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“When you step out on a newly made clay court that is clean, all the lines are perfect. It makes for a very pleasing visual experience,” Stefanos Tsitsipas said.
“But there’s also beauty when the courts are dirty and messed up and you can see all of the footwork and effort that has been put in and you have a visual of that, of how much work has been put in in order for you to succeed in what you do.” More
There’s glory in defeat. Losses, at least, make athletes more relatable to the rest of us.She couldn’t win a single game.In the third round of the French Open on Saturday, Wang Xinyu of China had to believe there was at least a chance she could defeat Iga Swiatek, the event’s reigning women’s singles champion and top seed. Wang is no slouch, after all. She is a hard-hitting 21-year-old who in April hit a career-high ranking of 59th in the world, and she can put up a viable fight against the very best.But she lost, and it was as ugly as can be: 6-0, 6-0 — in tennis parlance, a dreaded double bagel. The match didn’t last much longer than the warm-up.I say there’s glory in that kind of imperfection.Long live the frail. The weary and worn, the strugglers and the stragglers. The athletes who woefully suffer losses in public.Long live the defeated in sports.We’ve seen many of them over the past week or so, and we’ll soon be seeing more.Of course, this won’t happen only on the slippery clay at the French Open.The N.B.A. and N.H.L. playoffs have finally reached their finals. College softball, growing fast in popularity, is in the mix with the N.C.A.A. Division I championships. The Oklahoma Sooners are aiming for a third straight title — and to add to their Division I record of 51 consecutive victories — after beating Stanford on Monday in a semifinal in extra innings. Let’s have some sympathy for the Sooners’ cavalcade of victims.Most of the narrative will focus on the winners of these championships. That’s only natural. The world’s greatest athletes stretch and bend the limits of human potential. The best of the best even seem capable of controlling time. No wonder we watch them perform with awe that feels existential. They have become godlike in our world.That’s fine and understandable, but give me the tennis player who struggles with all her might to win a single game in a Grand Slam match. Give me the basketball star who shanks crucial free throws and the goaltender in hockey who slips and lets the winning slap shot whir by.Give me nerves that wilt when the pressure comes. I’m here for reflexes that aren’t what they used to be.Why? Well, the victors are always going to get their due. But to err, as we all know, is human — entirely and beautifully so. And those who lose in so many different ways occupy the more relatable corner of big-time sports.There’s comfort in knowing that highly conditioned, supremely coordinated, deeply battle-tested athletes can tire, cramp, succumb to pressure, struggle to get enough air and suffer stinging defeat. In the act of failing, they become, even if only briefly, more like the rest of us schmoes.So we can take solace in the Boston Bruins, who posted a record 65 wins in the regular season, promptly losing in the first round of the N.H.L. playoffs to the Florida Panthers. High expectations for the Stanley Cup became dead weight. Who can relate? I know I can.Speaking of Boston, in the N.B.A. playoffs, the Celtics’ Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum battled back from a 3-0 hole to tie the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Then, in Game 7, with a history-making comeback in play, they collectively laid a stink bomb, putting in performances that stand among the worst and weakest of their careers.The Boston Bruins won a record 65 games during the regular season before losing in the first round of the N.H.L. playoffs.Maddie Meyer/Getty ImagesEver been on the precipice of something great, only to fail — and fail hard, in public? Yeah, me too, going back to the fifth-grade play in which I forgot my lines, tripped onstage and nearly broke my nose. It wasn’t hard to sympathize with Brown and Tatum as they clunked shot after shot, and Miami won by 19 points, with all those millions tuning in.The red clay at Roland Garros — where no step is sure, no bounce can be counted on and each match can turn into a grueling marathon — offers as clear a window as any into the crushing truth of sports.Players walk onto the courts looking like Parisian runway models, their skin bronzed, their crisp outfits pressed. Then, once the matches get moving, reality sets in.At the other Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the points often finish rapid-fire. On the Roland Garros clay, the points can extend like a John Coltrane solo. They can go on and on, pressure mounting, tempo building in a crescendo.In the most prolonged and competitive matches you can often see agony — mental as much as physical — descend upon the players. Uncertainty creeps in, and with it gauntness. Muscles weaken and tremble. The crisp outfits — shoes, socks, shirts, wristbands, headbands, hats — cake with sweat and clumps of clay.Wang was not on court long enough to suffer like this against Swiatek. But Gaël Monfils of France was. Monfils, a weathered, 36-year-old veteran playing in perhaps his final Grand Slam in front of his home crowd, won his first-round match despite facing a 4-0 fifth-set deficit. Along the way, he struggled past aching lungs and a storm of leg cramps. He eked out the match, but was so tired and sore that he couldn’t make it to the court for his second-round match two days later.Jannik Sinner battled for more than five hours before losing to Daniel Altmaier in the second round of the French Open.Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via ShutterstockThe march of time waits on no one.A few days later, a much younger player, Jannik Sinner of Italy — 21, seeded No. 8 and rising fast — took to Suzanne Lenglen Court against Daniel Altmaier, a journeyman ranked No. 79.Sinner should have won without much trouble.He nosed ahead early, but struggled. An hour passed. Altmaier caught up. Another hour went by. The match became a stalemate. Three hours turned to four. Sinner held two match points — and coughed up both. They headed into a fifth set. Sinner fell behind and came back: He faced four match points, but won them all.And then … and then, after 5 hours 26 minutes, Sinner watched a screaming serve fly past his outstretched racket for an ace. Game. Set. Match. Final score: 6-7 (0), 7-6 (7), 1-6, 7-6 (4), 7-5. The upset was the fifth-longest match in French Open history.Sinner walked off the court messy and tussled, his face betraying the self-doubt common to losers. In other words, he was beautifully human. More
Tsitsipas is aiming to beat Carlos Alcaraz in Paris on Tuesday in a French Open quarterfinal, but what he really wants is to help turn his younger brother Petros into a doubles champion.Stefanos Tsitsipas already had a lot going on as he arrived at the French Open.He was trying to reach the level of the Grand Slam champions who came before him, like Novak Djokovic, who has beaten Tsitsipas in two major tournament finals, when he suddenly had to defend an attack from the sport’s young stars, led by Carlos Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard ranked No. 1 in the world. Tsitsipas, 24, has another priority, too — helping his younger brother Petros, 22, establish his own identity and become a top doubles player. They plan to play as many as nine events together this season, regardless of whether that helps Stefanos’s singles play, which Petros isn’t sure that it always does.“I don’t think I would have done this for anyone else,” Tsitsipas said last week, when his march toward his French Open quarterfinal showdown with Alcaraz on Tuesday was still two wins away. “This is our dream.”Tennis has always been the ultimate family affair for the Tsitsipas clan. The mother, Julia Salnikova Apostoli, was a top Russian player in the 1980s and was once the world’s best junior. The father, Apostolos, is also a seasoned player, though not a former top touring pro. He trained as a coach and a line judge and now coaches Stefanos, though does not meddle much when his sons are playing together.There are two other tennis-playing Tsitsipas siblings, Pavlos, 17, and Elisavet, 15.Too much family involvement can have its hazards in tennis, as the Tsitsipas family demonstrated at the Italian Open last month, when both of Stefanos’s parents were talking to him during his match against Daniil Medvedev of Russia. After Julia spoke to him in Russian, giving him instructions that Medvedev could easily hear and understand, Stefanos used some salty language and ordered her from his courtside box, which caused a mini scandal in Greece. He declined to comment on the matter upon his arrival in Paris.Stefanos Tsitsipas with his father, Apostolos, who is also his coach, after winning the Monte-Carlo Masters in 2022.Denis Balibouse/ReutersFor the moment, his relationship with Petros is far less fraught. But navigating it all with a tennis racket, especially when the activity dominates a family’s life, requires its own set of skills, particularly when one sibling’s talent evolves in a way the other’s does not, which is almost inevitably the case in tennis.Early last year, after much time and too many losses on tennis’s back roads, Petros Tsitsipas made a big decision — it was time to stop trying to make it as a singles player like his big brother and make doubles his game. There was more than tennis involved with the move. He was 21 and coming off an injury, with a singles ranking in the 700s. The time had come for Petros to forge his own identity and stop struggling through the lowest level tournaments — “making it through the jungle,” as he described it last week at Roland Garros.Doubles offered a path of less resistance. Good players who can’t hang near or with the most elite players on the tour and are game to learn doubles’ unique angles, quirks and strategies can earn a decent living. They just have to be willing to compete for far less prize money as the undercard or late-night programming at tournaments, especially when they are climbing the ladder.Petros Tsitsipas and Stefanos Tsitsipas lost their first-round doubles match at the 2023 French Open. They hop to play together at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesThis is where Stefanos comes in handy. Because of his high singles ranking (currently No. 5), the Tsitsipas brothers can get into big-time tournaments that Petros might not have qualified for with a lower-ranked partner. Also, given Stefanos’s star power, tournament organizers are more likely to offer them a wild-card entry into the doubles draw.That said, for Petros to climb the doubles rankings in a way he was not able to in singles, he has to play more than just eight or nine times a year with Stefanos, to learn the game and win as much possible. Lately, when his older brother has not been available, he has been playing in tournaments on the Challenger tour with Sander Arends, a 31-year-old from the Netherlands who never cracked the top 1,000 in singles but is ranked 98th in doubles. Last year, Petros had a different teammate nearly every week. He has climbed to 115th in the rankings, from below 400 two years ago.“It’s like learning to play chess,” Petros said.He can find an easy role model across the locker room. Jamie Murray spent years trying to be known as something besides the brother of Andy Murray, who in 2013 became the first man from Britain in 77 years to win Wimbledon.Jamie Murray said he still hears people say, “That’s Andy Murray’s brother” when he walks around the grounds of a tennis tournament, something he learned to accept years ago.“No point to fighting it,” he said.But Murray said he sensed that people stopped thinking of him as a sibling of someone better at his sport than he was after 2016. All it took was pairing with his brother to win the Davis Cup and becoming the world’s top-ranked doubles player — the same year his brother became the top-ranked singles player.Now he sees Petros trying to accomplish the same thing, to make his own way with people looking at him mostly as just someone’s brother.“It’s not easy,” he said.Andy Murray, left, and Jamie Murray had banner years in 2016, with Andy achieving a No. 1 ranking in singles and Jamie topping the doubles chart. They also won a Davis Cup together.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesWhen Petros is playing with Stefanos rather than with a specialist, doubles feels like a different game, Petros said. The specialist may be better at doubles than Stefanos but he is not nearly as good a tennis player. With a specialist, the game is all about tactics and strategy. With Stefanos — as with any great singles player — it’s all about feel and improvisation.“More freelance,” Petros said, like the difference between playing sheet music or jamming with a uniquely gifted musician who thrives on spontaneity.It used to be accepted as conventional wisdom that playing doubles improves the singles game, keeping reflexes sharp and the mind focused throughout a big tournament. Petros isn’t so sure that is always true, especially with the increasingly physical grind that singles has become and how different the quick rallies of doubles are from the baseline battles of singles.That has not been an issue at the French Open. The Tsitsipas brothers lost a heartbreaking first-round match in a third-set tiebreaker.“Trust me, it sucks,” Stefanos said the next day. “To be losing that with your brother, it sucks more than usual.”Stefanos Tsitsipas has lost only one set in singles at this year’s French Open.James Hill for The New York TimesThere is no turning back now, though. As long as Stefanos is not too worn out from a deep run at the French Open, the brothers hope to play Wimbledon, where men’s doubles will be best-of-three sets this year instead of best of five. From there, they also want to play the summer tournaments in North America, including the U.S. Open.Petros has worked so hard, Stefanos said. He wants to help him get as far as he can.“I just want to go for it,” Stefanos said.They want to represent Greece in the Olympics, and win the Davis Cup.“Doing that with your brother is probably the most beautiful thing you can witness on a tennis court,” he said.First though, he has another matter to contend with: Alcaraz in the French Open singles quarterfinals. More
Yannick Noah was nervous.He was on familiar and, for him, sacred ground at Roland Garros, in the stadium that has been so central to his life, where he has watched, played and won so many matches, including the biggest of his life, and served as the ultimate tennis talisman and guru for his countrymen.There was even that night after the finals, long after he had retired, and it was late, and after many drinks had been consumed, he convinced the staff to keep the lights on just bright enough and let him and his friends play some tipsy, barefoot tennis on the red clay.But he had never performed on Philippe Chatrier court like this, which is to say, never given a concert as the version of himself that has for the past three decades dominated his life: the African-pop-reggae star of sorts. But then the band was waiting on the stage, and the public address announcer was calling his name, and nerves be damned, Noah, barefoot on the court once more and pulling off pedal pushers as gallantly as any 63-year-old man possibly can, was walking across the red clay, with the microphone to his lips waving and singing his opening song.“I lived my best moment here,” he said later, during a news conference more packed than it would have been for any active player. “I have memories everywhere here, including my first kiss.”Sorry, he did not drop a name, though wouldn’t we all like to know.Books on Yannick Noah and his triumphant victory at the French Open in 1983 were on sale at Roland Garros. Yannick Noah and Caroline Garcia cut outs stood by the Philippe Chartrier court.Forty years ago Noah etched his name into the history of France, winning the French Open men’s singles title. That victory, which stands as the only title by a Frenchman at the French Open in the past 77 years, is one of those sports moments that is part of the broader French consciousness, a precursor of sorts to France winning the men’s soccer World Cup in 1998 with a team filled with stars with African heritage.Everywhere else, Noah is known as the swashbuckling and effortlessly athletic Cameroonian-French player who won that big tournament a while back. Tennis fans of a certain age smile at the mention of his name.In France, his legacy and life loom over every man who has played tennis since as something nearly impossible to live up to — French Open champion, and the winner of 23 ATP titles.Then there is his post-playing life: international music star; the winning captain at the Davis Cup, which he celebrated by leading his team in an epic version of the African conga dance that accompanies his hit song; a leader of his village in Cameroon. It’s cool stuff.Early last week, on the eve of his debut in a Grand Slam tournament, Arthur Fils, France’s 18-year-old next big thing, was told that Noah had been talking him up. He cocked his head and opened his eyes wide. Fils was born more than two decades after Noah’s magic moment, but he has spent his life watching that match point replay on French television.“Of course he is one of my idols, from a long, long time,” Fils said.Nicolas Escudé, the former top-20 player who is now the national technical director for France’s tennis federation, said he and so many French players have been struggling with the burden of Noah’s legacy for decades. No Frenchman even made the third round this year.“In my position and even before when I was a player listening to this constant, ‘Hey, you know, we need a successor for Yannick Noah,’ listening to this again and again is a pressure,” said Escudé, who is 47.Grand Slam tournaments are tennis’s version of the Star Wars bar — lousy with past champions collecting pats on the back and paychecks to do television commentary or rub shoulders with sponsors. Someone like Noah, on the 40th anniversary of one of this tournament’s biggest moments, would figure to be all over Roland Garros.Noah at a press conference at the site of his triumphant victory at the French Open.Noah held his trophy after beating Sweden’s Mats Wilander and winning the French Open in 1983.STF/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNot so much.He stuck around for about 24 hours after the pretournament concert at Philippe Chatrier, where Mats Wilander, his opponent in the 1983 final, joined him for a rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” The following day he attended the unveiling of a mural at Roland Garros celebrating his title. It was a private ceremony, closed to journalists and most of the public. And then he headed off to a music festival and his other life. On Sunday he performed in Caen, a small city a few hours’ drive west of Paris. . “For me, tennis is like some other time, like another life,” he said. “Once every 10 years, you know, they remind me I was a tennis player.”Like the rest of his life, the origin story involves that magical combination of destiny, talent and fortitude. Arthur Ashe spotted Noah at a tennis clinic during a tour of Africa in 1971, then quickly called his friend, Chatrier (the guy the stadium is named for), at France’s tennis federation. He told him there was a boy in Cameroon that had the makings of a champion.Soon Noah was living in France, and by the early 1980s his huge serve, speed and grace had made him a force on the professional tennis tour. His physique — 6-foot-4 and shoulders made for rebounding — is more common in this era than his own.Then came the dreadlocks that caused a stir in the staid world of an almost entirely white sport. Ahead of a Davis Cup final against Noah and France in 1982, John McEnroe, who was not exactly a creature of the establishment, remarked that he was “more afraid of his new hairstyle” than Noah’s game.The following spring, Noah romped to the French Open championship. He playing career officially ended after the 1996 season, with more titles than any Frenchman before or since.By then he was already deep into his music career. His song “Saga Africa” had become a hit in 1991, leading to a dual focus that soon began to tilt toward music.Noah during his concert at Philippe Chartrier. Noah began his career as a recording artist even before he finished his tennis career.Noah taking some time to sign autographs.“When I was losing tennis matches, I was telling people I was a singer,” he said.He moved back and forth between Europe and the United States, appearing in the stands of basketball games while watching his son, Joakim, became a college and N.B.A. star. Noah may not be around Roland Garros much this year, but Joakim was often in the player box of Frances Tiafoe, an American who is the son of African immigrants and is one of the tour’s few highly ranked Black players.Noah spends much of his time in Cameroon now. The photo that accompanies his mobile number shows him standing in front of a turquoise sea, sipping through a straw from a full martini glass, peering out from under the brim of a baseball cap.The dark dreadlocks are gone, replaced by tidy and appropriately thinning salt-and-pepper hair. There are lines across his forehead and bags under his eyes. But the gap-tooth smile, the soft voice, his “there-is-more-to-life-than-tennis” ethos, and that combination of swagger and approachability, it’s all still there. In the middle of the concert, he took a lap through the stadium, singing into the microphone in one hand, high-fiving and embracing the crowd with the other.The growing distance between the public and tennis players troubles him, he said, especially when social media is supposed to get them closer to fans. He has little use for the game’s code of conduct, which he said stifles players, preventing them from showing emotion on the court.Those emotional outbursts from McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, and even Noah on occasion, once helped draw the common sports fan to an elite game. Also, emotions are at the core of the sport, he said. Ask the players he coached to the Davis Cup title what he talked about with them, he said. He rarely mentioned tennis, just emotions.He worries about the future of French tennis. The are no coaches who have won at the highest level, so young players have no true expert guidance. Escudé dismissed Noah’s point of view, and said he’s not so available anyway, but Noah said he is around for occasional chats.“If the players call me, I’m here. But time is passing,” he said.For whatever time Noah has left, he will always cherish June 5. He looks at the video of the winning point and imagines people watching it when he dies. People stop him every day and tell him where they were when he won. Some have said they flunked their exams because they watched the match instead of studying, but they cherished being a part of the country’s cultural history.“For them it was a day that counted,” he said. “And I was there. I was at the core of that.”Noah walking barefoot on the court, a texture he described as being “like velvet.” More
If everything goes right in the quarterfinals Tuesday for Alcaraz and Djokovic, the two most dominant players on the men’s tour, the duel everyone has been waiting for will happen.Eight days ago, 128 men began competing in singles at the French Open. Pretty much everyone has been focused on two of them.Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic moved one step closer on Sunday to a potential semifinal showdown. They clinically disposed of overmatched opponents who often struggled to get points and games, much less sets, in back-to-back matches in front of a packed house on the Philippe Chatrier court, offering a look at what may be coming to that stadium before the week ends.First, Djokovic took apart Juan Pablo Varillas, a 27-year-old Peruvian who has spent the last decade beating the back bushes of the sport. He had never won a match in the main draw of a Grand Slam tournament before this year’s French Open and enjoyed a storybook ride through the first week. Djokovic ended all that in 1 hour, 57 minutes, expending what energy he needed in the 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 win and not an ounce more.“I know what my goal is here,” he said, and he did not have to explain what it was.Then it was showtime, as Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, took the court against Lorenzo Musetti, an Italian who is just 10 months older and has almost as flashy a game.That one took 2:08 and had the identical score, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, for Alcaraz.“My best match of the tournament so far,” he said.For more than a year, Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, and Alcaraz, the new king of the sport who won his first major title at the U.S. Open last year, have somehow been missing each other.Sometimes one would lose before he got deep enough to face the other. Djokovic’s decision not to get vaccinated against Covid-19 forced him to miss the hard court tournaments in North America last summer and this spring. When Djokovic returned for the fall season and the Australian summer, Alcaraz was hurt. They could not connect.Now they are six sets away. Alcaraz has to beat the fifth seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, on Tuesday. They have played four matches and Alcaraz has won them all.Djokovic plays 11th-seeded Karen Khachanov of Russia. They have played nine times, with Djokovic winning eight.That Alcaraz and Djokovic will face each other in a semifinal on Friday is not a certainty. Even the best players have bad days. Both Tsitsipas and Khachanov like playing on clay more than on any other surface. Djokovic has battled a sore elbow recently. Alcaraz has shown in the past eight months that he can be prone to injury. Upsets happen.“Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game,” Novak Djokovic said.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersThat said, on Sunday Djokovic and Alcaraz delivered performances — and self-assessments about them — that lent an air of near inevitability to a coming showdown.Djokovic has long been the master of match management at Grand Slam tournaments, which require men to win seven best-of-five-set matches to claim the title and almost always separate the great from the very good. He starts playing at the level of energy expenditure, both physical and emotional, that he has decided he needs for the match, and dials it up only if the need arises.So many of his winners Sunday, hit on angles that he saw and Varillas did not, may not have had the zip he displays against other opponents. They did not have to.He was up by 4-0 before the match was roughly 20 minutes old against an opponent who had never before faced anyone at his level.“With one ball you are being aggressive, and then with one ball he turns the coin the other way and then you are defending,” Varillas said.Djokovic has been in this position before, one match away from the heavyweight duel with one of the biggest names in the sport, often Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal. Last year it was a quarterfinal match against Nadal, who also has 22 Grand Slam singles titles. The year before Nadal loomed in the semifinals. Those both came to fruition.Djokovic did not pretend he has not been paying attention to what will come after what comes next.“You always follow the top guys in your half, how they’re playing,” he said. “Of course you’re looking, you’re analyzing everyone’s game.”Yes, he is focused on himself, he said, “but of course I do keep in mind what the others are doing.”The “others,” of course, means Alcaraz, who, perhaps because of his youth, comes to his matches from a vantage point other than energy conservation, looking instead to create the greatest spectacle possible.He relished the prospect of Sunday’s match with Musetti, his smile breaking out and his eyes lighting up as he spoke of playing another flashy upstart.“Really good rallies, good shots between us, and of course it’s going to be a really fun match to watch, as well,” he said.At times, that can be as important to him as winning. He almost never sees a drop shot he does not want to race to, a lob he does not think he can chase down so he can extend the rally with a shot between the legs, even if it means giving his opponent an easy overhead, which he will also try to chase. He is the one making the magic but also its biggest fan.After his win on Sunday, he confessed that sometimes, after his best shots, he wants to look up at the big screen in the stadium and drool over the replay along with everyone else in the crowd and watching on television at home.“A lot of times,” he said.Six more sets. Then, he and Djokovic will get to put on the show Roland Garros has been waiting for. More
Gauff, now 19 and in her fifth season on the tour, took on Mirra Andreeva, who is 16 and the latest teenager to go on a tear in women’s tennis.Tennis moves fast.The veteran tennis star Rafael Nadal recently made that observation, discussing how quickly a new generation of players assumes the role of the one before. His words were never truer than on the Suzanne Lenglen court at Roland Garros on Saturday, where Coco Gauff, now in her fifth season on the tour at 19 years old, was locked in a duel with an opponent who reminded Gauff and everyone else of herself from Wimbledon in 2019.That rival was Mirra Andreeva, a 16-year-old Russian who has exploded onto the women’s tennis tour over the past five weeks.She knocks off top 20 players. She plays with an easy, smooth power, unruffled by the size of the stage and the fuss suddenly being made about her. She trades text messages with Andy Murray, the three-time Grand Slam champion. She makes sarcastic jokes in news conferences in English.A similar hype surrounded Gauff four years ago at the All England Club, beating Venus Williams on Centre Court and rolling into the fourth round, riding a hot streak, limited knowledge and the lazy anticipation that the next Serena had arrived. These days, she continues to hunt for her first Grand Slam and top-level tour title.Glass half-full: Gauff is 19 and is already ranked sixth in singles and third in doubles and still doesn’t have her grown-up strength, as she has said her mother puts it. She is also one of the game’s great athletes, with an active mind and an awareness beyond the lines of the tennis court.Glass half-empty: Gauff has accumulated some baggage in the form of disappointing losses and inconsistent results during the past few months, and she takes that hard. After her loss in the fourth round at the Australian Open, Gauff left the news conference in tears. She knows opponents pick on her forehand. Her serve can disappear in tense moments.And now she’s got talented, free-swinging younger teenagers with a nothing-to-lose attitude like Andreeva’s closing in on her potential as the next big thing.“Transitioning into adulthood,” is how Gauff described her journey in life and tennis on the eve of the French Open.Clodagh Kilcoyne/ReutersIt is both a blessing and a curse of tennis how easy and quickly the declarations of future greatness can come. A couple of early wins, like Andreeva has managed in Paris, on the big stage at a Grand Slam tournament are often all it takes, even if those wins come by an easy draw or catching an opponent on an off day.This is especially true in women’s tennis, where fully developed raw power is less of a requirement and more girls than boys are able to gain enough of it to compete at the highest level. But tour veterans say that one of their biggest fears is playing a hot young player whose tendencies and weaknesses are still unknown.“They always win a bunch of matches because no coach has figured it out yet or broken the code,” said Sloane Stephens, 30, who had her own next-big-thing moments as a teenager.The pandemic, Stephens said, exacerbated the issue. There were so few opportunities to see the teenage prospects on the cusp of the tour because so many junior tournaments were canceled or players could not travel.There is a mental aspect to the dynamic as well. A young player often comes to the court believing she has nothing to lose, and some veterans are certain they are about to teach a lesson to the whippersnapper on the other side of the net.Daria Kasatkina said that older teens in the junior ranks are terrified of playing and losing to younger ones and that fear can extend to the tour, when the youngest players are taking on adults.“At 16, you’re not nervous,” Kasatkina said. “I would say it’s a little advantage. It’s disadvantage, and it’s advantage.”Kasatkina, who is from Russia, was high on her countrywoman, saying she was already physically strong and beating good players on her way to becoming the most talked about newcomer at the French Open.For 65 minutes Saturday, the hype was on track to grow. Andreeva was every bit the match for Gauff, especially in the tight moments.She broke Gauff’s serve when the 19-year-old was serving for the set at 6-5, and then let Gauff give her three set points in the tiebreaker with a shaky forehand and a misfired drop shot. Andreeva whacked a ball into the crowd in anger after losing two of them (“a really stupid move,” she said later), but on her third chance she hit the back of the line on her serve and put away a big forehand to put Gauff in a one-set hole.But then Gauff stopped giving away points, and Andreeva, with around 10,000 fans in attendance, started to show the lesser qualities of her 16-year-old self. She threw her racket on the court when she dropped an early game in the second set. An ugly, soft and looping second serve early in the third set gave Gauff a 3-1 lead, and it was smooth sailing from there.Andreeva later said that after she won the first set, the free-and-easy mood she had been playing with since she survived qualifying slipped away. Suddenly, she started thinking about how she was a set away from the final 16 of her first Grand Slam.“A mistake from me,” she said. “I should have just continued playing.”Andreeva was a difficult opponent for Gauff throughout the match.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesGauff said she told herself that her game plan was essentially working, that she had frittered away a set that she had basically won, but she had also learned how to read body language and to draw confidence when an opponent was growing angry. Chalk one up for age and experience.Gauff, by her own admission, is in the purgatory years of her evolution, both on the court and off.“Transitioning into adulthood,” is how she described it on the eve of the tournament, trying to figure out which qualities from adolescence she wants to hang on to and which ones she wants to discard.Gauff is on the stiffer side of the draw, with a possible quarterfinal match against Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 who beat Gauff in last year’s final in Paris, if she can get through Anna Karolina Schmiedlova. However, Gauff’s half of the draw became slightly easier Saturday after Elena Rybakina, one of the hottest players in the world this year, withdrew with a respiratory illness.Once more Gauff will be the younger player in her fourth-round match on Monday. Schmiedlova, of Slovakia, is 28 and ranked 100th in the world.She said she was long past factoring those numbers into her approach to matches, but she was highly qualified to give advice to at least one demographic in the professional ranks — the upstarts like Andreeva.“Do it for you,” Gauff said, when asked what she would tell Andreeva about how to approach everything that will, rightly or wrongly, come next after her breakout run in Paris. “Don’t do it for anyone else. When you step on the court you want to make sure it’s for you, and I think life and the game will be a lot more enjoyable that way.” More
The Belarusian player faced questions about the war earlier in the week from a Ukrainian reporter. On Friday, with the tournament’s blessing, she did not attend her post-match news conference.Aryna Sabalenka’s day began with a routine demolition of Kamilla Rakhimova of Russia that propelled the world’s second-ranked player, who is from Belarus, into the second week of the French Open as expected.But then Sabalenka put herself, the tournament and tennis once more at the center of the debate over sports and the war in Ukraine by refusing to attend the mandatory post-match news conference. She said she had felt unsafe during a previous news conference this week when a journalist from Ukraine asked Sabalenka about her support of President Alexandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, which has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine.“On Wednesday I did not feel safe in press conference,” Sabalenka was quoted as saying at the beginning of a transcript of her statements following her 6-2, 6-2 win over Rakhimova. “I should be able to feel safe when I do interviews with the journalists after my matches. For my own mental health and well-being, I have decided to take myself out of this situation today, and the tournament has supported me in this decision.”Cédric Laurent, a spokesman for the French tennis federation, the F.F.T., which organizes this Grand Slam tournament, one that has been dominated by geopolitics from the start, said federation officials learned after Sabalenka’s match that she would not participate in the news conference.French Open officials approved Sabalenka’s decision for Friday’s match but said no decision had yet been made about her news conferences during the rest of the tournament.Laurent said a “pool” had been selected to interview Sabalenka, but he declined to specify who was in the pool or if they were members of the independent news media or worked for the tournament or the women’s tennis tour, the WTA.A person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak on the matter said that only one person — a WTA employee — asked questions in the pool interview.A person familiar with the WTA’s actions who was also not authorized to speak on the matter said the organization supported Sabalenka’s desire not to participate in the news conference and the manner in which her statements were delivered.Sabalenka’s representatives at IMG, the sports and entertainment firm that is a unit of Endeavor, did not respond to requests for comment.The decision on Sabalenka comes two years after a confrontation with Naomi Osaka over attendance at news conferences led her to drop out of the French Open. Osaka announced on social media before the start of the tournament that she would not participate in the news conferences in order to protect her mental health and would pay whatever fines she received.After Osaka skipped the news conference following her opening-round win, she was fined $15,000 by the tournament referee, and the leaders of the four Grand Slam competitions — the Australian, French and U.S. Opens, and Wimbledon — threatened that she could be expelled from the French Open and face harsher penalties if she would not fulfill her media obligations.Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam champion and one of the world’s top-ranked players at the time, pulled out the next day, announcing for the first time that she had been battling depression and planned to take a break from tennis. She returned seven weeks later, but stepped away once more in the fall of 2021. She battled injuries for much of 2022, and is now pregnant with her first child, though she has said she intends to return after the birth.In Sabalenka’s case, the decision came following two tense exchanges with Daria Meshcheriakova, a part-time journalist from Ukraine who works for Tribuna, a sports publication based in the country.During the first exchange Meshcheriakova asked Sabalenka what her message to the world was about the war and why she had claimed that Ukrainian players “hate” her. Sabalenka denied having said that and then spoke as openly as she ever had regarding the war.“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody,” said Sabalenka, who lives in Miami. “How can we support the war? Nobody, normal people will never support it.”Three days later, after Sabalenka’s second-round match, Meshcheriakova challenged her about a letter she supposedly signed in 2020 in support of Lukashenko, “in times when he was torturing and beating up protesters in the street,” and about having participated in a New Year’s celebration with him.The letter that Sabalenka supposedly signed has not been made public, and her New Year’s celebration with the Belarusian president has not been independently verified, though there are many pictures of Sabalenka and Lukashenko together. In an interview Friday, Meshcheriakova, who left Kyiv for the Netherlands 10 days after the war began when missiles landed close to her apartment and whose parents still live in Russia-occupied Luhansk, said she had learned of the letter and the New Year’s celebration from prominent Belarusian journalists who had been forced to leave the country.“It’s true,” Meshcheriakova said, “and you saw how she responded.”Sabalenka said she had no comments about either question, then began to answer Meshcheriakova’s next question: “So you basically support everything because you cannot speak up? You’re not a small person, Aryna.”But Sabalenka quickly cut herself off when a moderator stated that Sabalenka had made it clear she would not comment further.“It’s all clear to us,” Meshcheriakova said to conclude the exchange.Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens on Sunday in the fourth round. Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockElina Svitolina, who is a kind of unofficial leader of the Ukrainian members of the tour, said they simply wanted to hear from players representing Russia and Belarus that they believe their countries should end the war.“I think pretty much all Ukrainians would love to hear that from their side,” Svitolina said after her three-set win over Anna Blinkova of Russia.Like the other Ukrainian players, Svitolina did not shake Blinkova’s hand after the match.“Can you imagine the guy or a girl who is right now in a front line, you know, looking at me and I’m, like, acting like nothing is happening,” Svitolina said. “I’m representing my country. I have a voice.”Sabalenka is scheduled to play Sloane Stephens of the United States on Sunday in the fourth round. It’s not yet clear whether she will face reporters after the match.Meshcheriakova, who works as a political analyst in addition to covering sports, said she was returning to her day job after Saturday. She said she had been using vacation time to report on the tournament and was paying her own expenses.In Osaka’s case, tournament officials said that not requiring Osaka to attend news conferences could give her an unfair advantage over other players.Stephens, who is a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said Friday that she supported Sabalenka’s decision not to attend her news conference, and that every player had a right to feel safe performing her media obligations.“Everyone needs to feel good about themselves and what they’re doing,” Stephens said. “If she doesn’t feel safe, then she doesn’t need to be there. That’s the end of that.”Meshcheriakova said she had spoken with her parents earlier in the day. Her mother, she said, had been watching the Russian media coverage of the story, in which she was described using the Russian words for a Black cross-dresser. She implored her daughter to stop covering the tournament and to leave immediately.“Of course I told her I wouldn’t,” Meshcheriakova said. “I’m a journalist.” More
Carlos Alcaraz es tan bueno y tan joven, y gana tantas veces, que su éxito parece predeterminado.Por supuesto, alguien así de rápido, con manos tan suaves como las de un artesano y un físico que lo coloca justo en la zona Ricitos de Oro de los grandes del tenis moderno —ni demasiado alto ni demasiado bajo—, se convertiría en el número uno del mundo más joven en los 50 años de historia del ranking de la Asociación de Tenistas Profesionales (ATP). También tiene buenos genes. Su padre fue tenista profesional a nivel nacional en España cuando era adolescente.Así que esto estaba predeterminado para Alcaraz, el campeón de 20 años que llegó a París como el favorito inasequible para ganar el Abierto de Francia, ¿no es cierto?Quizás no.Como sucede tan a menudo en los deportes, y especialmente en el tenis, donde la exposición y el entrenamiento tempranos son esenciales, hubo un elemento de suerte que ayudó a crear al heredero deportivo de la troika conformada por Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer y Novak Djokovic y que ha gobernado el campeonato masculino durante la mayor parte de las últimas dos décadas.Esa suerte finalmente tomó la forma del logo de una compañía local de dulces, que adornaba las camisetas que Alcaraz usaba durante sus partidos desde que tenía 10 años. Todo fue gracias a encuentros fortuitos con Alfonso López Rueda, el tenista presidente de Postres Reina, una empresa española de postres y dulces conocida por sus flanes y yogures. El interés de López Rueda por Alcaraz y el apoyo que le permitió viajar por Europa y comenzar a competir contra chicos mayores en escenarios desconocidos puede ser una explicación de la forma en que Alcaraz, desde el comienzo de su corta carrera, ha mostrado casi siempre una especie de serenidad alegre, incluso cuando el escenario se hizo más grande y el centro de atención más intenso.Carlos Alcaraz ha usado el logo de Postres Reina en su camiseta durante los partidos desde antes de los 10 años.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, vía Getty ImagesEl apoyo de la empresa de dulces permitió a Alcaraz viajar por Europa a los torneos.Samuel Aranda para The New York Times“Algunas personalidades son muy buenas para eso, algunas tienen que aprender”, dijo Paul Annacone, quien entrenó a los grandes jugadores Federer y Pete Sampras, entre otros. “Él realmente parece disfrutar del ambiente (ganar, perder, lo que sea), parece aceptarlo”.Al parecer, la mayor fortuna que puede tener un aspirante a tenista es haber nacido de padres que jugaron al más alto nivel. Los rangos profesionales, especialmente en el lado de los tenistas hombres, son terribles con los nepo babies, como se les conoce a los hijos de figuras exitosas que quieren ingresar al rubro de los padres. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz y Ben Shelton son descendientes de ex jugadores profesionales. Todos ellos tenían una raqueta en sus manos a una edad temprana y acceso casi ilimitado a alguien que sabía muy bien qué hacer con ella.Para todos los demás, algo de suerte es clave.Las habilidades que requiere el tenis profesional son muy especializadas, y el proceso largo y costoso de perfeccionarlas tiene que comenzar a una edad muy temprana. Pero el sistema de desarrollo de jugadores en la mayoría de los países está fracturado y, en el mejor de los casos, es regido por la casualidad, con programas escolares que son en su mayoría limitados. O una familia decide conscientemente exponer a un niño pequeño al tenis, o el niño no juega, al menos no en serio.Así que no sorprende que tantas de las historias de creación en el tenis profesional parezcan involucrar una sucesión de eventos fortuitos e inconexos.Frances Tiafoe probablemente no terminaría como semifinalista de Grand Slam si su padre, un inmigrante de Sierra Leona, se convertía en encargado de mantenimiento en un parque de oficinas en lugar de en un club de tenis local.Novak Djokovic tuvo la suerte de conocer a Jelena Gencic, una de las mejores entrenadoras de Serbia, cuando tenía 6 años y ella dirigía un entrenamiento en las canchas cerca del restaurante de sus padres en Kopaonik, en las montañas serbias cerca de Montenegro.Arthur Ashe estaba viajando por Camerún en 1971 cuando vio a un escolar de 11 años con talento en bruto para explotar. Llamó a su amigo Philippe Chatrier de la Federación Francesa de Tenis y le dijo que fuera a echar un vistazo. Ese chico era Yannick Noah, el último francés en ganar el Abierto de Francia.Al igual que con los demás, los dones y habilidades sobrenaturales de Alcaraz jugaron el papel más importante en su buena fortuna. Cuando tuvo la oportunidad de impresionar, lo hizo, pero antes la suerte tuvo que brindarle una oportunidad.La decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz de instalar canchas de arcilla roja en un club de El Palmar resultó por jugar a favor de su nieto.Samuel Aranda para The New York TimesLa historia de esa oportunidad comienza con la decisión del abuelo de Alcaraz hace décadas de incorporar canchas de tenis y una piscina en un club de caza en El Palmar, un suburbio de la ciudad de Murcia. Hubiera sido más barato poner todas las canchas duras, pero a los españoles les encantan las de la arcilla roja, también llamada tierra batida. Entonces el abuelo Alcaraz (otro Carlos) se aseguró de incluir esas canchas en las instalaciones.Ahora avancemos hasta hace una decena de años. López Rueda, loco por el tenis, es el director ejecutivo de Postres Reina, con sede en Caravaca de la Cruz. Pero a López Rueda no solo le gusta el tenis; le gusta jugar al tenis en arcilla roja. Vive en la misma región que el clan Alcaraz, y las mejores y más accesibles canchas de tierra batida para él están en un club en El Palmar, así que juega allí, comentó José Lag, ejecutivo de Postres Reina desde hace mucho tiempo y amigo de la familia Alcaraz, quien habló en nombre de su jefe, López Rueda.En el club se hizo amigo del padre de Alcaraz y jugó como compañero de dobles de su tío. Asimismo, el hijo de López Rueda, que es tres años mayor que Alcaraz, contó con el mismo entrenador, Kiko Navarro, que no paraba de delirar con el talento de Carlitos. Un día, López Rueda accedió a ver jugar al niño y no se parecía a nada que hubiera visto antes. Carlitos lo tenía todo, pero los recursos de su familia eran limitados. Su padre era entrenador de tenis y administrador del club, y su madre estaba ocupada criando al niño y a sus hermanos menores.López Rueda accedió a prestarle a la familia 2000 euros para viajar a un torneo, pero luego empezó a pensar en grande y decidió involucrar a su empresa para apoyar a este jovencito local que ya era capaz de vencer a competidores más altos, más fuertes y mayores.Postres Reina había apoyado durante mucho tiempo a los equipos locales de baloncesto y fútbol, pero el tenis era el deporte favorito de López Rueda y la empresa nunca había patrocinado a un atleta individual. Alcaraz se convirtió en el primero, luciendo el logo de la empresa en sus camisetas.El apoyo de la compañía, que duró toda la adolescencia de Alcaraz, le permitió seguir accediendo a los mejores entrenadores de su región y viajar por toda Europa para disputar los torneos más competitivos.“No se hizo con un interés publicitario”, dijo Lag. “Era solo para ayudarlo. Nunca pensamos que sería el número uno”.Alcaraz con López Rueda. Postres Reina nunca había patrocinado a un deportista individual antes de Alcaraz.Cortesía de Jose LagAl ver el éxito de Alcaraz, IMG, el conglomerado de deportes y entretenimiento, lo fichó a los 13 años, brindándole aún más acceso, especialmente a su actual entrenador, el exnúmero uno del mundo Juan Carlos Ferrero.Existe una buena posibilidad de que Alcaraz se hubiera convertido eventualmente en un jugador de primer nivel si López Rueda nunca lo hubiera visto. La Real Federación Española de Tenis, que tiene una de las mejores fuentes de desarrollo de talentos del mundo, probablemente se habría enterado de él en poco tiempo.Max Eisenbud, director de tenis de IMG, dijo que en cualquier historia de éxito en el tenis, el ingrediente más importante es una familia sólida dispuesta a tener una visión a largo plazo hacia el éxito de un chico.“Esa es la receta secreta”, dijo Eisenbud durante una entrevista reciente, pero reconoció que la asistencia financiera para una familia que la necesita ciertamente puede ayudar.Cuando un jugador avanza tan rápido como Alcaraz, pasando de estar fuera del top 100 en mayo de 2021 al número uno solo 16 meses después, se puede atribuir un papel en el resultado a cada detalle de su desarrollo.Los compañeros de Alcaraz han visto con asombro cómo ha elevado su nivel de juego en cada torneo, en una era en la que el foco de atención constante tortura a muchos de ellos. Durante los primeros meses de Alcaraz desafiando los peldaños más altos de la gira, Alexander Zverev se maravilló de su habilidad para jugar “simplemente por diversión”.Alcaraz dijo que sin importar lo que la gente viera, acostumbrarse a los ambientes cada vez más estridentes y llenos de presión tomó algún tiempo, pero aprendió rápido. Una paliza de Nadal en Madrid hace dos años ayudó, pero su mentalidad nunca cambió.“Siempre quise jugar en los grandes estadios”, dijo. Y ha parecido que realmente fue así.Alcaraz durante su derrota en los dieciseisavos de final del Abierto de Italia. Había ganado tres de sus cuatro torneos anteriores antes de una salida anticipada en Roma.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz ganó la final del Abierto de EE. UU. de 2022 para reclamar su primer título de singles importante y obtener el puesto número 1 en el ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesPara Alcaraz, el tenis es principalmente una alegría, desde su primera victoria en un torneo de Grand Slam en una cancha trasera en el Abierto de Australia en febrero de 2021, hasta sus victorias consecutivas sobre Nadal y Djokovic en el Abierto de Madrid en 2022, a su enfrentamiento en la semifinal contra Tiafoe en el Abierto de Estados Unidos en septiembre pasado frente a 23.000 fanáticos y con Michelle Obama sentada en la primera fila, hasta su triunfo en la final dos días después.¿Cómo es posible? Allen Fox, campeón de la División I y cuartofinalista de Wimbledon en 1965, que más tarde se convirtió en uno de los principales psicólogos deportivos, utilizó el término que utilizan los profesionales cuando no existe una explicación racional. Describió a Alcaraz como un “genio” y una “rareza genética”.“La única forma en que pierde es cuando falta”, dijo Fox. “Juega su mismo juego de alto riesgo y nunca quita el pie del acelerador”.Matthew Futterman es un periodista deportivo con larga experiencia y autor de dos libros, Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed y Players: How Sports Became a Business. More
