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      Novak Djokovic Comes Full Circle at the Australian Open

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      Deported a year ago and unable to play in 2022’s first Grand Slam tournament, Djokovic deeply felt this major title, his 22nd, calling it “a huge relief.”MELBOURNE, Australia — It felt like a full-circle occasion as Novak Djokovic celebrated on Sunday in the same city where he had been deported on a Sunday little more than a year ago.It felt like a cycle was ending. With the Australian Open title and the No. 1 ranking back in his possession, he cried in a way that he had never cried before at Melbourne Park or perhaps at any tournament: with big, loud, body-wrenching sobs as he lay on his back in the players’ box after embracing his family and team and then dropping to the ground, overcome by it all.When he finally returned to his feet and then to his courtside seat, he buried his face in a white towel and sobbed some more.“I just felt this huge burden off my back with everything we’ve been through,” he said. “It was a huge relief, and a huge release as well.”Djokovic has experienced no shortage of powerful sensations in Rod Laver Arena: the coming-of-age giddiness of winning his first Grand Slam singles title in 2008; the sweet misery of winning the longest major singles final in history in 2012 over Rafael Nadal, a 5-hour-53-minute test that left both combatants too weary to stand for the awards ceremony.But Sunday will surely occupy a category apart. Not for the final itself — a relatively straightforward 6-3, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (5) victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas — but for all that led to it and how Djokovic reacted.“He’s keeping everything inside,” Goran Ivanisevic, his coach, said. “Sometimes you have to explode.”Djokovic’s decision not to be vaccinated for the coronavirus has had big consequences, and returning to Australia after his forced exit on the eve of last year’s Australian Open would have been plenty to process on its own. But then came the left hamstring injury that caused Djokovic to hobble at times during the early rounds.Ivanisevic said “97 percent” of players would have withdrawn from the tournament if they had received magnetic resonance imaging test results that looked like Djokovic’s.“But not him; he is from outer space,” said Ivanisevic, pointing a finger to his temple. “His brain is working different.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Djokovic, who said he would have withdrawn if this were not a Grand Slam tournament, said he did not practice on any of the off days. He followed the same template in 2021 when he won the title after tearing an abdominal muscle. This time, he also required extensive therapy.“Look, a lot of people doubted and still doubt that I was injured,” he said, explaining that he would provide evidence at some stage. “But again, I don’t feel I need to prove anything to anyone. But it did affect me, especially in the first week. From the fourth round onwards, I felt like it was behind me.”Then came the latest controversy sparked by his father, Srdjan, who posed for photos with flag-carrying Russian supporters inside Melbourne Park after Djokovic’s quarterfinal defeat of the Russian Andrey Rublev on Wednesday.Djokovic explained that his father had intended to celebrate with Serbian fans as he had been doing throughout the tournament. But it was Djokovic who was left to address the incident with tournament officials and to explain it directly to the news media.“It required an enormous mental energy really to stay present, to stay focused, to take things day by day and really see how far I can go,” Djokovic said.Stefanos Tsitsipas, left, and Djokovic, during the trophy ceremony.Loren Elliott/ReutersBut it hardly affected the bottom line. He did not lose a set in the semifinal against Tommy Paul, an unseeded American, or in the final against Tsitsipas, the shaggy-haired, 24-year-old Greek star who beat Djokovic in two of their first three matches but has now lost to him 10 times in a row.On Sunday, Tsitsipas’s best shot, the forehand, too often cracked under Djokovic’s pressure, and sometimes it seemed as if it cracked simply at the prospect of Djokovic’s pressure. But Tsitsipas, who would have become No. 1 for the first time with a first major title, did not look quite as crestfallen as he did after losing a two-set lead to Djokovic in the 2021 French Open final.“Paris was heartbreaking,” he said.Instead, whether he realized it or not, he tried to take a page on Sunday night from Djokovic’s early-career playbook: when the Serb was getting beaten repeatedly by more established champions like Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Despite the frustration and dejection, Djokovic came to see playing his accomplished rivals as an opportunity to get the most out of himself.“Novak is a player that pushes you to your limits,” Tsitsipas said. “I don’t see this as a curse. I don’t see this as something, like, annoying. This is very good for the sport, to have competitors like him, to have champions like him. He’s very important for us that want to get to his point one day.”This seems the smart approach rather than stewing in negativity. But the reality for Tsitsipas is that Djokovic won that first Grand Slam title in 2008 in Melbourne at age 20 and won four more majors before he turned 25. And however full circle it all felt in Melbourne on Sunday night, Djokovic is hardly done searching for more titles, more ways to win.He and Nadal, who won the Australian Open in Djokovic’s absence last year, are back in a tie with 22 Grand Slam singles titles apiece. Djokovic wants the lead and as many majors as he can get before time and younger men inevitably deprive him of the opportunity.Like Federer, whose wife Mirka’s support on the home front and on the road with their young children allowed him to compete successfully on tour into his late 30s, Djokovic’s wife, Jelena, is giving him the same flexibility with their young son and daughter. Unvaccinated for the coronavirus, he is still unable to enter the United States at this stage but said he hoped a change in policy would allow him to enter in time to play at Indian Wells, Calif., in March.“I still have lots of motivation; let’s see how far it takes me,” he said. “I don’t know how many more years I’m going to play or how many more Slams I’m going to play. It depends on various things. It doesn’t depend only on my body.“I think it’s extremely important for me to first have the support and love from the close ones and the ability to go and play and keep the balance with the private life. But at the same time have the mental clarity or — how should I say — aspirations to really strive to chase these trophies. Physically I can keep myself fit. Of course, 35 is not 25, even though I want to believe it is. But I still feel there is time ahead of me.”Djokovic’s let out a scream, and also sobbed, after winning the men’s singles final on Sunday.Lintao Zhang/Getty ImagesFederer, 41, retired last September, and Nadal, 36, no doubt remains a threat when healthy but is out of action again for at least several weeks, this time with the hip injury that contributed to his losing in the second round to Mackenzie McDonald.Ivanisevic expects Nadal back in force in the spring for the clay-court season that culminates with the French Open, which Nadal has won a mind-bending 14 times, more than any player has won any Grand Slam tournament.“What I feel Nadal and I do, what we still fight for and what still motivates us the most is winning the biggest titles in our sport and keeping up with the young guns,” Djokovic said. “I think tennis is in good hands with great characters, great personalities and great players, but we’re still not going anywhere.”Djokovic has now joined Nadal in the double-digit club at a major tournament with his 10th Australian Open title.It has been and remains quite a duel, elevating and at times exhausting both men. Chasing excellence is hard enough; chasing it through adversity, whatever its provenance, is harder still.Though Djokovic, with his supreme timing and elastic movement, can make a difficult game look easy, his emotions in the aftermath on Sunday made it clear how challenging this tournament and this cycle have been. A little more than a year ago, he and Ivanisevic were at Melbourne Airport, being escorted to their plane out of the country.Now, Djokovic is back on top Down Under.“I would say this is probably the biggest victory of my life, considering the circumstances,” he said, the Australian Open trophy back in very familiar hands. More

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      Why Coaching From the Stands in Tennis Can Feel Like ‘Cheating’

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      In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.MELBOURNE, Australia — It has been an Australian Open full of progress and positive energy for Dean Goldfine, the traveling coach of the fast-rising American Ben Shelton, a surprise quarterfinalist in his first trip abroad.But Goldfine has also felt pangs of guilt. This is the first Australian Open, and only the second Grand Slam tournament, in which coaches have been allowed to communicate with players during matches from the stands, and that has made him uncomfortable.“Sometimes when I’m out there, when it’s happening, when I’m saying stuff, it’s like I want to look around and over my shoulder, because I feel like I’m cheating,” he said last week.Goldfine, 57, has been coaching on tour for more than 30 years. But in-match coaching had until recently been banned at all men’s tournaments, and at all four major tournaments for both women and men.The game is now in the midst of a quiet revolution. The women’s tour, outside of the Grand Slams, has allowed various forms of in-match coaching since 2008, and the men’s tour began allowing it last July from the stands for a trial period that included the 2022 U.S. Open, which was the first Grand Slam tournament to permit the practice.The Australian Open has followed that lead, and the other two major tournaments — the French Open and Wimbledon — are set to take part in the trial this year.Wimbledon’s leadership has long been the most vehement opponent of in-match coaching. Richard Lewis, the former chief executive of the All England Club, which runs the event, argued for the virtues of a “gladiatorial” contest in which players were required to problem-solve under pressure on their own.That remains an appealing concept to many players, spectators and even some coaches.“I’m against the coaching,” Goldfine said. “Just because for me that’s one of the unique things about our sport. It just takes away a big part of our game, which is the player out there, dealing with what’s going on and understanding it and being able to make adjustments and being able to deal with their emotions also.”Goldfine brought up Goran Ivanisevic, the mercurial Croatian star with the huge serve who did finally win Wimbledon in 2001 but had long struggled to bear down, block out distractions and play his best in big moments.“Imagine if Goran would have had someone that really could get him to calm down during matches,” Goldfine said.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said after the mixed doubles final.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.The rule has been a point of difference for tennis, which has been the rare major sport to forbid coaching during play (consider all those soccer and basketball coaches hollering instructions and all those caddies chattering in golfers’ ears).But the tide appears to have turned in earnest. Roger Federer, the Swiss superstar long opposed to the concept, has retired. Wimbledon has new leadership and has joined the experiment, which is feeling less and less like a trial and more and more like policy.Stefano Vukov, Elena Rybakina’s coach, shouted from the player’s box during her women’s singles semifinal match against Victoria Azarenka.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe main arguments in favor are that the interaction between coaches and players provides entertainment value, improves the quality of play and reflects the pro game’s shift to more of a team concept. Singles stars are relying on larger staffs, including physiotherapists, trainers, performance psychologists and, in the case of Rafael Nadal, sometimes as many as three coaches.Perhaps the most crucial argument is that allowing in-match coaching eliminates hypocrisy, because many coaches were already breaking the no-coaching rule on the sly.“I was at different times doing it, and I’m sure everyone’s done it at some stage,” said Nicole Pratt, a retired Australian player who is now a leading coach. “I guess probably being English-speaking and because most of the umpires understood English, I felt like that was somewhat a disadvantage sometimes. So now it’s an even, level playing field, and to be honest, I love it. Because I do think it can be influential on a match, the information a player is given, although not always.”In the past, in-match coaching has often been delivered illegally through code words or hand signals, like the one used by Serena Williams’s coach Patrick Mouratoglou during the uproarious 2018 U.S. Open final against Naomi Osaka that led to Williams being penalized by the chair umpire. Williams argued that she was not being coached during play and did not “cheat to win.”The language barrier has not always been protective. Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek star who will face Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final on Sunday, has long supported in-match coaching and has received numerous code violations for being coached by his father, Apostolos. Tournament officials have sometimes deployed Greek-speaking personnel to sit close to his father in the player’s box.Tsitsipas is delighted to see an end to the fines, at least for now. But above all, he is content to see the player-coach dialogue officially integrated into matches.“In my case, it has always been part of how I do things when I’m on the court,” Tsitsipas said on Friday. “I’m glad it’s not penalized now. That’s how it should be. I see no reason to have a coach with you if they can’t share some of their view and knowledge with you when you’re competing. I feel like it’s something very natural in our sport.”But in-match coaching is not necessarily a leveler. Top players can, in general, afford top coaches. Those lower down in the food chain usually cannot.“I worry about richer players getting richer,” said Jim Courier, the former No. 1 player who won the Australian Open twice. “I think about players who come down and play qualifying and cannot even travel with a coach and get in and go up against someone with four coaches.”Perhaps a data analyst would be a good hire at this stage. Many players now make use of analytics for scouting, paying for private services or using those provided by a national federation, like the United States Tennis Association. But for the coaching trial, the Australian Open is providing access to detailed in-match data, which is available on tablets in the player’s boxes at Rod Laver Arena and elsewhere on coaches’ smartphones or other devices.The data is compiled from information provided by Hawk-Eye Live, the electronic line-calling system, and tracks seemingly everything: players’ serve locations on routine points and pressure points; their ball-contact locations on the stroke following the serve; the percentage of balls they are hitting on the rise.“We knew we were going to have in-match coaching, which is great, but the question was how can we provide some support in an intuitive way,” said Machar Reid, the head of innovation at Tennis Australia.Stefanos Tsitsipas’s coaches — Mark Philippoussis, center, and his father, Apostolos Tsitsipas, right — watching his second-round match.Hannah Mckay/ReutersIt is quite a package and, for now, provides data only from matches in progress, not from an opponent’s prior matches. “This is all about in-match, and not so it can be used from a scouting point of view,” Reid said.Goldfine said the Tennis Australia package was “a lot to process” in real time, but he did pick out some data points to share with Shelton, a left-hander, during his quarterfinal defeat to Tommy Paul, a fellow American.“I did watch some of Tommy’s matches on Tennis TV, and in a couple of the lefty matches I watched, he served a fair amount of second serves to the forehand,” Goldfine said. “But against Ben, I noticed it was pretty much all backhand on the second serve. So that was one thing I did look at on the screen was serve locations, because for me, that’s big. So, I told Ben about halfway through the second set to sit on the backhand.”Goldfine offered much more advice to Shelton based on his own observations and instincts. The rules for the coaching trial allow for “a few words and/or short phrases,” but “no conversations are permitted.”How exactly do you define a conversation?“It’s a little ridiculous, just from that standpoint,” Goldfine said. “Just a big gray area.”What was clear to Goldfine and Shelton was that the coaching helped, perhaps all the more because Shelton, 20, is an inexperienced professional fresh out of college tennis, where in-match coaching is always permitted.“It’s been huge for Ben,” Goldfine said.It also provided entertainment when Paul, befuddled by Shelton’s big serve, turned to his coach, Brad Stine, to ask him which way Shelton might serve on the next point. Stine made a T with his fingers to indicate down the middle. Shelton, who had noticed their interaction, served wide instead, and everyone ended up grinning.The surprise is that the coaching trial has not changed the flow of the game much for spectators. It has provided some unsettling viewing — such as Elena Rybakina’s emotive coach Stefano Vukov admonishing her during matches — but it has generally gone unnoticed.The question remains whether in-match coaching provides enough payoff to justify changing a fundamental aspect of an individual sport. For now, tennis is leaning heavily toward the affirmative.“What I’m afraid of is that these young players will become dependent on their coaches,” Goldfine said. “And coaching for me is teaching, but having Ben experience it so he learns for himself, so he’s able to do these things on his own and figure things out. The last thing I want is my player to be dependent on me.” More

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      Big Risks and Big Rewards for Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open

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      The Belarusian, who beat Elena Rybakina to win her first Grand Slam title on Saturday, held the trophy in triumph while the war in Ukraine remained a brutal reality.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was the sort of outcome that Wimbledon had been intent on avoiding at the All England Club: a Belarusian champion holding up the silverware in triumph with the war in Ukraine still a brutal reality.But Wimbledon, where Belarusian and Russian players were banned in 2022 and may be again this year, has remained an outlier in professional tennis and increasingly in international sports.Aryna Sabalenka, born and raised to pound tennis balls into submission in Minsk, Belarus, was free to play and win the Australian Open women’s singles title as a neutral competitor, even if there was scant chance her victory would be greeted neutrally at home or by her country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, whom she knows personally.“I think everyone still knows I’m a Belarusian player, and that’s it,” Sabalenka said on Saturday night at a news conference, a glass of champagne in hand and the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup glittering beside her.She put her name on the trophy and secured her first Grand Slam women’s singles title with a brilliant and bold performance. Anything less would not have sufficed against Elena Rybakina in their gripping, corner-to-corner final that might have been better suited to a ring as the two six-footers exchanged big blows for two hours and 28 minutes.Mash tennis. Crush tennis. Rip tennis. Smack tennis. Take your pick, but something onomatopoeic seemed appropriate with all that power on display, and what separated this match from many a tennis slugfest was the consistent depth and quality of the punching.High risk was rewarded repeatedly on Saturday as both finalists took big swings, aiming close to the lines and often hitting them.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Rybakina finished with 31 winners to 25 unforced errors. Sabalenka, in what looked like the finest performance of her career, finished with 51 winners to 28 unforced errors: She cranked up the quality after an erratic opening set and won the lion’s share of the rallies, or maybe the tiger’s share, considering she had the animal tattooed on her left forearm at age 18 to remind her to fight for every point.“My parents didn’t know about this tattoo,” she told the Tennis Channel. “When they saw it the first time, my dad was laughing, I don’t know why, but my mom didn’t talk to me for one week.”Five years later, the tattoo remains but much has changed: Her father, Sergey, died in 2019 at age 43, leaving Sabalenka committed to achieving the dream he had for her to become No. 1.She has already fulfilled his wish in doubles, reaching the top spot in 2021. When the new singles rankings are released on Monday, she will be back at No. 2, behind Iga Swiatek, who still has a large lead based on her terrific 2022 season but who has lost to Sabalenka and Rybakina in the last two significant tournaments.Sabalenka, with the tattoo of a tiger on her left forearm that she got at 18 to remind her to fight for every point.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via ShutterstockSabalenka defeated her in November in the semifinals of the WTA Finals, the season-ending tour championships in Fort Worth. Rybakina overpowered Swiatek in the fourth round in Melbourne on her way to the final.Swiatek, the Polish star who looked set to become a dominant No. 1, is instead struggling to adjust to her new status and facing increased competition at the top, although she remains, until proven otherwise, the best women’s clay-court player.But on other surfaces, Sabalenka and Rybakina, last year’s surprise Wimbledon champion, clearly pose a formidable threat with their aggressive returns, relatively flat groundstrokes and penetrating serves.There were rare variations on Saturday: a drop-shot winner from Rybakina, a few defensive lobs and the occasional off-speed backhand. But for the most part, it was strength versus strength; straight-line power against straight-line power. The spectacle was frequently breathtaking, but you did not have to hold your breath for more than a few seconds: The longest rally was 13 strokes, and the average rally length was just 3.28 strokes.It was tennis reminiscent of the big-serving, high-velocity duels between Serena and Venus Williams. It was also a significant departure from last year’s Australian Open, where Ashleigh Barty ended a 44-year singles drought for the host country by winning the title, putting her court craft and crisply sliced one-handed backhand to work before shocking the tennis world (and Australia) by retiring in March at age 25.But Barty, now married to Garry Kissick and expecting their first child, has hardly avoided the Australian Open, making numerous public appearances this year and walking onto Rod Laver Arena before Saturday’s final with the Akhurst Memorial Cup in hand.“I can honestly look myself in the mirror and say I gave everything to tennis, but it gave me back so much more in return,” she said in a recent interview. “And all that really starts from the people I was surrounded with. So much of my success is our success. It genuinely is.”Sabalenka could relate to that on Saturday as she shared a post-victory moment with her team and then watched from afar as her normally stoic coach, Anton Dubrov, put a white towel to his face and sobbed in the player box.Sabalenka said she had never seen Dubrov cry and explained that last season, in February, as she struggled with the yips on her second serve and her confidence and reached a point where she could not even openly discuss the problem, Dubrov offered his resignation.“There were moments last year when he said, ‘I think I’m done, and I think I cannot give you something else, and you have to find someone else,’” Sabalenka said in an interview with Nine Network. “And I said: ‘No, you’re not right. It’s not about you. We just have to work through these tough moments, and we’ll come back stronger.’”Her performance on Saturday was incontrovertible proof that they had succeeded, with the help of a biomechanical expert but also Sabalenka’s own resilience. She is 11-0 this year and though she double-faulted seven times in the final, including on her first match point, she also repeatedly shrugged off any jitters (and the palpable concern of the big crowd) and came up with aces or service winners on subsequent serves.In the end, she hit 17 aces to Rybakina’s 9.“For sure, it’s not easy mentally,” Rybakina said of Sabalenka. “She didn’t have a great serve last year, but now she was super strong and she served well. For sure, I respect that. I know how much work it takes.”Rybakina has paid her dues, too. Born and raised in Russia, she switched allegiance to Kazakhstan in exchange for financial support in 2018. And though she was allowed to play at Wimbledon last year, her victory, with her strong Russian connections, was not the outcome the tournament was seeking either when it imposed its ban under pressure from the British government.Some Ukrainian players continue to oppose Russians and Belarusians being allowed to compete at all on tour, even as neutrals. The debate is about to intensify as the International Olympic Committee begins to push for Russians and Belarusians to be allowed to compete as independent athletes at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris — a move the Ukrainian government strongly opposes and could respond to by withdrawing its own athletes.But Sabalenka, after sitting out Wimbledon, where she reached the semifinals in 2021, is now a Grand Slam singles champion in Australia and was feted with no apparent ambivalence by the Australian Open tournament director, Craig Tiley, and was awarded her trophy in Rod Laver Arena by Billie Jean King.Sabalenka’s news conference was full of questions intended not to confront her directly but rather to probe the issue. However you present her on the scoreboard, it was a Belarus victory.“Missing the Wimbledon was really tough for me,” she said. “It was a tough moment for me. But I played the U.S. Open after. It’s not about Wimbledon right now. It’s just about the hard work I’ve done.” More

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      Aryna Sabalenka Wins the Australian Open Women’s Singles Title

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      The 24-year-old Belarusian player pushed Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan to three sets to capture her first Grand Slam singles title.Aryna Sabalenka is no longer afraid of big stages.Overcoming a history of buckling under the pressure of late-round Grand Slam tennis, Sabalenka, the powerful 24-year-old from Belarus, came from behind to beat Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in the women’s singles final of the Australian Open on Saturday.In a matchup of two of the biggest hitters in the sport, Sabalenka was a little more fearless and a few clicks more clinical than Rybakina in the crucial moments to cap off a dominant summer of tennis in Australia. It was Sabalenka’s first Grand Slam title in a rocky career that has included the kind of error-ridden, big-moment meltdowns from which some players almost never recover.Instead, the match proved a microcosm of Sabalenka’s career — a shaky start, filled with ill-timed double faults followed by a steadying midmatch recovery before a final-set display of raw power and precision that her opponent could not answer.And it all went down after Sabalenka decided last year to make a contrarian move in an era when athletes train their minds as hard as they train their bodies. Sabalenka fired her sports psychologist, deciding that if she was going to exorcise the demons of all those losses, she was going to have to do it on her own.On the final, anxious point, Rybakina sent a forehand long. In an instant, Sabalenka was on her back on the blue court, crying tears of joy — and relief.“It’s just the best day of my life right now,” she would say later.Holding the championship trophy on a stage a few minutes later, Sabalenka turned to her coaches and thanked them for sticking with her on an emotional ride to this first Grand Slam title.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event ran from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.“We’ve been through a lot of downs,” she said. “It’s more about you than it is about me.”Hardly, of course, especially on a night when she had to overcome an opponent who had proven herself on a stage like this before.Rybakina, a native Russian who became a citizen of Kazakhstan five years ago in exchange for financial support, was aiming to back up her championship run at Wimbledon and announce herself as the major threat in women’s tennis.“I should have been more aggressive,” Rybakina said when it was over. “She was stronger mentally, physically.”Instead it was Sabalenka who showed the mettle needed to survive the kind of high-risk, high-reward tennis battle that had seemed inevitable from the first days of a tournament in which the conditions were ideal for the biggest, flattest hitters.When players first began arriving in Melbourne more than two weeks ago, they said the combination of heat, humidity and court preparation had made the balls difficult to spin, giving the edge to players who hammer their first serves and rips at nearly every rally ball as though they get extra credit for velocity.That suited Rybakina and Sabalenka just fine, as they played with the silver champion’s trophy sparkling on a pedestal in the corner of the court, in case either of them tried to pretend this was just another match.Entering the finals, Rybakina led the field with in aces with 45. Sabalenka was third with 29. They were first and second in hitting winners off their opponents’ serve, and at the top of the charts in peak serve speed, with both cracking 120 miles per hour.Subtle, deft, tennis this was not, and for Rybakina it was so different from her championship match at Wimbledon in July, when she played Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, one of the most creative players in the game.It was also different psychologically, too, and not only because she was doing something in Australia that she had already done before and that her opponent had not.Sabalenka, left, hugs Elena Rybakina after winning her first Grand Slam women’s singles title.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRybakina, a Russian through her childhood who became a citizen of Kazakhstan when the country promised to pay for her tennis training, spent the better part of two weeks during Wimbledon talking about whether she was actually Kazakh or Russian. She was also asked to answer for her native country’s invasion of Ukraine as she stampeded to the title. Her family still lives in Russia, and Wimbledon had prohibited players from Russia and Belarus from participating.That sidelined Sabalenka, one of the few players who can match, and often top, Rybakina thump for thump.Sabalenka’s power is different than Rybakina’s, though. Both players are six feet tall, but Sabalenka swings a tennis racket like a lumberjack wields an ax, screaming with exertion on every stroke, every bit of struggle and emotion visible in her eyes, while Rybakina’s long arms make her seem like a human trebuchet, slinging shots in silence and giving no hint of the turmoil stirring inside.As Sabalenka settled in and knotted the score, the match became a test of which brand of high-octane tennis could sustain the pressure of a final set for one of the biggest championships in the sport. As the reigning Wimbledon champion playing against a first-time Grand Slam finalist, Rybakina held a priceless edge in experience, but Sabalenka had all of the momentum, and the balls were jumping off her strings with a pop and a zip that Rybakina couldn’t match.The scoreboard showed them trading service games through the first six games, but Sabalenka was on cruise control and Rybakina had to keep finding big serves or tiny escape hatches to stay even.Sabalenka hugged the trophy after coming back from down a set to beat Rybakina.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesServing in the seventh game Rybakina could no longer do it. On her third chance to get the crucial break of serve, Sabalenka sent her opponent scrambling after shots, then put away the game with an overhead shot from the middle of the court. Two games from the championship and in the driver’s seat, Sabalenka pumped her fist, took a few deep breaths and mouthfuls of water on the changeover, then strutted back onto the court to hammer her way to the title.An ace into the corner of the service box put her one game from cradling the trophy, which would be hers if she could just avoid wobbling.That Sabalenka was able to do so was the result of shifting how she thought about herself as a tennis player. “I started respecting myself more,” she said. “I started to understand that I am here because I worked so hard and I am a good player. I’m good enough to handle everything.”On Thursday, after finally making her first Grand Slam final on her fourth try, Sabalenka talked about having fired her sports psychologist. She decided that she was the only one who could find a way to overcome the mental struggles that doomed her in the past.“Every time hoping that someone will fix my problem, it’s not fixing my problem,” she said. “I just have to take this responsibility, and I just have to deal with that. I’m not working with a psychologist any more. I’m my psychologist.”For one moment the old Sabalenka reappeared as she tried to serve out the match at 5-4. She aced Rybakina to get to her first match point, then double-faulted to let Rybakina back in.Then, on Sabalenka’s fourth match point, Rybakina buckled, sending that forehand long, and an overwhelmed Sabalenka flat onto her back.Match over. Demons exorcised. And a new member of the sport’s most revered club. More

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      Rod Laver ‘Might Have Hurt Somebody’ With a Modern Racket

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      At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open. He likes what he sees.MELBOURNE, Australia — In the middle of the 1960s, before tennis entered the modern era, Rod Laver and the other top tennis players in the world had to barnstorm the globe hunting for paychecks, playing tennis matches everywhere from La Paz to Nairobi, like jazz musicians bouncing from gig to gig.Envious of the riches that the golf stars Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer were accumulating, Laver wrote to their agent, Mark McCormack, the founder of the sports and entertainment conglomerate IMG, and asked for help.“He didn’t think that tennis was big enough back in those years. He said he couldn’t do anything for me,” Laver said Friday afternoon. “I wrote back again two or three years later. He finally said ‘yes.’”By then, tennis was beginning its evolution from a largely amateur pursuit in which professionals could not play the biggest tournaments into the posh international spectacle it is today, with its biggest stars making tens of millions of dollars a year.A half-century ago, there was no bigger star than Laver, who won 11 Grand Slam singles titles and who remains the last man to win the four biggest tournaments in the sport in a single calendar year.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event ran from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Now 84 and living in California, Laver remains a king of the sport, a slight, diminutive redhead-gone-gray with a magical left arm.He spoke with The New York Times on Friday afternoon at a restaurant in the arena that bears his name in Melbourne Park.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.You played in a lot of places that bear little resemblance to an immaculate facility like Rod Laver Arena. Do you think about that, playing in La Paz, Bolivia, at 12,000 feet in a glorified gymnasium, as you watch the players compete in this grand stadium named for you?Well, in La Paz, you’re so high and we were using regular balls. I was playing with Fred Stolle and Butch Buchholz and Roy Emerson, and we decided we had to puncture the balls because they were flying all over the place. We put a little hole in them so we were playing flat-ball tennis. At least the people who came then didn’t think we were animals.I was in Nairobi once, and it was raining a lot, and someone got the idea to pour gas on the court and light it on fire to dry it out. There was black smoke everywhere. We probably were not very popular.Laver after winning the Australian Open in 1969.News Ltd/NewspixHow do you compare the highest level of the sport when you were playing to the highest level today?It’s a totally different world. I think our tennis was very good. But we were playing with small wooden rackets. Today’s players have a bigger-headed racket. They’re taller guys. They’re great athletes.Would you have liked to have competed with the modern technology?It would be nice. I did enjoy playing with the Dunlop racket. I think I played some damn good tennis with that racket.If you had the modern racket, can you imagine how you might have played Novak Djokovic?I think I might have hurt somebody. My left arm is like twice the size. I may not be able to get the ball in the court, but I can get a lot of speed up. I’d have to spin the ball to bring it down.Do you see any part of yourself in Djokovic in the way he approaches and dominates the sport?No. Two different games. I used what I learned from my coach back when I was 14. He said, “You lefties have the worst chip backhands; you’ll never win Wimbledon. You’ve got to learn to hit a topspin backhand.” I was hitting into the cheap seats for quite some time. Finally, I got a little more control, and bit by bit I found that that was my best shot.Laver during a match at Wimbledon in 1969, when he won the calendar-year Grand Slam.Tim Graham/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesSo do you think you could compete with today’s best?I think I could be competitive, but today’s players, they’re different. Everything is different. Emerson and I would be playing doubles on clay together, and we would come into the dressing room and kick our shoes off and just walk into the shower. There was red dirt all over you, and that was how we would wash out clothes. We would then hang them up, and they would be dry for us to play in the next day. When you were flying in those days, sometimes you could only have 20 kilos of clothes on the plane with you, and I’m on the road all year.You ended up playing until you were fairly old for a tennis player back then.My last match I was 38. In one tournament when I was getting on I had gotten to the last eight, and I had to play Bjorn Borg. I remember telling him, because we were good friends, I said, “You’re going to beat me, but you’re going to know that you played me.”What was the key to being able to play at such a high level until you were nearly 40?It’s your attitude and also the way you play. Did you wear out your body? I didn’t ever have problems. You always have some sort of trouble with your shoulders, your ankles. But if you look after yourself, you can. We also didn’t have as many great, great players. We had a few. If we got to the semis or a final, you would play them.The way the game is now, there are so many of them. All the Europeans who are competing, we didn’t have nearly as many when we played. More

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      Djokovic Is Back in the Australian Open Final

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      Djokovic will play for his 22nd Grand Slam title on Sunday against Stefanos Tsitsipas. Will his father, Srdjan, be in his usual seat in the stands to cheer him on?MELBOURNE, Australia — For Novak Djokovic, everything was going according to plan. Even better than that, by many measures.He had charmed a country that had kicked him out a year ago over his refusal to be vaccinated. The soreness in his hamstring at the beginning of the tournament had all but disappeared, allowing him to look nearly invincible in the crucial second week of the tournament. He appeared on a glide pattern to yet another Australian Open men’s singles title and the 22nd Grand Slam title of his career.And then his father, Srdjan Djokovic troubled the waters.Djokovic, Serbia’s favorite son and most famous citizen, will play for his 10th Australian Open championship on Sunday against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, but the glide pattern is officially over. He defeated Tommy Paul in straight sets Friday, 7-5, 6-1, 6-2, in front of a hostile crowd that notably did not include his father, who has been at all his other matches during this tournament.Srdjan Djokovic on Thursday appeared in a video with fans outside Rod Laver Arena, some of whom were holding Russian flags, and next to a man wearing a shirt with the “Z” symbol that is viewed as support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the tournament’s ban on Russian and Belarusian flags.Serbia has close political and cultural ties to Russia, and support for the Russian invasion is significant there, unlike in most of the rest of Europe. The incident made headlines worldwide, sparking the ire of Ukraine’s government and sending both the tournament and Djokovic’s team scrambling to control the damage.Early Friday, Srdjan Djokovic released a statement saying he had been celebrating with his son’s fans on Wednesday night and did not mean to cause an international incident. “My family has lived through the horror of war, and we wish only for peace,” the statement said. “So there is no disruption to tonight’s semifinal for my son or for the other player, I have chosen to watch from home.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Coaching That Feels Like ‘Cheating’: In-match coaching has always happened on the sly, but this year is the first time the Australian Open has allowed players to be coached from the stands.Rod Laver Likes What He Sees: At 84 years old, the man with his name on the stadium sits courtside at the Australian Open.India’s Superstar: Sania Mirza, who leaves tennis as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Hours later, Tennis Australia, which had been criticized for not acting more swiftly to snuff out demonstrations that might incite violence, released its own statement, saying that it had worked with police to remove the demonstrators and spoken with players and their teams about the importance of not engaging in any activity that causes distress or disruption. The organization noted Srdjan Djokovic’s decision not to attend the match.“Tennis Australia stands with the call for peace and an end to war and violent conflict in Ukraine,” the statement said.After the match, Djokovic said his father’s actions had been misinterpreted, that he had no intention of offering support to Russia and the war.“We are against the war, we never will support any violence or any war,” he said. “We know how devastating that is for the family, for people in any country that is going through the war.”He said he and his father decided together that it would be best for him not to attend the semifinal but he hoped he would be there watching him in the final on Sunday.“It wasn’t pleasant not to have him in the box,” he said.Only Djokovic knows how the incident affected his play, but he was erratic early against Paul, the first-time Grand Slam semifinalist from the United States. Djokovic jumped out to an early 5-1 lead, but after he complained to the chair umpire about a fan who was harassing him he fell into a temporary funk. He dropped the next four games as the crowd rallied behind the American underdog and taunted the defending champion. Boos echoed through the stadium after Djokovic steadied himself to win the first set, 7-5.Djokovic responded by putting his hand to his ear and waving his hands as if to say, “bring it on,” which spurred the clumps of Serbian fans who attend Djokovic’s matches no matter where in the world he is playing to drown out the howls.Tsitsipas lost to Djokovic in the 2021 French Open finals after surrendering a two-set lead.Fazry Ismail/EPA, via ShutterstockThe atmosphere is likely to be even more spirited on Sunday against Tsitsipas, who is a local favorite because of Australia’s significant Greek population, among the largest in the world outside of Greece and the United States. It will be a rematch of the French Open final in 2021. There, Djokovic came back from two sets down to win his second French Open singles title.Tsitsipas has struggled to recover from that loss but has been playing arguably his best tennis since then at this tournament. Whoever wins will be the world’s top-ranked player.On Friday, he beat Karen Khachanov of Russia in four sets, 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3. At 4-4 in the second set, Tsitsipas turned a tight match, scrambling for a series of overheads and winning the 22-shot rally with a rolling forehand winner to break Khachanov’s serve, then clinched the set in the next game. Despite wobbling in the third set with the finish line in sight, Tsitsipas came out strong in the fourth set and cruised into his second Grand Slam final, a test he said he has never been more ready for, especially with the Greek-Australian Mark Philippoussis helping his father coach.“I just see no downside or negativity in what I’m trying to do out there,” he said after beating Khachanov. “Even if it doesn’t work, I’m very optimistic and positive about any outcome, any opponent that I have to face. This is something that has been sort of lacking in my game.”Djokovic has not struggled with internal negativity in years, with good reason. He has won four of the last six Grand Slams he has played and is often most dangerous when facing adversity. The negativity he has had to deal with is external, whether it’s criticism for his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, or his requests that fans who try to disrupt him be removed from his matches, which has happened several times during this tournament.“It’s not pleasant for me to go through this with all the things that I had to deal with last year and this year in Australia,” he said. “It’s not something that I want or need.”There may be plenty of criticism at Sunday’s final. Chances are, Djokovic will be ready for it. More

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      Sania Mirza, India’s Tennis Superstar, Exits the Australian Open and Soon, a Career

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      Mirza, who leaves tennis in India as a sleeping giant, has been a trailblazer nonetheless. “I would like to have a quieter life,” she said after the mixed doubles final.MELBOURNE, Australia — “Keep fighting,” Serena Williams said to an 18-year-old Sania Mirza when they met at the net after a match at the Australian Open.That was in January 2005, and Mirza, strong-minded to begin with, took even more strength from the advice.A Muslim from Hyderabad, India, who started playing tennis on courts made of cow dung, Mirza became the most successful women’s tennis player in India’s history at an early age but kept pushing for more, experiencing success above all in doubles and in inspiring women from South Asia and beyond to think bigger.“I hope that I’ve been able to tell young girls and show young girls that they can achieve and do whatever they want in their lives, no matter how many odds are stacked against them and no matter how many times they are told they can’t do it, or it’s silly or it’s stupid,” Mirza said in an interview this week. “I hope that I’ve been able to bring that little mind-set shift where becoming an athlete can be a career option for a young girl, and I mean the first option.”On Friday, nearly 18 years to the day after that third-round defeat to Williams, Mirza reached the end of her Grand Slam journey: losing in the Australian Open mixed-doubles final with her compatriot Rohan Bopanna to Luisa Stefani and Rafael Matos of Brazil, 7-6 (2), 6-2.It was a fittingly big stage for a farewell: Rod Laver Arena on a sun-kissed Friday afternoon, even if the stands were far from full. Doubles, even with Mirza in the mix, remains a sideshow to singles.She and Bopanna, 42, certainly looked the part of veterans: Bopanna a bit heavier around the middle now with streaks of gray in his thick beard; Mirza with heavy white tape on her right calf and more tape on her left leg.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.“I looked like a mummy,” Mirza said with a chuckle. “But the fact is, you have to accept that we are on the wrong side as a tennis player, of age at least, and you have to manage your body.”Mirza, 36, intended to retire at the end of last season but tore a tendon in her right forearm in August and found herself struggling to comb her hair. She decided to come back and then retire, which she will do so after playing two regular tour events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai next month.“I was like, ‘Well, I can’t have this forearm dictate what I’m going to do,” she said. “This is part of my personality. It’s very difficult for me to accept being forced to do something, maybe anything. I just cannot be that person. If you tell me to have a cup of tea, I might like to have that cup of tea, but I want to have it on my own terms. That’s just who I am. And that goes into smaller things and bigger things in my life.”One of the most touching moments of her final Australian Open was her 4-year-old son Izhaan running across the big blue court into her arms after she and Bopanna won their semifinal.Izhaan is old enough to have a memory of what Mirza has called her “last dance,” and though mothers are extending their careers more frequently on the WTA Tour — see Tatjana Maria, Victoria Azarenka and perhaps soon Naomi Osaka, Angelique Kerber and Elina Svitolina — parenthood is one of the reasons Mirza is ready to move on.“It was very important to me that I be asked why I’m leaving and not when I’m leaving,” she said. “I would like to have a quieter life. I would not like to have this grind of doing this day in and day out and want to spend more time with my son, more quality time. I don’t want him to be a nomad traveling for 25 weeks a year.”She added, “And also my body. I’m pretty beat, and I would like to not feel pain when I wake up in the morning for a change and be pressed on and prodded on and have needles being put in.”Mirza, who married the Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik in 2010, said this sitting in a small interview room in a building at Melbourne Park that, like so many structures here, did not exist when she first arrived in 2005 with a world ranking of 166. That was too low for direct entry but with the Australian Open eager to build its regional connections and identity, she received a wild card as the top eligible Asian player.In her debut, she became the first Indian woman to reach the third round of a major in singles, losing 6-4, 6-1 to Williams, and reached the fourth round at the U.S. Open later that year. She was a confident teenager with a big forehand and personality, but injuries and her limited mobility kept her from improving on those results in singles, peaking at No. 27 in the rankings in 2007. Instead, she used her strengths to become No. 1 in doubles, winning six Grand Slam titles, three of them in mixed.Mirza became a major star in India — she has 10.9 million followers on Instagram (for comparison, Novak Djokovic has 12 million) — but not outside her region.“What you forget is that Indians are everywhere,” she said with a laugh. “And it’s not just the Indian people, it’s also the people from the subcontinent: the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis and the Sri Lankans. We are everywhere, and the fact is, when I go to a restaurant in Melbourne, and I walk there, I am stopped here, too. But having said that, it obviously wasn’t as crazy as it was back home.”“I’m pretty beat, and I would like to not feel pain when I wake up in the morning for a change and be pressed on and prodded on and have needles being put in,” Mirza said.Graham Denholm/Getty ImagesIn other countries, her tennis results would not have brought her the same level of recognition, but she has been a trailblazer even if no Indian women’s player has followed her all the way down that trail.“I think Indians looked at her with a lot of pride and a lot of prejudice,” said Prajwal Hegde, the tennis editor for The Times of India and one of the few women covering the sport worldwide. “That’s because of everything. She was a woman. She was outspoken. She was bold. She was daring.”Since Mirza’s emergence, China has had a first women’s major singles champion as have Latvia, Denmark, Canada and Japan. But India has remained an outsider, despite its 1.4 billion people and rich legacy of men’s tennis players like Ramanathan Krishnan,  Ramesh Krishnan, Vijay Amritraj, Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes. No Indian woman is ranked in the top 200 in singles this week. The sleeping tennis giant remains just that.“I’ve been asked about who is next a lot, a lot,” Mirza said. “And I’ve always come up empty with that answer unfortunately.”She agrees that it comes down to structures and said that all the Indian players, men or women, who have risen high in the game agree that they have done it “despite the system, not because of it.”For Mirza, “we are a cricketing nation, but we are not really a sporting nation.” But she intends to keep contributing to the tennis effort: through her eponymous academies in Dubai and Hyderabad.But she is not quite done playing yet, even if her Grand Slam days are done, and on Friday, as she took to the microphone after her last final in Melbourne, she choked up but pushed on, flashing back to facing Williams.“That was scary enough 18 years ago,” she said. “And I’ve had the privilege to come back here again and again.”She did not quite go out a champion, but she has been one, on her own terms.“I think if I had to pick one attribute of Sania, it’s that she was fearless,” Hegde said. “She was just born that way. At every stage there have been obstacles: from the clothes she wore, to the way she played, to the way she looked, to what she said. There was always this tendency to try to make her like everybody else, like other women.“It was not the India of today. She came well before her time, and she came at a time when it was not OK to be you. You had to conform. But she told everybody it was OK: to sit how you want, wear what you want, do your thing, do anything.”“I would like to have a quieter life. I would not like to have this grind of doing this day in and day out and want to spend more time with my son, more quality time,” Mirza said.Aaron Favila/Associated Press More

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      An Australian Open Final With Tennis and Debate on the Ukraine War

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      Nearly a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, a Russian-turned-Kazakh will play a Belarusian in the finals, which is sure to stir the debate over whether athletes from those countries should participate in international sports.MELBOURNE, Australia — In the two women’s semifinal matches at the Australian Open on Thursday night, geopolitics won in straight sets.For nearly a year, professional tennis — the most international of sports with its globe-trotting schedule and players from all over the world — has tried to balance its stated opposition to the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with its hopes that its competitions rise above the quagmire of international politics.It is not going well. Geopolitics has been everywhere at the Australian Open and will be on center stage in the women’s final.It has been 11 months since the sport banned Russia and Belarus from participating in team events at tournaments, as well as any symbol that identified those countries. It’s been nine months since Wimbledon prohibited players representing Russia and Belarus from competing, and it’s unclear whether they will be able to play this year. Players from Ukraine have lobbied to have them barred from all events instead of simply not being allowed to play under their flags or for their countries.That has not happened, and on Saturday Elena Rybakina, a native Russian who became a citizen of Kazakhstan five years ago in exchange for financial support, and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus will meet for the women’s singles title.Both Rybakina and Sabalenka, who blast serves and pummel opponents into submission, played tight first sets, then ran away with their matches.Rybakina beat Victoria Azarenka, another Belarusian, 7-6 (4), 6-3, while Sabalenka topped Magda Linette of Poland, 7-6 (1), 6-2. Conditions at this tournament — warm weather, balls the players say are tough to spin — have favored the big flat hitters since the first round, making the final showdown between Rybakina and Sabalenka almost inevitable.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.No Spotlight, No Problem: In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them. In this Australian Open, players under the radar have gone far.Victoria Azarenka’s ‘Little Steps’: The Belarusian player took a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes were strong.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.The matchup is sure to rekindle the debate over Russian and Belarusian participation in sports, a discussion that has become increasingly heated in recent days, both at this tournament and throughout the world. Rybakina’s and Sabalenka’s victories occurred hours after videos surfaced of Novak Djokovic’s father, Srdjan, posing with fans who waved a Russian flag and wore the pro-war “Z” logo and voicing his support of Russia, against tournament rules. Serbia and Russia have close historical and cultural ties.Another video raised the ire of Ukraine’s ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, Vasyl Myroshnychenko, who wrote on Twitter, “It’s a full package. Among the Serbian flags, there is: a Russian flag, Putin, Z-symbol, so-called Donetsk People’s Republic flag.”Last week, Tennis Australia, organizers of the Australian Open, prohibited fans from exhibiting any form of the Russian or Belarusian flags or other symbols that supported Russia’s war in Ukraine.On Thursday, Tennis Australia said four people waving the banned flags had been detained and questioned by the police for both revealing the “inappropriate flags” and threatening security guards.Djokovic, the nine-time Australian Open champion, plays in the semifinals Friday against Tommy Paul of the United States.On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee made clear that it was intent on having athletes from Russia and Belarus at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. The move went against the stated wishes of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who lobbied President Emmanuel Macron of France on the issue earlier this week.The I.O.C. last year recommended that sports federations not allow athletes from those countries to compete, a move it said protected Olympic sports from having the national governments in countries hosting competitions from inserting their politics into sports. Most international sports federations have followed that recommendation, but a few have recently relaxed their stances.In a statement Wednesday, the organization said, “No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport.” The I.O.C. said it planned to pursue “a pathway for athletes’ participation in competition under strict conditions.” If it follows recent precedent, that will most likely involve requiring Russians and Belarusians to compete either under a neutral flag or no flag at all and in uniforms without their national colors.Russian and Belarusian athletes could also compete in the Asian Games later this year, which will serve as an Olympic qualifier.The geopolitical strife at the Australian Open hasn’t even been limited to the war in Ukraine. Karen Khachanov of Russia, who faces Stefanos Tsitsipas in a semifinal Friday, has been writing messages of support to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area is a long-disputed enclave that is home to tens of thousands of ethnic Armenians within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, where a full-scale war was fought in 2020. Since December, Azerbaijani activists have blocked a main supply route for Nagorno-Karabakh, causing a growing humanitarian crisis.Karen Khachanov of Russia, who faces Stefanos Tsitsipas in a semifinal Friday, has been writing messages of support to the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.Ng Han Guan/Associated PressKhachanov, who is of Armenian descent and has spent extensive time in the country, said Wednesday he “just wanted to show strength and support to my people.”Khachanov’s messages prompted officials in Azerbaijan to write to the International Tennis Federation demanding it punish Khachanov. His messages do not violate any tournament or federation rules. He said Wednesday no one had told him to stop writing them.All this has put tennis back where it was last summer at Wimbledon. The tournament, along with the Lawn Tennis Association, prohibited players from participating in the sport’s most prestigious event and the lead-up tournaments in Britain.The men’s and women’s tours responded by refusing to award rankings points, an attempt to essentially turn Wimbledon into an exhibition. All the Grand Slams are supposed to abide by the sport’s rules prohibiting discrimination, but not awarding points for wins at Wimbledon also turned the tour’s rankings into something of a farce.Rybakina, a Russian through her childhood who became a citizen of Kazakhstan at 18 when the country promised to pay for her tennis training, spent the better part of two weeks talking about whether she was actually Kazakh or Russian and being asked to answer for her native country’s invasion as she stampeded to the title. Her family still lives in Russia.She has mostly not had to answer any political questions here. The actual Russians and Belarusians received those, allowing Rybakina to focus on tennis.“I think at Wimbledon I answered all the questions,” she said. “There is nothing to say anymore.”Sabalenka and the other players from Belarus and Russia have not had that luxury. They know how the world and many of their competitors have viewed them and their countries.“I just understand that it’s not my fault,” she said. “I have zero control. If I could do something, of course I would do it, but I cannot do anything.”The political currents show no sign of letting up. Wimbledon and the Lawn Tennis Association are discussing whether to let the players from Belarus and Russia participate this year. A decision is expected in the coming weeks. Wimbledon was the only Grand Slam to prohibit them from participating.Djokovic, the defending Wimbledon champion and seven-time winner of the championship, has been strategizing with his fledgling players’ organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association, to get the ban lifted.Russian players are desperate to get back to the All England Club.“The last information that I heard was, like, maybe one week ago that the announcement will be in couple of weeks,” Andrey Rublev said after Djokovic beat him in their quarterfinal Wednesday. “We’re all waiting. Hopefully we’ll be able to play. I would love to play. Wimbledon is one of the best tournaments in our sport.” More