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      In Tennis, the ‘Nepo Babies’ Are Everywhere

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      The names of a lot of the young pros on the tennis tour have a familiar ring to them. It’s about more than good genes.MELBOURNE, Australia — Stefanos Tsitsipas often sees something that is becoming increasingly familiar in his sport when he looks over at his team’s courtside box — a parent who is a former pro.Tsitsipas, the Greek tennis star who is scheduled to play Karen Khachanov in an Australian Open semifinal Friday, is the son of Julia Salnikova Apostoli, a top Russian player in the 1980s who was once the world’s top junior. His father, Apostolos, is also a seasoned player, though not a former top touring pro, who trained as a coach and a line judge and now coaches his son.Tsitsipas has long credited his tennis-playing parents for his professional success. It’s a growing refrain at tennis tournaments that has been particularly loud over the last two weeks at the Australian Open, where so many courts have featured the offspring of a prior generation’s pros. Sports are designed to be the ultimate meritocracy, and while every game features athletes who descended from others, tennis may be the ultimate “nepotism baby” sport.On-court success doesn’t require a parent who played elite tennis, but it sure can help.Ben Shelton, the 20-year-old surprise of the tournament and the son of the former pro Bryan Shelton, did not get serious about tennis until he was 11 years old. He played a lot of football when he was younger, but once he decided tennis was his calling, his father was on the court hitting balls with him every day.“He wanted me to be sure that it was what I really wanted to do because he didn’t want us to waste time on something if I wasn’t going to be fully committed,” Shelton, who lost a quarterfinal match Wednesday to his fellow American Tommy Paul, said during an interview this week. “Once he saw that I was fully committed and playing tennis and trying to compete at the highest level, he went all in.”Christian Ruud, who had a career-high singles ranking of No. 39 in 1995, coaches his son Casper.Jean-Christophe Bott/EPA, via ShutterstockSebastian Korda, the 22-year-old son of the 1998 Australian Open winner Petr Korda, also made the quarterfinals. It was his first time making it that far in a Grand Slam tournament, but most likely not the last. Korda’s mother, Regina Rajchrtova, was a pretty good player, too, rising to 26th in the world rankings in 1991.Petr Korda no longer coaches his son. But one of his tennis contemporaries, Christian Ruud, is still working in the box during every match for his prized pupil, his son, Casper, a two-time major finalist last year. They travel the world with golf clubs, hitting the links between tournaments.Yes, there is a fiery father-son doubles tournament waiting to be organized, and some other competitions, too.Tracy Austin’s 24-year-old son, Brandon Holt, made the second round in Melbourne, just as he did at the 2022 U.S. Open. Elizabeth Mandlik, the 21-year-old daughter of the four-time Grand Slam singles winner Hana Mandlikova, lost in qualifying after making the second round at the U.S. Open.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.Lest anyone forget, Judy Murray, the mother of Andy and Jamie, who have five Grand Slam titles between them in singles and doubles, gave the pro tour a shot in the mid-1970s as well. So did Taylor Fritz’s mother, Kathy May. His father, Guy Fritz, played professionally as well.Undoubtedly there is a generation of young players relieved that the children of Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf opted for other pursuits. Their son Jaden is a pitcher for the University of Southern California.Tracy Austin, second row far right, watched her son Brandon Holt at the 2022 U.S. Open.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesWeaned on the game since early childhood and tutored on everything from constructing a winning point to adjusting to life on the tour long before they ever get there, these players who do get the tennis bug grow up with myriad advantages that span nature and nurture. Veterans of the game, however, say the biggest edge does not fit the caricature of the high-achieving parent pushing a child to excel.Good DNA is a good start. Also, pursuing tennis can be incredibly expensive. Chances are, someone who had professional success has either money to finance a junior career or connections to a network of coaches and leaders of the sport to get the necessary support, especially when players are young and habits are forming.Before he died last year, Nick Bollettieri, who coached two generations of top players, including Agassi, said an aspiring professional had to learn the proper way to grip a racket by 10 at the latest. It’s a little awkward, more like cupping a handful of coins than grasping a frying pan or a baseball bat.“After that it’s too late,” he said.The players themselves and people who have spent their lives around tennis say the advantages go far beyond technical tips or pointers on strategy. Rather, having an innate feel for what a child needs at a given moment, not on the court but off it, can serve as a differentiator along the way.Mary Carillo, the former player who is now a tennis commentator, said the process usually begins with the child’s instinct to try to please their parents by emulating them. Then the parent tries to help the child enjoy the sport and get better at it by offering the requisite footwork and stroke technique. The children of pros begin to understand the rigor of the pursuit, that being like mom or dad is going to take a lot of hard work.Holt, Austin’s son, said during an interview in September that he learned by watching his mother go about her daily business, long after her career ended, how competitive she was and the importance of trying hard all the time. Whether his mother was playing cards, tennis or something else, she always wanted to win. That rubbed off.“If we were doing homework or chores and trying to take short cuts, that wasn’t acceptable,” he said. “You could not ever give less than your best. If you tried your hardest and got a bad grade on a test that was OK.”Martin Blackman, the general manager of player development at the United States Tennis Association, has witnessed the development of several second-generation players, including Shelton and Korda. He said those parents understand that becoming a great player is a journey during which progress is not necessarily measured by matches won or trophies collected.“It’s always about getting better, as a person first and then as a tennis-playing athlete,” Blackman said. “They know how hard it is so they don’t come down hard on their player-child after a poor result. They preserve their relationship with the individual. That combination gives players a tremendous amount of security and self-belief.”Mandlik said recently that whenever things aren’t going well, she goes back to a phrase her mother first said to her years ago — “tough times don’t last; tough people do.”As a child, Mandlik wanted to become a professional skier, but her mother refused to move from Florida to a cold-weather locale. So she decided to commit to tennis instead.She said her mother has never criticized her for a loss, something she has seen plenty of other parents do.“My mom understands how it feels to lose, so if you lose she’s not going to rip you,” said Elizabeth Mandlik, daughter of the four-time major singles champion Hana Mandlikova.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“My mom understands how it feels to lose, so if you lose she’s not going to rip you,” said Mandlik, whose twin brother, Mark, plays for the University of Oklahoma and has considered turning pro. “Now if you didn’t listen to your coach, then she can rip you.”Mandlik’s mother got her started in tennis but gave up coaching responsibilities long ago. Mandlikova sometimes watches her daughter practice, but rarely comes onto the court, leaving the coaching responsibilities to others, a move many former players make as their children rise through the ranks.Bryan Shelton, who coaches at the University of Florida, has handed his son over to Dean Goldfine, the former coach of Andy Roddick. Petr Korda has hired his good friend Radek Stepanek, a player he used to coach, to guide his son.Apostolos Tsitsipas is still the main voice in his son’s ear, in practice, and during matches, when he sits courtside, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees or his arms crossed on his chest, his face tight with concern, terror, frustration, inspiration — often all at once.He shouts words of encouragement in Greek, claps his hands every so often and raises a fist in celebration only when his son produces a little bit of magic. He sucks down bottle after bottle of water, but rarely leaves his seat for a bathroom break.Late last year his son brought in another voice, Mark Philippoussis, the retired, big-hitting Australian with Greek roots. In recent weeks, Stefanos Tsitsipas has begun playing with a combination of aggression, power and swagger that had disappeared from his game for long spells during the past year.“He makes for a good guy to have next to my father that can advise him, that can help him, can help me,” Tsitsipas said of Philippoussis after his quarterfinal win over Jiri Lehecka on Tuesday night.Parents, after all, can do only so much. More

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      Elena Rybakina Will Play Aryna Sabalenka in Australian Open Women’s Final

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      Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka have thunderous first serves and fast-paced groundstrokes, and are hard-wired to go for winners.MELBOURNE, Australia — It will be strength against strength and power against power in the Australian Open women’s singles final on Saturday.Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka, both 6-footers from Eastern Europe, have thunderous first serves and fast-paced groundstrokes, and are hard-wired to go for winners.But this Grand Slam final will also be a contrast in personalities.Rybakina is self-contained and difficult to read, maintaining an even keel throughout her matches. She reacted to her 7-6 (4), 6-3 semifinal victory against Victoria Azarenka with a clenched fist and only a hint of a smile, at least until the postmatch interview.Sabalenka is very expressive: rolling her eyes, fluttering her lips, shrieking with delight and frustration, chuckling when shots hit the net cord and fall her way — or do not.Rybakina, 23, is a quiet intimidator: her big serves and rolling, deep groundstrokes applying constant pressure. Sabalenka, 24, is anything but subdued: grunting on her shots and sometimes after her shots and often increasing the volume and velocity on big points.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.Sabalenka did it again on Thursday in her 7-6 (1), 6-2 victory over unseeded Magda Linette, who scrapped and counterpunched effectively until the first-set tiebreaker, when Sabalenka cranked up the power and the precision.“I kind of find my rhythm and start trusting myself and start going for the shots,” Sabalenka said. “It was great tennis from me in the tiebreak.”No argument there, and it is her phenomenal, next-level ball-striking that has propelled her into the top echelon of women’s tennis. And yet her inconsistency and combustibility have, until now, kept her from reaching the top. But after losing her first three Grand Slam singles semifinals, she is now into her first final.She is off to a torrid start in 2023, winning her first 10 matches without dropping a set and with no sign of the serving yips that were causing her to double-fault repeatedly a year ago when she competed in Australia.She served just two double faults against Linette, and when she served her first at 5-5 on the opening point of the game, she responded with a dominant serving game.But Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion from Kazakhstan, should pose a bigger threat to Sabalenka’s serve and equanimity. Sabalenka, from Belarus, has won their three previous matches, but all went to three sets, and they have not played since 2021. Both have lifted their games to new levels since then.Sabalenka is seeded fifth and Rybakina 22nd, but that does not tell the whole tale. Rybakina is seeded that low only because she received no ranking points for her Wimbledon victory last year after the tours stripped the tournament of points in response to its ban on Russian and Belarusian players, including Sabalenka, after the invasion of Ukraine.Rybakina, born and raised in Russia, only began representing Kazakhstan in 2018 after the country offered her greater financial support.If Wimbledon had been allowed to offer points, Rybakina would be in the top 10, but her run in Australia guarantees that she will break into the top 10 on Monday. She has beaten three straight Grand Slam singles champions to reach this final: Iga Swiatek, Jelena Ostapenko and Azarenka, a 33-year-old Belarusian who won the Australian Open in 2012 and 2013.There will be a first-time champion at Melbourne Park on Saturday, and there will be no shortage of full-cut, high-velocity tennis along the way. More

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      It’s Tommy Paul vs. Novak Djokovic in an Australian Open Semifinal

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      Paul, the first American man to reach an Australian Open singles semifinal since Andy Roddick in 2009, must now face Novak Djokovic.MELBOURNE, Australia — The tennis breakthroughs keep coming for Tommy Paul and his American friends.Taylor Fritz became the first of their peer group to win a Masters 1000 title last year at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif.A few months later, Frances Tiafoe became the first of their group to reach a Grand Slam semifinal in singles, pushing eventual champion Carlos Alcaraz to five sets.Now Paul, a smooth-moving talent who grew up near a small tennis academy run by his family in Greenville, N.C., has become the first American man to reach an Australian Open singles semifinal since Andy Roddick in 2009.For Paul, who defeated American newcomer Ben Shelton, 7-6 (6), 6-3, 5-7, 6-4, in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, all this is no coincidence. “I think it applies a lot,” Paul said. “You see Fritz win a Masters 1000, and I think all of us we’re all happy for him, but we’re all like, ‘OK, he did it. We can do that.’“And then ‘Foe makes semifinals of the U.S. Open and had chances in the semis, and who knows what would have happened if he had won that match? So, you see that happen, and you’re, like, ‘All right, that’s awesome. I’m happy for him, but I can do that.’”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.Paul, 25, has taken the hint, with ample encouragement from his veteran coach Brad Stine, who began working with him in September 2019 when Paul was outside the top 100 and had recently lost funding and coaching support from the United States Tennis Association and was denied a wild card at the 2019 U.S. Open.“That was based on some disciplinary things,” Stine said.But Stine was impressed by Paul’s openness to coaching and change — and his ability to handle world-class pace from the baseline — and though there have been some setbacks and lots of text messages, Stine feels Paul’s game is maturing and his commitment growing.“We went from him identifying himself as a counterpuncher,” said Stine, “to being a guy that’s looking for forehands and trying to dictate and dominate the court with the forehand, which was a big change because Tommy’s backhand had always been the more solid side of his game.”“I think everyone should be really excited for that kid,” Paul, left, said of Ben Shelton.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesStine already has helped a young American succeed down under.He was part of Jim Courier’s coaching team in 1992 and 1993 when Courier won back-to-back Australian Open singles titles and jumped in the Yarra River with Stine to celebrate.“He’s done so much for my game,” Paul said of Stine. “In the past four years, he’s really taken me up many, many levels. I’m really appreciative, and hopefully we can keep going. I’m going to make him jump in the Yarra if we win this thing. I’m not going, but I’m going to make him do it.”That swim, perhaps not the wisest idea in view of the Yarra’s pollution levels, remains a long shot.Paul’s opponent in his first Grand Slam semifinal on Friday will be none other than Novak Djokovic, who has won a men’s record nine singles titles at the Australian Open and who extended his winning streak at Melbourne Park to 26 matches on Wednesday night, demolishing a fine player, the No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev, 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.“I could not be happier with my tennis,” Djokovic said, his left hamstring still tightly wrapped but his movement and ball striking beyond reproach.Paul has practiced with Djokovic but never faced him on tour. Even though Djokovic and Rublev were still on court during Paul’s post-victory news conference, Paul said he wanted the ultimate Melbourne challenge.“I probably have a better chance of winning if it’s Rublev but to play Novak here in Australia would be awesome,” Paul said.He has more support than when he started. His mother Jill MacMillan, a former college player at East Carolina University who was his first coach, arrived in Melbourne on Wednesday morning after flying from Newark to Los Angeles to Melbourne in economy class in her scrubs. She is an audiologist and had only a carry-on bag after scrambling to make the trip on short notice after Paul beat Roberto Bautista Agut in the fourth round.“I texted Tommy once I was on my way and told him, ‘Your mom did something really crazy today. I just jumped on a flight from work,’” MacMillan said. “And he was like, ‘Unreal!’”Twenty-four hours and not much sleep later, she was sitting in the players box.“Oh my gosh, I was so high on adrenaline, I didn’t feel it,” she said. “But Ben made it pretty hard for him, though.”Chris McCormack, left, Paul’s agent, watched the match with Jill MacMillan, Paul’s mother, and Paige Lorenze, the player’s girlfriend.Aaron Favila/Associated PressShelton, a 20-year-old lefthander from Gainesville, Fla. playing in his first Australian Open, continued to impress in only his fourth tour-level event, pounding aces or aggressive second serves on break points and fighting back to force a fourth set even though he struggled for much of the match to return Paul’s serve.“I think everyone should be really excited for that kid,” Paul said, after shaking Shelton’s hand twice and embracing him at the net.There is genuine camaraderie among this rising generation of Americans, and Paul is now guaranteed to join Fritz and Tiafoe in the top 20 on Monday.He already has defeated top-drawer opponents: beating Rafael Nadal and the world No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in 2022. He is an all-surface threat who grew up playing on green clay at his family’s club in North Carolina and won the French Open boys’ title on red clay in 2015, beating Fritz in the final. Last year, he reached the fourth round at Wimbledon on grass.Now, he has made his deepest Grand Slam run on a hardcourt. The Yarra River, which still flows past Melbourne Park, awaits if Paul can beat the odds (and Djokovic) and become the first of his peer group to win a major title.“Actually, I think he will be the one taking a swim if he wins,” Stine said with a grin. More

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      With ‘Little Steps,’ Victoria Azarenka Is Making a Deep Run

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      Azarenka has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. But the outcomes have been good, too, as she’s in an Australian Open semifinal for the first time since she won it all in 2013.MELBOURNE, Australia — Dinner had arrived in the player restaurant for Jessica Pegula’s coach, David Witt, but it did not come with a spot in the Australian Open semifinals.Pegula, who was the highest-seeded player left in the women’s singles tournament at No. 3, had just been beaten convincingly, 6-4, 6-1, on Tuesday by her friend Victoria Azarenka in Rod Laver Arena.“Vika played pretty well,” someone said, using Azarenka’s nickname.“No,” Witt replied quickly. “Vika played beyond well. We weren’t expecting that at all. That was her best match in a long time.”Hardcourts, like the ones at Melbourne Park, have long been Azarenka’s happiest hunting grounds. A former world No. 1, she won back-to-back Australian Opens in 2012 and 2013 and reached the U.S. Open final in both those seasons, losing classic matches to Serena Williams each time. In 2020, a resurgent Azarenka beat Williams in a U.S. Open semifinal and gave Naomi Osaka quite a tussle before losing in the final.Though many of Azarenka’s former rivals, including Williams, are retired, she has played on, juggling motherhood with the demands of an international tennis tour and attempting to focus on the challenges at hand instead of what might have been.With her ball-striking ability, athleticism and innate combativeness, Azarenka, 33, a 6-foot Belarusian, had looked set for a long run near the very top of the women’s game. But she was knocked back by depression, injuries and an extended custody dispute with Billy McKeague, the father of their son, Leo. The boy is now 6 and living with Azarenka and relatives in Boca Raton, Fla., and attending school.“Obviously, he is watching some matches, but he definitely wants his mom to be home,” Azarenka said in her on-court interview Tuesday.After struggling through some of her early matches in Melbourne — losing the opening set to Madison Keys in the third round by 6-1 — Azarenka clicked into a higher gear against Pegula, the rising American who had not dropped a set in this tournament before their quarterfinal match.“I’m very excited,” Azarenka said. “I feel like I definitely appreciate being on the court more now.”She will face another tough assignment in a semifinal match Thursday against Elena Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion. Rybakina’s powerful and precise serve could provide quite a challenge for Azarenka, long one of the game’s premier returners.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so 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.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.But Azarenka has often sounded more interested in the process than the destination during this tournament. She said she has tried to train herself to focus on “little steps” rather than her more traditional, results-based goals.“I need to have patience,” she said. “When you win big, it’s hard to be patient, so you want to get the things going.”She felt she did not get ahead of herself on Tuesday, and though Pegula and Witt kept expecting Azarenka’s form to dip, she maintained a high level after the torrid start, full of deep groundstrokes and attacking flourishes, which gave her a 3-0 first-set lead.“I feel like sometimes when I play her, she can go off a little bit because of how she plays, but tonight it doesn’t really feel like she went off at all,” Pegula said. “That just made it super tough. At the same time, I feel like I gave her a lot of unforced errors, a lot of mistakes.”Uncomfortable in the slower conditions with Laver Arena’s roof closed because of rain, Pegula had to scrap for nearly every game she won, navigating six deuces before holding serve in the fourth game. Though she did break Azarenka at 5-3, Pegula dumped a short shot into the net at 15-0 in the next game that stopped her momentum as Azarenka broke back to win the set and take command of the match for good.Pegula, 28, a late bloomer who overcame major hip and knee injuries early in her career, is now 0-5 in Grand Slam singles quarterfinals, losing at that stage in the last three Australian Opens.“Obviously I’m upset about tonight, but at the same time, I’m putting myself in these positions to go deep in these tournaments,” she said. “I think I’ve proven that. I’ve been super consistent.”She continued: “Hopefully it comes together. I definitely want to do better. I want to do more.”“I knew I have to play fast, and I have to not give her the opportunity to step in, and I have to mix it up,” Azarenka said. Darrian Traynor/Getty ImagesAzarenka can certainly relate. She has had to battle her own perfectionist streak that sometimes left her overwrought and in tears during matches in her early years on tour. She has continued to be tough on herself and said that smashing rackets after a first-round defeat to Ekaterina Alexandrova in Ostrava, Czech Republic, last October was a recent low point.“I felt like especially last year my tennis wasn’t bad, but I wasn’t really mentally there,” she said. “I played with a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety, and it really was difficult to be brave and make the right choices in the important moments.”Asked about the fears, she said: “Fears of failing is a big one. To not be able to do what I want to do. So subconsciously sometimes it stops you from doing it. I think the point of being uncomfortable is scary. I’ve had panic attacks before.”But, she said, she had worked a lot on her mind-set.“Because when you achieve great success, sometimes you become conservative, and you become more hesitant to try new things,” she said. “This off-season, I was like: ‘You know what? I will just be open-minded and try new things and put my head down and work hard.’”The 2022 season was full of unexpected challenges, such as being among the players from Belarus and Russia who were barred from playing at Wimbledon because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Azarenka, one of Belarus’s most prominent athletes, has called for peace and said she was “devastated” by the war. She was also part of the WTA Player Council, along with Pegula, that supported the decision to strip Wimbledon of the rankings points typically awarded at the tournament in retaliation for the ban.Ukrainian players protested when Azarenka was included in the lineup for an exhibition ahead of last year’s U.S. Open to raise funds for relief efforts in Ukraine. Azarenka did not take part in the event.“It’s a very complicated and very delicate situation to manage,” said Maxime Tchoutakian, her coach. “She had a hard time, but it was a period that was difficult for many players, and they have to try to manage it the best they can.”Azarenka has said that she has donated clothing to help Ukrainian junior players and provided other financial support. The war continues, and it remains unclear whether Wimbledon will readmit Russians and Belarusians this year. But Azarenka, seeded 24th in Melbourne, on Tuesday looked particularly fit and focused: She was quick into the corners to defend but also decisive in moving forward and attacking to keep Pegula from settling into the sort of rhythm that suits her exquisite timing and flat hitting so well.“I knew I have to play fast, and I have to not give her the opportunity to step in, and I have to mix it up,” Azarenka said. “Because at hip level, there’s nobody better than Jess. She just doesn’t miss.”Azarenka sliced. She threw in looping forehands, ripped cocksure swing volleys for winners and served more consistently than usual against a player who had been among the leaders in Melbourne in breaking opponents’ serves. It worked, and now, for the first time in a decade, Azarenka is back in a semifinal at the Australian Open, the tournament she twice ruled and where her photo features in the tunnel of champions that players pass through on their way into Laver Arena.Her life has changed so much since 2013, as Leo makes clear. He was with her in Melbourne last year, joining her on the rostrum at a news conference after one of her matches. But he has school commitments this year and did not make the journey.“A few more days here, and I’ll be back,” Azarenka said to her son in her on-court interview after extending her stay with her play.“Honestly,” Witt said, “I don’t think she could have played better.” More

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      An All-American Australian Open Quarterfinal: Ben Shelton vs. Tommy Paul

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      Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul are playing for a spot in the Australian Open semifinals. The United States has waited a long time for something like this.MELBOURNE, Australia — Maybe one day, and sooner rather than later, American men swimming in the deep end of the pool at Grand Slam tennis events will stop being noteworthy.That is how it was during the first 40 years of the modern era of tennis, which began in 1968. During that era, some combination of players from the United States — Ashe, Smith, Connors, McEnroe, Agassi, Chang, Sampras, Courier, Roddick — almost always lurked, or even played each other, in the final days of the biggest tournaments.Those days now feel so long ago, an era that was destined to end after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the spread of wealth to Eastern Europe and the growing popularity and accessibility of a previously inaccessible sport beyond its traditional power centers in the United States, Australia, Britain, France and a few other countries in Western Europe.When Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul square off in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open on Wednesday afternoon (Tuesday night in the United States), it will be the first time two Americans have met this late in a Grand Slam event since Andy Roddick played Mardy Fish in Melbourne in 2007.Since one of them has to win, the United States is guaranteed its first Australian Open semifinalist since Roddick in 2009. A third American quarterfinalist, Sebastian Korda, retired with a wrist injury, down, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 3-0, to Karen Khachanov of Russia. Korda could have made it two American Grand Slam semifinalists for the first time since 2005.And yet, since early last summer, American men’s tennis has been having a moment that had been promised ever since the United States Tennis Association realized it had a serious problem on its hands some 15 years ago. This is what the U.S.T.A. had in mind when it began a development academy in 2008.The program has changed since then, switching to an emphasis on periodic camps for promising young players rather than having them leave home as young teenagers. But the goal has always been to develop a critical mass of players to compete regularly at the most important tournaments. American women, led by Serena and Venus Williams, could always do it. Not so for the men. Then last summer, results began to show.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.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.“This is what we’ve been working for,” Martin Blackman, the general manager for player development at the U.S.T.A., said as he sat on a bench across from Centre Court at Wimbledon in July.There, four American men made the final 16. Taylor Fritz barely lost to Rafael Nadal in a fifth-set tiebreaker in the quarterfinals. Two months later, at the U.S. Open, Frances Tiafoe became a sensation on his way to a semifinal loss to Carlos Alcaraz, the eventual champion and world No. 1.Those tournaments were a little different though.Wimbledon had barred Russians and Belarusians from participating because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That took three dangerous opponents — Daniill Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Khachanov — out of the draw.At the 2022 U.S. Open, Tiafoe was the only American to make it to the fourth round. But his victory over Nadal and near-upset of Alcaraz, combined with Fritz’s title at Indian Wells, Calif., in March, produced a new level of confidence among a collection of players 25 and younger, several of whom have been traveling, training and playing together since their early teenage years.“We expect to do well,” Paul, 25, said last week in an interview on a sun-splashed terrace in Melbourne as he watched another promising young American, Jenson Brooksby, beat Norway’s Casper Ruud, the second seed and a finalist at the French and U.S. Opens last year. “We probably expect to have at least a few of us in the second week. That’s our goal, and I know some of us want to go deeper.”He also served what turned out to be notice that afternoon.“We got Ben Shelton coming,” he said of the 20-year-old N.C.A.A. champion.Paul has taken the young player under his wing since Shelton turned professional in the middle of last year.“Kind of helped me navigate some of the early stages of a professional career,” Shelton said of Paul on Monday night, after his fourth-round win over another young American, J.J. Wolf, 24. “He’s been a good friend.”A good friend but never an opponent. They have hit just once, warming up together in Ohio last summer. Paul’s plan ahead of the quarterfinal was to watch videos of Shelton’s matches. What he will see is a dangerous lefty, seemingly fearless beyond his years, with a thumping serve and a fast-improving power game from the baseline.Shelton is still taking classes at the University of Florida and is determined to get his degree. He said he was lucky the semester had just started, so balancing school work with preparing for his matches was not a problem.Shelton also had the good fortune of a kind draw. Ranked 89th in the world at the beginning of the tournament, he has yet to face a seeded player. Most of his opponents have been lower ranked. One received a wild card. Another survived the qualifying tournament.Paul, ranked 35th, peaked at 29th in the world last year. He won the French Open boys’ singles title in 2015. Since then, though, he and his close friends and countrymen — Tiafoe, Fritz and Reilly Opelka — have watched players they beat as juniors achieve more than they have. But he believed he would play in the late stages of a Grand Slam event, even if, as he put it, some people might have considered him somewhat delusional in recent years.Born in New Jersey and raised in North Carolina, where he grew up playing on clay courts in Greenville, N.C., Paul is an all-court player with quick feet. He also has a frightening serve that topped out at 137 miles per hour during his fourth-round win over Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain. The ball off his racket sounds like wood popping in a campfire.Between points, and even in his service motion, there is a languid quality to his movements. Then the point begins and, if he is on, Paul is all grit, touch and force. But he is also comfortable banging and scrambling as long as the point requires.Lately, he has been playing with a freakish display of calm that betrays none of his internal tension. It’s the aspect of his game that he has worked on the hardest over the past 18 months.“That’s the hard part of playing tennis, right?” he said. “You got to keep calm.”That is especially true during five-set matches in Grand Slam events that include plenty of peaks and valleys, both physical and mental. Shelton, whose father, Bryan, played on the ATP Tour in the 1990s and now coaches both his son and the men’s team at Florida, has endured some early lessons in that. Two of his four matches have gone the distance. One ended in a fifth-set tiebreaker.For Paul and Shelton, doing Tiafoe one better and becoming the first American man to make a Grand Slam final since Roddick lost to Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2009, still may be too high a mountain to climb. The winner gets a likely semifinal match with Novak Djokovic, the nine-time Australian Open champion with 21 Grand Slam titles who is rounding into form as the tournament wears on.Paul would relish that chance anyway. He has waited a long time for it, and so has his country. More

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      Jessica Pegula Flies Under the Radar at the Australian Open

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      Jessica Pegula leads a cohort of players into the quarterfinals that few outside the locker room were paying attention to before the tournament. In this intensely mental sport, that was a good thing.MELBOURNE, Australia — Jessica Pegula does not land on many magazine covers. Her steady game does not produce a lot of highlight-reel moments. She is the world’s third-ranked player but has floated largely under the radar during her steady rise to the top of tennis.At the Australian Open this year, that approach is looking more and more like a secret to success.Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, lost Sunday in the fourth round and became the latest top-ranked player to talk about the burdens of being at the top.Ons Jabeur and Maria Sakkari, stars of the recently released Netflix series “Break Point,” failed to make it to the second week. Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American star, has her face on billboards at nearly every tournament even though she is ranked seventh in the world and has never won a Grand Slam or a Masters 1000 tournament. Neither have most teenagers, but not surprisingly, organizers scheduled three of her four matches in Rod Laver Arena, the tournament’s center court, and a fourth in Margaret Court Arena. She, too, lost Sunday in the fourth round.Who is still around? A diverse collection of big-hitters and all-court players who are both young and older but hardly A-list celebrities. They include Elena Rybakina, last year’s Wimbledon champion who has been largely snubbed by the tennis world the past six months; Jelena Ostapenko, the hard-hitting French Open champion whose days of being expected to win ended a few years ago; Donna Vekic of Croatia, a talented veteran currently ranked 64th in the world.On the men’s side, if someone had said a week ago that three Americans would make the quarterfinals but their names would not include Frances Tiafoe or Taylor Fritz, a breakout star of the U.S. Open and world’s ninth-ranked player, that would have sounded strange. But it’s the much less heralded Tommy Paul, Sebastian Korda and Ben Shelton who are alive.Tommy Paul celebrated his fourth-round win at the Australian Open. He will meet Ben Shelton, a fellow unseeded American, in the quarterfinals.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockThen there is Pegula, who made the quarterfinals of three Grand Slams last year and lost to the eventual champion and world No. 1 each time but has never commanded much attention. She said last week that she had heard that Netflix cameras might be following her around to gather material for the second season, but hasn’t noticed them.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so 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.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.“I’m definitely interested,” she said. “I want to have more exposure.”But does she really? In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them (See: Osaka, Naomi).Swiatek, who won 37 consecutive matches last year in addition to the French Open and the U.S. Open, said Sunday that recently, and especially in Australia, she found herself wanting to not lose rather than to win.“I felt the pressure,” she said.Ostapenko, who blasted Gauff off the court in straight sets Sunday, knows something about that. After she came out of nowhere to win the French Open in 2017, her life turned upside down. She felt like everyone expected her to win every tournament, “which is crazy, because you are still a human and you cannot feel great every day,” she said. “A lot of attention from everywhere outside the court, like photo shoots and all those kinds of things. You became more popular in your country. Everybody is watching you.”Currently ranked 17th, Ostapenko said she came to Australia hoping to begin a climb back into the top 10.It’s worth noting that inside the locker room, no one is under the radar. Every player knows every other player’s strengths and weaknesses, who’s hot, who’s nursing an injury or having a crisis of confidence.Both Gauff and Pegula said that they were not at all surprised that Rybakina, who played her first two matches on outer courts, just as she had for much of the summer and fall, had taken out Swiatek with her flat, thumping power that is ideally suited to the court conditions here.“It’s a motivation to win even more,” Rybakina said last week of her court assignments.Likewise, everyone in the locker room knows Pegula, who beat Swiatek earlier this month, has been playing the best tennis of her life, moving fast across the court, giving away so few points, forcing opponents to take whatever they can get from her, which hasn’t been much.“That locker room is the most educated place in the world,” said Pam Shriver, the Grand Slam doubles champion who recently started coaching Vekic part-time.Like everyone else here, Shriver, who was courtside Monday as Vekic beat Linda Fruhvirtova, a gifted 17-year-old from the Czech Republic, is pondering the so-called Netflix curse. No player featured prominently in “Break Point,” which was released 10 days ago, made it past the fourth round. Three withdrew with injuries just days before the tournament. Shriver wondered whether the players who had decided to participate in the series had taken the time to think through the effects that being part of a high-profile series might have on their psyches on the eve of the year’s first Grand Slam.“There are self-promoters and there are contenders,” she said. “Contenders don’t generally work on raising their profile or becoming influencers.”Often an athlete’s profile will grow organically based on results, but that doesn’t mean they do not have to manage the challenges of fame.Gauff has been in the spotlight since she was 15 years old and upset Venus Williams at Wimbledon.“There’s definitely a difference,” she said last week. “I feel like without being in the spotlight, you come more under the radar, less pressure, you don’t feel as many people online are probably going to, like, hate you if you lose.”Gauff laughed as she said that. But two days later, in the hours after her loss to Ostapenko, when she teared up during her post-match news conference and talked about how frustrated she was after working hard in the off-season, that joke seemed to hit closer to home.Donna Vekic is playing in her 11th Australian Open. “I’m kind of on the map again,” she said.Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesVekic, 26 and playing in her 11th Australian Open, knows about pressure on a teenage tennis star. As a 15-year-old, she was one of the sport’s next big things. In early 2021, she had knee surgery and struggled for more than a year to manage the pain. Her game finally clicked again in San Diego in October, when she rolled past a series of top-20 players, beating Sakkari; Aryna Sabalenka, ranked fifth in the world; and Danielle Collins, the 2022 Australian Open finalist, on her way to a three-set loss in the final to Swiatek.“From the end of last year, I’m kind of on the map again,” she said in an interview Monday.Coming into this tournament, Vekic just wanted to play at a high level, regardless of her results. Then she woke up Monday to text messages from two close friends telling her she was going to win the Open, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. She told herself that if she beat Fruhvirtova, she was going to turn off her phone.Even that might not do much good at this point. In the final eight of a Grand Slam, there is nowhere to hide, especially for Pegula. She is the highest seed left and plays the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals. By the numbers, she is the favorite now, even if there are three other players who have won Grand Slam singles titles still in the mix, who, like her began this journey outside the spotlight.“Doesn’t really feel like I’m the highest left,” she said, “though I guess that’s a cool stat.” More

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      Ben Shelton Masters a Tricky Fifth Set at the Australian Open. Holger Rune Does Not.

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      Neither Shelton, 20, nor Rune, 19, had gone this deep at the Australian Open. Playing in fourth-round matches on different courts, only one advanced to the quarterfinals.MELBOURNE, Australia — Two young tennis players born just six months apart were in different arenas but in the same predicament on Monday: trying to figure out how to prevail in a fifth set.Neither Holger Rune nor Ben Shelton had been this far at an Australian Open.Shelton, a 20-year-old American lefty with a friendly manner and an unfriendly serve, had never played in the Australian Open at all until this month: not even as a junior.But both powerful and hungry youngsters were on the brink of reaching the quarterfinals on opposite ends of the vast concourse at Melbourne Park that leads from the main court, Rod Laver Arena, to John Cain Arena.Rune, a 19-year-old from Denmark who entered the tournament ranked 10th in the world after a breakthrough 2022 season, was in Laver Arena facing the No. 5 seed Andrey Rublev in one of the featured matches of the day.The unseeded Shelton was somewhere closer to Off Broadway in Cain Arena facing J.J. Wolf, another unseeded American aiming for a breakthrough.Laver Arena was full. Cain Arena was not, with only a few fans seated on its sunny side on a warm yet hardly torrid day.But there were still shouts, roars and plenty of shifts in momentum in both venues before both matches arrived at a decisive fifth set, part of the learning curve for a professional men’s tennis player.Rune and Shelton had each played just one five-setter before arriving in Melbourne. Rune cramped in his five-set defeat to Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea at last year’s Australian Open; Shelton ran out of steam in his five-set defeat to Nuno Borges of Portugal at last year’s U.S. Open, his only previous major tournament.“Five sets in the heat, I barely survived,” Shelton said. “My fitness wasn’t near what I needed it to be at. So, I’ve worked really hard these last five or six months to get to where I want to be.”He has hired Daniel Pohl, the German fitness trainer who has worked with Naomi Osaka. Shelton was smart on Monday: toning down his natural exuberance early against Wolf to save fuel; dominating the fourth-set tiebreaker; jumping out to a quick lead in the fifth set; and then building on it to win, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4), 6-2.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so 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.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Wolf, 24, never broke Shelton’s serve in five sets, getting only two break points. Now Shelton will play in another all-American match against Tommy Paul, 25, in the first Grand Slam quarterfinal for both. Paul, already an established threat on the tour with victories over Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, advanced with a victory, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5, over the No. 24 seed Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain.With Sebastian Korda already in the quarterfinals, there are three American men among the final eight in Australia for the first time since 2000 when Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and the much lesser-known Chris Woodruff reached that stage.Shelton, who won the 2022 Division I men’s singles championship at the University of Florida and then turned professional that August, has had a fine draw here, facing no opponents ranked in the top 50. His returns need lots of work but after saving a match point in the first round against Zhang Zhizhen of China, he has continued to rise to the occasion, embracing the matches and the post-match interviews with the same enthusiasm.In only his second major tournament, Shelton has gone one round farther than his father and coach, Bryan Shelton, whose best Grand Slam run was to the fourth round at Wimbledon in 1994. He will also pass his father’s best career ranking of 55, breaking into the top 50 next week.“I try not to think about that at all,” Ben Shelton said of the comparison. “My dad’s the reason I’m here. I wouldn’t be here without him. They say you do better on your second try, and I think the way he coaches and explains the game to me and all the life experiences he’s given me, and my mom as well, are pretty much the sole reason I’m in the position I’m in.”Holger Rune after losing to Andrey Rublev in five sets.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is a gentle side to Shelton, much gentler than his running forehand, while Rune stalks the court with his long, elastic strides like a predator in search of the next meal.Still a teenager, Rune is already an imposing, intimidating physical presence, with rippling muscles in his legs and nervous energy as he adjusts his backward ball cap, picks at his shirt and shifts his weight as he prepares for the next rally.“I have so much passion to play matches, to compete,” he said. “To play tennis in this event is what I’ve been dreaming about since I was a little kid, so I’m leaving it all out there.”That approach worked in November when he swept through the field at the Paris Maters indoor event, beating Novak Djokovic in the final. And it looked like it would do the job again Monday when he served for the match at 5-3 in the fifth set against Rublev, the combustible shaggy-haired Russian who seems to throw his lean frame, and a percussive grunt, into each shot with every fiber of his being.In all, Rublev reeled off eight consecutive points before Rune held serve to 6-5 and then earned himself two match points in the next game.Rublev saved the first with a wide serve that Rune could not handle and the second with a crosscourt forehand that Rune could not handle.Andrey Rublev reeled Holger Rune in with great serves and one bold forehand that landed on the outer edge of a sideline.Martin Keep/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHe made it into the tiebreaker, only to see Rune jump out to a 5-0 lead. On other occasions, Rublev might have lost the plot, shouting at the injustice of it all, breaking rackets or pounding himself on the side of the head. But he kept it comparatively together this time, and he had time to recover because all the majors use a first-to-10-point final-set tiebreaker.Rublev slowly reeled Rune in with great serves and one bold forehand that landed on the outer edge of a sideline that left Rune wincing.Rublev soon led, 9-7, with two match points. Though Rune saved the first with a first serve, he had to produce something more extraordinary on the second: a running backhand pass winner down the line after Rublev chose not to hit to the open court with a swing volley.It was 9 all, and it was loud, very loud, with Rublev biting on his shirt collar and Rune pointing to his ears to ask for even more volume from the fans. Instead, he got an unlucky bounce.On Rublev’s next match point at 10-9 he hit a backhand return off Rune’s second serve that smacked into the net cord. Rublev was sure the ball was going to fall back on his side of the net. Instead, it trickled over and bounced on Rune’s side for a match-ending winner.“The luckiest probably moment of my life,” Rublev said. “Now I can go casino. If I put for sure I’m going to win.”Both men dropped their rackets, and Rublev dropped to the ground. He rose with tears in his eyes to embrace the youngster whose time, one expects, will come given all the tools already at his disposal.But potential is one thing, converting it another, and it may not be easy for Rune to shake off such a defeat. The image from Monday that will stick with observers was Rublev celebrating with both arms raised and Rune slumped in a chair behind him, both hands covering his face.“Of course, it’s not the end of the world, but it hurts,” Rune said. “I have to look at the other side, that there’s a few things I could have done better, so when I’m playing the next Grand Slam this won’t happen again hopefully.”Rublev, 0-6 in Grand Slam quarterfinals, gets to keep playing in this tournament, though perhaps not for long considering that he will next face Djokovic, a nine-time Australian Open champion who looked like a man back on a mission (and a healthy hamstring) on Monday as he demolished the Australian Alex de Minaur, 6-2, 6-1, 6-2.“The only chance I have is if I play my best tennis,” Rublev said.That sounds about right. More

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      Elena Rybakina Defeats Iga Swiatek in Australian Open

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      Iga Swiatek could not find an answer to the power game of Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who is seeded No. 22 in Melbourne.MELBOURNE, Australia — After starting this Australian Open in the hinterlands of Court 13, Elena Rybakina made it to center stage on Sunday for her fourth-round match with No. 1 Iga Swiatek.Rybakina ended up stealing the scene in Rod Laver Arena: pounding big serves and flat groundstrokes and taking away time and Swiatek’s shot at the title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.“It does not matter so much what court you start the tournament on as it does what court you finish the tournament on,” Rybakina said slowly and calmly a couple of hours later.Rybakina, who is 6 feet and has what tennis people call “easy power,” proved last July what she can do when she gets on a roll, rumbling past a series of Grand Slam champions and better-ranked, better-known players to win women’s singles at Wimbledon.A second major title is within reach if she maintains the form she showed against Danielle Collins in the third round and against Swiatek on Sunday. Lean with long limbs, Rybakina (pronounced ree-BOK-eena) can generate astonishing pace even in relatively slow conditions, and though she seems to take little delight in doing so with her still-water approach to competition, she made it clear in an interview that there was plenty of fire behind her poker-face facade.“What you see is calm, but for sure inside I’m nervous like everybody, and I’m full of emotions,” she said. “I’ve been that way since I was a junior. Sometimes it’s good also to show the emotions, that you are actually there and you are fighting. But this is something where I am different from other players. Most players are trying to learn how to be calm. I already know, and sometimes I’m trying to show more.”There were hints of it Sunday, including the amused smile that flickered across her face as she saw the excitement of the young Australian girl who met her and Swiatek at the net before the match to take part in the coin toss.But for the most part, Rybakina was all business, opening up big breaches in Swiatek’s normally formidable defenses with her big-bang patterns and her ability to take full cuts at the ball inside the court and straight off the bounce.Swiatek has faltered in her two most recent significant tournaments: the semifinals of the WTA Finals and the fourth-round match on Sunday in Melbourne.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockShe successfully attacked Swiatek’s forehand: hitting behind her on the run and ripping returns deep and at her body to capitalize on the extreme grip change Swiatek has to make after her serve.“For sure, if I feel physically strong and I’m healthy and I’m playing my best, it’s tough to compete against me, I understand that,” Rybakina said. “But also I’m trying to find my consistency throughout the year because it’s not easy with my big shots to avoid mistakes. But of course I’m trying to do less and less every match because I need to be focused, and it gets more difficult the better players you play.”The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so 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.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Swiatek, the thoughtful Polish star, is the clear and deserving No. 1. She won the French Open and U.S. Open last year and six other tournaments, winning 37 consecutive singles matches from February to July.But she has faltered in the two most recent significant tournaments: cracking on big points and losing in the semifinals of the WTA Finals to Aryna Sabalenka in November and now losing in the fourth round in Melbourne.She looked edgy: blowing a 40-0 lead in the opening game to lose her serve and blowing a 3-0 lead in the second set to lose the match, striking groundstrokes into the net at critical phases. She has seemed overwrought during the Australian summer: sobbing in her chair after losing to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup team event this month.“For sure, the past two weeks have been pretty hard for me,” she said. “So I felt today that I didn’t have that much to, like, take from myself to fight even more.”Her conclusion: “I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more.”If you went by the seedings, Sunday’s result was an upset. Rybakina is seeded 22nd, but that is misleading. She got no ranking points for winning Wimbledon because the tours stripped the tournament of points in retaliation for its decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players after the invasion of Ukraine.Rybakina, born and raised in Russia before switching allegiance to Kazakhstan in 2018, was not affected by the ban, but without the 2,000 points normally allotted to the singles champion, she did not get a rankings boost for her victory.With those points, she would be comfortably in the top 10 and would also have qualified for last year’s eight-player WTA Finals, where another mother lode of points was available.Though she and her team appealed to the WTA to give her a wild card for the event based on her Wimbledon victory, the WTA did not grant the request.“I think she deserved it,” Stefano Vukov, her coach, said on Sunday. “And people also don’t realize that players get big bonuses from their sponsors for finishing top five or top 10 that can add up to millions of dollars, so not getting the points from Wimbledon definitely cost her.”Representing Kazakhstan makes it more challenging to market her globally than if she represented, say, a Grand Slam nation. For Vukov, that is a part of the reason she has received more Off Broadway court assignments than a typical first-time Wimbledon champion.“Where you come from has a big impact on the respect you might get on tour,” he said. “Not to be prejudiced or negative about it, but it is what it is. The biggest markets we have are the U.S. and China. You might get more recognition if you are from the U.S. than maybe from Kazakhstan, which is totally understandable. In Kazakhstan, she gets huge recognition, but worldwide, internationally, it does affect things.”Vukov is an extrovert compared with his player. “That’s why it works very well between me and Elena,” he said. “Whatever she’s thinking, I’m probably expressing it. I hope.”He said he had considered complaining to tournament directors about court assignments but refrained because ultimately “people are going to promote who they want to promote.”“Look, I think we don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” he said. “I think people know her quality and how good she is and how much she can win. She just needs to keep on going down this road, and that’s it and win as much as possible. I see her as a bit the Djokovic of the women: You got to win maybe a couple more Grand Slams to get recognized.”In Melbourne, she will now need to get past another major champion, Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia. Ostapenko, the surprise 2017 French Open champion, outplayed and outslugged the American 18-year-old Coco Gauff on Sunday, prevailing, 7-5, 6-3, as she pounced on Gauff’s second serves, hit 30 winners and repeatedly forced the speedy Gauff into errors with her pace.“I still feel like I’ve improved a lot,” said Gauff, who teared up in her postmatch news conference. “I still feel like when you play a player like her and she plays really well, it’s like there’s nothing you can do.”Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, right, met with Coco Gauff of the United States at the net after their fourth-round match.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe other quarterfinal in the top half of the draw will match the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka against Pegula, the last American woman in singles. But Ostapenko’s quarterfinal against Rybakina on Tuesday is guaranteed to be the higher-velocity affair, and Rybakina will have more support than usual. For the first time at a major tournament, both her parents are in Melbourne along with her older sister Anna.Her parents, based in Moscow, have often been separated from the 23-year-old Rybakina during her pro career. Her two main training bases at this stage are in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Dubai, where she spent the preseason with her expanded team that now includes a full-time fitness trainer. But Rybakina, whose parents have also joined her in Kazakhstan, now has the means to reunite her family more often.“It was not easy in the last years, not only me being new on the tour but also how the world changed with all the pandemic and everything,” she said. “It was really a crazy time for everybody, not only the athletes. But, for sure, it means a lot.”They will all be in her player box on Tuesday: in Rod Laver Arena. More