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      In Paris, Coco Gauff Is Confident, Consistent, and Off to the Quarterfinals

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      The 17-year-old, the last American player in singles, will face Barbora Krejcikova in her first Grand Slam tournament quarterfinal on Wednesday.PARIS — It was Coco Gauff’s first appearance on the main stage at the French Open, and it was not the classic Parisian scene she had imagined with fewer than 100 fans in the stands at Court Philippe-Chatrier for the opening matches in this pandemic period of limited crowds.But Gauff’s performance was dreamy: a resounding 6-3, 6-1 victory in the fourth round over the 25th-seeded Tunisian veteran Ons Jabeur, a drop-shot artiste who, in theory, loves clay more than Gauff and had beaten her on the surface earlier this year.But Gauff, the gifted American teenager, has shifted into a higher gear since then, improving her consistency and growing more confident after reaching the semifinals of the Italian Open last month and winning both a singles and doubles title in Parma, Italy. You could see the belief in her body language on Monday as she patrolled the red clay, setting a measured pace between points and playing with power, depth and precision once the rallies began.At age 17, she is into her first Grand Slam quarterfinal and is the last American remaining in singles after Sofia Kenin’s 6-1, 6-3 loss in the fourth round to Maria Sakkari and Sloane Stephens’s 6-2, 6-0 loss to Barbora Krejcikova.The 24th-seeded Gauff, who will face the unseeded Krejcikova on Wednesday, has not dropped a set in Paris. Against Jabeur, she did not face so much as a break point and made just nine unforced errors and zero double faults.“Sooner or later, she will win her first Grand Slam title,” Jabeur said.Such comments, however sincere, can be problematic with young talents like Gauff. Focus too much on what she could do, and it is easy to not fully appreciate what she is doing now.So, let’s consider what other aspiring tennis stars her age are achieving. No other women’s player under the age of 18 is ranked in the top 300. Gauff is on the verge of breaking into the top 20 and has locked up an Olympics singles spot.“I just feel this is the most consistent tennis I have played at this level,” Gauff said. “Hopefully I can keep that going.”Gauff believes she’s playing the most consistent tennis of her young career.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockAfter reaching the fourth round of both her first Wimbledon appearance in 2019 and her first Australian Open in 2020, she has now made the final eight in her second French Open.She was asked to compare her mind-set during Monday’s match with her previous fourth-round matches at majors.“To be honest, I think I was just more hungry for it,” she said. “I feel like in the past I felt like I was satisfied with the run I made in the tournament, so maybe I feel like I came into the matches I guess not as hungry, and I know it’s probably not a good thing to say, but it’s the truth. But I think with a lot of young players we tend to get satisfied with just, you know, the small results, not small results but certain results before we realize that we can really shoot for more. My message has always been: Dream big and aim higher.”Gauff has wanted to be No. 1 with a career like Serena Williams’s since her early teens, but her Wimbledon breakthrough at age 15 did not point her straight to the top.Her last visit to Roland Garros in September 2020 was a reminder of the difficulty of the challenge. She lost in the second round to the Italian qualifier Martina Trevisan while making 19 double faults. Gauff has indeed found a better rhythm in recent weeks. “That’s obviously been a hurdle in my game,” she said. “I truly feel like I’m, you know, getting over that hurdle.”She has also shored up her forehand, cutting down on the errors on that less reliable wing and regularly doing great damage with it in midcourt and in extension. She continues to be comfortable at the net, something her father and coach Corey Gauff has long emphasized.“I mean at the end of the day, she’s basically a junior in high school,” Corey Gauff said. “And anybody knows in high school you are still developing and learning so there’s a big growth between 15 and 16 and more big growth between 16 and 17. She just has the uniqueness of growing up on tour and on TV, so every time she does something it’s news, and everybody is watching everything she’s doing. But she’s just developing, and she’s developing actually pretty quickly and playing more matches this year compared to 2020, where she played so few matches, is really helping her develop.”The tour’s five-month hiatus last year was both a burden and a blessing, isolating for a teenager but also a chance to work on improving her weaknesses outside the spotlight. But Corey Gauff said Coco struggled mentally when the tour resumed because of the restrictions.“This year is better,” Corey Gauff said. “Last year was tough. You could see that it was weighing on her. She was ranked high enough that she was more in the senior hotel, and her friends weren’t in that hotel. And the restrictions were much stricter last year than now. You literally just went to the court and came back and that wasn’t a lot of fun for her. It showed up in her tennis, too. She just wasn’t happy, wasn’t as excited being in the bubbles last year.”They are back in the same Paris hotel as in last year’s French Open, back to playing the card game Uno in the evenings, but now able to spend an hour outside the bubble daily. Though Coco has not yet been vaccinated, Corey Gauff said he and his wife Candi have been, which alleviates some concern and testing regimens.“That hour outside the bubble makes a world of difference,” he said.Candi Gauff was not traveling with her husband and daughter earlier in the clay-court season, but she has joined them for Roland Garros, leaving the Gauffs’ two younger sons at home in Delray Beach, Fla., with grandparents. “It’s nice to have her here,” Coco Gauff said. Corey Gauff said that Coco benefits from her mother’s presence and also her expertise. Candi Gauff was a hurdler and heptathlete at Florida State.“She needs her mom,” he said. “Teenage girls need their mother, because those are the ones who help them become young women and help them deal with things and pressures and of course my wife was a world-class athlete, so she understands the pressures and the discipline and preparation and proper nutrition and all the physiology that goes with it. It’s better her mom telling her than her dad telling her.”Iga Swiatek, the defending champion and eighth seed, remains the rightful favorite in Paris and is in Gauff’s half of the draw. Swiatek beat Gauff en route to the Italian Open title, and they could meet again in the semifinals if Gauff defeats Krejcikova and Swiatek defeats Sakkari.Whatever happens next at Roland Garros, Gauff is making progress even if she still prefers hardcourts and grass to clay.“Only thing about clay I don’t like, it’s just whenever you fall you just get all dirty,” she told me.But there were no tumbles or stumbles on Monday on the most important clay court in the world. More

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      In French Open, Rafael Nadal Is the Same as Always, and Yet He’s Different

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      The player who turned defense into an art form fights to avoid the wars of attrition he battled as a younger athlete. At 35, that is what he must do.PARIS — His hair is thinning on top. His knees can be shaky. In January, he suddenly came down with a balky back that almost forced him to withdraw from the Australian Open.And yet, with his win Monday over Jannik Sinner of Italy, a 19-year-old rising star, Rafael Nadal surged into the final eight once again at the tournament he has essentially owned since 2005. It’s just that he owns it in a different way than he used to.Nadal was not perfect Monday in his 7-5, 6-3, 6-0 win. He was down 5-3 in the first set before winning four straight games. He coughed up a 4-0 lead in the second. But as he nearly always has on the clay at Roland Garros, he made all the necessary shots, joy-sticking Sinner around the court as though he had a metal rod inserted into his chest.“At some point he was playing and I was only running,” Sinner said.Nadal has won the French Open 13 times. France’s tennis federation unveiled a statue of him on the grounds here before the tournament began, a steel abstraction of the final moments of his powerful forehand shot. Monday’s win was his 104th at Roland Garros.The victory moved Nadal, seeded third because of his current ranking despite all his success in Paris, closer to a semifinal showdown with Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1. Djokovic beat the 19-year-old Italian upstart Lorenzo Musetti in one of the more bizarre matches of this tournament. Djokovic appeared lost for the first two sets, missing his targets and uncharacteristically dropping two tiebreakers.Then he took a bathroom break and returned a steadied player, winning 12 of the next 13 games to knot the match at two sets each. He won four more games before Musetti retired down 4-0 in the fifth set.But the 35-year-old version of Nadal looming in the semifinals for Djokovic, 34, is plenty different from the Nadal who started winning in Paris long ago.Back then, Nadal was a defender of the first order. He hunkered down behind the baseline, chased down every ball and, especially on the red clay he loves so much, turned his matches at Roland Garros into wars of attrition.That was not the Nadal whom Sinner met Monday in the round of 16, or the one Cam Norrie of Britain ran into in the third round over the weekend. The Nadal of today, who knows there are only so many five-hour marathon matches a veteran player can survive, targets speed and efficiency nearly as much as victories.“I do what I can in every moment of course,” he said. “If I can win quicker, better.”Nowadays Nadal works to win matches faster.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBy now, several years into this latter era of Nadal dominance on clay, opponents have become accustomed to what to expect, but they still come away staggered from the experience.“It’s amazing how quick he was after his serve to find his forehand,” Norrie said after his loss. Norrie felt like he was playing pretty well against Nadal, but as he spoke his eyes appeared glazed, as though he had just seen something he could not quite believe. “The guy is relentless.”Between points, Nadal is as deliberate as ever. He sweats profusely, and towels off at every opportunity he can manage.He swears he does not have obsessive compulsive disorder, but he still must carry through with his series of tics and tasks before play starts, sweeping lines clean with his foot, whacking his shoes with his racket three times before his first serve to free the soles of the clay, bouncing the ball over and over until it feels just right in his hand before he tosses it.Once the point starts though, Nadal has become more relentless with each passing year, especially since 2016, when he began working full-time with Carlos Moya, the retired Spanish player and former world No. 1 who won the French Open in 1998.Shifts in tennis strategy can appear subtle on the surface, but they can have outsized effects on the way points, games and matches unfold.In Nadal’s case, Hawkeye’s laser cameras, which have become more prevalent during the past decade and take hundreds of measurements per second of the ball and the court position of each player, tell the story.When Sam Maclean, a data analyst with Hawkeye, combed through the numbers, the data showed exactly how Nadal had tweaked his playing style in his 30s, becoming more aggressive and trying to end points as quickly as he can, even if he will never be someone who finishes many points at the net.Not surprisingly, the change is especially apparent during Nadal’s service games, when he has the best chance to control what happens during the point.From 2012 to 2016, Nadal hit 30 percent of his first shots after his serves from inside the baseline. But each year he has worked with Moya, that number has risen, first to 36 percent, then to 39 percent, then to 41 percent, and last year to 42 percent.Nadal served against Jannik Sinner during their fourth round match on Monday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesWhy is that so important? Because when Nadal hits that first shot from inside the baseline, he wins 74 percent of the points. When he hits the first shot from behind the baseline, he wins just 59 percent of the points.And while Nadal often drifts deep into the back court when his opponents serve, the points quickly evolve into a fight for him to get forward, to that nub of tape in the middle of the baseline he earlier kicked clean to give himself a target to scurry toward during the point.Even though Nadal is giving himself less time to set up by stepping into the court for that first shot, he is still hitting the ball back as hard as he always did, on average about 75 miles per hour, according to Hawkeye, with a fierce level of topspin that makes his ball feel like a rock on his opponents’ rackets.“He’s the only guy who is playing like that with his forehand topspin,” said Richard Gasquet of France, who managed to win just seven games against Nadal in their second-round match.Gasquet said it was impossible to prepare for Nadal because there was no one to practice against who hits the ball even remotely like he does. Gasquet is the same age as Nadal and has been playing him since they were teenagers. He spent years in the top 10. He is 0-16 against him in ATP Tour events, and the victories are as decisive as ever, even as Nadal should be deteriorating.“It was really hard for me to play,” Gasquet said after his loss.Alexei Popyrin of Australia, Nadal’s first-round victim, was proud just to come close to winning a set.“It’s his court,” Popyrin said after his defeat. “It will always be his court.” More

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      Serena Williams’s Difficult Season on Clay Catches Up to Her at the French Open

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      Elena Rybakina, the No. 21 seed from Kazakhstan, defeated the 23-time Grand Slam tournament winner in their fourth-round match, 6-3, 7-5.PARIS — There is not much left of the main stadium where Serena Williams won her three French Open singles titles in 2002, 2013 and 2015.It has been rebuilt and remodeled in recent years, adding a retractable roof and subtracting a great deal of direct connection with tennis history. It is an undeniably new era at Roland Garros, one in which Williams, 39, is no longer the overwhelming favorite, especially on the surface that least suits her power game.A defeat on clay is no great surprise at this stage, even against a 21-year-old like Elena Rybakina, who had never been past the third round at a Grand Slam event until this tournament.But the 21st-seeded Rybakina seized the moment on Sunday, often overpowering Williams in her 6-3, 7-5 victory in the fourth round on the main Philippe Chatrier Court.She had never played Williams, but like all the young and talented players on tour, Rybakina has long had a connection with her, the player who was a dominant force long before they joined the tour.“I was watching her matches on TV, so many Grand Slams,” Rybakina said, referring to tournament titles.Williams has won 23 singles titles. That is one short of Margaret Court’s career record, and she has been one short for more than four years now. She seems increasingly far from finishing off her quest.Wimbledon, which starts in three weeks, still looks like her best chance: a place where her remarkable serve, big returns and penetrating groundstrokes can still do major damage.“I’m kind of excited to switch surfaces,” Williams said. “Historically I have done pretty well on grass. I have done pretty well on clay, too, just not this particular season.”But the younger generation is rising on all surfaces and increasingly unintimidated by the great Williams, despite all her shrieks and roars and trophies. Rybakina looked like she might crack when she lost her serve at 4-3 in the second set, but then quickly stabilized. To watch Williams round by round at this stage is to realize that every match can turn into a perilous adventure. That knowledge emboldens the opposition, and it reassured Rybakina, who was born and raised in Moscow but now represents Kazakhstan, in part, because of the financial support that country’s tennis federation has been able to offer.“It’s difficult to expect anything, because you watch on TV and that’s completely different when you come on court and you feel the power and everything,” Rybakina said of Williams. “I knew that the serve was going to be difficult for me to return. She’s powerful, but I was ready. Then after a few points, I felt it comfortable, so nothing.”In fact, the most dominant server on Sunday was not the seventh-seeded Williams. Rybakina’s average first serve speed was faster than Williams’s: 106.6 miles per hour to 105.3. Her average second serve speed was faster, too: 85.4 to 85.She hit four aces to Williams’s two, and more important, if you are searching for the bottom line, she won 69 percent of her first-serve points to Williams’s 59 percent and 52 percent of her second-serve points to Williams’s paltry 41 percent.Those numbers do not mislead, and though Williams is rightly lauded for her ability to disguise the location of her serve, she often looked more bamboozled by Rybakina’s delivery.Williams also found herself at quite a distance from many of Rybakina’s groundstroke winners and lost the majority of the quick-strike points of four shots or fewer.“We watched matches of Serena, of course,” Rybakina said of her game plan, made with her coach, Stefano Vukov. “We tried to make her play from the backhand side more, just because she has an open stance. With an open stance and two hands, it’s difficult to move the ball, so I tried to attack this side. Sometimes I was stuck too much to the forehand. That’s why I was losing points, because the forehand it’s better not to even play there, it’s so good.”But not everything is as good as it used to be, including Williams’s movement. Serving at 4-4, she lost the first point when she retreated to the baseline and tried to get out of the way of a Rybakina backhand only to have it hit her racket frame. Williams looked mortified, bent forward at the waist and leaned on her racket for 10 seconds or more.“She plays aggressive, but also, I mean, it’s difficult for her now also after she has a baby and everything,” Rybakina said. “So I had to step in and just try to move and get some shorter balls to finish the point.”Williams has had some remarkable success since returning to the tour in 2018 after the birth of her daughter, Olympia. She reached the final of Wimbledon and the United States Open later that year and did the same in 2019. The bar is so high for Williams, but she has stopped reaching the same heights, particularly in Paris, where she has not been past the fourth round since her comeback.This was her second Roland Garros at this age, 39. Last year, when the tournament was delayed until October, she withdrew before the second round because of an Achilles’ tendon injury suffered at the U.S. Open. This year she won three rounds, which felt rather like a triumph for those who watched her struggle on clay in Italy last month.“I’m in a much better place than when I got here,” Williams said. “It had been a really difficult season for me on the clay, and although I love the clay, I was like, ‘If I could just win a match.’”She continues to love Paris, too, a city where she has long had an apartment on the Left Bank, even if she has not been able to stay there with her family during the last two French Opens because of tournament rules during the pandemic.Williams speaks some French and will always have three French Open singles titles and two French Open doubles titles. But those glory days on the clay look as much a part of the past at Roland Garros as all the buildings and courts that no longer exist.Bring on Wimbledon, where traditions die harder, but Williams, who does not intend to play a warm-up tournament on grass, had better hurry if she wants to crank back the clock to reach 24.The younger generation’s time has come. More

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      Roger Federer Pulls Out of French Open

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      The 20-time Grand Slam event champion withdrew after a brutal third-round match that lasted until early Sunday morning.PARIS — After winning a grueling third-round match that finished well after midnight, Roger Federer put an end to his French Open, withdrawing from the tournament on Sunday.Federer, 39, was scheduled to face ninth-seeded Matteo Berrettini of Italy in the fourth round on Monday, but decided he did not want to risk pushing himself beyond his comfort zone.Federer, seeded eighth, was playing in only his third tournament in the last 16 months after two knee operations in 2020. Though he won the French Open in 2009 and has had strong clay-court results in his career, he ruled out his chances of winning before this year’s tournament even began, recognizing that he had played too little to be able to succeed on clay in a long series of best-of-five-set matches.Federer, the oldest player in this year’s men’s singles tournament, was also in a brutal half of the draw. It includes his two main rivals: No. 1 seeded Novak Djokovic and No. 3 seeded Rafael Nadal, a 13-time French Open champion.“After two knee surgeries and over a year of rehabilitation, it’s important that I listen to my body and make sure I don’t push myself too quickly on my road to recovery,” Federer said in a statement. “I’m thrilled I have gotten three matches under my belt. There is no greater feeling than being back on the court.” More

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      Federer Escapes With a Win in a French Open Night Match

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      Still, he expressed doubt about his ability to play his fourth-round match Monday against Matteo Berrettini.PARIS — In a third-round night match that ended at 12:45 a.m. Sunday in a nearly empty center court, Roger Federer managed to summon the energy and inspiration to hold off Dominik Koepfer, 7-6 (5), 6-7 (3), 7-6 (4), 7-5. “It was definitely unique in many ways, and I’m happy I found a way, also especially emotionally,” the 39-year-old Federer said. “How do you handle losing that second set? How do you handle to keep pushing yourself on and trying to feed off the energy of the team and all the people watching on TV?”“I was in many ways also playing for them,” Federer said of the viewers.Federer first played the French Open in 1999 as a teenager on a sunlit afternoon, losing to Patrick Rafter. Twenty-two years later, he had the dubious honor of playing in his first French Open night session. The sessions, new this year and created in part to increase television revenue, are being held without paying spectators because of pandemic curfew restrictions in Paris.There’s nothing quite like it ❤️ pic.twitter.com/A5SCKFptrs— Roger Federer (@rogerfederer) June 6, 2021
      Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and now Federer have all played and won under the lights, but Federer came closest to big trouble, needing 3 hours 35 minutes to prevail.Next up: a daunting fourth-round match on Monday with Matteo Berrettini of Italy, but only if Federer decides to play. This is only his third tournament in 16 months after two knee surgeries, and he said he would make a final decision on whether to remain in the French Open only after seeing how his body reacted to Saturday night’s grueling match. Wimbledon, which begins June 28, remains his main priority.“I don’t know if I’m going to play,” he said of the Berrettini match. “I will discuss with the team, and I go from there.”It was not a great escape against Koepfer — Federer faced no match points and was not pushed to a fifth set — but it was certainly an escape.Koepfer, an unseeded German who did not begin playing tennis seriously until age 16, often extended the rallies by playing from well behind the baseline in the heavy, late-evening conditions. He was repeatedly rewarded with mis-hits and miscues by Federer. The Swiss star finished with 63 unforced errors to 51 winners.“I guess business needs to keep moving,” Federer said of the new time slot. “But one thing’s for sure: Days and nights on clay make a huge difference. You cannot compare the two, whereas on hardcourt, you feel it’s quite similar.”Federer was down a break of serve in the third set before recovering. In the fourth set, Koepfer lost his serve at 1-1 with a backhand error. After the chair umpire had descended from his chair to confirm the ball mark, Koepfer crossed to the other side of the net and, after looking back over his shoulder to make sure the chair umpire was not watching, leaned forward and spit angrily on the ball mark and wiped it with his foot.Other officials were watching, however, and Koepfer was given a point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. Though he started the next game at a 15-0 disadvantage, he still managed to break Federer back as the Swiss player missed a series of forehands. Koepfer shouted triumphantly, and Federer shouted in frustration toward his box, both men’s voices reverberating through the stadium.Only journalists, officials, tournament staff members and the players’ teams were in attendance.“Thanks for not falling asleep, everybody,” Federer said with a wave to the few, the very few, in the stands. More

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      2021 French Open: What to Watch on Sunday

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      Daniil Medvedev, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Serena Williams lead the charge as the round of 16 begins at Roland Garros.How to watch: 5 a.m. to noon Eastern time on the Tennis Channel, noon to 2 p.m. on NBC and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Peacock; streaming on the Tennis Channel+ and Peacock apps.Both singles draws at the French Open have narrowed to just 16 competitors from 256 in the course of the past week. There are a few inspiring debutantes making their first appearance in the second week of a Grand Slam tournament, such as Tamara Zidanšek and Federico Delbonis. Although it is possible for them to push on, there are many former champions standing in their way.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Court Suzanne-Lenglen | 9 a.m.Daniil Medvedev vs. Cristian GarinBefore this year, Daniil Medvedev, the second seed, has never been past the first round at Roland Garros. Even this year, his clay court season had not gone well, with the 25-year-old Russian exclaiming in the middle of a match that he didn’t “want to play here on this surface.” Now, into the round of 16, Medvedev is starting to see results by leaning on his natural abilities and not becoming discouraged by the slights that the clay courts throw his way.Cristian Garin, the 22nd seed, will provide a much sterner challenge for the Russian. Garin is a clay court specialist, winning the Junior French Open in 2013. All five of his ATP titles have come at clay court events over the past couple of years. This will be his first round of 16 appearance at a major tournament, and although he has dropped sets in each of his first three rounds, they have been quintessential “dirt rat” matches, with long grueling points that played into Garin’s overall strategy. If he can push points in that direction throughout the match against Medvedev, Garin will certainly have a chance to make his first Grand Slam quarterfinal.Victoria Azarenka hitting a backhand during her third round match.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockCourt PhiliPpe-Chatrier | 7 a.m.Victoria Azarenka vs. Anastasia PavlyuchenkovaVictoria Azarenka, the 15th seed, missed six Grand Slam events between 2016 and 2018 because of various personal issues, and she spent several years trying to find the same abilities that led her to two Grand Slam titles earlier in her career. After a finals appearance at the U.S. Open in 2020, it seemed that she was prepared to contend once again. But, with early exits at the 2020 French Open and 2021 Australian Open, it wasn’t clear whether or not Azarenka’s performance in Flushing Meadows was a fluke. Seemingly not; Azarenka has not dropped a set at Roland Garros on her way to the round of 16, and she is playing some of her best tennis of the year as she focuses on the second week of play.Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the 31st seed, upset Aryna Sabalenka, the highest rated player left through the third round, on Friday in three sets. Pavlyuchenkova, who won two Junior Grand Slam tournament titles, has never been past the quarterfinals of a major event on the WTA Tour in a career marked by inconsistent performances. After a run to the semifinals at the Madrid Open in May, Pavlyuchenkova will feel that she is in good form, and that she is capable of finally making that big push. While her flat baseline shots are not well suited to clay, if she can power through and move Azarenka around the court, there are plenty of opportunities for an upset.Court Suzanne-Lenglen | NoonAlejandro Davidovich Fokina vs. Federico DelbonisOn Friday, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina upset the 15th seed, Casper Ruud, in a grueling five-set match that grew more intense with each passing minute. Even after four-and-a-half hours of play, Fokina was still constructing aggressive and precise points as he strove to reach his first Grand Slam round of 16. Now, after two five-set matches in consecutive rounds, Fokina’s endurance will be put to the test as he looks to better Federico Delbonis.Delbonis, ranked No. 51, upset the 27th seed, Fabio Fognini, in straight sets on Friday. The 30-year-old Argentine has never been past the second round of the French Open, but all four of his career ATP finals have been on clay. Delbonis does not fit the archetypal profile of a clay court specialist; he is 6-foot-4, with a two-handed backhand that he can hit down and flatten out with ease. Delbonis will look to use his powerful shots and experience to run Fokina ragged and push through to the quarterfinals.Serena Williams in action during her third round match on Friday.Benoit Tessier/ReutersCourt PhilipPe-Chatrier | NoonSerena Williams vs Elena RybakinaThere were concerns throughout the clay court swing that Serena Williams was not prepared for the French Open. Williams, the seventh seed, has slowly played herself into form over the past week, delivering a sensational straight-set performance against her fellow American, Danielle Collins, on Friday. Now Williams is the only top 10 player remaining in her half of the draw, with a much clearer path to the final next week. However, the WTA Tour has a deep bench of talented youngsters looking to make champions of the past fade away.Elena Rybakina, the 21st seed, has not dropped a set so far at this year’s French Open. The 21-year-old reached five WTA Tour finals in 2020, a tour best for the year, but she has not been able to recreate that success so far in 2021. With a career best run to the round of 16, she has made up for it, and now will need to summon her considerable power on both wings to try and unseat Williams and reach her first major quarterfinal.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on.Tamara Zidanšek vs. Sorana Cîrstea; Court Suzanne-Lenglen, 5 a.m.Paula Badosa vs. Marketa Vondroušová; Court Suzanne-Lenglen, 7 a.m.Elise Mertens/Hsieh Su-wei vs. Iga Swiatek/Bethanie Mattek-Sands; Court Simonne-Mathieu, 7 a.m.Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Pablo Correno Busta; Court Philippe-Chatrier, 9 a.m.Alexander Zverev vs. Kei Nishikori; Court Philippe-Chatrier, 3 p.m. More

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      Young Italian Men Are Taking Over the French Open. They Have No Idea Why.

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      Italy has 10 players in the top 100, the most ever, and two 19-year-olds who look like major stars in the making. Just don’t ask them what’s going on.PARIS — The Grand Slam event currently underway may be called the French Open. The overwhelming favorite in men’s singles is from Spain. But this tournament, and perhaps even the future of men’s tennis, suddenly feels very Italian.That may sound strange, especially to the Italians, who have never produced a world No. 1. But on Thursday, a pair of 19-year-olds, Jannik Sinner, the surprise quarterfinalist at Roland Garros last year, and Lorenzo Musetti, who is playing in his first Grand Slam tournament, stormed into the final 32. So did Matteo Berrettini, 25, who is seeded ninth. They joined the 34-year-old veteran Fabio Fognini, the No. 27 seed, who has crushed his first two opponents and serves as the spiritual leader for the younger set driving this unprecedented Italian charge.“It’s something we are not used to,” Berrettini said after pummeling Federico Coria of Argentina, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2, Thursday. “Nobody is used to it.”Tennis may be the ultimate individual sport, but countries sometimes produce waves of top players. Germans (Boris Becker, Steffi Graf) had their day in the late 1980s. Americans (Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Michael Chang) were mainstays of the top 10 in the 1990s. A decade ago, Spain was tennis royalty, winning the Davis Cup, the sport’s leading national competition, four times in eight years, with Rafael Nadal leading the way.If a country produces a generational star, it stands to reason more will follow. But as many times as not, countries produce a champion, and then the tennis cupboard is largely empty. There are no hot young Swiss players in the top 100 ready to fill Roger Federer’s shoes. Spain’s youngest player in the top 40, Pablo Carreño Busta, is 29.“You think the more good players you have from a nation they can groom the next generation, but then the chain breaks,” said Andrea Gaudenzi of Italy, a top 20 player in the 1990s who now leads the ATP Tour.Jannik Sinner made the quarterfinals of last year’s French Open and beat a fellow Italian, Gianluca Mager, to advance to the third round this year.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSo what has made Italy so good at this moment in men’s tennis history? Asking that is a bit like asking for directions in Rome — plenty of possible answers, none seemingly any better than the rest.Even the smartest tennis minds do not really know how to develop a phenomenal tennis player, much less several of them simultaneously. At its highest level, the game requires the mettle of boxing, the athleticism of basketball and the touch of billiards. Try manufacturing that.Italy began holding significantly more lower-level tournaments during the past decade. That allowed Sinner and Musetti easier access to pro tournaments to cut their teeth. And yet, there are other countries that have plentiful schedules of low-level pro tournaments but do not have a group similar to Italy’s. For instance, the United States, which is more than five times as large as Italy and has lots of low level tournaments, does not have a man in the top 30.Andreas Seppi, the 37-year-old Italian journeyman who notched a first-round upset at Roland Garros, credited the proliferation of top players to Italian coaches, who are more seasoned than they were when he was early in his career. Seppi said his coach, Massimo Sartori, essentially learned the trade with him.“I was my coach’s first player,” Seppi said. “Now all these coaches know what they have to do and how the tour works.”The 37-year-old veteran Andrea Seppi said Italian coaches were more seasoned now than they were as he rose up the ranks..Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIndeed, Sinner’s coach, Riccardo Piatti, previously worked with a young Novak Djokovic, and top pros like Richard Gasquet of France and Milos Raonic of Canada.Then again, Musetti’s coach, Simone Tartarini, who has been working with him since he was 7 years old, has coached largely national junior players in the past. The two sometimes share hotel rooms on the road.Sinner and Musetti’s disparate upbringings also offer no clues to success.Sinner, the son of a chef and a restaurant hostess, was a junior skiing champion and did not specialize in tennis until he began training at an academy in his early teens. At first, he struggled emotionally and physically with the daily grind of so many hours on the court, he said earlier this year.Musetti began playing tennis at the age of 4. Other than kicking a soccer ball occasionally with his friends, he never pursued another sport. By age 12, he was among Italy’s standout juniors.So if this golden generation of Italian players proves anything about tennis, it might be the random nature of development and how many different ways there are to play the game.“Some people might say we complain a lot inside the court,” Musetti joked the other day. “I used to, but now I have grown up a little bit.”Blame Fognini for that rap. Fognini, who played doubles with Musetti this spring, regularly offers tips about opponents and tactical advice to his young countrymen. He won’t hesitate to question a line call or hold an umpire, or even an opponent, accountable for the management of a match.He was easily handling Marton Fucsovics of Hungary on Wednesday when a fan in the rowdy crowd screamed after one of his serves, interrupting play. He made sure the chair umpire knew he was not pleased. Up two sets and two breaks, he was still taking long stares at ball marks. However in the third round on Friday, Fognini ran out of steam, losing 6-4, 6-1, 6-3, to Federico Delbonis of Argentina.On the other hand, Musetti, Sinner, Berrettini, and the 26-year-old Lorenzo Sonego — who was seeded 26th here but lost in straight sets in the first round — are mostly all-business on the court.They do not play much like Fognini either. Fognini is a classic counterpuncher. He saunters around the court, taking his time before serving, or returning. He will slice, bash and flick his forehand all during the same point, wait for the slightest opening and then pounce.On Thursday, Sinner played as he always does. All afternoon he attacked another Italian, the 87th-ranked Gianluca Mager, from the back half of the court with darts to the sidelines.Berrettini, who is 6-foot-5, leads with his booming serve, which has been clocked at 146 miles per hour. He powers his way into the court and finishes plenty of points at the net. He also has a highly effective backhand drop shot.Musetti is strong nearly everywhere on the court, with a museum quality one-hand backhand, a beautiful, low-to-high stroke that sends the ball flying off his racket. Opponents have seemingly won a point after pinning him deep on his backhand side, then end up watching a laser dive into the corner.“He’s got a lot of shots,” Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, the world’s fifth-ranked player, said of Musetti after beating him in Mexico in March. “He just has to work a bit on his serve.”Musetti said he spent much of the spring doing that, trying to make it less predictable.The work appears to be paying off. Musetti has yet to lose a set here. By the third set Thursday, his opponent, Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan, older by six years, was kicking his racket across the clay and tossing his cap.“I’m not trying to explain this,” Musetti said after the win. He faces, who else, another Italian, the 83rd-ranked Marco Cecchinato, in the third round.Musetti now has a 20-11 record on the ATP Tour, as good a start as any current player who has finished a season ranked in the top 10, according to Greg Sharko, the tour’s statistics whiz.The teenager from Tuscany is trying to treat these Grand Slam matches like any other, even though he knows that is impossible.“You think ‘racket, ball, opponent,’” Musetti said the other day. “But every tournament is different, especially in the Grand Slam.” More

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      At the French Open, Serena Williams Moves to the Fourth Round

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      At the French Open, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion defeated her fellow American Danielle Collins, 6-4, 6-4, in her most convincing performance of the week.PARIS — Serena Williams’s tennis dress was green and billowed in the breeze. The tape on her right thigh was white and tight.It was a fashion clash, surely not what Williams had in mind when she approved this French Open ensemble. But the tape was a fitting symbol of her determination and persistence at age 39.Williams is not at her peak, and she looked rusty indeed when she returned to the tour and the red clay in Italy last month. But she is serving and scrapping her way into a much better place in Paris, and on an overcast Friday afternoon at a lightly populated center court, she produced her most convincing performance of the week to defeat a fellow American, Danielle Collins, 6-4, 6-4.The match was less straightforward and symmetrical than the score. Collins, who reached the quarterfinals at Roland Garros last year, led by 4-1 in the second set after holding serve at love. The momentum appeared to have shifted, but Williams lifted, Collins dipped, and Williams did not lose another game.“Today in particular, this whole week thus far, I just needed a win,” Williams said. “I needed to win tough matches. I needed to win sets. I needed to win being down. I needed to find me, know who I am. Nobody else is Serena out here. It’s me. It’s pretty cool.”The one and only Serena is now back in the fourth round of the French Open, which is not unusual for a player who has won 23 Grand Slam singles titles but is extraordinary at this advanced stage of her game.“I needed to find me, know who I am. Nobody else is Serena out here.”Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesShe is the oldest woman to reach the round of 16 in singles at Roland Garros in the Open era, surpassing her older sister Venus, who was 36 when she reached that round in Paris in 2017.“I personally can’t imagine still playing at this level at almost 40 years old,” said Chanda Rubin, a former top 10 player who is now a Tennis Channel analyst. “People get used to things, and we’re all guilty of it. You start seeing it more often, and it becomes less amazing, but what she’s doing is still amazing to me.”Success among older athletes is all the rage with Phil Mickelson winning the P.G.A. Championship last month at 50, Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl in February at 43 and Sue Bird winning a W.N.B.A. title last year at 39.There is clearly a role-modeling effect underway. Venus, who will turn 41 on June 17, is fading but still on tour, playing with tape and day-to-day pain of her own yet still hitting winners past women half her age.Roger Federer, who will turn 40 in August, remains in contention at this French Open after looking quick off the mark again on Thursday as he defeated his longtime rival Marin Cilic in four sets on the same patch of red clay where Williams beat Collins in cooler, heavier conditions.Seven Americans played third-round singles matches on Thursday, including four men: John Isner, Steve Johnson, Reilly Opelka and Marcos Giron. Williams was the only American to prevail, and I asked the 27-year-old Collins afterward if seeing Williams and other icons succeed late into their 30s and beyond made her view her own future differently.“I think that should give a lot of different athletes confidence, younger athletes especially, not to put as much pressure on themselves,” Collins said. “You’re seeing some of the greatest athletes in the world have some of their best success once they’re a little bit older. I think that goes to the maturity, the experience that they have at that point. It just shows how much of sports is a mental game, more so than just a physical game. It should give players confidence to see somebody like Serena or Tom Brady or Phil Mickelson.”Of course, Williams, Federer, Brady and Mickelson were all young phenoms before they became enduring superstars. What made them exceptional initially has helped keep them exceptional, but they have also had to adapt: training differently, eating more carefully and, in the cases of Williams and Federer, competing more efficiently.“Serena has had to make adjustments, just like Roger, to remain a factor at the majors,” Rubin said. “Look at Roger, being more aggressive and moving in, taking on that challenge, so I think that kind of adaptability is a requirement.”Even so, it has been quite some time since they reaped tennis’s biggest rewards. Federer’s last major singles title came at the Australian Open in 2018; Williams’s came at the Australian Open in 2017, when she was two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia.Serena Williams acknowledged the crowd after her win on Friday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBut both have continued to give themselves major opportunities: two match points for Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon final against Djokovic; four different Grand Slam finals for Williams since her return from maternity leave.The odds of winning another major are against them. Federer, who will play Saturday night against Dominik Koepfer in the third round, is still in the half of the men’s singles draw with Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. But Williams’s section of the women’s draw has opened up promisingly. At No. 7, she is the highest seed left in the bottom half after No. 3 seed Aryna Sabalenka experienced her latest Grand Slam setback by losing, 6-4, 2-6, 6-0, on Friday to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.The only Grand Slam singles champions left in the bottom half are Williams and Victoria Azarenka, who is not at her most dangerous on clay. There is also Marketa Vondrousova, a left-handed Czech who reached the final here in 2019.“There are some real challenges in front of Serena, but of course it’s possible,” Rubin said. “If you look at who’s left in her half, she has to feel pretty good about her chances. She can go toe-to-toe in any of those matches and lose them, but they are also winnable. That’s what you want, and she has to be feeling better about her game after seeing how she handled a tough challenge against Collins today.”Williams served and competed well, and will need more of the same in the next round when she faces Elena Rybakina, a 21-year-old who is seeded 21st. Rybakina, who was born and raised in Moscow, now represents Kazakhstan and has Williams-level power.But Rybakina has never faced Williams and never played a match of this magnitude. Even at 39 on her least favorite surface, Williams deserves to be the favorite. More