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      At The U.S. Open, Arthur Fils Of France Keeps On Winning

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      At the U.S. Open, Arthur Fils, a 19-year-old Frenchman, is surpassing expectations. Britain’s Jack Draper, 21, has been there. It’s all good.It happens every year in tennis. Actually, four times a year.A young, bright-eyed player with fistfuls of skill and promise wins a match or two at a Grand Slam, and all of a sudden, the next big thing has arrived. There were U.S. Opens past when the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center were buzzing with the names Donald Young and Ryan Harrison, or any number of other quick hits who had their moments but never lived up to those first-week spectacles, or their own expectations.And here we are once more, just a few days into the year’s final Grand Slam, with no shortage of chatter about Arthur Fils, the gallant, 19-year-old Frenchman, who a year ago was battling to get within sniffing distance of the top 300. Now he is ranked 48th in the world and won his first match at a Grand Slam — on his third try — on Tuesday.On a field court in front of bleachers teeming with in-the-know spectators desperate for a glimpse of the future, Fils outlasted Tallon Griekspoor, the 24th seed, in five sets. Fils battled through cramps in the fourth set, hung with Griekspoor through the fifth, then overpowered him in the final two games, swinging his racket without fear, like only a player who has almost zero professional experience with failure and heartbreak can.Fils greeted Griekspoor after beating him on Tuesday.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesOn Thursday, Fils has a golden opportunity to reach the third round when he faces Matteo Arnaldi of Italy, a 22-year-old ranked 61st in the world. In the span of three days, Fils went from a teenager who was winless in his two previous matches at a Grand Slam to a favorite to make the final 32. The crowds will no doubt be there once more.“I really trust in myself,” Fils said an hour after his win over Griekspoor. “I think that I can win against anybody.”Between mouthfuls of salmon and rice, Fils spoke of his journey from a boy who picked up a racket on a family vacation in the south of France when he was 5 years old, to hitting once a week with his father at their home near Paris, to developing his game with coaches at France’s tennis federation beginning when he was 13.Until that point, he had competed in swimming, track and field, judo, and soccer — his true passion — but he was better at tennis than the other sports, so tennis became his thing. He is so young that when he was asked about the matches he watched during his childhood that made early impressions on him, he mentioned Roger Federer’s win over Rafael Nadal in the 2017 Australian Open final. Since he won his first ATP tournament in Lyon in May, he has been shouldering the hopes of a nation desperate for its first male Grand Slam champion since Yannick Noah in 1983.“That’s my dream since I’m 10,” Fils said. “Dreams now sometimes can help in the real life.”Maybe, but professional career arcs in tennis rarely follow an ever-upward trajectory during the early years. On Tuesday, Fils did not have to look far for the cautionary tale.Shortly after he was done for the day, Jack Draper, a 21-year-old from Britain, was sitting around a high table, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, fresh off a much-needed first-round win over Radu Albot of Moldova.Jack Draper against Felix Auger-Aliassime at the 2022 U.S. Open.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesA year ago, Draper was where Fils is now, the buzz of the tournament and the guy his compatriot Andy Murray touted as a future top player, vanquishing sixth-seeded Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada in the second round before losing to Karen Khachanov of Russia in the third.Since then, Draper has battled pain all over his body — there were abdominal and hip injuries during the first months of this year and a shoulder injury in the spring that caused him to miss the grass court season.“There’s people who are now in a better position than I am who I hadn’t heard of for a while last year,” Draper said. “So everyone’s on their different journey.”He shares an apartment near the Lawn Tennis Association’s Roehampton headquarters with Paul Jubb, his close friend and another rising British pro who caught his own buzz last year when he pushed Nick Kyrgios to five sets in the opening round of Wimbledon. Jubb has been battling an ankle injury for much of the year. On many days, hitting sessions have been replaced by physical therapy as together they have tried to come to terms with their immediate tennis lives not going exactly they way they hoped.“We’ve been keeping each other’s spirits up,” Draper said. “Just try and keep going and know that my time will come.”Draper celebrated match point against Radu Albot of Moldova during their first-round match on Tuesday.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesThe challenge for players in the Fils and Draper cohort is that the time for one of their own has already come. Carlos Alcaraz is just 20 and is already the world No. 1.Alcaraz’s breakthrough came years after conventional wisdom in men’s tennis held that the game had grown too physical for teenagers to excel. Then Alcaraz came along and set a new standard for Gen Z, likely raising the volume of the buzz when a fresh face has a good day or two at a Grand Slam.That suits Fils just fine. He is on his maiden voyage to New York.“Really nice,” he said. “Big city.”Noisy, too, which he doesn’t mind, especially when fans are buzzing about him, something he — and Draper, too — will try to use to their advantage on Thursday.“The New York City crowd is amazing,” Fils said. “They pushed me.” More

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      At Wimbledon, Is It Time for Hawk-Eye Live to Replace the Line Judges?

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      Line judges made incorrect calls in the first week that changed the trajectory of matches for Andy Murray, Bianca Andreescu and Venus Williams, among others. Is it time to give computers the job?Andy Murray was a victim.Bianca Andreescu was too.Jiri Lehecka had to play a fifth set and essentially win his third-round match twice.Hawk-Eye Live, an electronic line calling system, could have saved the players their set, even their match, but Wimbledon doesn’t use it to its full extent, preferring a more traditional approach. The rest of the year on the professional tours, many tournaments rely exclusively on the technology, allowing players to know with near certainty whether their ball lands in or out because the computer always makes the call.But when players come to the All England Club for what is widely regarded as the most important tournament of the year, their fates are largely determined by line judges relying on their eyesight. Even more frustrating, because Wimbledon and its television partners have access to the technology, which players can use to challenge a limited number of calls each match, everyone watching the broadcast sees in real time if a ball is in or out. The people for whom the information is most important — the players and the chair umpire, who oversees the match — must rely on the line judge.When the human eye is judging serves traveling around 120 m.p.h. and forehand rallies faster than 80 m.p.h., errors are bound to happen.“When mistakes are getting made in important moments, then obviously as a player you don’t want that,” said Murray, who could have won his second-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth set, if computers had been making the line calls. Murray’s backhand return was called out, even though replays showed the ball was in. He ended up losing in five sets.No tennis tournament clings to its traditions the way Wimbledon does. Grass court tennis. Matches on Centre Court beginning later than everywhere else, and after those in the Royal Box have had their lunch. No lights for outdoor tennis. A queue with an hourslong wait for last-minute tickets.Those traditions do not have an effect on the outcome of matches from one point to the next. But keeping line judges on the court, after technology has proved to be more reliable, has been affecting — perhaps even turning — key matches seemingly every other day.To understand why that is happening, it’s important to understand how tennis has ended up with different rules for judging across its tournaments.Before the early 2000s, tennis — like baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports — relied on human officials to make calls, many of which were wrong, according to John McEnroe (and pretty much every other tennis player). McEnroe’s most infamous meltdown happened at Wimbledon in 1981, prompted by an incorrect line call.“I would have loved to have had Hawk-Eye,” said Mats Wilander, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a star in the 1980s.But then tennis began experimenting with the Hawk-Eye Live judging system. Cameras capture the bounce of every ball from multiple angles and computers analyze the images to depict the ball’s trajectory and impact points with only a microscopic margin for error. Line judges remained as a backup, but players received three opportunities each set to challenge a line call, and an extra challenge when a set went to a tiebreaker.That forced players to try to figure out when to risk using a challenge they might need on a more crucial point later in the set.“It’s too much,” Wilander said. “I can’t imagine making that calculation, standing there, thinking about whether a shot felt good, how many challenges I have left, how late is it in the set.”Even Roger Federer, who was good at nearly every aspect of tennis, was famously terrible at making successful challenges.Hawk-Eye Live cameras along the outer courts at the U.S. Open in 2020.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore long, tennis officials began considering a fully electronic line calling system. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, tournaments were looking for ways to limit the number of people on the tennis court.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said adopting electronic calling in 2021 was also a part of the Australian Open’s “culture of innovation.” Players liked it. So did fans, Tiley said, because matches moved more quickly.Last year, the U.S. Open switched to fully electronic line calling. There is an ongoing debate about whether the raised lines on clay courts would prevent the technology from providing the same precision as on grass and hardcourts. At the French Open and other clay court tournaments, the ball leaves a mark that umpires often inspect.In 2022, the men’s ATP Tour featured 21 tournaments with fully electronic line calling, including stops in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Canada; and Washington, D.C. All of those sites have women’s WTA tournaments as well. Every ATP tournament will use it beginning in 2025.“The question is not whether it’s 100 percent right but whether it is better than a human, and it is definitely better than a human,” said Mark Ein, who owns the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.A spokesman for the All England Club said Sunday that Wimbledon has no plans to remove its line judges.“After the tournament we look at everything we do, but at this moment, we have no plans to change the system,” Dominic Foster said.Line judges at Wimbledon are responsible for ruling the ball in or out.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Andreescu became a casualty of human error. The 2019 U.S. Open champion from Canada, Andreescu has been going deeper into Grand Slam tournaments after years of injuries.With the finish of her match against Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in sight, Andreescu resisted asking for electronic intervention on a crucial shot the line judge had called out. From across the net Jabeur, who had been close to the ball as it landed, advised Andreescu not to waste one of her three challenges for the set, saying the ball was indeed out. The match continued, though not before television viewers saw the computerized replay that showed the ball landing on the line.“I trust Ons,” Andreescu said after Jabeur came back to beat her in three sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Andreescu explained that she was thinking of her previous match, a three-set marathon decided by a final-set tiebreaker, during which she said she “wasted” several challenges.Against Jabeur, she thought, “I’m going to save it, just in case.”Bad idea. Jabeur won that game, and the set, and then the match.Over on Court No. 12, the challenge system was causing another kind of confusion. Lehecka had match point against Tommy Paul when he raised his hand to challenge a call after returning a shot from Paul that had landed on the line. His request for a challenge came just as Paul hit the next shot into the net.The point was replayed. Paul won it, and then the set moments later, forcing a deciding set. Lehecka won, but had to run around for another half-hour. Venus Williams lost match point in her first-round match on another complicated sequence involving a challenge.Leylah Fernandez, a two-time Grand Slam finalist from Canada, said she likes the tradition of line judges at Wimbledon as the world cedes more to technology.Then again, she added, if “it did cost me a match, it would have been probably a different answer.”Andy Murray learned after his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas that his shot, called out by a line judge, was in and could have changed the outcome of the match.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is where Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion, found himself after his loss Friday afternoon. By the time he arrived at his news conference, he had learned that his slow and sharply angled backhand return of serve that landed just a few yards from the umpire had nicked the line.The point would have given him two chances to break Tsitsipas’s serve and serve out the match. When he was told the shot was in, his eyes opened with a startle, then fell toward the floor.Murray now knew what everyone else had seen.The ball had landed under the nose of the umpire, who confirmed the call, Murray said. He could not imagine how anyone could have missed it. He actually likes having the line judges, he added. Perhaps it was his fault for not using a challenge.“Ultimately,” he said, “the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.” More

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      Wimbledon Boycott in 1973 Changed the Tennis World

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      The walkout was the result of the tennis federation banning Nikola Pilic, an instance of player unity that is still felt today.Stan Smith’s 1972 Wimbledon cup sits alongside his 1971 United States Open winner’s prize in a trophy case inside his Hilton Head Island, S.C., home. Smith had hoped to defend his title in ’73.“I was playing the best tennis of my life,” said Smith, who had lost in the Wimbledon final in 1971 to John Newcombe in five sets and then went on to beat Ilie Nastase in the 1972 final, also in five sets. “Once you’ve won it you always want to win it again.”But in 1973, Smith decided not to play. Instead, he and 80 other players voted to boycott the tournament just before the first matches in support of the player Nikola Pilic. Pilic had been barred from the tournament by the International Lawn Tennis Federation, now the I.T.F., the world governing body of tennis that runs all the Grand Slam tournaments, for refusing to play a Davis Cup match for his native Yugoslavia a month earlier. “It was really difficult,” said Smith in a phone interview.This year, as the Women’s Tennis Association celebrates the momentous meeting at Wimbledon 50 years ago in which Billie Jean King encouraged her fellow players to form that organization, the Association of Tennis Professionals is also remembering a watershed moment in its own history. It was when its members banded together, flexed their muscles and walked out on the most prestigious tournament in tennis, with ramifications that are still being felt today. Among them: greater communication between the players and the tournaments, and wider distribution of prize money at all levels of the pro game.“This was the beginning of the ATP and players coming together because it was really testing the relationship,” said Andrea Gaudenzi, the current ATP chairman, who was born one month after the boycott, by video call. “Everybody was surprised of the support that Niki got. And that made the players think that if we get together, we are powerful and can do something. That was a very important milestone.”While the male players group had been started a year earlier, the men were still enduring power struggles between its members and the tournaments. Many of the top players were committed to World Championship Tennis, a professional circuit founded in 1968 that was backed by the Texas businessman Lamar Hunt. The tour competed with the International Lawn Tennis Federation.The ATP’s initial group of players, called the Handsome Eight, included Cliff Drysdale, Pilic and Newcombe. Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall soon signed on.In 1971, the federation, laboring to maintain control over players, voted to ban all competitors from the rival World Championship Tennis from the federation’s major events for 1972, including the French Open and Wimbledon. The ban lasted just one year, and created animosity with players.Pilic, shown playing in the men’s singles at Wimbledon in 1970, chose to compete in the doubles at the 1973 WCT Masters rather than the Davis Cup quarterfinal for Yugoslavia, his native country. Yugoslavia wasn’t happy.Ted West/Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesPilic and his doubles partner, Allan Stone, qualified for the 1973 WCT Masters, but the event coincided with a Davis Cup quarterfinal tie between Yugoslavia and New Zealand. Pilic opted to play the World Championship Tennis event, infuriating Yugoslavia, which went on to lose to New Zealand.The Yugoslav Tennis Federation asked the International Lawn Tennis Federation to act against Pilic. The federation suspended him for nine months, but that was reduced to one month, just long enough for him to miss Wimbledon.“Probably if I had played we would have won easily,” Pilic said by phone from his home in Croatia about the Davis Cup. “There was a big fight with the [Yugoslav] federation” and then with the lawn tennis federation. “They could do whatever they wanted. We had no control over the sport. We had to do something.”When the players gathered in London for Wimbledon, there were countless discussions and late-night meetings. Laver, the four-time champion, said he wouldn’t compete. So did the three-time winner Newcombe, as well as Smith, Rosewall and Ashe.“We needed to take the pulse of the players,” said Drysdale, the ATP’s first president, by phone. “We were professionals, and we wanted to stay that way. Niki had the right to play wherever he wanted to. There was no opposition to what we were doing. We never wrung our hands wondering if we were doing the right thing.”On the morning of the first day of play, Drysdale phoned the tournament referee, Mike Gibson, at 9, asked him if he had a pen and paper and began reading aloud the names of the 81 men who would no longer be competing, including 12 of the 16 seeds. By the time play began hours later there were 29 qualifiers in the draw and 50 lucky losers, men who had lost in the qualifying tournament but were suddenly awarded spots in the main draw.To show the extent of the players’ solidarity, Ashe held up a list of all the male Wimbledon competitors, with check marks next to all those who were boycotting the 1973 championship. Getty ImagesThere was some opposition to the players’ plan to withdraw. Nastase, who had been runner-up to Smith the year before, opted to compete. So did Roger Taylor, whom Pilic said he refused to speak to for a year afterward.Jimmy Connors also played, and Bjorn Borg, then just 17, did too, his first Wimbledon.Jan Kodes, a two-time French Open champion from Czechoslovakia, also opted to play and won his only Wimbledon. He beat Alex Metreveli of Russia in the final.“No one even asked me to support the boycott,” Kodes said via email. “I was not an ATP member, so I was not in the room. No one believed that this would happen. In my opinion it was pushed by the newly established ATP to show and increase the players’ power.“I’m not sure if the boycott was really necessary,” added Kodes, who went on to reach the final of the U.S. Open two months later. “There are many controversial situations and problematic decisions in tennis.”Drysdale, the former player, said the boycott had a long-lasting effect.“It changed the game forever because no one has ever forgotten what happened that year,” he said. “And we are all aware that it could happen again, depending on how the players are treated.“Everyone knows that the players walked out once on one of the most important tournaments in the world and no one will ever be sure that they wouldn’t do it again.”Gaudenzi said he believed that player unity was important to the growth of the game. What he would like to see now is greater synergy between the ATP, the WTA, the I.T.F. and the Grand Slam tournaments.“We need to come together and collaborate a lot closer,” said Gaudenzi, who stopped short of saying there should be one commissioner for the men’s and women’s tours. “I want tennis to be bigger. I want tennis to be relevant vis-à-vis other sports and other entertainment. We need to adapt to the new generation, the new technology, the new way fans are consuming the content and the competition. So we need to step up our game, and the only way to do it is to get together.”Pilic, now 83, still marvels at the tremendous sacrifice his fellow players made for him.“In that time I thought, maybe Niki Pilic is not that important,” he said. “But we were the products, and you cannot have the tournament without the products. People could not believe that we did it. But we proved in that moment that we were a very strong group. We lost that year, but the war was won.” More

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      Women’s Tennis Tour Approves Deal for Pay Equity by 2033

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      The WTA Tour approved a plan to achieve pay equity at its biggest tournaments. But it won’t be fully implemented until 2033.The women’s professional tennis tour took another step on Tuesday toward closing the gender pay gap, as players and tournament officials committed to bringing their prize money in line with the men for the most significant tournaments, though the shift won’t be complete for 10 years.The move came after months of negotiations within the WTA Tour, which includes tournament organizers, as well as years of complaints from players and foot-dragging by tournament officials who for decades have paid female professionals a fraction of what they pay the men even in tournaments where they play the same best-of-three-sets format.In Rome, in May, the men competed for $8.5 million while the women competed for $3.9 million. The Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open, paid men $6.28 million while women competed for $2.53 million. The National Bank Open in Canada offered the men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women.“More and more players have been getting restless with this,” said Jessica Pegula, the world’s fourth-ranked player and a member of the WTA Players’ Council. “Equal pay started with the Slams, and I think a lot of people thought that meant every tournament.”Women and men have received equal prize money at all of the Grand Slam tournaments since 2007. As part of this deal, organizers of the next two tiers of tournaments — the 1000-level tournaments, which are the biggest competitions outside of the Grand Slams, and the 500-level tournaments — have committed to pay equity as well.All events featuring both men and women at those two levels will pay prize money equal to that on the men’s tour, the ATP, beginning in 2027. By 2033, all events at those two levels will offer the same prize money.Tour executives and tournament officials say the phased-in approach is essential for raising the additional revenue to fund the pay increases, but that has not sat well with all players.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa of Spain, who has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world, said last month.Sloane Stephens, another Players’ Council member, said she understands the impatience of players who don’t want this benefit to kick in only after they have retired, but there are many existing contracts that prevent an immediate shift.“It may not be the fastest pathway, but we will get there,” she said. “If I wasn’t on the council, it would be hard for me to understand. This process takes time.”In an interview this spring, Steven Simon, the chief executive of the WTA Tour, said the time frame is necessary to allow the market to catch up with player sentiment, as the tour expands its marketing and renegotiates existing media contracts. Tournament organizers will also be able to take advantage of new rules that will make player attendance essentially mandatory at the biggest tournaments. Tournament organizers have long used the lack of a mandatory attendance requirement and a slight difference in the number of rankings points that players received as excuses for not providing equal pay. All of the tournaments with men and women will also now offer the same rankings points for both, making the competitions equal in every way and less confusing for fans.But while the pay equity deal offers an eventual solution to an old problem for tennis — and in all sports — it is hardly a panacea. With Wimbledon set to begin on Monday, women’s tennis continues to grapple with challenges.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” Paula Badosa has said about the gap between men’s and women’s prize money at most tournaments.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockMost immediately, the tour has yet to announce the location of its season-ending tour finals in November. That issue was supposed to have been settled after the tour announced earlier this year that it would end its 18-month suspension of operations in China over the country’s treatment of the former player Peng Shuai. In a social media post in 2021, Shuai accused a government official of sexually assaulting her, and tour officials were subsequently unable to contact her.Simon said its boycott proved ineffective. But when the tour released its fall calendar earlier this month, it gave no location for the finals, though it included several tournaments in China. Tour officials have said they intend to hold the event there, but negotiations are continuing with the Chinese over the details of its existing 10-year deal that guaranteed nearly $150 million in prize money.There is also the larger issue of whether the WTA Tour will be able to further unify with the men’s tour, a move that experts say is vital for maximizing the potential of pro tennis. And looming over all of this is what role, if any, Saudi Arabia may play in the sport.Saudi Arabia, whose LIV Golf circuit recently agreed to a merger with golf’s PGA Tour, already hosts a lucrative men’s exhibition event, but so far it has shown an inclination to grow its investments in tennis without the acrimony and litigation that accompanied its aggressive push into golf.Saudi Arabia is a leading candidate to become the host of the ATP’s Next Gen Finals, a season-ending 21-and-under tournament that has been held in Milan since its inception in 2017, according to people with knowledge of the bidding process. The proposal to stage the competition, beginning later this year, includes a plan to launch a similar women’s event.The WTA has yet to commit to that or to staging any competitions in Saudi Arabia, where women only recently gained the right to drive and where an abysmal human rights record includes the murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Simon traveled to the kingdom earlier this year for talks with government officials, though it’s not clear whether the WTA’s idea of further unification with the ATP includes a new tournament in Saudi Arabia.For now, erasing the pay gap is the first step, though some players do not understand the slow pace of change.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, who is ranked No. 6, said recently.In response, Simon has pointed to the deal the tour struck earlier this year with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm, which bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. Much of the investment will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts at a time when many of its players remain unknown to casual sports fans.Doing that may require some work on the part of the tournaments that goes beyond giving women more money.“We have to build these personalities,” Simon said.Women in tennis have also been increasingly vocal in recent months about the disparate treatment they have received. At the French Open, organizers put a men’s match in the featured prime-time slot on nine of 10 nights.The mixed tournaments almost always conclude with the men’s final on the last Sunday — an implicit peak — with the women’s final played the day before. At the Italian Open in May, Elena Rybakina and Anhelina Kalinina took the court at 11 p.m. local time in a largely empty stadium after rain and the men’s semifinals delayed their match for hours.After Tuesday’s announcement, at least the money will be equal — eventually.“It’s time for change,” Simon said. “The pathway is now there.” More

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      Forty Years After French Open Win, Yannick Noah Endures as a Star

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      Yannick Noah was nervous.He was on familiar and, for him, sacred ground at Roland Garros, in the stadium that has been so central to his life, where he has watched, played and won so many matches, including the biggest of his life, and served as the ultimate tennis talisman and guru for his countrymen.There was even that night after the finals, long after he had retired, and it was late, and after many drinks had been consumed, he convinced the staff to keep the lights on just bright enough and let him and his friends play some tipsy, barefoot tennis on the red clay.But he had never performed on Philippe Chatrier court like this, which is to say, never given a concert as the version of himself that has for the past three decades dominated his life: the African-pop-reggae star of sorts. But then the band was waiting on the stage, and the public address announcer was calling his name, and nerves be damned, Noah, barefoot on the court once more and pulling off pedal pushers as gallantly as any 63-year-old man possibly can, was walking across the red clay, with the microphone to his lips waving and singing his opening song.“I lived my best moment here,” he said later, during a news conference more packed than it would have been for any active player. “I have memories everywhere here, including my first kiss.”Sorry, he did not drop a name, though wouldn’t we all like to know.Books on Yannick Noah and his triumphant victory at the French Open in 1983 were on sale at Roland Garros. Yannick Noah and Caroline Garcia cut outs stood by the Philippe Chartrier court.Forty years ago Noah etched his name into the history of France, winning the French Open men’s singles title. That victory, which stands as the only title by a Frenchman at the French Open in the past 77 years, is one of those sports moments that is part of the broader French consciousness, a precursor of sorts to France winning the men’s soccer World Cup in 1998 with a team filled with stars with African heritage.Everywhere else, Noah is known as the swashbuckling and effortlessly athletic Cameroonian-French player who won that big tournament a while back. Tennis fans of a certain age smile at the mention of his name.In France, his legacy and life loom over every man who has played tennis since as something nearly impossible to live up to — French Open champion, and the winner of 23 ATP titles.Then there is his post-playing life: international music star; the winning captain at the Davis Cup, which he celebrated by leading his team in an epic version of the African conga dance that accompanies his hit song; a leader of his village in Cameroon. It’s cool stuff.Early last week, on the eve of his debut in a Grand Slam tournament, Arthur Fils, France’s 18-year-old next big thing, was told that Noah had been talking him up. He cocked his head and opened his eyes wide. Fils was born more than two decades after Noah’s magic moment, but he has spent his life watching that match point replay on French television.“Of course he is one of my idols, from a long, long time,” Fils said.Nicolas Escudé, the former top-20 player who is now the national technical director for France’s tennis federation, said he and so many French players have been struggling with the burden of Noah’s legacy for decades. No Frenchman even made the third round this year.“In my position and even before when I was a player listening to this constant, ‘Hey, you know, we need a successor for Yannick Noah,’ listening to this again and again is a pressure,” said Escudé, who is 47.Grand Slam tournaments are tennis’s version of the Star Wars bar — lousy with past champions collecting pats on the back and paychecks to do television commentary or rub shoulders with sponsors. Someone like Noah, on the 40th anniversary of one of this tournament’s biggest moments, would figure to be all over Roland Garros.Noah at a press conference at the site of his triumphant victory at the French Open.Noah held his trophy after beating Sweden’s Mats Wilander and winning the French Open in 1983.STF/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot so much.He stuck around for about 24 hours after the pretournament concert at Philippe Chatrier, where Mats Wilander, his opponent in the 1983 final, joined him for a rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” The following day he attended the unveiling of a mural at Roland Garros celebrating his title. It was a private ceremony, closed to journalists and most of the public. And then he headed off to a music festival and his other life. On Sunday he performed in Caen, a small city a few hours’ drive west of Paris. . “For me, tennis is like some other time, like another life,” he said. “Once every 10 years, you know, they remind me I was a tennis player.”Like the rest of his life, the origin story involves that magical combination of destiny, talent and fortitude. Arthur Ashe spotted Noah at a tennis clinic during a tour of Africa in 1971, then quickly called his friend, Chatrier (the guy the stadium is named for), at France’s tennis federation. He told him there was a boy in Cameroon that had the makings of a champion.Soon Noah was living in France, and by the early 1980s his huge serve, speed and grace had made him a force on the professional tennis tour. His physique — 6-foot-4 and shoulders made for rebounding — is more common in this era than his own.Then came the dreadlocks that caused a stir in the staid world of an almost entirely white sport. Ahead of a Davis Cup final against Noah and France in 1982, John McEnroe, who was not exactly a creature of the establishment, remarked that he was “more afraid of his new hairstyle” than Noah’s game.The following spring, Noah romped to the French Open championship. He playing career officially ended after the 1996 season, with more titles than any Frenchman before or since.By then he was already deep into his music career. His song “Saga Africa” had become a hit in 1991, leading to a dual focus that soon began to tilt toward music.Noah during his concert at Philippe Chartrier. Noah began his career as a recording artist even before he finished his tennis career.Noah taking some time to sign autographs.“When I was losing tennis matches, I was telling people I was a singer,” he said.He moved back and forth between Europe and the United States, appearing in the stands of basketball games while watching his son, Joakim, became a college and N.B.A. star. Noah may not be around Roland Garros much this year, but Joakim was often in the player box of Frances Tiafoe, an American who is the son of African immigrants and is one of the tour’s few highly ranked Black players.Noah spends much of his time in Cameroon now. The photo that accompanies his mobile number shows him standing in front of a turquoise sea, sipping through a straw from a full martini glass, peering out from under the brim of a baseball cap.The dark dreadlocks are gone, replaced by tidy and appropriately thinning salt-and-pepper hair. There are lines across his forehead and bags under his eyes. But the gap-tooth smile, the soft voice, his “there-is-more-to-life-than-tennis” ethos, and that combination of swagger and approachability, it’s all still there. In the middle of the concert, he took a lap through the stadium, singing into the microphone in one hand, high-fiving and embracing the crowd with the other.The growing distance between the public and tennis players troubles him, he said, especially when social media is supposed to get them closer to fans. He has little use for the game’s code of conduct, which he said stifles players, preventing them from showing emotion on the court.Those emotional outbursts from McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, and even Noah on occasion, once helped draw the common sports fan to an elite game. Also, emotions are at the core of the sport, he said. Ask the players he coached to the Davis Cup title what he talked about with them, he said. He rarely mentioned tennis, just emotions.He worries about the future of French tennis. The are no coaches who have won at the highest level, so young players have no true expert guidance. Escudé dismissed Noah’s point of view, and said he’s not so available anyway, but Noah said he is around for occasional chats.“If the players call me, I’m here. But time is passing,” he said.For whatever time Noah has left, he will always cherish June 5. He looks at the video of the winning point and imagines people watching it when he dies. People stop him every day and tell him where they were when he won. Some have said they flunked their exams because they watched the match instead of studying, but they cherished being a part of the country’s cultural history.“For them it was a day that counted,” he said. “And I was there. I was at the core of that.”Noah walking barefoot on the court, a texture he described as being “like velvet.” More

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      Carlos Alcaraz toma el escenario del Roland Garros

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      Carlos Alcaraz es tan bueno y tan joven, y gana tantas veces, que su éxito parece predeterminado.Por supuesto, alguien así de rápido, con manos tan suaves como las de un artesano y un físico que lo coloca justo en la zona Ricitos de Oro de los grandes del tenis moderno —ni demasiado alto ni demasiado bajo—, se convertiría en el número uno del mundo más joven en los 50 años de historia del ranking de la Asociación de Tenistas Profesionales (ATP). También tiene buenos genes. Su padre fue tenista profesional a nivel nacional en España cuando era adolescente.Así que esto estaba predeterminado para Alcaraz, el campeón de 20 años que llegó a París como el favorito inasequible para ganar el Abierto de Francia, ¿no es cierto?Quizás no.Como sucede tan a menudo en los deportes, y especialmente en el tenis, donde la exposición y el entrenamiento tempranos son esenciales, hubo un elemento de suerte que ayudó a crear al heredero deportivo de la troika conformada por Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer y Novak Djokovic y que ha gobernado el campeonato masculino durante la mayor parte de las últimas dos décadas.Esa suerte finalmente tomó la forma del logo de una compañía local de dulces, que adornaba las camisetas que Alcaraz usaba durante sus partidos desde que tenía 10 años. Todo fue gracias a encuentros fortuitos con Alfonso López Rueda, el tenista presidente de Postres Reina, una empresa española de postres y dulces conocida por sus flanes y yogures. El interés de López Rueda por Alcaraz y el apoyo que le permitió viajar por Europa y comenzar a competir contra chicos mayores en escenarios desconocidos puede ser una explicación de la forma en que Alcaraz, desde el comienzo de su corta carrera, ha mostrado casi siempre una especie de serenidad alegre, incluso cuando el escenario se hizo más grande y el centro de atención más intenso.Carlos Alcaraz ha usado el logo de Postres Reina en su camiseta durante los partidos desde antes de los 10 años.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, vía Getty ImagesEl apoyo de la empresa de dulces permitió a Alcaraz viajar por Europa a los torneos.Samuel Aranda para The New York Times“Algunas personalidades son muy buenas para eso, algunas tienen que aprender”, dijo Paul Annacone, quien entrenó a los grandes jugadores Federer y Pete Sampras, entre otros. “Él realmente parece disfrutar del ambiente (ganar, perder, lo que sea), parece aceptarlo”.Al parecer, la mayor fortuna que puede tener un aspirante a tenista es haber nacido de padres que jugaron al más alto nivel. Los rangos profesionales, especialmente en el lado de los tenistas hombres, son terribles con los nepo babies, como se les conoce a los hijos de figuras exitosas que quieren ingresar al rubro de los padres. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz y Ben Shelton son descendientes de ex jugadores profesionales. Todos ellos tenían una raqueta en sus manos a una edad temprana y acceso casi ilimitado a alguien que sabía muy bien qué hacer con ella.Para todos los demás, algo de suerte es clave.Las habilidades que requiere el tenis profesional son muy especializadas, y el proceso largo y costoso de perfeccionarlas tiene que comenzar a una edad muy temprana. Pero el sistema de desarrollo de jugadores en la mayoría de los países está fracturado y, en el mejor de los casos, es regido por la casualidad, con programas escolares que son en su mayoría limitados. O una familia decide conscientemente exponer a un niño pequeño al tenis, o el niño no juega, al menos no en serio.Así que no sorprende que tantas de las historias de creación en el tenis profesional parezcan involucrar una sucesión de eventos fortuitos e inconexos.Frances Tiafoe probablemente no terminaría como semifinalista de Grand Slam si su padre, un inmigrante de Sierra Leona, se convertía en encargado de mantenimiento en un parque de oficinas en lugar de en un club de tenis local.Novak Djokovic tuvo la suerte de conocer a Jelena Gencic, una de las mejores entrenadoras de Serbia, cuando tenía 6 años y ella dirigía un entrenamiento en las canchas cerca del restaurante de sus padres en Kopaonik, en las montañas serbias cerca de Montenegro.Arthur Ashe estaba viajando por Camerún en 1971 cuando vio a un escolar de 11 años con talento en bruto para explotar. Llamó a su amigo Philippe Chatrier de la Federación Francesa de Tenis y le dijo que fuera a echar un vistazo. Ese chico era Yannick Noah, el último francés en ganar el Abierto de Francia.Al igual que con los demás, los dones y habilidades sobrenaturales de Alcaraz jugaron el papel más importante en su buena fortuna. Cuando tuvo la oportunidad de impresionar, lo hizo, pero antes la suerte tuvo que brindarle una oportunidad.La decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz de instalar canchas de arcilla roja en un club de El Palmar resultó por jugar a favor de su nieto.Samuel Aranda para The New York TimesLa historia de esa oportunidad comienza con la decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz hace décadas de incorporar canchas de tenis y una piscina en un club de caza en El Palmar, un suburbio de la ciudad de Murcia. Hubiera sido más barato poner todas las canchas duras, pero a los españoles les encantan las de la arcilla roja, también llamada tierra batida. Entonces el abuelo Alcaraz (otro Carlos) se aseguró de incluir esas canchas en las instalaciones.Ahora avancemos hasta hace una decena de años. López Rueda, loco por el tenis, es el director ejecutivo de Postres Reina, con sede en Caravaca de la Cruz. Pero a López Rueda no solo le gusta el tenis; le gusta jugar al tenis en arcilla roja. Vive en la misma región que el clan Alcaraz, y las mejores y más accesibles canchas de tierra batida para él están en un club en El Palmar, así que juega allí, comentó José Lag, ejecutivo de Postres Reina desde hace mucho tiempo y amigo de la familia Alcaraz, quien habló en nombre de su jefe, López Rueda.En el club se hizo amigo del padre de Alcaraz y jugó como compañero de dobles de su tío. Asimismo, el hijo de López Rueda, que es tres años mayor que Alcaraz, contó con el mismo entrenador, Kiko Navarro, que no paraba de delirar con el talento de Carlitos. Un día, López Rueda accedió a ver jugar al niño y no se parecía a nada que hubiera visto antes. Carlitos lo tenía todo, pero los recursos de su familia eran limitados. Su padre era entrenador de tenis y administrador del club, y su madre estaba ocupada criando al niño y a sus hermanos menores.López Rueda accedió a prestarle a la familia 2000 euros para viajar a un torneo, pero luego empezó a pensar en grande y decidió involucrar a su empresa para apoyar a este jovencito local que ya era capaz de vencer a competidores más altos, más fuertes y mayores.Postres Reina había apoyado durante mucho tiempo a los equipos locales de baloncesto y fútbol, ​​pero el tenis era el deporte favorito de López Rueda y la empresa nunca había patrocinado a un atleta individual. Alcaraz se convirtió en el primero, luciendo el logo de la empresa en sus camisetas.El apoyo de la compañía, que duró toda la adolescencia de Alcaraz, le permitió seguir accediendo a los mejores entrenadores de su región y viajar por toda Europa para disputar los torneos más competitivos.“No se hizo con un interés publicitario”, dijo Lag. “Era solo para ayudarlo. Nunca pensamos que sería el número uno”.Alcaraz con López Rueda. Postres Reina nunca había patrocinado a un deportista individual antes de Alcaraz.Cortesía de Jose LagAl ver el éxito de Alcaraz, IMG, el conglomerado de deportes y entretenimiento, lo fichó a los 13 años, brindándole aún más acceso, especialmente a su actual entrenador, el exnúmero uno del mundo Juan Carlos Ferrero.Existe una buena posibilidad de que Alcaraz se hubiera convertido eventualmente en un jugador de primer nivel si López Rueda nunca lo hubiera visto. La Real Federación Española de Tenis, que tiene una de las mejores fuentes de desarrollo de talentos del mundo, probablemente se habría enterado de él en poco tiempo.Max Eisenbud, director de tenis de IMG, dijo que en cualquier historia de éxito en el tenis, el ingrediente más importante es una familia sólida dispuesta a tener una visión a largo plazo hacia el éxito de un chico.“Esa es la receta secreta”, dijo Eisenbud durante una entrevista reciente, pero reconoció que la asistencia financiera para una familia que la necesita ciertamente puede ayudar.Cuando un jugador avanza tan rápido como Alcaraz, pasando de estar fuera del top 100 en mayo de 2021 al número uno solo 16 meses después, se puede atribuir un papel en el resultado a cada detalle de su desarrollo.Los compañeros de Alcaraz han visto con asombro cómo ha elevado su nivel de juego en cada torneo, en una era en la que el foco de atención constante tortura a muchos de ellos. Durante los primeros meses de Alcaraz desafiando los peldaños más altos de la gira, Alexander Zverev se maravilló de su habilidad para jugar “simplemente por diversión”.Alcaraz dijo que sin importar lo que la gente viera, acostumbrarse a los ambientes cada vez más estridentes y llenos de presión tomó algún tiempo, pero aprendió rápido. Una paliza de Nadal en Madrid hace dos años ayudó, pero su mentalidad nunca cambió.“Siempre quise jugar en los grandes estadios”, dijo. Y ha parecido que realmente fue así.Alcaraz durante su derrota en los dieciseisavos de final del Abierto de Italia. Había ganado tres de sus cuatro torneos anteriores antes de una salida anticipada en Roma.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz ganó la final del Abierto de EE. UU. de 2022 para reclamar su primer título de singles importante y obtener el puesto número 1 en el ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPara Alcaraz, el tenis es principalmente una alegría, desde su primera victoria en un torneo de Grand Slam en una cancha trasera en el Abierto de Australia en febrero de 2021, hasta sus victorias consecutivas sobre Nadal y Djokovic en el Abierto de Madrid en 2022, a su enfrentamiento en la semifinal contra Tiafoe en el Abierto de Estados Unidos en septiembre pasado frente a 23.000 fanáticos y con Michelle Obama sentada en la primera fila, hasta su triunfo en la final dos días después.¿Cómo es posible? Allen Fox, campeón de la División I y cuartofinalista de Wimbledon en 1965, que más tarde se convirtió en uno de los principales psicólogos deportivos, utilizó el término que utilizan los profesionales cuando no existe una explicación racional. Describió a Alcaraz como un “genio” y una “rareza genética”.“La única forma en que pierde es cuando falta”, dijo Fox. “Juega su mismo juego de alto riesgo y nunca quita el pie del acelerador”.Matthew Futterman es un periodista deportivo con larga experiencia y autor de dos libros, Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed y Players: How Sports Became a Business. More

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      Before Carlos Alcaraz Was Great, He Was Good Enough to Be Lucky

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      Carlos Alcaraz is so good, so young, and wins so often that his success has seemed predetermined.Of course someone that fast, with hands as soft as an artisan’s and a physique that lands him right in the not-too-tall and not-too-short Goldilocks zone of the modern tennis greats, would become the youngest world No. 1 during the 50-year history of the ATP rankings. He has good genes, too. His father was a nationally ranked professional in Spain as a teenager.So this was preordained for Alcaraz, the 20-year-old champion who comes to Paris this week as the prohibitive favorite to win the French Open, wasn’t it?Maybe not.As happens so often in sports, and especially in tennis, where early exposure and training are essential, there was an element of luck that helped create the sport’s heir apparent to the troika of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic that has ruled the men’s game for the better part of the last two decades.That luck ultimately took the form of a local candy company’s logo, which adorned the shirts Alcaraz wore during his matches from the time he was 10 years old. It was all thanks to happenstance encounters with Alfonso López Rueda, the tennis-playing president of Postres Reina, a Spanish dessert and candy concern known for its puddings and yogurts. López Rueda’s interest in Alcaraz and the support that allowed him to travel Europe and begin competing against older boys in unfamiliar settings may be an explanation for the way Alcaraz, from the beginning of his short career, has almost always displayed a kind of joyous serenity, even as the stage grew bigger and the spotlight hotter.Carlos Alcaraz has worn the Postres Reina logo on his shirt during matches since before he was 10 years old.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesSupport from the candy company allowed Alcaraz to travel Europe to tournaments.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Some personalities are just adept at that, some have to learn,” said Paul Annacone, who has coached the great players Federer and Pete Sampras, among others. “He just really seems to enjoy the environment — win, lose, whatever — seems to embrace it.”The greatest fortune an aspiring tennis player can have, it seems, is to have been born to parents who played the game at the highest level. The pro ranks, especially on the men’s side, are lousy with nepo babies. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton are all the offspring of former professionals. All of them had a racket in their hands at an early age and nearly unlimited access to someone who knew best what to do with it.For everyone else, some kismet is key.The skills professional tennis requires are so specialized, and the long and expensive process of honing them has to start at such a young age. But the player development system in most countries is fractured and happenstance at best, with any school-based programs being mostly limited. Either a family consciously decides to expose a young child to tennis, or the child does not play, at least not seriously.So it’s hardly a surprise that so many of the creation stories in professional tennis seem to involve a sliding-doors moment.Frances Tiafoe probably does not end up as a Grand Slam semifinalist if his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, becomes a maintenance man in an office park instead of at a local tennis club.Novak Djokovic had the good fortune of meeting Jelena Gencic, one of the top coaches in Serbia, when he was 6 years old and she was giving a tennis clinic on the courts near his parents’ restaurant in Kopaonik, in the Serbian mountains near Montenegro.Arthur Ashe was traveling in Cameroon in 1971 when he spotted an 11-year-old schoolboy with raw talent to burn. He put in a call to his friend Philippe Chatrier at France’s tennis federation and told him he best come have a look. That boy was Yannick Noah, the last Frenchman to win the French Open.As with the others, Alcaraz’s preternatural gifts and skills played the biggest role in his good fortune. When he got the chance to impress, he did, but first luck had to deliver an opportunity.The decision by Alcaraz’s grandfather to put red clay courts at a club in El Palmar proved fortuitous for his grandson.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe story of that opportunity begins with Alcaraz’s grandfather’s decision decades ago to develop tennis courts and a swimming pool at a hunting club in El Palmar, a suburb of the city of Murcia. It would have been cheaper to put in all hardcourts, but the Spanish love the red clay. So Grandpa Alcaraz (another Carlos) made sure to include those courts with the development.Now flash forward to a dozen years ago. López Rueda is the tennis-mad chief executive of Postres Reina, which is based in Caravaca de la Cruz. But López Rueda doesn’t just like tennis; he likes to play tennis on red clay. He lives in the same region as the Alcaraz clan, and the best and most accessible clay courts for him are at a club in El Palmar, so he plays there, said Jose Lag, a longtime Postres Reina executive and an Alcaraz family friend, who spoke on behalf of his boss, López Rueda.At the club he became friendly with Alcaraz’s father and played as the doubles partner of his uncle. Also, López Rueda’s son, who is three years older than Alcaraz, had the same coach, Kiko Navarro, who could not stop raving about the talents of Carlito. One day López Rueda agreed to watch the boy play and it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Carlito had everything, but his family’s resources were limited. His father was a tennis coach and administrator at the club, and his mother was busy raising the boy and his younger siblings.López Rueda agreed to loan the family 2,000 euros to travel to a tournament, but then he started to think bigger and decided to get his company involved in supporting this local boy who was already capable of beating taller, stronger and older competition.Postres Reina had long supported local basketball and soccer teams, but tennis was López Rueda’s favorite sport and the company had never sponsored an individual athlete. Alcaraz became the first, wearing the company logo on his shirts.The company’s support, which lasted through Alcaraz’s early teenage years, allowed him to continue to access to the best coaching in his region and to travel throughout Europe to play in the most competitive tournaments.“It was done not as a marketing interest,” Lag said. “It was only to help him. We never thought he would be No. 1.”Alcaraz with López Rueda. Postres Reina had never sponsored an individual athlete before Alcaraz.Courtesy of Jose LagSeeing Alcaraz’s success, IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, signed him at age 13, providing even more access, notably to his current coach, the former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero.There is a fair chance that Alcaraz would have eventually become a top player had López Rueda never seen him. Spain’s tennis federation, which has one of the world’s best talent development pipelines, probably would have caught wind of him before too long.Max Eisenbud, the director of tennis at IMG, said in any tennis success story the most important ingredient is a solid family willing to take a long-term view toward a child’s success.“That is the secret recipe,” Eisenbud said during a recent interview, but he acknowledged that financial assistance for a family that needs it can certainly help.When a player develops as quickly as Alcaraz, rising from outside the top 100 in May 2021 to No. 1 16 months later, each detail of his development can be credited with having a role in the outcome.Alcaraz’s peers have watched in awe as he has raised his level of play with each tournament, in an era when the constant spotlight tortures so many of them. During Alcaraz’s first months challenging the top rungs of the tour, Alexander Zverev marveled at his ability to play “simply for the joy.”Alcaraz said that no matter what people saw, getting used to the ever more raucous and pressure-filled environments took some time but he learned fast. A drubbing by Nadal in Madrid two years ago helped but his mind-set never changed.“I always wanted to play in the great stadiums,” he said. And it has seemed like he really did.Alcaraz during his loss in the round of 32 at the Italian Open. He had won three of his previous four tournaments before an early exit in Rome.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz won the 2022 U.S. Open final to claim his first major singles title and earn the No. 1 ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMostly tennis is one big hoot to Alcaraz, from his first win at a Grand Slam tournament on a back court at the Australian Open in February 2021, to his back-to-back victories over Nadal and Djokovic at the Madrid Open in 2022, to his semifinal showdown against Tiafoe at the U.S. Open last September in front of 23,000 fans and with Michelle Obama sitting in the front row, to his triumph in the finals two days later.How could that be? Allen Fox, a Division I champion and a 1965 Wimbledon quarterfinalist who later became one of the game’s leading sports psychologists, used the term that professionals use when there is no rational explanation. He described Alcaraz as both a “genius” and a “genetic freak.”“The only way he loses is when he is missing,” Fox said. “He just plays his same high-risk game, and never takes his foot off the accelerator.” More

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      Alexander Zverev’s On- and Off-Court Drama

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      He’s a diligent player. He has also recently worked through an abuse claim and an on-court tantrum — and a serious injury at last year’s French Open.When Alexander Zverev left the French Open last year, it was in a wheelchair. He was in tears.After tearing ligaments in his right ankle while running for a ball, Zverev was forced to retire in the semifinals to the eventual champion, Rafael Nadal. Zverev had hopes of winning his first major title after twice winning the ATP Finals and capturing a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. He was also the runner-up at the 2020 United States Open.Zverev has faced plenty of adversity, much of it self-inflicted. A public feud with a former agent over money was settled out of court. Allegations of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend dogged him for about two years, prompting an investigation by the ATP, which eventually found no substantial evidence of the claims. And after throwing an on-court tantrum following a doubles loss last year, Zverev was fined $40,000 and put on 12 months of probation for “unsportsmanlike conduct.”Yet Zverev remains one of the most diligent workers on tour.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You are known for your physical strength on court. But the game is mental, too. Which is harder for you?I always feel like when I do the work, I am mentally prepared as well. Once I’ve done everything I can to be ready to win, there’s nothing to be nervous about. If you don’t play well, you don’t play well. Sometimes things happen out of your control in any sport, especially in tennis because it’s a singular sport.You’ve been super competitive since you were a child. How much of that has helped you on the ATP Tour?I hated losing. That has helped me because when somebody younger or better was coming up, I tried to outwork them. When I work more than everybody else, I’m going to be better than everybody else. Which isn’t always the right thing. I’ve learned that with age.Alexander Zverev at the Madrid Open. Zverev has defeated some of his fiercest peers, including Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Carlos Alcaraz.Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEverybody talks about your father’s influence on your game, but wasn’t it your mother who taught you technique?She had a bigger effect on me than my dad did, because she was the one who taught me the game from a young age. More people talk about my father because he’s my true coach now, along with Sergi Bruguera. But my mother had a much bigger influence than my father.Of all the men you’ve beaten — Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev — who is the most difficult?They all have their own difficulty. When Rafa’s playing well on clay, he’s unbeatable. I’ve played Novak on a lot of surfaces, but when he is in the zone, he is also very difficult. With Roger, everything just happens so fast. You feel like you’ve just started the match, and you’re already down a set and a break, and you have absolutely no idea how it happened. Medvedev just doesn’t miss. It doesn’t matter what position in the court you put him in, he’s always going to put the ball back, so you have to win the matches yourself. And Carlos Alcaraz, with him it’s obviously the power. You honestly can’t name one that is most difficult.With everything you’ve been through over the last several years, from your personal problems to your injury, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself?When you’re young, you’re naïve. You think everybody’s your best friend, that they’re there because they really like you. But tennis is a business, which, unfortunately, is not always the nicest thing in the world. I have a very close circle. I don’t let people in that much anymore. I only have people who I truly 100 percent trust. I had to learn to go into myself, to get the noise out of my head to be able to compete.What about this game gives you the greatest joy?It’s that you’re really you. You win by yourself, you lose by yourself. You can’t hide behind your teammates. A lot of players say they play for the money and they don’t really love tennis. I’m somebody who absolutely loves what I do. I can’t imagine doing anything else. For me, there’s no better life. More