French Open (Tennis)

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      Naomi Osaka Says She Won’t Talk to Journalists at the French Open

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      Citing mental health concerns, the world No. 2 wrote on Instagram Wednesday that she will accept any fines levied for not making herself available to reporters.Naomi Osaka, the four-time Grand Slam singles champion, announced Wednesday that she will not do any news conferences at the French Open because she said they can too often be damaging to the mental health of tennis players.Osaka, 23, is one of the game’s biggest stars. She made the announcement on Instagram four days before the start of the year’s second Grand Slam.Osaka said she had watched too many players break down during news conferences and leave the dais in tears. She said the process felt to her like “kicking a person while they are down.”“If the organizations think they can keep saying, ‘do press or you’re going to get fined,’ and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation then I just gotta laugh,” Osaka wrote. She said she would accept any fines levied against her for skipping the news conferences and requested that the funds be donated to a charity dedicated to mental health.Spokespeople for the WTA, the women’s professional tennis tour, and the French Open were not immediately available for comment.Osaka made an estimated $55 million last year in prize money and endorsements.She is hardly the first athlete to decline to speak with the press. The N.F.L.’s Marshawn Lynch often refused to speak with reporters when he was a star running back with the Seattle Seahawks. He famously sat in front of microphones and refused to engage questions ahead of the Super Bowl following the 2014 regular season. He garnered tens of thousands of dollars in fines during the playoffs that year.Ted Williams, the Hall of Fame baseball player who played his entire career with the Red Sox, also had an icy relationship with the Boston media and did not grant interviews for extended periods.While some tennis tournaments have different rules, in general players must appear at a post-match news conference at a Grand Slam event if a journalist requests their presence, whether they win or lose. Fines for refusing are often little more than a few thousand dollars. In 2015, Venus Williams was fined $3,000 for skipping a news conference after a loss at the French Open. She and her sister, Serena, were fined $4,000 each in 2010 for skipping a news conference at Wimbledon.The French Open takes place on clay, which is considered Osaka’s worst surface. She is not expected to win the tournament and could be upset in an early round. She has never made it past the third round in Paris.Attending a news conference, regardless of the outcome of a match, is considered an obligation tennis players fulfill to promote their sport, which has struggled to maintain coverage in some markets in recent years as the budgets of news organizations have been slashed.Billie Jean King, the Hall of Fame player who helped create the women’s pro tour, has spoken about visiting the sports editors in the markets in which she played to beg them to send sportswriters to cover matches during the tour’s early years and the importance of players speaking with the press to promote the sport.“I like writers,” King said during a recent interview. “Always have.”Osaka’s announcement comes three months after Serena Williams left a news conference in tears following a loss at the Australian Open. Williams left the podium following an innocuous question from a veteran Australian tennis journalist about her level of play and her unforced errors after a semifinal loss to Osaka, who later won the tournament.“I don’t know. I’m done,” Williams said before abruptly leaving the room.It is not clear whether Osaka will also refuse to do television interviews on the court after her matches. Those interviews have become a staple of Grand Slam play and are generally not confrontational. Except in the finals, only the winner of the match is interviewed for television on the court.The question now is whether any players will follow Osaka’s lead and whether tennis officials will accede to her pressure and change the requirements.Osaka is one of the most influential players in the world. Last year, tennis officials suspended play at the Western & Southern Open, a United States Open tuneup, after Osaka announced that she would default her semifinal match to draw attention to the issue of police violence against Black people following the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis.The suspension of play, a move that several sports undertook as athletes threatened a boycott, allowed Osaka to remain in the tournament. She won her postponed semifinal match and then defaulted the final because of an injury.Days later, she began her triumphant quest to win her second U.S. Open championship. She walked to the court for each match wearing a mask with the name of a different person of color who had been a victim of racist violence.In general, Osaka has a cordial relationship with the press, though she keeps journalists, especially those she does not know, at a distance and rarely grants interviews, even to the biggest news organizations, though she has become a staple of fashion magazine covers. She said her decision to skip news conferences was not a personal attack on the French Open or the handful of journalists who have interviewed her since her younger years, “so I have a friendly relationship with most of them.” More

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      Coco Gauff Wins Two Titles in One Day

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      A rare double championship made for a great day on clay. It also was a good sign for Gauff a week before the French Open.It had been a year and a half since Coco Gauff won a tennis title. On Saturday, she won two in only a few hours.Gauff, the 17-year-old from Delray Beach, Fla., secured the singles title first, defeating Wang Qiang, 6-1, 6-3, with a poised and powerful performance at the WTA Tour’s Emilia-Romagna Open in Parma, Italy.After a trophy ceremony and a short rest, Gauff returned to center court with her doubles partner, Caty McNally, and won that title, too, rebounding from a slow start to defeat Darija Jurak and Andreja Klepac, 6-3, 6-2.“Two titles in one day — not bad,” Gauff said as she thanked her father and coach, Corey, and the rest of her team. Her victories came just over a week before the start of the French Open in Paris.The education of Gauff as a tennis player continues, and she has been a star student on Europe’s red clay so far this spring. After defeating Maria Sakkari and Aryna Sabalenka earlier this month to reach the semifinals of the Italian Open in Rome, Gauff traveled north to Parma to play in a new WTA 250 event where Serena Williams, a late wild-card entry, was the main attraction.But Williams, 39, lost to Katerina Siniakova in the second round, and showed that she was still struggling to find her fitness and her form. Gauff, meanwhile, won five straight matches to collect her second WTA singles title.The first came indoors in Linz, Austria, in October 2019, when she was still 15 and won a tough three-set final against Jelena Ostapenko.“I feel like in Linz I was really nervous closing the match, and I hadn’t been in that moment before,” she said when asked to compare her emotions after each victory. “Linz was definitely more a sigh of relief, because I think I was up in that third set and lost a couple of games before I was able to close it out. Whereas here, I said I was just going to go for it and trust myself and trust my decisions, and that’s why I felt like here it felt more like it was meant to be and not relief.”Gauff will be ranked 25th on Monday, a new career high. That guarantees her a seeding for the first time in a Grand Slam tournament when the French Open begins on May 30.“I feel really good about going into the French, and I hope I can continue to build and get better,” said Gauff, who beat McNally to win the French Open girls’ championship in 2018. “I have a week and a day to get ready. I feel like I’m hitting good, moving good. My body feels good, my mentality. Emotionally I feel good, so I think it will be a good tournament for me.”Gauff did not have to deal with the WTA elite this week in Parma. She faced no players ranked in the world’s top 30, and no former major champions. Her highest-ranked opponent was No. 40 Amanda Anisimova, a powerful but erratic American whom Gauff defeated, 6-3, 6-3, in the quarterfinals before beating Siniakova in three sets and China’s Wang in a hurry.Wang, 29, had thrived in long rallies throughout the week, defeating Petra Martic and Sloane Stephens in tight matches. But she struggled from the start to control the flow of play against the fast and consistent Gauff.“She’s a very good player now, and she can be a really great player,” Wang said.That remains the consensus on Gauff. She became a star in a hurry by reaching the fourth round of Wimbledon, her first Grand Slam tournament, in 2019. But she has not rocketed quickly to the very top like the former prodigies Monica Seles and Martina Hingis.The pandemic has certainly been a factor. Gauff did not play a tournament for more than six months in 2020, and she then lost in the first round of the United States Open and the second round of the rescheduled French Open when she did return.Though her two-handed backhand and her court coverage remain her strengths, her serve and her forehand have been question marks. She has shored up the forehand and has been increasingly effective pouncing on short balls and hitting winners with that stroke. But double faults have been a recurring issue. Last month, she had 13 in a straight-sets loss to Ons Jabeur in the quarterfinals of an event in Charleston, S.C., and 12 more in a three-set defeat to Karolina Pliskova in the first round of the Mutua Madrid Open.Those are big, disquieting numbers. The serving yips can be daunting to overcome, particularly in tight matches with Grand Slam titles on the line. But Gauff, with less at stake, served well through the pressure in Rome and Parma.Against Wang, she hit six double faults, but none came at critical junctures, and she did not lose a game on her serve.“That feels good,” she said. “The serve is something I’ve been working on a lot, and I can still improve on it.”Pat Cash, the former Wimbledon champion who is coaching Wang, agreed that Gauff’s serve needed work — “Sometimes she gets a bit too much spin on it,” he said — but after sitting courtside in Parma on Saturday, he said he liked her chances of playing well in Paris.“I don’t think she’s going to be that far off at the French,” Cash said. “I think Coco can get frustrated with the ball coming back time and time again. She over-hits at times, and that’s what we were hoping she would do today. We were hoping to frustrate her, but she hit God knows how many lines, baselines and sidelines, with power.“I was very impressed with her speed, and she’s a strong girl. She was a pretty skinny little thing a couple years ago, but she’s very strong on the stretch. That’s where it really counts.”Cash continued: “When she is pushed wide, instead of just floating the ball back, she can get some heat on it, and that’s crucial. A lot of the girls are not strong enough to do that. I was very impressed how Coco ran down a lot of balls and got them back with speed and depth. It’s like Rafa. He’s in trouble, and all the sudden he’s out of trouble.”For a player, any day someone draws a comparison to Nadal on clay is a good day. So is any day that you leave a tournament with two champion’s trophies after a long wait. More

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      Roger Federer Takes an Uncertain Step in His Comeback

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      Losing in his first match since March 11 to the 75th-ranked Pablo Andújar, Federer appeared fit but rusty. Most troubling was the fact that he admitted to lacking confidence.The last time Roger Federer played in Geneva, 80,000 fans cheered him on at work over three days, filling the Palexpo Arena to the brim as he led Team Europe to victory in the Laver Cup.That was in September 2019.On Tuesday, only 100 fans were in attendance at the cozy Tennis Club de Genève as Federer faced off against Pablo Andújar.So much is different now as the world and the tennis tour continue to grapple with the pandemic, and as Federer, 39, is coming off his latest long layoff.This was his first match since March 11 and only his second tournament since February 2020. The rust showed at times, with mis-hits and missed first serves under duress, but Federer also flicked a fabulous forehand passing shot to break serve and zipped through his service games for much of the second and third sets.Until Tuesday Andújar, a 35-year-old Spanish veteran, had never faced Federer, but with the match on the line, he was the more precise and reliable player. Andújar swept the last four games on the red clay to win, 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, in the round of 16 at the Geneva Open.“He deserved it because he was more stable than me,” Federer said.At the start and down the stretch, Federer was too often on the defensive, too often reactive instead of proactive.“Roger looked healthy, fit, and moved fine for his first match on clay,” said Darren Cahill, the veteran coach and ESPN analyst. “He just looked very rusty against a guy who knows his way around a clay court really well.”Andújar also knows as much about comebacks as Federer does at this stage. Andújar has worked his way back from multiple elbow surgeries, just as Federer, once remarkably injury-free, has had to work his way back from three knee surgeries — the first in 2016 and two more in 2020.He came back in 2017 to win three more majors and regain the No. 1 ranking, but another renaissance is far from guaranteed.“I think this is way different from four years ago, and 35 is way different than closing in on 40,” said Paul Annacone, Federer’s former coach.Federer has endured long enough to see his most prestigious records matched or broken. During his layoff from February 2020 to March 2021, Rafael Nadal equaled him by winning a 20th Grand Slam singles title, and Novak Djokovic surpassed him by holding the No. 1 spot for a 311th week.Federer has also endured long enough to see new talent emerge in his homeland. Dominic Stricker, a Swiss 18-year-old who won the French Open junior title last year, made his ATP Tour debut on Tuesday in Geneva and upset Marin Cilic, the 2014 United States Open champion.Federer, who has trained with and mentored Stricker in Dubai, could not follow Stricker’s lead, even though Andújar is ranked 75th in the world, had not beaten a top-10 player in six years and had lost in the first round in four of his last five tournaments.Federer, ranked eighth, had Andújar on the ropes and let him escape, playing a shaky service game at 4-3 in the third and then dropping his serve again at 4-5 after saving two match points.Federer said after the match that he had lacked confidence in his ability to close out a win.Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe fourth point of the final game was telling. He hit a strong, high-kicking serve that earned a short return. The court was wide open, but Federer slapped a tight, midcourt forehand into the net, and later he missed two more whipping forehands off deep shots on the final two points.“I started really hitting through my shots for a while, but at the same time I told myself that it was going to be difficult to keep that up for two sets,” Federer said. “And that’s down to a lack of confidence. I couldn’t say to myself, ‘Yes, you’re going to close out this match.’”Even for all-time greats, confidence is essential and ephemeral. Federer looked slightly apologetic as he shook hands and exchanged post-match pleasantries with Andújar. He had not expected to be in top form this week, but he had hoped to play more than one match on home clay. Only 100 spectators were allowed on site, but a few more than that were watching in person. Some Swiss fans had managed to sneak into the woods next to the club.But this was not vintage Federer they were watching through the trees, and for all his tennis genius, it is no sure thing that a vintage Federer will reappear.What is clear is that the French Open, which begins on the red clay in Paris on May 30, is not his main goal. The big target is Wimbledon, which begins on June 28 at the All England Club, the grassy tennis temple where he has won eight titles and where he held two match points in the 2019 final before losing to Novak Djokovic.“I think Paris is going to be really challenging for him,” Annacone said. “But if the body sustains itself and maintains good health and he gets enough reps, Roger’s not going to go into the grass season not thinking he can win Wimbledon. He’ll say all the right stuff, but in his heart of hearts, he knows he can win that tournament. But the less dominant you are, the more that aura of invincibility starts to dissipate just a tad, and it only needs to dissipate a tad to make a difference. The locker room antenna is up.”It is not up just for Federer. Tuesday was a tough day on clay all around for 39-year-old tennis legends. Serena Williams, returning to action this month after not playing since February, struggled in Parma, Italy, at the same time Federer was struggling in Geneva.Williams lost, 7-6 (4), 6-2, in the second round to the 68th-ranked Katerina Siniakova, double-faulting at key moments and dropping 16 of the last 18 points.It was striking to see two of the planet’s main attractions performing in such small venues: Think Bruce Springsteen or Lady Gaga playing your local bar. But Federer and Williams, so often in sync, are serious about working their way back one more time against the odds and the ticking clock.“The expectations for both of them are so rough,” Annacone said. “As soon as there’s a loss, there are all these sweeping conclusions. They are at the peril of their own brand, so to speak. They can definitely still be great, but I’ll be interested to see if they can stay great for a whole match, a whole tournament.” More

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      French Open Is Delayed a Week

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      The tournament will begin May 30, about two weeks after France is expected to ease its current national lockdown.The French Open has been postponed by one week and will be played from May 30 to June 13, the second year in a row it has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.France, which has faced a third wave of coronavirus infections, on Saturday entered a new nationwide lockdown that could last for more than a month. Nonessential shops and schools have been shut, and the authorities have maintained a nighttime curfew that has been in place for months.Organizers said on Thursday that they hoped the new dates would allow spectators to attend in a safe way and give the public health situation more time to improve. The lockdown is expected to lift in mid-May, giving tournament officials about two weeks to prepare for the Grand Slam event.“Every week is important and can make a difference,” the French Open organizers said in a statement.The two-week tournament in Paris, one of the sport’s four Grand Slam events, was supposed to begin on May 23 and run through June 6. It will now start on May 30 and finish on June 13, only two weeks before the start on June 28 of Wimbledon, which will not be delayed.The president of the French tennis federation, Gilles Moretton, also suggested fans would be able to attend the event. The delay, Moretton said, “will give the health situation more time to improve and should optimize our chances of welcoming spectators at Roland Garros.”“For the fans, the players and the atmosphere,” he added, “the presence of spectators is vital for our tournament.”The plan — an agreement with both government officials and international tennis leaders — means that for a second consecutive year the competition will not take place as scheduled. And while Wimbledon will keep to its schedule, the change in France probably will cause some shuffling of the series of grass-court tournaments that precede it.Last spring, organizers shifted the start of the French Open to late September, believing that the pandemic that ravaged western Europe in the first months of 2020 would recede over the summer. The move, made with little consultation with organizers of other tennis events, caught the sport off guard.It also ultimately helped cause several top European players, including the former world No. 1 Rafael Nadal, to skip the United States Open, which took place in early September. Players had little time to recover from a Grand Slam event played on a hardcourt and prepare for one on clay. The move paid off for Nadal, who won a record 13th French Open men’s singles title in October. Organizers limited crowds to just 1,000 spectators each day.For months, as infection rates in France have remained stubbornly high and as the European Union has struggled to distribute coronavirus vaccines, organizers of the French Open have been studying situations for once again holding the signature event in front of smaller crowds. Last week, however, President Emmanuel Macron of France enacted a third national lockdown as the rate of coronavirus infections continued to escalate, imperiling the tournament.Afterward, Gilles Moretton, the president of the French Tennis Federation, said if France’s citizens were still under restrictions next month the organization might have to consider canceling the event.“If we are told a general confinement for two months, we will necessarily have to take measures — at worst, complete cancellation, but I dare not imagine that,” Moretton told Agence France-Presse.Before the new lockdown, Macron had tried to keep France open, hoping that increasing vaccinations would help slow the spread of the virus. Instead, with the country’s death toll from Covid-19 approaching 100,000, he closed all but the most essential businesses, limited citizens to a six-mile radius from their homes, prohibited travel between regions and set a curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Professional sports are still allowed to take place, but without spectators.Rafael Nadal won his record 13th French Open men’s singles title in 2020. The tournament was played in the fall instead of its traditional spring dates.Julien De Rosa/EPA, via ShutterstockMacron has said he hopes to reopen the country by mid-May, which would leave mere days for organizers to prepare for the arrival of hundreds of players from dozens of countries, though many of them would presumably be coming from Italy after having played the Italian Open.Touring tennis players have been living for months in a series of bubblelike settings that each tournament has created with the goal of keeping players and the local populace from transmitting the virus.At the year’s first Grand Slam event, in Australia, which has all but eliminated community spread of the virus, organizers forced players arriving from overseas into a limited quarantine for two weeks before they could mix with the rest of the population, and dozens of them ended up in a hard two-week quarantine, after multiple people tested positive upon arrival.The restrictions have begun to wear on players, who are unable to travel with their usual support teams and family members and must limit their movements to their hotels and the tennis venues.“I understand the reasons for it, but from a physical and mental health perspective I don’t know if it is sustainable,” Danielle Collins, a top American player, said last week after her exit from the Miami Open. “It can be very challenging.” More