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    Tennis Was Once Ruled by Teenagers. Now, Not So Much.

    Chris Evert, Steffi Graf, Bjorn Borg and Boris Becker grabbed the sport young. Today, it’s Joāo Fonseca and Mirra Andreeva.Wherever 18-year-old João Fonseca goes, he hears his name chanted as if he were akin to his countrymen, the Brazilian soccer stars Ronaldo, Pelé and Neymar. Mirra Andreeva, also 18, gets interview requests while she waits in line at a pharmacy in New York City.Teenage tennis prodigies used to be as common as gut tennis strings. Chris Evert was 16 when she reached her first U.S. Open semifinal in 1971. Steffi Graf was 17 when she captured the first of her six French championships. Monica Seles, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, Martina Hingis and Maria Sharapova were all under 20 when they catapulted to fame.Bjorn Borg was 18 when he won the first of his six French Open titles in 1974. Boris Becker was 17 when he grabbed his first Wimbledon. Stefan Edberg, Pete Sampras, Michael Chang and Rafael Nadal were all teenagers when they won their first majors.Over the years, as the sport became more physical and endurance minded, necessitating more mature bodies, the tide changed. Equipment, fitness and nutritional advances have also allowed players to continue competing into their mid-30s. Forty-year-old Stan Wawrinka, for example, a three-time major winner, is playing in his 20th French Open, which begins on Sunday.Jakub Mensik, 19, is the only teenage man ranked in the ATP’s top 60.Aleksandra Szmigiel/ReutersThere is only one teenage man, Jakub Mensik, 19, of the Czech Republic, ranked in the ATP’s top 60 and only one teenage woman, the Russian Andreeva, who is ranked a career-high No. 6, in the WTA’s top 60. Fonseca is No. 65.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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    French Open: 50 Years Ago, Chris Evert and Bjorn Borg Changed Tennis

    As teenagers, they brought the two-handed backhand to the sport — and to their first major championships, both at the French Open.When Chris Evert arrived in Paris for the 1973 French Open, she was an 18-year-old making just her second trip out of the United States. So she is still baffled as to why Philippe Chatrier, then the president of the French Tennis Federation, decided to take her and her mother, Colette, to Le Lido, the legendary burlesque theater on the Champs-Élysées.“He took us to dinner, and it was a dance club with half-naked women,” Evert said by phone from her Florida home in April. “They had their breasts showing. My eyes were like saucers. I had never been exposed to anything so sophisticated like that.”For Bjorn Borg, the ultimate Paris experience was celebrating his first French Open championship in 1974 with a private dinner in the Eiffel Tower.It has been more than a half century since Borg and Evert first played the French Open, but this year marks the 50th anniversary of their winning their first major championships in Paris. Evert went on to capture 18 Grand Slam singles titles, including a record seven at the French Open, six at the United States Open, three at Wimbledon and two at the Australian Open. Borg won six French Opens from 1974 to 1981 and five consecutive Wimbledons from 1976 to 1980.Borg was just days shy of his 17th birthday when he lost to Adriano Panatta in the round of 16 at the French Open in 1973, only his second appearance at a major after a first-round loss at the 1972 U.S. Open.Bjorn Borg playing Jean-François Caujolle in the first round of the French Open in 1974.Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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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    French Open: Hsieh Su-Wei Is a Dominant Force in Doubles

    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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    In Tennis, Bookends of Drama in 2023

    The year was full of unlikely winners and exciting team competitions.There was no champagne courtside. So, as Matteo Berrettini embraced Jannik Sinner after Sinner’s victory over Alex de Minaur last month to clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years, their teammate, Matteo Arnaldi, did the next best thing: He shook a water bottle and poured it over Sinner and Berrettini.Sinner, 22, ended the season with his 20th win in his last 23 matches. This year, he had a 64-15 record, won four tournaments, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up at the ATP Finals in Turin, Italy. He had wins over the three top-ranked players — Novak Djokovic, whom he beat twice in two weeks, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev. Starting 2023 at No. 15, he ended it at No. 4.Djokovic sorely wanted to lead Serbia to just its second Davis Cup title. But in the semifinals, he fell to Sinner after squandering three match points and then teamed with Miomir Kecmanovic to lose the deciding doubles match to Sinner and Lorenzo Sonego. The loss sent Italy into the final, where it beat Australia.Jannik Sinner helped clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years this year. He also had a 64-15 record and won four tournaments.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic was devastated by the defeat.“For me, personally, it’s a huge disappointment because I take the responsibility, obviously having three match points, being so close to win it,” he said after the match. “When you lose for your country, you know, the bitter feeling is even greater.”It is ironic that the season began and ended with exciting conclusions at the men’s and women’s team competitions. The Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup have been under siege in recent years as many of the game’s top players, including Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, shunned the historically heart-thumping, pride-producing finals because of scheduling conflicts. The U.S. women lost early in the finals, and the U.S. men didn’t even qualify as one of the top eight teams.Still, despite the player defections and a merry-go-round of format changes, both competitions provided some of the most striking moments of the year.Leylah Fernandez’s five wins helped lead Canada to its first-ever Billie Jean King Cup.Raul Caro/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah Fernandez rode a wave of patriotic passion, winning five matches to lead Canada to its first Billie Jean King Cup. Her teammate, then-18-year-old Marina Stakusic, who had never won a WTA Tour match, became an overnight star when she won three matches against opponents ranked in the top 70.If 2022 was billed as the season of King Carlos when Alcaraz went from No. 32 to No. 1 on the strength of his U.S. Open championship, then this season mostly belonged to Djokovic.He is considered by many in the game as the greatest player ever. The statistics prove it.At 36, Djokovic had one of the best seasons of his career. For the third time since 2015, he reached the finals at all four majors, falling just shy of attaining the Grand Slam.In January, a year after being removed from Australia because of his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, Djokovic returned to Melbourne Park and captured a record 10th Australian Open title by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final. With the 14-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal injured for most of the season, Djokovic won his third French Open in June by beating Alcaraz and Casper Ruud.After falling to Alcaraz in a scintillating five-set Wimbledon final, Djokovic bounced back and beat Medvedev at the U.S. Open to earn his 24th major, surpassing Serena Williams. He is now just one win away from breaking the men’s and women’s major record held by Margaret Court for 50 years.Djokovic captured his record 10th Australian Open by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesIn all, Djokovic played just 12 tournaments in 2023 and he won seven of them. He did not lose from mid-July until mid-November, when he fell to Sinner during the round-robin portion of the ATP Finals. He then beat Sinner in the final after assuring the year-end No. 1 ranking for a record-extending eighth time.Alcaraz, who won six titles in 2023 on three different surfaces and reached the semifinals at the French and U.S. Opens, in addition to his Wimbledon win, ended the year ranked No. 2. But he was candid after he lost to Djokovic in the semifinals in Turin.“I am not at his level on an indoor court,” Alcaraz, 20, said in November. “He has shown why he is the best player in the world. I have to practice more to be a better player.”With his 66 wins, Medvedev led the ATP in match victories. He won 19 straight, and reached the finals at Indian Wells and the Miami Open, which he won. He also won at Rome and reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up to Djokovic at the U.S. Open. He ended the year ranked No. 3.Two upstart players — the Americans Ben Shelton and Chris Eubanks — used their wide grins and whopping forehands to envelop the sport in a giant bear hug. Shelton, about two years away from leading the University of Florida to an N.C.A.A. championship, reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open. He then reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open before falling to Djokovic. Eubanks, another former collegian, upset Cameron Norrie and Tsitsipas to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.There was no shortage of compelling story lines among the women. Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka spent the season battling for tour supremacy.Sabalenka, only a year removed from serving woes so severe that she resorted to serving underhand during matches, won her first major at the Australian Open, a day she called the “best of my life.” She grabbed the No. 1 ranking after reaching the U.S. Open final.“It was amazing to see Sabalenka, who was basically laughed off that same court a year earlier, confront those demons and take responsibility,” Lindsay Davenport, three-time major winner and former No. 1, said by telephone last month.Swiatek took her third French Open and won six titles. But she faltered at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open before regrouping by the WTA Finals, snatching the year-end No. 1 from Sabalenka by beating her and Pegula to take the title. Pegula, for her part, was one of just two players, along with No. 4 Elena Rybakina, to notch multiple wins over Swiatek this season.Marketa Vondrousova, who endured long stretches away from the game because of two wrist surgeries, became the first unseeded women’s Wimbledon winner when she beat Ons Jabeur in the final.Coco Gauff, 19, beat Aryna Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBut it was Gauff and her wise-beyond-her-years attitude who transcended the sport in a way that only Williams has done. When Gauff, 19, beat Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open, the nontennis world, including the former first lady Michelle Obama, went wild. In her acceptance speech, Gauff, who had struggled early in the season, addressed her doubters.“Thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” Gauff said. “To those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you were really adding gas to it.”It was the kind of bold statement that left even former major winners stunned. One of them was Davenport, who admitted to having tears run down her face while she did match commentary on television.“To me, the story of the year was Coco,” Davenport said. “Players come along once in a generation. When you have all the expectations on you at 12 and 15 years old and you are able to handle everything and then elevate your game to win, then you really are truly something special.” More

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    The Present and Future of French Men’s Tennis

    Men’s tennis in France isn’t what it used to be. But the veteran Adrian Mannarino is still winning, and the teenager Arthur Fils is quickly finding his form.Adrian Mannarino couldn’t stifle his chuckle.He had just been asked what it meant to him to be the top-ranked men’s tennis player from France.“Well,” Mannarino said in a video interview from a tournament in Astana, Kazakhstan, in early October, “this is not a good sign for French tennis.”Mannarino, at 35, is in his 20th year on the ATP Tour. He has never been ranked in the world’s top 20 and has never advanced beyond the round of 16 at a Grand Slam tournament. He did win the championship in Astana, though, his fourth career title and second of the year.The victory propelled Mannarino’s world ranking to No. 24, just two off from his career-high from March 2018. But, as he heads into the Paris Masters for the 13th time, Mannarino is keenly aware of the void of top talent in France.“We all knew that whenever Gaël [Monfils], Richard [Gasquet], Gilles [Simon] and Jo [Wilfried Tsonga] would get old, there would be a time when French tennis would be in trouble,” said Mannarino, of four French players who have all been ranked within the top 10 but are now in their late thirties and have either retired or dropped down significantly in the rankings. (Though Monfils did win his 12th career title in Stockholm last week.)“We’re still waiting for the young players to get to the top. There’s a lot of talent, but it’s taking a little bit of time to get to the top level,” he said.There are now 13 Frenchmen in the top 100, but only four — Arthur Fils, Luca van Assche, Ugo Humbert and Hugo Gaston — are 25 or younger. Fils has shown the most promise.At just 19, Fils, a finalist at the French Open junior championship in 2021, began the season ranked outside the top 250 and playing on the lower-level challenger circuit. He is now ranked No. 38.In February, Fils broke through in his home country, reaching back-to-back semifinals in Montpellier and Marseille, where he beat Stan Wawrinka. He won his first ATP title in Lyon, France, in May, and reached the semifinals in Hamburg, Germany, beating Casper Ruud before falling to the eventual champion, Alexander Zverev. Fils upset Stefanos Tsitsipas en route to the final in Antwerp, Belgium, last week before he went down to Alexander Bublik in the championship match.Arthur Fils, also a French player, after a successful shot in a match that he ultimately lost to Matteo Arnaldi of Italy at the U.S. Open in August.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesFils also made his Davis Cup debut for France alongside Mannarino in September and then was chosen by Bjorn Borg, captain of Team Europe, to be one of the team’s six representatives at the Laver Cup. He lost his lone singles match there to Ben Shelton.Fils said he has modeled his game after his countryman Tsonga, a big hitter who was runner-up to Novak Djokovic at the 2008 Australian Open and reached five other major semifinals.“Tsonga was one of my idols when I was younger,” Fils said. “He had a big serve, some great forehands and was in amazing physical condition. I’m trying to do the same and play a lot with my forehand and try to serve a lot of aces.”Mannarino’s style of play is nearly the opposite. It is best described as durable and reliable, though he benefits from a left-handed hook serve that draws opponents off court.“I’m not really powerful, so I’m trying to be a little smarter,” said Mannarino. “I’m moving pretty well and adapting to my opponent’s game most of the time. I’m like a counterpuncher; I use the power of my opponent and just try to be as consistent as I can. And if my opponent can miss some shots, I’m always happy.”Though only two years younger than Gasquet and Monfils, both of whom have seen their rankings drop out of the top 50, Mannarino is playing some of the best tennis of his life. Last year, he reached the round of 16 at the Australian Open before losing to the eventual winner, Rafael Nadal. This year, he beat Shelton and Hubert Hurkacz at the Miami Open to reach the round of 16 and has wins over Daniil Medvedev and Taylor Fritz. And yet only once, in 2020, has he reached the third round at the Paris Masters.“I’ve never had great results at Bercy, but I feel like I’m really enjoying my time when I’m playing there,” Mannarino said, referring to the site of the tournament. As a child, he would sit in the top level of the stadium with friends from his local tennis club and cheer on the French players. “It’s always good to have the French crowd supporting you, especially the Parisians, because it’s pretty noisy and a good atmosphere.”Mannarino after winning a point against Daniil Medvedev of Russia in their second-round match at Wimbledon in July.Adam Vaughan/EPA, via ShutterstockFrance has a rich and vast tennis history. Suzanne Lenglen won Wimbledon six times from 1919 to 1925. Yvon Petra won Wimbledon in 1946, and Yannick Noah became the first Frenchman in 37 years to win at Roland Garros in 1983.Mary Pierce won the Australian Open in 1995 and the French Open in 2000. Amélie Mauresmo, a former world No. 1, captured both the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2006. And Marion Bartoli took the Wimbledon title in 2013.But there are no more revered French players than the Four Musketeers — Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and René Lacoste — who led their nation to the Davis Cup six straight years, from 1927 to 1932.More recently, though, Mannarino and Fils met during a practice session at France’s national tennis center when Fils was just 15.“His fitness coach came to me after and said, ‘Oh, Arthur didn’t like it; it was going too fast for him and he could barely keep up,’” Mannarino said. “And then, a few years later he’s almost beating me. He’s improved so fast, and his tennis is really mature for his age.”Mannarino knows his time left on tour is limited by his age. But, so far, he does not see himself as old.“I don’t feel old because I don’t feel like my tennis level is dropping yet, even my physical condition,” he said. “I just feel like a kid in my head, and I’m trying to enjoy my life on the tour. As long as my legs can still run, I’m going to keep trying my best.” More

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    At Wimbledon, Is It Time for Hawk-Eye Live to Replace the Line Judges?

    Line judges made incorrect calls in the first week that changed the trajectory of matches for Andy Murray, Bianca Andreescu and Venus Williams, among others. Is it time to give computers the job?Andy Murray was a victim.Bianca Andreescu was too.Jiri Lehecka had to play a fifth set and essentially win his third-round match twice.Hawk-Eye Live, an electronic line calling system, could have saved the players their set, even their match, but Wimbledon doesn’t use it to its full extent, preferring a more traditional approach. The rest of the year on the professional tours, many tournaments rely exclusively on the technology, allowing players to know with near certainty whether their ball lands in or out because the computer always makes the call.But when players come to the All England Club for what is widely regarded as the most important tournament of the year, their fates are largely determined by line judges relying on their eyesight. Even more frustrating, because Wimbledon and its television partners have access to the technology, which players can use to challenge a limited number of calls each match, everyone watching the broadcast sees in real time if a ball is in or out. The people for whom the information is most important — the players and the chair umpire, who oversees the match — must rely on the line judge.When the human eye is judging serves traveling around 120 m.p.h. and forehand rallies faster than 80 m.p.h., errors are bound to happen.“When mistakes are getting made in important moments, then obviously as a player you don’t want that,” said Murray, who could have won his second-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth set, if computers had been making the line calls. Murray’s backhand return was called out, even though replays showed the ball was in. He ended up losing in five sets.No tennis tournament clings to its traditions the way Wimbledon does. Grass court tennis. Matches on Centre Court beginning later than everywhere else, and after those in the Royal Box have had their lunch. No lights for outdoor tennis. A queue with an hourslong wait for last-minute tickets.Those traditions do not have an effect on the outcome of matches from one point to the next. But keeping line judges on the court, after technology has proved to be more reliable, has been affecting — perhaps even turning — key matches seemingly every other day.To understand why that is happening, it’s important to understand how tennis has ended up with different rules for judging across its tournaments.Before the early 2000s, tennis — like baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports — relied on human officials to make calls, many of which were wrong, according to John McEnroe (and pretty much every other tennis player). McEnroe’s most infamous meltdown happened at Wimbledon in 1981, prompted by an incorrect line call.“I would have loved to have had Hawk-Eye,” said Mats Wilander, the seven-time Grand Slam singles champion and a star in the 1980s.But then tennis began experimenting with the Hawk-Eye Live judging system. Cameras capture the bounce of every ball from multiple angles and computers analyze the images to depict the ball’s trajectory and impact points with only a microscopic margin for error. Line judges remained as a backup, but players received three opportunities each set to challenge a line call, and an extra challenge when a set went to a tiebreaker.That forced players to try to figure out when to risk using a challenge they might need on a more crucial point later in the set.“It’s too much,” Wilander said. “I can’t imagine making that calculation, standing there, thinking about whether a shot felt good, how many challenges I have left, how late is it in the set.”Even Roger Federer, who was good at nearly every aspect of tennis, was famously terrible at making successful challenges.Hawk-Eye Live cameras along the outer courts at the U.S. Open in 2020.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore long, tennis officials began considering a fully electronic line calling system. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, tournaments were looking for ways to limit the number of people on the tennis court.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said adopting electronic calling in 2021 was also a part of the Australian Open’s “culture of innovation.” Players liked it. So did fans, Tiley said, because matches moved more quickly.Last year, the U.S. Open switched to fully electronic line calling. There is an ongoing debate about whether the raised lines on clay courts would prevent the technology from providing the same precision as on grass and hardcourts. At the French Open and other clay court tournaments, the ball leaves a mark that umpires often inspect.In 2022, the men’s ATP Tour featured 21 tournaments with fully electronic line calling, including stops in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Canada; and Washington, D.C. All of those sites have women’s WTA tournaments as well. Every ATP tournament will use it beginning in 2025.“The question is not whether it’s 100 percent right but whether it is better than a human, and it is definitely better than a human,” said Mark Ein, who owns the Citi Open in Washington, D.C.A spokesman for the All England Club said Sunday that Wimbledon has no plans to remove its line judges.“After the tournament we look at everything we do, but at this moment, we have no plans to change the system,” Dominic Foster said.Line judges at Wimbledon are responsible for ruling the ball in or out.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesOn Saturday, Andreescu became a casualty of human error. The 2019 U.S. Open champion from Canada, Andreescu has been going deeper into Grand Slam tournaments after years of injuries.With the finish of her match against Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in sight, Andreescu resisted asking for electronic intervention on a crucial shot the line judge had called out. From across the net Jabeur, who had been close to the ball as it landed, advised Andreescu not to waste one of her three challenges for the set, saying the ball was indeed out. The match continued, though not before television viewers saw the computerized replay that showed the ball landing on the line.“I trust Ons,” Andreescu said after Jabeur came back to beat her in three sets, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.Andreescu explained that she was thinking of her previous match, a three-set marathon decided by a final-set tiebreaker, during which she said she “wasted” several challenges.Against Jabeur, she thought, “I’m going to save it, just in case.”Bad idea. Jabeur won that game, and the set, and then the match.Over on Court No. 12, the challenge system was causing another kind of confusion. Lehecka had match point against Tommy Paul when he raised his hand to challenge a call after returning a shot from Paul that had landed on the line. His request for a challenge came just as Paul hit the next shot into the net.The point was replayed. Paul won it, and then the set moments later, forcing a deciding set. Lehecka won, but had to run around for another half-hour. Venus Williams lost match point in her first-round match on another complicated sequence involving a challenge.Leylah Fernandez, a two-time Grand Slam finalist from Canada, said she likes the tradition of line judges at Wimbledon as the world cedes more to technology.Then again, she added, if “it did cost me a match, it would have been probably a different answer.”Andy Murray learned after his loss to Stefanos Tsitsipas that his shot, called out by a line judge, was in and could have changed the outcome of the match.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThat is where Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion, found himself after his loss Friday afternoon. By the time he arrived at his news conference, he had learned that his slow and sharply angled backhand return of serve that landed just a few yards from the umpire had nicked the line.The point would have given him two chances to break Tsitsipas’s serve and serve out the match. When he was told the shot was in, his eyes opened with a startle, then fell toward the floor.Murray now knew what everyone else had seen.The ball had landed under the nose of the umpire, who confirmed the call, Murray said. He could not imagine how anyone could have missed it. He actually likes having the line judges, he added. Perhaps it was his fault for not using a challenge.“Ultimately,” he said, “the umpire made a poor call that’s right in front of her.” More

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    French Open Doubles Champion Austin Krajicek Goes For a Repeat at Wimbledon

    After years of frustration in singles, Austin Krajicek nearly quit tennis. Then an old friend asked him if he wanted to give the sport one more shot.The last time Austin Krajicek stormed through the front door, threw his tennis bag into a closet and announced that he was done with the sport for good, his wife, Misia Kedzierski, thought he might actually be serious.Krajicek, a big-hitting lefty from Florida who had been a champion as a junior and in college, had spent seven years toiling on the professional tennis tour, breaking into the top 100 in singles a couple times, even winning a couple of matches in Grand Slam tournaments. But as the summer of 2018 approached, the losses piled up and his singles ranking tumbled into the 300s.He and Kedzierski had been living in a cheap apartment in Chicago that summer, with a mattress on the floor, some old furniture from her parents’ house, a few dishes and their dog. She never questioned his tennis pursuits, but she was also covering most of their expenses, as Krajicek’s tennis career was costing him more than he was bringing in.“It’s like that awkward time where you don’t want to talk about money necessarily,” Kedzierski, a data analyst for the restaurant industry, recalled recently. “But then you get to a point where you’re like, ‘Well, if we can’t pay rent, then should we keep doing what we’re doing right now?’”Krajicek after missing a return in a second-round match at the Japan Open in 2015. He continued to struggle year after year.Toru Yamanaka/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKrajicek didn’t think so.“It’s a brutal sport, and you have to be a little bit insane to keep going,” he said during a recent interview from his home in Allen, Texas, north of Dallas.Tennis seemed to be telling Krajicek to give up on the dream of competing for the biggest titles in the sport that had largely defined his life since he was 6 years old. At 28 he was no longer a kid, and he was a few credits short of finishing his degree in psychology from Texas A&M. He was getting his license to sell insurance. He was ready for Plan B.Then he got a call from a buddy from his college tennis days. Did he want to travel to England to play doubles in some minor league tournaments?Krajicek got his tennis bag out of the closet.One last shot.Playing for His Next MealKrajicek, who is a distant relative of the 1996 Wimbledon men’s singles champion, Richard Krajicek, began his tennis journey when he was 5, asking his father, a former college basketball player who had taken up tennis at a club near Tampa, if he could tag along. Soon he was training several days a week with the club professional, and soon after that, the club pro told Austin’s father he needed to find his son a better coach.At 14, Krajicek enrolled in the IMG Academy in Bradenton, where Nick Bollettieri famously churned out future champions under the often stifling Florida sun. At 18, Krajicek won the U.S. national junior championship in Kalamazoo, Mich., and flirted with turning professional. He opted instead to attend Texas A&M, to give his body and his game a few more years to develop. In 2011, he won the N.C.A.A. men’s doubles title.Then it was time to start playing for his next meal.The journey to the tennis big leagues has a few stops in grand world capitals like Paris and London, but players can spend far more nights in destinations like Binghamton, N.Y; Aptos, Calif.; Rimouski, Quebec; and Gimcheon, South Korea. There are terrible hotels, a lot of bad meals, and plenty of empty bleachers. Or no bleachers at all.Krajicek was a newly minted pro playing in a minor tournament in Champaign, Ill., when he met Kedzierski, a senior tennis player at the University of Illinois. A friend of Kedzierski’s had a crush on Krajicek but was too nervous to reach out. Kedzierski got his number and texted him on her friend’s behalf only to learn that Krajicek was interested in Kedzierski.They had their first dinner two months later in Maui, when they realized they were both there for tennis competitions. Nice guy, she thought.After graduation, she moved to Los Angeles to work for a stylist in the entertainment business. Krajicek, a master couch surfer who often stayed in the vacation homes of wealthy tennis boosters, was using Los Angeles as a training base. He started staying at Kedzierski’s place, showing up with his tennis bag and a suitcase, training for a week or two, and then heading back out on the road.Krajicek in his second-round match at the Australian Open in 2016. He would lose in straight sets to Kei Nishikori.Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesPretty quickly, Kedzierski discerned that Krajicek didn’t actually have a home. She told him he could leave a pair of shoes at her place if he wanted. He said no thanks — he was fine living out of the suitcase.She went about her career and got a master’s in marketing at Texas A&M.And he went about his, such as it was. In 2018, seven years into his pro career, Krajicek was winning just 38 percent of his singles matches. That was when Kedzierski began to see her boyfriend toss his tennis bag into the closet and swear off the sport a little more often.Tennis Wasn’t the ProblemFor all but the best tennis players, the fleeting nature of top form is often a mystery.“Anyone in the top 250 can make a good week,” Daniil Medvedev of Russia, one of the game’s best players and its top player-pundit, has said, over and over. No one disagrees with him.Krajicek found his form once more when he headed to England with Jeevan Nedunchezhiyan. Maybe it was the comfort of playing with an old friend. Maybe it was because he had reached the point where he was ready to let it all go.Whatever the reason, he and Nedunchezhiyan quickly made the final of a tournament in Nottingham. The next week, they won a tournament in Ilkley in northern England. The week after that, they won two matches and qualified for the main draw at Wimbledon, where they lost in the first round in a third-set tiebreaker.Krajicek flew back to Chicago to the cheap apartment with the mattress on the floor. The next week, there was a small pro tournament just up the road in Winnetka, Ill., a 20-minute drive. He and Nedunchezhiyan figured, why not enter? They won it, sharing $4,650 in prize money.This was beginning to get interesting.In addition to his size and power, Krajicek had something that most doubles players do not. He is left-handed, which can instantly turn a quality team into a dangerous one because opponents have to adjust to different angles and spins of the ball. The usual weak spots for teams with two right-handed players aren’t there.Krajicek and Nikola Mektic teamed up during the Paris Masters in 2018.Justin Setterfield/Getty ImagesTennys Sandgren, another old friend who had climbed into the top 70 in singles, asked Krajicek to be his partner at the U.S. Open. They reached the quarterfinals. Rajeev Ram, who was on his way to becoming one of the top doubles players in the world, asked him to play an ATP event in Moscow. They won.That was when Krajicek concluded tennis wasn’t the problem. Singles was.“I was over it,” he said.Doubles became the only mountain he would attempt to climb.A Turning PointKrajicek’s productive summer and fall had made tennis financially sustainable. Now he was qualifying for ATP Tour events, where the prize money was significantly higher than on the lower-level tour. By 2021, he had made the U.S. Olympic team, but it was clear that he still needed to improve to make it into the top echelon of the pro game.He and Kedzierski had moved to Texas. On a hot spring afternoon, Krajicek landed on a backyard court that belonged to a friend of Phil Farmer, a highly regarded coach. Farmer had worked with top Americans, including John Isner, Sam Querrey and the Bryan brothers, one of the sport’s great doubles duos. A player Farmer was coaching at the time had told Farmer he had to check out his hitting partner.He obliged. Running Krajicek through a series of drills, he immediately saw a player with a huge serve who could nail targets down the line and crosscourt with both his forehand and his backhand. Krajicek also had soft hands and a stinger of a forehand volley.“I could really envision where his game was and where it needed to go,” said Farmer, who has been coaching him ever since.There was room for improvement — he needed to be more aggressive with his returns, and serve to the whole service box, rather than just his favorite spots. His low volleys needed work.Krajicek training with Phil Farmer at Wimbledon.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesHe also needed a permanent partner. Then Ivan Dodig of Croatia, a mainstay of the doubles tour with a chess master’s understanding of the game, was suddenly free.He and Krajicek began their partnership in Belgrade, Serbia, in April 2022. By early June, they had reached the French Open final. Kedzierski, who had married Krajicek the previous December, caught a last-minute flight to Paris. She was watching courtside as Krajicek and Dodig squandered three championship points and lost in three sets.“That was not the match to watch,” she said.The next day, she and Krajicek delayed their return flight for 24 hours and rode rented bicycles all over Paris.Back at home, their friend Terry Brush had been keeping a bottle of Old Forester Birthday edition bourbon ready for when Krajicek won his first Grand Slam. He and Farmer, both bourbon lovers, had signed the label, pledging to open it only when they got that victory.Catching up at home after Paris, Brush asked Krajicek if he wanted to open it. They had come so close.Not a chance, Krajicek told him.In a Good RoutineA year later, Krajicek and Dodig were back in Paris, making their way through the French Open draw, but barely. Three of their first four matches went to deciding third sets as they vanquished a couple of Argentines, a Swiss and a Chilean, a Portuguese and a Brazilian, a pair of Germans, and a Spaniard and another Argentine.From 5,000 miles away, Kedzierski could tell that with each win, Krajicek’s routine was becoming more precise.Austin Krajicek and Misia Kedzierski.Matt SachsHe was eating the same meal (Chipotle delivered to his room) at the same time each day (around 6 p.m. so he could finish eating for the day by 7, which helped him get a good night’s rest). Then he watched videos of his opponents’ matches and went to sleep. Even his text messages to her came at the same time each day, including his check-ins about their two golden doodles, Tucker and Moose.When Krajicek made it to the finals, he asked her if she was coming to Paris. Not doing it, she told him.“He was in such a good routine,” Kedzierski said. “There was no way I was going to mess that up.”The final matched Krajicek and Dodig against Sander Gillé and Joran Vliegen of Belgium. Krajicek and Dodig seized control at the start and never gave it up. Watching from home with a few friends, Kedzierski saw Krajicek’s last blistering forehand clinch the title and, for the next week, the No. 1 ranking. She Facetimed him as soon as the ball landed so that when he looked at his phone, he would see she had called. Fifteen minutes later, from a tunnel under the stadium, he called her back.She told him how proud she was of him. He reminded her of all the times he had wistfully said he was going to get to the top.The next day, Krajicek crammed into an economy seat for the flight home to Dallas, even though he had to return to Europe five days later for the grass season and Wimbledon. The emergency exit door was sticking out in front of his seat, forcing him to angle his legs for the better part of 10 hours, leaving his frame a little cockeyed and sore by touchdown.Kedzierski was waiting for him. So was that bottle of bourbon.Krajicek, left, and Ivan Dodig after winning the French Open men’s doubles title.Caroline Blumberg/EPA, via Shutterstock More

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    Swiatek Overcomes Muchova to Win Another French Open

    Swiatek was drawn into a tight match with Karolina Muchova, and emerged with her third singles championship at Roland Garros in four years.Iga Swiatek is once more the queen of clay.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, beat Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic to claim the French Open women’s singles championship on Saturday.Muchova, whose smooth and athletic game has been one of the sport’s best kept secrets for years, struggled with errors early but found her form and gave Swiatek the final of her life, forcing her to use every bit of the clinical, relentless approach that had made her the world’s top player — and then some — for more than a year.Swiatek outlasted Muchova, 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 in a breathtaking, up-and-down battle that met the moment of one of the grandest stages in the sport. When Muchova’s second serve tumbled into the net on Swiatek’s first match point, Swiatek dropped her racket and brought her hands to her eyes, as Muchova came around the net for a well-earned congratulatory hug.Soon there was the increasingly familiar sight of Swiatek emerging in the stands for a celebratory huddle with her team and a few quiet words with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz, who started working with her when she was a shaky teenager and helped mold her into a steely champion.“A big challenge,” Swiatek said of her triumph in the understatement of the day. “Really proud of myself that I did it.”Swiatek has been virtually unbeatable at Roland Garros since 2020. With Saturday’s win, she captured her third French Open singles title in four years. Since 2019, her record in the tournament heading into the final was 28-2, which may not rival the 112-3 record of Rafael Nadal, but give her time. Swiatek just turned 22 last week and has given few hints that she will be slowing down.Other than the occasional battle with her psyche, she seems to be getting better each year, especially at the French Open, a tournament she loves more than any other.For Muchova, the final capped a remarkable comeback from a year ago, when she sprained an ankle in a third-round singles match at Roland Garros and had to withdraw. The injury was the latest in a series of ailments that had long kept her from realizing the potential that so many of the game’s coaches, players and experts have seen in her for years.That loss sent her spiraling out of the top 200, forcing her to play a series of smaller tournaments to regain her standing. She entered this tournament ranked 43rd in the world, though few in tennis believed there were 42 women better than Muchova.Muchova plays a backhand against Swiatek.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesBut playing in a Grand Slam final for the first time is a challenge for any player, especially against the best in the world. Swiatek had cruised through her first five matches of the tournament. She won four of her first six sets without conceding a game. Then she lost just seven games across her next two matches.Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil made Swiatek uncomfortable for a bit in the semifinal, pushing her around the court and into a tiebreaker in the second set, but she arrived in the final with every reason to believe she would be lifting the trophy at day’s end.That faith grew stronger in the first minutes of the match, as the fluidity and mix of power and finesse that Muchova plays with on her best days were nowhere to be found. She sprayed balls wide and long, banged easy shots into the middle of the net, and gave Swiatek too many free points.There is no clock that regulates the length of a tennis match, but much of the sport is about controlling time, that is, finding a way to make an opponent feel rushed, like she has no chance to get to the ball, while figuring out how to give yourself all the time in the world. For more than a year that has been Swiatek’s signature, and it’s exactly what she did to Muchova on Saturday.There was a time two years ago when she was among the most creative players in the world. Her game featured squatting backhands and a repertoire of forehands with six different kinds of spin. There was an artistry to it all, but she didn’t win nearly as much.Now Swiatek doesn’t build winning points as much as she seizes them, going for winners with her big, rolling forehand at the first opportunity. The shorter the point, the less she has to think.She never eases her way into a match. She seeks to dominate from the start. When a point ends she hustles to start the next like she’s rushing to catch a train, plowing through sets and matches as though she’s got tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.For Muchova to have a chance, she was going to need to control the clock by extending points and find enough time to get comfortable on the biggest stage of her career.Swiatek had her first break of Muchova’s serve and the lead after just seven minutes. She led 6-2, 3-0 after an hour, while Muchova was still trying to find her footing.“The balls are coming fast,” Muchova said of the experience of facing Swiatek. “If you have a chance you have to take it because there may not be another.”And then she did. Shot by shot, point-by-point, game-by-game, she did. The strokes grew crisp and precise, the points stretched out, she slid into her shots so gracefully at moments it looked like she was dancing. Her volleys stung as the packed crowd of more than 15,000 fans chanted her name, urging her on.Swiatek wobbled, and as the match moved to the two-hour mark it was all even at a set apiece. Two minutes later, Muchova broke Swiatek’s serve for a third straight time and had her first lead of the day.Muchova and Swiatek had not played a competitive match since 2019, before either of them had established themselves at the top of the game. But they have practiced many times since then, and Swiatek has raved about Muchova’s talents.“Great touch,” Swiatek said of her competitor. “She can also speed up the game. She plays with that kind of, I don’t know, freedom in her movements. And she has a great technique.”All of it was there Saturday on one of the sport’s biggest stages, in one of the great Grand Slam finals in recent memory. Swiatek, who had sprinted to a seemingly insurmountable lead, wobbled as Muchova found her form, then battled from a service break down twice in the deciding set and found the answers and shots she needed.Swiatek had never lost a Grand Slam final and won all of those matches in straight sets. One of the few lingering questions was how she would respond if pushed into the crucible of a third set with everything on the line.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersAt first, it didn’t look good. She double-faulted to give Muchova yet another break of serve to start the deciding set and looked finished as Muchova surged to a 2-0 lead.Mary Carillo, the longtime tennis commentator, likes to divide players into two groups — those who have fangs and those who do not, those who don’t just win from the front but relish the chance to brawl and fight to the final ball and those who pack it in.Muchova had shown her fangs in the semifinal and in mounting her comeback on Saturday. Now it was Swiatek’s turn. She won 12 of the next 14 points to take back the lead only to watch Muchova bite once more, turning the third set into a roller coaster.She charged forward behind deep balls that had Swiatek on the run and finished points with touch or a blast or a line-pasting swipe, holding her own serve and breaking Swiatek’s for a 4-3 advantage.“After so many ups and downs I stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition.”That worked. Muchova’s lead lasted seven minutes, until an ill-timed drop shot settled to the bottom of the net and Swiatek was even once more and hearing the deafening chants of her name to the beat of a bass drum.“Iga is No. 1 in the world and I was so close,” Muchova said.With Muchova serving to stay in the match, Swiatek took dead aim on her returns at Muchova’s feet and nailed her targets, putting Muchova on her heels and in a quick hole. Double match point arrived as Muchova pulled a forehand wide. With a double-fault from Muchova, Swiatek had her crown, the queen of clay for another year.“Sorry for being so difficult,” she told her team during the awards ceremony.Four Grand Slam finals. Four championship trophies. Tops in the world. Swiatek doesn’t seem that difficult at all. More