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      Frances Tiafoe vs. Carlos Alcaraz in the U.S. Open Men’s Semifinals: How to Watch

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      Fans will get to see what one of the next great tennis rivalries could look like on Friday at 7 p.m.Those who have been worried about the state of men’s tennis when the likes of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal are retired have nothing to worry about.The next generation of men’s tennis is here, and fans will get a chance to see what one of the next great rivalries could look like when Frances Tiafoe, the 24-year-old American ranked No. 26, faces Carlos Alcaraz, the 19-year-old Spaniard ranked No. 4, in the semifinals of the U.S. Open.The two will play in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern time in what is expected to be a thrilling and intense match.Here’s what you need to know before their semifinal match on Friday:How did Frances Tiafoe and Carlos Alcaraz advance?Through five singles matches, Tiafoe has dropped only one set, which came in the fourth round against Nadal. Tiafoe defeated Marcos Giron of the United States in the first round, then Jason Kubler of Australia, Diego Schwartzman, an Argentine seeded 14th, Nadal and Andrey Rublev, a Russian seeded ninth, in the quarterfinal.Alcaraz arrives at the semifinals after back-to-back marathon five-set matches: He beat Jannik Sinner of Italy in a 5-hour, 15-minute quarterfinal match that ended at nearly 3 a.m. Thursday, and Marin Cilic of Croatia in the fourth round in a match that lasted nearly four hours.Alcaraz defeated Sebastian Baez of Argentina in the first round, Federico Coria of Argentina in the second and Jenson Brooksby of the United States in the third.Want to see the match in the stadium?Get ready to pay up. As of Thursday evening, tickets in the upper levels of Ashe Stadium were available from resellers on Ticketmaster for about $300. Tickets in the middle levels of the stadium were going for anywhere from about $1,000 to nearly $3,000.The best seats in the house? Those are nearly $7,000.Catching the match at home?Tune into ESPN on Friday. (If you’re in Canada, tune into TSN.)If that’s not enough for you, consider preparing yourself a Honey Deuce, the official cocktail of the U.S. Open. (Find the recipe here.)What can we expect?This match will be intense. Tiafoe and Alcaraz both play fierce tennis, and they’re quick up and down the court.Leading up to the U.S. Open, Tiafoe trained on his home court at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md. Komi Oliver Akli, a senior director of player development at the center, said that Tiafoe spent much of his sessions focusing on his fitness. Before Tiafoe beat Nadal in the fourth round, Akli told him to be physical in the match.“Make the match longer; make every point longer,” Akli said he told Tiafoe.Tiafoe won their only previous matchup last year in Barcelona on clay. According to Tipico Sportsbook, Alcaraz is the favorite to win Friday’s match, with -200 odds against +150 for the underdog Tiafoe. More

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      At the U.S. Open, Data Analysts Are Just as Busy as the Players

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      A new era of data analysis has given players deeper insights into their opponents’ games and a strategic advantage.For the data analysts working with the top tier of American tennis players, the busiest time of year begins with United States Open qualifying. They will spend 15-hour days creating and curating a trove of quantitative data and video clips.They will churn out match statistics and about 200 scouting reports for nearly 70 players over the three-week competition. The ultimate goal: provide players and coaches with more granular insights into each point and, in the process, give them a strategic advantage.“Players will always get their match tagged, broken up into how a point starts and how a point ends, and back to them within 24 hours,” said Geoffrey Russell, who works for the United States Tennis Association as senior manager for Team U.S.A.’s professional players. “We’ll also do bespoke projects for coaches who ask us to break down certain things even further.”During this year’s Open, Russell will collaborate with a team of eight data analysts. Their efforts speak to growing interest and investment in tennis analytics, and represent one of many ways the sport is employing the in-depth data analysis long used by professional teams in baseball and basketball.In tennis, it’s been more a data evolution than revolution, a gradual search for new, objective performance measures. That’s largely resulted in a combination of statistics and video highlights that build a more sophisticated picture of how individual players compete and, as a result, guide some match strategy and development.Tennis lags behind other sports in analytics, but it has gained significant momentum over the last several years. Better technology means more opportunities to capture and analyze more data points efficiently.National governing bodies like the United States Tennis Association collect shot-level data. New metrics in the tennis lexicon include steals (when players fall behind in a point yet manage to win it) and balance of power (how much time players spend on attack versus how much time opponents spend there). And there’s more attention paid to how points develop.The strategy coach Craig O’Shannessy said that from 1991 to 2012 tennis analytics “was very primitive.” Then, in 2015, rally length appeared in tournament data. Analysis of that data revealed much shorter rally lengths than expected, driving curiosity and greater respect for analytics.Andy Murray and his coach, Ivan Lendl, during a practice in June. Toby Melville/Reuters“There has been a gradual acceptance of new data points in our sport that matter most to winning and losing matches,” he said. “So, we’re definitely going down a road where we’re improving.”Still, even with new metrics and keen interest in analytics from top players like Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray, tennis has not fully embraced analytics, especially since the data requires time-consuming analysis and sometimes calls into question conventional thinking about how to compete and train.“The challenge at the moment is that coaches are looking at the numbers, but not always looking at them in the right way,” said Warren Pretorius, founder of Tennis Analytics, which provides players and coaches with match analytics. “They’re taking bits and pieces of match stats to support their theories.”So which new data points provide the most meaningful insights? It depends on the player. That speaks to another big tennis analytics challenge: What translates to more wins varies widely based on a player’s strengths, weaknesses and tendencies under pressure.“What we try to do is help athletes gain clarity about what their identity is,” said David Ramos, the U.S.T.A.’s director of coaching education and performance analytics. “How do they want to be playing in the most important points? How do they define a good performance if they don’t win a match? It’s definitely about the game style and personalizing the K.P.I. [key performance indicators] for a particular player.”To provide new insights and help process all the information, there are data-oriented companies eager to service players, coaches, broadcasters and fans. The U.S.T.A. works with companies like TennisViz, SwingVision, Hawk-Eye, Dartfish, Kinexon and IBM to generate meaningful data.The player Mackenzie McDonald of the United States calls himself a “big numbers guy” and finds the scouting reports provided by the U.S.T.A. helpful. At a recent U.S. Open tuneup tournament, he used data about his opponent’s preferred placement for first and second serves to his advantage. He also looks at the hot and cold plays metric (patterns that increase or decrease players’ chances of winning points).“You have to build a story for your opponent,” said McDonald, 27, who is ranked No. 77 in the world and will be playing in the Open. “It’s not x’s and o’s. It’s more like this is what can happen. This is what this guy likes. And these are the tools you can use.”Some top players add strategy coaches to their team for data analysis. O’Shannessy worked with Djokovic’s team from 2017-19, helping the former No. 1 player in the world understand his game better through analytics.O’Shannessy said that sometimes Djokovic asked simple questions, like whether he should hit a backhand or move around for a forehand when the ball landed in a specific spot. O’Shannessy then presented data for winners and forcing errors that came from the right side of the court versus the left side.“He was so good at absorbing all of this information and not rejecting it,” said O’Shannessy, who is also director of Brain Game Tennis, a strategy and analytics website. “His openness and willingness to just ask questions, anything to find an advantage, was key. His talking about it in the tennis world gave it a lot of legitimacy.”When the U.S. Open starts, McDonald will review the scouting reports provided by the U.S.T.A.“I think you’ve got to keep things as simple as possible,” he said. “You’ve got to keep some human element and instinct. Bottom line for me is I only look at a couple different areas.”Mat Cloer, who coached McDonald and is associate head coach for the University of Florida men’s tennis team, added: “It comes back to understanding the player you’re working with and how they absorb information. What information do you need to provide? That’s where the art of coaching comes into play.“If used properly, analytics can be game changing and eye opening.” More

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      Djokovic vs. Kyrgios: How to Watch the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final

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      Djokovic, a six-time Wimbledon champion, plays Nick Kyrgios, who is appearing in his first Grand Slam singles final.Sunday, the final day of Wimbledon, features the men’s singles championship at 9 a.m. Eastern between Novak Djokovic, a six-time Wimbledon champion, and Nick Kyrgios, who is playing in his first Grand Slam singles final.Kyrgios earned a spot in the final with some ease, after Rafael Nadal pulled out of the tournament with an abdominal injury the day before their scheduled semifinal.How to watch: In the United States, on ESPN with the pre-match show beginning at 8 a.m. and streaming on ESPN.com and the ESPN app. In Canada, on TSN1 and TSN4, with the pre-match show beginning at 8 a.m. More

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      The Changing Grass at Wimbledon

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      It starts off lush, but by the second week, a lack of moisture can alter the game. Players must adjust.On the surface, Wimbledon is more steeped in tradition than any other tennis tournament, yet it undergoes more radical changes from day to day than any other Grand Slam because it is the only one played on grass. As its grass courts gradually lose their moisture and then patches of the grass itself, players must continually adjust.Fifty years ago many tournaments, including three of the four Grand Slams, were played on grass. But today, many players play only one or two grass-court tournaments before Wimbledon.“The players are on hard courts almost all year and have no doubts there, but they’re not getting many reps on grass,” said Tracy Austin, a Tennis Channel analyst who reached two semifinals and won a mixed doubles title at Wimbledon. “Players get psyched out by the grass.”As Ian Westermann, the author of “Essential Tennis,” said, “Players have to problem-solve and think on their feet.”Wimbledon used to be even more distinctive, but in a way that many fans found repetitive and boring. Grass courts play fast, and the ball stays low, so matches were once an onslaught of serve-and-volley points, which reduced the drama. In 2001, the tournament switched grasses, replacing a mix that was 70 percent ryegrass and 30 percent creeping red fescue with 100 percent ryegrass.Groundskeepers at work on Wimbledon’s Centre Court during the tournament in 2021.Pool photo by Jed LeicesterThe new lawn made the courts more durable and provided cleaner bounces, while allowing Wimbledon to keep the soil beneath drier and firmer. That yielded higher bounces and slowed the game, which Eddie Seaward, who was then the head groundskeeper, acknowledged was needed for the good of the sport.The serve-and-volley quickly fell from favor. Craig O’Shannessy, the director of the Brain Game Tennis website, said that, in 2002, 33 percent of the men’s points featured that approach, but three years later, that number had dropped to 19 percent. Since 2008, the serve-and-volley has been used 5 to 10 percent of the time.But O’Shannessy cited statistics revealing that even as usage fell, the serve-and-volley remained a winning tactic: Two-thirds of serve-and-volley points were won by men, a figure that has not varied for two decades. O’Shannessy cited a “herd mentality” for abandoning the tactic and said players should attack more frequently.Austin said rallying is now part of Wimbledon. She said that as changes in strings and playing styles gave returners more weapons against the serve-and-volley, players began engaging in baseline rallies on the grass.Serve-and-volley “is successful because it’s not predictable,” she said, adding that players no longer learn or practice the serve-and-volley style, so they’re not comfortable doing it often.Wimbledon still requires a different skill set and mind-set from the other Grand Slams. While there are longer baseline rallies now, Westermann said, “grass places a premium on first-strike tennis. You just have to take your shot.”Patrick McEnroe, an ESPN analyst, said that players in his day had to charge the net immediately because service returns otherwise stayed too low, but that now the ball was more likely to come up high enough for the server to hit an aggressive ground stroke.“It’s easier to hit a first ball from the middle of the court with your forehand than with a volley,” McEnroe said. “And a mediocre volley is likely to bounce higher now, giving your opponent more of a chance to hit a passing shot.”Austin said that “serve-plus-one” style wasn’t always feasible without a big serve, but McEnroe said players should focus on “taking the ball early and moving forward” to win the point in one or two shots.Westermann said big servers still could go further in Wimbledon than on other Grand Slam surfaces, and McEnroe added that the wide slice serve was especially effective because it is harder to reach and harder to recover from on the low, fast court.Additionally, Wimbledon favors players who can hit through the court with hard, flat ground strokes. Topspin, the shot that brought Rafael Nadal endless success on clay, is less effective here because the deadened bounce leaves the ball in an opponent’s comfort zone.To optimize the lower bounce, Austin and McEnroe said the slice backhand — important to Roger Federer’s Wimbledon glory — was an essential weapon. “The slice stays so low and the spin is even more squirrelly on grass, especially because there are still uneven bounces there,” Austin said.More than other surfaces, grass rewards players who can improvise off low or bad bounces, McEnroe said. “Clay requires more point construction, but on grass, the advantage is to the superior technical players who have the best racket skills,” he said.Ashleigh Barty celebrated after winning her Wimbledon singles final last year against Karolina Pliskova. In the second week of the tournament, players must deal with the grass as it turns to dust and dirt.Pool photo by Ben QueenboroughThe bounces are lower and the ball moves slower in the first week, O’Shannessy said, because there is more water in the blades of grass. “Your butt and hamstrings will be way more sore playing on grass from getting down low,” he said.That moisture also causes players to slip on the run, Austin said, adding that “it gets in their head” as they worry about potential injuries.McEnroe said players can’t just explode and run all out. “Your feet have to be light, and while you run, you have to think, ‘How am I going to stop?’” he said.As the second week begins, the grass dries out and the soil hardens — barring rain — producing a higher bounce, making topspin more effective.As second-week regulars, returning players have an edge, O’Shannessy said: They are experienced in dealing with the grass as it turns to dust and dirt. “You’re often moving between two different surfaces, and if you’re not used to it, that can be difficult,” he said.The dirt surrounding the baseline where the players hit many of their shots not only changes the bounce again, but it also becomes slippery. “Complaining about the dirt is another Wimbledon tradition,” Westermann said.While it might be tempting for players to back up for better footwork and time to adjust to the bounces, he said, that tactic just allows opponents to go on the offensive.“Players instead need to double down and take the ball early,” he said. “Players who are confident and aggressive will be rewarded.” More

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      In Abu Dhabi, Turning the Desert Into a World-Class Golf Course

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      At the Yas Links, water management is vital, as is the type of grass used. It must tolerate saltwater.Yas Links Abu Dhabi, which is hosting the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship starting this week, is no mirage. Like other courses in the Middle East, it is a testament to man overtaking nature in harsh conditions.What players and fans will see is a course, ranked among the top 50 in the world by Golf Digest, that appears to have been unearthed from the desert sand, but, in fact, was the handiwork of the architect Kyle Phillips. The course was built on land bordering the Persian Gulf, and Phillips worked to make that coastline look like, well, a coastline.“The idea was to protect the large mangrove area by dredging away from it and maintaining it,” Phillips said. That was accomplished by making the channel (by the course) wider and more open between the mangroves and the ocean, then building land forms that echo those of the original links courses in Scotland.But the biggest challenge, Phillips said, was working in the heat. Summer temperatures regularly hit more than 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), but the humidity can reach about 86 percent. Sandstorms, like something from a movie, also appear he said. He also noted that the golf course was a speck in the total development of Yas Island.“This went from a barren island to seven hotels, the marina, the Ferrari theme park and the Formula 1 track, too,” Phillips said of the development that began in 2006 and finished in 2018.Clinton Southorn, director of construction and agronomy of Troon International, which manages the course, said it was a “literal oasis.”But that oasis takes maintenance, and the high salinity of the water used to help the grass grow, Southorn said, makes the impossible happen.“From an agronomy point of view, you can’t grow grass here,” he said. “But this tells you about Mother Nature and how it can adapt and how with technology and tools, and the right skills in place, you can sort of change that.”Southorn also said the consistency of the weather helped.“We can put an application down, such as an herbicide, we don’t need to worry about a storm coming through and washing it all away. On the flip side, there’s no rain.”In that climate and environment, taking care of the turf is complicated by the use of water in Abu Dhabi, said Corey Finn, the course manager. He said the potable water of the United Arab Emirates was acquired through desalination, but the golf course uses the recycled water of the nearby hotels and buildings.This poorer quality water poses challenges for Finn, but the entire process relies on six specialists who ensure that pipes are not leaking, sprinklers are not blocked and that the system shuts off as asked by its computer system.That system also allows Finn and his team to measure the amount of water the course receives. Measurements are taken each morning, and the data is sent to a cloud server that overlays the usage on a map of each green, allowing them to adjust the usage.To aid in this endeavor, the course uses paspalum, a type of grass that thrives in salty water. Because of how Yas Links must take care of its turf, its strain of paspalum suffers when it rains.To maintain high-quality turf, Finn said, they often have to add more water to flush the salt and minerals from the soil, and this sometimes allows them to wait a week before watering again.The challenge for the tournament, which moved across town from Abu Dhabi Golf Club after 16 years there, is twofold. Southorn said paspalum was a sticky grass that could grab the ball and posed a challenge to golfers who did not often play on this type of surface. And for the club, while the greens and fairways are all paspalum, making mowing easier, the tournament arrives during winter and at the height of tourist season, when the course receives its most play, putting added stress on the grass.“So we’re doing 150 to 200 rounds a day, which is 100 golf carts rolling over the grass,” Southorn said.Courses that hold professional tournaments must balance a one-week showcase event versus the 51 weeks they host guests, but it’s not often those courses hold tournaments when their grass is its most vulnerable. But Finn said the grass would be where it needed to be for the tournament.“Everywhere you turn on a golf course there is a challenge one way or another. What our team goes through every summer is pretty amazing,” he said about working in the heat, “and we have to manage, and not just the grass. We have to manage ourselves as well.” More

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      The Mental Health of Tennis Players Is No Longer in the Shadows

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      The sport is very stressful, and many professionals had to often manage their anxiety alone. Now the tours provide help.Robin Soderling was at the peak of his prowess when the walls started crumbling.In 2009, when Soderling was just 24, he stunned the four-time defending champion Rafael Nadal en route to the final of the French Open.Soderling reached the final again in 2010, losing to Nadal. By the end of the season, Soderling was ranked No. 4 in the world.Eight months later, he played his final match on the ATP Tour.“I always felt like I was under pressure,” Soderling, now 37, said on a video call from his home near Stockholm. “The better I became, the worse it got. Basically, every match I played I was the favorite. When I won, it was more of a relief than happy. When I lost, it was a disaster. Losing a tennis match made me feel like a terrible person.”When anxiety and panic attacks forced Robin Soderling of Sweden out of competition a decade ago, such issues weren’t talked about, he said. “There was such a big stigma.”Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesExpectations were high as soon as he had success as a junior. But by the time he was 26, Soderling was done, having experienced anxiety and panic attacks as well as debilitating mononucleosis.“My entire immune system was bad because of the mental stress I put on myself,” he said. “Even on my rest days I was never switched off. Then my body just tipped over. I went from being able to play a five-set match on clay to not being able to walk up the stairs. But I couldn’t really talk to many people about it because there was such a big stigma.”Sports psychologists are now a regular presence on the Women’s Tennis Association and ATP Tours. And almost no one is afraid to talk about it. At last year’s WTA Finals, most of the eight top singles players spoke freely about receiving counseling for mental health issues.“I’ve been working with a psychologist for years,” said Maria Sakkari, a semifinalist at the French and United States Opens in 2021. “I invested a lot in that. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever done for myself.”Because tennis is an individual sport, most players are on their own with limited support networks. They travel for 11 months of the year and almost everyone regularly loses.“Tennis is one of the toughest sports because there are constant changes that sports with a consistent schedule don’t have,” said Danielle Collins, a top 30 player. “We never know what time we’re going to play. We travel from city to city each week on different continents, with different cultures, even different foods. We even play with different tennis balls. And we lose every week unless you win the tournament. That’s something that you have to adjust to.”Last October, on World Mental Health Day, Iga Swiatek, the 2020 French Open champion, announced she was donating $50,000 in prize money to a mental-health organization. She is open about the value of having the psychologist Daria Abramowicz as a member of her traveling staff. Venus Williams has partnered with the WTA to donate $2 million to BetterHelp, an online therapy site, to provide free service.Sports psychology and mental wellness are not new concepts. Ivan Lendl hired the therapist Alexis Castorri in 1985 to help him after he had lost three straight U.S. Open finals. He went on to win the next three. But only recently have players been so open about seeking counseling.Mardy Fish, the former touring pro and captain of the United States Davis Cup team, opened the discussion when he said he had panic attacks before his fourth-round match against Roger Federer at the 2012 U.S. Open. Fish withdrew from that match and was subsequently diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. He shed light on his journey in a Netflix documentary.Iga Swiatek of Poland, who won the French Open in 2020, has a psychologist on her traveling staff.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesNaomi Osaka made headlines last May when she dropped out of the French Open, citing mental health concerns. She lost in the third round at the U.S. Open in September, and just returned to the tour in Australia this month.Jim Loehr, a clinical psychologist, has been practicing since the 1970s and founded the Center for Athletic Excellence in Denver. He has seen the field evolve.“Back then, people were very quiet about seeing anyone who could help their game mentally,” said Loehr, who is also a co-founder of the Human Performance Institute. “And we couldn’t talk about it either because our work is confidential. Now, everyone seems to have a sports psychologist.“That makes perfect sense,” he said. “Athletes need a team around them in order to ignite extraordinary performances. A coach is there for biomechanical expertise in stroke production. Then there are physios and massage therapists to facilitate healing and trainers, nutritionists, sports psychologists, even spiritual advisers. The body is pretty complicated, and it works best when all parts are integrated. The healthier and happier you are, the more you light it up on the court.”The WTA and the ATP have also taken note of the importance of well-being. The ATP has teamed with Sporting Chance, a British mental health organization. ATP players can call counselors and therapists 24 hours a day, seven days a week.“We have a hand-in-hand collaboration that makes it feel like an in-house service,” said Ross Hutchins, a former tour player and the ATP’s chief tour officer. “The goal is to make players more open to talking about their issues in a more comfortable manner. They may not want to chitchat about it the way they would with physical injuries, but we want to make it OK for them to feel any way they do.”Maria Sakkari, a semifinalist at the French and United States Opens in 2021, said she has long worked with a psychologist. “It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever done for myself.”Hector Vivas/Getty Images The WTA, which has offered mental health services for more than 20 years, recently began a more aggressive approach by adding four mental health care providers, one of whom is at tournaments year-round. Services include strategies for managing the mental and emotional challenges of match play, handling finances, and transitioning to life after tennis.“Our job is to help the athletes be their best outside of the court,” said Becky Ahlgren Bedics, the WTA’s vice president for mental health and wellness. “We don’t touch the X’s and O’s. We’re part of the holistic development. We are there to help with the pebble in your shoe during a run. We say, ‘Let’s stop and take the pebble out before it gets to be a bigger problem.’”The major championships are on board as well. At the Australian Open, which begins on Monday, a sports psychiatrist and psychologist are available to players. So are health and well-being experts. There are quiet rooms where players can relax and focus without distraction. There are even soundproof, private pods within the player areas.Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion, said the tours were taking the right steps.“I think the world is changing their perception of what mental health is,” she said. “We have that empathy when we see somebody who is physically hurt. Mental health is something that is invisible. But it is as strong, as powerful, as physical health.”Soderling doesn’t play much tennis anymore, other than with his two children. After multiple attempts at a comeback, each time followed by another panic attack, he stopped. Now he owns RS Sports, a sportswear company, and serves as captain of the Swedish Davis Cup team. He considers himself healed and will help anyone who asks.“As an athlete we’re treated to the best medical care you could have if you have a knee or a wrist injury,” Soderling said. “But it’s taken a long time to work with the mental aspect. It’s a shame it’s called mental health because it was not only in my head. My whole body was affected.“I’m glad to see there’s a better understanding of mental health today,” he added. “But it’s sad that it had to happen to so many people before it was taken seriously.” More

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      The Strategy, and Importance, of the Service Toss

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      Tennis players work for years perfecting the move, and finding the sweet spot can strikingly improve their game.The tennis ball ascends into the air and for a brief moment — like the one atop a roller coaster — all is tranquil. And then, bam, the racket, whipping through the air, makes contact and the action begins.The serve is the only time in tennis when the human hand, not the racket, dictates the direction and placement of the ball. And that makes starting with a good toss essential to winning.“You have total control of the serve, and so the toss is a key component,” said Craig Boynton, who coached John Isner and now coaches Hubert Hurkacz, who climbed from 35th to 9th in the rankings in 2021 as his service results improved.Aryna Sabalenka, ranked second on the women’s tour, noted in an email that “without a consistent toss you cannot have a consistent serve.”Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, whose strength enables a higher toss, serves against Tamara Zidansek of Slovenia during the 2021 US Open at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesThe toss may be the most underrated aspect of a player’s game for the pros, says the ESPN analyst Brad Gilbert. It looms even larger at the club level for recreational players, where many players lose control, often using too much wrist, bending their elbow or letting their arm drift. “If you lose control of your ball toss, you will lose your serve,” he said.The ideal is to hit the ball in that split second when it stops moving at the apex, said Jimmy Arias, the tennis director of IMG Academy, but there’s not one perfect toss height.Sabalenka and Taylor Fritz, ranked 23rd on the men’s tour, said in recent years they had started tossing the ball higher as they learned to use their legs to push off more, generating greater height and force.“You want to maximize the height you make contact with the ball on the serve,” Sabalenka explained. “As I got stronger I was able to bend and jump more up to the ball. That allowed me to toss the ball up a bit higher.”Boynton said that some big servers, like Andy Roddick, had a quicker motion and thus had a lower toss, while many Europeans learned a longer motion that required more time and a higher toss. “The height is partially determined by how long your motion is.”Sabalenka said players have their own ideal toss. “It takes a lot of practice to figure out what works best for you, your body, your particular motion, and your timing.”The goal, Arias said, is finding a motion and toss where the player is neither rushing nor waiting. “Serving is all about the rhythm, and the toss dictates that.”Hubert Hurkacz of Poland in action during his group stage match against Alexander Zverev of Germany at the Nitto ATP Finals tennis tournament in Turin, Italy, in November.Alessandro Di Marco/EPA, via ShutterstockAmong current players, Denis Shapovalov, Alexander Zverev and Federico Delbonis have notably high tosses. “Delbonis tosses it over the moon and has to wait five minutes for it to come down,” Arias said, which is fine except that he believed that when nerves creep in at big moments the higher toss and longer wait could create problems.Shapovalov, who has changed his approach several times, and Zverev have both often been plagued by double faults or second-serve struggles.“Zverev has to let it drop, but could go to a lower ball toss on his second serve,” Gilbert suggested, which would speed up Zverev’s motion and help solve his problem.But that would be a radical change, which may be necessary for a club player or someone on the junior level, but which is rare on the pro tour. At that level players do not separate out the toss for isolated practice. Fritz even laughed at the question. (To perfect his toss growing up, Gilbert would work on it walking to school and while sitting in a chair. “If you have to leave the chair to catch the ball then your toss is moving you.”)While Boynton said he believed it could be worthwhile overhauling a club or junior player’s toss and having them practice it separate from the serve, he would not make major changes at the professional level.Serena Williams, often credited with a “perfect toss,” serves against Belarus’s Aliaksandra Sasnovich during their women’s singles first round match on the second day of the 2021 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Tennis Club in JuneAdrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“For the pros, it’s more about tweaking the timing and the rhythm of all these moving parts,” he said, adding that last year he worked with Hurkacz on not letting the tossing arm speed up, which helped generate a more consistently big serve.Redoing a professional’s toss can be “very dangerous,” Arias said, but added that if it worked the results could be striking. He pointed to Marin Cilic, who had failed to reach his potential until his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, redid Cilic’s serve in 2013. Ivanisevic, who ranks second all-time in percentage of first service points won, had Cilic toss the ball further out in front (and a little lower). In 2014, Cilic won the United States Open.A good toss is not just about height, it’s also a matter of location. Gilbert said that an “elite toss” hits the spot from which you could hit your topspin, flat or slice serve.He said Andy Roddick, Pete Sampras and Serena Williams were dominant servers in part because “every toss was perfect” and they hit the ball at 12 o’clock, with no sideways drift so it was impossible to read before contact. (Arias practiced with Sampras “a million times,” but could not read his serves.)“You need to toss it in the same spot every time and not give away where you’re serving,” Fritz said, adding, “I would only move my toss around because of the sun.”But the 56th-ranked Jenson Brooksby said that while a toss must be in the right area, he did not strain for perfection. “There is a margin of error that does not matter,” he wrote in an email.Sabalenka and Fritz said top players disguised their serves well, but Brooksby said on the men’s tour Roger Federer is best. Boynton also praised Nick Kyrgios, while Arias said Novak Djokovic was underrated, explaining that he shortens the returner’s reaction time by tossing the ball further out in front of him.“If you could teach a long jumper to toss the ball all the way out to the service line, then hitting the serve would be like [a player at the net] hitting” an overhead for him,” Arias said. More

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      A Relaxed Ash Barty Is Still No. 1

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      She stepped away from the game and came back stronger, winning four tournaments this year, including Wimbledon.In a year when mental health has often been a headline in sports, it is fitting that Ash Barty of Australia is the No. 1 women’s player in the world. Barty had the self-awareness to walk away from tennis for more than a year in 2014 to seek a more normal existence (though she also took up professional cricket).In 2019, when she stumbled at Wimbledon, losing in the fourth round, she took a few weeks to return home and rejuvenate. And after staying off the tour for nearly a year during the pandemic, she has won four titles this year, including Wimbledon.Barty discussed her approach to tennis and life as she prepared for the United States Open. The following interview has been edited and condensed.Are you someone who has always gone your own way?I grew up with values from my mom and dad that you make the right decisions for the right reasons, and they are not dependent on tennis. When I do that, regardless of what that means for my tennis, I’m a happy person. Certainly, you can’t please everyone, but that’s all I need to do.Do you get frustrated when people attack Naomi Osaka or Simone Biles for making decisions based on their mental health?I haven’t followed those stories too closely, but based on the headlines, I hope that they are making the right decisions for the right reasons. It shouldn’t matter to Simone and Naomi what the rest of the world thinks.Barty serving to Angelique Kerber during the semifinals of the Western & Southern Open on Aug. 21 in Mason, Ohio. She went on to win the tournament.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesIn 2019, after reaching No. 1, you fell at Wimbledon, took three weeks off and then fell in the second round of your next tournament. Did you feel pressure as the new No. 1?It was really exciting — this was something I’d worked towards. It certainly didn’t add any pressure, if anything it took it off because I had absolutely nothing to prove to anyone.After Wimbledon, it was really important for me to go home and take stock. I arrived in the U.S. knowing I was probably not going to be playing my best tennis in some of those tournaments. But I had a solid end of the year. [Barty reached the finals of the China Open and won the year-end WTA Finals.]This year, was it easy to find your footing right away?I just take each week as it comes. Each match is an opportunity to do the best that I can on that given day. Whether that’s a win or loss is quite irrelevant. It’s more about going out there with the right attitude regardless of the result.As an athlete you need to be able to separate and not place your self-worth on those wins and losses — that’s certainly a false way to determine whether you’ve had a successful career. It’s more about the way you go about it and how much you enjoy that journey.Were you confident before Wimbledon or worried about lingering injuries?I always trust in my tennis. If I play well, I’ll be very hard to beat. But at Wimbledon, my team and I had no idea how my body was going to respond, so we were on edge. I would wake up each morning to see if I felt all right. Getting through the tournament physically was massive, so I was able to relax and play some of my best tennis when it mattered most.The U.S. Open has proved your biggest challenge. You’ve never gotten past the fourth round. Is there a specific challenge to playing there for you?I love playing in New York, and I love the conditions. Making the fourth round a couple of years in a row is not terrible — being in the second week of a Slam is where you want to be — and I’ve lost to some quality opponents. We just keep chipping away. I just go there and try to put my best foot forward. More