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      in Tennis

      French Open: Hsieh Su-Wei Is a Dominant Force in Doubles

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      She has won seven majors, including the French Open twice.When Hsieh Su-Wei walked on the court to play doubles at the Miami Open in March with her partner, Elise Mertens, she wasn’t burdened by a cumbersome tennis bag holding half a dozen rackets, an assortment of snacks and multiple changes of clothes and shoes.Despite being No. 1 in the world in doubles, Hsieh, 38, wore an outfit that she bought off the rack and that bore none of the logos associated with lucrative sponsorship deals that many of her colleagues on the WTA Tour have. Until recently, Hsieh had no manager, requiring her to sell herself to sponsors. Her efforts so far have been unsuccessful.“It’s not an easy job dealing with the sponsorship when the people are not sure if they are going to have you or not,” said Hsieh, who typically competes with just two rackets, which she said was no problem since she had never broken one and could not remember the last time she even popped a string. “I don’t want to waste the time to do it. I just want to focus on my tennis.”Hsieh has never been consumed by the trappings of her sport, preferring to travel her own circuitous path. An accomplished singles player, she ranked a career high No. 23 in 2013 but has never gone beyond the quarterfinals at a major. She first ascended to No. 1 in doubles in 2014, winning Wimbledon in 2013 and the French Open in 2014, both with Peng Shuai. She won her second Wimbledon in 2019 with Barbora Strycova and her third with Mertens two years later.Hsieh and her partner, Barbora Strycova, celebrating after winning the final of the women’s doubles at Wimbledon last year. Strycova retired after last year’s U.S. Open. Hsieh will partner with Elise Mertens at this year’s French Open.Alastair Grant/Associated PressAfter leaving the tour for nearly 18 months at the end of 2021 to heal a nagging muscle strain in her leg that had her contemplating retirement, Hsieh returned in April of last year and has now won three of the last four majors, each with a different partner. At last year’s French Open, she paired with Wang Xinyu, who is nearly 16 years her junior, to win the championship. Hsieh then captured Wimbledon with Strycova.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Australia Beats France on Penalties to Reach World Cup Semifinals

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      Australia needed 10 rounds of penalty kicks to confirm its place in the team’s first semifinal, and extend its country’s wild ride.By the time it was over, the overriding feeling at the Brisbane Stadium was not so much euphoria or ecstasy or relief but dizziness. Not from the heights that Australia has reached in its home World Cup, beating France to reach a first semifinal, but from the winding, coiling, nauseating road it took to get there.The game itself was fraught enough, the goal-less stalemate of the score line belying more than two hours in which the balance of power hopped back and forth: France started well, composed and inventive, only for Australia to wrestle control. It was not an evening defined by patterns of play so much as storm surges, and the ability to withstand them.The 120 minutes of play before the penalty kicks were defined by each team fighting for control and withstanding pressure.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe penalty shootout that decided it, though, was something else entirely. France missed its first kick, with Australia goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold denying Selma Bacha. Solène Durand, the substitute goalkeeper brought on by France as a penalty specialist — or, who knows, perhaps just a piece of psychological warfare — saved a shot from Steph Catley.Ève Périsset, introduced specifically to take a penalty, missed France’s fifth; Arnold, the goalkeeper, stepped up to win it. She stepped up confidently. Durand did not move. The crowd started to celebrate. Her teammates accelerated toward her. Her attempt struck the right post. Australia would have to wait.Each team had taken eight penalties by the time Arnold saved another, this time from Kenza Dali. The goalkeeper had, though, stepped forward too soon. It had to be taken again. Dali chose the same side of the goal, a double bluff. Arnold called it. She saved it again. Clare Hunt stepped up to win it for Australia. By that stage, it was hardly even a surprise that she could not convert.Instead, it would be Cortnee Vine who decided it. Vicki Bècho was the last French outfield player set to take a penalty; after her, Durand would have had to take her turn. But Bècho struck the post, and with a nation watching, Vine kept her composure, and Australia had survived, 7-6, in the shootout. The thunderclap that followed was tinged with just a hint of desperation, the energy ever-so-slightly frantic.Mackenzie Arnold saves a penalty from Kenza Dali.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCortnee Vine, a substitute, scoring the winning goal for Australia.Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesFrance’s captain, Wendie Renard, consoling Vicki Bècho, who hit the post.Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAustralia has, over these last three weeks, embraced this team in a way that has been simultaneously predictable — this is an enormous sporting nation, one that draws a considerable proportion of its identity from its prowess in the various sports it takes to heart — and wholly surprising to those who have witnessed soccer’s struggles for acceptance.It is not just that the stadiums have been full: The World Cup is an event, a showpiece, a good day out, and almost every country on the planet is united in enjoying the sensation of being part of a major event. It is that the streets are full of green-and-gold, that the newspapers have images of the Matildas front and center, that it is the primary topic of discussion.The fact Australia’s progress has continued will only exacerbate that, of course, now that the country is only two games from a world championship. It is the nature of it, though, that is perhaps the best advertisement for soccer’s curious charms.For three hours, nobody in the Brisbane Stadium could tear their eyes away, nobody could take anything for granted. As they walked away, they would have felt not only delighted and proud but nauseous and drained, too, their nerves frayed and torn by what they had been through. And that, after all, is the point of sport. It is what will draw them back in four days, when a semifinal, and the chance to live it all again, hovers on the horizon. More

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      5 Players to Watch at the Evian Championship

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      Any one of these talented women could win the golf tournament in France.It’s not easy to pick the winner of a major championship in women’s golf.Over the last 21 majors there have been 20 different champions. The most recent: Allisen Corpuz, who captured the United States Women’s Open at Pebble Beach earlier this month for her first tour victory.Will the trend continue at the Amundi Evian Championship, which begins on Thursday at the Evian Resort Golf Club in France? The chances are pretty good given the many talented players who could get on a roll.Here are five golfers to keep an eye on.Rose Zhang hitting from the ninth tee during the first round of the U.S. Women’s Open golf tournament in early July.Darron Cummings/Associated PressRose ZhangNo one in women’s golf has generated more buzz recently than Zhang.While a student at Stanford, she claimed her second straight N.C.A.A. individual championship, which no woman had done. Then, after turning professional, she defeated Jennifer Kupcho on the second hole of a playoff in the Mizuho Americas Open to become the first woman since Beverly Hanson, in 1951, to win her pro debut.Zhang, 20, played well in her first two attempts at winning a major this year: a tie for eighth at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June, where she was in contention until finding the water with her tee shot on the 18th hole, and a tie for ninth at the U.S. Women’s Open.Zhang has a chance to be a member of the U.S. squad at this year’s Solheim Cup matches in Spain.Corpuz hitting a tee shot on the third hole during the final round of the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Christian Petersen/Getty ImagesAllisen CorpuzWhat can Corpuz possibly do for an encore? Win her second major.Corpuz, 25 — who almost backed up her Open triumph with another win a week later at the Dana Open, finishing second by three — was unflappable during the final round of the Open, as she became the first American woman to win it since Brittany Lang, in 2016. Corpuz played the last 11 holes in one under par and was the only one to break par in each of the four rounds.“It was something I had dreamed of,” she said, “but at the same time kind of just never really expected it to happen.”The victory wasn’t a total surprise. In late April, she was tied for the lead after three rounds of the Chevron Championship, the first major of the year, before shooting a 74 to finish in a tie for fourth. She tied for 15th at the KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Corpuz became the second player from Hawaii to win the U.S. Women’s Open. The first was Michelle Wie West in 2014.Lydia Ko of New Zealand hitting off the 18th tee during the first round of the Mizuho Americas Open golf tournament in June.John Minchillo/Associated PressLydia KoPoor Ko. It has been that kind of year.Can she recover from what took place two weeks ago in the final round of the Dana Open, when she was assessed six penalty strokes for playing preferred lies, and another for picking up her ball?Preferred lies come into play when a golfer is allowed to move the ball because of the course becoming too wet. It had rained heavily on Saturday, so the players were allowed to play preferred lies on holes No. 1 and 10, but Ko also adjusted her ball position on three other holes. As a result, her score was a 78, dropping her into a tie for 65th.It was fair to expect a stellar 2023 from Ko, 26, after what she accomplished last season when she was the Player of the Year and won the Vare Trophy for the lowest scoring average (68.9).Early in the season, however, Ko of New Zealand missed the cut at the Chevron Championship, tied for 57th at the KPMG and tied for 33rd at the Open.Nelly Korda playing a shot during a practice round before the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship in June.Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesNelly KordaThe year was going very well for the No. 2-ranked Korda, with six top-six finishes in her first seven starts — until an ailing back forced her to miss tournaments in May and June. Still in pursuit of her first tour victory this year, she has an opportunity to make up for lost time.And it looks like she might do just that.Two weeks ago, Korda won the individual title in the Ladies European Tour’s Aramco Team Series.She hopes to “take that momentum into the next two big events.”In the majors, she finished third at the Chevron Championship, missed the cut at the KPMG and closed with an 80 at the U.S. Women’s Open to finish in a tie for 64th.Korda, who turns 25 on Friday, won her lone major at the 2021 KPMG Women’s P.G.A.Jin Young Ko of South Korea hitting a tee shot on the eighth hole during the third round of the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesJin Young KoKo of South Korea is due to break out of her small slump. She hasn’t posted a top-10 result since a victory at the Cognizant Founders Cup in May.She certainly knows how to come up big in big events. In 2019, she won the ANA Inspiration and the Evian Championship.With 13 top-10 finishes in 2018, Ko, 28, was the L.P.G.A.’s Rookie of the Year, and in 2019 she was the Player of the Year, an honor she received again in 2021. In late June, she passed the former star Lorena Ochoa of Mexico to set a record for the most weeks (159) at No. 1.“It’s an honor people saying with Lorena and me in the same sentence,” she said. “It makes me happy, but also it makes me humble.” More

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      Preparing for the Evian Championship

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      Golfers say this major’s longtime course is unique, some say it’s quirky, but players still must go over it again and again to get ready.Brooke Henderson, who has won 20 times since turning professional in 2014, rolled in a putt on the final hole of last year’s Amundi Evian Championship to win the women’s major by one shot over the rookie Sophia Schubert.It was Henderson’s seventh time playing the championship, which starts on Thursday and is the only major played in continental Europe. It is also the only women’s major played on the same course every year, the Evian Resort Golf Club in France, which has hosted the tournament for nearly 30 years.That presents an opportunity and a challenge for players trying to prepare to play on a course that was significantly redesigned a decade ago. It would seem to make it easier to get ready year after year. But the course itself is not universally liked. It’s been called quirky and unfair, and one player, Stacy Lewis, who is a major champion, skipped it for two years.It also stands in contrast to courses for the other majors, which have moved to be hosted at the same venues where the men have won.The United States Women’s Open was held at Pebble Beach Golf Links for the first time this year. And it’s set to be played at Oakmont, Pinehurst, Merion, and the Los Angeles Country Club, which hosted this year’s men’s United States Open.It’s the same with the KPMG Women’s P.G.A. Championship, which was played this year at Baltusrol, and the A.I.G. Women’s Open that was played last year at Muirfield, one of the most historic golf courses in Scotland.Yet few players are going to skip a major. So, does their preparation for the Evian differ from preparing for the other majors? And with a schedule that calls on players to travel farther and more widely in the season than the men do on the PGA Tour, is their preparation for the Evian different from their training for majors on courses they have seen before? (Add to that the fact that many players were in the United States last week, playing the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational in Michigan.)“Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions,” Henderson said.Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesHenderson, who is two-time major champion, was circumspect in her response about preparing.“My team and I focus on peaking at the majors and work particularly hard to prepare for those weeks both mentally and physically,” she said. “The venue at the Amundi Evian Championship, like all major courses, is unique and really tests all aspects of your game in different ways. Given that it is a course we come back to each year, we adjust our strategy slightly based on prior experience and course conditions.”Other players, particularly those who aren’t major champions, think about these weeks differently.“We always circle the majors to try to peak during those certain tournaments,” said Ally Ewing, a three-time winner on the L.P.G.A. Tour. “I’m a process person. I want to be ready in the spring to play solid golf at the Evian. There are a lot of things that go into competing in a golf tournament there. I circle those dates.”Ewing, who tied for 30th at the Evian her rookie season in 2016, said her focus this week had always been on controlling what she could put into preparing.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” Ally Ewing said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of, I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”Stuart Franklin/Getty Images“It goes back to the hours I put in at age 14 to make sure the ball position was always the same place and that my putting stroke was repetitive,” she said. “It’s about a solid base. My prep should be focused on my tempo and knowing my way around the course. I need to dial in the speed on the greens and learn where to place on our approach shots.”In that sense, the memory of returning to the Evian each year helps with some of the variables.“All three of my wins have been brand-new golf courses for me,” she said. “Getting to a golf course where I have no past recollection of — I feel like rookies get to an event and they have this cram mind-set.”“When I get to the Evian and there are a ton of side-hill lies, I’m working on creating comfort where I am. Every golf course is going to play differently, but I’m the same.”For Ewing, it comes down to strategy, whether she’s played a major course a half dozen times, like at the Evian, or if it’s her first time at a venue.“Sometimes, it’s simply looking and asking, do the greens have a lot of pitch back to front,” she said. “Do we want to be below the hole to score? Or on a course with a lot of runoff areas, we need to pay attention to the spots where we can miss. Let’s leave ourselves a chance to make birdie or, worst case, a par.”She added: “As a professional, we miss shots. I miss some shots left and some shots right.”“I have yet to figure that course out,” Lizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship.”Stuart Franklin/Getty ImagesLizette Salas, who is in her 13th season on tour, hasn’t always liked playing at the Evian.“I have yet to figure that course out,” she said. “It’s definitely a challenging golf course, as far as the layout. You’re hardly ever going to get a flat lie at the Evian Championship. Also, the weather is a very big factor to determine how low we can go for that week. I feel there’s only so much you can do to that golf course, other than tear it completely down.”She admits that some courses just don’t suit a player’s eye, or they’re places that they’ve not always played well at. “But as the purses continue to rise, that just encourages us not to suck it up, but to take it as a new challenge and try to make it work.”In eight appearances at the Evian, her best finish was her first time, tied for 11th in 2013.For Salas, playing well in a major is about the prep work.“I definitely prepare differently today,” she said. “In my earlier years, my goal was to play the course as many times as possible. But I realized it’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon. Today I like to play the course no more than twice ahead of time and focus on the main trends of the course.“It’s a course we’ve seen over and over again, but we don’t have the luxury of getting there early because of our schedules. If you like a course more than others, it dictates your practice schedule.”At this month’s U.S. Women’s Open, she went to Pebble Beach a month early. “I got to play an afternoon and a morning round to see the wind tendencies,” she said.As the defending champion at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational, Salas played that tournament in Michigan and then flew to France to get ready for the Evian.But one thing that doesn’t change is her emphasis on what she calls “boring golf.” “You’re not trying to hit a ton of balls” to prepare, she said. “You’re just trying to understand the golf course. Is there any insight on how to play this course the best way?”For others, though, they try to block out the magnitude of the event and play the week like any other tournament.“You just have to go into it thinking it’s just another event,” said Jessica Korda, who has missed the cut three times at the Evian, “because that’s exactly what it is at the end of the day.” More

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      For Natalie Gulbis, the Thrill of Winning the Evian in 2007

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      It was her lone tournament win, and she remembers the relief of getting that first one.Like two other long-ago visitors to France, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, who always had Paris in the 1942 movie “Casablanca,” Natalie Gulbis of the United States, a longtime member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, can say she will always have Evian.Gulbis, who three times played in the Solheim Cup, a biennial tournament in which a European team plays an American team, registered her lone tour victory at the Evian Masters in 2007, beating Jang Jeong of South Korea by two-putting from 25 feet for a birdie on the first playoff hole. Trailing Juli Inkster by four shots heading into the final round, she closed with a two-under 70.Gulbis, 40, who plays very few tournaments these days and has undergone multiple back surgeries, reflected recently on her victory in France.The conversation has been edited and condensed.What stands out about that week in 2007?The relief that I could win a tournament. I had worked so hard to become a tour professional, and I had finished second one too many times before. And that event is so incredibly special. I was paired with Annika [Sorenstam], who was one of my best friends on tour.What do you recall about the playoff hole?I remember trying to focus on hitting it [her second shot] solid and making sure that I carried the water and gave myself a chance. My caddie gave me less club. He knew that players who get in contention always have extra adrenaline.What’s so special about the Evian event?It’s in this most beautiful place up in the hills overlooking Lake Geneva, the golf course is incredible, and just the way they treat you from start to finish. It’s really the closest thing we have to the Masters.Any explanation for why it was your only tour victory?No. And I don’t even think about it unless somebody asks. I really don’t. When I look back at my career, the most fun and memorable events have been team events. It would be interesting to see how I would feel if I had won 10 [individual] events. I don’t know if I’d sit here feeling significantly different.“The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined,” Gulbis said.Harry How/Getty ImagesSo you’re not disappointed?I think I’d feel guilty if I felt disappointed. The opportunity to be a professional athlete is so special, and I just don’t take that for granted. To compete all over the world and play for an organization like the L.P.G.A. has far exceeded any expectation I could have ever imagined.What’s the state of the tour these days?In 2023, we’re playing for $101 million, 33 events. Absolutely crazy if I would have thought 10 years ago that the L.P.G.A. would be playing for over $100 million in a season.What’s the most nervous you ever were in a Solheim Cup?In Sweden in 2007, I was the anchor match [in the final group]. And then, that morning, I thought, ‘What did I commit to?’ That means it could come down to my match. It didn’t, and I ended up winning my match anyway.Are you excited about being an assistant to captain Stacy Lewis at this fall’s Solheim Cup in Spain?I am excited. It is a very different experience being a captain than it is being a player, and I think I’m going be even more nervous as a captain. Stacy has worked so hard, and she is so committed to try to get that cup back, and I just want to help her in any way I can.Would you want to be a captain yourself some day?I’m not sure. I don’t like to say until I have completely seen what it’s like to be an assistant captain all the way through.What was the biggest impact your instructor, Butch Harmon, made on you?Everything. How much time do you have? I started working with him when I was 18, and what he has done for me, on and off the golf course, it’s amazing. He’s helped me in every aspect of being a professional golfer, and it’s so much more than competing. He is such a huge fan of women’s golf, and I’m so grateful I’ve had the opportunity to work with him for 20 years. More

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      A Continental Competition, All in One Neighborhood

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      At the eight-minute mark of the final of the CAN 18 soccer tournament, the players on the Mauritania team score three times in rapid succession.The balls hitting the goalkeeper’s small net sound like the blasts of a cannon. Boom. Boom. Boom. The last two happen so quickly that many in the crowd miss them.“Did they score?” the Ivory Coast fan squished next to me asks, looking stunned. “Yes, twice,” a Mauritanian fan on my other side responds gleefully.It doesn’t take long to understand that the annual soccer tournament of Paris’s 18th arrondissement is different: The stadium is a small, caged turf court in the middle of the Goutte d’Or — the dense, working-class landing spot for each new wave of immigrants to the city, a place where African wax stores and tailors for boubous compete with boulangeries and bistros among the crowded streets.The tournament was one of many around Paris inspired by the 2019 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, or Coupe d’Afrique des nations in French, the continental competition typically held every two years. The events have become so popular that the finals of one in Créteil, a southeastern suburb of Paris, were broadcast on Amazon Prime last summer.Mamoudou Camara floated the idea for the tournament on Snapchat in the summer of 2019. This year’s edition had 16 teams.In the Goutte d’Or, Mamoudou Camara’s principal aim wasn’t to shine a positive light on immigration and community spirit in his neighborhood, which is tucked behind the Gare du Nord — Europe’s busiest train station — and is among the city’s most impoverished, gritty and diverse areas. He was just thinking a tournament might help his friends survive the hot nights during Ramadan. He raised the idea on Snapchat, and by the end of that evening in summer 2019, six teams had registered. A day later, there were six more.Instead of holding the event in a far-off stadium, Camara and his friends decided to host it in their childhood nest, the mini court in the center of the urban park where they spent their summer nights and weekends, battling over a ball and rounds of Coca-Cola or Fanta. (The loser paid.)It offers a very different atmosphere than the marble statues and the manicured flower beds of the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens. On game nights, the park, Square Léon, is buzzing with older men crowded around checker tables, little kids clambering up playground equipment and older women in West African dresses selling bags of homemade doughnuts and slushy ginger drinks that both tickle and soothe the throat.Just before the final match starts, a tambour player beats out rhythms.“In our neighborhood, we have all nationalities,” said Camara, 26. “We are proud to say we are multicultural.”Around 30 percent of the 21,000 residents in this neighborhood were immigrants or foreigners in 2019, according to France’s national statistics institute.Sixteen teams registered this year, the event’s fourth edition, to play 31 games over three weeks. On this June night, we are down to the finals. The Ivory Coast, a veteran team that won the inaugural tournament in 2019, is back in its orange and green jerseys, trying to reclaim the title. Challenging them is Mauritania — a team packed with young players, many of them semiprofessionals, wearing yellow and brown. The jerseys were created by a celebrated local designer who collaborates with Nike, and who has been invited to the presidential palace.The teams for Cameroon and Tunisia before their match. A local designer who has collaborated with Nike created the uniforms for the 2023 tournament.“For me, CAN is one of those moments when the neighborhood can revel in being a bit exceptional,” said Éric Lejoindre, the mayor of the 18th arrondissement.It is just one sign of how the tournament has matured. This year, the neighborhood city hall provides a small grandstand on one side of the court. Everywhere else, spectators stand, claiming their spots a good hour before the game begins.By the time the referee blows his whistle, we are standing eight rows thick.The court measures just 25 meters by 16.5 meters — about 82 feet by 54 feet — roughly one-seventeenth of FIFA’s recommended field size. It is framed by a low concrete wall, topped by a tall chain link fence.The confined area makes for an intense game of precision, tight tricks, bursts of speed and a blasting ball that echoes against the walls and crashes into the fence every few minutes.This is soccer by inches, with a team losing and gaining the ball within seconds.Camara and other organizers devised the rules: five players per team on the court; no offside; corner kicks are thrown in; any foul after the fifth within a half results in a penalty kick; and games last 30 minutes to an hour, depending on their importance.Two people livestream matches, and another camera is rolling for the referee to review plays.The first year, all players had to be locals, but the rules have since loosened, allowing players from elsewhere to participate. But those who grew up competing on the court quickly reveal themselves by using the side walls to their advantage, bouncing passes around defenders to their teammates and back to themselves.Martin Riedler, who three years ago formed the tournament’s French team, compared it to a boxing ring.The playing surface is much smaller than that of a full-size soccer field. “You have to be on your toes the whole time, which makes the experience so intense,” one player said.“You have to be on your toes the whole time, which makes the experience so intense,” said Riedler, who attended Santa Clara University in California on a soccer scholarship. He has packed his team with elite players who can hit the cross bar from the halfway line of a full field, but who also find the arena overwhelming. “You know you won’t sleep at night after a game.”Players slam each other to the turf, then pick one another up. They continually battle against the wall, so close that a spectator might graze them through the fence. They offer up-close renditions of spectacular maneuvers, flicking the ball over their opponents’ heads and spinning it around their feet. That is one of the beauties of a small court, the referee Bengaly Souré tells me. It’s a compression chamber of technical plays.“There’s no space, but they create space,” he said.When a player jumps and kicks the ball into the net midair, Souré turns to the fence and expresses his admiration.The crowd is part of the fun. Spectators shout their observations over the sounds of African beats, booming from loudspeakers. It is agreed that the player wearing No. 7 for Mauritania — who plays for a team in Italy — is a dangerous force. And though the Ivory Coast falls increasingly behind, the game could turn at any moment.The Guinea-Bissau team before a match.Some people claim their spots an hour before the match.“I’ve seen a team that’s losing 4-1 make a comeback,” said Makenzy Kapaya, a 37-year-old artist who grew up in the Goutte d’Or but later relocated to a less cramped apartment elsewhere. Like many in the crowd, he has returned to watch the games and to reunite with childhood friends.“If you have problems, people will help you here, no matter what your origins,” Kapaya said. The Goutte d’Or, a dense, working-class area, often makes news for unflattering reasons — drugs, prostitution, violence. The library closed for months three years ago because employees said they had been repeatedly threatened by dealers selling near its doors. Following the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk this summer and the subsequent protests across the country, the local police station was attacked.Éric Lejoindre, the mayor of the 18th arrondissement, pointed out that local volunteers had been quietly helping with homework, cooking and housing for years. A group of therapists in the Goutte d’Or hold regular listening sessions, setting out chairs in an abandoned lot for passers-by to unload their burdens.For all its problems, the neighborhood has huge heart, Lejoindre said.“Locals know it, but sometimes we need it to emerge in a spectacular fashion,” he said. “For me, CAN is one of those moments when the neighborhood can revel in being a bit exceptional.”Mauritania went on a scoring outburst as night fell.After halftime, the Ivory Coast players rally, bringing the score to 9-7. But then Mauritania yanks the plug from their energy and dreams. As the sky dims into an inky night, and spectators hold up their phones as lanterns, Mauritania scores again. And again. And again. Boom, boom, boom. The players start to do little dances after each goal.When Souré blows his whistle for full time, a crowd surges onto the tiny court to embrace the young Mauritanian team in a squealing cyclone of joy.Camara, who will take a few weeks off before beginning preparations for next year’s event, said he was continually surprised by how much joy the little tournament had brought to the neighborhood. At a time when anti-immigration sentiments are growing and identity politics are flaring in France, he said he considered it a unifying event. “We thought we were just starting something for fun,” he said, “but we created something bigger.”Red and white fireworks burst above the little park in the heart of the Goutte d’Or. The celebration will continue for hours.Spectators applauded Mauritania’s victory against Ivory Coast.Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle More

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      in Tennis

      The Exclusive, Elusive World of Real Tennis

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      Up on the second floor, hidden behind the facade of a tall Haussmann building not far from the Arc de Triomphe, is the Jeu de Paume Club, the only active court tennis club in Paris.The members of the club, like the players at Wimbledon in England, are dressed all in white, and they call out the scores “quinze!” and “trente!” just the same as the umpires a few miles west, at Roland Garros, where the French Open is being played through June 11.Modern tennis, or lawn tennis, which was formally invented in England in the 1870s, bears many of the traces of court tennis, not least the basic vocabulary of scoring, even if no one has definitively proven if it is referenced from medieval horological sources or the paces that a player advanced when he won a point in the game of longue paume, the ancestor of most racket sports but particularly lawn tennis, which has been played in villages across France since the 13th century.Court tennis, also known as real tennis, developed 200 years later, according to Gil Kressmann, a historian and the honorary president of the Jeu de Paume Club, as cities evolved in France and walled courts replaced the large open spaces previously used for longue paume. The sport took off across Europe and Britain, where it was championed by Henry VIII.A match in the court tennis French Junior Open, in the under-17 category, played in the Palace of Fontainebleau.Matthieu Sarlangue, the top-ranked French court tennis player, is No. 10 in the world.The courts in France then, as today, were managed by professionals known as maîtres paumiers, who performed in matches, gave lessons and made the balls and rackets. As for the last requirement, Guillaume Dortu, the current club professional at the Palace of Fontainebleau, did not hide his relief that “mercifully, professionals don’t have to do that today.”But he and other club pros like Rod McNaughtan in Paris are the only people allowed to sell court tennis rackets, which are still constructed of wood. Each month, they make 100 to 150 balls, carefully weighing the hard core of cork and cotton webbing before stitching the thick yellow felt exterior by hand. They also clean the court daily.Enthusiasm for the game started to wane at the end the 17th century, and it was linked to gambling and less salubrious events such as when the Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi, better known as Caravaggio, killed an opponent on a tennis court in Rome in 1606, leading to his being banished from the city. In France, the game’s popularity suffered under Louis XIV, whose heavy physique discouraged him from playing. He was keener on billiards.Rod McNaughtan is the professional at the Jeu de Paume Club, the only active court tennis club in Paris.The French Revolution, which began in 1789, distracted from the game, though one of the revolution’s founding moments, the Tennis Court Oath, took place in the tennis court at Versailles, where deputies convened after being locked out of the palace, swearing not to disband until France had a constitution.Today, the sport is played competitively in the four countries that also make up tennis’s Grand Slam: France, where the game is known as jeu de paume; Britain and Australia, where it goes by real tennis; and the United States, home of the current men’s world champion, Camden Riviere. There are just over 50 courts in the world, and the prohibitive cost of constructing new courts is a major issue. While the game is gaining in popularity, there are only around 10,000 active players.Whatever they might lack in numbers, court tennis players make up for with enthusiasm. When asked to describe the sport, they most frequently compare it to chess and say its cerebral demands are as important, if not more so, than the physical ones.Players take pride in the esoteric nature of the game as well as its asymmetrical court with buttress, galleries, numerous nooks and crannies with odd names and the fact that no two courts in the world are exactly the same. Therein lies the challenge for players like Matthieu Sarlangue, who is ranked No. 10 in the world and is a 13-time French amateur champion. “Technically it’s very difficult and demanding,” he said. “You really have to master the tactics because there are so many options on the court.”McNaughtan makes about 120 tennis balls a month.The game is a sporting conundrum, one that Martin Village, a 70-year-old court tennis enthusiast from London and member of the Dedanists’ Society, a small group of British players dedicated to the history of the sport, explained simply.“If you wanted to design a game that was going to put people off from playing it,” he said, “you would probably design a real tennis court. But that’s why it is a source of endless fascination.”The building housing the tennis club at the Palace of Fontainebleau.The site of the tennis court at Versailles, where the Tennis Court Oath was sworn in 1789.Participants in the French Junior Open, clockwise from top left: Wandé Blanchot, 13; Hart Cordell, 10; Anatole de Beaumont, 16; and Paul Rigaud-Gérard, 11.A spectator took in a match at the French Junior Open in the under-13 category.Hart Cordell preparing for a match in the French Junior Open in the under-13 category. More

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      At Roland Garros, the French Get Behind Their Own

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      Had you been at Roland Garros around supper time Wednesday evening and heard the crowd of nearly 10,000 fans chanting Lucas Pouille’s name at a near deafening level, you would have assumed you had just missed a triumphant performance.Not even close. Pouille, a 29-year-old Frenchman, on the court named for Suzanne Lenglen, the French tennis star of the 1920s, lost in straight sets to Cameron Norrie, a Briton to add insult to injury, in less than two hours.No matter.For 105 minutes, the French faithful had serenaded Pouille and met his every winner with rousing roars. A four-piece band with a horn and a bass drum tooted and banged away between points. If you are French at the French Open, it’s what you do.Each of the four Grand Slam tournaments has its unique charms and intangible quirks, rhythms and characteristics.Fans waited for the Frenchman Arthur Fils to sign autographs after his first-round match on Monday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFrench flags fluttered in the stands during the Fils match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThe Australian Open is a two-week summertime party held when much of the world is shivering. Wimbledon has its mystique, the sense that the grass, especially on Centre Court, is hallowed ground, and the hear-a-pin-drop silence of the most proper of crowds. The U.S. Open delivers noisy chaos, the rattle of New York’s subways and the teeming crowds that joyfully ignore the idea that big-time tennis is supposed to unfold amid quiet.Roland Garros’s signature is the near limitless abandon with which the French fans unite behind anyone who plays under the bleu-blanc-rouge as the French standard is known. There are spontaneous renditions of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” as though they are at Humphrey Bogart’s cafe in “Casablanca.”This happened after Pouille, once ranked 10th in the world and currently 675th following struggles with injuries and depression, beat Jurij Rodionov of Austria in the first round in waning light Sunday.“It made me want to keep working to get back and experience it again,” said Pouille, who stayed and listened to the serenade.When a French player is on the court — any French player, on any court — there is a distinctly louder, higher-pitched and fuller sound that rises from the stands. It’s like the crescendo of a symphony, over and over, hour after hour.Supporters of Alice Robbe of France serenaded her during a qualifying match last week.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFils enjoyed the crowd’s backing after winning a game during his first-round match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAmazingly, it keeps going on even though the French have been mostly terrible at this event for a long while — or maybe that’s why it happens. A Frenchman has not won the singles tournament since Yannick Noah in 1983, or made the final since Henri Leconte in 1988. A Frenchwoman has not won since Mary Pierce in 2000, which was also the last time the country was represented in the women’s singles final.Albert Camus, the French philosopher, famously wrote that we must consider Sisyphus, the Greek mythology figure, to be happy, even though he spends his life repeatedly pushing a rock uphill because “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”Camus would have made a perfect modern French tennis fan.The zenith of this tournament for the French came Tuesday night as Gael Monfils, whose Gumby-like athleticism and ambivalent relationship with the sport have made him a tennis folk hero, came back from the brink to beat Sebastian Baez of Argentina in five sets.Monfils, 36, who has been battling injuries and played little the past year, cramped so badly in the fifth set he could barely walk. He fell behind by 4-0, but the crowd never relented and willed him back to life. The roars at the main court, Philippe Chatrier, could be heard more than a mile away. It was obvious what was unfolding simply by opening a bedroom window.Monfils told the crowd the victory was as much theirs as his after he prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.The ecstasy ride ended 24 hours later when Monfils called a late-night news conference to announce his withdrawal from the tournament because of a wrist injury.Caroline Garcia, seeded fifth, seemed to be the French’s best hope of having their first women’s singles finalist since 2000.James Hill for The New York TimesGarcia lost her second-round match to Anna Blinkova of Russia in three sets, despite the encouragement of the crowd.James Hill for The New York TimesIt came at the end of an awful day for the French players, who dropped all their singles matches. That included Caroline Garcia, the fifth seed and the only seeded Frenchwoman.Garcia had spoken earlier in the week of trying to capture the enthusiasm of the crowd and use it to her advantage. In the past, she has experienced it as pressure that has caused her to disappoint in front of the hometown fans. She has never made it past the quarterfinals.“I try and take all of this energy,” she had said of the support. “It’s a great opportunity.”No such luck. Garcia was cruising, up a set and a break in her second-round match Wednesday against Anna Blinkova of Russia. But she tightened up and frittered away the lead. The crowd helped her draw even at 5-5 in the third set, rattling Blinkova into double faults as Garcia saved eight match points before she lost, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.“She managed the crowd very well and kept very calm,” Garcia said of Blinkova.There was more pain Thursday as French players lost their last three singles matches, but those uniquely throaty urgings were an accompaniment all the same. When the last Frenchman, Arthur Rinderknech, lost Thursday night to the ninth-seeded Taylor Fritz, the crowd booed Fritz so loudly he could not hear the questions during his on-court interview. And a year from now, the French fans will push the rock up the hill again, and again, and again.James Hill for The New York Times More