Collins, Danielle (1993- )

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    The Not-So-Genteel Side of Tennis Is in the College Playoffs

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    It took roughly an hour for the last rounds of the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s tennis championships to get real.The top doubles teams from Virginia and Kentucky were locked in an epic tiebreaker to decide who would take the often crucial doubles point into the singles portion of their matchup. The Cavaliers and the Wildcats took turns saving match points with clutch volleys and gutsy passing shots, as their teammates and fans howled and taunted after every winner and error.One last Virginia forehand sailed long and wide, giving Kentucky the tiebreaker, 11-9, and the early advantage in the team competition. The howls got louder and the taunts more rowdy. The All England Club this was not.The college version of this supposedly genteel sport — especially the competition that unfolds in the final segment of the N.C.A.A. championships — is where tennis morphs into something more like the spectacle of pro wrestling.Players roar after nearly every point. Coaches regularly wander across the courts mid-game for quick pep talks and to give strategy tips. The crowds cheer double faults and mis-hits, and the fans scream for action on one court when someone is about to serve on another court just a few feet away. The school colors pop off the courts — Texas Christian purple, Texas Longhorn burnt orange, North Carolina baby blue, Stanford cardinal — and provide a welcome respite from the corporate apparel seen throughout the pro game.North Carolina women’s players practicing before their match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesClaremont-Mudd-Scripps players using tubs with ice water for recovery after practice.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesIt is tennis with the volume turned up to 11, something the often staid and stale pro tours could learn from.“No place else I’d rather be,” said Fiona Crawley, a junior at the University of North Carolina, who is the top-ranked woman in the country playing for the top-ranked team. “This is my life.”Crawley, from San Antonio, is majoring in English and comparative literature. Her plan after graduation involves getting her “butt kicked on the tour for two years because I love to travel,” then becoming a teacher.The top-ranked University of Texas men’s team also has the No. 1 player on its side of the sport, with junior Eliot Spizzirri leading the top-ranked Longhorns into the final eight. He is thrilled to not be grinding the back roads of the pro circuit just yet.“It almost feels like a different sport,” Spizzirri said of college tennis. “You look to your left and your right and your best friends are competing right next to you and you don’t want to let them down.”An ocean away from all of this, Madrid, Rome and Paris are serving as the hot spots in the pro game this month during the European clay court swing. Yet for pure, high-octane intensity from the first ball to the last, it is hard to beat what is unfolding here on the steamy courts of the U.S.T.A. National Campus.Eliot Spizzirri of Texas during a doubles match.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesThis year the U.S.T.A. is hosting the final rounds of 14 major collegiate championship competitions from Division I, II and III. It’s part of a pitch the U.S.T.A. is making to the N.C.A.A. to make the training center in Orlando the permanent home of the final phase of the Division I tournaments, which means the quarterfinals onward for the teams, plus separate singles and doubles competitions.The idea is to make getting to Orlando for tennis akin to getting to Omaha for the men’s College World Series, a yearly destination for Division I baseball teams since 1950.“This is an opportunity to enhance the college game,” said Lew Sherr, the chief executive of the U.S.T.A.One argument for the sprawling campus is its seating for spectators, which cuts through the spine of the courts and makes it easier to watch simultaneous matches that have implications for one another.But a hurdle may be the weather. Playing tennis in Orlando in May can sometimes feel like playing on the surface of the sun, and matches have been suspended because of rain. A thunderstorm on Thursday meant the suspension of Division I play for the night, and there aren’t enough indoor courts to offer a backup plan.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesNo matter the venue, though, college tennis has been having a bit of a moment lately within the sport, making a case as a viable option for young prospects.Cameron Norrie, who played at Texas Christian, is ranked 13th in the world. Ben Shelton, an N.C.A.A. champion last year, wowed at the Australian Open. Jennifer Brady (U.C.L.A.) and Danielle Collins (Virginia) have made the Australian Open singles final in recent years.The ATP top 100 includes a dozen former college players, and the men’s tour even joined forces with collegiate tennis to guarantee top-ranked college players spots in lower-tier pro tournaments.This season, North Carolina State has featured Diana Shnaider, a 19-year-old Russian who made the second round of the Australian Open. She has already won a small WTA tournament.Attending college, if only for a year, was Shnaider’s hedge against professional tennis potentially banning Russians from competing because of the war in Ukraine. It was also a lot cheaper than paying for coaching and court time in Moscow. After the team finals, she will turn professional and head to Paris for the French Open.“It’s made me better,” Shnaider said of the college tennis experience.Still, much of the tennis establishment has long looked down at its version in college sports, an institution that is big in the United States but not in other countries. For critics, campus life that can include parties and papers and exams can distract from the focus on the sport, softening players compared with the rigors of the minor leagues of the pro game.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesJacob Langston for The New York TimesDavid Roditi, a former tour pro who has coached Texas Christian the past 13 seasons, said college tennis has a uniquely rowdy and pressurized proving ground that players can only understand with experience. Plus, most players don’t peak until their 20s anyway, he said, so what is the rush to go pro? He’s seen too many players burn out on the lonely tour life long before their prime.“They quit before they can find out how good they could be,” Roditi said. “In college you get four years of safety.”There are limits to scholarships, of course, and the competition is generally not as rigorous as on the pro circuits. Still, Roditi has been successfully selling the ideals of college athletics abroad for several years. His team has players from Scotland, England, France, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Jacob Fearnley, his top player, grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland.Fearnley said he was small as a teenager and needed time to develop and get stronger. Turning professional after high school would have been foolish, he said. Spizzirri, the Texas star, has a similar tale. Both are now long, lean and powerful.Fearnley said he has played low-level pro tournaments that were a snooze compared with what he has learned to deal with in college. During an early road match against Michigan near the beginning of his college career, the crowd yelled at him after every double fault and told him he was a hopeless tennis player. He crumbled then, but not anymore.“It’s just noise,” Fearnley said the other day ahead of another showdown with Michigan. “That’s what our coach tells us. You learn the only thing that matters is you and your opponent and what’s happening on the court.”Cleeve Harper of Texas cheering on his teammates.Jacob Langston for The New York Times More

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      Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams and One Last Shared U.S. Open

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      Osaka lost in the first round Tuesday to Danielle Collins, but would remember the final Grand Slam of the year for the front-row seat she had to her idol’s farewell party. A little more than 24 hours had passed since Serena Williams captivated Arthur Ashe Stadium with her opening-round triumph and bedazzled tennis dress, wrap and hair, and now it was Naomi Osaka’s turn.A year ago, with Williams sidelined with a hamstring injury, Osaka had brought so much heat to the U.S. Open, even before her third-round loss led her to announce that she needed to step away from tennis because it brought her so little joy and so much sadness, even if the sport had allowed her to eclipse Williams as the highest-paid female athlete.Now, for what she says is the last time, Williams is back, and once more, these two megastars that transcend their sport are connected, just as they have been since a fireworks-filled final at Ashe four years ago evolved into both a torch-passing and a moment that has linked them through their careers.Osaka, who lost to the 19th-seeded Danielle Collins, 7-6 (5), 6-3, in a match that bled into early Wednesday morning, is struggling to get out of a prolonged slump as she battles nagging injuries and could not reclaim her magic the way Williams did Monday night. “This is what makes you great, being able to win matches like this even if it’s in the first round,” Osaka said after coming up short. The loss meant a second consecutive premature exit from a tournament that once looked like it would be her grandest stage for years, and it happened despite all those connections she embraced over the past week to the role model she still reveres, who will be back in the spotlight Wednesday night.“I’m a product of what she’s done,” Osaka said Saturday in her pretournament news conference. “I wouldn’t be here without Serena, Venus, her whole family.”Like everything else at this tournament, Osaka’s match seemed peripheral to Serena Williams’s narrative, even if Osaka’s loss had its own significance. At the moment, Osaka is more famous than she is successful at the game that gave her stardom, which could become a problem if those two phenomena do not align soon, and now she will have to do it without her tennis guidepost on tour with her. Since Williams delivered her intentionally vague announcement that she would stop playing competitive tennis at some point after this U.S. Open, few players — perhaps even, few people — have taken the news as hard or tried to collect these last morsels of Williams’s professional tennis life as much as Osaka has.Sensing that end might not be far-off, Osaka cried as she watched Williams’s first match in Toronto earlier this month at the National Bank Open, and she cheered Williams on during her first-round match at the Western and Southern Open in Ohio the following week.It was similar to how she felt after she beat Williams in the semifinals of the Australian Open last year, a loss that caused Williams to break down during her news conference and end it after just a few questions. At the time, Osaka sensed that was the last time Williams was going to play in Australia.Assuming Williams keeps her word, Osaka’s intuition will have aged well once more. The morning after the first-round Toronto match, Williams’s announcement in Vogue that the end was imminent hit Osaka hard.“I’m like, ‘Oh, my God,’ this is what devastation must feel like,” Osaka said of what she felt as she read the news. “It really is an honor just to keep watching her play.”Osaka was watching once more Monday night. She donned a baseball cap and a pair of round glasses and sat roughly 20 rows up from the court, even to the baseline, in the front row of a corporate box but in the open air, with fans passing in the aisle within an arm’s length of her.Coco Gauff, another young Black player who has credited Williams’s career with providing inspiration and a road map for her own path in tennis, was in the stands as well. Gauff, who had won her first-round match Monday afternoon, had planned to watch Williams’s match on television, but changed her mind, deciding she did not want to miss the moment dedicated to the woman who had given her belief.“It made me feel that I could do it,” she said Monday of learning about how Williams and her sister Venus had grown up poor in Compton, Calif., and broken into what had been an overwhelmingly white sport. “I hope that somebody can look at me and say that I feel like I can do it because she did it.”Osaka, whose mother is Japanese and father is Haitian, is a Japanese national, but, like Williams, she grew up largely as a Black woman in America, but their links go far beyond that.Like Williams, Osaka was largely coached by her father, who has spoken of copying the playbook Richard Williams essentially wrote for creating female champions. Osaka also has an older sister who played professional tennis; Mari Osaka, 26, retired last year.For much of their childhoods, Mari was the better player, though Naomi appeared to have a higher ceiling because of her speed, just as Serena Williams did. The first mountain each had to climb was getting good enough to play with and then beat their older sisters. Like Williams, Naomi Osaka has not been shy about speaking out on social justice issues, especially in 2020, following a series of police killings and shootings of Black people. Both have been unafraid to take on the tennis establishment.They played each other five times. Osaka won three of the matches, most memorably the 2018 U.S. Open final, when an overmatched Williams was penalized for receiving coaching and ended up in an ugly dispute with the chair umpire, Carlos Ramos. Osaka ended up in tears during the trophy ceremony as the crowd howled at the outcome.That was the first of Osaka’s four Grand Slam singles titles. It was the second of the four finals Williams lost while on the precipice of tying Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles championships. Williams has not won any Grand Slam singles titles since then. Osaka has won three more, including the 2020 U.S. Open, and was on the cusp of taking the torch from Williams and full control of the sport until her struggles with mental health prevented her from playing all but a few matches during the last six months of 2021. This April, she made the final of the Miami Open, her best result since her comeback began in January, but battled an Achilles’ tendon injury that derailed her preparation for the French Open and forced her to pull out of Wimbledon. After a few hard-fought losses this summer, Osaka badly wanted to play into the later rounds of the U.S. Open, and she came out on fire, lacing serves and forehands and digging balls out of the corners as she sprinted to an early 3-0 lead, looking like the Osaka of two years ago. But Collins quickly matched every ounce of Osaka’s power and proved just a little bit sharper, and maybe a bit luckier in the crucial first-set tiebreaker. She floated a desperate lob that caught the back of the baseline and knuckled a mis-hit service return that Osaka could not handle to clinch the set. In the second set, Osaka took another early lead only to succumb to another rush from Collins, as her forehand grew a little too loose on a night with so little margin for error. Collins gambled with big swings that paid off more often than not, and more often than Osaka’s gambles did. With Collins serving for the match, Osaka had two shots to get back on serve but couldn’t find the winners she needed and sent a backhand long to give Collins the match. “I just have to chill a little bit,” Osaka said while the loss was still raw. “There’s a lot of random chaos in my head right now.”She paused a slow walk off the court and an early departure from the tournament to sign some courtside autographs. Then it was over, and the tournament spotlight was back on Williams once more. More

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      Ashleigh Barty Wins Australian Open Women’s Singles Title

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      The top-ranked Barty defeated an American, Danielle Collins, to become the first Australian to win the Grand Slam singles title there since 1978. “I’m so proud to be an Aussie,” she said.MELBOURNE, Australia — The 44-year drought was over in Ashleigh Barty’s sunburned country. Barty, often inscrutable on a tennis court, had just finished letting her guard down with a full-flex howl of delight that could almost be heard above the roars in Rod Laver Arena.Now, Barty, Australia’s first Australian Open singles champion since 1978, was motioning to someone on the other side of the deep blue expanse, beckoning with both hands and a relaxed smile.Casey Dellacqua emerged from the sidelines. They have been close for a decade — since Barty summoned the moxie at age 15 to ask her to play doubles — and it seemed appropriate on this fulfilling Saturday night that Dellacqua, now retired, be the first to embrace her.“She brought me into the sport again,” Barty said.Dellacqua supported Barty’s decision in September 2014 to leave the tennis tour. Barty, just 18, was depressed, lonely and desperate to live a more normal life than that provided by hotels and practice courts. And when Barty had spent more than a year away from the game, playing professional cricket and leaving the jet lag behind, it was Dellacqua who invited her out for a hit and helped her realize that she did indeed want to fully explore her prodigious tennis talent.Barty returned to the tour in 2016 with no ranking but full commitment, and Saturday’s 6-3, 7-6 (2) victory over Danielle Collins of the United States was the latest proof that she made the right decision, for herself above all, but also for her sports-mad country.“She knows how proud I am of her,” Dellacqua said as she sat next to Barty on the set of Australia’s Channel Nine on Saturday. “Everybody thinks I have done a lot, but I cannot explain what Ash has done for me.”For a tennis nation like Australia, home to Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall and to grass courts in country towns and fancy clubs, it beggars belief that it would take 44 years to win any tournament, much less their own. But the drought was real in Australia, as homegrown champions like Patrick Rafter and Lleyton Hewitt and Samantha Stosur won major singles titles abroad but came up short in Melbourne.Barty, now 25, has solved the riddle — aced it actually — by not dropping a set in any of her seven matches at this year’s Australian Open.Born and raised in the steamy Australian state of Queensland, Barty has been ranked No. 1 for more than 100 weeks and has become a hugely popular figure in her home nation. Her matches during the Open this year have attracted large television audiences.But until now, her most significant triumphs also have come far from Australia. She won her first Grand Slam singles title in 2019 at the French Open and won Wimbledon last year when most Australians were unable to travel because of coronavirus restrictions.But she was able to organize a “Barty Party” at home this year, defeating the 27th-seeded Collins in prime time.After erasing two breaks of serve to rally from 1-5 deficit in the second set, she dominated the tiebreaker and finished off her victory with a forehand passing shot winner.After hugging Dellacqua, Barty was presented the winner’s trophy by another of her touchstones, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, a four-time Australian Open singles champion who, like Barty, is of Indigenous Australian heritage. The two women from different eras — Goolagong Cawley is 70 — have developed a deep connection, and Goolagong Cawley’s appearance on Saturday night was kept a surprise from Barty, who had not seen her in a year.“As an Aussie, the most important part of this tournament is being able to share it with so many people,” Barty said in her victory speech. “You guys today in the crowd have been nothing shy of exceptional. This crowd is one of the most fun I’ve ever played in front of and you guys brought me so much joy out here today. You relaxed me and you forced me to play my best tennis and against a champion like Danielle I know I had to absolutely bring that today.”In truth, it was not Barty’s best tennis: there were too many nervy shots, a first serve percentage of just 57 percent and even a missed backhand volley into an open court. But in light of the occasion and all that Aussie-Aussie-Aussie expectation, it was a stirring finish and it capped a dominant performance throughout the tournament.Barty’s final match wasn’t perfect, but it was stirring, and capped a dominant performance throughout the tournament.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesBarty swept through the draw by controlled play with her precise and powerful first serve, crisply chipped backhand and versatile topspin forehand. She won 82 percent of her first serve points against Collins, an aggressive returner, working wonders repeatedly with her sliced serve in the deuce court and fighting through some shaky patches to find the angles and lines when she needed them most.Barty has not beaten a player ranked in the top 10 in any of her three Grand Slam singles victories. That is not her fault, of course, and there were seven other top 10 players in Melbourne this year.Collins will surely harbor some regrets about the second set. She was in firm command at one stage and seemed to be relaxing under duress while Barty was tightening, double faulting twice to go down 1-5. But though Collins was within two points of winning the set in three different games, she could not close the deal as the near-capacity crowd gave Barty nothing but positive reinforcement, meeting Collins’s errors with cheers and her winners with polite applause.Collins was unusually subdued early, though was soon pumping her fist and shouting her trademark “Come on!” But she said she has struggled with back pain during this deep run in Melbourne, which explains why she has been standing up on changeovers instead of taking a seat, and neither her body nor her nerve could sustain her in the second set.“She started to push me back in the court a little bit more. I think I was having some issues really being able to fully rotate on some of my shots to be able to get my shots to where I needed them to be,” Collins said. “It was really unfortunate, but did everything I could, tried to push through it, fell short.”Collins delivered an eloquent, moving speech, breaking into tears as she thanked her mentor, Marty Schneider, doing justice to the occasion and to Barty.Danielle Collins was within two points of winning the second set in three different games.Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“It’s been tremendous to watch her climb the rankings all the way to No. 1 and live out her dream,” Collins said.It was a road game for Collins, but she has played plenty of those in her long and challenging climb from the public parks of Florida to a Grand Slam final.Collins, 28, was a two-time N.C.A.A. singles champion at the University of Virginia and did not turn fully professional until she was 22, quite a contrast with Barty, who began her professional career at age 14.Collins will rise to No. 10 in the world rankings after her run and become the top-ranked American for the first time. But she could not stop Barty from giving Chris O’Neil company. O’Neil, the last Australian to win the Australian Open in singles was an unseeded player ranked outside the top 100 who never made another deep run at a major tournament after her victory in 1978.The crowd cheered as Barty howled after winning match point.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesBarty has now solidified her spot as the world’s top-ranked player and has won her three Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces, red clay at the French Open, grass at Wimbledon and hardcourt in Melbourne. The only Grand Slam singles title she has yet to win is the U.S. Open, although she did win the women’s doubles title in New York in 2018 with her American partner, CoCo Vandeweghe.At 5-foot-5, Barty is not physically imposing in a sport increasingly populated by taller players like the 5-foot-10 Collins. But Barty is a complete threat, able to adjust her game on the fly and hit a particularly wide variety of shots.When she returned to tennis in February 2016, she did so with a new coach, Craig Tyzzer. They have formed quite a partnership and have worked to develop Barty’s game while preserving her mental health and enthusiasm.She did not compete on tour for most of 2020 because of coronavirus restrictions, and after her successful summer in 2021, she was weary and homesick and chose to return to Australia after losing in the third round of the U.S. Open instead of remaining overseas and competing in the WTA Finals in Mexico. Despite the similarity between the hardcourt surfaces used in Melbourne and New York, Tyzzer surprisingly said on Saturday that he does not think that Barty will win the U.S. Open unless the tournament makes a move to using heavier balls that are better suited to her game, which relies heavily on spin.But the decision to take a break certainly has paid off at the start of 2022. She is 11-0, winning the title in Adelaide and now, most significantly, seven matches at the Australian Open, giving Australians a much-needed lift after nearly two years of pandemic lockdowns and restrictions.“It can’t be easy playing with the weight of your country on your shoulders,” said Todd Woodbridge, the former Australian Open star, at the awards ceremony.But Barty’s shoulders were sturdy enough, and the Daphne Akhurst Memorial Cup was soon glittering in her deft hands. More

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      Danielle Collins Will Play Iga Swiatek in Australian Open Semifinal

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      Less than a year after an endometriosis diagnosis led to the removal of a tennis-ball sized cyst, the 27th seeded American will play No. 7 Iga Swiatek in a semifinal.MELBOURNE, Australia — Danielle Collins has played exceptional tennis to reach the semifinals of the Australian Open, but only after achieving the victory of being “able to feel like a normal person.”Less than a year after an endometriosis diagnosis led to the removal of a tennis-ball sized cyst from her uterus, as well as tissue from her bladder and bowels, the 27th-seeded Collins surged past Alizé Cornet, 7-5, 6-1, in a Wednesday afternoon quarterfinal match in Rod Laver Arena.“The advice that I had gotten over the years is that painful periods are normal, taking anti-inflammatories on a regular basis is normal,” Collins said. “I felt like it was something that I just had to deal with. It finally got to the point where I couldn’t deal any longer with it physically or mentally.”“Once I was able to kind of get the proper diagnosis and the surgery, I feel like it’s helped me so much — not just from a physical standpoint, but from a mental standpoint,” she added.Collins was able to return to competition seven weeks after surgery, at last year’s French Open.Cornet said Collins’s play had been even more powerful and stifling than she had expected.“Her ball is going really fast in the air, and she takes the ball super early,” Cornet said. “All the time you feel really oppressed. I felt out of breath all the time. I couldn’t, like, place my game. She just never let me do it, never gave me the time to do it. Yeah, she’s impressive.”Iga Swiatek of Poland celebrated after defeating Kaia Kanepi of Estonia.Tertius Pickard/Associated PressBefore the match, Cornet had compared Collins, known for roaring encouragement at herself on court, to a lion but said afterward: “Today I don’t think I gave her enough battle so she could express herself.”Collins returns to the semifinals three years after making her only other Grand Slam singles semifinal appearance here. Cornet was playing in her first quarterfinal in 63 Grand Slam main draw appearances. She said that her run had given her a newfound appreciation for the challenge of advancing deep into a tournament like the Australian Open.“I have eternal respect for the Grand Slam winner because it’s such a long way; my God, I have the feeling I’m playing this tournament for a year,” Cornet said. “I’m so exhausted mentally, physically. When you go all the way and win these freaking seven matches, it’s just huge.”In a Thursday evening semifinal, Collins will face the seventh-seeded Iga Swiatek of Poland, who needed more than three hours to beat the Estonian Kaia Kanepi, 4-6, 7-6 (2), 6-3, later Wednesday afternoon.Thursday’s first semifinal will pit the top-seeded Australian Ashleigh Barty against the unseeded American Madison Keys. If Collins and Keys both win, it will set up the first all-American final in Melbourne since Serena Williams beat her sister Venus in 2017.Collins, 28, first reached the semifinals here three years ago in a breakout run that confirmed her arrival from collegiate standout at the University of Virginia to elite professional.Apart from her physical improvements, Collins said that some of her biggest mental growth came in late 2020 on a very different surface: when the American doubles specialist Bethanie Mattek-Sands took her rock climbing in Arizona.Collins, who has a long-held fear of heights, said she was “terrified” by the “what ifs” of rock climbing, but that the stakes involved — even with ample safety equipment in use — made tennis seem relaxing by comparison.“Halfway through it I realized every time I step out on the court, it’s not life or death,” she said. “For people in rock climbing, it can be. That was a really big realization for me and something I think helped me grow to kind of step out of my comfort zone and try something I had never done before, something that I was really scared of doing. That was a huge moment of growth for me.”The comeback win marks a new area of growth for Swiatek, who burst into the top echelon of the game when she raced to the 2020 French Open title without dropping a set. Working on winning when not playing her best has been an area of focus for Swiatek and her traveling sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz.Last season, Swiatek only came back to win after losing the first set three times in 13 matches.“I’m proud of myself that I’m still able to find solutions and actually think more on court on what to change, because before it wasn’t that clear for me,” Swiatek said. “It’s part of the work that we have been doing with Daria to control my emotions and just maybe actually focus on finding solutions.” More

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      At the French Open, Serena Williams Moves to the Fourth Round

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      At the French Open, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion defeated her fellow American Danielle Collins, 6-4, 6-4, in her most convincing performance of the week.PARIS — Serena Williams’s tennis dress was green and billowed in the breeze. The tape on her right thigh was white and tight.It was a fashion clash, surely not what Williams had in mind when she approved this French Open ensemble. But the tape was a fitting symbol of her determination and persistence at age 39.Williams is not at her peak, and she looked rusty indeed when she returned to the tour and the red clay in Italy last month. But she is serving and scrapping her way into a much better place in Paris, and on an overcast Friday afternoon at a lightly populated center court, she produced her most convincing performance of the week to defeat a fellow American, Danielle Collins, 6-4, 6-4.The match was less straightforward and symmetrical than the score. Collins, who reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros last year, led by 4-1 in the second set after holding serve at love. The momentum appeared to have shifted, but Williams lifted, Collins dipped, and Williams did not lose another game.“Today in particular, this whole week thus far, I just needed a win,” Williams said. “I needed to win tough matches. I needed to win sets. I needed to win being down. I needed to find me, know who I am. Nobody else is Serena out here. It’s me. It’s pretty cool.”The one and only Serena is now back in the fourth round of the French Open, which is not unusual for a player who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles but is extraordinary at this advanced stage of her game.“I needed to find me, know who I am. Nobody else is Serena out here.”Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesShe is the oldest woman to reach the round of 16 in singles at Roland Garros in the Open era, surpassing her older sister Venus, who was 36 when she reached that round in Paris in 2017.“I personally can’t imagine still playing at this level at almost 40 years old,” said Chanda Rubin, a former top 10 player who is now a Tennis Channel analyst. “People get used to things, and we’re all guilty of it. You start seeing it more often, and it becomes less amazing, but what she’s doing is still amazing to me.”Success among older athletes is all the rage with Phil Mickelson winning the P.G.A. Championship last month at 50, Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl in February at 43 and Sue Bird winning a W.N.B.A. title last year at 39.There is clearly a role-modeling effect underway. Venus, who will turn 41 on June 17, is fading but still on tour, playing with tape and day-to-day pain of her own yet still hitting winners past women half her age.Roger Federer, who will turn 40 in August, remains in contention at this French Open after looking quick off the mark again on Thursday as he defeated his longtime rival Marin Cilic in four sets on the same patch of red clay where Williams beat Collins in cooler, heavier conditions.Seven Americans played third-round singles matches on Thursday, including four men: John Isner, Steve Johnson, Reilly Opelka and Marcos Giron. Williams was the only American to prevail, and I asked the 27-year-old Collins afterward if seeing Williams and other icons succeed late into their 30s and beyond made her view her own future differently.“I think that should give a lot of different athletes confidence, younger athletes especially, not to put as much pressure on themselves,” Collins said. “You’re seeing some of the greatest athletes in the world have some of their best success once they’re a little bit older. I think that goes to the maturity, the experience that they have at that point. It just shows how much of sports is a mental game, more so than just a physical game. It should give players confidence to see somebody like Serena or Tom Brady or Phil Mickelson.”Of course, Williams, Federer, Brady and Mickelson were all young phenoms before they became enduring superstars. What made them exceptional initially has helped keep them exceptional, but they have also had to adapt: training differently, eating more carefully and, in the cases of Williams and Federer, competing more efficiently.“Serena has had to make adjustments, just like Roger, to remain a factor at the majors,” Rubin said. “Look at Roger, being more aggressive and moving in, taking on that challenge, so I think that kind of adaptability is a requirement.”Even so, it has been quite some time since they reaped tennis’s biggest rewards. Federer’s last major singles title came at the Australian Open in 2018; Williams’s came at the Australian Open in 2017, when she was two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia.Serena Williams acknowledged the crowd after her win on Friday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBut both have continued to give themselves major opportunities: two match points for Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic; four different Grand Slam finals for Williams since her return from maternity leave.The odds of winning another major are against them. Federer, who will play Saturday night against Dominik Koepfer in the third round, is still in the half of the men’s singles draw with Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. But Williams’s section of the women’s draw has opened up promisingly. At No. 7, she is the highest seed left in the bottom half after No. 3 seed Aryna Sabalenka experienced her latest Grand Slam setback by losing, 6-4, 2-6, 6-0, on Friday to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.The only Grand Slam singles champions left in the bottom half are Williams and Victoria Azarenka, who is not at her most dangerous on clay. There is also Marketa Vondrousova, a left-handed Czech who reached the final here in 2019.“There are some real challenges in front of Serena, but of course it’s possible,” Rubin said. “If you look at who’s left in her half, she has to feel pretty good about her chances. She can go toe-to-toe in any of those matches and lose them, but they are also winnable. That’s what you want, and she has to be feeling better about her game after seeing how she handled a tough challenge against Collins today.”Williams served and competed well, and will need more of the same in the next round when she faces Elena Rybakina, a 21-year-old who is seeded 21st. Rybakina, who was born and raised in Moscow, now represents Kazakhstan and has Williams-level power.But Rybakina has never faced Williams and never played a match of this magnitude. Even at 39 on her least favorite surface, Williams deserves to be the favorite. More

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      2021 French Open: What to Watch on Friday

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      Serena Williams, John Isner and Victoria Azarenka will play on Court Philippe-Chatrier as the third round of the French Open begins.How to watch: 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time on Tennis Channel; streaming on Tennis Channel+ and the Peacock app.The third round of the French Open begins on Friday, and 12 Americans will play singles matches in the next two days. John Isner and Reilly Opelka, who are seeded, will be looking to fix a recent issue: There are no American men ranked in the top 30 for the first time in more than 50 years. There are no such issues on the women’s side, with Sofia Kenin and Serena Williams in the top 10 and five more Americans behind them in the top 30.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Court Philippe-Chatrier | 6 a.m.Victoria Azarenka vs. Madison KeysVictoria Azarenka of Belarus, the 15th seed, reached the semifinals of the French Open in 2013, but has not been past the third round since. In the past year, she reached the U.S. Open final, but was also knocked out in the first round of the Australian Open. After injuring her back at the Madrid Open in early May, it was unclear whether Azarenka, 31, would be able to play at Roland Garros. So far, Azarenka, a former world No. 1, has performed well, but she will be facing a formidable opponent in the third round.Madison Keys of the United States, the 23rd seed, has also struggled in 2021, not winning consecutive matches until this week at the French Open. Keys, 26, reached the semifinals in 2018 and the quarterfinals in 2019, but lost in the first round last year. Both players are hard-hitting baseliners. It should be an electric match.Court Philippe-Chatrier | 10 a.m.Serena Williams vs. Danielle CollinsSerena Williams celebrated after winning a long point in a tough match against Mihaela Buzarnescu in the second round on Wednesday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesSerena Williams, the seventh seed, showed signs of vulnerability in the second round against Mihaela Buzarnescu of Romania. After losing the second set, Williams, 39, limited her errors and ended up storming through the third set, 6-1, with a dominant performance returning serves. After some early-round exits during the clay-court swing, Williams must take every challenge seriously.Danielle Collins, an American ranked No. 50, swept past Anhelina Kalinina in the second round, losing only two games. Collins, who had surgery for endometriosis in the spring, did not play a tournament on clay in preparation for the French Open, but she has shown match fitness in the first two rounds. Collins, 27, will be a troublesome opponent for Williams. When the two met on hardcourts in January, Williams barely won in a third-set tiebreaker. Now, on a less favorable surface, there is the potential for an upset.Court Philippe-Chatrier | 3 p.m.Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. John IsnerJohn Isner has a booming serve, but his ground game will be tested in the third round.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesJohn Isner, the 31st seed, does not have a game that would traditionally favor clay. Isner, a 6-foot-10 American, has a booming serve that favors him on hardcourts and grass, but he has worked in recent years to improve his ground game. This helped him as he broke his second-round opponent, Filip Krajinovic, three times in the second set. Now, Isner’s ground game will be tested to its limit as he looks for an upset.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, the fifth seed, has had a strong clay-court season, winning the Monte Carlo Masters and the Lyon Open and reaching the final of the Barcelona Open. Tsitsipas, 22, swept through the first two rounds of the French Open without dropping a set, and is a favorite to reach the final from his half of the draw. On Friday, he will have to find a way to adjust to Isner’s strong serve. If he can settle in on return games and get some early breaks, he should be able to control the flow of the match.Court 14 | 5 a.m.Casper Ruud vs. Alejandro Davidovich FokinaCasper Ruud, the 15th seed, has spent the last few years knocking down national records that were once held by his father, Christian. This time, he will look to be the first Norwegian player to reach the round of 16 at more than one Grand Slam event after doing so for the first time at the Australian Open this year. Ruud picked up his second ATP title, and his second on clay, in Geneva last week.Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, ranked No. 46, struggled in a five-set match against Botic van de Zandschulp in the second round. The match lasted 3 hours 42 minutes, with far more errors than winners coming from both players as they attempted to grind out long points and exhaust each other. It will be a challenge for Fokina, 21, to recover in time.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on.Aryna Sabalenka vs. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova; Court Simonne-Mathieu, 5 a.m.Pablo Carreño Busta vs. Steve Johnson; Court Simonne-Mathieu, 10 a.m.Daniil Medvedev vs. Reilly Opelka; Suzanne Lenglen Court, 10 a.m.Paula Badosa vs. Ana Bogdan; Court Simonne-Mathieu, noon. More

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      2021 French Open: What to Watch on Wednesday

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      Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Serena Williams feature on the first day of second-round matches.How to watch: 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time on Tennis Channel; streaming on Tennis Channel+.Grand Slam tournaments often feature some first round upsets, but this year’s French Open has been particularly eventful in the half of the draw that plays its second-round games on Wednesday.Pablo Andujar, who is 35 years old and has never reached the fourth round of the French Open, is trying to follow up his knockout of fourth-seeded Dominic Thiem in the first round. Naomi Osaka, who was seeded second, withdrew from the tournament after reaching an impasse with organizers about appearing at news conferences.While there are plenty of stars still present in the tournament, the field has certainly widened for new challengers to make deep runs.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through the courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and will fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Court Phillipe-Chatrier | 3 p.m.Daniil Medvedev vs. Tommy PaulDaniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, secured his first French Open victory on Monday in his fifth appearance at the tournament. Medvedev has reached the final of two hardcourt Grand Slam events, but has struggled on clay. Although he pushed past Alexander Bublik in straight sets, it was not a particularly convincing performance.Tommy Paul, ranked No. 52, won his first-round match in five sets. Paul, a vaunted youth prospect who won the Junior French Open in 2015, has not yet bloomed on the ATP Tour, only making it to the third round of a major event once. Paul’s main weakness is his two-handed backhand, which is incredibly stiff and mechanical compared with his powerful, fluid forehand strokes.Paul will need to remain aggressive and try to unsettle Medvedev throughout their match to push for an upset, while Medvedev will clearly look to aim at Paul’s backhand when he needs to reset points and get himself back into winning positions.Court 13 | 8 a.m.Danielle Collins vs. Anhelina KalininaDanielle Collins, ranked No. 50, underwent surgery for endometriosis in the spring. Although she has not played a competitive match since March, Collins looked at ease in her first-round victory over Xiyu Wang. Although it took her three sets to win, Collins was consistent except on her first serve. With a few days of rest between matches, that will have been the focus of her practice sessions and a key to her advancing farther at Roland Garros.Anhelina Kalinina, a qualifier, upset Angelique Kerber, the No. 26 seed and three time Grand Slam champion, in straight sets on Sunday. This is Kalinina’s third main draw appearance at a major event — her first on clay — and the young Ukrainian seems to be oozing confidence as she tries to reach the third round for the first time.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece reached the semifinal at the French Open last year.Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCourt Suzanne-Lenglen | 10 a.m.Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Pedro MartinezStefanos Tsitsipas, the fifth seed, has had a strong clay court season, winning the Monte Carlo Masters and Lyon Open and reaching the final of the Barcelona Open. Tsitsipas, 22, reached the semifinals of the French Open last year, and looks to be a favorite to reach the final this year, with both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the other half of the draw. Keeping focused and trying to be as efficient as possible will be Tsitsipas’s main goal throughout the early rounds.Pedro Martinez, ranked No. 103, is a clay-court specialist. His first-round upset over Sebastian Korda, an American who had just won the Parma Challenger, was clinical, as Martinez needled away at Korda’s weaknesses and drew out 47 unforced errors. Although Martinez’s task is much harder for the second round, a similar strategy would be appropriate: he should try to unsettle Tsitsipas and coax out mistakes with long, arduous points.Paula Badosa of Spain won the Serbia Open in preparation for Roland Garros. Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockCourt 6 | 8 a.m.Paula Badosa vs. Danka KovinicIt is quite rare for Grand Slam tournaments to have a player seeded No. 33. But Paula Bodasa received that designation when Alison Riske, the 27th seed, withdrew from the competition after the draw was announced last week. Bodasa filled in her spot in the draw but to avoid confusion about relative rankings, was formalized as the 33rd seed instead of every player being adjusted. Badosa, who won the Serbia Open in preparation for Roland Garros, should feel that a seeding is well deserved, especially after a fourth-round finish at the French Open last year.Danka Kovinic has never been past the second round of a Grand Slam event in 15 previous main draw appearances. Kovinic reached the final of the Charleston Open on green clay after defeating several top players, and will be hopeful that her success earlier this year can help lead to an upset against the in-form Bodasa.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on.Fabio Fognini vs. Marton Fucsovics; Court 14, 7 a.m.Karen Khachanov vs. Kei Nishikori; Court Phillipe-Chatrier, 8 a.m.Serena Williams vs. Mihaela Buzarnescu; Court Phillipe-Chatrier, 11 a.m.Aryna Sabalenka vs. Aliaksandra Sasnovich; Court Suzanne-Lenglen, 1 p.m. More