverev and Medvedev certainly would represent quite a 1-2-3 punch and a fitting challenge for Djokovic as he chases his crowning moment in New York.Daniil Medvedev played Tuesday against Botic van de Zandschulp. He is a likely opponent for Novak Djokovic in the U.S. Open final. Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockWilliams was in a similar spot in September 2015, already the most successful player of her era and a clear No. 1. Like Djokovic, she too already had won four majors in a row — the so-called Serena Slam — but had not achieved the Grand Slam by winning all four in the same calendar year. Djokovic also won four majors in a row over two seasons, from 2015 to 2016.Only five players have completed the Grand Slam in singles: Don Budge in 1938, Maureen Connolly in 1953, Rod Laver in 1962 and 1969, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988.Williams put herself in position to join the list by making a series of great escapes at the Grand Slam tournaments in 2015, winning the French Open despite playing much of it with a high fever and leaving her room (and in some cases her bed) only for her matches. Coming into the Vinci match, Williams had won all 11 of her three-set matches at majors in 2015, including a tough three-setter against her sister Venus in the quarterfinals.It was a phenomenal run of gutsy, big-point tennis, but Williams’s luck ran out against Vinci, whose crisply sliced backhand, rhythm shifts and surprise attacks to the net were just the right mix to play tricks on Williams’s timing and mind.Vinci also embraced the occasion: cupping her hand to her ear and shouting to the crowd after prevailing in one extended rally.“I didn’t start the match thinking about winning, but I told myself to try because sometimes miracles happen,” Vinci said on Tuesday. “In the tensest moments, especially towards the end, I tried to think that on the other side of the court it was not Serena Williams but just a person and just to try to hit the ball over the net as often as possible.”She managed it often enough to complete her comeback and reach her first and only Grand Slam singles final, losing to her friend and Italian compatriot Flavia Pennetta in straight sets.Vinci, who retired in 2018, said she and Williams had never discussed their U.S. Open match, but what is clear is that they both will never forget it.“Serena lost to the Grand Slam more than anything else,” Navratilova told me on the night of that upset. “But still, Vinci had to finish it off.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      Carlos Alcaraz’s Stirring U.S. Open Run Ends in the Quarterfinals

      by

      Alcaraz, an 18-year-old Spaniard, beat two seeded players in New York but retired with an injury midway through the second set on Tuesday night.Carlos Alcaraz’s stunning run at the U.S. Open came to a sudden and surprising end on Tuesday night when the 18-year-old from Spain retired from his quarterfinal match against Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada midway through the second set.Auger-Aliassime took the first set, 6-3, and was leading 3-1 in the second set when Alcaraz approached the umpire and informed him that he was retiring from the match with an injury.“I was expecting a tough battle,” a surprised Auger-Aliassime said of Alcaraz who, but for a handful of points, played the Canadian nearly to a draw in the first set. “I didn’t see it coming.”Alcaraz came into the match after two five-setters, against the third-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas and the German qualifier Peter Gojowczyk. Alcaraz wore bandages on the upper part of both of his legs but appeared to be moving well for most of the night. After the third game of the second set, Alcaraz had a brief examination with a medical trainer, but there was little other indication that his discomfort was serious enough that it might require him to retire from the match.Alcaraz and Auger-Aliassime, 21, played a tight first set, with Auger-Aliassime having just a slight edge over Alcaraz, who has been nicknamed “the next Rafa” — a reference to his countryman, Rafael Nadal, the winner of 20 Grand Slam tournament singles titles.Auger-Aliassime played a nearly flawless first set that included six aces. He also rushed the net 10 times and won eight of those points, a particularly aggressive strategy against a player known for hitting the ball as hard as anyone in the game.Alcaraz was good but not great, lacing the occasional screaming winner down the line. But he never quite found the rhythm or the feel of the ball that he displayed in his best moments in this tournament, especially during his upset of Tsitsipas to announce himself to the world.Alcaraz was one of three teenagers who made the quarterfinals at the 2021 U.S. Open. Leylah Fernandez, a 19-year-old Canadian, booked her spot to the semifinals on Tuesday when she beat Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, the fifth seed.Emma Raducanu, 18, of Britain, will play the 11th-seeded Belinda Bencic of Switzerland in her quarterfinal match on Wednesday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium.Auger-Aliassime will play Daniil Medvedev of Russia, the No. 2 seed, in the semifinals on Friday. It is the first time he has made the final four at a Grand Slam tournament. Medvedev was a finalist at the U.S. Open in 2019 and a semifinalist last year. He lost in the finals of the Australian Open in February. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Tennis

      The Teenagers Are Taking Over Tennis. That Might Not End Well.

      by

      The U.S. Open play of Leylah Fernandez, Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu has been exhilarating. But if the past is prelude, rough seas are ahead.It has been quite a run for the teenagers at the U.S. Open, especially a bright-eyed and beguiling troika that has managed to turn the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center into its personal playground.Like young stockbrokers who have yet to see a bear market, Emma Raducanu, Leylah Fernandez and Carlos Alcaraz are experiencing the best of tennis life: match after match of effusive crowds that chant their names and ask for selfies, passing shots that nick the back of the line, and the freedom of swinging their rackets on a stage where they cannot lose, because no one was counting on them to win in the first place.And yet, they do not have to look far to see how quickly it can all go off the rails.“Buckle up, it’s a long ride,” Shelby Rogers, the veteran American and Raducanu’s latest casualty, said Sunday when asked what advice she could offer the trio of teenagers for when their U.S. Open runs end.Naomi Osaka had just emerged from her teens three years ago when she upset Serena Williams to win this tournament. Three years, three Grand Slam titles, nearly $20 million in prize money and tens of millions more in sponsorships later, Osaka’s tournament ended this time with a loss to Fernandez followed by a tearful announcement that she will take an indefinite leave from tennis. Iga Swiatek, the Polish star who won the 2020 French Open at 19 without losing a set, spent much of her upset loss Monday against Belinda Bencic of Switzerland screaming at her coach and the sports psychologist who travels with her.By now it is accepted wisdom that tennis has a tendency to eat its young like few other sports. Managing life as a young star on the tennis tour is a physical and mental test that trips up nearly every player at some point, especially those who break through early and then are suddenly expected to compete at the highest level nearly every time they take the court.Emma Raducanu siged autographs and took selfies after defeating Sara Sorribes Tormo over the weekend.Elsa/Getty ImagesA ranking and seeding system places a number next to their name, letting them and the world know in the starkest way who should win any given match. Guaranteed payments from sponsors can relieve the burden of playing for your next meal or plane ticket. However, those contracts are often laden with incentive bonuses for winning tournaments and climbing the rankings. There is an implicit understanding that the contract will, at best, be reduced and at worst not be renewed if players don’t maintain a certain level of proficiency.The attention, from millions of fans but also from family, cuts both ways, sports psychologists say, especially in a sport that has so many parent coaches. Fernandez’s mother has had a front-row seat for her daughter’s upsets of Osaka and Angelique Kerber, the former world No. 1. She leaned over the rails and screamed when Fernandez prevailed on the biggest points. Success naturally brings that kind of enthusiasm but can also produce a fear that the love will vanish if the winning stops.Fernandez’s father, Jorge, doubles as her coach. He is at home in Florida with her younger sister, she said, but he calls every day with a game plan for the next match, “just telling me what to do in the day before, and then he trusts in me and in my game, that I’m going to execute it as much as I can.”They may not be exhibiting poise under pressure as much as they are playing without pressure, which allows them to swing freely without the fear of not living up to expectations.Carlos Alcaraz and Leylah Fernandez continued to impress with their play into the second week at the U.S. Open.Frank Franklin II/Associated PressJohn Minchillo/Associated Press“I think it’s just the young people” who can play this way, Kerber said Sunday after Fernandez bested her in three sets with blistering forehands and fearless serves at the corners of the service box. Kerber, 33, has won three Grand Slam titles and was ranked No. 1 as recently as 2017. For several years she has battled injuries, inconsistency and the idea that she should still be at the top of the sport.“Playing completely without pressure, in this position, it’s impossible, but I wish,” she said.Oddly, for much of the past decade, players, coaches and tennis officials generally accepted that the sport had moved beyond teenagers. Equipment that allowed for powerful shots from previously impossible angles extended points and matches, accentuating the importance of mature strength and conditioning to a degree that made it too hard for teenagers to compete at the top level of the game, especially on the men’s side.Then Coco Gauff, the rising American, started winning matches at Wimbledon in 2019, when she was just 15. Now a collection of her physically advanced peers are making their mark.Raducanu beat Rogers in her debut in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Monday. On Tuesday, Fernandez plays Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in the quarterfinals, while Alcaraz takes on Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada.Raducanu, who is in her first summer of playing top level competitions, impressed once again Monday. She dropped the first two games, then reeled off 11 of the next 12 games and won 6-2, 6-1, showing off her exquisite combination of graceful athleticism and smooth, lacing groundstrokes. She has lost a combined total of just four games in her last two matches. When Rogers’ last ball settled into the net, Raducanu dropped her racket, fell to her knees and covered her eyes in disbelief.Young fans waited for Fernandez after her match on Sunday.Elsa/Getty ImagesMartin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the United States Tennis Association, said in recent years the better, and more physically developed, older teenagers had begun to shun junior tournaments, instead cutting their teeth in low-level professional events, while still finding a balance between competition, training and rest.“So they come in under the radar and then they emerge on the big stage,” he said.There is nothing that can come close to guaranteeing that they will not succumb to the challenges of the game — being on the road for months on end, living up to rising expectations, and dealing with the inevitable losses and physical ailments.“It is a perilous prospect,” said David Law, a tennis commentator for the BBC who previously worked for ATP, said Sunday as he settled in for Raducanu’s match. “It can go wrong. We’ve seen it go wrong.”Law does not have to look far to be reminded of that. One of his BBC colleagues is Laura Robson, who at 18 made the fourth round of the U.S. Open in 2012 with wins over Kim Clijsters, one of the top players in the world, and Li Na, the Chinese star. She appeared on her way to greatness. Two years later she was battling a wrist injury from which she would never fully recover.Raducanu during her upset win on Monday.Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFrances Tiafoe, the 23-year-old American, spoke Sunday night after his fourth-round loss to Auger-Aliassime about his efforts to work his way back from the hype surrounding his quick rise into the top 50 in 2018, when he was seen as the savior of American men’s tennis.“I thought I was just going to just keep going,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. Same work you did to get up there, the same work you need to keep going, keep working harder.”Despite the cautionary tales, it is nearly impossible not to be swept up in the excitement of watching new talent burst onto the scene at one of the biggest showcases in sports. It is a breathless experience that tennis has long thrived on.Alcaraz, a Spaniard already burdened with the nickname “the Next Rafa,” a reference to his countryman, the 20-time Grand Slam winner Rafael Nadal, said he knows that he has become a subject of fascination back home over the past few days.“I’m trying not to think about this,” he said Sunday after beating Peter Gojowczyk of Germany in the fourth round, his second consecutive five-set win. “Just focus on New York, on every day here.”That is a good start, said Mary Carillo, the tennis commentator and former Grand Slam doubles champion. Carillo has seen tennis crack so many rising stars, from Andrea Jaeger, who tanked matches, to Mardy Fish, who battled anxiety and mental illness at the peak of his career. Her heart sinks every time she sees players checking their phones for what is being said about them on social media as soon as they walk off the court.Survival, she said, comes down to the stuff we learn in kindergarten: Get enough sleep; don’t talk to strangers; don’t listen to what they say about you; stay away from bad people.“You really better make sure you have the right people on your ball club,” Carillo said. “People who understand your values, your ambitions, how much you can take and most importantly when you need some time to step away.” More

    • 25 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Reilly Opelka

      by

      There are currently 14 men in the top 100, the most since 1996, but none in the top 20. While the United States may not have any truly elite players right now, it does have youth.It took a while, but after the American Reilly Opelka and his big serve were eliminated in the fourth round of the U.S. Open on Monday by Lloyd Harris of South Africa, I decided to go searching.I had to weave through the big crowds that have happily again been part of the experience at this year’s tournament. I had to work my way up and down the concourse, examining the banners that commemorate, year by year, the past Open champions — most of whom seemed to be named Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer — before arriving at my destination.There, near a coffee stand, dangling from the same post, were banners featuring the last two American men to win the singles title at Flushing Meadows: Pete Sampras in 2002 and Andy Roddick in 2003.It has been nearly 20 years now, the longest gap in the history of this Grand Slam tournament between American men’s champions. I covered both Sampras’s and Roddick’s victories, and there was no suspecting the length of the drought to come.New American men’s stars had always emerged, sometimes with a slight delay but never this kind of delay. There was concern about the future when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors got older in the 1980s, but then along came one of the greatest generations from any nation: Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Michael Chang, with fine players like Todd Martin and MaliVai Washington playing secondary roles.There was big concern when those players aged out in the early 2000s, but Roddick still managed to reach No. 1 before being left knee-deep by the genius of Federer and the inexorable rise of Nadal and Djokovic.Roddick did his best, no doubt, which was often remarkable, reaching three Wimbledon finals and another U.S. Open final before retiring in 2012.But though Serena Williams, a winner of 23 major singles titles, has given American tennis fans plenty to celebrate since then, no American man has reached a Grand Slam singles final in over a decade as the Europeans have put a chokehold on men’s tennis.“We got a little bit spoiled,” said Brad Stine, the veteran American coach who mentored Courier and now works with the young American Tommy Paul.There has been no room in this upscale neighborhood. The prime real estate has been occupied by the Big Three, which for a time could have been considered the Big Five with Andy Murray and Federer’s Swiss compatriot Stan Wawrinka each winning three major titles.Now a much younger group has emerged that you could call the Next Four: Matteo Berrettini of Italy, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Alexander Zverev of Germany. If you like, toss in the still-reigning U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem of Austria and Andrey Rublev of Russia, a top-10 player.They, like the stars they are succeeding, are all Europeans.Tennis is more central to the sports culture in Europe, attracting more interest and presumably a greater percentage of top-quality athletes. There are more professional tournaments, both at the minor league and major league level, in Europe.But this season and this U.S. Open have offered up some evidence for better days ahead for the American men. There are 14 in the top 100 at the moment, the most since 1996. There were 13 in the second round at the Open, the most since 1994 when Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang were in full flow.But unlike those halcyon days, none of the new-age Americans are currently ranked in the top 20. There is depth but, for now, no truly elite players. What bodes well is that there is youth. All three of the American men to reach the fourth round here were under 25: Opelka, 24; Frances Tiafoe, 23; and Jenson Brooksby, 20.“In the top 100, we’ve got a huge group of guys there; we just don’t have the world beaters,” Opelka said after his 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-1, 6-3 loss to Harris. “I don’t think we will have a Sampras-Agassi era of just dominance like that again. It’s rare for any country.”Brooksby, the last American singles player left in the tournament, certainly looked like a worldbeater for a set and a half on Monday night. In his first appearance in Arthur Ashe Stadium, he played with intelligence and resilience to take a 6-1 lead on world No. 1 Novak Djokovic. Brooksby then got back on serve in the second set after breaking Djokovic in an eight-deuce game that felt more like chess than tennis. But Djokovic, chasing the Grand Slam, has been playing best-of-five set tennis for nearly 20 years. Brooksby is just starting out and could not keep pace, losing 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.“I told him at the net he has a bright future ahead of him,” Djokovic said.Opelka, Tiafoe and Brooksby are not alone. Sebastian Korda is 21 and Brandon Nakashima is 20, and both also have had success this season with Korda reaching the quarterfinals of the Miami Open after beating three seeded players and then winning his first tour title in Parma, Italy. Nakashima made the singles finals in Atlanta and Los Cabos, Mexico, and upset John Isner, the most successful American man of the last decade, in the first round of this year’s U.S. Open.All this might not have been worth celebrating 25 years ago, but it counts as good news now.“I do think we’re moving in the right direction,” said Stine, who has coached privately and with the United States Tennis Association. “Ideally for U.S. tennis we want to have as many guys as we possibly can inside the top 250, which means we’re flooding the qualifying rounds of the Slams. And then from there, we need as many in the top 100 as we can get. It’s a numbers game, ultimately. You could ask, would you rather have 14 in the top 100 with none in the top 20? Or only six in the top 100 and all in the top 20? I think you’d obviously go with the six, but I do think we’re making progress.”They are a diverse group with varied game styles. Consider just the three American men to reach the round of 16. Opelka, who should break into the top 20 on Monday after the Open, is nearly seven feet tall with a big-bang game that can make him a nightmare to face. Tiafoe, who lost in four sets to Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada on Sunday night, is a compact power server from College Park, Md., with quickness and dynamic groundstrokes who has had a resurgent season under his new coach Wayne Ferreira.Brooksby, the newest arrival at this level, is a northern Californian who made good use of his wild card into the Open.“I think Brooksby is our best,” said Opelka, who picked Brooksby and Korda as the most likely Americans to win a Grand Slam title down the road.Brooksby has an unconventional game based on consistency, great defense and abrupt rhythm shifts rather than the power baseline style that predominates on the men’s tour.“Is his swing beautiful? No. But is it repeatable? Absolutely, and that’s the most important thing,” said Stine, who has known Brooksby since he was 11. “The contact point is clean, and he makes a million balls. He plays the game really at the simplest form there is. I’m going to miss fewer balls than you are. I’m going to run and get to all the balls you hit, and I’m going to make you hit one more ball. And it’s been extremely effective and extremely irritating to his opponents.”The next challenge for the young Americans is beating enough opponents to start going deep, truly deep, in the tournaments that matter most. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Serena Williams Is Not at the U.S. Open, but Her Coach Is Everywhere

      by

      Patrick Mouratoglou has become a bigger star than most players, and is building an empire, too. That does not leave much time for coaching, and that may be just how he likes it.Maybe it’s the beard, the persistent, salt-and-pepper whiskers, always trimmed to a perfect length that makes Patrick Mouratoglou initially seem more like a French existentialist philosopher rather than tennis coach.Or maybe he is a tennis venture capitalist. Or a tennis resort executive. Or a tennis “guru,” as Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek star, has referred to him. Depending on the moment, Mouratoglou can be all of those things, which can make it difficult for him to also be a coach, at least in the way he thinks a professional tennis coach should coach. That may seem odd for a man best known as one, a man who wrote a book about himself called “The Coach,” but it is the way he always intended it to be.For years, Mouratoglou has been courtside at Serena Williams’s matches. He has coached her since 2012, and was presumed to be her boyfriend for a time. Coaching her from the stands during the 2018 U.S. Open final led to one of the most notorious meltdowns of Williams’s career. She is not at the U.S. Open this year, having withdrawn to recover from a hamstring injury.Mouratoglou, though, has been everywhere, just as he is at every major tennis tournament these days.There he is sitting a seat away from Tsitsipas’s father and coach, Apostolos, during early-round matches against Andy Murray and Carlos Alcaraz. After a match, he grabs a microphone for one of any number of television interviews he does about the state of the modern game. Sometimes he camps out in the plaza of the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and signs autographs for fans who know him better than they know most of the players. Last Tuesday night, he passed a sports drink onto the court of Arthur Ashe Stadium, trying to help relieve the cramps of Holger Rune, the 18-year-old Danish player who trains at his academy, as Rune fell in four sets to Novak Djokovic in the first round.Mouratoglou watching Stefanos Tsitsipas during a match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAt age 51, Mouratoglou has become one of the most recognizable stars in tennis, even though he was never more than a middle-rung junior player as a teenager in France. Corey Gauff, the father and coach of the rising American star Coco Gauff, often wears a baseball hat with Mouratoglou’s “M” logo above the brim when he watches his daughter play.He is the rare coach who has turned himself into a brand, which may mean he is better at marketing than he is at coaching. Don’t ask Mouratoglou to boil down his approach to tennis into a simple strategy or formula.“My philosophy is I know nothing,” he said in an interview days before the start of the U.S. Open. “I learn the person and I learn my player. A lot of coaches start with their method. There is one method per player and I need to find it.”Tennis is in an odd spot at the moment. The careers of most of its biggest stars are in repose. Its greatest men’s player, Novak Djokovic, is worshiped in his own country but has never been universally embraced. Naomi Osaka is already a tennis megastar, but she has played little this year and announced Friday night that she was going to take another break from the game.That leaves enough space for a coaching figure like Mouratoglou to fill.Tennis does this every so often, producing a coach who is a savvy marketer and businessman to become far more than a teacher and trainer, usually with the help of television cameras that pivot to them as they watch their star players. Think of the Australian Harry Hopman in the 1970s and the New Yorker/Floridian Nick Bollettieri in the 1980s and 1990s.None though, has reached the level of Mouratoglou.His empire includes the Mouratoglou Academy, in the south of France, which houses 200 student tennis players, many of whom live and attend school and train there full time.He runs camps for another 4,000 players, including some adults, each year. Next year, he will offer an e-coaching product.Mouratoglou stopped for a photograph with fans.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesHe is also a chief organizer of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, a made-for-television competition that has included several top players and has introduced a faster scoring system for matches.There are Mouratoglou tennis centers at resorts in Costa Navarino in Greece and at Jumeirah in Dubai. He is an investor in the tennis media website Tennismajors.com.With only 24 hours in a day, he recently gave up his gigs as a commentator for ESPN and Eurosport.He is the full-time coach of just one player, Williams, but helps oversee to varying degrees the training and development of several others, including Tsitsipas, Gauff, Rune, and Alexei Popyrin, the 22-year-old Australian who reached the third round of the U.S. Open.Having a portfolio as lengthy as Mouratoglou’s would seem to run counter to someone whose authority flows from his stature as a coach and whose philosophy relies on spending enough time with each player to tailor his methods and strategies to the individual. That approach, Mouratoglou said, requires a deep knowledge of each player’s strengths and weaknesses, both mental and physical, as well as their cultural and family background.The simplest explanation is that Mouratoglou is no longer really a coach, if he ever was one in the first place, with his work for Williams as an exception. But she may not be around for much longer. It’s not a role he ever intended to play. He took it on out of necessity. His vision for his tennis empire was not going to work otherwise.Serena Williams at a practice with members of her coaching team, including Mouratoglou, at the 2021 French Open.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAs a child, Mouratoglou dreamed of becoming a top professional, but his parents told him it would be too risky and would not support the endeavor. He quit tennis at 16, pursued his education, and at 20 went to work for his father, a leading French industrialist and the owner of a major renewable energy company.When Mouratoglou was 26, his father told him he was ready to become a partner. Mouratoglou told his father he was quitting. He still had a passion for tennis and wanted to build a tennis empire, beginning with an academy for young players.He partnered with Bob Brett, an Australian coach and a protégé of Harry Hopman. Mouratoglou knew little about coaching and felt he needed a big name to attract players. Then in 2004 Brett quit. Mouratoglou realized if he found another well-known coach to be his partner, the same thing could happen, so he learned how to coach and found some young prospects whose early careers he could help support, like a venture capitalist seeding a start-up company.His early recruits included Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia. He began working with Williams in 2012, and has used the stature from her unmatched success to build his empire and a new model for the more expansive role a tennis coach might play.Mouratoglou now operates like the chief executive of a company with a player development division, with each player functioning as a separate unit or product. He has 50 coaches working for him at his academy. The top pro players associated with him — the ones whose televised matches he makes sure to attend — each has someone else who functions as their coach. Most have only limited contact with Mouratoglou on a practice court, though he supervises the team of fitness trainers the players work with. His academy can serve as base camp where they can train.Mouratoglou first saw Gauff, 17, when she was 10. He established a relationship with her father, who brought Coco to the academy. He first spotted Tsitsipas, now 23, on YouTube when he was just 16.“Patrick is kind of like the overseer,” Coco Gauff said the other day.She said Mouratoglou usually speaks to her through her father if he has any specific pointers, so she does not have too many voices in her head. “He also helps with getting the right people on my team, figuring out who and what I need to help me succeed,” she added.Mouratoglou with Coco Gauff and her father at the Australian Open last year.Michael Dodge/EPA, via ShutterstockBoth Popyrin and Rune, who has had Lars Christensen as his coach since he was 6, said the most important role Mouratoglou has played is providing them an ideal environment for training.It is a mutually beneficial relationship. The players, who get access to a first-class training center with nearly every possible amenity, are the best marketing devices to attract other aspiring players, who pay for the academy’s array of services, or for tennis enthusiasts, who attend camps at a Mouratoglou tennis center at a resort.There is probably no better way for Mouratoglou to make sure everyone knows about his connection with these players than taking his customary spot in their boxes during their matches. All Mouratoglou’s current players in the main draw lost during the early rounds, though there are several players with Mouratoglou ties in the junior tournaments this week.He has one sacrosanct rule when he attends a match: If he starts with one player, he stays to the end, even if another player his company works with is playing on another court. Leaving midway might send a bad message, he said.It’s also another way of letting the players know if they need anything, Mouratoglou or someone in his growing empire will be there. Popyrin, who has struggled this year and is 73rd in the ATP rankings, said Mouratoglou has lately been a voice of positivity trying to remind him that he can become a top player, perhaps like the third-ranked Tsitsipas, though he added that Mouratoglou usually functions like a tennis Buddha, a sounding board who listens far more than he speaks.“I vent to him,” Popyrin said. “He lets you speak your mind, and when you speak your mind to him, a lot of the time you get the answer yourself.” More

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Tennis

      What to Watch at the U.S. Open

      by

      Novak Djokovic looks to fend off the surging Jenson Brooksby as a slew of crowd favorites clash in the round of 16.How to watch: From 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Eastern time on ESPN2; and streaming on the ESPN app. In Canada on TSN from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and streaming on TSN.ca and the TSN app.Matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern Standard.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 11 a.m.Belinda Bencic vs. Iga SwiatekBelinda Bencic, who won gold in women’s singles at the Tokyo Olympics, reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 2019 and is two wins away from returning this year. Bencic, a hardcourt specialist seeded 11th, has lost only 18 games across three rounds of play as her flat baseline shots have caused difficulties for her opponents.Iga Swiatek, the seventh seed, is the only woman to reach the second week of each Grand Slam event in 2021, but she did not make it past the quarterfinals at any of the first three. Against Bencic, Swiatek will have to use crafty shots to try to unsettle Bencic’s rhythm on longer rallies.Arthur Ashe Stadium | 10 p.m.Maria Sakkari vs. Bianca AndreescuBianca Andreescu won the 2019 U.S. Open but sustained a knee injury at the end of that year, stymying her development as she took 15 months off, returning at the 2021 Australian Open. After losing in the first round on both the French Open’s clay and Wimbledon’s grass, Andreescu, the sixth seed, has looked more at home on the hard courts of Flushing Meadows.Maria Sakkari, the 17th seed, reached her first major semifinal at this year’s French Open and has moved into the round of 16 at the U.S. Open without dropping a set. After this run, she will move into the top 15 in the world rankings for the first time and with a few more wins, she could even reach the top 10, a first for a Greek woman.Novak Djokovic has looked vulnerable at times.John Minchillo/Associated PressArthur Ashe Stadium | 7 p.m.Novak Djokovic vs. Jenson BrooksbyNovak Djokovic, the first seed, has not looked as indefatigable as usual during the U.S. Open. Although he has won each of his three matches in four sets, there have been moments of lethargy that point to some issues with Djokovic’s form as he chases a calendar Grand Slam.Jenson Brooksby, a 20-year-old American who entered the main draw through a wild card, upset the 21st-seeded Aslan Karatsev in five sets on Saturday. Brooksby has a strangely stylized game, with a shortened service motion and a massive backswing on the forehand that beguiles opponents. He’ll test that style against the best returner in modern tennis.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 4 p.m.Oscar Otte vs. Matteo BerrettiniOscar Otte, a qualifier, had never moved past the second round of a major tournament until this week, starting his run in the main draw by upsetting the 20th-seeded Lorenzo Sonego in the first round. He will come up against a much stronger opponent, the sixth-seeded Matteo Berrettini of Italy. Berrettini’s breakout performance came at the U.S. Open in 2019, and he seems most at home among the raucous crowds of New York City. His strong serve and brutalist style of play is well suited to faster surfaces, and Otte will be pushed to play more defensively.Shelby Rogers is coming off defeating the top-ranked Ashleigh Barty.Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesArthur Ashe Stadium | 3 p.m.Shelby Rogers vs. Emma RaducanuShelby Rogers had lost to Ashleigh Barty, the world No. 1, all four times they’d played in 2021. On Saturday night, she fought from two breaks down in the third set to win in the tiebreaker, motivated by a crowd that swelled in anticipation after any mistake that Barty made. She will face Emma Raducanu, an 18-year-old Briton, in an attempt to reach her second consecutive U.S. Open quarterfinal. Raducanu blitzed past Sara Sorribes Tormo in the third round, losing only one game in 70 minutes. Raducanu’s second appearance in a major tournament has resulted in yet another visit to the round of 16, and she is in good form to attempt to make a deeper push. More