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      Tennis’ Most Popular Podcast Is The Tennis Podcast

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      It started around David Law’s parents’ dining room table. A decade later, “The Tennis Podcast” is the conscience of the game and how the sport communicates with itself.WIMBLEDON, England — The moment Amélie Mauresmo, the French Open tournament director, said women’s tennis did not have as much appeal as men’s tennis right now, there was little doubt she was going to get an earful.Those objecting included a British woman named Catherine Whitaker, who delivered a scathing, 10-minute-35-second dressing down of Mauresmo on an increasingly influential show, “The Tennis Podcast.” Whitaker was somewhere between exasperated and aghast that a former No. 1-ranked player in women’s singles would say such a thing to explain why she had scheduled men for nine of the tournament’s 10 featured night sessions. She called out Mauresmo for possessing an “unconscious bias” against some of the world’s greatest and most famous female athletes.The next morning, a member of the French Open’s communications staff approached Whitaker with a proposition: Would she like to join a select group of journalists to speak with Mauresmo?That Whitaker’s words had gotten the attention of Mauresmo — who would later attempt to walk back her comments — might have been hard to foresee in 2012, when Whitaker and her boss, David Law, sat at the dining room table at his parents’ home to record the first episode of their podcast.“Maybe five people listened to it,” Law, a longtime tennis communications executive and BBC radio commentator, said during a recent interview. For years, the show stopped and restarted, with episodes dropping irregularly and attracting tiny audiences.A decade on, “The Tennis Podcast” regularly tops the Apple charts for the sport in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and Spain. It is a favorite of the game’s luminaries and commentators, such as Billie Jean King, who has listened to the entire archive, Chris Evert, Pam Shriver and Mary Carillo. In the United States, it recently ranked 40th among all sports podcasts. In certain moments, such as during Mauresmo’s crisis, it is how the sport talks to itself.From left, David Law, Catherine Whitaker and Matt Roberts host the show. “He’s the one they all like the most,” Law said of Roberts. “I know, because I read all the emails.”James Hill for The New York Times“I’m a nerd,” Carillo said in late May, just before taping a special 10th anniversary show high above the main court, Philippe Chatrier, at Roland Garros. “These guys know their stuff. And they’re funny. You can’t fake funny.”Every sport has its handful of must-listens. Most feature hosts who came to their podcasts with established platforms or have major media companies behind them.Whitaker, Law and Matthew Roberts, who began as the show’s Twitter intern in 2015 when he was still in college, are the genre’s charming garage band that broke through, though they are not sure why. Maybe tennis debate just sounds more proper with British accents? “The Tennis Podcast” has become an interesting test case for a crowded podcast market where it’s hard to develop an audience and even harder to make a living, as the three are trying to do.Roberts, 26, still is not sure if this is a legitimate career choice.“Maybe I’ll write some more?” he wondered one evening in Paris.At big events like the little competition taking place here at the All England Club this week, the group will occasionally set up with the microphones and a pint at a picnic table, though with a growing legion of fans, especially at Wimbledon, that arrangement is becoming more problematic.On the show (and in their lives), Law, 48, plays the goofy but thoughtful father. He is clueless about most pop culture references. He often jousts with Whitaker, 36, as though she were a much younger stepsister. Roberts serves as the wise-beyond-his-years son, often settling their disputes.“And he can do that annoying, jumping backhand thing,” Whitaker said of Roberts, who played junior tennis tournaments and has a degree in modern languages.At this year’s French Open, a fan of the podcast nervously approached to praise Roberts.“He’s the one they all like the most,” Law said of Roberts. “I know, because I read all the emails.”They now earn enough to travel to all the Grand Slam tournaments, though Wimbledon is a home game of sorts. Law, who is married with two children, recently quit his day job as the communications director for the annual grass-court tournament at Queen’s Club in London, about 120 miles south of his home near Birmingham.Through newsletter subscriptions and an annual Kickstarter campaign, the hosts can sustain themselves and earn enough to travel to all four Grand Slam tournaments.James Hill for The New York TimesWhitaker, who lives in London, sent Law an email after she graduated from university telling him she was desperate to work in tennis. He hired her to assist with his work with retired players on the Champions Tour.He also liked her voice, and eventually raised the concept of a podcast. Whitaker was skeptical, but went along.Law got introduced to podcasts the same way a lot of Britons did — listening to “The Ricky Gervais Show” in the mid-aughts. As the medium grew, Law realized that each sport seemed to have a podcast that became The One, and quickly grabbed the title “The Tennis Podcast.”It was a good name, he thought. “And there were no other tennis podcasts, so it was actually true,” he said.In 2013, with the podcast muddling along with just a few hundred weekly listeners, Whitaker went to work writing news releases about crime and punishment in the press office of the Crown Prosecution Service. She knew within a month that despite her yearning for stability, she had made a terrible mistake. It took her a year to walk away and commit to the podcast, as well as a few side gigs in tennis.The venture cost Law money the first four years. In 2015 he sold a small sponsorship to BNP Paribas, the French bank.The next year, Law, Whitaker and Roberts did the first of their annual Kickstarter campaigns, which, along with subscriptions to additional content for 5 pounds per month or £50 for the year, or about $6 and $61, sustain them.They have 3,000 subscribers and roughly 35,000 weekly listeners. Their success helped Whitaker get hired to host Amazon Prime’s tennis coverage.They owe a great debt to Carillo. Five years ago, she approached Whitaker at a tournament and asked her if she was from “The Tennis Podcast.” Whitaker said she was, then found Law and told him the strangest thing had just happened.Carillo spread the word. She told King, who told Evert, who told Shriver, or something like that. No one is certain of the order. All are now dedicated listeners. King joined the show’s hosts at Whitaker’s apartment last summer for curry and to watch the European Championship soccer matches.Shriver, right, Mary Carillo and Billie Jean King are among the game’s luminaries who regularly listen to the podcast.James Hill for The New York TimesAfter Shriver went public with the revelation that her longtime coach, Don Candy, had sexually abused her as a teenager, her first interview was on “The Tennis Podcast.” Steve Simon, the head of the WTA Tour, also came on to discuss sexual abuse.Most shows have no guests. The troika chat about the latest results from Estoril, in Portugal, or Istanbul. They mock one another’s food choices or underhand serving abilities.Law said years of mistakes and research have provided valuable lessons, such as the importance of releasing a new podcast weekly, dropping it on a specific day (usually Monday), limiting the weekly shows to about an hour, and doing 45-minute daily episodes during the Grand Slams.Things went a little longer after Mauresmo stepped in it earlier this month at the French Open, allowing Whitaker the proper time for her takedown. She described Mauresmo as a product of a system “designed and upheld almost exclusively by men,” telling everyone who might believe that men’s tennis was inherently more attractive than women’s tennis to “get in the bin.”A lot more than five people were listening. More

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      Entering Wimbledon, Emma Raducanu Carries a Heavy Load of Expectations

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      Emma Raducanu came out of nowhere to win the U.S. Open at 18 years old. Things have been a little rocky ever since. The British tennis-sphere gasped earlier this month.For the third time this year, the teen sensation Emma Raducanu had to quit in the middle of the match because of an injury. Just weeks before Wimbledon, her participation in the event, the most anticipated homecoming this sport has experienced in years, appeared to be in jeopardy.A lengthy headline in The Daily Mail put it this way:“Emma Raducanu has ‘no idea’ if she’ll be fit for Wimbledon as she RETIRES just 33 minutes into her first match on grass since last summer, after US Open champion struggled through just seven games with ‘freak’ injury to her left side.” (Emphasis theirs.)A day later, however, Raducanu, who is 19 years old, put out word that she expected to be just fine for Wimbledon, which begins Monday. But there will still be jitters until she takes her first swings, most likely on Centre Court, and perhaps manages to win her opening match. A kingdom is dreaming.“This is stress that is off the scale really,” said Annabel Croft, a British former professional and once rising young star who is one of a handful of women with an inkling of the kind of pressure Raducanu is under.Wimbledon is where it all began a year ago for Raducanu. Back then, she was just weeks removed from taking her university entrance exams, a practically unknown player with smooth strokes and an ability to glide across the court. Raducanu cruised to the fourth round at Wimbledon, charming the fans with her athleticism and graceful style before retiring with breathing difficulty against Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia.As it turned out, that run was just a warm-up. Two months later at the U.S. Open, she won 10 consecutive matches on her way to the title. Raducanu became the first British woman to win a Grand Slam title since Virginia Wade in 1977.Raducanu, a British citizen born in Canada to a Chinese mother and Romanian father, was seemingly built for the global sports stardom that has followed.British fans’ expectations of Raducanu mean that the pressure on her is “off the scale,” the former tennis player Annabel Croft said.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockThere was the Met Gala, and then millions of dollars in sponsorships from the highest-end corporations — Porsche, Tiffany and Co., British Airways, Evian, Dior and Vodafone, and on and on. Now, when someone says “Emma” in Britain, they more likely mean Raducanu than Jane Austen. She has become the game’s ultimate disrupter.Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American, said in May that Raducanu had altered how she viewed winning a Grand Slam title — meaning she now believes anyone could do it, even her. Gauff made the finals of the French Open earlier this month.Raducanu’s unlikely path could inspire more players: Developing into a Grand Slam winner while shunning tennis academy life and preparing to attend one of England’s storied universities. Winning one of the sport’s four major championships in just the second try. Doing it with a seeming immunity to pressure.Raducanu recently announced that she has decided not to hire a full-time coach. She has been through four, and she has determined that what she really needs is high-intensity hitting partners. “Sparring,” as she put it recently. That will get her more used to the pace of the highest level of tennis. Playing without a coach is also something most top players just don’t do.For this disruption to be successful, at some point Raducanu’s results will have to return to the level she reached at the end of last summer. Her record is an undistinguished 8-11 this year.She and her former coaches have said she got tripped up by Covid-19 in December, which interrupted her off-season training. She entered the season in a diminished physical condition. That, perhaps, led to the nagging injuries and not having the season she had hoped for. She said recently that because of the U.S. Open win and the 2,000 points it produced, her ranking (No. 11) is probably better than her game.All of this, of course, would be fine if Raducanu were just another player just beginning her second year as a full-time professional. Raducanu is so new to this life that last month in Paris, where she played in the main draw of the French Open for the first time, she said she is looking forward to her second full year as a pro because she would no longer be so clueless about her surroundings every week.“I’m always asking where everything is,” she said. And yet, Raducanu is the reigning U.S. Open champion, and the first Grand Slam champion to emerge from a qualifying tournament. She was the BBC’s sports personality of the year for 2021, and the reason the Lawn Tennis Association, which oversees tennis in Britain, reports a boomlet in participation since September.For seven consecutive months, adult monthly participation has steadily increased, said John Dolan, a spokesman for the organization. Women’s participation during the first three months of 2022 was stronger than it has been the past five years. Annual participation among 16- to 34-year-olds is up 10 percent.“My academy is absolutely packed with little boys and girls wanting to be the next one,” Clinton Coleman, a global scout for IMG, the sport’s top representation firm, and the head professional of a London tennis center, said of the Raducanu phenomenon. “Never seen anything like it.”Simon Briggs, the tennis correspondent for The Telegraph, one of the major British news organizations, said that a year ago he thought he was going to have to find another line of work. Andy Murray’s career had hit its twilight and Britain’s talent pipeline seemed out of gas.Raducanu received medical attention before retiring from her fourth-round match at Wimbledon last year.Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via ShutterstockThen Raducanu made Wimbledon’s fourth round. Briggs had to write a story on her virtually every day once she began the summer hard court season in North America. Three days after Raducanu lost in the second round of the French Open, Briggs was still filing stories about her.“She’s got to be the biggest female sports story here since the Second World War,” Briggs said last week.Jo Durie, a top 10 player from Britain in the 1970s who commentates on tennis for the BBC, said people who don’t even follow sports often stop her in the market to ask about Raducanu.“She’s so well-known people expect her to play well and win all the time,” Durie said. “Of course it’s not fair. She’s so young.”It’s possible only Christine Truman can understand what Raducanu’s transformation into “Emma” has really been like. Truman, 81, reached the semifinals of Wimbledon when she was 16 years old and won the French Open two years later. The victory earned her a voucher worth 40 pounds ($112 in the United States at the time) that could not be used on anything tennis-related because that would violate the rules then on professionalism. But she became a household name practically overnight.She was tall and blonde and easily recognized and could not go to the bread line, or ride the escalator down to the subway, or visit the pharmacist without being stopped. She met Winston Churchill, who had sent her congratulatory telegrams. He was quite old by then, though it was still a thrill for her.“Winston, it’s the tennis girl,” Clementine Churchill said to her husband, who shook Truman’s hand.In her mid-20s, Truman said, she thought she could both “have fun” and stay at the top of the game. It did not work so well.Her advice to Raducanu?“Remember what made you good and don’t lose sight of that,” she said in an interview last week.And hire a coach.“They can spur you on when you’re doing well and bring you back up when you’re doubting yourself,” she said. “If they have the belief, it rubs off on you.” More

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      Returning to Singles, Serena Williams Will Face an Unseeded Player

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      After a year away from singles, she risked drawing the world’s No. 1, Iga Swiatek, in the first round. Instead, she will face a player ranked 113th.In her first singles match in a year, Serena Williams could have faced one of the new leaders of the game that she once dominated.As an unseeded wild card at Wimbledon, Williams could have been drawn to play No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who has won six tournaments in a row. Or Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American who is on the verge of breaking into the top 10 and just lost to Swiatek in the French Open final.But when Friday’s draw was done, Williams was spared an established threat in the first round. Instead, she will play Harmony Tan, an unseeded French 24-year-old who is ranked 113th and will be making her main-draw debut at Wimbledon.The match will almost certainly be played on Centre Court, where Williams has won seven Wimbledon singles titles, six women’s doubles titles and two Olympic gold medals when the All England Club staged the tennis event at the 2012 London Games.But though Tan will be stepping on to that famous patch of grass for the first time, Williams will also be in new territory. At age 40, she remains arguably the biggest star in women’s tennis (Naomi Osaka makes it a debate), but Williams has played very little tennis in the last three years and played none at all on tour for nearly a year until returning in Eastbourne this week for two doubles matches with Ons Jabeur.They won them both before Jabeur withdrew with a right knee injury as a precautionary move before Wimbledon, where unlike Williams, Jabeur is one of the leading favorites for the title despite never reaching a Grand Slam final.That is a reflection of Jabeur’s shotmaking talent and recent victory at the grass court tournament in Berlin, but it is also a reminder that the women’s game is in transition. The reigning Wimbledon women’s champion, Ashleigh Barty, sent shock waves through the sport by retiring in March at age 25, weary of the travel far from her home in Australia and lacking the drive to continue pushing for the biggest prizes.Iga Swiatek, celebrating her French Open victory, has won 35 straight matches going into Wimbledon.Thibault Camus/Associated PressSwiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, has stepped convincingly into the gap, winning 35 straight matches, and she could make it 36 by defeating a Croatian qualifier, Jana Fett, in the first round of Wimbledon. But Swiatek has played little on grass at this early stage in her career and below her, the hierarchy on tour is constantly shifting.In winning her six straight titles, Swiatek beat six different players in the finals. Anett Kontaveit, seeded No. 2 at Wimbledon behind Swiatek, has lost in the first round in three of her last four tournaments and has not played a match on grass this season, attributing her recent struggles to her continuing recovery from Covid-19.This year’s Wimbledon, which begins Monday, will not offer a full-strength field for women or men. Wimbledon barred Russian and Belarusian players from competing, in part because of pressure from the British government after the invasion of Ukraine.The tours responded by stripping Wimbledon of ranking points for the first time, and despite extensive discussions, both sides held firm to their positions.Wimbledon has maintained its prize money at normal levels, and though there was speculation that players might skip the tournament because of the lack of points, that has not materialized. Of the highest ranked players, the only ones who will be absent are either injured, like Alexander Zverev, Leylah Fernandez and Osaka or barred, like Daniil Medvedev and Aryna Sabalenka.Wimbledon is the only major tennis tournament to bar the Russians and Belarusians, and the ban has excluded four of the top 40 men, including No. 1 Medvedev and No. 8 Andrey Rublev, both of Russia. But Novak Djokovic, who has won the last three editions of Wimbledon, and his longtime rival Rafael Nadal are both in the men’s field. So is Andy Murray, now unseeded and trying to recover from an abdominal injury after an encouraging run to the final on grass in Stuttgart.Roger Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon singles champion who is still recovering from knee surgery at age 40, will miss the tournament for the first time since 1997 (he won the boys title in 1998 before playing in the main draw in 1999).Djokovic, who has a good draw, will face Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea in the first round. Nadal, playing Wimbledon for the first time since 2019, will face Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina. Murray, the British star, will face James Duckworth of Australia.Wimbledon’s ban has excluded six of the top 40 women, including No. 6 Sabalenka, a Belarusian who was a Wimbledon semifinalist last year; No. 20 Victoria Azarenka, a former No. 1; and No. 34 Aliaksandra Sasnovich, who was Serena Williams’s most recent opponent at Wimbledon.Sasnovich advanced last year when Williams retired in the opening set of their first-round match after reinjuring her right hamstring in a slip on the fresh grass on Centre Court. Partly in response, Wimbledon, for the first time, allowed players to train on Centre Court before the tournament to wear in the grass and improve the footing during the early rounds.Williams, who has played more at Wimbledon than anyone in the women’s field, already knows her way around the grass, but she has been increasingly prone to injuries and will now have to try to find form in a hurry.Williams will face the unseeded Harmony Tan of France, who is ranked 113th in the world, in the first round at Wimbledon.Miguel Sierra/EPA, via ShutterstockTan, despite her world ranking, has the tools to create some doubt and trouble. She is an effective counterpuncher who likes to change pace with slices and drop shots and could force Williams to dig low and move more than she might like at the beginning of her comeback.Williams, with her first-strike power and deep experience, certainly looks like the favorite, but if she gets past Tan, she will quickly run into clearer threats. She could face No. 32 seed Sara Sorribes Tormo, a tenacious Spaniard, in the second round and could then face No. 6 Karolina Pliskova, who lost to Barty in last year’s Wimbledon final. Williams has never played Tan or Sorribes, and she has split her four previous matches with Pliskova, losing to her in the semifinals of the 2016 U.S. Open and quarterfinals of the 2019 Australian Open.Advance past the third round and Williams could face Gauff for the first time, in a match that would certainly generate major interest. But it seems most premature to start talking about the fourth round when Williams has played no singles at all in a year. This is the second longest break of her remarkable career, ranking only behind the 13-month break she took after winning the 2017 Australian Open when she was already two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia.She looked understandably rusty and slow off the mark in the early stages of her doubles matches with Jabeur in Eastbourne, but she soon found her timing and came up with some trademark first serves under duress in both victories. Her ball striking when in position was often solid, but the trick will be putting herself in prime position in singles, where there is so much more court to cover and the potential for extended rallies if Williams cannot dominate with her serve and full-cut returns.The new wave of women’s players, led by Swiatek, have adapted to the power and generate plenty of it themselves. A deep Williams run would be quite an achievement, but if there is any Grand Slam where she could achieve it with so little preparation, it would be Wimbledon. More

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      Why You Can’t Watch LIV Golf on American Television

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      The human rights record of its funder, Saudi Arabia, may be the least of the new tour’s challenges when it comes to getting on American television.For the Saudi-backed upstart LIV Golf tour, the strategy for luring top golfers like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson away from the prestige and stability of the PGA Tour was simple: Offer cash, and lots of it.The arrival of the new tour and the defection of PGA Tour stars were major disruptions in what has been a stable and even staid sport. But when the first LIV event was finally held outside London last weekend after months of anticipation, it was not shown on television in the United States. And it’s unlikely that any American network will be broadcasting LIV events anytime soon.The reason boils down to this: The networks are happy airing the PGA Tour.“We are positioned as the home of golf in this country,” said Pete Bevacqua, the chairman of the NBC Sports, which shows by far the most golf in the United States. “We are not only satisfied where we are, but unbelievably pleased where we are.”Some golfers couldn’t resist the pull of the new tour, whose events are shorter than the PGA Tour’s (three days instead of four) and offer huge payouts, with individual winners receiving $4 million and the members of winning teams sharing $3 million, far more than most PGA Tour events. Even last-place finishers get $120,000; PGA Tour players who don’t make the cut after two rounds get nothing.Charl Schwartzel of South Africa won $4 million for winning the inaugural LIV Golf tournament. He pocketed another $750,000 because his team won the team competition.Alastair Grant/Associated PressBut the LIV tour got nowhere with those who might have aired its events in the United States. Representatives for LIV Golf spoke with most American broadcasters, but did not have substantive discussions about a media rights agreement with any of them, according to people familiar with those discussions. LIV broached the idea of buying time to show the London tournament on Fox — an inversion of the normal business relationship, where the media company pays the sports organization to show its event — but discussions did not go far.In the end, the London tournament was not on American broadcast TV or popular sports streaming platforms such as Peacock and ESPN+. Instead, golf fans could watch it on the streaming service DAZN, YouTube, Facebook or LIV Golf’s website, without commercials.Limited viewership numbers suggest not many of them did. The final round of the London event attracted an average of 68,761 viewers on YouTube and fewer than 5,000 on Facebook, according to Apex Marketing, a sports and entertainment analytics firm. On the same weekend, 812,000 viewers watched the final round of the PGA Tour’s Canadian Open on Golf Channel, and 2.78 million watched when coverage switched over to CBS.The absence of a media rights agreement would normally threaten the survival of a new sports league. But LIV Golf is not a commercial entity with a profit imperative. It is bankrolled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and part of a larger effort by the kingdom to improve its image around the world. Players who have joined the LIV tour have been accused of helping to “sportswash” Saudi Arabia’s record of human rights abuses, including the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.LIV did not respond to a request for comment.But NBC and other broadcast networks have a long list of reasons other than reputational damage to steer clear of the new venture.LIV’s main barrier to entry in the United States is that most major media companies are deeply invested in the success of its competitor, the PGA Tour. NBC, CBS and ESPN are collectively in the first year of a nine-year, $6 billion-plus agreement to show the PGA Tour in the United States, while Warner Bros. Discovery (which owns TNT and TBS) is paying the PGA Tour $2 billion to show the tour worldwide.The media companies are not contractually restricted from showing LIV, according to the people familiar with the deals, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private agreements. But they believe that doing so would draw attention away from the tour on which they are spending billions.Fox, which has a history of risk-taking in sports (it is currently investing in spring football), might seem like a good candidate to team up with LIV, but Fox does not televise any golf, and that is by design. The network had the rights to broadcast the U.S. Open through 2026, but paid money to give up those rights to NBC.Even if networks wanted to take a chance on LIV Golf, the logistical challenges would be significant. Golf monopolizes entire weekends throughout the year and is more expensive to produce than arena- and stadium-based sports. (Golf presents a particularly difficult hurdle for Fox, which rarely puts sports on its streaming service, Tubi, meaning it is difficult to show golf when schedules collide.)Phil Mickelson at the LIV Golf tournament near London. The winner of 45 PGA Tour events, he was suspended by the PGA Tour after announcing he would play on the LIV tour.Paul Childs/ReutersLIV Golf also did not have any stars on board until recently, and it is not clear whether it will attract enough top golfers to make its events attractive to fans. Questions about the tour’s backing have been uncomfortable for those who have joined.“I would ask any player who has left or any player who would ever consider leaving, ‘Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?’” Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, said in a televised interview Sunday.Players who have signed contracts with LIV have been booted from the PGA Tour, though that could soon become the subject of litigation. Players have also been dropped by sponsors, either because of the association with Saudi Arabia or because companies don’t want to support golfers competing on a tour few are watching.A Quick Guide to the LIV Golf SeriesCard 1 of 6A new series. More

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      Phil Mickelson Will Play LIV Golf Event That Starts Friday Near London

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      “I fully realize and respect some may disagree with this decision,” said Mickelson, who hasn’t competed since his comments about the contentious tour were reported in February.Phil Mickelson, who has not played competitively since incendiary remarks he made in support of a Saudi-backed golf league that hopes to rival the established PGA Tour were reported in February, will end his self-imposed layoff later this week by playing in the first event of the upstart LIV Golf circuit.Mickelson, the winner of six major golf championships including last year’s P.G.A. Championship when he became the oldest golfer to win a major, will be one of 48 players competing for $25 million in prize money when the tournament begins Thursday at the Centurion Club near London. Last week, Dustin Johnson, 15th in the men’s world golf rankings, also agreed to compete on the alternative tour. A report in The Telegraph said Johnson was paid $125 million to join LIV Golf, whose major shareholder is the Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.The breakaway tour has also promised hefty appearance fees and a format that guarantees every entrant six-figure payouts.“This new path is a fresh start, one that is exciting for me at this stage in my career,” Mickelson, whose world ranking has slumped to 72nd, wrote on Twitter Monday. “I fully realize and respect some may disagree with this decision and may have strong opinions and I empathize with that. I have a renewed spirit and excitement for the game,” he added.Mickelson’s announcement will most likely lead to his suspension from the PGA Tour, which has paid Mickelson more than $94 million in tournament earnings for 30 years. Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, has said players who choose to play LIV Golf events will be subject to discipline that could include suspensions or lifetime bans.Mickelson, with a reputation as a golf firebrand, might relish a court challenge to the PGA Tour’s right to ban him. Monahan has not flinched when asked if he had the authority to discipline players in that manner, insisting that the tour’s lawyers believe any punishment handed to golfers who play for the rival tour will withstand legal scrutiny.Mickelson, one of the most recognizable golfers of his generation, drew heavy criticism after he acknowledged Saudi Arabia had a “horrible record on human rights” — including the murder of a Washington Post journalist — but said he was still talking with, and aiding, the new tour because it was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Earlier this year, Mickelson, 51, accused the PGA Tour, where he has won 45 times, of “obnoxious greed.” He later said his remarks were “reckless,” but nonetheless several longtime corporate sponsors, including KPMG and Workday, ended their relationships with him.On Monday, Mickelson wrote: “I want to again apologize to the many people I offended and hurt with my comments a few months ago. I have made mistakes in my career in some of the things I have said and done. Taking time away and self-reflecting has been very humbling.”The tournament near London is one of eight events this year in the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Early this season, Mickelson competed in three PGA Tour events, missing the cut in two and finishing tied for 30th in the third.Although a three-time Masters winner, he skipped this year’s tournament. On Monday, however, Mickelson said he intended to play in future major championships. He is currently in the field for next week’s U.S. Open and next month’s British Open.Greg Norman, the chief executive and commissioner of LIV Golf, who said last week that “free agency has finally come to golf,” praised Mickelson.“His contributions to the sport and connection to fans around the globe cannot be overstated, and we are grateful to have him,” Norman said on Monday in a statement.Many of Mickelson’s colleagues on the PGA Tour, including his longtime rival Tiger Woods, have been critical of Mickelson’s adversarial stance toward the tour.“The viewpoints that Phil has made with the tour and what the tour has meant to all of us has been polarizing,” Woods said last month.Rory McIlroy, a four-time major winner, called Mickelson’s comments, “naïve, selfish, egotistical, ignorant.”Last week, McIlroy, who has been outspoken in his disdain for the LIV Golf venture, was dismissive of the catalog of players entered in the tournament to begin Thursday at the Centurion Club.“I certainly don’t think the field is anything to jump up and down about,” McIlroy said.But Monday on Twitter, Mickelson was cheerful.“I’m thrilled to begin with LIV Golf and I appreciate everyone involved,” he wrote. More

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      ‘Wagatha Christie’ Case Offers a Riveting Peek Into Celebrity Culture

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      Libel proceedings in London have laid bare the personal lives of two British celebrities in a legal whodunit for the social media age. And it wasn’t just the tabloids that became obsessed with the feud.LONDON — A candid window into the glamorous world of English soccer, and an exposé of the machinations of back-stabbing celebrities. A phone lost to the sea, along with the evidence it supposedly contained. And a legal whodunit with powerhouse lawyers dissecting private WhatsApp messages in open court as tears flowed on the witness stand.These were some of the gossip-fueling facets of a libel case contested by the wives of two famous English soccer players that is expected to draw to a close on Thursday. The proceedings, focused on an Instagram feud between the two women, have riveted Britain over the past week, with establishment news media and tabloids alike breathlessly covering each revelation, and photographers competing for shots of celebrities arriving outside the London courtroom.The judge in the case will later rule on whether one of the women, Coleen Rooney, defamed the other, Rebekah Vardy, in social media posts that accused Ms. Vardy of leaking Ms. Rooney’s personal information to The Sun newspaper.Tabloid coverage of the wives and girlfriends of soccer players (widely known in Britain by the acronym WAG) is intense, and both women have leveraged their exposure to build huge social media followings and achieve some fame in their own right as media personalities. Both took the stand during the case, clad in an array of designer clothes (dissected by the media for hidden messaging).The widespread curiosity in the proceedings should surprise nobody, said Adrian Bingham, a professor of modern British history at the University of Sheffield who has studied media and gender issues. “The essence of a good story remains the same,” he said, noting the “healthy lashings of sex and deceit and money and glory” in the case.“We don’t know how the plot ends so this is exciting,” he added. “Who did do it? Who is going to be found guilty?”The public sparring between the two women began in October 2019 after Ms. Rooney disclosed online that a follower on her private Instagram account had been leaking information to a tabloid newspaper. She had a suspicion who the leaker was, she added, explaining that she had engineered a sting operation in which she gradually limited her followers to just one account — Ms. Vardy’s — and then posted false stories to see if they would show up in the news media.Ms. Vardy holding hands with her husband, the Leicester City soccer player Jamie Vardy, as the couple left court in London on Tuesday. She has denied leaking stories about Ms. Rooney.Hannah Mckay/ReutersMs. Rooney said that the stories were indeed picked up, and she revealed the findings of her investigation in an online statement accusing Ms. Vardy of leaking them. Ms. Rooney’s apparent sleuthing skills led to the case becoming known as the “Wagatha Christie” affair — playing off the WAG acronym and the name of the detective novelist Agatha Christie.When asked in court by Ms. Vardy’s lawyer what she had intended to achieve with her online statement, Ms. Rooney said: “I wasn’t achieving anything; what I wanted was to stop the person who was leaking my private information to The Sun.”“This was my last resort,” she added.Ms. Vardy has denied being behind the leaks and said that multiple people had access to her account. As a result of Ms. Rooney’s post, she said, she received verbal abuse from the public while pregnant, including threats against the child she was carrying.“I have been called a leaker, and it’s not nice,” Ms. Vardy said during the hearing.In 2020, Ms. Vardy began libel proceedings against Ms. Rooney, and, because the two women were unable to reach a settlement, the case went to trial — an unusual and costly process that will have racked up millions of pounds in legal fees, according to lawyers’ estimates.With such vast sums at stake and the private lives of the rich and famous on full view in court, the feud quickly entranced large sections of the British public.Even the more serious news outlets, which would normally ignore such a celebrity spat, have found a way into the story by analyzing the broader implications of widespread social media use, Professor Bingham said.“There is a legitimacy to talking about this because it’s in a courtroom and it raises genuinely serious issues of privacy,” he noted.And for the tabloids, the case was a feeding frenzy. Athalie Matthews, a London-based lawyer who specializes in defamation, said the personal details that emerged in court effectively blew “the personal lives of both parties wide open in a way that the press can report on with complete impunity.”Ms. Rooney with her husband, the former England soccer captain Wayne Rooney, arriving in court last week. Her sting operation and accusations against Ms. Vardy are at the center of the libel case.Dan Kitwood/Getty ImagesInterest was so high that attendees spilled into an overflow room at the London courtroom. Juicy revelations were blogged live by journalists and summarized by news outlets as diverse as the BBC and The Daily Mail — though by Thursday, journalists waiting outside the courtroom seemed ready for the trial’s end.Ms. Rooney and her husband, the former England soccer captain Wayne Rooney, had been experiencing marital tensions, it was revealed in one session. WhatsApp messages between Ms. Vardy and her agent, Caroline Watt, disparaged Ms. Rooney and discussed leaking stories about other people in exchange for payment, the court also heard. And a phone potentially containing relevant WhatsApp messages was accidentally dropped by Ms. Watt into the North Sea, Ms. Vardy’s lawyer said — a mishap that Ms. Rooney’s lawyer said appeared to be a case of concealing evidence.Ms. Vardy acknowledged that Ms. Watt had previously passed information about Ms. Rooney to The Sun newspaper, but Ms. Vardy’s lawyers argued that there was insufficient evidence that Ms. Vardy herself was responsible for any leaks. They have also said that Ms. Watt is ill and therefore not able to provide testimony.If Ms. Vardy wins the libel case, the damages awarded are likely to be in the tens of thousands of pounds, according to legal experts, with Ms. Rooney probably having to pay her rival’s legal fees. If Ms. Rooney wins, Ms. Vardy will be left with the bill for the fees and could face a counter case for infringement of privacy, Ms. Matthews, the defamation lawyer, said.“The trial is not going to change the image of libel as the preserve of the rich,” Ms. Matthews added, noting that few people had the money to risk on such legal proceedings.But, Ms. Matthews said, it might cause people to reconsider before posting material that could cause serious harm to someone’s reputation.Regardless of the outcome, the case has highlighted the tensions inherent between the desire for privacy and the price of fame. “This is what tabloid culture is all about and we’re just seeing a new iteration of this in a social media age,” Professor Bingham said. More

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      in Football

      Gallery Lures Soccer Fans to Tottenham Stadium for Art

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      A new gallery at the stadium of Tottenham Hotspur, a top London club, is presenting contemporary works to visitors, with mixed results.LONDON — Annie Lawrence, 8, was looking excited on Sunday afternoon. She was about to see Tottenham Hotspur, the soccer team she supports, play its first game of the English Premier League season — but her exhilaration wasn’t entirely because of the impending game.Lawrence was standing in OOF, a gallery dedicated to art about soccer that opened last month in a building attached to the club’s stadium gift shop. Some of the works on display seemed to be making her as happy as a Tottenham win.OOF’s opening show, “Balls” (until Nov. 21) features 17 pieces of contemporary art made using soccer balls, or representing them. There’s one made out of concrete, and another in silicon that looks like it’s covered in nipples.Pointing at a huge bronze of a deflated ball by Marcus Harvey, Lawrence said, “I’d like that one in my bedroom.” The artist said in a phone interview that the work might evoke anything from Britain’s decline as an imperial power to the end of childhood.Yet for Lawrence, its appeal was simpler: “It looks like you could sit in it, like a couch,” she said.Fans making their way to Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium on Sunday for the club’s first match of the English Premier League season.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe futuristic Tottenham Hotspur stadium viewed from a window of the gallery.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesAnnie Lawrence, 8, posing in front of one of her favorite works in the show: “Kipple #2” by Dominic Watson.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesLawrence then took her father upstairs and looked at a piece called “The Longest Ball in the World,” by the French artist Laurent Perbos. “It’s looks like a sausage!” she said, before grinning for photos in front of another piece that features a papier-mâché soccer ball rotating in a microwave.Not everyone was so enthusiastic about the works on display. Downstairs, Ron Iley, 71, looked at the ball covered in nipples by the Argentine artist Nicola Costantino. “Load of rubbish,” he said, then walked out.The worlds of art and soccer don’t necessarily mix. The most well-known recent work to combine both is a bust of Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese player, that made headlines when it was unveiled in 2017 because it looked nothing like him. Other pieces, like Andy Warhol’s acrylic silk-screens of Pelé, are little more than simple tributes to great sportsmen.Eddy Frankel, an art critic who founded OOF with the gallerists Jennie and Justin Hammond, said he wanted to show that art about football, as soccer is known in Britain, can be exciting, complex and thought-provoking. “We’re using football to express ideas about society,” Frankel said. “If you want to talk about racism, bigotry, homophobia, or if you want to talk community and belief and passion: All of that, you can with football.”A visitor photographs Nicola Costantino’s “Male Nipples Soccer Ball, Chocolate and Peach.”Alex Ingram for The New York TimesFrankel said he used to keep his passion for soccer quiet in Britain’s art world, since “you can’t really get away with being into both.” That changed one night, in 2015, when he was at Sotheby’s to report on an auction of a monumental painting by Gerhard Richter, the German painter. The sale clashed with a game featuring Tottenham Hotspur, the club Frankel supports, so he started watching the match on his phone. Soon, about 15 people behind him were leaning over to get a view, he said.“I just went, ‘Oh, so there are people who care about football in the art world like I do,” Frankel said.In 2018 he launched OOF as a magazine that explored the intersection of his passions. “We thought we’d maybe get away with four issues,” he said. The biannual magazine is now on issue eight.Setting up an exhibition space seemed the logical next step, Frankel said, adding that he initially wanted to open it in a former kebab shop near Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, which is in an area about eight miles north of London’s traditional gallery districts. But when he and his partners approached the local council for help, they suggested contacting the club instead, which offered a 19th century townhouse that sits incongruously outside the club’s futuristic stadium and is attached to its gift shop.Most of the works on display at OOF are for sale, with some pieces worth up to $120,000, yet the gallery has a much higher footfall than most commercial galleries. More than 60,000 fans come to the stadium on game days, and on Sunday, a few hundred spectators peeled off from the crowds for a look around, many dressed in Tottenham Hotspur’s uniform.OOF is located in a 19th-century townhouse owned by the club that can be reached via the stadium gift shop.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesOOF’s organisers: The art critic Eddy Frankel and the gallerists Jennie and Justin Hammond. “The Longest Ball in the World,” by Laurent Perbos, is on the floor in front of them.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesAbigail Lane’s “Self-Portrait as a Pheasant” is made from a football, bird wings, oil paint, painted wood and glass.Alex Ingram for The New York Times“We’re basically running a museum, without a museum budget,” Frankel said.A tongue-in-cheek sign at the entrance asks visitors not to kick the art, but not everyone had complied, Frankel said: On a recent visit, Ledley King, a former Tottenham Hotspur captain, had given “The Longest Ball in the World” a light boot.Pebros, the artist behind the work, laughed when told about the incident in a telephone interview. “Maybe he doesn’t go to many galleries, so he didn’t know,” he said.The current squad, including its famed striker Harry Kane, had not yet been to visit the gallery, Frankel said. The players were trying to keep social interactions to a minimum during the pandemic.“Obviously, we’re a commercial gallery so it’d be nice to sell some art,” Frankel said. “But the real success is if we can get loads of people through the door, and get them to engage in contemporary art, who normally wouldn’t,” he added.Many of the several hundred visitors on Sunday fit that bill. “We don’t go to galleries if we’re honest,” said Hannah Barnato, 27, there with her partner. “But it’s interesting. It’s different,” she said.Paul Deller’s “A Playground of Bubbleheads’,” a work the artist made in 2020 and 2021.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesSam Rabin, one of three guides in the gallery who talk the fans through the works, said that was a common reaction. “I’ve never heard the phrase, ‘It’s different,’ more than I have working here,” he said.But many visitors, especially children, showed a deep connection with the art on display, he said, adding that this proved soccer and art were not the separate worlds they might seem. “They’re both emotional experiences,” he said. “They’re both worthwhile experiences.” More

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      in Tennis

      Sebastian, Nelly and Jessica Korda Succeed in the Family Business

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      Petr Korda has long envisioned greatness for his children, the pro golfers Nelly and Jessica and the tennis pro Sebastian, who won his first-round match at Wimbledon.WIMBLEDON, England — Sebastian Korda watched from his father’s hotel room in London on Sunday night as his sister Nelly achieved a major dream, winning the Women’s P.G.A. Championship in Atlanta. Two days later, on a different sort of green, Sebastian kept the family business booming. More