French Open (Tennis)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Tennis

      Naomi Osaka Is Talking to the Media Again, but on Her Own Terms

      by

      The tennis superstar is guest-editing Racquet magazine and has written a cover essay for Time. What’s left for traditional sports journalism?In early May, a couple of weeks before she tweeted that she wouldn’t appear at a required news conference at the French Open, Naomi Osaka was on a Zoom call with a writer for Racquet magazine who was trying to gain insight into the athlete’s inner life.Ms. Osaka said she’d gone to the protests in Minneapolis last year and had been moved by what she saw.“It was a bit of an eye opener,” she said of the experience, “because I’ve never had time to go out and do anything physically.”Ms. Osaka ignited a furious debate over the role of the tennis media with her announcement that she’d pay a $15,000 fine rather than attend a news conference that she said was bad for her mental health. Her decision, and the response from tennis officials, ended with her withdrawal from the French Open. The British tennis writer Andrew Castle called her decision “a very dangerous precedent” that would be “hugely destructive and a massive commercial blow to everyone in the sport.”If the freak-out over the cancellation of an inevitably boring news conference seemed a bit oversized, it was because Ms. Osaka didn’t just open a new conversation about mental health in sports. She touched a raw nerve in the intertwined businesses of sports and media: the ever-growing, irresistible power of the star. We journalists are touchy about retaining what is often pathetically minimal access to athletes. The media was once the main way that sports stars found fame, glory and lucrative endorsements, and a glossy profile can still play a role in elevating an obscure player. But the rise of social media and of a widening array of new outlets has produced a power shift, as my colleague Lindsay Crouse wrote in June, “redistributing leverage among public figures, the journalists and publications that cover them.”Ms. Osaka walked into the middle of that dynamic during the French Open. While tennis news conferences can be quite weird — some local journalist in the room amuses the traveling press by confusing one Russian player for another, or asks a particularly off-the-wall question — the mood is usually pretty sedate. Most players roll with them without complaint. And Ms. Osaka wasn’t being grilled about her personal life or her mental health. She was bothered by questions about her performance on clay courts. Another recent question concerned what she planned to wear to the Met Gala, a high-society Manhattan event of which she is a co-chair.She has become the best-paid woman in sports, earning about $60 million last year according to Forbes, and almost universally positive coverage hasn’t hurt her ability to build a portfolio that includes swimwear and skin care lines, two Nike sneakers and the Naomi Osaka bowl at Sweetgreen. And she drew broad and favorable coverage when she provoked a tournament into taking a day off to make a statement on police killings of Black Americans. She has a cover essay in the next issue of Time that is conciliatory toward the media even as it expands on her statements about mental health, a person familiar with it said.“The press is a willing accomplice to what most of these athletes are trying to accomplish,” said the Tennis Channel commentator Brett Haber.Ms. Osaka at the Australian Open. She set off a debate about the media’s role with her announcement at the French Open that she’d rather pay a fine than attend a news conference.Mackenzie Sweetnam/Getty ImagesI have an impulse to defend the need for athletes to give news conferences, on the principle that what Naomi Osaka does today, Joe Biden will do tomorrow. But there’s an additional layer that muddies the media’s position, which is that athletes are only talking to us because they’re under contract. “I’m just here so I won’t get fined,” the running back Marshawn Lynch groused repeatedly in a video Ms. Osaka also posted. There’s something a bit compromising in athletes appearing at a news conference not because they need, or even respect, the power of journalism but because a corporation is paying them to sit on the dais and reluctantly have no comment.Enterprising reporters can still get insight from news conferences, and many athletes don’t share Ms. Osaka’s stress about them. “It’s like pretty easygoing,” the Polish tennis player Iga Swiatek said last week. But while independent journalists can still deliver everything from breakthrough investigations to commentary, the role of journalism as a mere conduit for athletes’ words doesn’t make that much sense anymore. Ms. Osaka “could do a press conference on Instagram live if she wanted,” her agent, Stuart Duguid, told me.The ritual is “a relic of an era when they needed the press — when the press were the accepted conduit between athletes and the public,” a Guardian sportswriter, Jonathan Liew, said in an interview.But the Osaka story has broader resonance because sports, and the media that covers them, are often leading indicators of the direction in which we’re all headed. In 2007, Hillary Clinton’s top spokesman, Howard Wolfson, told me he was preoccupied with Major League Baseball’s site, MLB.com, and how the league had created a media entity that it totally controlled. Why couldn’t a politician and her campaign do the same, he wondered? It didn’t quite work for her, but by 2008, Barack Obama was producing videos far more compelling than anything the networks were making. In 2016, the Trump Show was the best thing on TV, syndicated to your local cable network.The assault on the independent sports media reached its peak with the 2014 introduction of The Players’ Tribune, with the promise of giving players their own voice. But that effort pretty much fizzled, selling to an Israeli media company in 2019. Though it occasionally published powerful essays, it mostly had that sterile quality of a glorified news release.Athletes’ more successful ventures into media have avoided taking on journalism directly. The model is the Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James, who has spent a decade building a media company that has done deals for TV shows and movies with HBO, Netflix, Warner Brothers and others. And at its best, these platforms can elicit more than you’d get at a news conference. Mr. James built his company, in part, on the insight that athletes would open up to one another, and “didn’t want to be asked questions that everyone should know the answers to,” said Josh Pyatt, the co-head of WME Sports, who has been at the center of building media companies for athletes.On a recent episode of “The Shop,” produced for HBO by Mr. James, the quarterback Tom Brady acknowledged the wooden quality of many athletes’ comments to the press.“What I say versus what I think are two totally different things,” said Mr. Brady, who co-founded another media company, Religion of Sports, with Michael Strahan, the former New York Giant and current “Good Morning America” host. “Ninety percent of what I say is probably not what I’m thinking.”Who wants that? But somewhere between the compulsory news conference and the glory days of Sports Illustrated, there’s space for a new independent sports journalism, one that reckons with the power athletes now wield on their own platforms but also retains a degree of journalistic independence that most of the athlete-owned media companies don’t attempt.That, at least, is the thinking behind Racquet, a gorgeous print tennis quarterly that started in 2016 with literary ambitions (the first issue included not one but two reconsiderations of the novelist David Foster Wallace) and has an ambitious, diverse roster of writers. Its next issue, due in August, will be guest edited by Ms. Osaka. It includes the interview with her (by Thessaly La Force, who is also a features director of T: The New York Times Style Magazine); an essay on the Japanese discovery, through Ms. Osaka, a Japanese citizen, of the Black Lives Matter movement; and a photo essay on the tennis culture in Ms. Osaka’s father’s native Haiti.An illustration for Racquet magazine that accompanies an interview with Ms. Osaka.Photo illustration by Johanna Goodman/Getty Images for Racquet MagazineA tennis media that revolves around daily news cycles is “still living in an age where pulling quotes from a presser makes a headline, makes a story,” said Caitlin Thompson, a former college tennis player and veteran journalist who is Racquet’s publisher and co-founder, with David Shaftel. “They’re not operating in a world where an athlete can reach more people and be more attuned to the larger cultural and social contexts than they are.”Racquet has tried to straddle those worlds. Its contributors include Andrea Petkovic, a top German player (and another Foster Wallace fan), and the Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas, who is also a photographer. But it also published a tough investigation of allegations of domestic abuse against the German tennis star Alexander Zverev. And Thompson said that younger players “understand what we’re doing because they’re children of the internet — they’re all Gen Z.” The Australian Nick Kyrgios, for instance, has a “context in which he wants to be seen, which is this kid playing Call of Duty between matches and being more into the Celtics than the men’s tour,” Ms. Thompson said. (The August Racquet issue also explores Ms. Osaka’s medium of choice, manga.)Ms. Osaka skipped Wimbledon, but she’s expected to be back for the Tokyo Olympics this summer. And the Racquet issue offers a bit of the texture of a young star’s strange life — between hotel rooms and tennis courts — that you would be hard-pressed to find at a news conference.Ms. Osaka sometimes describes herself as shy, but she told Racquet: “Tennis is a thing that I’m least shy about. At the end of the day, even if I don’t win that match, I know that I have played better than 99 percent of the population, so there’s not anything to be shy about.” More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Tennis

      It’s Novak Djokovic’s Wimbledon. Don’t Roll Your Eyes.

      by

      The fiery star’s march toward history could force his detractors into an uncomfortable position: giving him his due.At first glance, this year’s Wimbledon, returning after the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world’s most famed tennis tournament in 2020, looks to be a diminished affair.No Rafael Nadal. After a bruising defeat to Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the French Open, Nadal withdrew from Wimbledon, citing a need to heal.No Naomi Osaka. She announced last week that she would continue her hiatus to care for her mental health.Roger Federer will stride again on Centre Court, but he is nearly 40 and still shaking the rust from an injured knee. As time passes, so do the chances that Serena Williams will make another winning run.But Djokovic will be there, fresh from victory at Roland Garros and taking dead aim at the record books. Winning Wimbledon, which begins next Monday, would give him his 20th major title, tying him at long last with Federer and Nadal. It would also keep alive his quest to win four majors in a single year, the Grand Slam, something not achieved on the men’s side in 52 years.He sits now on the precipice of history, which creates a bind for his many stubborn detractors: Ignore and deride his stirring march, or finally give the fiery and efficient Serb his just due.Here’s why the haters, and those simply unmoved by his ascent, should give Djokovic reconsideration.His minimalist approach redefines tennis mastery.In a sport that breathes aesthetics, that lives on the awe-inspiring flow of points and balletic movement of its most outstanding practitioners, Djokovic’s pared-down approach is as divisive as Rothko’s color blocks.More than perhaps anyone in tennis history, Djokovic has refined the foundational core of the game — preparation, balance, weight shifts, footwork.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesFederer has Rembrandt’s flair: all those baroque swings and gracefully artistic approaches. Nadal’s physical, looping groundstrokes recall a heavyweight boxer’s pounding left hooks.But Djokovic’s game has its beauty. No top player has ever been as flexible, as able, on every surface to twist and bend and turn an outright mad-dash defensive sprint into a sudden attack. More than perhaps anyone in tennis history, Djokovic has refined the foundational core of the game — preparation, balance, weight shifts, footwork.He is a minimalist, spare and unencumbered by the need for showy flair. Is there an eye-catching aesthetic to that? You bet.He’s not a robot. He’s Houdini.There are too many slashes at Djokovic on the internet to count. They say he’s a machine. A robot. Nothing more than the world’s most expansive squash wall.Hogwash.Yes, he wins … and wins, and wins. Over the last decade, nobody has done more of that in tennis. But there is nothing predictable about how Djokovic goes about it. There are all-out, percussive beat downs — blurs of brilliance that mix power and defense and deftness — as in his straight-sets demolition of Nadal in the final of the 2019 Australian Open.There are also vivid displays of guts, grit and staying power. His recent Roland Garros title was all about that. But remember, too, the six-hour, five-set marathon against Nadal to win the Australian Open in 2012. And, of course, the comeback from two match points down to nip Federer in the epic Wimbledon final of 2019.Don’t forget 2010 and 2011, when Djokovic twice rose from the ashes to knock off Federer in the semifinals at the U.S. Open, beating back two match points in both cases. In 2011, Djokovic not only came back from two sets down, he saved the first match point he faced with a from-the-heels forehand return that rocketed past his rival and stung the line for a clean winner.Federer promptly wilted, losing every remaining game, drooping off as if disgusted by the audaciousness of his opponent.If you think a profound penchant for Houdini-like escapes is boring, well, maybe you’re beyond convincing.Djokovic’s flaws redeem him.Yes, he can erupt, shattering rackets, barking like a petulant child at himself, his coaches, umpires and peers. At his temperamental nadir, the 2020 U.S. Open, he struck a ball in anger that hit a lineswoman, leading to his default from the tournament.At his most heedless, he tried to hold tournaments last year in Serbia and Croatia during one of the worst periods of the pandemic. The exhibitions were canceled after he and other top players came down with the coronavirus.Djokovic has proved himself all too human in the best, worst and most searching ways. He does not hide from it. Despite the myriad clips of him raging on the court or appearing tone deaf off it — as in April when he said he did not think coronavirus vaccinations should be mandatory on the ATP Tour — his journey has always been public facing.His flaws, and the openness with which he reveals his interior life, make him more interesting than his near-perfect, more restrained peers.Yes, Djokovic can erupt, shattering rackets, barking like a petulant child at himself, umpires and his coaches, as he did during the 2018 U.S. Open. Frank Franklin Ii/Associated PressWithout him, tennis would be a monotonous duopoly.For years, men’s tennis seemed defined by a single rivalry: Federer versus Nadal. Two great champions, two contrasting styles.Their lasting connection came to define this era of the sport. Then Djokovic barged and bullied his way in. He is the third wheel, different from Federer and Nadal in almost every way, including the fact that he does not hail from well-to-do Switzerland or Spain, but from an Eastern European country many fans cannot find on a map.For his haters, all of this is a bitter pill to swallow, one they must choke down with frequency.Djokovic now holds the upper hand in head-to-head wins over both rivals. Since 2011, he has captured 18 major titles, seven more than Nadal and 14 more than Federer in that span.After winning this year’s Australian Open, a newspaper headline summed up tennis’s uncomfortable truth: Djokovic might be the greatest of them all.If a rested Federer can stir the old grass-court magic, maybe we get the title bout everyone wants: a rematch of the heart-pounding 2019 All England Club final.Novak Djokovic will find himself in a familiar spot, facing a boisterous crowd intent as much on Federer winning as on seeing the Serb crumpled in defeat.Should recent history hold, Djokovic will raise the champion’s trophy again, another rebuke to the holdouts who refuse to embrace one of the most exciting champions in all of sport.Wimbledon diminished? Not quite. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Rafael Nadal Will Skip Wimbledon and Tokyo Olympics

      by

      The Spanish star said a short turnaround between the French Open and Wimbledon did not allow enough time for his body to recover.Rafael Nadal, a 20-time Grand Slam tournament winner, will not go for No. 21 at Wimbledon this year, he announced on Thursday. He also pulled out of the Olympics, and in doing so became the latest top athlete to suggest that compressed sports schedules after the pandemic were asking too much of their biggest stars.“Hi all, I have decided not to participate at this year’s Championships at Wimbledon and the Olympic Games in Tokyo,” he wrote in a series of posts on Twitter. “It’s never an easy decision to take but after listening to my body and discuss it with my team I understand that it is the right decision.”“The goal is to prolong my career and continue to do what makes me happy, that is to compete at the highest level and keep fighting for those professional and personal goals at the maximum level of competition.”The fact that there has only been 2 weeks between RG and Wimbledon, didn’t make it easier on my body to recuperate after the always demanding clay court season. They have been two months of great effort and the decision I take is focused looking at the mid and long term.— Rafa Nadal (@RafaelNadal) June 17, 2021
      His withdrawal came a day after the basketball star LeBron James blamed the N.B.A.’s compressed schedule for a string of injuries to some of its biggest names, and as coaches and medical experts in Europe were warning about the physical demands on players competing in the monthlong European Championship.Nadal has struggled with injuries during his career, and Wimbledon is played on grass, a surface that is not his favorite. (He has won there only twice, and now will have missed the event three times since 2009.) The Olympics in Tokyo will be played on hardcourts.Nadal most recently skipped last year’s U.S. Open in New York, citing concerns about the coronavirus.Nadal cited the short turnaround between the French Open and Wimbledon as the reason for his withdrawal, saying it would not give him enough time to recuperate.Nadal, 35, is coming off a memorable French Open semifinal against Novak Djokovic last week. In a bid to win the tournament for the 14th time, Nadal won the first set before eventually losing in four. Djokovic went on to win the tournament.Nadal, Djokovic and Roger Federer, 39, are locked in a battle to amass the most career Grand Slam singles titles. Nadal and Federer have 20 and Djokovic has 19. No other player has more than 14.Nadal has played in three previous Olympics, winning the singles gold medal in Beijing in 2008. In 2016, he carried the flag of Spain at the opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Golf

      A Delightful Glimpse Into Golf’s Secret World of Bitter Feuds

      by

      A moment ripe with loathing, shared between two large golfers, interrupts the game’s smooth surface.For those of us who follow golf, pleasure rarely comes as pure as it did a few weeks ago, when some golf-world insider leaked an unaired confrontation between the sport’s most notable warring hulks. Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka are the P.G.A.’s No. 5 and No. 8 ranked players, respectively. Both are very beefy and very good — two figures on the leading edge of golf’s turn toward overwhelming power as the tactic of choice — and they have been openly feuding since 2019, when Koepka publicly complained about DeChambeau’s overly deliberate pace of play. Since then the rivals have badgered each other on Twitter to great comic effect, but an in-person confrontation, much longed for by fans, has proved elusive.Then the moment arrived. Koepka was being interviewed following his Friday round at the P.G.A. Championship at Kiawah Island, providing standard-issue responses to standard-issue questions about course conditions and putting surfaces. Suddenly DeChambeau’s massive figure materialized in frame, ambling behind him. DeChambeau appeared to say something while walking by — we still don’t know what — but his mere presence was enough to render the environment charged with animosity and turn the normally unflappable Koepka’s facial expressions into a symphony of malice. Within seconds, he was so discomposed that he could no longer continue the interview. “I lost my train of thought,” he fumed, and a flurry of expletives ensued. A sketch-comedy program would be hard pressed to conjure a funnier reaction shot than Koepka’s journey from annoyance to exasperation to exhaustion; his eyelids seemed forcibly pulled shut by the sheer magnitude of his disgust.It’s difficult to describe exactly why this burst of antagonism between large men was so enchanting to golf media. Part of the explanation has to do with the game’s by-design status as the most passive-​aggressive of televised sports. The magisterial slowness of the contest creates a false intimacy among competitors, who are often paired together, moving down the course in a dance as awkward as anything Larry David could concoct. To cover the sport is to know of a nontrivial number of players who wouldn’t cross the street to pour water on a fellow pro who erupted in flames. But owing to golf’s byzantine, Edith-Wharton-style bylaws of decorum, it verges on impossible to get any of them to come out and say this. So they maybe do other things to bug one another, like taking a ludicrous amount of time to line up a two-foot putt, or telling a playing partner “nice shot” after what is objectively a terrible shot, or chewing their granola bars extra loud. Once you’ve seen enough of this hidden needling, open hostility can feel like the ultimate forbidden fruit.The sport’s dread of confrontation is built on a century-old anthropologist’s dream of class-driven mores.Given that golf news not involving Tiger Woods remains essentially a niche concern, it came as a surprise to see the extent to which Koepka’s interview penetrated mainstream culture. National media reported on the incident with delight, and the clip was viewed millions of times online. Memes cropped up like ragweed. The whole affair even eclipsed the actual victor that week: Phil Mickelson, who at 50 became the oldest player ever to win a major championship. That achievement was, we thought, just about the biggest non-Tiger story the sport could generate. But Koepka’s expression, it seemed, tapped into something universal; his sheer annoyance transcended the game.A week later, over in the world of tennis, the biggest news of the 2021 French Open also emerged from outside the competition itself. Just before the tournament, the second-seeded Japanese superstar, Naomi Osaka, announced that she was unwilling to attend the event’s mandatory news conferences, citing feelings of depression and anxiety related to those obligations. And when officials pushed back, threatening punitive measures beyond the fines Osaka expected, she called their bluff, withdrawing from the tournament after her first-round victory. Not only did the Open lose an off-court stare-down with one of the sport’s premier attractions, but — in an echo of Mickelson’s win — hardly anyone was paying much attention to what was happening on the court itself. Tournament officials would clearly have preferred for all this to be ironed out behind closed doors, but as Osaka continued to prosecute her case on social media, the story spun further and further from their control.That’s what happened with the Brooks-Bryson face-off as well. After Koepka’s fusillade of swearing, the Golf Channel’s Todd Lewis, who was conducting the interview, joked that “we’re going to enjoy that in the TV compound later” — suggesting the segment would never make it to air, but would be shared among the media workers who make golf appear so well mannered. To which Koepka replied, “I honestly wouldn’t even care.”For those used to following rough-and-tumble team sports like football or hockey, it may be difficult to appreciate just how norm-breaking behavior like this can be. Even as the video dominated headlines, the sport’s old guard hastened to downplay it. No less an august figure than Jack Nicklaus dismissed the rivalry as “media driven,” which is true mostly in the sense that Koepka and DeChambeau have indeed repeatedly used the media to express how much they genuinely dislike each other. The sport’s dread of confrontation is built on a century-old anthropologist’s dream of class-driven mores, but if the popular reaction to Koepka’s face in that interview makes one thing clear, it’s that these golfers aren’t the ones acting weird. Golf itself is.Tennis, too. The French Open officials’ attempts to make Osaka comply with media rules are in some ways understandable: They have commitments to reporters and sponsors, and excusing one player from her obligations while requiring others to fulfill them could, arguably, create a competitive imbalance. (In the kind of development you could hardly make up, the tournament’s 11th-seeded player, Petra Kvitova, soon injured her ankle during a news conference and had to withdraw.) What feels strange is their evident belief that they could prevail at a time when their leverage has never been less in evidence. Osaka made some $50 million last year and first announced her refusal to do press to around 2.4 million followers on Instagram. She’s no great lover of clay courts, and it’s likely her expectations for success at the tournament were modest to begin with. And yet tennis apparatchiks seem to have assumed she would fall in line for the same reason golf ones presumed Koepka’s interview would be quietly passed around a private room: because that’s the done thing.All this suggests the two sports are having difficulty understanding both their audiences and their athletes. They proceed from the premise that their tissue-thin veneer of high-minded sportsmanship and sometimes incomprehensible notions of etiquette are celebrated attributes, not turnoffs. But evidence suggests the opposite. Fans don’t want pageantry; they want intimacy. Increasingly, the stories that grab the public are those that break up the placid, corporatized surface of the game — a tennis star who chooses self-care over a major, or two large golfers who seem ready to fistfight. We recognize the image-​crafting guardrails that surround every sport, and we perk up when we see them falling. Is this what happens when sports stop being polite and start getting real? More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      For Novak Djokovic, Two Down and Two, Maybe Three, to Go

      by

      He has won the Australian and French Opens, but achieving a Grand Slam won’t be easy. He must successfully defend Wimbledon. Then there’s the U.S. Open. And don’t forget about the Olympics.PARIS — With his 19th career Grand Slam singles title in hand, Novak Djokovic is chasing more tennis milestones unreservedly.No complexes. No playing it cool.“I’ve achieved some things that a lot of people thought it would not be possible for me to achieve,” he said Sunday after winning his second French Open.The odds were stacked against him from the start of his journey. His family were ski racers, not tennis players, and lacked the means to finance his career without considerable sacrifice. He grew up in Serbia in a time of conflict, when Serbia was an international pariah and traveling outside the country was a challenge.He still left home — for the first time at age 12 — and found a path to the top of a brutally competitive global sport. Perhaps more remarkably, he has endured at the top.He first reached No. 1 on July 4, 2011. Nearly 10 years later, he is amid another extended reign at No. 1 and to watch him think on his feet (or fly through the air with his elastic limbs) is to observe a form of tennis genius. His game is not as smooth and artful as Roger Federer’s. His point-by-point tenacity is not as obvious as Rafael Nadal’s. But he is the complete package, with no weaknesses other than an intermittently shaky overhead. He has become the sport’s most steely-eyed competitor, and while watching him ward off danger and big deficits, it is easy to forget that he was once considered a player without staying power, prone to midmatch retirements.Now, he is the one in everybody else’s head, and that could be helpful as he pursues, at the same time, the men’s record for Grand Slam singles titles and a so-called Golden Slam.Djokovic with the French Open’s Coupe des Mousquetaires, his second Grand Slam trophy this year.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAfter winning in Paris, he is just one major singles title behind Federer and Nadal’s 20. But the chase that will generate bigger buzz is Djokovic’s attempt at age 34 to win all four Grand Slam singles titles and the Olympic singles gold medal in the same calendar year.“He is so amazingly great that it would not surprise me, but it’s a perfect game in progress, so it’s difficult to talk about,” said Brad Gilbert, the coach and ESPN analyst, using a baseball analogy.Steffi Graf is the only player to have completed a Golden Slam. But Djokovic now has a chance to make his own run after winning the Australian Open and the French Open this year.Wimbledon, which starts on June 28 in London, is the next target. The Olympics in Tokyo and the U.S. Open in New York will follow.“Everything is possible,” Djokovic said. “And I did put myself in a good position to go for the Golden Slam, but I was in this position in 2016, as well. It ended up in a third-round loss in Wimbledon.”That defeat was a shock. When Wimbledon began in 2016, Djokovic had won four straight majors, although not in the same calendar year, and had just won the French Open for the first time. But he ran into Sam Querrey in the third round at the All England Club. Querrey, a tall and big-serving American who thrives on grass, upset him in a match that lasted two days because of rain delays.“If Novak is not the best returner of all time, he’s on the very, very short list,” said Craig Boynton, Querrey’s coach at the time, in an interview on Monday. “But from the start of that match, he just couldn’t read Sam’s serve, and Sam was hitting line after line.”Querrey won the first set in a tiebreaker and then rolled through the second set before play was suspended because of darkness. As this year’s French Open proved once more, Djokovic is adept at using off-court breaks to change the flow of a match. Against Querrey, he did the same, returning after a night’s sleep to win the third set but then failed to serve out the fourth. Querrey rallied to finish him off. Djokovic then went into a tailspin from which he did not emerge until the spring of 2018.Djokovic after he defeated Roger Federer at Wimbledon in 2019.Nic Bothma/EPA, via ShutterstockTennis remains a game of momentum. If Djokovic defended his 2019 title at Wimbledon — last year’s tournament was canceled — and lost at the Olympics, he would still have a chance at the Grand Slam heading into the U.S. Open. Only two men have achieved a Grand Slam in singles: Don Budge of the United States in 1938 and Rod Laver of Australia in 1962 and 1969.No man has come close since then, although Serena Williams came within two matches of achieving it in 2015 before being upset in the semifinals of the U.S. Open by Roberta Vinci.“It gets more and more interesting as it builds,” Boynton said of a Grand Slam. “You saw what happened with Serena. She’s human. We’re all human, and so is Novak. I would think he would be able to handle it, but you just never know. You never know what stumbling block is right around the corner. Novak is making it look easy right now, but I’m telling you, it’s just not that easy.”Djokovic actually has not made it look easy over the last two months. He lost early in Monte Carlo and at the first of two tournaments in Belgrade, then fought his way through two tough matches before losing to Nadal in the final of the Italian Open. After winning the second tournament in Belgrade against a low-grade field, he came to Paris feeling better about his game but still had to overcome two-set deficits twice at Roland Garros and also had to play one of the matches of his life to defeat Nadal in a four-set semifinal.Djokovic played a match of his life against Rafael Nadal in the French Open semifinal.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThere was also the extended scream he let rip after his quarterfinal victory over Matteo Berrettini that spoke volumes about the state of his inner peace. But Djokovic can change his mood as quickly as he changes directions on a tennis court. He has learned how to turn a negative into a positive, imagining that when fans chant Federer’s or some other opponents’ name they are actually cheering “Novak.”On Sunday, in the final against Stefanos Tsitsipas, Djokovic had pockets of support but the majority of the 5,000 fans were pulling for the newcomer. Djokovic still prevailed, draining some of the suspense from his comeback from two sets down by going up a break early in all three of the final sets.Djokovic gave a child who had cheered and coached him a hug and his racket after the final at Roland Garros.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesWhen it was over, he went to the side of the court and spoke with a boy in the front row, embracing him and giving him the racket he had used to close out the victory. “He was in my ear the entire match basically, especially when I was two sets to love down,” Djokovic explained when I asked him about it. “He was actually giving me tactics, as well. He was like, ‘Hold your serve, get an easy first ball, then dictate, go to his backhand.’ He was coaching me literally. I found that very cute, very nice.”Leave it to Djokovic, an expert at blocking out the static and focusing on the essential, to hear one of the few voices in a big crowd wishing him well.That skill could come in handy as he chases history. More

    • 175 Shares119 Views

      in Tennis

      Tsitsipas Is the Latest to Come Close, and Learn How Far He Must Go

      by

      Stefanos Tsitsipas took a two-set lead over Novak Djokovic in the French Open men’s final. But in his loss he found that “two sets doesn’t really mean anything.”PARIS — The atmosphere seemed as if it was designed to make a Greek feel at home in his first Grand Slam singles final.Greece’s azure-and-white flags were draped over seats in the French Open’s main Philippe Chatrier Court. The fans, most of them French, were chanting Stefanos Tsitsipas’s surname and often cheering Novak Djokovic’s errors. And then there was the weather: sun-kissed with a slight breeze and a pale blue sky.Santorini? Roland Paros?But no matter how much it might have felt like a title was meant to be for Tsitsipas on Sunday as he jumped out to a two-set lead, it was all a false promise and yet another chance for the world’s clear No. 1 player to demonstrate his resilience and poise under pressure.Tsitsipas fans could be heard throughout the Paris crowd.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“He gave me no space,” Tsitsipas said of the final three sets, looking understandably crestfallen but also a bit befuddled.Djokovic is the champion who has beaten Roger Federer on three separate occasions in Grand Slam tournaments after saving two match points, including the 2019 Wimbledon final.Djokovic is the man who prevailed against Rafael Nadal in a grinding 2012 Australian Open final that lasted nearly six hours; the man who stopped Nadal on Friday in a heavyweight bout of a semifinal at the tournament Nadal has won a preposterous 13 times.The truth is, the opponent does not have Djokovic where he wants him in a major tournament until he has the big trophy in his hands. Tsitsipas, like so many players before him, had to settle for the smaller prize. He was asked what he had learned from the defeat.“Two sets doesn’t really mean anything,” Tsitsipas concluded.The best-of-five format, which is only in use for men’s singles at the four Grand Slam tournaments, remains a major roadblock to the younger set in their pursuit of winning titles over the Big Three. Long form gives Djokovic more time to untie tactical knots; more time to impose his groundstrokes and great returns; more time to create doubt and stress in the minds of his less experienced opponents.Tsitsipas and Djokovic during the trophy ceremony.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesDominic Thiem broke the long run of the Big Three — Djokovic, 34; Nadal, 35; and Federer, 39 — by winning last year’s U.S. Open, but he did not have to defeat any of them along the way. Nadal skipped the event over virus concerns, and Federer was recovering from knee surgery. Djokovic eliminated himself in the fourth round by smacking a ball that inadvertently hit a lineswoman in the throat, resulting in his ejection.But Thiem has faded, struggling mentally with the tour’s pandemic-related restrictions and straining to retain his drive and excellence. He has been touchingly open about his doubts, but his slump also makes you marvel at the drive and sustained focus of a player like Djokovic, who has had plenty of pandemic concerns of his own and actually tested positive for the coronavirus. Djokovic had his own fade from late 2016 to early 2018, but he has come back at full roar and full stretch. (Nobody can stretch the way Djokovic does.) The younger generation, however talented, has yet to break through and win the titles that matter most against the players who matter most.Tsitsipas, a 22-year-old seeded fifth in this tournament, spent several minutes in his chair after match point, his face hidden by a towel. But defeat was not the saddest part of his day. In a social media post after the match, he revealed that his “very beloved” paternal grandmother had died just five minutes before he walked on court. It was unclear whether he was aware of her death at the time. “Lifting trophies and celebrating wins is something, but not everything,” he wrote on Instagram.That is undeniable, but Tsitsipas does seem to have Grand Slam titles in his future. He possesses the ambition and the tools: a big bang of a forehand, a forceful and varied serve, a one-handed backhand that he can drive effectively from higher contact points or slice to change the pace of points and defend in the corners. He also has above-average volleys that he could have put to more frequent use on Sunday, no matter how daunting it is to face Djokovic’s passing shots.Tsitsipas, the son of a Russian mother and Greek father, is a great athlete, not just a great tennis player. He is quick on the move with improving core strength and with a hairstyle and rolling walk that recall Bjorn Borg, the great Swedish champion who, now 65, awarded the trophies on Sunday looking as cool as ever. (He skipped the socks with the loafers.)Tsitsipas during his five-set loss to Djokovic.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBut though Borg faced plenty of greatness in John McEnroe, Ivan Lendl and Jimmy Connors, he never had to deal with the combined firepower and long-running excellence of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal.Djokovic is on course to be the most statistically successful of the Big Three and already holds the men’s record for total weeks at No. 1. He will reach 325 weeks on Monday, and for now, the most gifted youngsters — Tsitsipas, Daniil Medvedev, Alexander Zverev, Andrey Rublev, Jannik Sinner and Lorenzo Musetti — can only look up and wonder if they truly have what it takes.As a group, they can take some solace in knowing that two of them were up, two sets to none, on Djokovic at Roland Garros. Musetti, a 19-year-old Italian, took his lead in the fourth round before running out of steam and straight into Djokovic’s staying power. Musetti won just one more game, but Tsitsipas had enough left to make the fifth set interesting.“Despite my loss today, I have faith in my game,” Tsitsipas said. “I very much believe I can get to that point very soon. I was close today. Every opponent is difficult. There’s a small difference between the player I played today and the ones from before. But I think with the same attitude and if I don’t downgrade myself, I see no reason for me not to be holding that trophy one day.”For now, such trophies still belong to the elders, no matter how loud the cheers or how reassuring the weather. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in Tennis

      Now Halfway to a Grand Slam, Novak Djokovic Wins the French Open

      by

      Djokovic rallied to win three straight sets and defeat Stefanos Tsitsipas. It was his 19th major men’s singles title overall and his second this year.PARIS — Novak Djokovic beat Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece to win the French Open on Sunday, coming back from two sets down for his second stunning triumph in less than 48 hours.The 6-7 (6), 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory lasted more than four hours and capped a stirring tournament for Djokovic, who beat Rafael Nadal, a 13-time French Open champion, in a thrilling semifinal Friday night.“I played a lot of tennis in the past 48 hours against two great champions,” Djokovic said at the end.It was the second triumph in a Grand Slam event this year for Djokovic, who won the Australian Open in February, and the 19th in his career, just one behind Nadal and Roger Federer, who are tied for the career lead among men with 20.Djokovic, 34, has said that ending his career with more Grand Slam tournament titles than anyone else in history is one of the main motivations that keeps him playing tennis.“Everything is possible,” Djokovic said. “Definitely, in my case, I can say that.”He is now halfway to a Grand Slam — winning all four major tennis tournaments in a single year — something that no man has accomplished in more than 50 years. He is the defending champion at Wimbledon, which begins in two weeks.Djokovic, a Serb, has won Wimbledon five times, and he has won 12 Grand Slam titles on hardcourts, including three at the U.S. Open, which will take place in New York at the end of the summer.Tsitsipas, 22, is one of the rising stars in pro tennis. He was playing in his first Grand Slam final and was not expected to upset a player who has no equal in his sport at the moment, though he came close.Tsitsipas won the first two sets against Djokovic.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“These are the kind of matches you learn from the most,” Djokovic said to Tsitsipas on the court.The match followed the four-set duel that Djokovic played against Nadal two days earlier. Djokovic immediately called that match one of the greatest of his career. It was easily his greatest win in Paris. This one was likely a close second, requiring Djokovic to recover from a violent tumble on the clay in the first set that staggered him badly.The title was Djokovic’s second at a French Open. He is now the only male player of the modern era to have won every Grand Slam tournament twice.And yet Sunday’s final was anything but a coronation, even if at first it looked like it would be. Djokovic compared beating Nadal at Roland Garros to climbing Mount Everest. Two days later, it turned out, he had to scale K2.Djokovic appeared to be on cruise control until midway through the first set. The score was tied, 3-3, but Djokovic had yet to lose a point on his serve, and he had put pressure on Tsitsipas during his service games. Tsitsipas had saved himself with four early aces. The match was tight, but it wasn’t close.Then Tsitsipas hit a drop shot that landed just a few feet from the net. Djokovic sprinted for it and stretched to get his strings on it, but as the ball hit the clay a second time, Djokovic lost his footing and tumbled to the clay, just missing a collision with the thick post that holds up the net.He stayed on the clay for several seconds. Tsitsipas and the chair umpire approached to see if he was OK. He said he was, but rose slowly and walked to his chair to dust himself off as the chair umpire picked up his racket.Djokovic returned to the court a minute later but slowly, and from that moment on, he was not moving the way he normally does.He winced as he twisted on his serves, and he could not finish his strokes the way he normally does, whipping his racket up by his ears.He stayed even with Tsitsipas in the first set, and broke him at 5-5 as Tsitsipas made two seemingly crucial errors. But serving for the set at 6-5, Djokovic made four errors of his own.In the tiebreaker, Tsitsipas spurted to 4-0 lead, only to see Djokovic get to set point at 6-5 as Tsitsipas took his own tumble across the clay and rose with dust all over the back of his shirt. But Tsitsipas blasted a winner to tie it once more, then forced two more errors from Djokovic to take the first set.The crowd reacted after Tsitsipas won the first set against Djokovic.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBrimming with confidence and holding a one-set lead, Tsitsipas began smacking the ball with abandon, moving a seemingly hobbled Djokovic backward and forward and going to the net to finish off points. He broke Djokovic’s serve in the first game, then, leading, 4-2, laced a forehand down the line and forced Djokovic into yet another error to get his second break of serve.On the changeover, Djokovic smothered his face with his towel, exhibiting the kind of hopelessness and despondence he rarely does. A game later, Tsitsipas had a two-set lead, and the match was his to lose.Djokovic left the court after the second set, and underneath the stadium he gave himself an audible talking to, even though a voice inside his head was telling him the match was over. “I told myself, I can do it,” he said. “I encouraged myself.”It is one thing to win two sets in a Grand Slam match. It is another thing entirely to win the third one against a player who is on the verge of winning as many Grand Slam singles titles as any man who has ever picked up a racket.Leading, 2-1, in the third set, Djokovic started jumping on Tsitsipas’s serve for the first time in nearly an hour, pushing him back into the court and moving him from side to side. His shots started landing in spots that left Tsitsipas totally out of position once he caught up to them.It was as though Djokovic had finally figured out that if he didn’t have the strength to swing an ax he could still use a scalpel. His serve often struggled to get to 100 miles an hour. And at the same time, the precision that had been with Tsitsipas for much of the afternoon was gone.“I felt like he could read my game better,” Tsitsipas said.On the fifth break point of the game, Djokovic sent his return deep to Tsitsipas’s backhand, and Tsitsipas sent it back to the middle of the doubles alley. Djokovic had a lifeline, and five games later he had the third set. Tsitsipas called for a trainer to stretch his hips.Djokovic did not stop there.The fourth set resembled target practice, a series of surgical strikes from Djokovic that resulted in so many blasts long and wide, or easy balls to the middle of the court, from Tsitsipas. A masterly Djokovic backhand drop shot from behind the baseline gave Djokovic a second service break and a 3-0 lead. Tsitsipas had to battle just to keep the set from being embarrassing.After two weeks and three-plus hours of tennis, there was one set to play for the championship.Tsitsipas had been here before. He let a two-set lead slip away in the semifinals Friday against Alexander Zverev of Germany, only to recover to prevail in the fifth set. Against Djokovic, though, he could not summon the same resolve, no matter how much he tried to talk himself through it during the changeovers.Djokovic won three sets in a row to force a comeback victory.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesTrouble came early. Facing break point while serving at 2-1, Tsitsipas was slow to move his feet on a shot from Djokovic that nearly caught the baseline. Tsitsipas volleyed a backhand long. Roughly three hours after Djokovic served for the first set, he had a lead once more, and he was not going to give it up.“I tried my best. I tried as much as I could,” Tsitsipas said.With a match and a championship within reach, there may be no player who closes as clinically as Djokovic.Tsitsipas made one last stand, saving match point with a backhand winner to the corner. But on the final point, Djokovic worked his way to the net and put away the tournament with an overhead to an open court. It took him a bit to summon the energy to raise his hands in celebration.Halfway to a Grand Slam.“We said as coaches if he accomplishes the Grand Slam this year we are going to quit,” said Marian Vajda, Djokovic’s longtime coach. “I think it’s possible.” More