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      in Tennis

      Nick Kyrgios, a Dream and a Nightmare for Wimbledon, Is Winning

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      The Australian’s matches and news conferences have become irresistible theater — some call them a circus — that is a blessing and a curse for a sport battling for attention.WIMBLEDON, England — All white is the dress code at Wimbledon, the oldest and most traditional of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. So when Nick Kyrgios wears a black hat for his on-court interview, he is sending a message.And that’s what he did Saturday night on the No. 1 Court, after his emotional, fireworks-filled, 6-7 (2), 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (7) win over Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, the No. 4 seed.As Wimbledon enters its second week, the women’s tournament is wide open and there is potential for a men’s final of Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, which looks more inevitable each day. And then there is Kyrgios, a dangerous and disruptive force who has so much pure talent, but is so temperamental and combustible that the sport can neither control him nor ignore him.He plays when he feels like it, then disappears for months, only to return to wreak havoc and provide headline-grabbing theater.“Everywhere I go I’m seeing full stadiums,” he said after his battle with Tsitsipas. “The media loves to write that I am bad for the sport but clearly not.”Kyrgios is an immensely talented Australian who has an ambivalent relationship with the rigors and requirements of professional tennis. He relishes his role as the game’s great outlaw, unafraid to jaw with, spit toward or berate judges and umpires.He badgers the young workers on the court for not keeping the changeover chairs stocked with fresh towels and bananas. He smashes rackets. One ricocheted off the ground and very nearly crashed into the face of a ball boy at a tournament in California this year. His boorish displays regularly garner tens of thousands of dollars in fines.Then he will return to the court and fire one of the most dangerous serves in the game. He puts on the sort of magical shotmaking clinics — shots between the legs, curling forehands, underhanded aces — that other players can only dream about.He is the ticking time bomb who packs stadiums and has hordes of young fans. He is at once the sport’s worst nightmare and its meal ticket: hard to watch but also hard to ignore.When he loses, it’s always someone else’s fault. When he wins, it’s because he has overcome all manner of forces against him: tournament directors, the news media, the tennis establishment, fans who have hurled racial slurs at him.“Unscripted. Unfiltered. Unmissable,” is how the @Wimbledon Twitter feed put it Saturday night as Kyrgios, in all of his brilliance and brattiness, overpowered and outfinessed Tsitsipas over three compelling hours.All evening, Kyrgios went after the chair umpire as well as the tournament referees and supervisors for not defaulting Tsitsipas after he angrily sent a ball into the crowd, coming dangerously close to directly hitting a fan on the fly. Kyrgios claimed the umpire surely would have sent him off had he done the same thing. (He may not be wrong on that one.)The nearly endless complaints and interruptions rattled Tsitsipas. He struggled to maintain his composure, complaining to the chair umpire that only one person on the court was interested in playing tennis, while the other was turning the match into a circus. Then he took matters into his own hands, and started trying to peg Kyrgios with his shots. The crowd of more than 10,000 grew louder with each confrontation.It became only more intense after Kyrgios finished off Tsitsipas in the tiebreaker with three unreturnable shots — a half-volley into the open court; a ripped, backhand winner; and a drop shot from the baseline that died on the turf just beyond Tsitsipas’s reach.The drama was cresting as the Tsitsipas and Kyrgios news conferences descended into a name-calling, insult-filled back and forth about decorum and who had more friends in the locker room.Tsitsipas, certain that Kyrgios had intentionally made a mess of the match — and probably steamed that Kyrgios had beaten him twice in a month’s time — said his fellow players needed to come together and set down rules that would rein in Kyrgios.“It’s constant bullying, that’s what he does,” Tsitsipas said of Kyrgios. “He bullies the opponents. He was probably a bully at school himself. I don’t like bullies. I don’t like people that put other people down. He has some good traits in his character, as well. But when he — he also has a very evil side to him, which if it’s exposed, it can really do a lot of harm and bad to the people around him.”Tsitsipas said he regretted swatting the ball into the crowd, but was less remorseful about another that he smacked across the net and into the scoreboard, earning a point penalty.“I was aiming for the body of my opponent, but I missed by a lot, by a lot,” he said. Then, he added, “When I feel like other people disrespect me and don’t respect what I’m doing from the other side of the court, it’s absolute normal from my side to act and do something about it.”“It’s constant bullying, that’s what he does,” Tsitsipas, above, said of Kyrgios.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKyrgios was watching all of this on a television nearby. Minutes later, he sat down behind the microphone, wearing that black cap and a T-shirt featuring Dennis Rodman, the onetime N.B.A. rebel, and a big grin. Once more, Tsitsipas had created a situation where Kyrgios could get the better of him, even allowing him the rare chance to take the high road and claim to be a kind of innocent.“He was the one hitting balls at me,” he said of Tsitsipas. “He was the one that hit a spectator. He was the one that smacked it out of the stadium.”He called Tsitsipas “soft” for letting Kyrgios’s conversations with tournament officials get to him.“We’re not cut from the same cloth,” he said of Tsitsipas. “I go up against guys who are true competitors. If he’s affected by that today, then that’s what’s holding him back, because someone can just do that and that’s going to throw him off his game like that. I just think it’s soft.”On Sunday, Wimbledon fined Tsitsipas $10,000 and Kyrgios $4,000 for their behavior.Tsitsipas’s mother is a former pro and his father is a tennis coach who reared his sons on the tennis court from an early age. Kyrgios is of Greek and Malay descent, and his father painted houses for a living.“I’m good in the locker room,” Kyrgios, now rolling, went on. “I’ve got many friends, just to let you know. I’m actually one of the most liked. I’m set. He’s not liked.”Then, one last dagger.Kyrgios said that he did not take the court to make a friend, to compliment his opponents on their play, and that he had no idea what he had done to make Tsitsipas so upset that he barely shook his hand at the end of the match.Every time he has lost, Kyrgios said, even when he has been thrown out of matches, he has looked his opponent in the eye and told him he was the better man.“He wasn’t man enough to do that today,” he said.The victory put Kyrgios into the round of 16, where he will play the American Brandon Nakashima on Centre Court on Monday. He is two wins from a possible semifinal showdown with Nadal, assuming the 22-time Grand Slam event champion can keep winning as well. It would be the ultimate hero-villain confrontation, a perfect setting for all manner of potential Kyrgios explosions and boorishness, but also, as that Twitter feed put it, unmissable theater.Nadal is known to be one of the game’s true gentlemen, a keeper of the unspoken codes between players. He has marveled at Kyrgios’s talent and questioned the baggage he brings to the court and the ordeals he often creates with umpires, especially when his chances of winning begin to slip away.On Saturday night, after winning his own match and hearing about the Kyrgios-Tsitsipas fracas, Nadal turned philosophical when asked when a player crossed the line, and whether Kyrgios goes too far. It is, he said, a matter of conscience.“I think everyone has to go to bed with being calm with the things that you have done,” Nadal said. “And if you can’t sleep with calm and being satisfied with yourself, it’s because you did things that probably were not ethical.”How does Kyrgios sleep? Only he knows. More

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      in Soccer

      Women’s Euros Offer a Soccer Free-for-All

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      England will be expecting to win its first major women’s title on home soil this summer. But the field is deep, and filled with contenders.That old, familiar feeling crackled and fizzed into the warm night air as 20,000 fans streamed out of Elland Road last Friday. England had just dismantled the reigning European champion. A major tournament, on home turf, was only a few days away. The weeks ahead seemed to glisten with promise.England, by now, should know just how dangerous that feeling is. June is nothing but treachery and illusion. It is when July arrives, bringing with it the piercing light of high summer, that all of that faith and hope have an unerring tendency to curdle into disappointment and regret. Those flags, brandished so proudly, invariably fall limp in the heat.There are certainly reasons to believe that this year will be different. An abundance of them. England’s women’s team, without question, arrives at Euro 2022 as a genuine candidate to win its first major international honor.Its strengths are so many and varied that it almost seems disparaging to point out that it has home-field advantage and can expect the backing of raucous, capacity crowds. No player would dare say it, but if England emerges triumphant from the European women’s championship that begins next week, it will not be because of the passion of the public but the talent and experience of the squad.Its Dutch coach, Sarina Wiegman, knows her route to glory; she led her homeland to this title five years ago. It has a team packed with players who feature regularly in the world’s best competitions. It has a recent track record of traveling deep into the final stages of tournaments.“Watching those last 30 minutes, teams will be very worried,” Mark Parsons, the coach of the Netherlands, said after his side was picked apart at Elland Road. “England will be favorites for the tournament.” He is right. There is a convincing argument that Wiegman and her players not only can end the next month triumphant, but that they should.The problem is that the same applies to quite a few of England’s opponents in the tournament. A similarly compelling argument could be made for Spain, a team constructed around the stars of Barcelona’s all-conquering side and one that boasts at its heart Alexia Putellas, widely regarded as the finest female player on the planet.The Netherlands, too, should not be taken lightly, despite its defeat in Leeds. It has been only three years since — under Wiegman’s command — the Dutch were competing in the World Cup final. Vivianne Miedema, Lieke Martens, Danielle van de Donk and the rest have hardly regressed since.It is not quite a year since a Swedish team, bristling with experience, was competing in the Olympic final. Though it missed out on gold against Canada, the manner in which Peter Gerhardsson’s team swatted aside not only Japan, but also Australia and the United States during its run should serve as a warning.France’s coach, Corinne Diacre, raised eyebrows with her squad selections.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFrance’s aspirations seem to be limited not only by the fallout from what is best referred to diplomatically as the Aminata Diallo affair — it is hard to avoid the suspicion that another Knysna moment lies in wait, though in the rather less glamorous surrounds of Rotherham — but also by the curious decision of its coach, the imposing Corinne Diacre, to omit two of her finest players. Eugénie Le Sommer and Amandine Henry will be notable by their absence.Norway, by contrast, is bolstered by a returning force. The presence of Barcelona’s Caroline Graham Hansen alone would have been enough to make the Norwegians a threat. That she can now call on Ada Hegerberg, the forward seeking to make up for lost time after missing almost two years of her career through injury, may be enough to turn Norway into a contender.Ada Hegerberg is back on Norway’s team.Ntb/Ntb, via ReutersIt is true of all major tournaments — whether contested by women or men — that part of the charm lies in an unpredictability rooted in the comparative rarity of meaningful international soccer.Meetings of established, or expected, powers between finals are infrequent, and so it is difficult to interpret the teams’ merit in relation to one another. Both Argentina and Brazil, for example, will arrive in Qatar later this year among the favorites to deprive Europe of the (men’s) World Cup for the first time since 2002.Both are in rich veins of form. Both have considerable momentum behind them. Yet how much that means, what it is worth, is obscured by the fact that they have faced European teams on only a handful of occasions since 2018, all of them in the vanilla, faintly desensitized surrounds of the exhibition game.That is true of this summer’s Euros, too, of course: England’s 5-1 victory over the Dutch may or may not be a true guide to the sides’ strength, but it seems relevant that the Netherlands rested some of the standout players at Parsons’s disposal — Miedema included — and had enjoyed substantially less training time than the English. Neither of those will apply should the two teams be reunited in the final at Wembley.Lieke Martens and the Netherlands won’t be an easy out at the Euros.Nigel Roddis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe effect of those missing showdowns is magnified, though, by the fact that so little women’s club soccer is broadcast, certainly in comparison to the men’s game. As readers of this column have previously noted, the perception that England’s Women’s Super League is the strongest domestic tournament in Europe has arisen at least in part because there is no broadcast deal for its equivalents in Spain or France or Germany.England’s squad, as Wiegman has observed, is undoubtedly brimming with talent. A clear idea of how that compares with the strength in depth of, say, Spain is both possibly irrelevant — tournaments are not always won by the most gifted team — and somewhat elusive. Even performance data does not necessarily provide a complete picture because players’ statistical output depends entirely on the context in which they are operating.As women’s soccer grows, that should start to change and bring with it multiple material benefits. It would certainly be a shame if the insularity that afflicts the men’s game — mentioning no names, England — was adopted in a sport that has experienced its starburst in a far more connected world.For the time being, though, perhaps it is best just to enjoy its effects: a major tournament that offers the hope of legitimate uncertainty, one that could conceivably be won by almost half of its constituent teams — Denmark: we forgot Denmark — and one that, as tournaments used to do, will not reflect an established hierarchy but serve to define it.Freeways. Pebble Beach. Hollywood. In That Order.Gareth Bale: off to California.Geoff Caddick/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesGareth Bale has won the Champions League five times. He has three Spanish titles to his name and just as many European Super Cups and Club World Cups. He was once the most expensive player in the world, as long as Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t listening. He has, to his name, either the finest, or the second-finest, goal scored in a Champions League final.He has scored more goals for his country than any player. He has been the central figure in restoring Wales to the ranks of soccer’s elite nations: ending its wait for a place at a major finals in 2016 and then, less than a month ago, qualifying for its first World Cup in more than 60 years. He is still only 32.It is hard to explain, then, why it is that both Bale’s departure from Europe and his arrival in Major League Soccer, with Los Angeles F.C., have been so comparatively low-key. Bale’s stock should be higher than Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s, say, when he landed in North America. He is closer to his prime than Andrea Pirlo was when he came to New York. His résumé is, if anything, better than Frank Lampard’s was when he made the same move.The most obvious explanation is that the last three years of Bale’s decade at Real Madrid have been underwhelming, at least on a personal level. He has been little more than an optional extra at the club since his decisive intervention in the 2018 Champions League final. He has, for reasons that have not always been entirely clear, been cast as a villain by the club itself.It is a shame that dispiriting coda has come to obscure, to some extent, quite how much Bale has achieved, quite how high he has soared. His has had, by any metric or measure, a superstar’s career. He is certainly the greatest coup secured by an M.L.S. team since Ibrahimovic, and possibly since David Beckham. It is tempting to wonder if it will be only after he retires that we come to realize it.A New Idea? Boooooooo.A.C. Milan finished two points above Inter in the Serie A table last season.Roberto Bregani/EPA, via ShutterstockRegular readers will know by now that it is the considered opinion of this newsletter that soccer does not handle change very well. All sports cherish their traditions, the mores and the practices that lend them their lore and their magic, but few are quite so resistant to the relentless march of progress as soccer.It is hardly surprising, then, that the idea — announced this week by the F.I.G.C., Italian soccer’s governing body — of settling the Serie A title not by goal difference or head-to-head records but through a winner-take-all playoff has not exactly won universal acclaim.In truth, it is hardly a sweeping revolution. The new measure will come into force only if the teams that finish first and second end any given season with the same number of points. Yet that has done little to soften the blow of what seems, to many, a wanton break with tradition, a tacky novelty and, worst of all, the unwelcome intrusion of Americanism into the sport.This, some have warned, will prove to be the thin end of the wedge. Before you know it, there will be playoffs for the Champions League places, every game will last three hours and for some reason everyone will stop using contactless card readers and insist on paying for things using a PIN.The thing with traditions, though, is that they have to start somewhere. The last time the two leading teams in Italy could not be separated was in 1964, when Bologna and Inter Milan both ended the season on 54 points. Italian soccer did not have an established tiebreaker, so the game’s authorities had to improvise. Their solution? A winner-take-all playoff. Maybe it was goal difference and head-to-head records that were the intruders all along.CorrespondenceWe start this week with another entry in the ledger marked “two nations, separated by a common language.”“Why do English papers refer to players getting paid however many thousand pounds per week,” Jerome O’Callaghan asks, though he is by no means the first. “An annual amount I could understand, but this weekly thing is very vague. Do I take that weekly amount and multiply it by 52? Why the obsession about weekly paychecks?”This is one of those conventions that I’m happy to admit I’ve never really thought about; it is just the Way Things Are Done. I cannot be entirely certain — and I’d welcome other analyses — but my instinct is that it is an echo of the era in which players were treated like industrial workers.Until the 1960s, their pay was capped at £20 a week; the fact it was measured by the week, I suspect, was because that is how most factory employees were paid. Even after the so-called maximum wage was abolished, the tradition stuck: Players’ salaries, from that point on, were understood as and presented in weekly amounts.“I’m wondering if you have any comment on the serial snubbing of Son Heung-min by the P.F.A. in their award nominations,” Glenn Gale wrote. “I’ve read articles claiming various explanations (he scored many of his goals late in the season and so on). One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is any suspicion of bias against him as an Asian player. Is this the proverbial elephant in the room nobody wants to mention?”Son Heung-min, the star hiding in plain sight.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersI’ve always shared that suspicion, Glenn: It has seemed to me for a while that Son is overlooked a little because of the fact that we ascribe star quality much more easily to players from certain countries than we do others. We wrote about it, in fact, a few years ago. In this case, I wonder if perhaps the more pressing issue is that everyone on the Tottenham team is seen as a supporting actor to Harry Kane; it may be that which prevents Son from getting his due credit.And finally, a succinct one from Shawn Donnelly, presumably prompted by the Bale news. “Does anyone in England watch M.L.S.?” he asked. Some people must — the league has a broadcast deal here — but, like anything that is not the Premier League, the numbers are most likely quite small because England remains a very insular soccer culture. There aren’t vast audiences for Serie A, either, for example.The better news, perhaps, is that in terms of awareness, M.L.S. has made major strides. That can be attributed, in part, to the fleeting presence of the likes of Bale, Ibrahimovic, Wayne Rooney and the rest, but more significant is the (relative) success of players like Miguel Almiron. The medium-term future of M.L.S. is as a league that players come from, after all, rather than a place that, when they hit a certain age, they go to. More

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      in Tennis

      Wimbledon, a Longstanding Tradition, Opens with a Flurry of Changes

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      One hundred years after the opening of Centre Court, it’s a season of change at the All England Club, what with the barring of Russian players and a new set of green doors.WIMBLEDON, England — It is about tradition this year at Wimbledon on the 100th anniversary of Centre Court, but as the defending men’s singles champion Novak Djokovic walked back onto the grass on Monday to launch this year’s tournament, it was also about change.There is plenty of it at the All England Club in 2022: large and small; obvious and subtle.The big stuff: Russian and Belarusian players (and journalists) have been barred because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tournament has been expanded from 13 days of play, with no matches scheduled on the first Sunday, to a full 14 days that will leave no respite for the grass and the leafy neighborhood.The little stuff: The benches and desks in the Centre Court press seats have been replaced with padded chairs. All England Club members with their circular purple badges no longer serve as moderators at news conferences. Now, the stars sit alone at the rostrum, as they do nearly everywhere else in the tennis world.Djokovic passed through a set of green doors to meet Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea in their first-round match.Paul Childs/ReutersAs if to underscore the theme, Djokovic and his first-round opponent, Kwon Soon-woo, arrived on the most celebrated court in tennis in novel fashion.Players have long exited the clubhouse and made a hard left, passing behind a screen with a club member leading the way, before taking a hard right and stepping onto the grass.Beginning this year, they walk straight ahead and unaccompanied out of the clubhouse and onto the court through a new set of green doors that are quickly closed behind them.It seemed unceremoniously abrupt to those used to the old ways and fond of the murmurs from the crowd that used to build into cheers as the players navigated the passageway before coming fully into public view.But the pixie dust was still there, as Djokovic confirmed after his 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory, which seemed even closer than the score.“Childhood dreams were realized here in 2011,” Djokovic said of the first of his six Wimbledon singles titles. “I will never forget that. It will always have a special place in my heart. Of course, every time I step out there on the court, there is this goose bumps type of feeling, butterflies in the stomach.”It happens the first time, too, as Emma Raducanu later confirmed. All in a rush last year, she became a global star and a superstar in Britain by winning the U.S. Open at age 18, becoming the first player to win a Grand Slam singles title as qualifier. Victories have been much harder to come by since then, but she already had fine memories of Wimbledon after reaching the fourth round in her first appearance in the main draw last year.Emma Raducanu of Britain in her match against Alison Van Uytvanck of Belgium.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressMonday, however, was her first match on Centre Court, and though she has barely played on grass this season because of injuries, she managed the moment, and a tricky opponent in Alison Van Uytvanck, to win 6-4, 6-4.Raducanu may not be ready to take over women’s tennis. No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who just turned 21, has taken up that air and space. But Raducanu clearly knows how to rise to an occasion.“From the moment I walked out through those gates, I could really just feel the energy and the support and everyone was behind me from the word ‘go,’” she said. “I just really tried to cherish every single point on there, played every point like it could have been one of my last on that court.”That was imaginative thinking indeed, considering that Raducanu, Britain’s first women’s Grand Slam singles champion since Virginia Wade in the 1970s, is poised to be a Centre Court fixture for a decade or more if she can remain healthy.Andy Murray knows the drill. He, too, became a Centre Court regular in his teens and eventually lived up to the billing by ending a 77-year drought for British men in singles by winning Wimbledon in 2013 and again in 2016.Playing with an artificial hip at age 35, Murray has proved his love of his craft beyond a reasonable doubt. Though he will never bridge the achievement gap that separates him from the Big Three of Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer — each with 20 or more major singles titles — Murray remains a threat on grass on any given afternoon.He demonstrated it with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory over James Duckworth that closed play on Centre Court on opening day, almost exactly eight hours after it had begun and almost exactly 100 years after the first opening day on Centre Court.Britain’s Andy Murray celebrated his first-round victory over James Duckworth of Australia.Hannah Mckay/ReutersThat was on June 26, 1922, after the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club moved from its cozier, original home on Worple Road after purchasing land on Church Road to accommodate a new, larger stadium. The main court at Worple Road had been called Centre Court because it was actually at the center of the grounds. The club kept the name even though the new primary court was no longer so central.The new Wimbledon got off to a soggy start with rain and more rain, forcing the 1922 edition to finish on a Wednesday, but it was still a popular success with worthy singles champions: the stylish and long unbeatable Frenchwoman Suzanne Lenglen and the Australian men’s star Gerald Patterson, a two-time Wimbledon champion nicknamed “The Human Catapult” because of his big serve (he could volley, too).Both Lenglen and Patterson would have been in for a few surprises if they had been watching on Monday. Centre Court is now rainproof with its retractable, accordion-style roof that was put to good use for Djokovic’s and Kwon’s duel.The electronic scoreboards and the touch screen operated by the chair umpire would also have caught their eyes, as would the once-unthinkable fact that the chair umpire for Monday’s opening men’s match was a woman: Marija Cicak. More

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      in Tennis

      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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      World Cup 2022: What to Know as Teams Prepare for Qatar

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      The World Cup draw is Friday in Qatar, even though the entire field isn’t yet complete. While we don’t know all the teams, we do know quite a bit about how things will play out. Here’s a primer on the world’s greatest sporting spectacle.When is the World Cup?The opening match is Nov. 21 (three days before Thanksgiving in the United States). Over the month that follows, all the games will take place in a tight circle of eight stadiums in and around Qatar’s capital, Doha, making it the most compact World Cup in history.The final is Dec. 18 — a week before Christmas, which means the Doha airport on the morning of Dec. 19 is going to look like the entrance to a Walmart on Black Friday.Wait, don’t they play the World Cup in July?They always had, until Qatar got it.Qatar, like the other bidders, initially proposed holding the tournament in its normal summer window, and brushed aside any suggestion it could not do so with the help of cooling technology that did not, at the time, exist. As The Times wrote on the day of the vote in 2010:“Qatar’s bid overcame concerns about heat that can reach 120 degrees there in the summer. Officials say they will build air-conditioned stadiums, spending $4 billion to upgrade three arenas and build nine new ones in a compact area connected by a subway system.”It took more than four years, but in 2015 FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, eventually concluded that a summer World Cup in 120-degree temperatures might bring unneeded problems (like, say, fans and players dying) and agreed to move the tournament to the relatively cooler months of November and December.The Education City stadium in Al Rayyan, one of eight built or remodeled for the 2022 World Cup.David Ramos/Getty ImagesWhat about the league games that normally take place then?Oh, the leagues grumbled. A lot. But they lost.The switch to winter will disrupt not only league competitions in Europe and elsewhere, but also the lucrative UEFA Champions League, and it will require starting seasons earlier or finishing them later, or both.A winter World Cup also would leave those professionals who do not go to Qatar — less than 800 of the world’s players take part — with a midseason break that could extend to two months, once pretournament camps and friendlies and post-Cup rest is factored in.Fox Sports, which paid hundreds of millions of dollars for the United States broadcast rights, will have to wedge in a month of soccer games around another fall sport that tends to demand attention that time of year. Maybe you’ve heard of the N.F.L.?How many teams get in?A total of 32. They’ll be split into eight groups of four. The top two finishers in each group advance to the round of 16. After that, the World Cup is a straight knockout tournament.Which countries have qualified?Qatar qualified automatically as the host, and 28 other teams so far have joined it. Those include most of the biggest teams from Europe and South America: England and Germany, Brazil and Argentina, France and Spain.Canada is in. The United States and Mexico joined the field on Wednesday night.Ukraine might still go. Russia will not.Three places remain unclaimed. One will come from Europe, where Ukraine’s playoff against Scotland was postponed by war. Those teams will meet in June, with the winner to face Wales for Europe’s final place.The other two entries will come from two intercontinental playoffs that month: Costa Rica will face New Zealand, the Oceania survivor, in one game, and Peru, the fifth-place team from South America, will face an Asian team, either Australia or the United Arab Emirates.Are Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo going?Yes and yes.Argentina, and Messi, qualified in November. But Portugal, and Ronaldo, needed to sweat out a European playoff after botching its guaranteed route to the finals in the group stage.Will Qatar be Lionel Messi’s last World Cup?Franklin Jacome/Pool Via ReutersWho won’t be there?Erling Haaland, for one. (Norway didn’t qualify.) Mohamed Salah. (Egypt lost to Senegal on penalty kicks for the second time in a month.)Oh, and Italy. But then that’s not new for them. The Italians missed the 2018 tournament, too. Whoops.When will the games take place?Qatar is in the same time zone as Moscow. So whatever strategy you used to wake up early (or stay up late) for the games in 2018 will work this time, too. But it will mean kickoffs as early as 4 a.m. Eastern, and no later than 2 p.m. Eastern.How can I find out who my team is playing?The World Cup draw is Friday in Qatar. In it, all 29 teams that have qualified and the three still to be determined will be placed in groups. So by the end of the day, you’ll know which three teams your team will face in the group stage, and have a good idea of who might await in the knockout rounds.Harry Kane and England made the semifinals at the last World Cup and the final at last summer’s European Championship. Could 2022 be their year at last?Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWho are the favorites?The usual suspects qualified early, so many of them, in fact, that our soccer columnist, Rory Smith, wrote in November that “the likelihood is that the winner is already there.”Quite what the tournament, riddled with scandal and concern from the day Qatar was announced as the host, will be like cannot yet be known. The identities of the teams who will contest it, though, are — for the most part — extremely familiar.Most, if not quite all, of the traditional contenders are already there: a 10-country-strong European contingent led by France, the defending champion, and Belgium, officially the world’s best team, as well as the likes of Spain and England and Germany. They have been joined by the two great powerhouses of South America, Brazil and Argentina.More than a dozen more teams have joined the party since those sentences were written last year. Which is to say that, in March, it’s still wide open. More

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      Decades After a Disaster, English Soccer Fans May Stand Again

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      A practice banned for decades could return with new safety features.There was a time when thousands of fans at every English soccer game would stand throughout the match in spectator areas without seats. But after fans were crushed to death in the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, standing areas were banned as unsafe.Still, many fans pined nostalgically for the days of standing. And now, after many years, England’s top two soccer leagues will be allowed to add standing areas again, with safeguards, the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, a government advisory board, said Wednesday.In the past, standing fans were put in sloped, concrete areas. Often there were more fans standing than sitting at games.It was a cheaper way to see the game, and the proximity to fellow enthusiasts often made for a great atmosphere. But the areas sometimes grew rowdy, and especially after a goal, surges of fans could knock people over.During the height of hooliganism in the ’70s and ’80s, fighting sometimes broke out between rival sets of fans. This led teams to erect fences to separate standing fans from their rivals, and also sometimes from the field.That fencing contributed mightily to the Hillsborough disaster, when nearly 100 Liverpool fans in a crowded standing terrace at an F.A. Cup semifinal in Sheffield were crushed to death.Although standing was not the direct cause of the disaster — poor policing was, according to inquiries — the government nonetheless banned standing at games and insisted that every spectator have a seat.But for 30 years, many fans have carried a torch for standing at games. They said that they missed the atmosphere and that standing could be organized more safely than it was in its heyday. They also noted that many fans stood by their seats for a good part of games anyway.Although movement on the issue has taken decades, standing advocates have built momentum, and recently approval has seemed imminent. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which opened in 2019, was designed with two areas that could quickly be converted into so-called safe standing areas should it be permitted.Teams in the top two divisions can apply now to start standing areas in January. But those areas will look very different from the open concrete slopes of old.First, there will be seats there that fold up, so that fans can choose to sit if they like. No more than one fan for each seat will be admitted to the area, to avoid the tightly packed throngs that were often seen last century.In addition, metal rails will be placed between each row. Fans can lean on them, and they will also help keep people in their own rows, preventing excited forward surges of humanity that could be dangerous.Safe standing has been implemented elsewhere in the world, with success. German top-flight stadiums include thousands of spots for standers. Orlando City, L.A.F.C. and Minnesota are among the M.L.S. teams with safe standing areas. In Britain, Celtic of Glasgow began allowing a few thousand standees in the 2016-17 season. “We are beyond delighted to finally claim a win for the F.S.A.’s Safe Standing campaign,” Kevin Miles, chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Association, a fan advocacy group, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Today’s announcement is the result of prolonged and sustained campaigning by football fans.”Vinai Venkatesham, Arsenal’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the club would meet with fans next week to talk about adding standing areas. “It is something we are looking at,” he said. “We need to see what any implications will be, such as would it reduce the capacity. But we will listen to what our fans say and explore what can be done.”Tariq Panja More

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      in Tennis

      What Emma Raducanu Means for a More Complex Britain

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      Emma Raducanu, 18, galvanized the nation with her triumph in the U.S. Open, drawing congratulations from royalty and inspiring pride in her hometown outside London.LONDON — At long last, Britain got the outpouring of national jubilation it has craved this summer, not from a men’s soccer team that narrowly missed sports immortality but from a young woman with a radiant smile, Emma Raducanu, who stormed from obscurity to win the U.S. Open tennis title on Saturday.The straight-set victory of Ms. Raducanu, 18, over Leylah Fernandez, a 19-year-old Canadian, drew an eruption of cheers from crowds that gathered to watch the match at pubs in her hometown, Bromley, and at the nearby tennis club that set her on an improbable path to Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City.“The atmosphere is buzzing,” said Dave Cooke, manager of The Parklangley Club, where Ms. Raducanu trained for several years, starting when she was 6. The day after her victory, members brimmed with pride, recounting how she returned after competing at Wimbledon for a practice session.“Just to watch her train was phenomenal,” said a member, Julie Slatter, 54. “You just know she’s going to take it all the way.”Queen Elizabeth lost no time in congratulating the new champion for “a remarkable achievement at such a young age,” which she said was a “testament to your hard work and dedication.” Looking slightly dazzled Ms. Raducanu said, “I’m maybe going to frame that letter or something.”Dave Cooke, the club manager at Parklangley. He said Ms. Raducanu ‘‘strived to meet her dreams.’’Andrew Testa for The New York TimesHer victory made history on multiple counts: She became the first player to win a Grand Slam title from the qualifying rounds and the first Briton to win a Grand Slam singles title since Virginia Wade captured Wimbledon in 1977. Ms. Wade cheered on Ms. Raducanu from the gallery, as did Billie Jean King on the winner’s podium — two champions crowning a new one, and heralding, perhaps, a glittering new era for British tennis.For long-suffering British sports fans, Ms. Raducanu’s victory was also a kind of redemption after the heartbreaking defeat of England’s soccer team in the finals of European championships in July. England snatched defeat from victory in that game when it missed three penalty kicks in the deciding shootout against Italy.But on Saturday, Ms. Raducanu did not let a cut on her leg, from a fall late in the match, stop her from dispatching Ms. Fernandez, 6-4, 6-3, closing things out with an ace before falling to the court in joyous celebration. The timeout she needed to get her leg bandaged was one of the few anxious moments for Ms. Raducanu during a tournament in which she did not drop a single set.Like the national soccer team, Ms. Raducanu embodies the exuberant diversity of British society. Her victory is both a tacit repudiation of the anti-immigration fervor that fueled the Brexit vote in 2016 and a reminder that, whatever its politics, the polyglot Britain of today is a more complicated and interesting place.The daughter of a Romanian father and a Chinese mother, Ms. Raducanu was born in Toronto in 2002. Her family moved to England when she was 2, settling in Bromley, an outer borough of London known for leafy parks and good schools. A serious student, Ms. Raducanu has taken time off from the professional tour to study for exams, crediting her mother for keeping her focused on academics.A shopping street on Sunday in Bromley, Ms. Raducanu’s hometown.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“She’s got where she is because she’s a nice person and put in some hard work and strived to meet her dreams,” Mr. Cooke said.Though he described Ms. Raducanu as part of a generation of younger athletes who have stayed grounded and mentally strong, he said the Grand Slam title would impose new pressures on her.“You achieve something great, you raise your own bar,” he said. “We need to strip back those pressures from her.”Ms. Raducanu first came to national attention in June when she reached the fourth round at Wimbledon before withdrawing, telling coaches she was having trouble breathing.That setback led some commentators, including John McEnroe, to express doubts about her mental fitness, especially at a time when another female star, Naomi Osaka, has spoken openly about her struggles with the pressures of the game. Under the lights in Flushing Meadows, however, Ms. Raducanu silenced her critics. She looked fit, poised, and relentless.Her performance inspired people from all corners of British society. At her old club, girls talked about running into Ms. Raducanu in the school hallways or at local restaurants. Some said they hoped to follow in her footsteps.“We want to go into tennis,” said Yuti Kumar, 14, who attends the same school as Ms. Raducanu, Newstead Wood School, where the graduates include the actress Gemma Chan and Dina Asher-Smith, an Olympic sprinter.The actor Stephen Fry waxed philosophical, saying on Twitter, “Yes, it may be ‘only’ sport, but in that ‘only’ there can be found so much of human joy, despair, glory, disappointment, wonder and hope. A brief flicker of light in a dark world.”The Parklangley Club on Sunday.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesThe Spice Girls kept it simpler. “@EmmaRaducanu that’s Girl Power right there!!” the group tweeted.Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prince Charles, Prince William and the Manchester United soccer team all sent their congratulations, as did the right-wing Brexit leader, Nigel Farage, who tweeted “a global megastar is born.”David Lammy, a Labour Party member of Parliament who is Black, noted that Mr. Farage once said he would not be comfortable living next to a Romanian (Mr. Farage later expressed regret for the remark). “You have no right to piggyback on her incredible success,” Mr. Lammy posted on Twitter.The dust-up echoed one earlier in the summer when Mr. Lammy faulted Conservative Party members for jumping on the bandwagon of the English soccer team, once it began winning, after having earlier criticized its players for kneeling before games to protest racial and social injustice.In Bromley on Sunday, though, the focus was on a local hero. Many believed her achievement would fuel a surge of interest in tennis playing — and other ambitions — among young people who have struggled to find motivation during the pandemic.“She’s a schoolgirl and she’s from Bromley,” said Jennifer Taylor, 40, sitting outside a pub. “I’m sure if she comes to Bromley, they’ll be a huge welcome for her.”As she prepared to return home, Ms. Raducanu alluded to Britain’s eventful sports summer, in which millions of fans, herself included, took to chanting the theme of the England team, “Football’s coming home.”Posting pictures of herself waving a Union Jack and holding the silver cup of the Open champion, she said, “We are taking her HOMEEE.”“The atmosphere is buzzing,” said the manager of the Parklangley Club, where Ms. Raducanu trained.Andrew Testa for The New York Times More

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      Venerable Golf Clubs Embrace Fun to Draw More Members

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      Championship play one day, an easier course with piped-in music the next.Many of the world’s top golfers will be among the about 140 players at the BMW PGA Championship, which begins Thursday and is held annually on the West Course at the Wentworth Club in Surrey, England. Like they have done for decades, the players will be hitting shots around one of Europe’s most historically rich golf clubs.But like other storied golf-opolises — those vast golf-focused communities built last century — the club is in the midst of a radical reimaging of what it is. This has not always gone smoothly or been well received by its passionate members.Home to the European PGA Tour’s headquarters, Wentworth is where the idea for the Ryder Cup, to be contested later this month, was hatched. The club also has hosted scores of professional tournaments, stretching from the 1950s.Winners at Wentworth have included some of the game’s best: Rory McIlroy, Paul Casey and Colin Montgomerie, who won three BMW PGA Championships in a row. Last year’s championship was won by Tyrrell Hatton, who has qualified for the European squad’s Ryder Cup team.Tyrrell Hatton of England won last year’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.Paul Childs/Action Images, via ReutersYet, in golf as in life, things do not always stay the same. In 2014, the club was bought by Reignwood Group, which is an investment vehicle of Yan Bin, a Chinese billionaire whose wealth derived from selling Red Bull energy drinks. After paying 135 million pounds (about $187 million), he wanted to make some changes, which set off a furor.He decided to reduce the membership rolls to make the club, which has three 18-hole golf courses, more upscale. Instead of having more than 3,500 members, he increased the annual dues to slash the membership count, said Ruth Scanlan, director of marketing for Wentworth.He reportedly wanted only 888 members, 8 being a lucky number in China. And those members had to buy what are called debentures — essentially a bond held by the club. The fee was 150,000 euros (about $178,000), and at last count the club had about half the number of debenture members he wanted, Scanlan said.How Wentworth, which in the 19th century was owned by a relative of the Duke of Wellington, is changing is emblematic of a broader trend of older, once-unassailable golf centers. What has happened is difficult for longtime members, but anything new or different at an established club often comes with grumbling.The bigger issue is how Wentworth and other golf-opolises have had to face down a starker choice: Change now or go into decline as the world of golf resorts leaves them behind.But what has forced these changes?There is not just one answer. Before the pandemic, rounds of golf were in decline and traditional golf courses were struggling to turn a profit. This could be seen as a reason for Wentworth’s looking to go more upscale. But other clubs chose a different route, by trying to add more fun to their clubs or letting nonmembers stay at a private club as a way to play.Which is what Mike Keiser did. Keiser sold his greeting card company in 2005 and parlayed the proceeds into several golf resorts, including Bandon Dunes in Oregon, Sand Valley in Wisconsin and Cabot Links in Nova Scotia. His courses are all about golf and the post-round golf hangout. And they began siphoning off players from the older golf-opolises.In many ways, PGA National in Florida is Wentworth’s equivalent in the United States. It is home of the Honda Classic, which is played on a tough course, and has been the longtime headquarters of the P.G.A. of America.PGA National used to have five courses that were stout tests of golf and attracted business golfers and vacationers, and it hosted tournaments for elite amateurs and professional golfers. One of its courses — designed by Tom Fazio, an architect who has worked on Augusta National — was sliced and diced into a family-friendly nine-holes and another venue just for match play — where winning and losing a hole matters more than the score.Covid-19 was the impetus for the change, said Jane Broderick, club manager and director of golf at PGA National, who has been there for 35 years. “When you see this resurgence of golf, you think, how do we keep these golfers?” she said. “They may not be the die-hard golfer. What we’re trying to do with these courses is make them a social experience.”Broderick said converting the Fazio course to two, more-relaxed courses was driven by the club’s new owners, Brookfield Asset Management, which paid $233 million for the club in 2018. “We’re unbuttoning the top button of our golf shirt, and we’re relaxing the rules,” she said. “We want people to have fun.”Firestone Country Club in Ohio, a private club that was originally the company club for the tire manufacturer of the same name, has long been known for being a strong test of golf. It has hosted decades worth of PGA Tour events, most recently the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational as well as the Bridgestone Senior Players Championship. Tiger Woods has won eight PGA Tour events at Firestone.Yet, more recently, the club has opened up to limited stay-and-play options.“We always had three really good golf courses,” said Jay Walkinshaw, the club’s general manager. “As the club and the membership has evolved, we realized we had these 86 guest rooms on property and some excess capacity. That was when we started thinking about opening up Firestone.”Opening it for semipublic play has brought in revenue without hurting member play. “It’s a destination for golf enthusiasts, and now we’re accessible to them,” he saidEven venerable Pinehurst in North Carolina, the host of four United States Opens in the next two decades, has loosened up. Its main attraction, Pinehurst No. 2, considered among the best Donald Ross-designed courses, remains a sought-after test of golf just as when Payne Stewart beat Phil Mickelson in the 1999 U.S. Open. But it now has the Cradle, a nine-hole course, with music piped in. What it is missing in history, the Cradle aims to make up in fun.“There’s this theme at Pinehurst of going back to our history and tweaking it for the modern era, and the Cradle is a great example,” said Tom Pashley, president of Pinehurst. “Having music at the Cradle is lauded now, but it was a very difficult decision. It’s added to the relaxed atmosphere we wanted. It’s part of the charm now of playing the Cradle.”Likewise, Pebble Beach Golf Links in California this year converted an underused par-3 course into the Hay, a short course designed by Tiger Woods with lengths that commemorate historical moments at Pebble, including a replica of the course’s seventh hole, the short par-3 surrounded by water.“One of the nice things is it’s challenging for the good golfer and still accessible for the new golfer,” said David Stivers, chief executive of the Pebble Beach Company.Yet the company also recognizes that as golf becomes more accessible it needs easier, not harder options. Stivers said Pebble Beach was introducing a shorter set of tees to allow more players to experience the perennial U.S. Open host site.Similarly, Sea Pines in South Carolina, which is open to the public, operates three courses, including the highly rated Harbour Town Golf Links. John Farrell, director of sports operations at Sea Pines, said his focus was not on adding new things but on speeding up rounds, which can be painfully slow at sought-after courses.“Our focus has been to take care of the core values of the golf experience,” he said. “If you do that, everything else takes care of itself. We check pace of play every single day.” More