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      Even for the Greatest Players, Life in Tennis Can Be a Slog

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      Naomi Osaka is taking an indefinite break from tennis as she struggles to find meaning and joy from playing. It’s a sadly familiar script for the sport.The moment resonated with nearly every player who has ever picked up a racket, and especially those who have reached the pinnacle of tennis.A tearful Naomi Osaka sat behind a microphone late on Friday night and spoke of how the sport she has so dominated at times has become a joyless binary journey between relief after victories and sadness following losses. There is no contentment, no happiness.Then came what may be her last public words for some time.“I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while,” she said.How long is anyone’s guess. But while Osaka’s misery is her own — like the unhappiness of the unhappy families Tolstoy refers to at the start of Anna Karenina — tennis has seen this movie so many times before that an unavoidable question arises: What is it about this sport that makes so many of the best players in the world, a collection of athletes seemingly swaddled in wealth and fame and glory, so intolerably miserable?“I think with anything you’re passionate about, it’s always a love/hate relationship, because you want that thing so bad all the time, you want to be perfect,” Bianca Andreescu, the Canadian star who won the U.S. Open the first time she played it in 2019 but has battled injuries, inconsistency and the frustrations that come with both ever since, said after her third-round win Saturday. “In my case, it’s tennis.”Careers cut short because of broken minds rather than aging bodies haunt tennis like ghosts.Bjorn Borg of Sweden, a superstar of the 1970s and winner of 11 Grand Slam titles, lost his fourth U.S. Open final in 1981. He walked off the court, drove away in his car, and never played another Grand Slam tournament again. He was 25. Steffi Graf, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, quit at 30, just weeks after a French Open title and a Wimbledon final, saying she had lost her motivation and passion for the game. Andre Agassi and Jennifer Capriati succumbed to drug abuse and, in Capriati’s case, addiction, though they managed to mount comebacks.More recently, Paula Badosa of Spain has spoken of her battles with depression brought on in part by the frustrations and pressures of the game. Iga Swiatek of Poland, who won the 2020 French Open at 19, spoke after a recent loss of seeing little other than tennis balls when she closed her eyes at night. After losing a hard-fought match at the Olympics she sobbed into a towel as though she had lost a close relative.Paula Badosa has spoken of her depression brought on by the pressures of the game.Aaron Doster/Associated PressAthletes in team sports talk about the joy that comes from being a part of something larger than themselves, of heading into battle surrounded by a band of brothers and sisters.Golfers play an individual sport filled with crushing frustrations, but they walk peaceful, beautiful grounds through a morning or afternoon, a caddie by their side lending advice and providing technical and emotional support. When they lose, the golf course gets the best of them.Tennis players and coaches speak of the singular form of intensity and loneliness that accompanies the game.From the time they are small children, tennis players run on hard, often hot, and sometimes sweltering courts for hours as a human on the other side of the net tries to pound them into exhaustion and defeat. And they do it alone, prohibited from communicating with anyone during the most important matches.They cross borders and time zones and oceans often from week to week during a grueling, 11-month season. Sometimes they compete at 11 o’clock in the morning. The next day they might start at 11 at night. Sleeping and eating schedules are discombobulated.Tennis players talk differently when they talk about losing. The player not holding the trophy at the end of a tournament does not come in second place, and semifinalists do not finish in third or fourth. Pro golfers who finished fourth often say they had a great week. Marathoners and swimmers talk about being on the podium.As Novak Djokovic, no stranger to tennis misery, said the other night, “We are a particular sport that only has one winner.”The coronavirus pandemic has only magnified pressures and pitfalls, and added another kind of loneliness. For more than a year, at most tournaments players have had to limit their movements to their hotels, practice courts and competition venues, passing long hours alone in soulless rooms. They are tested for Covid-19 every few days, always one swab away from a 10-day isolation far from home.Daria Abramowicz, a sports psychologist who travels with Swiatek, said the sport in its modern form is an energy sucking journey of climbing the rankings ladder, defending your position, and cultivating fans, as well as sponsors, who can provide a financial safety net but bring their own demands.Daria Abramowicz, a sports psychologist, with Iga Swiatek in Australia in February.Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“If your tank is empty or almost empty, and if you feel burdened that there are a lot of challenges all around the performance, it is impossible to enjoy the process and enjoy this moment,” Abramowicz said.For better or worse, Osaka has taken on burdens.After the murder of George Floyd, she flew to Minneapolis to march with protesters. After the shooting of Jacob Blake, she single-handedly brought her sport to a standstill when she announced she would not play her semifinal match in the Western & Southern Open. She wore a mask with the name of a different victim of police violence onto the court for each of her matches at the U.S. Open last year.“She allows herself to really feel and experience that sadness,” said Pam Shriver, the former top player and Grand Slam doubles champion.In May, ahead of the French Open, Osaka tried to overturn years of tennis protocol when she refused to participate in post-match news conferences because she said they put too much stress on players, especially after losses. Her stance led to an ugly confrontation with tournament organizers and her withdrawal from the tournament after just one match.In Japan, where she has become a symbol of a new, multiracial vision of a traditionally homogeneous society, she embraced the honor of lighting the Olympic cauldron and becoming the face of the Games. It was her first competition since the French Open.She has told the world about her battles with depression the past three years, a move that John McEnroe said took great courage. The seven-time Grand Slam winner, who 40 years later is still shaken by the sudden departure of Borg, his chief rival, said her candor probably helped countless people. McEnroe added that it may also make it harder for Osaka to thrive because of the increased attention it brings.“She’s the type of player we need around the sport another 10 years, that should win a bunch of more majors hopefully, if she’s in the right head space,” McEnroe said days before the start of the U.S. Open.After spending roughly two years on the pro tour with Swiatek, Abramowicz has concluded that players can survive careers — inevitably filled with losses and disappointment — only by working every day to build self-worth and self-confidence that is not measured by wins and rankings points but rather relationships. Only then can they find a way to enjoy the process, as enervating as it might be.“You need to maintain the core values, because without that there is nothing,” Abramowicz said. “There is just burned ground.” More

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      Canadian Tennis Players Excel at the U.S. Open

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      Canada’s high-performance tennis program is achieving its goal of producing elite players, several of whom have advanced at the U.S. Open.The Canadian flag is everywhere at the U.S. Open, where Canadian players are winning on courts across the grounds and beyond.On Saturday, Bianca Andreescu won in Louis Armstrong Stadium while Denis Shapovalov waited to play there in the night session. On Friday, Felix Auger-Aliassime beat Roberto Bautista Agut in Armstrong, Vasek Pospisil won at doubles on Court 10, and three Canadian girls won junior qualifying matches at the Cary Leeds Center in the Bronx.The biggest win took place in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, when Leylah Fernandez, a French Open junior champion two years ago, beat No. 3 seed Naomi Osaka to muscle her way toward the front of Canada’s booming tennis program, an assembly line of players that includes four men in the top 60 and six girls in the top 100 of the junior rankings.Not bad for a country with about a tenth of the population of the United States. But Canadian players are pouring over the border and making New York their temporary home.“I’m just glad that there’s so many Canadians going deep in this tournament,” Fernandez said shortly after she had showed the steely nerve it took to oust the defending champion in the world’s biggest tennis stadium. Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday, is the latest young Canadian to captivate the tennis world, following in the path of Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open; Auger-Aliassime; Shapovalov; and, before them, Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard.A country of about 37 million, Canada has made a concerted effort over the past several years to develop elite players, and it is working. Most of them pass through Tennis Canada’s high-performance development program, and many were either immigrants themselves or the Canadian-born children of immigrants.Fernandez belongs to that list, too, although her route is unique. Her father and coach, Jorge Fernandez, was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal with his family when he was a small boy. Fernandez’s mother, Irene Exevea, is of Filipino descent from Toronto.Jorge Fernandez describes himself as a former journeyman professional soccer player in the lower levels of the game, mostly in Latin America. He never knew anything about tennis until his daughter showed interest as a schoolgirl.“She played some soccer in Montreal,” the elder Fernandez said in a telephone interview Saturday, “but I didn’t want her to just follow me. I wanted her to find her own passion.”That turned out to be tennis, but Leylah struggled to gain the favor of the local tennis associations. She was part of a Quebec-based development program for a while, but it dropped her, Jorge said, in part because she was tiny. She still wanted to play.“I told her, ‘It’s OK, we’ll do it ourselves,’” her father said.They plunged ahead on their own, and soon enough, Leylah Fernandez was tearing through the ranks of her age group and several years above it, winning so many tournaments that Tennis Canada officials finally invited her to train with them.But as often happens when parents hand their children over to tennis federations, there were differences of opinion, especially over how much Leylah should play. Ultimately, Jorge Fernandez took his daughter out of the program, although amicably, he says.“I told them we would meet up again,” he explained, “and look, we have.”He continued: “It’s OK to have disagreements. We all wanted the same thing, which is for Leylah to be successful. We just had a different idea of how to do it, for a while. But they have been doing great work. I tip my hat to them with all the success they have had with so many Canadians going through the program.”Bianca Andreescu playing on Saturday.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah’s mother thought their daughter would be one of those successes, too. According to Jorge Fernandez, Exevea thought he was crazy to remove his daughter from a program that provided free coaching and more. But he was committed to doing it himself, so he and Leylah and her younger sister, Bianca Jolie, who is 17, continued to train on their own in Montreal. (The oldest, Jodeci, is a dentist in Ohio and did not play tennis competitively).That left the chief bread-winning duties to Exevea, who, unlike Jorge Fernandez, has a university degree. She moved to California so she could earn U.S. dollars and stayed there for three years while Jorge tapped into his knowledge as a former professional athlete to coach his daughters.“Those were difficult years, because they only saw their mother maybe two times a year,” Jorge said. “We finally decided to move to Florida. It’s the Mecca of tennis, and we could have the whole family together again.”To learn the art of tennis and coaching it, Jorge Fernandez immersed himself in the sport, reading texts and watching videos on the internet. His goal was to cultivate a balance between work and fun to ensure that Leylah never got burned out. He taught his daughter, who is 5 feet 6 inches, to study Justine Henin, who is listed at 5-6¾, because it seemed like an appropriate blueprint for success.Despite her size, Leylah Fernandez is a potent ball striker. Her father claims that, pound for pound, Leylah is “the best power hitter on the tour,” and she derives confidence from her strength. Even before she took the court against Osaka, she said she knew she could beat the four-time major champion.“From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone,” she said Friday night, before noting that it was past her bedtime.When she won the French Open junior title in 2019, Leylah Fernandez asked her father if they could celebrate at McDonald’s. Always diligent about nutrition, and in a city known for its culinary expertise, Fernandez chose the fast food restaurant as a way to splurge. Her father agreed.“It was just the two of us,” Jorge said. “It was sweet, but at the same time, the whole family should have been there. It’s one of the difficult things of the tennis life, all the travel.”Jorge Fernandez could not attend his daughter’s victory over Osaka. He was in Florida attending to business. But before she took the court, Leylah called him for the strategic game plan, and he was true to his ethos.“He told me to go on the court, have fun,” she said, and she followed the advice perfectly, flashing a brilliant smile during a relaxed but exuberant speech after the match.For a time, her family had debated moving to Ecuador so that the girls could play for that country. Instead, they retained their loyalty to Canada, and Leylah Fernandez plays on the Canadian team for the Billie Jean King Cup. On Sunday, she will play No. 16 seed Angelique Kerber, a three-time Grand Slam tournament champion, for a spot in the quarterfinals.Already, she and her compatriots have helped raise the profile of Canadian tennis a notch higher.“Our goal here is just to have fun on court,” she said, “to do our best. Hopefully we can inspire kids in Canada to keep going.” More

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      How to Watch the U.S. Open on Saturday

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      Novak Djokovic and Ashleigh Barty feature at Arthur Ashe Stadium as the third round of singles play concludes.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.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 2 p.m.Novak Djokovic vs. Kei NishikoriNovak Djokovic, on a quest for a career-defining Grand Slam, has not been kept out of the second week of a Grand Slam event since the 2017 Australian Open. The task of breaking that streak falls to Kei Nishikori, a finalist at the 2014 U.S. Open. Nishikori struggled with a wrist injury in 2017 and has more recently faced issues with his right shoulder. Although his game can now be inconsistent at times, Nishikori could push Djokovic to exert himself more seriously, or at the least provide some very entertaining tennis.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 1 p.m.Belinda Bencic vs. Jessica PegulaBelinda Bencic, the 11th seed, won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in August, and has kept her foot on the pedal since. Bencic has lost only 16 games on her way to the third round, overwhelming her opponents with steady counterpunching on defense and acute shot making on offense.Jessica Pegula, the 23rd seed, has been similarly dominant in her past two matches. Following her run to the quarterfinals at the Australian Open in February, she will be looking to match her career result and push herself into the top 20. As these two hardcourt heavyweights meet, it’s hard to say which will persevere.Louis Armstrong STADIUM | 3 p.m.Gael Monfils vs. Jannik SinnerGael Monfils, the 17th seed, struggled at the beginning of 2021, losing in the first round at the Australian Open, but has found his form since then. Monfils recently recorded his 500th ATP Tour win, joining an exclusive club that only contains 10 other active members.On the other side of the net, the relative newcomer Jannik Sinner has only won 60 professional matches. However, Sinner has already made himself a mainstay near the top of the tour, reaching the finals at the Miami Open to break into the top 20.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 7 p.m.Ashleigh Barty vs. Shelby RogersAshleigh Barty, the first seed, has followed an unusual pattern through the first two rounds of play. She has won the first set in both of her matches at ‘6-1’, while needing to win seven games to then finish off the second set and secure victory. Shelby Rogers, ranked No. 43, will need to start brightly in order to push back on the momentum that Barty has begun to build.Sleeper match of the day.ARTHUR ASHE STADIUM | 6 a.m.Emma Raducanu vs. Sara Sorribes TormoEmma Raducanu was ranked No. 338 before this year’s Championships at Wimbledon. After receiving a wild-card into the main draw, the 18 year-old won three matches without dropping a set, catapulting herself up the rankings. Although her hard court preparation this summer was only at challenger level events, she played through the qualifying rounds and her first two matches at the U.S. Open without dropping a set once more, and will look to reach the second week of play on her first attempt at Flushing Meadows.Sara Sorribes Tormo upset the 22nd seed, Karolina Muchova, in the first round and then skated past Hsieh Su-wei in the second. Her powerful baseline shots are moderated by her clay-court upbringing, making it difficult for opponents to set themselves against a barrage of consistent, deep balls. More

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      Naomi Osaka Loses to Leylah Fernandez at the U.S. Open

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      In tears after the third-round match, the defending champion said, “I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”Naomi Osaka, the defending women’s singles champion, was upset, 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4, in the third round of the U.S. Open on Friday night by Leylah Annie Fernandez, an unseeded 18-year-old from Canada.During her post-match news conference Osaka was in tears.“I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match,” she said. “I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”She flashed two thumbs up and left the room crying.The 73rd-ranked Fernandez, a quick and dynamic left-hander, had never faced Osaka, but she did not appear intimidated, clenching her fist after winning key points and often dictating play with her topspin forehand.It was a memorable evening for teenagers in Arthur Ashe Stadium. In the preceding match, Carlos Alcaraz, a dynamic Spanish 18-year-old, eliminated the No. 3 men’s seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas, in a momentum-shifting thriller that came down to a fifth-set tiebreaker. That was the final match of the day session, and when the arena had been cleared and the night-session crowd had taken their seats, Fernandez followed Alcaraz’s lead, rallying to defeat the third-seeded Osaka.The upset came on the same court where Osaka had become a global star by surprising Serena Williams to win the 2018 U.S. Open. Osaka has since won three more Grand Slam singles titles, including one at last year’s Open.Fernandez had never faced Osaka but did not appear intimidated.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesOsaka broke Fernandez’s serve at 5-5 in the second set with a backhand winner and then served for the match. She had not faced even a break point at that stage but was unable to close out the victory. Fernandez went on to win the first five points of the ensuing tiebreaker, prompting Osaka to hurl her racket to the court. Fernandez then evened the match at one set apiece.“I guess I wanted to stay on the court a little bit longer, and I wanted to put on a show for everybody here,” Fernandez said in her post-match interview. “One hour was just not enough for me on court.”Fernandez quickly took the lead in the third set by breaking Osaka’s serve again in the opening game, and though Osaka began to find her range in her own service games, she could not solve Fernandez’s slower left-handed serve.Osaka did not hide her frustration. After Fernandez hit a net-cord winner in the second game of the final set to go up, 40-15, Osaka took hold of the ball and smacked it high into the stands, receiving a code violation for ball abuse.Fernandez would face no break points on her serve in the final set, and when it came time to serve for the most significant victory of her career, she held at love. At 30-0, she hit a terrific backhand drop-shot winner, and on her first match point, Osaka misjudged a forehand and hit it wide.Osaka appeared to be frustrated in the final set, hitting a ball high into the stands.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesArms up and smiling, Fernandez jogged forward to the net for the handshake.“From the very beginning, right before the match, I knew I was able to win,” she said.Fernandez’s victory was the first major upset of the U.S. Open women’s tournament, which, despite the depth of talent in the women’s game, had largely respected the seedings in the first two rounds. But Friday’s result was the latest setback for Osaka, the biggest star in the women’s game after Serena Williams. Since winning the Australian Open in February, she has played sparingly and has not won another title or even reached another semifinal.Osaka withdrew from the French Open after winning one round after she was fined for declining to take part in the mandatory post-match news conference. Later she explained in a post on social media that she had experienced depression since winning the 2018 U.S. Open and had often found it difficult to face the news media. She returned to her home in Los Angeles and decided to skip Wimbledon but returned to compete at the Tokyo Olympics, where she became the first tennis player to light the Olympic cauldron but lost in the third round to Marketa Vondrousova.Fernadez’s parents, left, after the upset.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesShe was beaten in the round of 16 of the WTA 1000 event in Cincinnati by Jil Teichmann in her only North American tournament before this year’s Open. After defeating Maria Bouzkova in straight sets in the first round in New York, she received a walkover in the second round when Olga Danilova withdrew because of illness.But because of her lack of recent match play, the unexpected break did not turn out to be an advantage. Fernandez, brimming with energy, was able to capitalize. More

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      Carlos Alcaraz Upsets Stefanos Tsitsipas, Emma Raducanu Advances at the U.S. Open

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      Carlos Alcaraz shocked Stefanos Tsitsipas on Friday. Then Leylah Fernandez stunned Naomi Osaka. On Saturday, the fast-rising Emma Raducanu gets her chance at the final 16.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesGeoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFor years, tennis has been asking itself how it will move on as its biggest stars head for the exits.If the first week of the U.S. Open is any indication, it just might be with three 18-year-olds named Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez who have barged in where they don’t yet belong, but clearly do.With howls of “Vamonos!” coursing through the crowd at Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, Alcaraz of Spain pulled off the upset of the tournament in knocking off Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, winning a five-set classic, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 0-6, 7-6(5).When Alcaraz was done, Leylah Fernandez stepped into the spotlight.Fernandez, the product of an Ecuadorian father and a Filipino mother who was raised in Canada, went toe-to-toe with the defending champion, Naomi Osaka, and outlasted the four-time Grand Slam winner to win 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4 in front of a raucous night crowd that largely expected to see Osaka put on a clinic against a teenager ranked No. 73 in the world who had never made it past the third round of a Grand Slam.Osaka struggled to gain control of the match and solve Fernandez’s lefty power, always a dangerous combination. Fernandez looked like she might make an exit with Osaka serving for the match at 6-5 in the second set, but she had the audacity to break Osaka’s serve, then ran away with the tiebreaker and never looked back.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIt was just a few months ago that Tsitsipas, with his flowing dirty-blond hair and philosopher-prince soliloquies about tennis as a form of self-expression, looked to be the heir apparent to the Big Three of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.But ever since he coughed up a two-set lead over Djokovic in the French Open final, he has frittered away good will with inconsistent play, pronouncements that getting the Covid-19 vaccination is unnecessary, and a never-ending series of midmatch toilet breaks that go on and on and on. His father, Apostolos, who doubles as his coach, was in his corner Friday, but there weren’t many others.After a couple of matches on the field courts, Alcaraz strutted into Arthur Ashe Stadium like a middleweight boxer intent on landing some quick crosses on the jaw of his opponent. Did he ever.Alcaraz, known as “the next Rafa” in tennis circles, especially in Spain, already had Tsitsipas on his heels in the third game when he ripped a crosscourt forehand by Tsitsipas, who stopped and stared at the mark and shook his head with an “are you kidding me?” laugh.Alcaraz was just getting started. By the time he broke Tsitsipas’s serve for a third time to clinch the first set, the seats of the biggest stadium in the sport were filling up with thousands of fans who were acting like they had been on a first-name basis with Alcaraz for years.It’s a funny thing about young and little-known tennis players like Alcaraz and Raducanu, who were both well outside the top 200 a year ago — they develop followings like indie bands. The field courts at major tournaments function sort of like small night clubs. As word spreads of a player whose strokes and stage presence can’t be missed, the bleachers and the standing room surrounding those outer courts swell beyond capacity, with fans who will speak years later of catching Alcaraz or Raducanu in a tiny venue up close, the way the early adopters of the Talking Heads still talk about those nights at CBGB in the East Village in the 1970s.Carlos Alcaraz during his upset win over Stefanos Tsitsipas.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesThat was the vibe at Raducanu’s match on Thursday on the tennis hinterland known as Court 10 at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the last court before the South Gate exit.Raducanu, whose parents are Romanian and Chinese, was born in Canada before moving to England when she was 2. She was barely known in England before Wimbledon. There, in her Grand Slam debut, she played her way into the second week of the tournament with her fearless, clean strokes and aversion to giving up a chance to put pressure on her opponent, whether that means whipping forehand service returns or firing second serves that look like first balls.The Wimbledon run ended dramatically in the round of 16, when, playing in front of 12,000 screaming fans on the No. 1 court for the first time, she suddenly couldn’t breathe. She retired from the match, down a set and 3-0 to Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, leaving all of England crestfallen.In an interview on Thursday, Raducanu said that what ailed her was physical — simple exhaustion brought on by a series of long rallies against a mature opponent — not what most assumed was a panic attack from the pressure of a more intense spotlight than anything she could have anticipated.“I was playing at such a high level for so many days and I wasn’t used to it,” Raducanu said after her second round win over Zhang Shuai of China. “We had some 20-shot rallies and I could not control my breathing. The doctors advised me not to continue. I hated retiring.”Since then, Raducanu has played a lot of matches and won a lot of matches, at tournaments in Northern California, Chicago, and at the U.S. Open, where she has won 10 consecutive sets, including three wins in the qualifying tournament.She is long and lean and athletic in the most graceful way. She stays low to the ground as she moves across and into the court, chasing down every ball she has the slimmest chance of reaching. Waiting to receive the serve, she crouches like a shortstop anticipating a sharp line drive.By Thursday afternoon, Raducanu had the overflow crowd on Court 10 chanting her name. As she served to clinch the match against Zhang, drums started to sound just beyond the fence. These were not just any drums. They were the booming sounds of the Howard University marching band, which was performing throughout the grounds all day. And they were intermittent, playing without warning, even as Raducanu was about to toss her ball in the air to serve.Raducanu has won 10 consecutive sets.Seth Wenig/Associated PressRaducanu said she twisted her mind into thinking the drums were celebrating her. When it was over, a bulging pack of fans hung over the fence asking for autographs and selfies. She obliged every one, nearly forgetting to grab the racket she dropped in the corner of the court on the final point before she left.She will move to a larger stage on Saturday for her third round match against Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain.“I’m ready to play on anything, even the park at the back P17,” she said, referring to the outer practice courts in Flushing Meadows.Alcaraz was more than ready. His battle against Tsitsipas lasted more than four hours. After letting Tsitsipas even the match at a set apiece, Alcaraz was down 5-2 and two service breaks in the third set, and Tsitsipas was bullying him around the court like a man playing a boy. It was a moment when most players, much less a teenager, would go away against the world’s third-ranked player.Alcaraz did the opposite. He blasted forehands and backhands at the lines, and put Tsitsipas on the run chasing drop shots and topspin lobs as he drew even at 5-5. Soon Tsitsipas was talking to himself after nearly every point. A drop shot and a searing passing shot clinched the set in a tiebreaker for Alcaraz, whose trademark is a little unconscious hop he takes after he hits winners.He windmilled his fist as the crowd exploded. Only Alcaraz’s coach, the former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero, stayed in his seat. Forgive him, he has been here before. Tsitsipas headed off the court for another of his signature toilet breaks, to a rousing round of boos.The break worked for Tsitsipas, who reeled off the next six games to take the fourth set, 6-0. It was another moment when the teenager could have faded.Instead, he called for an on-court massage, and on to the fifth set they went, trading service games until what seemed like an inevitable deciding tiebreaker as the crowd chanted “Carlos! Carlos! Carlos!”Once there, Alcaraz kept on blasting, leading with his chin. A forehand right at Tsitsipas’s gut that he rimmed into the net gave Alcaraz three match points. He needed every one, missing by an inch at 6-4 on a topspin lob before one last winner down the line completed the coming out party, with one last explosion from the crowd as he collapsed on the court.“The best match of my career,” Alcaraz called it.Almost as good as that Talking Heads show at Max’s in 1975.This is how tennis moves on. More

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      Bianca Andreescu Returns to the U.S. Open With Winning on Her Mind

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      Dogged by injuries, the 2019 champion didn’t play a single match last year, but the young Canadian has surrounded herself with a new team focused on keeping her healthy.So much has changed since her first visit, but Bianca Andreescu is still undefeated at the U.S. Open, where she swept to the 2019 title in precociously grand style, defeating Serena Williams in straight sets in the final at age 19.After playing no official matches in 2020, she is back in the third round this year, but is also looking back.“I work on being in the moment, but I do get the flashbacks quite often here,” Andreescu, who practices visualization techniques, told me on Thursday. “I think that’s a good thing because it builds my confidence a little bit, going back and thinking about all that happened in 2019.”She was in the same physical space as she walked the sprawling grounds where she became Canada’s first Grand Slam singles champion, yet she was in a different place. Her support team is almost entirely new: from her agents, Max Eisenbud and Marijn Bal, to her fitness trainer, Abdul Sillah, to her coach, Sven Groeneveld, who was taking copious notes in the stands of Louis Armstrong Stadium on Thursday night as Andreescu defeated Lauren Davis 6-4, 6-4.It felt so familiar, and yet so strange. Andreescu walked into the interview room as if she were intent on remaining incognito, mask on, hoodie up, eyes barely visible. It was the same room that was packed in 2019, camera flashes firing in rapid succession as she and her former coach Sylvain Bruneau posed with the U.S. Open trophy. But on this night, with pandemic health restrictions in place, there were just a handful of masked reporters. No flash bulbs. No Champagne. No buzz.After she finished, we respected the U.S. Open rules, speaking by Zoom for a follow-up interview even though we had just been sitting 12 feet apart in the same room.“I feel like we’re in some kind of Blade Runner movie,” I said.“Exactly,” she said. “It’s just super weird, and it’s crazy that it’s still going on, but you can’t really do much about it.”The pandemic has taken a toll on many professional tennis players, including Andreescu, who tested positive for Covid-19 earlier this year. But her troubles did not begin there.At the end of her breakthrough 2019 season, in which she also won the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and the Rogers Cup in Toronto, I traveled to Toronto to spend a day with Andreescu and watch her become the first tennis player to receive the Lou Marsh Trophy, awarded to Canada’s top athlete in any sport.But she was limping that day after receiving a platelet rich plasma injection in her ailing left knee, and since then her career has continued to feel like a playground game of one step forward and two steps backward. Injuries, a concern for Andreescu since she was one of the world’s best juniors, have repeatedly knocked her back.Since her return to the tour in 2021, her fortunes have yet to turn in earnest. She had to quarantine for two weeks ahead of the Australian Open at the start of the season after Bruneau tested positive for the coronavirus after the charter flight to Melbourne. Back in form at the Miami Open, she reached the final against Ashleigh Barty only to retire in tears after injuring her ankle. She then missed much of the clay court season after testing positive for Covid-19 herself in April; split with her longtime management agency; lost in the first round of the French Open; split with Bruneau; and then lost in the first round of Wimbledon, too. At 21, she concedes that her love of the game and the tour has dimmed on occasion.“For sure, a couple times this year, when I caught Covid and the part about not being able to see my friends and family for such a long time,” Andreescu said. “My grandma caught Covid. She’s 86. She survived, thankfully, but so many of these things made me question, should I be traveling during this time? But you can’t stop forever, so I tried to deal with everything in the best way I could. Some things I wish I could have done better, but you live and learn, and I’m in a good place physically and mentally right now, and I think that’s all that matters.”Eisenbud, the senior vice president at IMG, is convinced that the best is yet to come.“Listen, you don’t beat Serena at 19 years old in the final of the U.S. Open if you’re not really special,” he said.Andreescu after winning the 2019 U.S. Open singles final.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesThat is undeniable. Andreescu’s beguiling blend of power, touch and explosive movement makes her a transcendent tennis talent. But while she will be the favorite to win in the third round against Greet Minnen, she is still searching for confidence and consistency. That is unsurprising, considering the many moving parts in her game and her lack of experience and match play. She has still played just one full season on tour, and that season in 2019 was also interrupted by injuries.Variety is her trademark — she has all the shots — but she also has a taste for risk and for sharp angles that can lead to flurries of unforced errors. Watching her play and deploy her vast arsenal of weapons can be intoxicating, but there is also the sense that she is winging it, relying on instinct rather than a deep tactical understanding.“I get bored really easily,” Andreescu once told me. “So even on the court I just try to mix it up. That can be a setback and an advantage, because I have a lot of tools in my toolbox so I try to choose the right ones at the right times as best as I can, but I’m still working on it.”Her new team was assembled with input from Eisenbud, who began managing Maria Sharapova when she was 12 and helped her become the highest-earning women’s athlete. He later helped the Chinese star Li Na capitalize on her success.“One commonality around Sharapova’s Grand Slam wins and Li Na’s Grand Slam wins was that everything around the team was calm,” Eisenbud said. “I need to try to get calm water around Bianca.”Eisenbud and Bal actively recruited Andreescu and have been jointly managing her since June 1. Silla, her new fitness trainer, helped Naomi Osaka improve her conditioning and footwork ahead of her first U.S. Open title in 2018. Groeneveld, who is working with Andreescu on a trial basis, is one of the most experienced coaches in tennis. He coached Sharapova in the later stages of her career and helped her manage chronic injuries, which was an important factor for Andreescu.She interviewed Groeneveld and several other coaches by FaceTime earlier this year after she made the difficult decision to part ways with Bruneau.“Sven really stood out right from the start,” she said. “I had what I wanted in a coach written down and what I didn’t want in a coach written down. I made sure to really, really pay attention to this, because I want to get to the next level, and Sven honestly checks all the boxes: Maria Sharapova, injuries, being around on tour a long time, and that experience really, really helps, and I already see it.”To avoid injuries, Andreescu said they have tailored her schedule to make sure that she does not push too hard on the court during practice if she is pushing hard on her fitness. She also has continued working with Kirstin Bauer, an Austrian physiotherapist and osteopath who is the one holdover on Andreescu’s team from 2019, aside from her parents and her dog Coco.“I had so many changes happen with my agency, fitness trainer, coach, and having Kirstin by my side through literally everything I’ve been through the last two and a half years is comforting,” Andreescu said. “We work a lot on prevention.”Staying healthy remains the challenge for Andreescu, and it is nothing new. As a junior, she had back and shoulder injuries as well as stress fractures in her feet that restricted her to non-weight-bearing exercises.“We had an office chair, and we took the back off it and wheeled it on the court, and every day she would spend an hour and work forehand and backhand,” said André Labelle, one of her early coaches. “I think she had a three-month stretch in the chair.”But for all her commitment, she has continued to miss too much playing time as a professional, and though it is easy to imagine her dueling for Grand Slam titles for years to come with the likes of Osaka, Barty and Coco Gauff, that vision only makes sense if Andreescu can improve her staying power. “I’m very impatient,” she said. “I want everything, you know, right away, but I’m getting better with that.” More

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      Taking Aim at Novak Djokovic, Kei Nishikori Wants a Streak of His Own

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      The world’s No. 1 has beaten his third-round opponent in 16 straight matches. The unseeded Japanese player is optimistic. But he’s not delusional.It was one of the most famous retorts in tennis history, a perfectly executed overhead slam of a quote from the self-deprecating prince of the tour, Vitas Gerulaitis. Going into his match against Jimmy Connors at the 1979 Masters, Gerulaitis had lost 16 straight matches to the lefty, but pulled off the upset at Madison Square Garden.“Let that be a lesson to you all,” he told reporters afterward. “Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!”Forty-two years later, Kei Nishikori finds himself in a similar spot, hoping that he could mimic that quintessential sports one-liner. Just like Gerulaitis with Connors, Nishikori has lost his last 16 matches to Novak Djokovic, Nishikori’s upcoming opponent in the third round of the U.S. Open on Saturday.Oh, Nishikori, who is from Japan, says he embraces the challenge, all right. But he doesn’t take us for fools, either. No one wants to face the best player on the planet — perhaps the best player of all time, who is only five matches from becoming the first man to win a Grand Slam since Rod Laver in 1969 — in the third round.“I’d rather have someone ranked lower,” Nishikori said.Bless his honesty.Over all, Djokovic is 17-2 against Nishikori, with the most recent win a straight-sets victory at the Olympics in Tokyo last month. But there is something about that 16-0 marker that seems to elicit punch lines from players. When asked Thursday night if he has Nishikori’s number, Djokovic paid homage to Gerulaitis’s comedic genius when he nodded and agreed.“I actually do,” Djokovic said.What’s this? A blatant burst of bravado bordering on disrespect toward an opponent? It would be unsportsmanlike, and out of Djokovic’s playbook to claim he has another player’s number. But before anyone could put Djokovic’s brash proclamation on Twitter, he reached back as if to grab something and added, “in my phone.”Get it? He’s got Nishikori’s phone number, just in case he wanted to text his upcoming opponent something along the lines of, “Sweet 16,” or “See you on court for No. 17!”Instead, Djokovic flashed his humble side. Rather than providing bulletin board fodder, he lavished Nishikori with praise.“I don’t have anyone’s number on the court until I win,” Djokovic said and added, “He’s one of the quickest and most-talented players that I’ve seen in my lifetime, in my career.”Despite the one-way flow of traffic in this pairing, there is one aspect to the streak that bears noting. It started after Nishikori beat Djokovic in their most marquee encounter, the semifinals of the U.S. Open in 2014. Nishikori dispatched Djokovic, who was ranked No. 1 then, by 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3, before he went on to lose to Marin Cilic in Nishikori’s only major final.Nishikori celebrates his upset win over Novak Djokovic in a U.S. Open semifinal in 2014.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“I think it was one of my best matches,” Nishikori said of the win over Djokovic. “Because of that, I think it’s a little better feeling that I have, playing here. I mean, even though he’s the best player, I have good memory here playing the U.S. Open and beating him before here.”The only other time Nishikori beat Djokovic was in 2011, at Basel in Switzerland, in their second meeting. No other player has dominated Nishikori the way Djokovic has.But believe it or not, Djokovic’s streak against Nishikori is not his best. He holds a 17-0 advantage against Gael Monfils over all (apparently, someone does beat Monfils 17 times in a row). Djokovic also holds 14-match winning streaks against Cilic and Stan Wawrinka, according to the ATP.Against Rafael Nadal, his longest winning streak is seven matches, which he has done twice, and he is 30-28 over all against the Spaniard. Djokovic’s longest winning streak against Roger Federer is five straight, from 2015 to 2019 and he holds a 27-23 advantage over Federer.But Djokovic, while terrific, is not perfect. Nishikori said the key to beating him is achieving the right balance of patience and aggression. He recalled that when he won in 2014 he was very aggressive.“I have to stay patient,” he said. “I still have to play great tennis to beat him. Same time, I have to be aggressive. He’s not going to give me any free points, so I have to earn the points. Being aggressive is the key.”If he sounds a little bit muddled on the subject, he can be forgiven. It’s a daunting task. Nishikori is not only trying to beat the No. 1 player, who has defeated him 16 consecutive times. He is also trying to stop Djokovic from attaining immortality.If Djokovic wins the U.S. Open, he will not only become the first player, man or woman, to win a Grand Slam since Steffi Graf in 1988, he will also break the three-way tie among him, Federer and Nadal, with a record 20 career major titles.Perhaps the pressure will work on Nishikori’s favor. Perhaps he will become the Roberta Vinci of the 2021 U.S. Open. Vinci got in the way of Serena Williams’ quest for a Grand Slam, beating her in a semifinal at the 2015 U.S. Open. Williams had won all four of their singles matches heading into that day, and she and her sister, Venus, had beaten Vinci in a doubles match, too.But the Italian player turned upstart and spoiled the party. Nishikori was asked if the pressure that is mounting on Djokovic could help him to play spoiler, too.“Yes,” he said while leaning back with a sly smile.It was not exactly a line worthy of Gerulaitis’s hall-of-fame retort. But for the understated Nishikori, there was definitely humor in it. The real question may be: Can anyone beat Kei Nishikori 17 times in a row? More

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      The U.S. Open Is Alex Molcan’s Proving Ground

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      After seeing one of his junior opponents soar in the rankings while he floundered, Molcan has regained confidence and is in the third round of his first Grand Slam event.Alex Molcan had usually played Andrey Rublev evenly when they competed in junior tournaments for players age 14 and under. Sometimes Rublev won, sometimes it was Molcan.But as they got older, their paths began to diverge.Rublev, now ranked No. 7 in men’s singles, began making big strides, winning tournaments and reaching the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open in 2017 at just age 19.Molcan, meanwhile, was stagnating back in Bratislava, Slovakia, where he lived at the time. Molcan began to ask himself why.“How is it possible that he’s there and I’m here?” Molcan said in an interview on Wednesday. “And then I realized that I screwed up.”That realization several years ago may have saved Molcan’s tennis career, and although it took several years to make up for it, he is now moving in the right direction again. He started the year ranked No. 313 but is now at 138th and headed higher after he won three tough matches to qualify for the U.S. Open, and then pulled off a pair of upsets to advance to the third round in the main draw.Playing in the main draw of a Grand Slam event for the first time at age 23, the left-handed Molcan will play No. 11 Diego Schwartzman of Argentina on Friday in a matchup that seemed unlikely when the draw was released.“I believe in my game, now,” Molcan said. “Finally, I started to believe that what I’m doing is right.”Until this week, the highlight of Molcan’s career was reaching the final of the Belgrade 2 tournament, where he faced top-ranked Novak Djokovic on May 29. Molcan, who had beaten Fernando Verdasco and No. 52 Federico Delbonis to reach the final, broke Djokovic’s serve in the first game with a forehand down the line, and said to himself, “I can play with these guys.”No one was shocked when Djokovic came back to win in straight sets, but Molcan came away brimming with confidence, especially with the help of a mental strength coach he said has been instrumental to his recent success.Originally from Presov, a town of about 90,000 in eastern in Slovakia, Molcan showed enough promise as a child that his mother, who was divorced from his father, took him and his little sister 250 miles west to Bratislava when Alex was 12. If he was going to make it as a pro, Bratislava was the place to train.After a few years his mother, Andrea Jackova, moved back to Presov for work. Molcan stayed in Bratislava, living with a friend’s family. Molcan said the family traveled quite a bit and left the two boys, then 14 and 15, home alone, and not surprisingly, trouble ensued as the two adolescents began drinking and running around at will.“Two young guys in Bratislava, it wasn’t good, of course,” Molcan said. “We did stupid things and I wasted two years maybe. The other guys were out there working hard every day and I wasn’t. That kept me down.”But even through his rebellious adolescent haze, Molcan knew deep down he had the ability to beat good players, like Rublev, if he could only rediscover it. He needed to get his focus back. He needed his mother.Jackova, a former sprinter, Molcan said, finally moved back to Bratislava along with Molcan’s sister. She found work as an athletic trainer, but finances were still a challenge and Molcan remembers those difficult days as “crazy times.”“She changed her life because of me,” he said. “It’s what maybe mothers do. Maybe not. But mine did, and to be honest, this is really overwhelming for me that someone can do this for her kids.“To move the family with a little kid, my sister, who was 3 years old, it was the hardest decision in her life because she was trying to help me be a good tennis player, to stay humble and be the good person. It is really amazing.”As a way to show his appreciation, Molcan inscribed his mother’s birthday on a tattoo when he turned 18. With Jackova’s support, Molcan rededicated himself to tennis. But he had lost two critical years of his tennis growth and it would take years to recover. Most of his professional life until this year was spent on the Challenger circuit — tennis’s minor leagues — battling other low-ranked players across Europe for scraps.Molcan lost the final of the Belgrade 2 tournament to Novak Djokovic in May but left the match feeling more confident.Andrej Cukic/EPA, via ShutterstockHis ranking never rose above 250 until this year, when he won spots in his first ATP main tour events. He also earned a chance to qualify for Wimbledon, reaching the final stage of qualifying before losing to Antoine Hoang of France in a five-set match.Molcan then arrived at the U.S. Open needing to win three matches to qualify for his first major tournament. The first two went smoothly, but against Gastao Elias of Portugal, Molcan needed to fight off a match point and then win a tiebreaker, 8-6, in the third and final set. On the final point he dropped his racket, fell onto his back with his arms and legs spread wide, in a brief moment of celebration.His celebrations after his first two main draw wins over Cem Ilkel of Turkey and Brandon Nakashima of the United States were more muted, less emotional, in part because they were not as demanding. He beat Ilkel in four sets and came back from a two-sets-to-one deficit to oust Nakashima on Court 12, with a small crowd rooting hard for the American.Although he had never played five-set matches before this year, Molcan says he has the physical capacity to handle them. He even considers it an asset.“I am prepared,” he said. “I have no worries to play longer matches. That’s where I get the confidence.”If he can somehow outlast Schwartzman, a two-time quarterfinalist at the U.S. Open, and then win two more matches, he could conceivably meet the fifth-seeded Rublev in a semifinal. Then he could really see if, after all these years, he has really caught back up. 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