Kontaveit, Anett (1995- )

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    Serena Williams’s Magical Run at the US Open Isn’t Over Yet

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    The U.S. Open threw the closest thing to a farewell celebration that Serena Williams would allow for her opening-round match Monday night. But if a party was all that the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion wanted, she could have thrown herself one and skipped all those hours of sweat on the hard courts back home in Florida.Williams did not come to New York simply for a ceremonial send-off, to listen to another series of elegies about how she has changed this sport and so much else, how she has broken down barriers and paved the way for the next generation of Black tennis stars and female athletes, and the one after that, too. She knew all of that, better than anyone.There is another legacy that Williams possesses as much as all the others — as one of the world’s great competitors. And she came to New York to compete in a Grand Slam tournament, seemingly her final one, to once more put her best on the line against the finest players in the world on the sport’s biggest stage.She got that and more on Wednesday night as she won, 7-6(4) 2-6, 6-2, outlasting Anett Kontaveit of Estonia, the world’s second-ranked player, an opponent who, like Williams, loves nothing more than blasting tennis balls as she tries to overwhelm whoever is standing on the other side of the net.If that first appearance two nights earlier was about posterity and sweet send-offs, about a former U.S. president and music and movie stars coming out to see and be seen, round two was about doing everything possible to win a tennis match in front of a whole new gallery of boldface names, like Tiger Woods, who sat in Williams’s box, and Zendaya, and some 23,000 other very partial observers at Arthur Ashe Stadium.“There’s still a little left in me,” she said on the court when it was done.“I love a challenge, I love rising to the challenge.”Williams will face the unseeded Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia in the third round on Friday, and in this tournament she feels as though she has nothing to lose, after a career of having a target on her back.“I’m having fun, I’m enjoying it,” Williams said.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesNo matter who prevailed, this was never going to be a match with much subtlety. It was a showdown between two players who, when they are on, are among the best ball-strikers in the world, and two players at the opposite ends of the sport.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.A Magical Run: As her successes on the field prove, Serena Williams did not come to New York to receive a ceremonial send-off, but to put her best on the line against the world’s finest players.In the Player’s Box: Fans at Arthur Ashe Stadium have been catching glimpses of her family and entourage. Here is a look at who has been in attendance to support her.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Field: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to one another.In front of another capacity crowd, one of them, assuming she keeps her word, was playing to extend the greatest career in modern tennis, and to show her daughter, Olympia, just what she is capable of. Olympia was turning 5 on Thursday and showed up to this tournament in the iconic beads her mother wore the first time she began to rule this sport on this same stage.The other was attempting to get one thing that every young player wants — the chance to tell her grandchildren that on a magical night in the biggest stadium in the sport, she beat the greatest player of all time.Ultimately, a battle like that, especially on this court, was going to be better than any tribute video even her friend Spike Lee, the award-winning filmmaker, could make. And he made a pretty good one that welcomed Williams, in her bedazzled shoes and dress and hair and warm-up jacket, onto the court once more. Wouldn’t it?“I’ve grown up watching her win so many Grand Slams,” said Kontaveit, 26. “I always remember how fiercely she competed for every point.”This idea, that Williams could somehow turn what two weeks ago was shaping up to be one ceremonial goodbye match into top-level sport, began to take shape in the last games of her Monday-night win, when she started rolling those patented forehands and surging forward for those patented swinging volleys. Suddenly Danka Kovinic of Montenegro was like so many other overmatched first-round victims during the height of Williams’s powers.But for a few shaky swings early on, Williams essentially picked up where she had left off, reeling off deep forehands that had Kontaveit backpedaling and crushing serves that darted onto the lines.She hustled into the corners to dig out shots with swings of desperation. She brought the sound effects, too, the warrior grunts, screams of “Come on!” and sneakers screeching across the pavement on every pivot and twist.Williams finally notched the first service break in the ninth game, on her sixth break point, sending a crowd that had been revving up all night into its first eruption. But Williams frittered the prosperity and failed to serve out the set.Two games later, the players headed into a tiebreaker that stayed even until Williams grabbed a 5-3 lead as Kontaveit netted a drop shot. A service winner got Williams to set point, and an ace clinched it, sending a roar up through the open rectangle of the Ashe roof.Kontaveit is not known as the steeliest of competitors, especially in the biggest tournaments. She has made the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam tournament just once.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesMaybe everyone in the building wanted her to go away for the night, but Kontaveit was having none of it. Instead she pounced, breaking Williams’s serve three times to send the match to a decisive third set. An awkward murmur rolled around the stadium as Williams headed off the court for a brief bathroom break.For Williams, there was nothing awkward about it all. This sort of competition is what she came for, what she has been doing since she was a little girl, and the thing that makes her so ambivalent about leaving the sport and what she will miss most. She can still hang with the best even after playing just five matches in 14 months entering Wednesday.And that is exactly what she did, and then some. Maybe if Williams and Kontaveit had their last set unfold on some random tennis court in an empty park, things might have gone another way. But it didn’t. Elite competition against a magical backdrop almost never does, and Williams, a star made for the bright lights, probably would not have much use for it if it did.Kontaveit gave her very little, other than a few short serves that Williams jumped on to notch two early service breaks on her way to a 4-1 lead. Williams had to take everything else, her chest and shoulders rising and falling as she tried to catch her breath between points against an opponent who was never going to go away on her own.Serving at 4-2 with a point to win the game after nearly letting Kontaveit draw even, Williams sent a topspin lob that caught the back of the baseline and sent Kontaveit to the back wall, barely able to get her own lob back. Williams met it mid-air in the middle of the court for one more swinging volley winner to get to 5-2. It brought on what would be the second-loudest roar of the night.There was one more big one to come Wednesday, a few actually as she sat on her chair and soaked it all in. It looks like more are on the way.This is what she came for. More

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      ‘I’m Just Serena,’ Swinging Freely for Another Grand Slam Run

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      Of course Serena Williams is confident. She deserves to be. And her opponents know that her improving game and overwhelming crowd support make beating her in this U.S. Open all the more difficult.Serena Williams is almost 41. She did not play competitive tennis for nearly a year, and it showed — truly it showed — at Wimbledon, in Toronto and in Mason, Ohio, at the three tournaments where she made painfully brief appearances earlier this summer before arriving in New York for her farewell U.S. Open.She looked slow to react and slow on the run. She looked rusty, mistiming returns off second serves that she would once have punished.But that is all irrelevant now. Williams is relaunched, as she made clear by defeating Anett Kontaveit, the No. 2 player in the world, on Wednesday night.Williams is into the third round of what is very likely her final tournament: convincingly replaying her greatest hits — big-point aces, swing-volley winners, full-cut groundstrokes on the move — and quickly giving first-time opponents like Danka Kovinic and Kontaveit a true taste of what it is like to face the real Serena.With her 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2 victory over Kontaveit complete, Williams was asked on court by ESPN analyst Mary Joe Fernandez, “Are you surprising yourself with your level at the moment?”Williams looked at her for a little while and chuckled.It was the most telling answer of the evening, and no actual words were required even if Williams did tack on a few when the chuckling was done: “I’m just Serena you know,” she said.“She’s not coming here to be surprised by winning, otherwise she wouldn’t be here,” said her coach Eric Hechtman.This is not bravado. This is hard-earned confidence. The kind that comes with being raised by parents who made it clear that greatness lay ahead if the right choices and sacrifices were made. The kind that comes from measuring yourself against an uber-talented big sister named Venus from the moment you could pick up a racket on a court full of cracks in Compton, Calif. The kind that comes from winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles across nearly two decades against rivals from multiple tennis generations and despite all manner of setbacks, both professional and personal.Williams has good reason to believe that she can rise above, even in the twilight, because she has done it so often.Serena Williams’s Farewell to TennisThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Decades of Greatness: Over 27 years, Serena Williams dominated generation after generation of opponents and changed the way women’s tennis is played, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles and cementing her reputation as the queen of comebacks.Is She the GOAT?: Proclaiming Williams the greatest women’s tennis player of all time is not a straightforward debate, our columnist writes.An Enduring Influence: From former and current players’ memories of a young Williams to the new fans she drew to tennis, Williams has left a lasting impression.Her Fashion: Since she turned professional in 1995, Williams has used her clothes as a statement of self and a weapon of change.“I would never, ever count Serena Williams out, and if you do, that would be your biggest mistake,” said Kathy Rinaldi, the captain of the United States King Cup team, who was watching on Wednesday.If you do count her out, as Williams has explained before, you are only going to help her.“Because she’s going to use that to prove you wrong,” Rinaldi said. “But she’s really enjoying this one. You can clearly see. It’s got to be really tough for her opponents: to face her and face the crowd.”It has been quite a team effort so far: Williams rolling back the years and five tiers of stands packed to the roof in sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium with fans wholly committed, perhaps for the first time, to showing Williams nothing but love in a venue where she has generated ambivalence in the past with her outbursts and, at other times, with her dominance as she racked up six U.S. Open singles titles and made long runs at No. 1.But with Williams preparing, in her words, to “evolve away from tennis,” the U.S. Open crowd seems to have considered her body of work, enduring excellence and manifest love of the game and the battle and decided to go all in.“There’s no rush here,” Williams said with a grin, alluding to her impending evolution. “I’m loving this crowd. Oh, my goodness, it’s really fantastic. There’s still a little left in me. We’ll see.”Watching her lose 6-4, 6-0 last month to Emma Raducanu in the first round of the Western and Southern Open with tape on her left leg, it did seem reasonable to believe she might not be able to pull her game together in time.“She was a little banged up in Cincy,” Hechtman said. “She’s much better now and of course the crowd helps a lot, absolutely. At the end of the day, you play that many years and that many tournaments and win that many titles, you need the big stage to get you up for it.”There have been more standing ovations than at a national political convention, myriad shouts of support and, less sportingly but probably unavoidably, plenty of cheers for the opposition’s errors, including their missed serves.The latest sellout crowd on Wednesday night even booed a machine: disagreeing with the electronic line-calling system when one of Kontaveit’s winners was shown to have landed on the extreme outside edge of the sideline.In the second set, Kontaveit won one of the points of the tournament — a spectacular scrambling effort punctuated with a backhand winner — and was greeted with a golf clap.It will not get easier for her rivals. Ajla Tomljanovic, the tall and unseeded Australian who will face Williams in the third round on Friday night, was playing on Court 7 on Wednesday as Williams and Kontaveit dueled in the main stadium.“I was hearing the crowd and it like scared me, even though I was playing on a different court,” Tomljanovic said. “So I’m going to have to get my earplugs.”Tomljanovic said before even seeing the draw she had a vision that she would face Williams in New York and was only hoping that it was not going to be in the first round.So it has turned out, and Tomljanovic, like nearly all of Williams’s opponents in this latest comeback, has never played her before. Like Kontaveit, she wants the experience to make her career feel complete but is not sure how she will handle the moment (Kontaveit ended up in tears at her news conference).“I do this trick where I feel like the crowd is cheering for me as well,” she said. “I heard Novak Djokovic say that once about doing that in his matches. It’s a good one. It’s all about tricking your mind really, because you can’t control what the crowd does.”The British chair umpire, Alison Hughes, tried her best on Wednesday night and ended up saying “please” a great deal more than she succeeded in truly quieting the din.It is a moment that spurs thoughts of U.S. Opens past, particularly of Jimmy Connors’ rip-roaring run to the semifinals in 1991 as he was celebrating upset victories and his 39th birthday.“I just feel like I have had a big red X on my back since I won the U.S. Open in ’99,” Williams said. “It’s been there my entire career, because I won my first Grand Slam early in my career. But here it’s different. I feel like I’ve already won, figuratively, mentally.”A record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title still seems an unreasonable notion to many of us outsiders. She is 40, after all, and also playing doubles with Venus starting Thursday night, which could put extra strain on her injury-prone frame.Her ex-coach Patrick Mouratoglou counseled against doubles during majors and was proved correct in 2018 when in her first major after coming back from childbirth she played both events in the French Open and had to exit the singles draw with an injury.She and Venus have not played doubles at a major again until now, but it is understandable that they want this full-circle moment, and Hechtman said the plan is simply to eliminate a full practice session on the days Serena plays doubles.But her singles draw certainly gets one thinking about the possibility of a deeper run. There are no Grand Slam singles champions left in Serena’s quarter of the draw and only one left in her half: the unseeded Canadian Bianca Andreescu, who beat Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open final.But going all the way surely does not seem preposterous to Team Serena, and when Hechtman was asked very late on Wednesday night about the Connors precedent, he mulled it over and said he was leaning toward a different U.S. Open swan song: Pete Sampras, who won the 2002 men’s title in what turned out to be his final tournament.Dream on New York, and as the Williams family would surely endorse, dream big. More

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      It Was Anett Kontaveit Against Serena Williams, and the Crowd

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      Anett Kontaveit walked out of the players’ tunnel first, with barely a notice from the audience in Arthur Ashe Stadium, which was half full at the time. She made a small waving gesture, to no one in particular, and then went to her chair to prepare for her role as the villain in the biggest tennis spectacle of her life: the Serena Williams U.S. Open.As Williams made her own appearance underneath thunderous applause just moments later, Kontaveit never looked up or glanced over. She just continued to put on her wrist bands, drink water and select her first racket.She got up, walked onto the court first, knowing that for the vast majority of people in the building, she was there only to be the foil for the queen of tennis, there to lose.“It was her moment,” Kontaveit said. “I was trying to do my own thing. Of course, this is totally about her and I was very aware of that.”In the face of a tidal wave of support for Williams, Kontaveit played her role as the antihero as if fashioned from a script, playing well enough to raise the drama, but not well enough to win. Williams took the match, 7-6 (4), 2-6, 6-2, to advance to the third round, eliminating the worthy Estonian challenger and No. 2 seed from the U.S. Open.But Kontaveit did not go out without conjuring some of the best tennis from Williams in years. She made some brilliant shots and penetrating serves, but Williams was better on the biggest points, to the delight of 29,959 spectators, a record crowd for a U.S. Open night session. In team sports, athletes regularly encounter hostile environments of 30,000 fans or more. But standing alone in front of all that passion, energy and desire is something different, and Kontaveit informally awarded the audience an assist in the outcome.“It was really hard,” Kontaveit said of the crowd, adding, “I knew it was coming. I guess you can’t learn from anyone else’s mistakes. Feeling it, it was something I never experienced before.”The fans not only cheered when Williams won a point; they yelled encouragement to their heroine throughout the match, shouting, “We love you, Serena,” and “Come on, Serena,” including at critical moments on Kontaveit’s service toss, which is against audience decorum. Several times the chair umpire had to take the fans to task and ask for quiet as Kontaveit waited.Serena Williams had 11 aces to Kontaveit’s five.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“They were not rooting against me,” Kontaveit said. “They just wanted Serena to win so bad. I don’t think it’s a personal attack against me or anything. It’s fair. She deserves this.” When the match was over and the players had shaken hands at the net, Kontaveit quickly gathered up her rackets and within moments was back in the locker room, sorting out her feelings after playing one of her best matches of the summer, only to lose to a crowd favorite.Kontaveit knew what was coming well beforehand. She understood she would be facing a substantial onslaught of support in favor of her opponent, and claimed it would relieve her of all expectations and pressure.The precedent had been set on Monday during Williams’s declarative first-round straight-sets win over Danka Kovinic of Montenegro. The crowd for that match was so loud, and in such a celebratory mood, that Kovinic said she could not hear the ball coming off the strings of the rackets, an important signifier of how the ball might move after it lands. Kovinic, ranked No. 80, spoke of actually being swept up in the moment herself, dazzled by the celebrities in attendance that night. For Kontaveit, it was more about the competition, and she was not as carefree afterward.Although she has earned the No. 2 ranking, she has had a difficult summer, losing three of her last four matches on hardcourts entering the U.S. Open. She said she contracted Covid-19 in April and had difficulty regaining her strength. Her one singles title this year came in St. Petersburg, Russia, in February, but she also made it to the finals in Doha, Qatar, later that month.Kontaveit reached the fourth round of the U.S. Open in her first try in 2015, but since then has not been immune to getting knocked out in the first or second round of a major. It has now happened 16 times in the 27 majors she has entered since that run. Her best result at a major is reaching the quarterfinal stage at the 2020 Australian Open, where she lost to Simona Halep.She does have some experience of going deep into the tournament at the U.S. Open. As a junior in 2012 she reached the final, losing to Samantha Crawford.This year, players have commented that the courts at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center are faster than normal, a factor that would tend to enhance the playing style of both Williams and Kontaveit, since each relies on power. Kontaveit indicated she was all for it.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAfter an early exit from the Western and Southern Open outside Cincinnati, she arrived early in New York and practiced on the same courts. The difference was that then, there was virtually no one in the stadium watching. On Wednesday, the entire tennis world was tuned in.As Kontaveit said on Monday, “I’m not sure if I’ll ever experience something like this again.”The next player to experience it will be Ajla Tomljanovic, from Australia, who beat Evgeniya Rodina in three sets on Court 7 at roughly the same time that Williams and Kontaveit were playing. Even from over there, Tomljanovic could hear the noise pulsating from Ashe, the same din that she will be facing in person on Friday night.“I’m like, Court 7 isn’t that close,” Tomljanovic said. “I kept thinking, ‘Oh, my God, that’s annoying me and I’m not even playing against her.’” More

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      Serena Williams’s Next Opponent Is a Struggling Anett Kontaveit

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      They will face off in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium on Wednesday, a venue that feels like home to Williams even if it has not always been a haven.At nearly 41 years of age, Serena Williams would seem to have seen it all in tennis, but the new experiences keep coming in what she has suggested — but coyly not quite confirmed — will be her final tournament.Since returning to the tour in June after nearly a year’s absence, she has played five singles matches: four of them against opponents she had never faced.More novelty lies ahead on Wednesday night in the second round of the U.S. Open when she will play her first career match against Anett Kontaveit, the No. 2 seed.They will face off in a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium, a venue that feels like home to Williams even if it has not always been a haven.Kontaveit, a 26-year-old Estonian whose international profile is not nearly as high as her ranking, has surely never experienced anything quite like what awaits her on Wednesday. But she sounds more excited than daunted.“I’m going to fight as hard as I can for every point and really enjoy the atmosphere of being out there against the greatest player of all time,” she said. “I think it’s such a great opportunity.” Kontaveit is the highest-ranked player in history from Estonia, the northernmost of the three Baltic States. But she is not Estonia’s first elite women’s singles player. Kaia Kanepi, 37, reached her first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal in 2008 at the French Open and has been to six more, most recently, in a big surprise, at this year’s Australian Open.Kontaveit, a ferocious ball-striker with a powerful serve, has made it to only one Grand Slam quarterfinal at this stage, which helps explain her relative anonymity. But she did break new ground for Estonia by reaching the championship match of last year’s WTA Finals, the tour’s prestigious year-end event, losing to Garbiñe Muguruza of Spain.That run boosted Kontaveit’s ranking, but her best results have come in lower-tier events and often indoors: no surprise considering Estonia’s long winters. Though she has often trained in Britain and was once described by the country’s Daily Telegraph as “an honorary Briton with a cut-glass” English accent (presumably a compliment), she still lives in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital, in an elegant modern apartment that she has decorated with plants and some of her own handmade pottery.“She does get recognized in the street, and she has a lot of fans in Estonia for sure,” said Torben Beltz, the veteran German coach who joined her team in June before Wimbledon.Kontaveit, a prodigy who won the Estonian women’s singles title at age 13, received instruction from her mother Ülle Milk in her formative years. But she has had a series of prominent international coaches on tour: working with the Dutchman Glenn Schaap; the Briton Nigel Sears; and Dmitry Tursunov, a straight-talking and deep-thinking former tour player from Russia who was instrumental in Aryna Sabalenka’s rise into the top three and then Kontaveit’s.But Tursunov and Kontaveit ended their partnership this spring. Kontaveit attributed the split to Tursunov’s Russian nationality making it complicated for him to secure visas and travel with her consistently on tour after the nation’s invasion of Ukraine, but that did not keep Tursunov from being quickly rehired for a trial run by Emma Raducanu, the 19-year-old British star.Though Kontaveit reached the final of the Qatar Open in February, this has been a trying season. She said she contracted Covid-19 in late April and withdrew from the Madrid Open and said she struggled physically when she returned to the tour.“We all know she had long Covid kind of,” Beltz said. “She was not fit, but she’s very close again to get this back and is playing better in practice really well now. So I think it’s coming.”This will be Kontaveit’s first match with Williams but not the first match Beltz will coach against Williams. He previously worked with Angelique Kerber when she faced Williams in a series of major matches, including the 2016 Australian Open final that Kerber won and the 2016 Wimbledon final that Kerber lost.“I’ve been scouting her for a long time,” Beltz said with a laugh. “Every tournament when you play good you have to scout Serena, because you know your player may have to face her. But it’s great to face a champion, I think. It’s going to be a good match tomorrow.”Kontaveit reached the final of the Qatar Open but lost to Iga Swiatek of Poland.Noushad Thekkayil/EPA, via ShutterstockBeltz scouted Williams this time from afar by watching on television when she defeated Danka Kovinic of Montenegro on Monday night in an extraordinary atmosphere at Ashe Stadium.“I couldn’t get a ticket,” Beltz said. “This is the biggest thing I’ve ever seen in women’s tennis. I think it’s the greatest thing for the sport, and we all have to thank Serena for all she did. Especially right now with the end coming.”Though Williams has struggled since her return to the tour in June, winning just two of her five singles matches, Beltz could see progress against Kovinic.“I think her ball speed, serve and return is really up to her prime time,” Beltz said of Williams. “I saw her other matches, and it looks like she’s improved over the last couple of weeks. She looks in better shape and looks good now. For Anett, I think the key is to just go out and try to play her best tennis but also enjoy the moment. It’s going to be a big challenge, a great challenge, but I think she wants that challenge and wants to embrace it.”Remarkably, she may get to embrace the challenge twice in Williams’s farewell U.S. Open. Kontaveit and Shelby Rogers, her American partner, could also face Williams and her sister Venus in the second round of the women’s doubles tournament. More

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      Serena Williams Rises to the Occasion, Like So Many Times Before

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      Williams met a valedictory night at the U.S. Open with a win that was fitting, and with a second-round match on Wednesday, the farewell party at Arthur Ashe Stadium continues.It was an opening night at the U.S. Open that could have been the closing night of Serena Williams’s 27-year professional singles career.But win or lose, Williams was getting the ceremonial treatment in Arthur Ashe Stadium. The guest list and laudatory tone were set; the protocol and the videos narrated by Queen Latifah and Oprah Winfrey were in place.It felt closer to a rock concert than a first-round tennis match as Williams walked into the sold-out stadium where she has experienced triumph and heartache in fairly equal measure only to be greeted this time by perhaps the loudest extended roar of support she has experienced in her nearly 41 years.“Really overwhelming,” Williams said. “I could feel it in my chest, and it was a really good feeling. It’s a feeling I will never forget and that meant a lot to me.”Williams and the CBS journalist Gayle King after the match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesIt was the message and gift that the crowd of nearly 24,000 in Ashe Stadium clearly wanted to deliver with Williams nearing the finish line.A loss to the 80th-ranked Danka Kovinic would have been no surprise. Williams has struggled with her movement and timing since returning to action in June after nearly a one-year hiatus.In her early comeback tournaments, she had looked late to the ball and late to the realization that time is undefeated. In her last match before the U.S. Open, she was beaten, 6-4, 6-0, in the first round of the Western and Southern Open in Mason, Ohio, by a player less than half her age: 19-year-old Emma Raducanu, last year’s big-surprise U.S. Open women’s singles champion.New York, despite the valedictory mood, was in danger of becoming a downer, and Williams was hardly reassuring in the early going against Kovinic as she went down a service break with double faults and unforced errors piling up.But with Kovinic serving and just one point away from a 4-2 first-set lead, Williams struck a backhand return that landed on the outside edge of the baseline for a winner that got her back to deuce.Serena Williams’s Farewell to TennisThe U.S. Open could be the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Decades of Greatness: Over 27 years, Serena Williams dominated generation after generation of opponents and changed the way women’s tennis is played, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles and cementing her reputation as the queen of comebacks.Is She the GOAT?: Proclaiming Williams the greatest women’s tennis player of all time is not a straightforward debate, our columnist writes.An Enduring Influence: From former and current players’ memories of a young Williams to the new fans she drew to tennis, Williams left a lasting impression.Her Fashion: Since she turned professional in 1995, Williams has used her clothes as a statement of self and a weapon of change.It was a slightly mis-hit shot that easily could have produced a different outcome, but the winner rattled Kovinic, who double faulted twice in a row.It was 3-3 in a hurry, and Williams took the hint and the momentum, sweeping the next three games to take the first set and then clicking into a gear she has not experienced in quite some time to take command.Spectators watched Williams on a big screen set up at Hudson Yards in Manhattan.Anna Watts for The New York TimesTroubled by knee pain in Ohio, she looked significantly quicker on Monday. She made errors on the move but at least she was moving. Though this was hardly vintage Williams, there were certainly nods to past glories as she began ripping ferocious full-cut return winners, closing on high balls with cocksure swing volleys and even holding serve at love.Raducanu, who barely made an unforced error and rarely had to hit a second serve in the last tournament Williams played before Monday night, was certainly a higher hurdle to clear than Kovinic, who finished with eight double faults and put only 44 percent of her first serves in play.But this, by the end, was an improved Williams, and it was evident her confidence grew as the match progressed in this grand yet so-familiar space.She was asked if the idea of retirement was now causing her less pain. In Toronto, shortly after her announcement, she broke down in tears at the post-match ceremony after losing to Belinda Bencic in the second round.“I do feel different; I think I was really emotional in Toronto and Cincinnati, and it was very difficult,” Williams said. “It’s extremely difficult still, because I absolutely love being out there. The more tournaments I play, I feel like the more I can belong out there. That’s a tough feeling to have and to leave knowing the more you do it, the more you can shine. But it’s time for me, you know, to evolve to the next thing.”Much has changed in Ashe Stadium since Williams made her U.S. Open debut in 1997, playing doubles with her older sister Venus. The court, once green, is now blue. The stadium, once fully exposed to the elements and swirling winds, now features a retractable roof that has changed the acoustics and the airflow even when the roof remains open.There are screens and more screens: on the walls and in the hands of the fans. And as Williams approached the end of this first-round victory that no one was taking for granted this year, many of the spectators rose to their feet as she prepared to return Kovinic’s serve on match point, holding their phones aloft to capture the moment.It was a rare, perhaps unprecedented scene — a head start on a standing ovation — and Williams delivered closure, finishing off the 6-3, 6-3 victory and then celebrating with a victory jig before the start of the bigger celebration — of her place in tennis and the wider culture. It was a surprise to Williams, who sat courtside in her chair as Gayle King and Billie Jean King took turns offering tributes.“You touched our hearts and minds to be our authentic self,” Billie Jean King said. “To use our voices. To dream big. Thank you for your leadership and commitment to diversity, equality and inclusion and especially for women and women of color. Most of all, thank you for sharing your journey with every single one of us.”Tamara King, a 42-year-old African American woman, was among those in Ashe Stadium. Once a Monica Seles fan, she soon became a Williams fan after Serena and Venus turned pro in the 1990s. After hearing that Serena’s retirement was imminent, she said she spent $3,000 on a ticket to Monday’s match.Multiple times throughout the night, she was moved to tears.“Never thought that I would be able to pay to be able to sit and see somebody that looks like me be loved by so many people at a court like Arthur Ashe Stadium,” Tamara King said. “It’s just full circle, because you know Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe were the pioneers of this. And now we have Serena and Venus, who have passed the torch to like Coco, which is just amazing for Black women. It’s amazing for tennis. Hopefully, it’ll continue.”King was referring to Coco Gauff, the rising 18-year-old American star who reached the French Open final this year and won her first-round match in Ashe Stadium earlier in the day, beating the French qualifier Leolia Jeanjean. But Gauff, like King and so many others, was watching Williams on a Monday when the Open set a night-session record on the grounds with 29,402 paying spectators.For their money, they got a match and what amounted to a farewell party — even if Williams is not quite ready to say farewell just yet.Despite the first-person Vogue essay earlier this month indicating that the end was near, she was still not prepared late Monday night to confirm that this will be her last tournament.“I’ve been pretty vague about it, right?” Williams said in the playful tone that is usually reserved for good nights at the office. “I’m going to stay vague, because you never know.”Williams will face No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round on Wednesday.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesWhat is clear is that this tournament is not over. She has entered the doubles draw with Venus, with whom she has already won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. And on Wednesday, she will face the No. 2 seed Anett Kontaveit in the second round of the singles tournament. That is perhaps less daunting than it appears on the draw sheet.Kontaveit, an Estonian who resides in London and has the English accent to prove it, has a powerful baseline game but has reserved her best performances for lesser occasions. She has been past the fourth round only once in a Grand Slam tournament, reaching the quarterfinals of the 2020 Australian Open, and has not been past the second round in the first three majors this season, in part because of the after effects of contracting Covid-19.She is also well aware that Wednesday night will be a new experience on two levels. She, like most of Williams’s opponents on tour these days, has never faced her, and Kontaveit has never faced any opponent in an atmosphere like this.“I was really rooting for her to win today,” Kontaveit said. “I mean, this is the last chance. Better late than never.”If the U.S. Open organizers threw this big a bash for Williams after a first-round victory, what might they do if she beats the No. 2 seed?Kris Rhim More

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      Serena Williams Will Play Danka Kovinic at U.S. Open on Monday

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      Williams, who has said the Open is most likely her final tournament, will play 80th-ranked Danka Kovinic in the first round on Monday.Unseeded and ranked No. 608, the great Serena Williams could have been drawn to face all manner of opposition in the opening round of her farewell U.S. Open.She could have played any of the 32 seeds, including the No. 1 seed, Iga Swiatek, or the No. 7 seed and her longtime rival, Simona Halep, now working with Williams’s former coach Patrick Mouratoglou.Williams could have had a U.S. Open rematch with Naomi Osaka or Bianca Andreescu, both of whom have beaten her in recent U.S. Open finals. She could have matched up, for the first and final time, with Coco Gauff, an 18-year-old American star who chose tennis in part because Williams was such an inspiring and dominant champion.Or, most poignantly, Serena could have faced the deeply symbolic and forever-conflicted prospect of playing her big sister Venus Williams one last time in the tournament in which both came of age — to put their enduring excellence in perspective — in a different century.But tennis draws are roulette wheels, and Thursday’s game of chance in New York delivered Danka Kovinic, a first-round opponent lacking resonance and the intimidation factor but hardly lacking the ability to snuff out Serena Williams’s last chance at a last hurrah.Kovinic, an unseeded 27-year-old Montenegrin who trains in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, is ranked just 80th in the world and has lost her last five singles matches on tour. But Williams, who turns 41 on Sept. 26, is ranked far below Kovinic at this late stage of her career and has only a 1-3 record in singles since returning to the tour in June.She was soundly beaten, 6-4, 6-0, by Emma Raducanu, last year’s surprise U.S. Open champion, in the opening round of the Western and Southern Open last week, with Williams wearing tape to protect her left knee and looking late to the ball and increasingly glum.Williams was beaten, 6-4, 6-0, by Emma Raducanu in the opening round of the Western and Southern Open last week.Jeff Dean/Associated PressIn light of her recent form, advanced tennis age and lack of matches this season, a deep run at her final U.S. Open would be one of Williams’s most remarkable achievements.But first she must find the means to defeat Kovinic. They have never played in singles on tour, but Kovinic has the weapons, including a powerful serve, to trouble Williams in a match that also will be, given the circumstances, an event. It will be played on Monday in Arthur Ashe Stadium, surely at night under the prime-time lights.The occasion could certainly get to Kovinic, much more accustomed to outside courts. But she has handled the big stage well before: upsetting Raducanu in the second round of this year’s Australian Open in Margaret Court Arena. The occasion and scenario could also get to Williams, a champion who runs on emotion and has made it clear she is no fan of goodbyes.But there is a huge gap in achievement here: Williams is clearly the greatest women’s player of this era with 23 Grand Slam singles titles and long runs at No. 1. Kovinic has yet to win a tour singles title.If Williams, a six-time U.S. Open singles champion, were to prevail, she is likely to face the No. 2 seed, Anett Kontaveit, in the second round. Though that sounds like a nasty draw, Kontaveit built her lofty ranking on the strength of increasingly distant success and has struggled since March, in part because of the aftereffects of contracting Covid-19.She is arguably the most vulnerable of the top eight seeds, which means that Williams, if she can pull her big game together and keep her aches and pains to a minimum, has actually landed in a decent place in her last U.S. Open.It is harder to say that about Venus Williams, 42, in what could also be her final U.S. Open. She has not won a singles match on tour in over a year and will be the underdog in her first-round match against Alison Van Uytvanck, a Belgian ranked No. 42. If she gets past that, Venus would most likely face Elena Rybakina, the reigning Wimbledon champion, whose big serve, lean build, easy power and athleticism bear a certain resemblance to Venus.What seems clear is that Venus and Serena, who are in different halves of the draw, will not play each other again, at least not on tour, after facing off 31 times in singles over more than 20 years. (Serena leads, 19-12.)Serena, left, and Venus Williams after their match at the 2018 U.S. Open.Jason Szenes/EPA, via ShutterstockSwiatek, who won the French Open in June, has lost in the quarterfinals or earlier in her last four tournaments but showed excellent form on American hardcourts earlier this season, winning the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and the Miami Open en route to a 37-match winning streak in singles. Her first-round opponent at the U.S. Open will be Jasmine Paolini, an unseeded Italian ranked 57th.Raducanu, who has yet to reach another tournament final since her shock triumph in New York last September, has shown flashes of better form recently, with back-to-back routs of Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka last week. But she has a daunting first-round matchup in New York in the French veteran Alizé Cornet, an Australian Open quarterfinalist this season and one of the best defenders and competitors on tour. Cornet also upset Swiatek in the third round of Wimbledon this year.But the best matchup of the opening round in the women’s tournament could be Osaka versus Danielle Collins.Osaka, a former No. 1 and two-time U.S. Open singles champ, is unseeded this year but still dangerous on hardcourts as she showed by reaching the Miami Open final earlier this season. Collins, a fiery American seeded 19th, reached the Australian Open singles final in January, losing to Ashleigh Barty, the now-retired Australian star.Unless Swiatek can recover her early-season form, it looks like a wide-open women’s tournament, and the men’s event also could be full of surprises in the absence of Novak Djokovic, the former No. 1 and reigning Wimbledon champion, who withdrew from the U.S. Open on Thursday shortly before the draw because he continues to be barred from entering the United States as he is not vaccinated for Covid.Whatever one’s view of Djokovic’s stance, he has stuck to his principles at considerable cost to himself and his sport, which has often been deprived of one of its biggest stars.Djokovic has refused to be vaccinated though nearly all of tennis’s top 200 players and all of Djokovic’s significant rivals have done so. The choice has caused him to miss four Masters 1000 events this year and two Grand Slam tournaments (the Australian Open and the U.S. Open) at a moment when he and Rafael Nadal are locked in a duel for the men’s record for major singles titles.Though Djokovic did win Wimbledon this year, he received no ranking boost for it because the men’s and women’s tours stripped Wimbledon of ranking points because the tournament had barred Russian and Belarusian players in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.To sum up, it has been a tennis season that beggars belief, full of abrupt twists and turns. Though the Russians and Belarusians will be in New York, Djokovic will not and must now wait and lobby to be allowed to play next year’s Australian Open, which would require the new Australian government to lift his three-year ban on applying for a visa, a ban that resulted from his deportation in January.In Djokovic’s absence in New York, Nadal, who has 22 Grand Slam singles titles to Djokovic’s 21, has a clearer pathway to padding his slim lead. He has a seemingly smooth early-round draw, facing Rinky Hijikata, an inexperienced wild-card entry from Australia, in his opening match.But Nadal has played (and lost) just one match since withdrawing from Wimbledon in July because of an abdominal injury. Daniil Medvedev of Russia, who is the No. 1 men’s seed and defending champion after defeating Djokovic in last year’s final, has hardly been an irresistible force this season, even on his preferred hardcourts.Djokovic lost to Medvedev in last year’s U.S. Open final.Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThere is elbow room, perhaps plenty of elbow room, for others to muscle their way into the title picture: men such as Carlos Alcaraz, Stefanos Tsitsipas, Taylor Fritz, Jannik Sinner, Nick Kyrgios or the surprise Cincinnati champion, Borna Coric. (This is not an exhaustive list.)But that is a matter for the second week of this intriguing U.S. Open. For now, all eyes are on Serena. More

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      Sabalenka Struggles, Then Prevails as Top Women Fall at Australian Open

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      The No. 2 seed looked shaky in her opening service game in the second round but pushed through, indicative of the women’s game: unpredictable and deep in talent.MELBOURNE, Australia — Thursday was another rough day for the leading women at a major tennis tournament. Garbiñe Muguruza, the No. 3 seed, and Anett Kontaveit, the No. 6 seed, lost within five minutes of each other in their second-round matches at the Australian Open after playing in the championship match of the WTA Finals in Mexico in November.Thursday’s setbacks were hardly surprising in the spinning roulette wheel that is the women’s game, which is so unpredictable and deep in talent that Emma Raducanu, as a little-known 19-year-old British qualifier, managed to win last year’s U.S. Open title without dropping a set in only her second appearance in a Grand Slam tournament.Raducanu was seeded 17th in Melbourne, and as if to prove the point she made in New York again, she was beaten in the second round on Thursday, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, by 98th-ranked Danka Kovinic.The prospects were not looking much better for second-seeded Aryna Sabalenka. She has more cabinet-rattling power than anyone in the women’s game, but she also has developed the yips on her second serve: a sudden inability to rely on the muscle memory that she had acquired throughout many years of pounding tennis balls and opponents into submission.On Thursday, in a 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory against 20-year-old Wang Xinyu of China, Sabalenka was not just missing second serves, she was missing some of them by 15 feet or more as they landed closer to the baseline than the service box.In her opening service game alone, she made six double faults and finished the first set with 12, losing the set, 6-1. Some in the crowd began closing or covering their eyes as if not to intrude on her grief. A double fault gets personal. True, it counts no more or less than a groundstroke that lands long, a misjudged volley that is parried wide or a drop shot that lacks the steam to make it past the net.But the serve remains the only shot in tennis over which a player has total control, from the toss to contact, and when it goes off, or, worse yet, completely off, the psychology gets tricky, particularly when the serve is the cornerstone of one’s game. (See the strapping Sabalenka, who is nearly 6 feet and can rain down aces.)“If you see me serving on the practice court, it’s perfect; it’s an amazing serve,” she said this week.“I just. I think it’s all about in here,” she said, pointing to her head.Double faults have been a recurring problem for her despite her rise in the rankings, and there were signs of bigger trouble in November at the WTA Finals near Guadalajara, Mexico, where she hit 19 double faults in a round-robin loss to Maria Sakkari.Sabalenka after she lost to Maria Sakkari of Greece in the women’s title game of the 2021 WTA Finals.Ulises Ruiz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut the off-season clearly did not help her resolve the issue, and she has been double-faulting at an unsettling clip since arriving in Australia. There were two lead-in tournaments in Adelaide, and she lost in the first round of both to opponents ranked far below her: hitting 18 double faults against Kaja Juvan and 21 against Rebecca Peterson.Mark Philippoussis, an imposing and big-serving Australian who lost to Roger Federer in the 2003 Wimbledon final, felt for Sabalenka and sent her a text after her second defeat, offering to help as soon as he had finished his television commentary duties.They went on court that night.“We served a lot, and he gave me some tips about what I should focus on during the game when I’m like struggling with my serve,” she said. “And my coach was there. They had a nice conversation. We had a nice conversation.”In fact, Sabalenka said they talked much more than they served. “Maybe a few hours,” she said in Melbourne. “But I was really worried going here about my serve, what was going to happen in the match. But I just tried to stay positive during this practice week.”A combustible competitor even in better times, she said she has also done her best to stay positive with the Australian Open underway. Her service problems are not behind her, but she rallied to defeat Storm Sanders in three sets in the opening round on Tuesday despite 12 double faults, most of which came early.“I was thinking a lot on my serve,” she said. “I tried to control everything, and that’s not how it works. I have muscle memory, and I just have to trust myself, and that’s what I did in the middle of the second set.”But the problem quickly resurfaced against Wang, and she had to pull off a greater escape: 19 double faults is the equivalent of giving away nearly five service games.“There’s just so much overthinking going on,” said Roger Rasheed, a veteran Australian coach who has worked with Lleyton Hewitt, Grigor Dimitrov and Gaël Monfils. “She is technically fine, but the moment she misses her first serve, she is already in trouble as the mind is controlling her in a negative way.”The Australian Open has certainly seen worse in the second round from a star. In 1999, Anna Kournikova, a 17-year-old Russian who was seeded No. 12, served 31 double faults against Miho Saeki of Japan.“I’m really frustrated about it, like everybody who’s watching,” Sabalenka said. “When I practice, I have no problem, but when I come to the line, something happens. I’m just going to have to fight through it.”She finished the match by putting a towel over her head in her chair — not the usual Kournikova approach — but she had won in three high-wire sets.Wang in action during her second-round match.James Gourley/ReutersConsider that foreshadowing for Sabalenka, who powered through her problem to a degree by hitting her second serves as hard as she typically hits her first. She also tried to focus on her strengths, not her weaknesses, and, in truth, played some phenomenal, acrobatic offense and defense from the baseline once the ball was in play.“I’ve already had a lot of experience with playing without the serve, and I kept telling myself you have enough other shots to win the game even without the serve,” Sabalenka said with a shrug.But this does not seem like a sustainable approach for winning her first Grand Slam singles title at this Australian Open. “It just puts unwanted pressure on the rest of her weapons: no room to breathe,” Rasheed said.Kournikova, after all, did not make it past Round 4 when she had the yips. Next up for Sabalenka: Marketa Vondrousova, a French Open finalist and Olympic silver medalist who is seeded 31st this year. More

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      Garbiñe Muguruza Wins WTA Tour Finals in Mexico

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      The sport’s final tournament, an elite event for the best in the game, produced a veteran champion, and a glimpse of where women’s tennis is headed in 2022.GUADALAJARA, Mexico — As her final shot forced one final error, and Garbiñe Muguruza beat Anett Kontaveit and slammed an exclamation point onto the tennis season by winning the WTA Finals, the veteran player claimed more than just an individual triumph.This was not simply a win for a single player, but for power and aggression in women’s tennis and the unique form of mental toughness it requires.Muguruza, who prevailed, 6-3, 7-5, in 99 minutes, had her opponent on her heels from the start, finding opportunities to break Kontaveit nearly every time she served in the first set, pushing forward and making Kontaveit backpedal far behind the baseline and scramble across the back of the court. Kontaveit, an Estonian, made a battle of it, forcing Muguruza to raise her level of play in the second set. But after an hour and a half, Kontaveit resembled a prize fighter whose arms were still swinging but whose wobbly legs could not sustain her any longer.“A dream come true to play here,” said Muguruza, a Spaniard the Mexican fans adopted as one of their own during the tournament.Trying to guess the next dominant player in women’s tennis long ago became an act of futility. The game produces surprise champions practically every week. But what unfolded a mile above sea level in the middle of Mexico in the past week provided plenty of hints about where the women’s game is going. Players hoping to make it at the elite level would do well to figure out how to hit the ball as hard as they can, and then try to hit it even a little bit harder, and not care much when inevitable misses occur.“It doesn’t always go your way,” said Kontaveit, who survived an onslaught from Maria Sakkari of Greece in the semifinals and figured out the modern power game of the moment as few others have during her white-hot final month of the season. “You miss some shots. Be kind to yourself, and look forward to the next point.”The WTA Finals is different from other tournaments, where top players can usually spend a few rounds getting a feel for the ball against inferior competition. The WTA Finals includes only the best eight available players of the season. Every match is a test the caliber of a Grand Slam quarterfinal, or something even tougher, making it clear what it takes to win at the highest level, night after night.The tennis of the past eight days was not for the faint of heart. This was a collection of women blasting ball after ball after ball, mostly trying to pummel opponents into submission rather than outthink them.Muguruza powered her way to the trophy over eight days in Mexico.Carlos Perez Gallardo/ReutersThe eight-player field in Mexico included two players — Iga Swiatek of Poland and Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic — who approach the court with an old-style mix of finesse and artistry. Swiatek and Krejcikova went a combined 1-5 in round robin play and failed to advance to the semifinals. The last four was made up of players whose specialty is hitting untouchable balls through the back of the court at withering speed. When the ball is landing inside the lines, the strategy wins points and games and crushes an opponent’s spirit.Muguruza, a two-time Grand Slam champion who is 28, has been doing this for a while, though this was her first time reaching the final in the year’s ultimate tournament.A dozen years ago, after she had sprouted to six feet tall, she realized that following in the stylistic footsteps of the Spanish greats of the previous generation was not going to work for her. They were classic defenders, so-called dirt-ballers who honed their games on clay and fought tennis wars of attrition.“I’m a tall woman, big arms, and my personality did not match the classic Spanish game,” Muguruza said Tuesday. “I wanted to dominate.”She did plenty of that in Guadalajara, and it was fitting that to get to the finals, Muguruza had to first beat the next iteration of herself in Paula Badosa, a 23-year-old Spaniard who modeled her game after Muguruza’s. Like Muguruza, Badosa is six feet tall, and she saw in Muguruza another way to play.“Other Spanish players play different,” Badosa said. “She was the only one who played super aggressive.”It’s true that had Ashleigh Barty of Australia, the world’s top-ranked player, opted to play this championship, finesse might have played a larger role in the past week. Barty’s greatest weapon is a slice backhand, though she, too, hits plenty of forehands through the back of the court and is among the game’s leaders in service aces. But Barty ended her season in September after spending six consecutive months on the road because of Australia’s restrictive rules for international travelers.And so, the 2021 WTA Finals unfolded mostly as a series of slugfests in which brute strength was as potent a weapon as a drop shot.There was a three-set brawl between Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Sakkari, the tour’s reigning gym rat. After outlasting Sabalenka, Sakkari spoke of using her supreme strength and fitness as weapons.“It makes a lot of players be kind of like intimidated because they know that I can last long,” Sakkari said.Playing with relentless aggression, though, is a high-risk, high-reward game, a tightrope walk without a safety net that brings wild swings within a season, or even a match.Kontaveit returning a shot to Muguruza on Wednesday.Hector Vivas/Getty Images for WTAKontaveit lost four straight matches and nearly all of her confidence during the summer when she could not make enough consistent and true contact with the ball. Then she got on a roll in the fall and won the final two tournaments to grab the final spot in this championship.Sabalenka seized the momentum and a 3-1 lead in the final set Monday night against Sakkari. Then the nerves kicked in, and her balls couldn’t find the court. With a game that is all power all the time, Sabalenka was out of options and barking at herself like a dog in the night as Sakkari reeled off five straight games to win their nearly three-hour battle.But 21 hours later, in the semifinal, those same crushing, crosscourt backhands from Sakkari kept floating long and wide or getting hammered right back across the net by Kontaveit. Sakkari then found her groove and got within three games of the finish line. But her blasts started hitting the net and flying long once more, and she could not find a way out of a rut that was both physical and mental.“A missed opportunity,” she said through tears when it was over.Wednesday night’s championship match was one last heavyweight bout.Muguruza muscled a backhand to earn her chance to win the first set, and oddly won it with a magical topspin lob, one of the few that anyone tried all week in Mexico. Soon, though, it was back to big hitting, serves darting for the corners and deep drives at the lines at the earliest opportunities. She fell behind late in the second set and needed one last burst of power to thrash through the final three games, collapsing on her back when Kontaveit’s final ball hit the middle of the net.Great tennis players have remarkable long-term memories and terrible short-term ones.They remember details of points played a decade earlier and can recall an opponent’s catalog of tendencies in the heat of competition.But they also have a knack for forgetting a lost point, game or set as soon as it’s gone. They play each point, each shot, on its own merits. Blast a forehand into the net. Fine. Here comes the next one, hit just as hard and with the strongest belief that it will find the back corner of the court.That is what Muguruza was able to do in the crucial moment Wednesday night.With the power game ascendant, it’s the likely path anyone who wants to compete for championships and make it to this elite finale will have to take in 2022. More

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      The WTA Finals Provide a Fitting Finale to a Zany Year

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      Favorites who were virtually unknown a year ago. Big names missing in action. And, as usual, a championship completely up for grabs.GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Karolina Pliskova let out a good long breath Sunday afternoon when she finally defeated Barbora Krejcikova to finish off her round-robin play at the WTA Finals Sunday afternoon.After three sets in intense sun, there was nothing left to do but wait for the evening session’s outcome, and then, perhaps, play the final two matches of this ridiculously long and taxing year filled with restrictive bubbles and unmatched drama — and more Covid-19 tests than anyone cares to think about.Finally, mercifully, the 11-month endurance test that has been women’s tennis this year is approaching a fitting end in this near-mile-high city in central Mexico.Everything about these WTA Finals is so 2021. The season essentially began with more than two dozen players locked in their hotel rooms in Melbourne, Australia, for two weeks because they flew on planes with other players or coaches who tested positive for the coronavirus upon their arrival. So it was only proper that this tournament, which was supposed to be in China, faced its own pandemic-related upheaval. Tour officials had to scramble, moving the tournament out of a country that had largely prohibited foreigners from entering the country.As the final matches of the year were unfolding, tour officials were also confronting a claim this month by the Chinese player Peng Shuai, 35, who in a social media post said she had been sexually assaulted by a top official in the Chinese government. Her post has since been taken down, and on Sunday, Steve Simon, chief executive of the WTA Tour, which does extensive business in China, called on officials there to investigate the claim fully and transparently.The tour’s ties to China are deep though. After her match on Sunday, hours after the WTA released its statement condemning the Chinese, Pliskova was asked to film a promotional spot on behalf of the WTA in which she watched messages wishing her well from Chinese fans on an iPad, then recited a short script that culminated with, “I hope to see you soon in China.”A spokesman for the WTA said the message was targeted to Chinese fans, not government officials.Beyond logistical hurdles and the mounting China controversy, the most fitting tribute to this roller coaster of a season is that the eight players who earned the privilege of playing in the WTA Finals were about as random a collection as anyone could have imagined. In a sport in which seemingly any player can win a tournament, in which even a teenage qualifier this year surged to a Grand Slam event title, nothing was more appropriate than hearing player after player here confess to not being able to fathom at the start of the year that they would qualify for this exclusive championship.Paula Badosa of Spain said that in In January in Abu Dhabi, her coach told her that if she maintained her level she would make the top 30. Badosa, a fast-improving 23-year-old, told him that was impossible, that she would settle for the top 50.After winning the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in October, she cracked the top 10. “I didn’t even expect it,” Badosa said ahead of her first match here, a 6-4, 6-0 demolition of the Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 1 seed. “Even less expected to be here in the WTA Finals.”Paula Badosa has moved into the top 10 and won her first two matches in Guadalajara.Francisco Guasco/EPA, via ShutterstockHas there been a tennis season when the beginning and the end looked so different, and not merely because empty stadiums have given way to filled arenas? In February, after the Australian Open, where Naomi Osaka of Japan won her second consecutive Grand Slam singles event and the fourth of her career, she appeared ready to take control of the sport. Ten months later, she is on indefinite leave as she deals with her mental health. No one knows when, or if, she will return.Serena Williams made the semifinals in Australia and appeared poised for a serious try for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title. She has been sidelined with injuries since the early summer. Ashleigh Barty of Australia, the 2021 Wimbledon champion, passed on the last two months of the season after an exhausting half-year on the road.The American Sofia Kenin, who arrived in Australia as the defending champion, endured an emergency appendectomy, Covid-19 and a split with her father and coach, Alex Kenin. She tumbled out of the top 10. Simona Halep of Romania, the No. 2 seed in Australia, battled injuries and is now ranked 22nd.The only player to make it back to this championship from 2019, the last time it was played, was Pliskova of the Czech Republic. In place of the usual stars are players like Maria Sakkari, a 26-year-old from Greece with a physique more typical of a mixed martial arts fighter than a tennis player. She cracked the top 20 only last year.The biggest name in the game at the moment, Emma Raducanu of Britain, the qualifier who won the U.S. Open in September, is not here because she did not qualify. The qualification requirements were made when everyone just assumed that anyone good enough to win a Grand Slam event would certainly be among the top-ranked players still playing at the end of the year. In a perfect world, the tour finals would feature all the Grand Slam champions and finalists.Alas, this championship has just a single Grand Slam singles champion from this year, Krejcikova, known until recently as a doubles specialist, who came out of nowhere to win the 2021 French Open. There is just one other Grand Slam finalist — Pliskova, who lost to Barty at Wimbledon. There, Barty looked like she might not lose again for a while, but she did not even make the second week of the U.S. Open and called it a season.As the last preliminary-round matches opened Sunday, little known Anett Kontaveit of Estonia — no one’s current idea of a tennis star — had emerged as a worldbeater, the winner of her last two tournaments and her first two matches in Mexico. Kontaveit, 25, was the last player to qualify for Guadalajara, but the first player to make it through to the semifinals.“I feel like I can take on anyone,” Kontaveit said Friday, after she blasted Pliskova, 6-4, 6-0, hitting the ball harder and flatter than in the past. “It’s really just trusting my shots a little more, going for it, but going for it with margins.”Badosa, too, has continued her new tricks, fulfilling the promise that the tennis cognoscenti had predicted when she was a rising junior. She finished last year ranked 70th, and spent much of the first part of the year losing crucial points in her biggest matches. Not these days: On Saturday, she won nearly all of them, floating across the baseline as she knocked off Sakkari, 7-6 (4), 6-4.“It’s experience,” Badosa said. “I was quite new at the beginning of the year.”Anett Kontaveit was the first player to make it through to the semifinals.Ulises Ruiz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith three days to go, the WTA Finals are shaping up as a glimpse of what the next season holds for this topsy-turvy sport rather than as a crowning of a champion of champions. Given the tumult in recent years, expecting anything specific from any one player from month to month, much less season to season, has become something of a fool’s errand.It’s better to just digest the competition as a snapshot of who is hot and who is not at a moment that just happens to be the end of the season.Those snapshots include Kontaveit almost never missing; Badosa wearing out the paint in the corners of the court with her forehand; Sabalenka blasting 120-mile-per-hour second serves and willing the crowd into her corner in a come-from-behind, three-set win over Iga Swiatek of Poland on Saturday night.“I kept saying, ‘You have to get through this challenge, you have to get through this challenge,’ again and again,” Sabalenka said at the end.She was talking about the match. She could have been talking about the season. More