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      At Roland Garros, the French Get Behind Their Own

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      Had you been at Roland Garros around supper time Wednesday evening and heard the crowd of nearly 10,000 fans chanting Lucas Pouille’s name at a near deafening level, you would have assumed you had just missed a triumphant performance.Not even close. Pouille, a 29-year-old Frenchman, on the court named for Suzanne Lenglen, the French tennis star of the 1920s, lost in straight sets to Cameron Norrie, a Briton to add insult to injury, in less than two hours.No matter.For 105 minutes, the French faithful had serenaded Pouille and met his every winner with rousing roars. A four-piece band with a horn and a bass drum tooted and banged away between points. If you are French at the French Open, it’s what you do.Each of the four Grand Slam tournaments has its unique charms and intangible quirks, rhythms and characteristics.Fans waited for the Frenchman Arthur Fils to sign autographs after his first-round match on Monday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFrench flags fluttered in the stands during the Fils match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThe Australian Open is a two-week summertime party held when much of the world is shivering. Wimbledon has its mystique, the sense that the grass, especially on Centre Court, is hallowed ground, and the hear-a-pin-drop silence of the most proper of crowds. The U.S. Open delivers noisy chaos, the rattle of New York’s subways and the teeming crowds that joyfully ignore the idea that big-time tennis is supposed to unfold amid quiet.Roland Garros’s signature is the near limitless abandon with which the French fans unite behind anyone who plays under the bleu-blanc-rouge as the French standard is known. There are spontaneous renditions of the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” as though they are at Humphrey Bogart’s cafe in “Casablanca.”This happened after Pouille, once ranked 10th in the world and currently 675th following struggles with injuries and depression, beat Jurij Rodionov of Austria in the first round in waning light Sunday.“It made me want to keep working to get back and experience it again,” said Pouille, who stayed and listened to the serenade.When a French player is on the court — any French player, on any court — there is a distinctly louder, higher-pitched and fuller sound that rises from the stands. It’s like the crescendo of a symphony, over and over, hour after hour.Supporters of Alice Robbe of France serenaded her during a qualifying match last week.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesFils enjoyed the crowd’s backing after winning a game during his first-round match.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAmazingly, it keeps going on even though the French have been mostly terrible at this event for a long while — or maybe that’s why it happens. A Frenchman has not won the singles tournament since Yannick Noah in 1983, or made the final since Henri Leconte in 1988. A Frenchwoman has not won since Mary Pierce in 2000, which was also the last time the country was represented in the women’s singles final.Albert Camus, the French philosopher, famously wrote that we must consider Sisyphus, the Greek mythology figure, to be happy, even though he spends his life repeatedly pushing a rock uphill because “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.”Camus would have made a perfect modern French tennis fan.The zenith of this tournament for the French came Tuesday night as Gael Monfils, whose Gumby-like athleticism and ambivalent relationship with the sport have made him a tennis folk hero, came back from the brink to beat Sebastian Baez of Argentina in five sets.Monfils, 36, who has been battling injuries and played little the past year, cramped so badly in the fifth set he could barely walk. He fell behind by 4-0, but the crowd never relented and willed him back to life. The roars at the main court, Philippe Chatrier, could be heard more than a mile away. It was obvious what was unfolding simply by opening a bedroom window.Monfils told the crowd the victory was as much theirs as his after he prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 7-5, 1-6, 7-5.The ecstasy ride ended 24 hours later when Monfils called a late-night news conference to announce his withdrawal from the tournament because of a wrist injury.Caroline Garcia, seeded fifth, seemed to be the French’s best hope of having their first women’s singles finalist since 2000.James Hill for The New York TimesGarcia lost her second-round match to Anna Blinkova of Russia in three sets, despite the encouragement of the crowd.James Hill for The New York TimesIt came at the end of an awful day for the French players, who dropped all their singles matches. That included Caroline Garcia, the fifth seed and the only seeded Frenchwoman.Garcia had spoken earlier in the week of trying to capture the enthusiasm of the crowd and use it to her advantage. In the past, she has experienced it as pressure that has caused her to disappoint in front of the hometown fans. She has never made it past the quarterfinals.“I try and take all of this energy,” she had said of the support. “It’s a great opportunity.”No such luck. Garcia was cruising, up a set and a break in her second-round match Wednesday against Anna Blinkova of Russia. But she tightened up and frittered away the lead. The crowd helped her draw even at 5-5 in the third set, rattling Blinkova into double faults as Garcia saved eight match points before she lost, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.“She managed the crowd very well and kept very calm,” Garcia said of Blinkova.There was more pain Thursday as French players lost their last three singles matches, but those uniquely throaty urgings were an accompaniment all the same. When the last Frenchman, Arthur Rinderknech, lost Thursday night to the ninth-seeded Taylor Fritz, the crowd booed Fritz so loudly he could not hear the questions during his on-court interview. And a year from now, the French fans will push the rock up the hill again, and again, and again.James Hill for The New York Times More

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      At the French Open, Djokovic Storms the Court and Into Controversy, Again

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      In recent days, the Serbian tennis star Novak Djokovic has inserted himself into the mounting international crisis in Kosovo.After everything that Novak Djokovic had put himself through over the past few years, the French Open began with the possibility, finally, of a Grand Slam tournament free of drama.But three days into the Open, Djokovic has put himself at the center of the mounting international crisis in the Balkans, where ethnic Serbs and Albanians have clashed in recent days in the conflict over Kosovo.The message that the Serbian tennis star scrawled Monday night on a plexiglass plate overlaid on a television camera lens — “Kosovo is at the heart of Serbia” — has sports officials calling for him to be disciplined, muzzled or both, and Albanian loyalists calling him a fascist.“A drama-free Grand Slam, I don’t think it will happen for me,” Djokovic said after he beat Marton Fucsovics of Hungary on Wednesday night. “I guess that drives me, as well.”The 22-time Grand Slam tournament champion struggled to find his timing early on, with the wind gusting as day turned to night. But as the light faded the wind did too, and Djokovic cruised, finishing off the steady Fucsovics, 7-6 (2), 6-0, 6-3, in two hours and 44 minutes. But as it is so often with Djokovic, what is happening on the tennis court this week is only a fraction of the story.The World Health Organization recently declared an end to the Covid-19 health emergency and the United States ended its requirement for foreign travelers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, ending discussion of Djokovic’s decision not to receive the vaccination. He was forced to skip some of the most important tournaments in tennis over the past two years, and last year was detained and deported from Australia ahead of the Open.He didn’t even have to worry about his main nemesis, with Rafael Nadal missing this year’s French Open, a tournament he has won 14 times, because of an injury. Djokovic continues his usual march toward the second week of the tournament — though the top-seeded Carlos Alcaraz may pose trouble.After Djokovic’s first-round match on Monday, like every winning player on the stadium courts at major tennis tournaments, he grabbed a marker for the traditional signing of the courtside television camera.The practice, which began in the 2000s as a way for players to connect with fans, gives them an opportunity to send an international television audience a typically cheerful message like “Vamos!” (Spanish for “Let’s go!”), wish a loved one “happy birthday” or write their child’s name.Occasionally the scrawl expresses a political opinion. In the days before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian player Andrey Rublev wrote “No War Please” on the lens plate.Writing in his native language and drawing a heart, Djokovic’s message followed a weekend of violent clashes between Serbian protesters and NATO forces who have been trying to maintain a tense peace in the region for 15 years.Roughly an hour later, during the Serbian portion of his post-match news conference, Djokovic, whose past political statements have been suffused with Serbian nationalism, doubled down.“I am against wars, violence and any kind of conflict, as I’ve always stated publicly,” Djokovic said, according to the widely circulated translations. “I empathize with all people, but the situation with Kosovo is a precedent in international law.” He called Kosovo, “our hearthstone, our stronghold,” and said, “Our most important monasteries are there.”Almost immediately, the statements sparked the expected reactions at the polarized ends of the conflict: hero worship from Serbs, and outrage from the ethnic Albanians who account for the overwhelming majority of the population in Kosovo but are vastly outnumbered in a handful of villages and small cities. The groups, Orthodox Christians on one side, Muslims on the other, have been fighting on an off for control in the region for hundreds of years, dating back to the Ottoman Empire.Jeta Xharra, a human-rights activist in Kosovo, said in an interview Tuesday that Djokovic’s statements represented a “medieval mentality” that she compared to the thinking that led Russia to invade Ukraine last year.“It’s appalling for a man of his stature to use sports to push a fascist mentality,” she said.The Kosovan Olympic Committee has called for the International Olympic Committee and the International Tennis Federation to take disciplinary action against Djokovic.For its part, French Open officials have opted to stay out of the conflict. There is nothing in the rule book that prohibits a player from making political statements. France’s tennis federation, the F.F.T., said it was “understandable” that players would discuss international events. However, the French sports minister, Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, called Djokovic’s statement “inappropriate” during a television interview, saying it was “very activist” and “very political” and that he “shouldn’t get involved again.”Judging from Djokovic’s recent and not-so-recent behavior, that is not an option, and he said as much during his statement after his first match.“This is the least I could have done,” he said in his native language. “I feel the responsibility as a public figure — doesn’t matter in which field — to give support.”Supporters cheering Djokovic after his second-round victory at the French Open.Teresa Suarez/EPA, via ShutterstockFor Djokovic the statements have had increased impact because with the war in Ukraine garnering so much attention, few outside of the Balkans were aware of just how heightened the tensions in Kosovo have become during the past week — as heightened as they have been since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.An international military force has attempted to maintain peace in the region for decades. More than 100 countries have recognized Kosovo. Serbia and Russia have not. Ethnic Serbs who live in Kosovo boycotted local elections last month in the northern part of the country where Serbs hold majorities. That allowed Albanian candidates to win control, in their view.The five countries that control the peacekeeping force in the region — the United States, France, Italy, Germany and Britain — asked Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership not to send in security forces to take control of town municipal buildings following the elections. It did anyway, a move that the five countries condemned. The Serbs protested the takeover, sparking the violent clashes that wounded 30 members of the NATO peacekeeping force, known as KFOR (Kay-phor).“Both parties need to take full responsibility for what happened and prevent any further escalation, rather than hide behind false narratives,” Maj. Gen. Angelo Michele Ristuccia, the KFOR mission commander, said in a statement.President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia claimed that 52 Serbs were injured in the clashes, three seriously. He put the Serbian Army on high alert and sent his troops to the border.Watching events unfold from Paris as he prepared for the French Open, Djokovic searched for a way to express two emotions — a desire for peace and the belief that Kosovo is part of Serbia. He has often spoken of the traumatic experience of growing up in a war zone, with bombs falling not far from his home during the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s. He has said that anyone who has lived through that experience could never be in favor of war and violence. He used those words in January, when controversy found him at the Australian Open after his father, who was born in Kosovo, was caught on video posing with a fan of his son’s who was holding a Russian flag.In 2008, when Djokovic was a young player breaking into the sport’s elite ranks, he recorded a video expressing solidarity with protesters in Belgrade after Kosovo declared independence.“Of course, I’m aware that a lot of people would disagree,” he said as midnight closed in Wednesday. “But it is what it is. It’s something that I stand for.” More

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      Can Erika and Mirra Andreeva Become Tennis’ Next Great Sister Act?

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      Women’s tennis was headlined for more than two decades by Serena and Venus Williams. On Tuesday, the teenagers Mirra and Erika Andreeva made their French Open debuts.Long day for the Andreeva family.First came an early rise to get Mirra, a 16-year-old Russian, ready for her 11 a.m. French Open debut against Alison Riske-Amritraj of the United States. Mirra was as efficient as they come, finishing her match Tuesday in 56 minutes by improvising an array of easy, smooth winners against an opponent twice her age.“I just play as I feel inside,” she said.Then came a long wait for Mirra’s older sister, 18-year-old Erika, who was last up on Court No. 14 against Emma Navarro, another American. She took the court just after 7:30 p.m. in Paris. With the sun dropping toward the banks of the Seine, she gave every ounce of energy she had to try to match her sister’s success before Navarro won in three sets, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4, despite Andreeva showing plenty of promise.One family, more than a dozen hours on the grounds of Roland Garros, a 16-year-old in the second round, and an 18-year-old who came oh-so-close. So it goes for tennis’s newest sister act.If this all sounds a bit familiar, it should. Sister acts are not exactly new in women’s tennis, which was headlined for more than two decades by the American duo of Serena and Venus Williams. They won a combined 30 Grand Slam singles titles. Venus Williams, 42, still has not retired, though another major title seems unlikely.More recently, Naomi Osaka of Japan and her sister, Mari, had their moments, though Mari never got higher than 280th in the singles rankings before retiring in 2021 at age 24. Leylah Fernandez of Canada, a 2021 U.S. Open finalist, has partnered in doubles with her younger sister Bianca. This French Open main draw even had another sister duo — Linda and Brenda Fruhvirtova of the Czech Republic. Both lost their opening-round matches.Coaches and parents — who are often one and the same — say the reasons for sisterly success is fairly obvious: never having to look far for a practice partner. Also, the younger sibling grows up with the motivation of trying to overtake the older one. And yet the accomplishment still feels a bit astounding each time it happens, even more so when the journey starts in Siberia, as it did for the Andreevas.Mirra said her mother, Raisa, fell in love with the sport while watching Marat Safin of Russia in the Australian Open in 2005, when he won the tournament. She decided then that she wanted her children to be tennis players.As a toddler, Mirra trailed along to her sister’s tennis practices and matches. At 6, she started playing seriously herself. When the girls showed early promise the family moved from Siberia, which was not exactly teeming with tennis players or tennis friendly weather, to Sochi, Russia, with a mild climate along the Black Sea, and then Cannes, France, where they enrolled in a tennis academy.Mirra said she was about 8 years old when she competed in her first international tennis tournament, an under-12 competition in Germany, where she made the semifinals. At 12, a recruiter for IMG, the sports and entertainment firm, spotted her at a tournament for top juniors.“She was a small player but she was feisty and fighting and just running for the ball and a great competitor and that was the differentiator,” said Juan Acuna Gerard, an IMG agent. “Our recruiter said, ‘This girl is special.’ She was undersized for her age, but fiercely competitive.”The company now represents Erika, too.Erika Andreeva of Russia lost her first-round match to Emma Navarro of the United States in three sets.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesLast month, still not 16, Mirra became one of the youngest players to beat a top-20 opponent, knocking off Beatriz Haddad Maia of Brazil on her way to the round of 16 at the Madrid Open.She said she wasn’t nervous then, or ahead of her match Tuesday. She needed her alarm to wake her up in the morning.“I was excited but in a good way, you know?” Mirra said.The Andreeva sisters worked under the radar on a day when much of Roland Garros was buzzing about one of the biggest upsets in recent memory, as Thiago Seyboth Wild of Brazil, 172nd in men’s singles, beat Daniil Medvedev, the former world No. 1 who is the second seed at the French Open, in five sets.Medvedev, who excels on hard courts, has never been a fan of clay-court tennis or had much success at Roland Garros. But he won the final earlier this month at the Italian Open, the main clay-court tournament ahead of the French Open. It seemed like the victory might have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship between Medvedev, the creative Russian, and the red clay. He declared himself cautiously optimistic about his chances.But Medvedev was never comfortable on a gusty Tuesday afternoon, spraying balls in the wind, double-faulting 15 times and catching an opponent playing the match of his life.“Every time it finishes I’m happy,” Medvedev said of his clay-court season. “I had a mouthful of clay from the third game of the match.”Mirra Andreeva had no such issues. Her biggest problem of the day was that her sister’s match started too late for her to hang around to watch it. That may have been for the best. She said she gets far more nervous watching her sister’s matches than while playing her own.Tuesday evening would have caused plenty of jitters. Erika dropped a messy first set, gritted her way to draw even with a clinic in tennis defense, then surged to a 3-0 lead in the deciding set, only to watch Navarro find her groove and win six of the next seven games. Sitting in the front row, quietly urging her daughter on all evening, Raisa finally left her seat as Erika’s lead slipped away.The loss left Mirra to carry the family torch the rest of the way in Paris. She will face Diane Parry of France on Thursday, no easy task but it beats chemistry, the class that she said befuddles her in her online school.“Chemistry is so bad,” she said. “I don’t understand anything.”Tennis, on the other hand, comes much more naturally. Her coaches — she and Erika have separate ones — give her a game plan before each match. She listens, takes it in, then forgets what she was told almost as soon as she walks onto the court, playing by feel instead.“If I feel that I have to do a drop shot, even though the score is not really appropriate to do a drop shot, I will do it anyways,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain.”For the moment, she does not have to. More

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      The Agony of Playing Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic at the French Open

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      Little-known players learned humbling lessons when they drew Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic in the first round of the French Open.Aleksandar Kovacevic did plenty of tossing and turning Sunday night before finally settling in for what he thought was about six hours of restless sleep.He had good reason to be nervous. Kovacevic, who is 24 years old and the world’s 114th-ranked player, had a noon tennis date in the first round of the French Open with Novak Djokovic, the winner of 22 Grand Slam singles titles.The only person with a more daunting assignment perhaps was Flavio Cobolli of Italy. Cobolli, who is 21 and ranked 159th, survived the qualifying tournament last week, only to be rewarded with an opening-round confrontation with Carlos Alcaraz.It didn’t go so well for either of the unknowns.Nine games and roughly 35 minutes into Cobolli’s match, an Alcaraz forehand sailed long and Cobolli let out a scream, swung his racket in celebration and let a smile spread across his face. He pumped his fist to the crowd as he walked to his chair. He had finally won a game against the best player in the world, who was playing like, well, the best player in the world.“I did the best I could,” Cobolli said.Alexsandar Kovacevic grew up idolizing Novak Djokovic, who defeated him in three sets on Monday.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesKovacevic, who lost to Djokovic, 6-3, 6-2, 7-6(1), had a pretty good idea of what that felt like, too, even though he lasted more than two hours on the court with a player he grew up idolizing.“There was some points, passing shots that he hits, and they’re just points where I feel like I had no chance sometimes,” Kovacevic said. “And those are definitely humbling.”It is a truism of tennis that the top players hate playing the first round of a Grand Slam. Anything but a cruise to victory is cause for concern. Also, there is always the possibility of epic failure in the form of a loss to someone few have heard of.Whatever discomfort Djokovic and Alcaraz may have felt walking onto the courts at Roland Garros on Monday, they mostly managed it with ease, especially Alcaraz. He made an early contribution to the tournament highlight reel, curling a backhand around the net post for a winner early in the second set. Djokovic had more of a workout, and even lost his serve late in his match after getting windblown clay in his eyes.It helped that the stars drew opponents with three digits in their rankings whose recent experience didn’t have much in common with their own. Kovacevic had a particularly winding journey to his date on the French Open’s center court with Djokovic.His father, Milan, immigrated to America from Serbia to pursue a doctorate in computer science from U.C.L.A. His mother is from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kovacevic grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, about 500 yards from the green clay of the Central Park tennis complex.In ninth grade, he still wasn’t good enough to play singles for Beacon High School, a public school in Midtown, even though he was spending afternoons training at the John McEnroe Tennis Academy on Randall’s Island.Things started to click after he left Beacon to train in Florida while taking classes at home. At a tournament one summer, he played a top junior who was planning to attend the University of Illinois. His opponent told him he should join him at the school, so he did, even though he didn’t have much interest in college. By the time he finished five years later, he was ranked in the low 400s and figured he would give pro tennis a shot.Since then he has mostly been playing in the tennis hinterlands, though he did win a match in the main draw of the prestigious Miami Open in March.“It has not been the most glorious over the last couple of years,” he said.“I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket,” Kovacevic said of Djokovic. “It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”Jean-Francois Badias/Associated PressOn Monday, Kovacevic made his Grand Slam debut against Djokovic on the main court at Roland Garros, Philippe Chatrier, though it wasn’t his first time meeting Djokovic.That happened at the U.S. Open when he was 6 and his Balkan-proud parents brought him to watch the 18-year-old Djokovic win an early-round match, long before Djokovic was the player he would become. And two years ago he warmed up Djokovic at the U.S. Open after coming within a point of qualifying to play.He has the pictures to prove it, and he has tried to incorporate elements of Djokovic’s game into his own. His squat as he waits for an opponent’s serve — knees wide, chest up, racket out front — has plenty of Djokovic in it, even if the rest of his game isn’t quite there yet.“Where I am in my career, like it shouldn’t be so crazy to me that I’m playing some of these guys,” he said. “But, you know, the little kid in me, I’m standing in Chatrier in front of a packed crowd, playing the best player to ever pick up a racket. It’s something that you got to take in for a second, but also push away and try to focus and play.”The way Alcaraz has started his career, he may eventually have something to say about who is the best player to pick up a racket. Everyone in tennis knows this, including Cobolli, who has also spent most of his brief career in the sport’s version of the minor leagues.He was in an elevator, still feeling good about qualifying for his first main draw Grand Slam match, when he looked at his phone and saw that his opponent was Alcaraz. He said he closed his eyes, ran his hand through his hair, and thought, “Oh no.”Roughly, three-quarters of an hour into the match, it was going as he dreaded it might. Alcaraz couldn’t miss and later said he felt “invincible,” like he would never lose a game. Cobolli barely had time to breathe between shots.The scoreboard said 6-0, 2-0. “He was playing incredible,” Cobolli said.Cobolli lasted just under two hours against Alcaraz.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOn the bright side, there is nothing the French crowd loves more — other than a French player — than rallying behind a player who is getting blitzed. And by the time Cobolli got his legs under him, knotting the third set at 5-5, the crowd of nearly 10,000 on the Suzanne Lenglen court was chanting his name. It was like he was one of their own, especially after he saved three match points and broke Alcaraz’s serve to draw even in the set.“I felt important on the court,” Cobolli said.The final score was 6-0, 6-2, 7-5, the elapsed time 1 hour, 57 minutes.Now that Cobolli has seen up close what the best looks like, he said he understands better what he must do to compete — hit the weight room, he said with a grin as he pushed in at his chest with his hand. And get better at tennis.Hope springs eternal for him as it does for so many of the Kovacevics and Cobollis in the game. Just over two years ago, Alcaraz’s ranking had three digits, too. More

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      Women’s Tennis Suddenly Has a Big(ish) Three

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      Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka have been winning just about everything important lately, emerging as a potential triumvirate unseen in the women’s game for about a decade.Iga Swiatek, Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka have won a combined five Grand Slam singles titles. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have won 64.Swiatek, Rybakina and Sabalenka have been at the top of the sport for roughly a year. Some combination of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic has been there the last 20.Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland; Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who was born and raised in Russia but represents Kazakhstan; and Sabalenka, the 2023 Australian Open champion from Belarus, are still largely known only to tennis geeks. Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are among the most recognizable athletes on earth.So it is with the utmost hesitance, caution and respect for what has come before that anyone should invoke the term “Big Three” when talking about Swiatek, 21, Rybakina, 23, and Sabalenka, 25.And yet something has been happening with this group lately in the rivalry-starved women’s game — something that could all come together in a glorious rumble during the next two weeks at the French Open. The first of the three to play at Roland Garros, Sabalenka, started her tournament with a win over Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine in a match tinged with wartime bitterness. Swiatek and Rybakina’s first-round matches are scheduled for Tuesday, with Swiatek taking on 70th-ranked Cristina Bucsa and Rybakina facing Linda Fruhvirtova, an 18-year-old ranked 59th.Ever since Ashleigh Barty of Australia retired while atop the rankings in March 2022 at age 25, Swiatek, Rybakina and Sabalenka have been hogging nearly all of the most prestigious trophies. They have often beaten one another on the way to the winner’s circle, giving hope to the tennis executives — if not the rest of the field — that the women’s game just might be on the cusp of the kind of rivalries it has been missing for roughly a decade, perhaps even as far back as when Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters were battling for supremacy.“It is what you want, the best players playing each other, over and over,” Steve Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, said during a recent interview.The budding rivalry even has a geopolitical back story to add some fuel and antagonism. Swiatek has been among the most outspoken critics of Russia’s invasion, helping to raise millions of dollars to support relief efforts in Ukraine. She wears a pin with Ukraine’s flag on it when she plays. Rybakina and Sabalenka hail from the two countries perpetrating the war, as Kostyuk reminded everyone Sunday.The Russian invasion of Ukraine has continued to cast a pall over the sport, especially whenever players from the Eastern European countries most affected by the conflict compete. Kostyuk refused to shake Sabalenka’s hand after their match on Sunday.Swiatek has never gone as far as Kostyuk and the other players from Ukraine have, but whatever relationship Swiatek has with her two biggest rivals, it is a chilly one. Swiatek said she, Rybakina and Sabalenka respect one another but do not have any relationship at all off the court. Also, she said, she tries not to think about politics when she plays.“When I think about the player, like, personally, it doesn’t help,” she said. “We don’t really have time in a match to overanalyze all the other stuff.”There certainly has not been a shortage of matches to analyze, though.In the first round, Sabalenka, a Belarusian, faced Marta Kostyuk, a Ukrainian who opted not to shake her hand after the match. Swiatek has been one of the most outspoken players against Russia’s invasion, which Belarus aided by hosting Russian troops. Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesSwiatek has lost to Rybakina three times this year already — at the Australian Open, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and then this month at the Italian Open in Rome, where she retired after injuring her leg early in the third set. Rybakina went on to win the tournament.Rybakina has provided a blueprint for toppling Swiatek, a three-time Grand Slam tournament winner. Few could do that in 2022, when Swiatek reeled off 37 consecutive wins at one point. But Rybakina is among the most powerful players in the game, and she uses that ability to put Swiatek on her heels.“Against Iga, it’s always tough battles,” Rybakina said earlier this year. “Everybody wants to beat her.”Swiatek beat Sabalenka in the final at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, in April (with a car on the line). Sabalenka returned the favor in May in the final at the Madrid Open.Sabalenka beat Rybakina to win the Australian Open in January. In March, Rybakina beat Sabalenka to win the title at Indian Wells, regarded in the sport as an unofficial fifth Grand Slam tournament.“Women’s tennis needs this kind of consistency to see world No. 1 and world No. 2 facing in the finals,” Sabalenka said after her win in Madrid. “It’s more intense.”Elena Rybakina won the Italian Open title after defeating Swiatek in the quarterfinals. Rybakina has three wins over Swiatek this year.Alex Pantling/Getty ImagesShe has also made it clear that overtaking Swiatek for No. 1 has been her primary motivation during the past year and that having a specific target has helped her figure out what she needs to improve upon to get there.It’s not unlike the dynamic that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic experienced at the heights of their success. They knew they were better than just about everyone else, knew the weapons that their stiffest rivals brought to the fore and knew their top priority had to be finding a way to answer them.Swiatek said it’s more fun this way, and not just for the spectators. So many matches against the same tough outs and so many familiar tactics to combat turn the sport into a search for solutions to very specific problems.“Pretty exciting, because I never had that yet in my career,” she said. “Extra motivation, for sure.”Not a true Big Three yet, but not that far off, and far closer than women’s tennis has been to one in a while. More

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      French Open: Ukraine’s Kostyuk Booed After No Handshake With Belarusian Sabalenka

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      Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine had the crowd on her side initially, but then was booed after she did not shake hands with Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus after losing to her in straight sets.The moment the women’s singles draw for the French Open pitted Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus against Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine in the opening round, there was no doubt the start of the tournament would produce some fireworks.It did that and more.The score line showed a decisive 6-3, 6-2 win for Sabalenka, the reigning Australian Open champion, who is the second seed in Paris and one of the hottest players in the world.But what did not show up in the score line was the behavior of the morning crowd at Roland Garros’ main court, Philippe Chatrier. Spectators urged on Kostyuk at the beginning of the match, then rained boos on her when she left the court without shaking hands with Sabalenka. Kostyuk has refused to shake the hand of any player from Russia or Belarus.And then there was Sabalenka, who on Sunday came as close as she ever has to condemning the Russian invasion, in a rare statement of defiance by an athlete from Belarus or Russia.“Nobody in this world, Russian athletes or Belarusian athletes, support the war. Nobody,” Sabalenka said at a news conference after her win. “How can we support the war? Nobody, normal people, will never support it.“This is like one plus one, it’s two,” she continued, saying if she could stop the war she would. “Unfortunately, it’s not in our hands.”But shortly afterward, Kostyuk dismissed Sabalenka’s sentiments as empty words.“I feel like you should ask these players who would they want to win the war, because if you ask this question, I’m not so sure these people will say that they want Ukraine,” Kostyuk said.She added that Sabalenka should speak for herself and not for other players from Russia and Belarus.“I personally know athletes from tennis that support the war,” she said without identifying any.After Sabalenka said nobody supports the war in Ukraine, Kostyuk, above, said the question should be, “who would they want to win the war?”Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesThe impact of the war in Ukraine on tennis has been constant and never-ending. Fifteen months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war shows no end in sight. (Belarus has provided a staging ground for Russian soldiers, and its leader has said the country would join the war if attacked.)Belarus and Russia have been banned from team tennis competitions, and their flags and country names have been banished from the sport. The moves have left players from Ukraine unsatisfied and players from Russia and Belarus feeling like pariahs.The tension on Sunday was in stark contrast to the otherwise celebratory feel of the first day of the French Open. It is often one of the most joyous days in tennis, especially with the sky sparkling with that special shade of bright Parisian blue. There is no red like the red of the clay courts of Roland Garros, no crowd that looks as effortlessly elegant as this one: the Panama hats, the silk spring dresses, the aperol spritzes in fancy glasses in seemingly every other hand.The absence of the injured star Rafael Nadal, whose record 14 men’s singles titles have made him synonymous with this event, is weirding everyone out. But as Nadal has said, tennis moves fast and waits for no one. The rousing roars whenever a French player was in action echoed across the grounds as loudly as they ever have. As Kostyuk and Sabalenka made clear, though, the war may very well make this tournament and tennis summer unlike any before it. On Monday, Elina Svitolina, among the most successful players Ukraine has produced, will make her Grand Slam return from maternity leave, against Martina Trevisan of Italy. Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine, whose grandparents had to leave their home and whose parents’ home was bombed, will play Diane Parry of France on Tuesday in her first match after her emotional run to the Italian Open final this month.“Everyone is in a very different situation,” Kostyuk said in an interview Sunday. “Whoever needs a comfort, I’m always there. We have a very good group.”Kostyuk, though, was the one who seemed to need some comforting Sunday in the moments after her match. On the final point, she walked to shake hands with the chair umpire and then directly to her courtside seat. Sabalenka shook hands with the chair umpire, too, then stood for a moment watching Kostyuk gather her belongings as the restless noise from the crowd began to rise.Sabalenka said she initially thought the boos were for her but then realized they were for Kostyuk.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesSabalenka said she initially thought the boos were for her, but then realized they were for Kostyuk, undeservedly so, she added, explaining that she understands why the Ukrainian players do not want to be seen shaking hands with a Belarusian or a Russian.Kostyuk said she was shaken by the reaction, which was so different from a supportive reception in the United States this year when she refused to shake the hand of a Russian opponent.“I want to see people react to it in 10 years when the war is over,” she said. “I think they will not feel really nice about what they did.”Kostyuk last visited Ukraine in March to see her father and grandfather. She traveled there after the Miami Open. The journey required four flights to get to Poland by way of her temporary home in Monte Carlo, a two-and-a-half-hour train ride to the border, and then a six-hour car ride. She spent five days there, struggling to sleep amid the distant sounds of bomb-carrying drones that her relatives have somehow learned to live with. She said she still has not recovered from the trip.She woke up at 5 a.m. Sunday and saw a series of alerts on her phone about the latest drone attack on Kyiv, the largest of the war. She said she tried not to look at her phone in the overnight hours, but when she saw all the alerts she could not stop the urge to see what had happened.A few hours later, she was at Roland Garros preparing for her match with Sabalenka. To her surprise, she said, for the first time since the start of the war ahead of a match against a Russian or Belarusian, she was not focused on the nationality of her opponent. It was refreshing, she said, and it made her think that a day would come when a war would no longer intrude on her chosen occupation, that every tennis match would be nothing more and nothing less than that.One day perhaps, but certainly not Sunday. More

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      Before Carlos Alcaraz Was Great, He Was Good Enough to Be Lucky

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      Carlos Alcaraz is so good, so young, and wins so often that his success has seemed predetermined.Of course someone that fast, with hands as soft as an artisan’s and a physique that lands him right in the not-too-tall and not-too-short Goldilocks zone of the modern tennis greats, would become the youngest world No. 1 during the 50-year history of the ATP rankings. He has good genes, too. His father was a nationally ranked professional in Spain as a teenager.So this was preordained for Alcaraz, the 20-year-old champion who comes to Paris this week as the prohibitive favorite to win the French Open, wasn’t it?Maybe not.As happens so often in sports, and especially in tennis, where early exposure and training are essential, there was an element of luck that helped create the sport’s heir apparent to the troika of Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic that has ruled the men’s game for the better part of the last two decades.That luck ultimately took the form of a local candy company’s logo, which adorned the shirts Alcaraz wore during his matches from the time he was 10 years old. It was all thanks to happenstance encounters with Alfonso López Rueda, the tennis-playing president of Postres Reina, a Spanish dessert and candy concern known for its puddings and yogurts. López Rueda’s interest in Alcaraz and the support that allowed him to travel Europe and begin competing against older boys in unfamiliar settings may be an explanation for the way Alcaraz, from the beginning of his short career, has almost always displayed a kind of joyous serenity, even as the stage grew bigger and the spotlight hotter.Carlos Alcaraz has worn the Postres Reina logo on his shirt during matches since before he was 10 years old.Manuel Romano/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesSupport from the candy company allowed Alcaraz to travel Europe to tournaments.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Some personalities are just adept at that, some have to learn,” said Paul Annacone, who has coached the great players Federer and Pete Sampras, among others. “He just really seems to enjoy the environment — win, lose, whatever — seems to embrace it.”The greatest fortune an aspiring tennis player can have, it seems, is to have been born to parents who played the game at the highest level. The pro ranks, especially on the men’s side, are lousy with nepo babies. Casper Ruud, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Sebastian Korda, Taylor Fritz and Ben Shelton are all the offspring of former professionals. All of them had a racket in their hands at an early age and nearly unlimited access to someone who knew best what to do with it.For everyone else, some kismet is key.The skills professional tennis requires are so specialized, and the long and expensive process of honing them has to start at such a young age. But the player development system in most countries is fractured and happenstance at best, with any school-based programs being mostly limited. Either a family consciously decides to expose a young child to tennis, or the child does not play, at least not seriously.So it’s hardly a surprise that so many of the creation stories in professional tennis seem to involve a sliding-doors moment.Frances Tiafoe probably does not end up as a Grand Slam semifinalist if his father, an immigrant from Sierra Leone, becomes a maintenance man in an office park instead of at a local tennis club.Novak Djokovic had the good fortune of meeting Jelena Gencic, one of the top coaches in Serbia, when he was 6 years old and she was giving a tennis clinic on the courts near his parents’ restaurant in Kopaonik, in the Serbian mountains near Montenegro.Arthur Ashe was traveling in Cameroon in 1971 when he spotted an 11-year-old schoolboy with raw talent to burn. He put in a call to his friend Philippe Chatrier at France’s tennis federation and told him he best come have a look. That boy was Yannick Noah, the last Frenchman to win the French Open.As with the others, Alcaraz’s preternatural gifts and skills played the biggest role in his good fortune. When he got the chance to impress, he did, but first luck had to deliver an opportunity.The decision by Alcaraz’s grandfather to put red clay courts at a club in El Palmar proved fortuitous for his grandson.Samuel Aranda for The New York TimesThe story of that opportunity begins with Alcaraz’s grandfather’s decision decades ago to develop tennis courts and a swimming pool at a hunting club in El Palmar, a suburb of the city of Murcia. It would have been cheaper to put in all hardcourts, but the Spanish love the red clay. So Grandpa Alcaraz (another Carlos) made sure to include those courts with the development.Now flash forward to a dozen years ago. López Rueda is the tennis-mad chief executive of Postres Reina, which is based in Caravaca de la Cruz. But López Rueda doesn’t just like tennis; he likes to play tennis on red clay. He lives in the same region as the Alcaraz clan, and the best and most accessible clay courts for him are at a club in El Palmar, so he plays there, said Jose Lag, a longtime Postres Reina executive and an Alcaraz family friend, who spoke on behalf of his boss, López Rueda.At the club he became friendly with Alcaraz’s father and played as the doubles partner of his uncle. Also, López Rueda’s son, who is three years older than Alcaraz, had the same coach, Kiko Navarro, who could not stop raving about the talents of Carlito. One day López Rueda agreed to watch the boy play and it was unlike anything he had ever seen. Carlito had everything, but his family’s resources were limited. His father was a tennis coach and administrator at the club, and his mother was busy raising the boy and his younger siblings.López Rueda agreed to loan the family 2,000 euros to travel to a tournament, but then he started to think bigger and decided to get his company involved in supporting this local boy who was already capable of beating taller, stronger and older competition.Postres Reina had long supported local basketball and soccer teams, but tennis was López Rueda’s favorite sport and the company had never sponsored an individual athlete. Alcaraz became the first, wearing the company logo on his shirts.The company’s support, which lasted through Alcaraz’s early teenage years, allowed him to continue to access to the best coaching in his region and to travel throughout Europe to play in the most competitive tournaments.“It was done not as a marketing interest,” Lag said. “It was only to help him. We never thought he would be No. 1.”Alcaraz with López Rueda. Postres Reina had never sponsored an individual athlete before Alcaraz.Courtesy of Jose LagSeeing Alcaraz’s success, IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, signed him at age 13, providing even more access, notably to his current coach, the former world No. 1 Juan Carlos Ferrero.There is a fair chance that Alcaraz would have eventually become a top player had López Rueda never seen him. Spain’s tennis federation, which has one of the world’s best talent development pipelines, probably would have caught wind of him before too long.Max Eisenbud, the director of tennis at IMG, said in any tennis success story the most important ingredient is a solid family willing to take a long-term view toward a child’s success.“That is the secret recipe,” Eisenbud said during a recent interview, but he acknowledged that financial assistance for a family that needs it can certainly help.When a player develops as quickly as Alcaraz, rising from outside the top 100 in May 2021 to No. 1 16 months later, each detail of his development can be credited with having a role in the outcome.Alcaraz’s peers have watched in awe as he has raised his level of play with each tournament, in an era when the constant spotlight tortures so many of them. During Alcaraz’s first months challenging the top rungs of the tour, Alexander Zverev marveled at his ability to play “simply for the joy.”Alcaraz said that no matter what people saw, getting used to the ever more raucous and pressure-filled environments took some time but he learned fast. A drubbing by Nadal in Madrid two years ago helped but his mind-set never changed.“I always wanted to play in the great stadiums,” he said. And it has seemed like he really did.Alcaraz during his loss in the round of 32 at the Italian Open. He had won three of his previous four tournaments before an early exit in Rome.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersAlcaraz won the 2022 U.S. Open final to claim his first major singles title and earn the No. 1 ranking.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMostly tennis is one big hoot to Alcaraz, from his first win at a Grand Slam tournament on a back court at the Australian Open in February 2021, to his back-to-back victories over Nadal and Djokovic at the Madrid Open in 2022, to his semifinal showdown against Tiafoe at the U.S. Open last September in front of 23,000 fans and with Michelle Obama sitting in the front row, to his triumph in the finals two days later.How could that be? Allen Fox, a Division I champion and a 1965 Wimbledon quarterfinalist who later became one of the game’s leading sports psychologists, used the term that professionals use when there is no rational explanation. He described Alcaraz as both a “genius” and a “genetic freak.”“The only way he loses is when he is missing,” Fox said. “He just plays his same high-risk game, and never takes his foot off the accelerator.” More

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      Alexander Zverev’s On- and Off-Court Drama

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      He’s a diligent player. He has also recently worked through an abuse claim and an on-court tantrum — and a serious injury at last year’s French Open.When Alexander Zverev left the French Open last year, it was in a wheelchair. He was in tears.After tearing ligaments in his right ankle while running for a ball, Zverev was forced to retire in the semifinals to the eventual champion, Rafael Nadal. Zverev had hopes of winning his first major title after twice winning the ATP Finals and capturing a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. He was also the runner-up at the 2020 United States Open.Zverev has faced plenty of adversity, much of it self-inflicted. A public feud with a former agent over money was settled out of court. Allegations of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend dogged him for about two years, prompting an investigation by the ATP, which eventually found no substantial evidence of the claims. And after throwing an on-court tantrum following a doubles loss last year, Zverev was fined $40,000 and put on 12 months of probation for “unsportsmanlike conduct.”Yet Zverev remains one of the most diligent workers on tour.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You are known for your physical strength on court. But the game is mental, too. Which is harder for you?I always feel like when I do the work, I am mentally prepared as well. Once I’ve done everything I can to be ready to win, there’s nothing to be nervous about. If you don’t play well, you don’t play well. Sometimes things happen out of your control in any sport, especially in tennis because it’s a singular sport.You’ve been super competitive since you were a child. How much of that has helped you on the ATP Tour?I hated losing. That has helped me because when somebody younger or better was coming up, I tried to outwork them. When I work more than everybody else, I’m going to be better than everybody else. Which isn’t always the right thing. I’ve learned that with age.Alexander Zverev at the Madrid Open. Zverev has defeated some of his fiercest peers, including Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Carlos Alcaraz.Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEverybody talks about your father’s influence on your game, but wasn’t it your mother who taught you technique?She had a bigger effect on me than my dad did, because she was the one who taught me the game from a young age. More people talk about my father because he’s my true coach now, along with Sergi Bruguera. But my mother had a much bigger influence than my father.Of all the men you’ve beaten — Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev — who is the most difficult?They all have their own difficulty. When Rafa’s playing well on clay, he’s unbeatable. I’ve played Novak on a lot of surfaces, but when he is in the zone, he is also very difficult. With Roger, everything just happens so fast. You feel like you’ve just started the match, and you’re already down a set and a break, and you have absolutely no idea how it happened. Medvedev just doesn’t miss. It doesn’t matter what position in the court you put him in, he’s always going to put the ball back, so you have to win the matches yourself. And Carlos Alcaraz, with him it’s obviously the power. You honestly can’t name one that is most difficult.With everything you’ve been through over the last several years, from your personal problems to your injury, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself?When you’re young, you’re naïve. You think everybody’s your best friend, that they’re there because they really like you. But tennis is a business, which, unfortunately, is not always the nicest thing in the world. I have a very close circle. I don’t let people in that much anymore. I only have people who I truly 100 percent trust. I had to learn to go into myself, to get the noise out of my head to be able to compete.What about this game gives you the greatest joy?It’s that you’re really you. You win by yourself, you lose by yourself. You can’t hide behind your teammates. A lot of players say they play for the money and they don’t really love tennis. I’m somebody who absolutely loves what I do. I can’t imagine doing anything else. For me, there’s no better life. More