Kyrgios, Nick

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      Wimbledon Needs More Arthur Ashe Moments, On and Off the Court

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      Nick Kyrgios and Ons Jabeur brought a fresh diversity to the men’s and women’s singles finals.WIMBLEDON, England — For the first time in nearly a half-century, a weekend at Wimbledon felt, and looked, different.Nick Kyrgios and Ons Jabeur brought a fresh diversity to the men’s and women’s singles finals. Jabeur, of Tunisia, became the first North African player to make it to a singles final. Kyrgios, an Australian with Malaysian roots and a well-documented swagger that marks him as something wholly different from his peers, was playing in his first Grand Slam final. Jabeur and Kyrgios each ended up losing, but that is beside the point.Not since 1975, when Arthur Ashe and Evonne Goolagong made it to their finals, had both championship matches combined to be as diverse. Tennis evolves in fits and starts, and nowhere does that feel more true than at Wimbledon.To look at the Centre Court crowd these past two weeks was to see how hard change is to pull off, especially when it comes to race.In the stands, an all-too-familiar homogeneity. Aside from a dappling of color here and there, a sea of whiteness. To me, a Black guy who played the game in the minor leagues and always hopes to see it move past its old ways — to see a lack of color always feels like a gut punch, particularly at Wimbledon in London.After Saturday’s women’s final, I stood beside a pillar near one of the Centre Court exits. Hundreds walked by. Then a few thousand. I counted roughly a dozen Black faces. This grand event plays out in one of the most diverse metropolises in the world, a hub for immigrants from across the globe. You wouldn’t know that by looking at the spectators. There were some Asian faces. A few Muslims in hijabs. The Sikh community is huge in London. I saw only one of the traditional Sikh turbans at the court.When I pulled a few of the Black fans aside and asked them if they felt aware of how rare they were in the crowd, the reply was always as swift as a Jabeur forehand volley or a Kyrgios serve. “How could I not?” said James Smith, a London resident. “I saw a guy in a section just above me. We smiled at each other. I don’t know the man, but there was a bond. We knew we were few and far between.”The fans see it.And the players, too.“I definitely notice,” said Coco Gauff, the American teen star, when we spoke last week. She said she is so focused when she plays that she barely notices the crowd. But afterward, when she looks at photographs of herself at Wimbledon, the images startle. “Not a lot of Black faces in the crowd.”Gauff compared Wimbledon with the U.S. Open, which has a more down-to-earth feel, like the world’s greatest public parks tournament, and a far more varied crowd.“It’s definitely weird here because London is supposed to be such a big melting pot,” Gauff added, pondering for a while, wondering why.Going to Wimbledon, like going to big-time sporting events across North America and far beyond, requires a massive commitment. Tried and traditional Wimbledon pushes that commitment to its limits. You can’t go online to buy tickets. There’s a lottery system for many of the seats. Some fans line up in a nearby park, camping overnight to attend. The cost isn’t exactly cheap.“They say it is open for all, but the ticket system is designed with so many hurdles that it’s almost as if it’s meant to exclude people of a certain persuasion,” said Densel Frith, a Black building contractor who lives in London.He told me he’d paid about 100 pounds for his ticket, about $120. That’s a lot of money for a guy who described himself as strictly blue collar. “Not coming back tomorrow,” he added. “Who can afford that? People from our community cannot afford that. No way. No way. No way.”There’s more to it than access and cost. Something deeper. The prestige and tradition of Wimbledon are its greatest assets, and an Achilles’ heel. The place feels wonderful — tennis in an English garden is not hyperbole — but also stuffy and stodgy and stuck on itself.“Think about what Wimbledon represents for so many of us,” said Lorraine Sebata, 38, who grew up in Zimbabwe and now lives in London.“To us it represents the system,” she added. “The colonial system. The hierarchy” that still sits at the foundation of English society. You look at the royal box, as white as the Victorian era all-white dress code at this tournament, and you cannot miss it.Sebata described herself as a passionate fan. She has loved tennis since the days of Pete Sampras, though she does not play. Her friend Dianah Kazazi, a social worker who came to England from Uganda and the Netherlands, has an equal passion for the game. As we spoke, they looked around — up and down a corridor just outside the majestic, ivy-lined Centre Court — and could not find anyone who appeared to have the African heritage they shared. They said they had many Black friends who enjoyed tennis but did not feel they could be a part of Wimbledon, situated in a luxurious suburb that feels exclusive and so far from the everyday.“There is an establishment and a history behind this tournament that keeps things status quo,” Kazazi said. “You have to step outside of the box as a fan to get around that.” She continued: “It is the history that appeals to us as fans, but that history says something to people who don’t feel comfortable to come.” For many people of color in England, tennis is simply not seen as “something for us.”I understood. I know exactly where these fans were coming from. I felt their dismay and bitterness and doubt about whether things would change. Honesty, it hurt.Maybe it helps to know what Wimbledon means to me.I get goose bumps whenever I enter the gates, off leafy, two-lane Church Road. On July 5, 1975, when Arthur Ashe defeated Jimmy Connors, becoming the first Black man to win the Wimbledon singles title and the only Black man to win a Grand Slam tournament title except Yannick Noah at the French Open in 1983, I was a 9-year-old whose sports love was the Seattle SuperSonics.Seeing Ashe with his graceful game and keen intelligence, his Afro and skin that looked like mine, persuaded me to make tennis my sport.Wimbledon didn’t alter the trajectory of my life, but it did change the direction.I became a nationally ranked junior and collegiate player. I spent a little over a year in the minor leagues of the professional game, reaching No. 448 on the ATP rankings list. Nonwhite players were nearly as rare in my time as in Arthur’s.Today, as we just witnessed this weekend, there is a budding new crop of talent. Serena and Venus Williams combine as their North Star. And yet there’s a lot of work to be done. Not only on the court, but in drawing fans to the game and getting them into the stands at a monument to tennis like Wimbledon. A whole lot of work that will take a whole lot of time. More

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      Djokovic vs. Kyrgios: How to Watch the Wimbledon Men’s Singles Final

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      Djokovic, a six-time Wimbledon champion, plays Nick Kyrgios, who is appearing in his first Grand Slam singles final.Sunday, the final day of Wimbledon, features the men’s singles championship at 9 a.m. Eastern between Novak Djokovic, a six-time Wimbledon champion, and Nick Kyrgios, who is playing in his first Grand Slam singles final.Kyrgios earned a spot in the final with some ease, after Rafael Nadal pulled out of the tournament with an abdominal injury the day before their scheduled semifinal.How to watch: In the United States, on ESPN with the pre-match show beginning at 8 a.m. and streaming on ESPN.com and the ESPN app. In Canada, on TSN1 and TSN4, with the pre-match show beginning at 8 a.m. More

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      Novak Djokovic Defeats Cameron Norrie to Get to Wimbledon Final

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      Kyrgios is playing in his first Grand Slam singles final, and Djokovic may be playing in his last until next year’s French Open.WIMBLEDON, England — In the last year, Novak Djokovic has experienced the highest of tennis highs, coming within one match of winning a rare calendar-year Grand Slam and the lowest of lows, including detainment and deportation after he arrived in Melbourne in January to try to defend his Australian Open title.On Sunday, he will get a chance to win a seventh Wimbledon singles title against an opponent, Nick Kyrgios of Australia, that few, including Kyrgios himself, thought would ever find the mental strength required to arrive at the biggest stage in the sport.Djokovic earned his spot in the final with a four-set win over Cameron Norrie of Britain on Friday afternoon, overcoming some early-match inconsistency that is becoming a bit of a habit. He withstood both a strong start from Norrie and a raucous hometown crowd on Centre Court to win the semifinal, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.It was the only men’s semifinal played Friday.On Thursday, Rafael Nadal withdrew from the tournament with a tear in his abdominal muscle. Nadal’s decision not to play after he aggravated the tear in his five-set, quarterfinal victory over Taylor Fritz, allowed Kyrgios to advance without effort into his first Grand Slam singles final. It also ended the hope for a coveted showdown between Djokovic and Nadal, who have won a combined 42 Grand Slam titles but have played each other for the trophy at Wimbledon only once, in 2011. Djokovic won.What the matchup with Kyrgios in the final might lack in terms of historical value — no one, not even Kyrgios, expects him to evolve, at 27, into an all-time great — it may well make up for with drama. It is a duel between two players that many in and around the sport view as villains.Djokovic’s impetuous and contrarian behavior, especially compared with his chief rivals, the gentlemanly Nadal and Roger Federer, has long made him more feared than loved, a crasher of the binary tennis rivalry that Federer and Nadal first created more than 15 years ago.Kyrgios, a temperamental and explosive talent who has spent his career battling the tennis establishment and his own demons, is an uncontrollable and disruptive force who has put himself in the heat of the Wimbledon spotlight since the first days of this tournament.He can explode at any moment, and he has repeatedly in the past two weeks, at chair umpires, opponents, fans or anyone he views as treating him unjustly. Sometimes it is genuine, other times it is merely to shake up and distract his opponent. He has earned $14,000 in fines this tournament but has played to packed stadiums, with fans lusting for his booming serve, or the occasional underhanded one, and his through-the-legs trick shots.On Tuesday, news broke that Kyrgios was due in court on Aug. 2 to face allegations of assaulting a former girlfriend. Chiara Passari told police Kyrgios grabbed her during a domestic dispute in December. On the advice of his lawyers, Kyrgios has declined to comment on the allegations.“There’s going to be a lot of fireworks emotionally,” said Djokovic, a favorite in the match even though he has never beaten or even won a set against Kyrgios.Djokovic and Kyrgios have not played since 2017, and they have never played in a Grand Slam event. But the two sparred verbally at the Australian Open in 2021, a tournament that took place during the height of the pandemic.Djokovic criticized tournament organizers for the restrictions they placed on players arriving in Australia for the tournament. Most players were under a limited two-week quarantine, but many ended up confined to their rooms for 14 days after a handful of people on their special flights into the country tested positive for Covid-19.Kyrgios had remained in Australia for most of the first year of the pandemic, dedicating time to delivering food and other supplies to people who struggled to get them during the country’s strict lockdowns. Djokovic, who has refused to get vaccinated, has been skeptical of the public health community’s management of the pandemic.Long before officials began to give the green light to public gatherings, he staged a tennis exhibition that turned into a superspreader event. Then, shortly after arriving in Australia, he criticized the rules.“Djokovic is a tool,” Kyrgios wrote on Twitter.Djokovic then said in a news conference that he respected Kyrgios’s tennis talents but had no respect for him off the court.Kyrgios hit back, saying he could not take Djokovic’s criticism seriously, given Djokovic’s behavior.“He’s a very strange cat, Novak is,” he said. “A heck of a tennis player but unfortunately someone who’s partying with his shirt off during a global pandemic, I don’t know if I can take any slack from that man.”They have since reached a détente of sorts. It began earlier this year, when Kyrgios spoke up on Djokovic’s behalf after Djokovic was detained in Australia during the controversy over his vaccination status, which ultimately led to his deportation.Kyrgios even described it Friday as a kind of “bromance.” Djokovic would not go that far.“I think everyone knows there was no love lost for a while there,” Kyrgios said. “I think it was healthy for the sport. I think every time we played each other, there was hype around it.”Djokovic said relations were far better than they had been.“When it was really tough for me in Australia, he was one of the very few players that came out publicly and supported me and stood by me,” he said. “That’s something I truly appreciate.”Djokovic remains unvaccinated, and unless the United States and Australia change their rules, Sunday’s final may be his last Grand Slam match for nearly 11 months, and he does not expect it to be easy.“He plays lights-out every time he steps out onto the court,” Djokovic said of Kyrgios. “Just a lot of power in his serve and his game. So I’m sure he’s going to go for it.”Djokovic struggled to go for it initially Friday on a sun-splashed, 80-degree day that meteorologists in London were calling a heat wave. Norrie, a steady, never-say-die lefty, was the better player early and into the first games of the second set, going toe-to-toe and trying to out-rally the best rallier in the world.Djokovic struggled with his serve and to find his trademark precision on his groundstrokes. He also doesn’t much care for playing in the heat. Midway through the first set, with Norrie pushing ahead, Djokovic settled into his chair and draped a towel over his head as the packed Centre Court crowd roared for a countryman with a home just up the road.Norrie, who lives so close to the All England Club that he cycled to the grounds earlier in the tournament, smacked an ace to win the set, pumped his fist and basked in the sound. In addition to the crowd inside the stadium, there were thousands more picnicking and downing beers and Pimm’s on Henman Hill as they watched the match on a big screen.But Djokovic is so good at taking an opponent’s best — and the chiding of a crowd — and biding his time for an opening to appear. He did so when he dropped a set in the fourth round to the hot, Dutch unknown, Tim van Rijthoven, and in the quarterfinals when he dropped the first two sets to Jannik Sinner of Italy, one of the world’s great young players.Djokovic put a baseball cap on to protect himself from the heat of the sun, and midway through the set he stopped giving free points to Norrie. Suddenly, Norrie found himself fighting off break points every time he served. In the eighth game of the set, Norrie sent a forehand long to give Djokovic a 5-3 lead. Djokovic turned to his box and clinched his fist, as if to say, “Don’t worry, I got this.”There was never any doubt. Djokovic sprinted through the third set as Norrie’s game slipped, and he grabbed an early service break in the fourth. Norrie battled to keep it close, but ultimately that was all he could do. A small victory but not the one he wanted.On the final point, Djokovic, who has played 68 Grand Slam tournaments and made the finals 32 times, crushed a serve down the middle, then turned to bait a fan who had yelled to try to disrupt his last stroke. He later claimed with a smile that he was blowing kisses to one that had supported him.Now he faces Kyrgios, a player he said he and others had long seen as among the most dangerous in the world if he could ever get control of his emotions and be committed to the sport, which he has, at least for now.“For the quality player that he is,” Djokovic said of Kyrgios, “this is where he needs to be, and he deserves to be.” More

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      For Sunday’s Wimbledon Final, ‘Fireworks’ and a Contrast in Style

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      Despite their previously contentious relationship, Nick Kyrgios and Novak Djokovic have developed “a bit of a bromance,” Kyrgios said. They meet for the Wimbledon men’s singles title on Sunday.WIMBLEDON, England — With the Wimbledon title at stake, it will be the maximizer versus the man who seemingly makes it up as he goes along.Both Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios were identified early as players of surpassing talent and great potential. But while Djokovic, long the No. 1 player in the world, has turned over stones and sifted through the gravel in his restless quest for enduring excellence, Kyrgios has struggled to find the motivation, equanimity and clarity of purpose to challenge for the game’s biggest prizes.But on Sunday, they will share, however briefly, the same objective as they clash — the verb seems just right — on the grass of the All England Club.“Well, one thing is for sure, there are going to be a lot of fireworks emotionally from both guys,” Djokovic said on Friday.This final, the capstone to one of the weirdest of Wimbledons, will be a contrast in styles.Kyrgios, with his huge and hard-to-read serve, can undoubtedly bring the heat. Djokovic, the premier returner in the game, is an expert at extinguishing such flames.Kyrgios can make any shot look spectacular, turning routine strokes into between-the-legs performance art. Djokovic has long been underappreciated because he can make an excruciatingly difficult shot look routine and smooth.But the starker contrast is in their résumés. This will be Djokovic’s 32nd appearance in a Grand Slam singles final, breaking his tie for the men’s record with his longtime rival Roger Federer.It will be Kyrgios’s first, which he said was a big reason he had a nearly sleepless night on Thursday after Rafael Nadal, his would-be opponent, withdrew from the tournament with an abdominal tear. That allowed Kyrgios to skip the semifinal phase altogether on a journey to uncharted territory for him.Kyrgios beat Djokovic in their two previous matches.Ryan Pierse/Getty Images“I was just restless, so many thoughts in my head about a Wimbledon final; that’s all I was thinking about,” Kyrgios said, estimating that he got just one hour of sleep. “That’s where Djokovic has the advantage from the get-go. He can draw from experience. He’s done it so many more times. He knows the emotions he’s going to be feeling. I don’t know that. I don’t know anything like that.”Kyrgios does know what it is like to defeat Djokovic, however. They faced off twice in 2017 in back-to-back tournaments on hard courts, and Kyrgios, serve and big game clicking, won both matches without dropping a set: He prevailed, 7-6 (9), 7-5, in the quarterfinals in Acapulco, Mexico, and won, 6-4, 7-6 (3), in the round of 16 in Indian Wells, Calif.Djokovic was in a slump at that time, falling back because of an elbow injury and personal problems after a long period of dominance. Kyrgios was just 21 and seemingly on an upward trajectory.But the past five years have been full of surprises, and while Djokovic, 35, recovered his mojo and resumed piling up major titles before his vaccination standoff in Melbourne, Kyrgios continued to bedevil his elders on court, including chair umpires. Yet he has failed to get past even the quarterfinals in a Grand Slam singles draw until now.He has faced, by his own account, mental health challenges, including self-harm, suicidal thoughts and abuse of alcohol and drugs. But his upside was never in doubt for the champions who had faced him.“I think, between us players, we always know how dangerous he is, on grass particularly, because of his game, because of his attitude on the court being so confident, just going for it, being a very complete player,” Djokovic said.Djokovic joked that he would start by trying to win a set, and said that he was well aware that this final, despite the yawning gap in achievement, had the potential to be something spectacular.“Honestly, as a tennis fan, I’m glad that he’s in the finals, because he’s got so much talent,” Djokovic said. “Everyone was praising him when he came on the tour, expecting great things from him. Of course, then we know what was happening throughout many years with him mentally, emotionally. On and off the court, a lot of different things were distracting him, and he was not being able to get this consistency.”Djokovic then finished the thought on a welcoming note.“For the quality player that he is, this is where he needs to be and he deserves to be,” he said.The Djokovic-Kyrgios relationship was once publicly tense, but it sounded more like a mutual-admiration society on Friday, and Djokovic made it clear that he appreciated that Kyrgios, an Australian, offered him support in January when he was deported from Australia before the Australian Open. He had arrived in Melbourne convinced that he would be given a waiver to enter because he had recently recovered from the coronavirus — even though he hadn’t been vaccinated.“We definitely have a bit of a bromance now, which is weird,” Kyrgios said. “I think everyone knows there was no love lost for a while there.”Though Djokovic was not quite prepared to second the bromance, Kyrgios said they had begun exchanging Instagram direct messages. “Earlier in the week, he was like, ‘Hopefully, I’ll see you Sunday,’” Kyrgios said.So it has turned out, but win or lose, Kyrgios’s ranking will not reflect the breakthrough. Kyrgios arrived at Wimbledon ranked 40th in the world, and his ranking will actually drop next week because of the ATP Tour’s decision to strip Wimbledon of ranking points this year in response to the tournament’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.On Monday, the points from last year’s Wimbledon will also fall off players’ rankings, dropping Kyrgios to about 45. Djokovic, who has won 27 straight matches at Wimbledon and is on the verge of a fourth straight title here, will also drop back: from No. 3 to No. 7.It is unprecedented and, frankly, unjust. Though the men’s and women’s tours made their move to mark their territory and try to discourage future bans over political issues, the point stripping has clearly been more of a short-term hit to the players than to Wimbledon, which has been bustling with full crowds after a lighter-than-usual first few days and has continued to generate global buzz. (Kyrgios vs. Djokovic won’t hurt there.)But it also has been a Wimbledon full of odd twists and big letdowns, with three leading men’s players, including Matteo Berrettini, withdrawing after testing positive for the coronavirus, and with Nadal unable to play his semifinal against Kyrgios and continue his quest for the calendar-year Grand Slam. One of the twists: Elena Rybakina, born and raised in Russia and often still training there, is in the women’s final and now representing Kazakhstan. Even the British government was unable to finish the tournament, with British ministers resigning en masse before Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the hint.Djokovic did have to play his semifinal, however, and the suspense did not last much more than a set and a half on Friday before he found his flow against Cameron Norrie of Britain and accelerated to the finish with a victory, 2-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.It was, as it so often is with Djokovic involved, two against one: Norrie and a partisan Centre Court crowd versus Djokovic.It was loud, often thunderously loud, in the early stages as Norrie took the lead, but it is much less clear which way the crowd will blow on Sunday. Kyrgios’s often-confrontational approach and foul-mouthed dialogues (and monologues) run counter to the codes that are typically embraced at the All England Club, whose crowd trends older, particularly on Centre Court.Kyrgios, who leads the tournament in fines, is also facing legal trouble, having been summoned to appear in court in Australia on Aug. 2 in relation to an assault allegation from his former girlfriend. He has declined to address the allegations at Wimbledon, and on Friday, when his name was mentioned in Djokovic’s on-court interview, there was a brief flurry of cheers followed by a much louder round of boos.“I believe that the crowd are going to support Novak in the final,” said Mark Petchey, a British coach, television analyst and former player. “It will be interesting to see how that affects Novak, who is so used to being the underdog.”Sunday’s duel will be interesting indeed and just maybe transcendent. Kyrgios, after three full days of waiting, could either rise to the most significant opportunity of his career or fall flat after too many restless nights of anticipation.“It’s definitely a shock to the system because I’ve been playing so many matches,” he said of his unexpected break.But it certainly appears that Kyrgios has a game and a temperament made for the sport’s biggest occasions. We already know that Djokovic does. More

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      Rafael Nadal Withdraws From Wimbledon Ahead of Semifinal Match

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      The 22-time Grand Slam champion tore a muscle in his abdomen earlier in the tournament. “I am very sad.”WIMBLEDON, England — In the end, after a day of contemplation and consideration for what mattered most, health prevailed over the temptations of yet another title.On Thursday evening, 24 hours after one of the gutsiest and most grueling efforts of his career, Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam champion, pulled out of his semifinal match against Nick Kyrgios set for Friday.“I believe I can’t win two matches under these circumstances,” he said. “I can’t serve.”Nadal made the announcement at a news conference just after 2 p.m. Eastern in the main media conference room at the All England Club, explaining that he was withdrawing because of a tear in his abdominal muscle.“I was thinking the whole day about the decision,” he said. “I think it doesn’t make sense to go.”“I am very sad,” he said.Nadal, who entered the tournament halfway to a Grand Slam and with concerns about his chronically injured foot, said he began to feel soreness in his abdomen roughly one week ago. The pain grew worse, and it became clear that he had most likely torn the muscle early in his five-set win over Taylor Fritz in the quarterfinals Wednesday.In that match, Nadal took a medical timeout in the second set. From the stands, his father and other members of his family motioned for him to stop playing rather than risk further injury, but Nadal ignored their pleas and pulled off one of the more remarkable comeback wins of a career that has seen many of them.After the match, Nadal warned that he might not be able to play in the semifinal and that he planned to have a scan to determine the extent of the injury.“The decision at the end — all the decisions — are the player’s decision, but at the same time I need to know different opinions and I need to check everything the proper way, no? That is even something more important than win Wimbledon, that is the health,” he said. Still, few thought that Nadal, who has played through pain for so much of his career, would not at least try to play the semifinal.The withdrawal — the first from a Wimbledon semifinal in the modern era of tennis — was especially disappointing because Nadal’s game had been improving with each match, something he noted Thursday and after his win over Fritz, despite this being his first tournament on grass in three years.“I’m in the semifinals, so I am playing very well the last couple of days, especially yesterday, at the beginning of the match, playing at a very, very high level,” he said.With Nadal’s withdrawal, Kyrgios receives a pass to his first Grand Slam singles final. Kyrgios, 27, had never made a Grand Slam singles semifinal previously during a career filled with controversy.“Different players, different personalities,” Kyrgios wrote of Nadal in a post on Instagram after the announcement. “@rafaelnadal I hope your recovery goes well and we all hope to see you healthy soon 🗣🙏🏽 till next time.”Nadal had won the first two Grand Slams events of the year, the Australian Open and the French Open. The win against Fritz put him just nine wins away from a calendar-year Grand Slam, something no male player has pulled off since Rod Laver in 1969.The withdrawal is the latest blow for a tournament that has followed a rocky road since April, when organizers announced that they would bar Russian and Belarusian players from competing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Organizers made the move amid intense pressure from Britain’s government and royal family, which is closely associated with the tournament and did not want Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, photographed carrying out her traditional duty of presenting a trophy to a Russian or Belarusian champion.No tournaments outside of Britain, including the U.S. Open, followed Wimbledon’s lead. The decision also sparked a battle with the men’s and women’s professional tours, which decided not to award any rankings points for victories at Wimbledon, turning the sport’s most prestigious tournament into something of an exhibition.The situation grew even more awkward Thursday when Elena Rybakina, who was born and raised in Russia but began representing Kazakhstan four years ago after its tennis federation offered to fund her development, qualified for the women’s final.Thursday evening, though, all else seemed to pale in comparison with the disappointment that Nadal wouldn’t be able to take the court for his showdown with Kyrgios, and if he had prevailed, a possible 60th match against Novak Djokovic.Nadal said the injury had caused discomfort for several days but the pain became severe in the fifth game of the match while he was leading 3-1. It got even worse a few games later as Fritz broke Nadal’s serve to pull ahead.Nadal said he then changed the way he served, slowing and shifting what is normally a violent twisting motion — the torque of his torso and the power of his legs — to serve at roughly 120 miles per hour. During lengthy segments of the match, Nadal struggled to serve at triple digits.Still, he resisted his family’s pleas for him to quit, wanting to finish what he started. He defended that decision Thursday even though it ultimately deprived the tournament of one of its semifinals.He called it the right decision “because I won the match. I finished the match. I won the match. I did the things I felt in every single moment.”Nadal with tape on his stomach after a medical timeout during his match against Taylor Fritz.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressHowever, his willingness to risk his health shifted Thursday, he said, when he saw and felt the extent of the tear. He reasoned that winning two more matches would be impossible and that trying would only make the injury worse and cause him to miss more matches this summer.“Very tough circumstances,” he said tightening his lips with that slight tilt of his head he so often does when conveying unfortunate news.He said he would not be able to compete for at least three or four weeks but he would be able to begin hitting from the baseline in as little as a week, then begin serving once he can do so without discomfort. That is important to Nadal, since his chronically injured foot often becomes a problem when he does not play for long periods. He can begin serving sometime after that, assuming he can play without pain.That timetable, he said, will not interfere with his normal summer schedule, which generally includes hardcourt tournaments in Canada and Cincinnati before the start of the U.S. Open in late August.As of now, Djokovic will not be able to play the U.S. Open because of his refusal to get vaccinated for Covid-19. U.S. policy currently prohibits unvaccinated foreigners from entering the country.In recent years, Djokovic has become obsessed with finishing his career with the most Grand Slam singles titles. He began the year tied with Nadal and Roger Federer at 20.Nadal then won the first two Grand Slams of the year to pull ahead in a race that he said he cared little about, something that was slightly hard to fathom given how competitive he is on the court.“As always, the most important thing is happiness more than any title, even if everybody knows how much effort I put to be here,” he said.He also said Thursday evening that he never gave consideration to the withdrawal ending his chance for the calendar year Grand Slam, a quest that Djokovic also has obsessed about and came within one match of pulling off last year when Nadal missed the second half of the year because of his ailing foot.“Never thought about the calendar slam,” he said. “I thought about my daily happiness.” More

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      Kyrgios, Under a Hotter Spotlight, Stays Quiet and Wins Again

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      A day after the emergence of allegations that he assaulted a former girlfriend, Kyrgios found a way to advance to a Wimbledon semifinal but declined to address the accusations afterward.WIMBLEDON, England — The tennis career of Nick Kyrgios has long been an exercise in torture and turmoil, featuring battles with tennis officials, rivals, the news media, alcohol and a psyche that never seems at peace, even when he swears it is. Kyrgios said he contemplated suicide in 2019.Given all that, Wednesday afternoon at the All England Club looked to be filled with land mines in every direction. On the surface, Kyrgios’s only task was to beat Cristian Garin, a steady but middling Chilean player known more for his efforts on clay courts. Simple enough, seemingly, for someone whose innate tennis talents appear to be nearly limitless.Kyrgios, though, has often combusted on the biggest stages. He was playing in a Grand Slam quarterfinal match for the first time since 2015 — he has never made a major semifinal — just 24 hours after a former girlfriend had accused him of assaulting her in Australia last December.For all the troubles Kyrgios, a 27-year-old Australian, has faced on and off the court since he first broke into the top ranks of pro tennis as a teenager, this was something else.“I feel like I’m in ‘The Last Dance,’” Kyrgios, a huge N.B.A. fan who often wears Jordan Brand clothing, said to his physiotherapist Tuesday as he left a practice court, referencing the documentary about the melodrama surrounding the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls.That had been all anyone outside of his tight circle had heard Kyrgios say. He left the rest to his legal team, which said he was taking the allegations seriously but declined to address them in any detail until prosecutors decide to formally pursue a charge.Kyrgios is due in court to face the allegations on Aug. 2, a time when under normal circumstances he might be playing the summer hard court season in North America and preparing for the U.S. Open. After the hearing, law enforcement officials will decide whether to pursue a formal charge of common assault.Kyrgios’s former girlfriend, Chiara Passari, told police Kyrgios grabbed her during a domestic dispute in December.On the advice of his lawyers, Kyrgios declined to comment on the allegations in the news conference after his match Wednesday.“I have a lot of thoughts, a lot of things I want to say, kind of my side about it,” he said. “Obviously I’ve been advised by my lawyers that I’m unable to say anything at this time. I understand everyone wants to kind of ask about it and all that, but I can’t give you too much on that right now.”Pierre Johannessen, a lawyer for Kyrgios, said in a statement Tuesday evening that Kyrgios “is committed to addressing any and all allegations once clear, taking the matter seriously does not warrant any misreading of the process Mr. Kyrgios is required to follow.”Kyrgios declined to say when he had learned about the allegations and the summons, which became public when The Canberra Times in Australia broke the news.Also, he notably did not deliver the sort of strenuous denial that Alexander Zverev, another tennis player who has also faced allegations of assaulting a former girlfriend, has at major tournaments.“I understand you want me to give you the answers,” Kyrgios said when asked if he planned to appear in court or if he knew of the accusations before Wimbledon. “I can’t. I can’t speak anymore on the issue.”Kyrgios spat at a fan in the first round and bickered with his opponent in the third.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKyrgios said the 24 hours following the accusations becoming public had been difficult but he did not feel it had affected his play.“Obviously seeing it — I’m only human,” he said. “Obviously I read about it and obviously everyone else was asking questions. It was hard. It was hard to kind of just focus on kind of the mission at hand.”During the past 10 days, Kyrgios had become a fan favorite at Wimbledon, mixing the best of a sublime game packed with power and showboating trick shots with behavior that ran the gamut from boorish and profane to gross.He spat in the direction of a fan during his tense five-set, first-round win. He baited the No. 4 seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas, into losing his cool and the tennis match in their third-round duel, carrying on with the chair umpire until Tsitsipas got so angry hitting Kyrgios with the ball became as important to him as hitting winners.When the matches ended, he took on journalists who questioned his behavior or his violations of Wimbledon’s all-white dress code, and even went after vanquished opponents. After Tsitsipas called him a “bully,” he said the Greek star was “soft” and no one on the tour liked him. Then came the assault allegations.The crowds never left him though, and they were there from before the start of the match until after the end of his win, 6-4, 6-3, 7-6 (5), over Garin, a businesslike, almost anticlimactic affair, considering all that was swirling. It earned Kyrgios a semifinal showdown with the 22-time Grand Slam singles champion Rafael Nadal on Friday.“I didn’t see something weird during the match,” Garin said of Kyrgios.This time around, so far at least, the turmoil hasn’t gotten the better of either his brain or his game. If anything, it has quieted the confrontations, and may be bringing out the best of his tennis. Part of what drives him, Kyrgios has said, is to prevail over all the naysayers and critics who view him as the antithesis of the sport’s mythic gentility.Kyrgios’s three-set win Wednesday was as routine as any on the tournament, a stark contrast to the controversy off the court. In the Kyrgios box, his father, girlfriend, agent, and physiotherapist rose after every point. Ever the iconoclast, Kyrgios plays without a coach.Fans welcomed Kyrgios onto the No. 1 Court with a throaty roar. Throughout the match, wails of “Come on, Nick” echoed through the stands. In the few tense moments, the “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oy, Oy, Oy,” cheer sounded, too.Kyrgios will face Rafael Nadal, a 22-time Grand Slam singles tournament champion, in the semifinals. They’ve played nine times, including at Wimbledon in 2014.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressGarin broke Kyrgios’s serve at love in the opening game and won the first nine points of the match, prompting Kyrgios to shrug his shoulders and start the running dialogue with his box that lasted all afternoon. He quickly settled in though, drawing even by the middle of the set, as he stepped up the velocity on his serve and his powerful forehand, running Garin around the court.With Garin serving to stay in the first set, Kyrgios pressured him into a series of errors, to get to triple set point, and then one more to take the early advantage. The second set brought more of the same. An early break of serve, a bump or two to give Garin a chance to get back even, some back and forth with his posse for support, and then ultimately, an ace to take a commanding lead.He and Garin traded service games for the better part of an hour in the third set, but even though Garin had three chances to break Kyrgios’s serve and force him and his tiring legs to play longer, there was never much of a sense that Garin could win a set, much less three. Every time Kyrgios needed a point, he found a big enough serve, or his hard, flat backhand, or a whippy, nasty forehand to get him over the hump.Late in the tiebreaker, Kyrgios came to the middle of the net, and gave Garin three short chances to put the ball past him. He stabbed the first two back then watched Garin hit the third into the middle of the net. A point later, Garin miss-hit a backhand wide and Kyrgios collapsed to his back, a Grand Slam semifinalist for the first time, amid the eeriest and tensest of environments.Next up is Nadal, and with Kyrgios, who knows what else. More

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      Rafael Nadal Prevails at Wimbledon In Grueling Win Over Taylor Fritz

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      Nadal struggled with an abdominal injury in his grueling quarterfinal victory over Taylor Fritz, a rising American star who pushed Nadal to five sets.WIMBLEDON, England — It was Wednesday evening on Centre Court, and Rafael Nadal was back in the semifinals of Wimbledon after proving once again that his threshold for pain and ability to improvise under duress are far beyond the norm.Taylor Fritz was in his courtside chair pondering what might have been and sensing that no defeat had ever hurt quite like this one because he felt like breaking into tears.“I’ve never felt like I could cry after a loss,” said Fritz, the 24-year-old rising American star who will rise no higher at the All England Club this year after Nadal’s victory, 3-6, 7-5, 3-6, 7-5, 7-6 (10-4).A thriller of a quarterfinal, it lasted 4 hours 21 minutes and might have gone quite a bit longer if not for the new rule at Wimbledon this year that requires a first-to-10-point tiebreaker to be played at 6-6 in the fifth set. The English soccer stalwart David Beckham, watching rapt from the royal box, might have preferred penalty kicks.Fritz, a thunderous server who also can pound his groundstrokes, upset Nadal to win the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in March in a match Fritz played with an injured ankle and Nadal played with a stress fracture in his rib cage.Fritz was on the verge of a more significant breakthrough on Wednesday and won, in the end, just as many points as Nadal did (168 apiece). But for all Fritz’s power and hustle, he could not win the points that mattered most; he could not capitalize on Nadal’s abdominal injury or on a two-set-to-one lead. He quickly lost command of the decisive tiebreaker, falling behind, 0-5, as Nadal summoned the shotmaking and guile that have made him a 22-time Grand Slam singles champion.“Rafa did what Rafa does: He figures stuff out,” said Paul Annacone, one of Fritz’s coaches. “He figures out what he’s got on the day, and he never makes it easy for the opponent. That’s why he’s thus far the most accomplished guy in the history of tennis.”Nadal, still chasing the Grand Slam at age 36, will face the Australian Nick Kyrgios, another big server with a much more volatile personality, on Friday for a place in the men’s singles final.In Friday’s other semifinal, the No. 1 seed, Novak Djokovic, the three-time defending Wimbledon champion, will face the No. 9 seed, Cameron Norrie, the last British player left in singles.The question is whether the second-seeded Nadal will be healthy enough to play. Nadal said he came close to retiring from the match after aggravating the lower abdominal injury midway through the opening set. But even without a full-strength serve and even with his father and sister urging him from the stands to retire, Nadal, as so often, found the solutions he needed to prevail even if he did not look a great deal more upbeat than Fritz when he arrived for a sotto voce news conference.Taylor Fritz threw everything he had at Nadal, but it wasn’t enough.Hannah Mckay/Reuters“It’s obvious that today is nothing new,” he said of the injury. “I had these feelings for a couple of days. Without a doubt, today was the worst day. There has been an important increase of pain and limitation. And that’s it. I managed to win that match. Let’s see what’s going on tomorrow.”He said he would undergo more tests on Thursday before deciding whether he would return to Centre Court to face Kyrgios, who upset him on that same patch of grass in their first meeting in 2014 in the round of 16. Nadal has won six of their eight other matches, including a testy second-round duel at Wimbledon in 2019 in which Kyrgios deliberately hit full-cut passing shots at Nadal’s body and felt no need to apologize.“Nick is a great player in all the surfaces but especially here on grass,” Nadal said. “He’s having a great grass-court season. It’s going to be a big challenge. I need to be at my 100 percent to keep having chances, and that’s what I’m going to try to do.”Nadal is clearly tired of talking about his body, weary of dealing with the injuries that have just kept coming during his intermittently sensational season.“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,” Nadal said.For the first time in his long career, Nadal won the first two Grand Slam tournaments of the season, the Australian and French Opens. No man has completed a Grand Slam, winning all four major tournaments in the same year, since Rod Laver in 1969, but Nadal kept his bid alive with Laver, 83, watching from the royal box.Nadal managed it by settling for a much slower serve that, according to Fritz, gave him more trouble than Nadal’s full-force delivery. Nadal walked gingerly off the court for a medical timeout with a 4-3 lead in the second set and said he received anti-inflammatory medication and treatment from a physiotherapist.“For all the first set and all the second and a big part of the third, the problem was not only the serve but that if I served I could feel the pain for the rest of the point and could not play it normally,” he explained. “It took a while to figure it out.” His average serve speeds on Wednesday were 107 miles per hour for first serves and 94 miles per hour for second serves compared with 115 and 100 in the previous round. But once he adjusted, he said he no longer had lingering discomfort during the exchanges and that he felt uninhibited on his groundstrokes.“For a lot of moments, I was thinking maybe I will not be able to finish the match,” he said, speaking to the Centre Court crowd. “But, I don’t know, the court, the energy, something else, so yes, thanks for that.”Nadal has not always been the crowd favorite at Wimbledon, where his longtime rival Roger Federer has long enjoyed that role. But Federer, 40, is not playing here this year, and Nadal, back for the first time since 2019, has been hearing plenty of positive feedback as he tries to win Wimbledon for the third time.He pushed on Wednesday, evened the match at two sets apiece and then went up a break in the fifth to take a 4-3 lead, only to lose his own serve in the next game. But as the match extended past four hours, he regained control and finished off the victory with a classic forehand winner from inside the baseline, complete with his bolo-whip finish behind his left ear.It has been a Wimbledon full of surprises. Before it began, the All England Club barred Russian and Belarusian players because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Three leading players — Matteo Berrettini, Marin Cilic and Roberto Bautista Agut — withdrew after contracting the coronavirus.But Nadal and Djokovic are still in contention heading down the stretch, and so is Simona Halep, a former No. 1 who won Wimbledon in 2019 and is in resurgent form with the help of her new coach, Patrick Mouratoglou. Halep, a Romanian, will face Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan in the semifinals on Thursday. Ons Jabeur, the No. 3 seed from Tunisia, will play Tatjana Maria, a German ranked No. 103 who has been the biggest surprise of the women’s tournament.Last year, Fritz came close to surprising Djokovic before losing in five sets in the third round of the Australian Open in a match in which, strange but true, Djokovic suffered an abdominal injury. The scenario against Nadal must have felt agonizingly familiar, and he said his biggest regret was not pushing Nadal harder the three times Nadal served to stay in the match.“In the end, he was just really, really, really good,” Fritz said. “Certain parts of the match I felt like maybe I kind of just needed to come up with more, do more. I left a lot kind of up to him, and he delivered.” More

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      Nick Kyrgios to Appear in Court on Assault Allegation in Australia

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      The accusation landed on the eve of perhaps the most important match of Kyrgios’s controversy-filled career, a quarterfinal showdown with Cristian Garín.WIMBLEDON, England — The spotlight on the Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios, whose confrontations with opponents and Wimbledon officials have made his matches can’t-miss theater for the past week, grew hotter Tuesday when news emerged that the police have begun legal proceedings against him after a former girlfriend accused him of assaulting her in December.The accusations landed on the eve of one of his most important matches, a quarterfinal showdown with Cristian Garín of Chile that he is favored to win, and less than 24 hours after he survived a five-set challenge from the American Brandon Nakashima on Monday.That match was largely uneventful by Kyrgios standards, mostly lacking the battles with umpires, the racket smashing and even the spitting in the direction of fans that often occur when Kyrgios signs up for a tournament.After the 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-2 win Monday, Kyrgios spoke of how good he felt, how he had reached a kind of equilibrium in his life after years of turmoil and how he has been able to enjoy moments on the tennis court in a way he rarely has in the past.“That’s probably the first time in my career where I wasn’t playing well, regardless of playing Centre Court Wimbledon, fully packed crowd, I was able to just say, ‘Wow, look how far I’ve come,’ to myself,” he said. “I was bouncing the ball before I served. I really just smiled to myself. I was like, ‘We’re here, we’re competing at Wimbledon, putting in a good performance mentally.’”Hours later, news broke in Australia that Kyrgios had been charged with one count of common assault related to an incident with an ex-girlfriend, Chiara Passari, according to The Canberra Times and a statement from the police. Kyrgios is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 2.“While Mr. Kyrgios is committed to addressing any and all allegations once clear, taking the matter seriously does not warrant any misreading of the process Mr. Kyrgios is required to follow,” Pierre Johannessen, a lawyer for Kyrgios, said in a statement Tuesday evening.Kyrgios did not register for a practice court on Tuesday, unlike the other players who have qualified for quarterfinals, including his opponent, Garín.On Instagram, where Kyrgios is active and has posted statements during previous controversies, he posted a picture of himself speaking with a young girl at a tennis tournament and added the caption, “This is why I play ❤️ to all my youngsters out there, believe in yourself.”The charge against Kyrgios — he is accused of grabbing Passari during a dispute — carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.The charge creates an awkward situation for Wimbledon, but also the ATP, which organizes the men’s professional tour.A spokesperson for the All England Club said Tuesday: “We have been made aware of legal proceedings involving Nick Kyrgios in Australia, and as they are ongoing, we are not in a position to offer a comment. We are in touch with Nick’s team and he remains scheduled to play his quarterfinal match tomorrow.”The ATP in the past has waited for the legal process to unfold before penalizing a player for behavior off the court.But it came under pressure to take action after allegations surfaced that Alexander Zverev had attacked a former girlfriend twice in hotel rooms during tournaments, even though the woman had not filed charges with the police and said she would not do so. Zverev has denied the allegations.The ATP, which did not comment on the Kyrgios charge because, a spokesman said, the legal process is not resolved, announced last year that it was conducting an independent investigation of Zverev. The organization has not announced anything related to it other than to say it was continuing. Zverev continued to compete on the tour until he injured an ankle in a semifinal match at the French Open last month against Rafael Nadal.Tournament officials at Wimbledon have fined Kyrgios $14,000 for two infractions this year: $10,000 after spitting in the direction of a fan after his first-round win and $4,000 fine for using an obscenity in his third-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas.He has also violated Wimbledon rules against having colored clothing by walking onto the court wearing — though not playing in — red sneakers and baseball caps that have been black or red.“More attention for me,” he said Monday when asked about a potential penalty for the dress code violation. “What’s that saying? Any publicity is good publicity, right?” More