Murray, Andy (1987- )

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      Carlos Alcaraz Has Been Studying the Grass Court Masters. That Means Andy Murray.

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      On a day many matches were rained out at the All England Club, Alcaraz displayed his continued improvement on grass, and what he has learned from Murray.Carlos Alcaraz took a little time to rest after coming up short in the French Open last month, and then he embarked on the next step toward strengthening one of the few remaining weaknesses in his tennis development — playing on grass.For Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, that meant getting enough training sessions and matches on the surface that is at once the most traditional and most quirky in the sport. It also meant hours of watching videos of Andy Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion and one of the masters of grass court tennis.On a day of rain that caused the cancellation or suspension of nearly every match not contested on the two covered courts at the All England Club, Alcaraz showed that his homework was paying off, and Murray provided the young Spaniard with a fresh batch of study material.Alcaraz has never advanced past the round of 16 at Wimbledon, but he has left no doubt about his goals for his third go-round at this most venerated of tennis competitions.“To win the tournament,” he said after the 6-0, 6-2, 7-5 pounding he delivered to Jeremy Chardy of France. “I have a lot of confidence right now.”An afternoon of play against Chardy, who had announced that he planned to retire after this tournament, was sure to help with that. There was little chance that Chardy was going to provide much of a challenge for Alcaraz at 36 years old, ranked 542nd in the world, and with just one tour level win this year.But for Alcaraz, who grew up mostly playing on red clay, the value of the day came not from the difficulty of his opponent. It came from spending more time on the sport’s most beguiling surface. With each match at Wimbledon Alcaraz gets closer to the inevitable — when the most talented young player becomes every bit as good on grass as he is everywhere else.Alcaraz, left, and Andy Murray at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna in 2021.Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty ImagesThis is where watching videos of Murray comes in. Alcaraz knows how to hit a tennis ball as well as and as hard as anyone, and his drop shot is as good as it gets on clay and hard courts. He’s also just about the fastest player in the game, especially on clay and hard courts. But he has said he needs to learn how to adapt his speed and his repertoire of shots to the grass.Few players have shown how to do that better than Murray, who won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, and showed why Tuesday afternoon in his 6-3, 6-0, 6-1 dismantling of Ryan Peniston, a fellow Briton.There are others who have conquered grass, of course, namely Roger Federer, who won a record eight men’s singles titles at Wimbledon and spent the afternoon chatting quietly in the front row of the royal box with Catherine, Princess of Wales, after he was celebrated with a video and a standing ovation. Alcaraz has studied his matches, too.And then there is Novak Djokovic, who has won the last four singles titles here, seven overall, and is on a 29-match Wimbledon winning streak. The problem with studying Djokovic is that he moves differently than everyone else on grass.Djokovic has somehow figured out how to glide and slide as though he were on clay or a hard court. When others try to play that way, they often end up on their backsides or with a strained groin. It is a style of grass court tennis that should come with a “don’t try this” warning.Alcaraz didn’t. Not on his way to the title at the grass court tuneup at Queen’s Club two weeks ago, or against Chardy on Tuesday, when he displayed plenty of signs of his Murray/Federer imitation game.Alcaraz took on balls ever so slightly earlier, a necessary move since they barely bounce on grass. He decelerated and turned with a series of quick stutter steps instead of his usual lightning quick plant-and-pivot. He showed off his improving serve, firing 10 aces, with plenty of them sliding off the court, including a final one on match point into the deep-wide corner of the service box that slid off the court before Chardy could move for it.“Every time that I get out to the court playing, it’s better for me,” he said when it was over. “I get more experience that is really, really important on that surface.”Murray does not lack for experience on grass and has almost always looked comfortable at the All England Club, making the third round in his debut in the main draw in 2005, when he was just 18 years old. Tuesday’s win over Peniston provided plenty of grass court study tips.Alcaraz often talks about how he begins every match wanting to play aggressively. Murray showed that on grass, aggression can take many forms beyond Alcaraz’s crushing forehands.Andy Murray in action in his first-round match on Tuesday.Hannah Mckay/ReutersHe played blocked backhand returns of serve that died in the front of the court to set up passing shots and sent drop volleys nearly sideways. In some rallies he produced a series of strokes that passed ever closer to the top of the net, and slid ever lower as they landed on the grass. One passing shot while Peniston was at the net darted toward his feet as though it fell off a table as soon as it passed over the tape. It was all over in two hours and 1 minute, one of Murray’s easier days on Centre Court, though he confessed to feeling nervous early on.“I like to feel that way,” he said “If I was going on the court and felt flat, didn’t have any emotion when I’m walking out there, that’s something that would probably be a bit wrong.”When Peniston committed his final error, Murray celebrated with the slightest of fist pumps and a brief wave to the crowd.He noted that the last time Federer had watched him on Centre Court was in the final of the 2012 Olympics, when Federer was cheering on his countryman and Murray’s opponent that day, Stan Wawrinka.“I was glad to get a few claps today,” Murray said.Murray skipped the French Open to begin his preparations for Wimbledon, the tournament he believes offers him the best chance to play into the second week.Those chances likely improved Tuesday when the match between his potential opponents, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Dominic Thiem, was suspended shortly after Thiem won the first set. They will likely resume Wednesday, with the winner taking on Murray, almost undoubtedly on Centre Court, Thursday.Murray said he does not study draws, preferring instead to focus only on his next match rather than waste time on hypotheticals. If he did, he would find a potential opponent in the semifinals who would be familiar with his tricks.That would be Alcaraz. More

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      Andy Murray Returns to Wimbledon Aiming for Another Long Run

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      A decade ago, Murray broke the 77-year singles championship drought for British men at Wimbledon. It has been up and down since. Can he recapture the magic?In late May, with most of the world’s best tennis players focused on the red clay at the French Open, Sir Andy Murray was 300 miles away on the other side of the English Channel, dialed in on preparations for the grass at Wimbledon.That had been the plan, anyway. But then his wife, Kim Sears, had to head up to Scotland for a few days to handle some business at the hotel she and Murray own. That left him solo for the morning rituals beginning at 5:30 a.m. with their four children, all younger than 8: cooking breakfast, getting everyone dressed and dropping them off at school.Three hours later, with the last child delivered, he headed to Britain’s national tennis center in Roehampton, where he received treatment from his physiotherapist and trained for several hours on the grass court and in the gym. There was also an afternoon of interviews and shooting promotional videos. It’s all part of the next phase of Murray’s quixotic, late-career quest to finish his journey on his terms, metal hip and all.Maybe that means somehow recapturing the magic of 10 years ago, when he became the first British man in 77 years to win the most important title in his sport. Maybe it’s simply cracking the top 30 or 20 once more, proving wrong all the doctors and doubters who called him foolish for entertaining a future in professional tennis after hip resurfacing surgery in 2019.Or maybe it’s pushing off for however long he can be the full-time tennis elder, entrepreneur and someone who, years ago, did that glorious thing.The default demeanor that accompanies Murray’s grueling physical play has always looked something like misery, peppered with a near-constant verbal self-flagellation that pulls spectators into his battle. But there is also joy in the training, the competing, the quest to improve and get the most out of himself while doing something that he loves, even when that means struggling against seemingly inferior opponents. Murray knows nothing else he does will ever match the feeling. So he goes on, results be damned.“I’m jealous of your Jannik Sinners and these young guys that have got an amazing career to look forward to,” he said during a recent interview at the end of that harried day as he headed for the tennis center parking lot. “I would love to do it all over again.”Murray’s Wimbledon singles title in 2013 was the first by a British man since Fred Perry won in 1936.Kerim Okten/European Pressphoto Agency‘An Outrageous Career’A decade on from the moment Britain had been waiting on since the Great Depression, Murray returns to the All England Club a version of himself that he could not have imagined in 2013, when he was just another 20-something bloke who walked his dogs in London on the south bank of the Thames.The tennis obsessive is now a man in full: a husband of eight years; a father of four; an officer of the Order of the British Empire (hence the “sir”); an art collector; an entrepreneur with a portfolio that includes a hotel, a clothing line and other investments; and the wise man, sounding board and occasional practice partner for the next generation of British tennis stars, such as Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu.Mirra Andreeva, the 16-year-old Russian phenom, would like some time with him, too. She called him “so beautiful” this spring.Regrets, he has a few, especially in those years in his 20s when he trained like a fiend and viewed time with friends and family as an impediment to a tireless search for every ounce of success. Another speed workout. More lifting, or hot yoga, or hitting practice balls. Why did he make life so difficult for his coaches? Why did he eat all those sweet-and-sour candies? Why did he stay up until 3 a.m. playing video games so often?The lazy view of Murray, who plays Ryan Peniston of Britain in the first round on Tuesday, is a player with just three Grand Slam singles titles, the same as Stan Wawrinka, who is a fine champion but no one’s idea of an all-time great. Novak Djokovic just won his 23rd. Rafael Nadal has 22; Roger Federer, 20. They are the so-called Big Three.Djokovic said recently he doesn’t much like that term because it excludes Murray, a player he has been battling since his days on the junior tennis circuit. The longtime mates practiced together on Saturday at the All England Club.There is a reason Federer included Murray as a central character in his send-off last year at the Laver Cup. Murray has beaten Djokovic, Nadal and Federer a combined 29 times, including two wins over Djokovic in Grand Slam finals. He made 11 Grand Slam singles finals during the most competitive era of elite men’s tennis. Only he, Nadal, Federer and Djokovic held a No. 1 ranking between 2004 and 2022. And he withstood unmatched pressure during his run to that first Wimbledon title.“It’s an outrageous career,” said Jamie Murray, a top doubles player who teamed with Andy, his younger sibling, in 2015 to deliver Britain its first Davis Cup triumph since 1936.Or it was an outrageous career, until that grueling physical style exacted its toll on Murray’s back and ankles and eventually led to the degenerative hip condition that stymied his run at the top in 2017. In January 2018, Murray had an initial unsuccessful hip surgery. For the rest of the season, everyone saw him suffering and limping through the pain.At the 2019 Australian Open, Bob Bryan, a 23-time Grand Slam doubles champion, put his breakfast tray down at Murray’s table and told him about the hip resurfacing surgery he had undergone the previous summer. The operation allowed Bryan to return to high-level competition doubles in just five months. Elite singles was something else entirely.“‘All I want to do is play,’” Bryan said Murray told him.Later that month, Murray posted a startling photo on Instagram that showed him lying in a hospital bed.“I now have a metal hip,” he wrote after the roughly two-hour resurfacing procedure that replaced the damaged bone and cartilage with a metal shell. “Feeling a bit battered and bruised just now but hopefully that will be the end of my hip pain.”Murray’s pain had grown so severe that the primary goal of the operation was to give him the ability to play with his children.For the next six months, he attacked physical therapy and rehabilitation the way he had attacked tennis. He was a full-time father. He played golf. He hung around with old friends.Matt Gentry, Murray’s longtime agent and business partner, said the downtime gave Murray a window into life without tennis. It wasn’t terrible.Murray has long admired American sports stars who take an entrepreneurial approach to their careers, and he and Gentry began to map out opportunities. Murray has since launched a clothing line. He has invested with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in TMRW Sports, a company that is seeking to find new ways to marry sports media and technology, including a new golf competition. He is part of a group that is building thousands of padel courts at sports clubs throughout the United Kingdom.In 2013, he purchased Cromlix House, a 15-room castle-like hotel near his childhood home in Dunblane, Scotland, for roughly $2 million. The property was especially meaningful: His grandparents held their 25th anniversary party there in 1982. He and Sears held their wedding reception there. His brother, Jamie, also got married at the property.Murray and Sears recently completed the first phase of a multimillion-dollar renovation and expansion of the property that will eventually include cabins by the nearby loch. The hotel is home to several pieces of art from Murray’s private collection, including a series of Damien Hirst and David Shrigley prints.For now, Murray said, he mostly listens to pitches and writes checks, but he plans to become more involved in his business ventures when he is done playing tennis. If he has his way, that day will not arrive for some time.‘Why Shouldn’t He Keep Playing?’Murray’s mother, Judy, a former player who was his first tennis coach, said tennis allows her son to express so many parts of his identity, beginning with a burning need to compete, but also an analytical mind that loves studying the game and its history.From the time he was a small boy, she said, if a game of cards or dominoes wasn’t going his way, those cards and dominoes would go flying across the room. He also had an older and bigger brother he desperately wanted to beat, and plenty of people who said that a boy from a small town in Scotland, where the weather was terrible and indoor courts were scarce, could never win Wimbledon. Now those same people say his time has passed.“If he still loves it, then why shouldn’t he keep playing?” Judy Murray said in an interview on Friday.Andy Murray with his mother, Judy, at the All England Club in 2019, when he played doubles while recovering from hip surgery.Hannah Mckay/ReutersMurray said he has a rough idea of when and how he would like his tennis career to end, but he knows it might not be his choice. Federer desperately wanted to play more, but his knee wouldn’t allow it. Murray has seen the videos of Nadal limping off the court in Australia in January with a torn muscle and hip injury from which he may never fully recover.Murray knows that his next desperate sprint for a drop shot, or one of his signature points earned while running the baseline back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, could be his last. Then again, he could still be doing this three years from now, which carries its own unique complications.He recently ran out of his stash of the bulky, extra-support tennis shoes that Under Armour manufactured for him until their last partnership deal expired. So Murray had to call his friend Kevin Plank, the Under Armour founder, and ask if he could make him more shoes. Plank did.In early June, when Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz and nearly everyone else of consequence was playing in Paris, Murray was playing a Challenger tournament at a racket club in Surbiton, southwest of London, in the tennis minor leagues.The field was made up of pro-tour deep cuts and some early round French Open casualties. A crowd of hundreds packed the stands, which were set on shaky scaffolding.Murray took only a few games against Chung Hyeon, a journeyman from South Korea, to show why he is certain he can beat anyone in the world on grass at a time when so few pros have mastered the surface: the slice backhands that go successively lower until they barely bounce above an opponent’s shoelaces; the dying volleys in the front of the court, and the stinging ones to the baseline; the slice serve that slides so far off the court; the softballs that look like meatballs but are really knuckleballs, wobbling in the air and twisting when they hit the grass.Two weeks and two Challenger trophies later, Murray had claimed 10 straight matches, the first five won while commuting from his home outside London, where he had decamped to a spare bedroom for the month to get some rest.Then came his final Wimbledon tuneup, at Queen’s Club in London, where he lost his first match to Alex de Minaur of Australia, a top 20 player who took advantage of Murray’s heavy legs and lackluster serve that day. Murray tried not to read too much into the result.All journeys have peaks and valleys. As the teachers in Murray’s hot yoga classes would say, the only way out is through — even on those days when the end feels closer than Murray hopes it might.Murray passed on the French Open and played two grass-court ATP Challenger tournaments in England instead. He won both.Ben Stansall/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      French Open Quarterfinalist Tsitsipas Takes On Doubles, With His Brother

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      Tsitsipas is aiming to beat Carlos Alcaraz in Paris on Tuesday in a French Open quarterfinal, but what he really wants is to help turn his younger brother Petros into a doubles champion.Stefanos Tsitsipas already had a lot going on as he arrived at the French Open.He was trying to reach the level of the Grand Slam champions who came before him, like Novak Djokovic, who has beaten Tsitsipas in two major tournament finals, when he suddenly had to defend an attack from the sport’s young stars, led by Carlos Alcaraz, a 20-year-old Spaniard ranked No. 1 in the world. Tsitsipas, 24, has another priority, too — helping his younger brother Petros, 22, establish his own identity and become a top doubles player. They plan to play as many as nine events together this season, regardless of whether that helps Stefanos’s singles play, which Petros isn’t sure that it always does.“I don’t think I would have done this for anyone else,” Tsitsipas said last week, when his march toward his French Open quarterfinal showdown with Alcaraz on Tuesday was still two wins away. “This is our dream.”Tennis has always been the ultimate family affair for the Tsitsipas clan. The mother, Julia Salnikova Apostoli, was a top Russian player in the 1980s and was once the world’s best junior. The father, Apostolos, is also a seasoned player, though not a former top touring pro. He trained as a coach and a line judge and now coaches Stefanos, though does not meddle much when his sons are playing together.There are two other tennis-playing Tsitsipas siblings, Pavlos, 17, and Elisavet, 15.Too much family involvement can have its hazards in tennis, as the Tsitsipas family demonstrated at the Italian Open last month, when both of Stefanos’s parents were talking to him during his match against Daniil Medvedev of Russia. After Julia spoke to him in Russian, giving him instructions that Medvedev could easily hear and understand, Stefanos used some salty language and ordered her from his courtside box, which caused a mini scandal in Greece. He declined to comment on the matter upon his arrival in Paris.Stefanos Tsitsipas with his father, Apostolos, who is also his coach, after winning the Monte-Carlo Masters in 2022.Denis Balibouse/ReutersFor the moment, his relationship with Petros is far less fraught. But navigating it all with a tennis racket, especially when the activity dominates a family’s life, requires its own set of skills, particularly when one sibling’s talent evolves in a way the other’s does not, which is almost inevitably the case in tennis.Early last year, after much time and too many losses on tennis’s back roads, Petros Tsitsipas made a big decision — it was time to stop trying to make it as a singles player like his big brother and make doubles his game. There was more than tennis involved with the move. He was 21 and coming off an injury, with a singles ranking in the 700s. The time had come for Petros to forge his own identity and stop struggling through the lowest level tournaments — “making it through the jungle,” as he described it last week at Roland Garros.Doubles offered a path of less resistance. Good players who can’t hang near or with the most elite players on the tour and are game to learn doubles’ unique angles, quirks and strategies can earn a decent living. They just have to be willing to compete for far less prize money as the undercard or late-night programming at tournaments, especially when they are climbing the ladder.Petros Tsitsipas and Stefanos Tsitsipas lost their first-round doubles match at the 2023 French Open. They hop to play together at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open.Clive Mason/Getty ImagesThis is where Stefanos comes in handy. Because of his high singles ranking (currently No. 5), the Tsitsipas brothers can get into big-time tournaments that Petros might not have qualified for with a lower-ranked partner. Also, given Stefanos’s star power, tournament organizers are more likely to offer them a wild-card entry into the doubles draw.That said, for Petros to climb the doubles rankings in a way he was not able to in singles, he has to play more than just eight or nine times a year with Stefanos, to learn the game and win as much possible. Lately, when his older brother has not been available, he has been playing in tournaments on the Challenger tour with Sander Arends, a 31-year-old from the Netherlands who never cracked the top 1,000 in singles but is ranked 98th in doubles. Last year, Petros had a different teammate nearly every week. He has climbed to 115th in the rankings, from below 400 two years ago.“It’s like learning to play chess,” Petros said.He can find an easy role model across the locker room. Jamie Murray spent years trying to be known as something besides the brother of Andy Murray, who in 2013 became the first man from Britain in 77 years to win Wimbledon.Jamie Murray said he still hears people say, “That’s Andy Murray’s brother” when he walks around the grounds of a tennis tournament, something he learned to accept years ago.“No point to fighting it,” he said.But Murray said he sensed that people stopped thinking of him as a sibling of someone better at his sport than he was after 2016. All it took was pairing with his brother to win the Davis Cup and becoming the world’s top-ranked doubles player — the same year his brother became the top-ranked singles player.Now he sees Petros trying to accomplish the same thing, to make his own way with people looking at him mostly as just someone’s brother.“It’s not easy,” he said.Andy Murray, left, and Jamie Murray had banner years in 2016, with Andy achieving a No. 1 ranking in singles and Jamie topping the doubles chart. They also won a Davis Cup together.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesWhen Petros is playing with Stefanos rather than with a specialist, doubles feels like a different game, Petros said. The specialist may be better at doubles than Stefanos but he is not nearly as good a tennis player. With a specialist, the game is all about tactics and strategy. With Stefanos — as with any great singles player — it’s all about feel and improvisation.“More freelance,” Petros said, like the difference between playing sheet music or jamming with a uniquely gifted musician who thrives on spontaneity.It used to be accepted as conventional wisdom that playing doubles improves the singles game, keeping reflexes sharp and the mind focused throughout a big tournament. Petros isn’t so sure that is always true, especially with the increasingly physical grind that singles has become and how different the quick rallies of doubles are from the baseline battles of singles.That has not been an issue at the French Open. The Tsitsipas brothers lost a heartbreaking first-round match in a third-set tiebreaker.“Trust me, it sucks,” Stefanos said the next day. “To be losing that with your brother, it sucks more than usual.”Stefanos Tsitsipas has lost only one set in singles at this year’s French Open.James Hill for The New York TimesThere is no turning back now, though. As long as Stefanos is not too worn out from a deep run at the French Open, the brothers hope to play Wimbledon, where men’s doubles will be best-of-three sets this year instead of best of five. From there, they also want to play the summer tournaments in North America, including the U.S. Open.Petros has worked so hard, Stefanos said. He wants to help him get as far as he can.“I just want to go for it,” Stefanos said.They want to represent Greece in the Olympics, and win the Davis Cup.“Doing that with your brother is probably the most beautiful thing you can witness on a tennis court,” he said.First though, he has another matter to contend with: Alcaraz in the French Open singles quarterfinals. More

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      Tennis Injuries Present Top Players with Serious Challenges

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      Getting hurt is part of the game, but sometimes it can take years for top players to return to form.It didn’t take long for Alexander Zverev to realize his situation was dire.After hours of scintillating shot-making, Zverev and Rafael Nadal were set to begin a second tiebreaker in their semifinal match at last year’s French Open.But suddenly, Zverev ran wide for a forehand, rolled his right ankle on its side and let out a bellow. He stumbled to the ground, red clay caked to the back of his black sleeveless top, and cupped his ankle in his hands.“I knew immediately that I was done because my ankle was basically three times the size it normally is,” said Zverev by phone of the injury that took him from tennis for the rest of 2022 and dropped his ATP ranking from No. 2 to outside the top 20. “It wasn’t a nice feeling.”Zverev is hardly the first player to be forced into an extended layoff because of a serious injury.His opponent that day, Nadal, hasn’t played a tour match since he hurt the psoas muscle between his lower abdomen and upper right leg during the Australian Open in January. After repeated attempts to rehab the injury over the last four months, Nadal — who has also suffered from chronic foot pain, a cracked rib and a torn abdominal muscle in the last 18 months — withdrew from the French Open on May 18. He is the 14-time Roland Garros champion and has played the tournament every year since 2005. He also indicated that he does not plan to play Wimbledon and that 2024 will likely be his last year on the professional tour.Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in January, where he injured his psoas muscle. He recently announced that he will not compete in the French Open. Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEmma Raducanu, who won the 2021 United States Open, has been frequently injured ever since, and recently underwent surgery on both of her wrists and one ankle. Andy Murray, a Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion, announced before the 2019 Australian Open that he would retire after the tournament, only to come back, first playing doubles, then returning to singles following a successful hip resurfacing surgery.Bianca Andreescu, who beat Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open, has suffered injuries to her adductor, ankle, foot, back, and right shoulder, causing her to question whether she should stop competing. And Stan Wawrinka, a three-time major champion, contemplated retirement following multiple surgeries on his knee and ankle. Once ranked world No. 3, Wawrinka is now fighting to stay in the top 100.Injuries, surgery and rehab are dreaded words in any athlete’s vocabulary. For professional tennis players, who are not protected by a team sport’s comprehensive rehabilitation coverage but are instead treated as independent contractors, working their way back onto the ATP and WTA Tours can be grueling physically, mentally and even financially.“I had never experienced an injury from the time I started, and I played with high intensity every day,” said Dominic Thiem by phone. Thiem, who beat Zverev to win the 2020 U.S. Open, suffered a debilitating wrist injury in June 2021 and was sidelined for months. Once ranked No. 3, Thiem lost seven straight matches when he first returned to the ATP Tour, and his ranking plummeted to No. 352, forcing him to play lower-level Challenger tournaments.“With an injury, the whole system comes to a stop,” said Thiem, who is now ranked just inside the top 100. “You can’t do your job, and you no longer have a clear plan. After I returned, it was like never before. You have to lower your expectations, but that’s very tough because for all those years you set for yourself a certain standard, not only from the tournaments you play, but also how you feel the ball. Basically, everything changes.”The process of returning from a layoff can be just as difficult as the injury itself. Readjusting to the rigors of constant travel and the pressure of playing matches at all hours of the day and night, along with worrying about the possibility of reinjury, can impact a player’s recovery.Andreescu knows that. Plagued by back troubles through much of 2022, she had finally begun to rebound at the Miami Open in March. But during her fourth-round match against Ekaterina Alexandrova, Andreescu tumbled to the court, clutching her left leg and screaming in agony.“I’ve never felt pain like that,” Andreescu said by phone as she prepared to return to the tour three weeks later in Madrid. “The next morning I knew what happened, but I was just hoping that I was waking up from a bad dream. Then I felt the pain, and I knew this was real.”Andreescu has rehabbed her body many times before, but she is also convinced that the mind-body connection is just as important.Bianca Andreescu at the 2023 Miami Open. Andreescu has suffered multiple injuries since beating Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I believe that everything starts in the head and that we create our own stress and, in a way, our own injuries,” she said. “There can be freak accidents, but if you can get your mind right, then it’s easier to come back from those injuries.”The WTA takes injury prevention and rehabilitation seriously. The tour has programming and staff devoted specifically to athletes’ physical and psychological well-being. According to Carole Doherty, the WTA’s senior vice president, sport science and medicine, all its players receive comprehensive medical care, with services that include cardiology, checkups with dermatologists, bone-density exams, and nutrition and hydration advice.When a WTA player is out injured, or pregnant, for at least eight consecutive weeks, she can apply for a Special Ranking, which means that upon her return she will be ranked where she left off and can enter eight tournaments over a 52-week span with that ranking. The ATP has a similar protocol called Protected Ranking.Becky Ahlgren Bedics, the WTA’s vice president of mental health and performance, is keenly aware of the psychological toll an injury can take.“Injuries take you out of training and competition and force you to regroup and prioritize your life differently,” said Bedics, who encourages players who are off the tour to delete WTA rankings from their phones, so they won’t see where they stand as compared with their peers. “It’s tough for an athlete whose only thought is, ‘How can I get back, and what happens if I don’t?’”Bedics and her mental health team encourage players to manage their expectations upon their return to play.“There are so many stressors in this game, including financial ones,” Bedics added. “Our athletes are typically very young and not going to be doing this for 50 years. Sometimes they are supporting their families. So, what we help them do is listen to ‘what is,’ not ‘what ifs.’ We want them to look forward, but also to look backward to see how far they’ve come.”Daria Saville tore her ACL while competing in Tokyo last September. “Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” she said.Kiyoshi Ota/Getty ImagesDaria Saville understands the play-for-pay nature of tennis. She has suffered from repeated Achilles’ tendon and plantar fasciitis issues since 2016. She had surgery after the 2021 Australian Open, which kept her from playing for nearly a year. Then, while competing in Tokyo last September, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, requiring more surgery.“Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” said Saville, who also had ACL surgery in 2013. “On tour, life is not so hard. Everything is done for you, so you don’t have to overthink. The worst thing that happens is you play bad and lose a match.”Fortunately, for Saville, the financial burdens have been lessened by the support she receives from her national federation, Tennis Australia, which pays for her physiotherapist and strength and conditioning coaches. She also gets pep talks from her coach, the former tour player Nicole Pratt.When Thiem thinks back on his wrist injury, he connects the dots to when he won the U.S. Open. Having achieved that goal, Thiem said, he suddenly lost his passion and motivation to play, prompting him to practice with a decreased level of intensity, ultimately leading to the injury. Trying to come back has been difficult.“I can’t forget,” Thiem said, “that all the time when I didn’t play, the other players were playing, they were practicing and improving and moving ahead of me. That makes it even harder to come back.” More

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      Injured Rafael Nadal Withdraws From The French Open

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      Nadal, the Spanish star, has battled a core muscle injury since January. He said that next season “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”Rafael Nadal, the 14-time French Open men’s singles champion, will not compete in this year’s edition of the event that has defined his career because of an injury that has sidelined him for months.Nadal, who has competed in Paris every year since 2005 and has an astonishing record of 112-3 at Roland Garros, made the announcement in a news conference Thursday at his tennis academy on the Spanish island of Majorca.Nadal said he would further extend his break from the game to try to get healthy and then attempt to play next season, which he said “probably is going to be my last year in the professional tour.”“That’s my idea,” he said. “Even that, I can’t say that 100 percent it’s going to be like this because you never know what is going to happen, but my idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career.”His withdrawal from the French Open, which is scheduled to begin on May 28, was not a surprise. He has not played since suffering an injury to his lower abdomen and right leg at the Australian Open in January. But the reality of the announcement, and his approaching absence from the red clay he has ruled for so long, jolted the tennis world.“I was working as much as possible every single day for the last four months and they have been very difficult months because we were not able to find the solution to the problem I had in Australia,” Nadal said. “Today I am still in the position where I am not able to feel myself ready to compete at the standards I need to be to play at Roland Garros.”Nadal won last year’s French Open to claim his 22nd Grand Slam singles title, and he has repeatedly called the tournament, the year’s second major, the most important of his career. His absence will create a massive void that the statue of him just steps away from the main stadium ensures will be a theme throughout the event.Nadal made it clear that he did not want to play the tournament with no realistic chance of being truly competitive.“I am not a guy who is going to be at Roland Garros and just try to be there and put myself in a position I don’t like to be in,” he said.“My idea and motivation is to try to enjoy and to try to say goodbye to all the tournaments that have been important to me in my tennis career,” Nadal said on Thursday.Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNadal said that after pushing himself through pain to try to get ready for the French Open, he will now take an extended break from practice in an attempt to get healthy.“I don’t know when I will be able to come back to the practice court, but I will stop for a while,” he said. “Maybe two months. Maybe one month and a half. Maybe three months. Maybe four months. I don’t know. I’m not the guy who likes to predict the future but I am just following my personal feelings and just following what I really believe is the right thing to do for my body and for my personal happiness.”For weeks, as the pro tennis tour has meandered through the European clay season, which he has dominated throughout his career, Nadal’s health and his halting rehabilitation process have been some of the game’s main plot points. The conversation has gotten louder each week his withdrawals — from tournaments in Monte Carlo, then Barcelona, then Madrid — mounted.His most expansive comments before Thursday came in a video posted on social media last month in which he explained that his ongoing battle to recover from the tear in his psoas muscle in his lower abdomen and upper right leg had not gone as planned. Nadal suffered the injury in January during the second round of the Australian Open, the year’s first major tournament, where he was attempting to defend his title.In the days following Nadal’s injury in Australia, his team stated that it expected him to miss six to eight weeks, a timetable that would have allowed Nadal to return in time for the spring clay court season in Europe.The announcement at the beginning of this month that Nadal would not play in Rome, where he has won a record 10 times, sounded major alarm bells. The conditions there are closest to those at the French Open. Over the weekend, the organizer of a challenger event on red clay in France next week said Nadal had not sought entry into that tournament. That meant his opening match at Roland Garros would have to be his first real competition in more than four months.Nadal had said last month that he planned to seek additional treatment for the injury but did not specify what that treatment entailed and said he had no idea when he would be able to compete again. Throughout a record-setting but injury-plagued career, Nadal has mainly relied on a group of medical specialists in his native Spain, including Dr. Angel Ruiz Cotorro.It is not unheard-of for Nadal to enter a Grand Slam tournament without having played a tuneup on the corresponding surface. Nadal entered Wimbledon last year without having played a competitive match on grass since the middle of 2019. He made the semifinals but had to withdraw because of an abdominal injury.The psoas muscle injury is the latest in a string of ailments over the past 18 months — the flare-up of a chronic foot injury, a cracked rib and a pulled abdominal muscle — that have caused Nadal, who turns 37 on June 3, to miss many of the tournaments that are usually on his schedule. It comes at a time in his career when retirement has begun to feel less conceptual and more like a looming reality with each passing week.Nadal won his 14th French Open men’s singles title in 2022.James Hill for The New York TimesMaking matters worse, tennis punishes inactivity in a way that can make coming back from long layoffs especially difficult. If Nadal misses the entire clay court season, he will experience a calamitous drop in the world rankings unlike anything he has been through during the past two decades.In March, Nadal dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in 18 years. By missing the French Open, he is likely to drop out of the top 100 for the first time since 2003. While he will still be able to gain entry into any tournament by requesting a wild card, depending on how long he is sidelined and whether his ranking will qualify for protection, he may not be seeded and is likely to face top players far earlier than he usually would.That will present a special challenge for Nadal, who has often talked about needing to play himself into form and finding his rhythm with a series of wins against lesser competition. That opportunity will not be available without a higher ranking, and winning matches is the only way to achieve a higher ranking. Andy Murray of Britain, who turned 36 on May 15, is a two-time Wimbledon champion who climbed to No. 1 in 2016 and has been battling this dynamic since his return from major hip surgery four years ago.Nadal’s absence figures to leave the door wide open for Carlos Alcaraz, the Spanish sensation who turned 20 earlier this month and last year became the youngest man ever to achieve the world’s top ranking after winning the U.S. Open; or Novak Djokovic, who is tied with Nadal with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. Djokovic has had his own injury problems during the clay court season, though he has appeared to be in solid form this week in Rome at the Italian Open.When he rejoined the tour in April, he aggravated an elbow injury in Monte Carlo and Barcelona. Then he withdrew from Madrid so he could rest for Rome, where he has won six times, and Roland Garros, where he has won twice, most recently in 2021.Djokovic, the world No. 1, missed two important hard court tournaments in the United States in March because he could not gain entry into the country without being vaccinated against Covid-19. The Biden administration has ended that requirement, meaning Djokovic will be able to play in the U.S. Open. More

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      At the Australian Open, Novak Djokovic Wins But Andy Murray Loses

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      The aging stars were both playing hurt at the Australian Open. Only Djokovic managed to move on, beating Grigor Dimitrov in straight sets.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was a little after 7 p.m. in Melbourne on Friday night when Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray limped, hobbled and creaked onto their respective courts for their third-round showdowns.In Djokovic’s way stood Grigor Dimitrov, the Bulgarian once nicknamed “Baby Fed” for his flowing, graceful style, and in Murray’s path was Roberto Bautista Agut, part of the talented generation of Spaniards led by Rafael Nadal. There was also so much wear and tear accumulating for the two limping lions of the sport — one who is arguably the greatest player ever, and Murray, the former world No. 1 and fourth member of the vaunted Big Four.Djokovic, a nine-time winner of the Australian Open, has been battling a sore left hamstring that has limited his movement and those trademark sliding stretch shots. On Rod Laver Arena, his assassin’s glare has been replaced with the worried look of a man who keeps hearing the same grave diagnosis no matter how many physicians he asks for an opinion.Murray, whose rocking pigeon-toed walk has never been pretty, played for nearly 11 hours over 10 sets in his first two matches, the second of which finished after 4 a.m. on Friday. He fell asleep for three hours as the sun was rising, having pulled off a finals week-style all-nighter. Then he returned to Melbourne Park to have seven or eight blisters on his foot drained.Murray also has a metal hip following a resurfacing surgery in 2019 that some doctors told him would allow him to do little more than rally with his children.If you have ever watched a friend who has run a marathon try to descend a flight of stairs the next morning, you have a good idea of what Murray looked like during the first set on Friday night, when he lost 6-1 within half an hour. He looked like the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz,” his joints desperately in need of oil.Serving in the third game of the second set, he double-faulted to give Bautista Agut the crucial break and let out a primal grunt that sounded like some combination of frustration and hopelessness. The craftiness and power, the unmatched ability to scramble and extend points that are supposed to be long over, had to be somewhere inside that 6-foot-3-inch frame, but somehow those parts of him would not come out.“My legs were actually OK,” Murray said after Bautista Agut had sent him packing in four sets. “I was struggling with my lower back. That was affecting my serve.”Andy Murray during his match against Roberto Bautista Agut.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockTo sit close and watch Murray fully engaged in the kind of battle he relishes usually means bearing witness to a running internal dialogue. He assumes the role of the lead character in the drama, an unflinching critic, cursing himself for his mistakes, pumping his fist and shaking his racket in determination when he smacks a winner. And, of course, there is the hourslong one-way conversation with his coach and his mother sitting courtside.There was almost none of that for the first hour on Friday night. What was the point of all that angst and self-punishment if this was all for naught? On this night, he was going to need something else.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.Caroline Garcia: The top-five player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. She is at the Australian Open chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches in professional tennis stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.He found it in two corners of Margaret Court Arena, far away from where his coaches sat, where two groups of Murray fans huddled around a Scottish flag, screaming to urge the Murray of old, or even the Murray of early Friday morning, out of him. They were the ones on the other side of his fist pumps and self-talk.Slowly, Murray came alive, climbing out of the hole and then lacing a running backhand to save his serve at 5-5 in the second set after he had already lost the first and was staring at doom. Then came the great escape tiebreaker.The hole at 2-5 brought out the swinging forehand volley winner and an untouchable crosscourt backhand to get him within a point. Getting out of the hole at 4-6 required surviving one of those long, nervy rallies and a ripping forehand drop-shot combination to draw even.At 7-7, a jumping backhand return of serve gave him the edge. When Bautista Agut smacked a ball into the net on the next point, Murray stood with his hands on his hips and stared at the Scottish faithful with the flag in the corner.This is what it looks like to go kicking and screaming into the twilight.Murray won the second set as fans cheered him on with a Scottish flag.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMeanwhile, across the entry plaza that the two feature courts share, about 100 yards away on Rod Laver Arena, Djokovic managed his ailments like a guy whose old car has a clutch and choke that needs to be handled just so to get from here to there.After prevailing 9-7 in a first-set tiebreaker, an ill-advised split to reach a Dimitrov overhead early in the second set had Djokovic grimacing and leaning over.A game later he was back to business, that steady drumbeat of backhands and forehands targeted at Dimitrov’s shoelaces over and over until Dimitrov just couldn’t move quickly enough to get them back anymore, much less get Djokovic on the run, which was his only hope.Djokovic has said his leg generally feels fine at the start of the matches, but then a bad move tweaks it and things go downhill from there.“Pills kick in, some hot cream and stuff, that works for a little bit, then it doesn’t, then works again,” he said. “It’s really a roller coaster, honestly.”It’s all eerily reminiscent of a moment two years ago, when Djokovic tore an abdominal muscle during his third-round match, then figured out the right combination of rest, painkillers and match management to cruise to his record ninth singles title in Melbourne.Djokovic’s night was over just as Murray was trying one last escape, this time after dropping the third set. He surged to an early fourth-set lead but could not hold it.In almost every tennis match, a player’s feet are the ultimate tell, and as the fourth set wore on, Murray’s feet barely lifted off the ground on his serve. When he ran, he looked like he was stepping on hot coals. The flow was gone and it wasn’t coming back, and soon his shots were flying long and wide or, like his last one, into the net.He said he was proud of his efforts this past week. “That is really, in whatever you’re doing, all you can do,” he said. “You can’t always control the outcome. You can’t control how well you’re going to play or the result. You can control the effort that you put into it, and I gave everything that I had the last three matches.”A few minutes later, he limped down three stairs. It was time to rest. More

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      Why Tennis Matches at the Australian Open Never Seem to End

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      Andy Murray’s second-round match at the Australian Open didn’t end until after 4 a.m. As matches more often go into the early morning hours, some players say it is harming their physical and mental health.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was 4 o’clock on Friday morning at the Australian Open, and Andy Murray and Thanasi Kokkinakis were still playing tennis.It was not a particularly rare marathon match or a vagary of the tournament’s distant time zone. At the U.S. Open last September, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner were still playing at nearly 3 a.m.Professional tennis is the only major sport that puts athletes through all-night competitions and requires them to return less than 48 hours later and put their minds and bodies back on the line.It is a longstanding problem. But as matches stretch later into the morning hours, increasingly players are pushing back, citing concerns for their physical and mental health, and performance. Not to mention fans who are falling asleep in the stands or on their sofas around the world.“It’s crazy,” Jessica Pegula, the American women’s star, said on Friday.Murray’s 5-hour, 45-minute victory over Kokkinakis in the second round ended at 4:05 a.m. It was the third-latest recorded finish in the history of professional tennis, surpassed only by Alexander Zverev’s victory over Jenson Brooksby in Acapulco, Mexico, last year that ended at 4:54 a.m., and by Lleyton Hewitt’s victory over Marcos Baghdatis at the 2008 Australian Open that ended at 4:34 a.m.It will be one of the highlights of the 35-year-old Murray’s late career. But he experienced it, unnecessarily, with mixed emotions.“If my child was a ball kid for a tournament, and they’re coming home at 5 in the morning, as a parent I’m snapping at that,” Murray said. “It’s not beneficial for them. It’s not beneficial for the umpires, the officials. I don’t think it’s amazing for the fans. It’s not good for the players.”He added later, “Rather than it being like epic Murray-Kokkinakis match, it ends in a bit of a farce.”It has been a particular challenge at the Australian and U.S. Open, where both a men’s and women’s singles match are scheduled in each night session, a great move for gender equality, ticket sales and star power.In 2008 when Hewitt finally defeated Baghdatis at the Australian Open in a match that started just before midnight and ended not long before sunrise, Hewitt’s post-match news conference didn’t begin until 5:30 a.m.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.“Obviously, going on that late is not easy for anyone, any players, because it does throw your whole rhythm and clock out quite a bit,” Hewitt said at the time.The toll is heavy on athletes, support staff and spectators with regular jobs, even though a very informal poll of fans coming out of the Murray match at 4:15 a.m. did not reveal any outrage.“We would never leave early,” said Kathie Griffith from Canberra, Australia. “Fantastic tennis.”Australian Open tennis player Alexei Popyrin after his five-set victory over Taiwan’s Chun-Hsin Tseng. The match finished at 2.30 a.m. in front of a small but vocal crowd.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesA small crowd watched a late-finishing match on Margaret Court Arena at 12:22 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesRequiring play into the middle of the night seems contradictory to the sport’s increased focus on supporting players’ mental health. Nick Kyrgios, the Australian star, said his series of late matches at last year’s U.S. Open were particularly draining.“I was always last match, going on court at 10 p.m., finishing matches around, like 1 a.m., then doing media and treatment and eating,” Kyrgios said. “I was not going to sleep before 4 a.m. every night. And I felt as if, you know, I was going out night-clubbing or something. It was like I’m not even getting enough sleep to go and perform the next day.”Decompressing from a late match is a challenge.“I’m staring at the room,” Kyrgios said. “You’ve got so much adrenaline, and it’s incredibly hard to wind down and to do it on a daily basis potentially seven times to win a Grand Slam. It’s exhausting, for sure.”The sport has never had a formal collective discussion about a better, saner approach but it could be coming. On Friday, the Professional Tennis Players Association, the player group recently co-founded by longtime men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic, released a statement saying that “we look forward to exploring alternate means to scheduling that put fans and players and their well-being first.” There are guidelines on both the men’s and women’s tours about not starting matches after midnight, but that still does not preclude long-after-midnight finishes. And while the men play best-of-three sets on the regular tour, they continue to play best-of-five at the four majors in part because that remains a point of separation for the Grand Slam tournaments.Switching to best-of-three for the men (the women already play best-of-three everywhere) would be one of the most effective ways of controlling finish times. But there are less extreme measures available, including starting play earlier, establishing a curfew or playing one singles match in a night session instead of the customary two.After a long night of tennis, David Reyes, 32, waited for his phone to charge so he could figure out how to get home at 1:30 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesTennis fans waited for cabs outside Melbourne Park after the last match finished at 2:30 a.m. With no public transportation available at that time, the small number of fans that stayed to watch the final point must catch rideshares or taxis home.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesLong matches are becoming more common, and there are multiple factors. Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, said the institution of the 25-second shot clock, intended to speed up play, has not necessarily worked that way. “A lot of players are taking full time now between points because they can see the time,” he said. “There’s also the equity of play with so many good players.”Nicolás Pereira, a coach and television analyst, thinks the recent widespread use of analytics in professional tennis may also have made matches more even.Tiley said the sport should consider changes like reducing changeover times or cutting the time between points to 20 seconds. But the biggest obstacle still seems to be that the Australian Open and U.S. Open schedule a men’s singles match and women’s singles match in each night session. That is for gender equality in a sport that was a front-runner in that area but also for entertainment value. If one match is a rout or ends early because of an injury, the other could still be a classic.Tiley said that market research showed that offering just one match on a court in an evening session would be risky.“I think you lose a lot with broadcasters and with fans who would be buying a ticket to risk seeing one match where one player can potentially blow out another player,” he said on Friday in an interview. “All the data and research we have on that indicates that it’s an option that would have a significant impact on the success of the event. We have a number of examples where our first match has gone 56 minutes and if that was your only match that night, I think you start to run a risk in terms of the value you provide.”The French Open, which started night sessions in 2021 that featured only one match, has sparked complaints about gender inequality by scheduling mostly men’s matches in that slot (best-of-five generally gives you more content than best-of-three). But with an 8:45 p.m. start, there have been some late finishes in Paris, too, leaving spectators without public transport and players with the too-familiar late-night routine.Another option in Melbourne and New York would be to schedule one singles match each night, alternating men and women, and pair that match with a doubles match that could be moved to another court if the singles match turns into a marathon.Tiley said the problem is that the doubles events do not start until several days into the tournament. “You’d miss the first three or four nights with that,” he said, also expressing resistance to the idea of scheduling an exhibition doubles match to supplement the main singles match.“I think you would erode interest and the data shows us that,” he said.Fans watched Frances Tiafoe and Carlos Alcaraz late into the night from the plaza outside Arthur Ashe Stadium at the 2022 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran/The New York TimesFans leaving Roland Garros after a night match at the French Open in 2022.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesPlaying a compelling match in the middle of the night does not help local viewing figures. But because of the global audience, it could paradoxically generate bigger audiences elsewhere. When it was 4 a.m. in Melbourne, it was noon in New York and 6 p.m. in Paris. “I am more concerned about the well-being of the athletes playing that late than concerned about who is watching in different parts of the world,” Tiley said. Tiley, like Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, agrees that late finishes like Alcaraz’s in New York and Murray’s in Melbourne are problematic. “Finishing that early in the morning is not ideal,” Tiley said. “I completely empathize with anyone who has to be there that late.”Tiley said the Australian Open could be open to a curfew like the one at Wimbledon, which because of a town edict requires matches played under the lights to be stopped by 11 p.m. But Tiley said players traditionally have been resistant to the idea of stopping a match for the night once it begins.That was once routine at the French Open and Wimbledon when there were no lights and certainly seems a better solution than testing players’ limits and reducing their chances of recovering well for subsequent matches. Alcaraz did manage to win last year’s U.S. Open after beating Marin Cilic and Sinner in matches that finished after 2 a.m., but that is an exception, and that draining effort could have contributed to Alcaraz’s recent struggles and injuries.“If the players want to have a curfew, fine we’ll have it,” Tiley said. “We are open to anything, and we always have been. It’s not a new thing. We’ve always made adjustments.”The Australian Open did recently move up the start of the night sessions to 7 p.m. from 7:45 p.m. But that clearly was not enough change to avoid, in Murray’s words, a “ridiculously late” finish.Matthew Futterman More

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      Andy Murray Wins Australian Open Thriller at 4 A.M.

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      Murray’s stirring five-set comeback against Thanasi Kokkinakis of Australia ended a day that also saw the men’s singles favorite Novak Djokovic win while playing with a hamstring injury.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was a night worthy of a knight, and Sir Andy Murray’s stirring comeback victory from two sets down against Thanasi Kokkinakis at the Australian Open also turned into one of the latest nights in tennis history.That is saying something in a sport that is often, too often, played into the wee hours of the morning, but Murray, a stouthearted Scotsman now playing tennis with an artificial hip, needed 5 hours 45 minutes to find a way to prevail against Kokkinakis, a big-serving Australian nearly 10 years his junior.Murray’s win, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (5), 6-3, 7-5,  began Thursday and finished Friday at 4:05 a.m. with several thousand die-hard fans still making plenty of noise in Margaret Court Arena as some waved British flags for Murray and Australian and Greek flags for Kokkinakis.The end finally came with the 35-year-old Murray breaking serve at 5-5 and then holding his own to finish off the longest match of his career and earn, truly earn, a spot in the third round.The Australian Open has brought him plenty of heartache — he has lost in the final a record five times — but it is bringing him plenty of fulfillment this year.In the first round on Tuesday, he saved a match point and upset the No. 13 seed, Matteo Berrettini of Italy, prevailing in a fifth-set tiebreaker after 4:49.The duel with Kokkinakis, a 26-year-old wild-card entrant ranked 159th in the world, lasted nearly a full hour longer. But the quality and tenacity of play was often extraordinary down the stretch despite all that time on the court.“I just rely on that experience and that drive and my love of the game and competing and my respect for this event and the competition,” Murray said. “That’s why I kept going.”This was the third-latest recorded finish in the history of professional tennis, surpassed only by Alexander Zverev’s victory over Jenson Brooksby in Acapulco, Mexico, last year that ended at 4:54 a.m., and by Lleyton Hewitt’s victory over Marcos Baghdatis at the 2008 Australian Open that ended at 4:34 a.m.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.It is a dubious honor to be on that list, but Brooksby, a 22-year-old Californian, at least got to play in the daylight on Thursday. He recorded the most significant victory of his career by upsetting the No. 2 seed Casper Ruud of Norway, 6-3, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2, in Rod Laver Arena in the second round.That came less than 24 hours after Mackenzie McDonald, 27, another unseeded Californian, upset the injured Rafael Nadal, the No. 1 seed and the reigning champion, on the same court.Jenson Brooksby won Thursday against Casper Ruud, 6-3, 7-5, 6-7 (4), 6-2, at the Australian Open.Carl Recine/ReutersIn all, eight American men reached the round of 32 in Melbourne, the most at this Grand Slam tournament since 1996 when Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi were still in their primes.“First and foremost, Casper is a warrior,” Brooksby said. “I knew it would be a great battle out there. I was pretty confident with my level and just wanted to have fun competing.”Nadal, however, will not compete for at least a few weeks. He announced on Thursday that he had undergone a magnetic resonance imaging scan that showed an injury of the iliopsoas muscle in his left inner hip.Nadal, 36, will return to Spain for treatment and, according to his team, “the normal time estimated for complete recuperation is between six and eight weeks.” That would likely mean that Nadal will miss the next block of hardcourt events, including the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. But if he recovers, Nadal could be ready to compete during the clay-court season. He has dominated on clay for close to two decades and could aim for a 15th singles title at the French Open.But Novak Djokovic, Nadal’s longtime rival who is chasing his record of 22 Grand Slam singles titles, remains in contention in Melbourne despite his own injury challenges. Djokovic, a nine-time Australian Open champion, started the tournament with a nagging left hamstring injury. He aggravated it on Thursday night in his victory, 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-2, 6-0, over Enzo Couacaud, a French qualifier ranked 191st who sprained an ankle early in the match but managed to continue.Late in the second set, Djokovic, with his left hamstring tightly wrapped, began wincing and landing awkwardly on some shots, looking far from eager to slide into his signature defensive splits. He even limped and pulled up as he ran to his left for a backhand at one stage.With a third-round matchup against Grigor Dimitrov scheduled for Saturday, Djokovic conceded that his situation going forward in the tournament was “not ideal.”“I am worried,” he said of his injury. “I mean, I cannot say that I am not. I have reason to be worried. But at the same time, I have to accept the circumstances and try to adjust myself with my team.”Djokovic said he was minimizing or eliminating practice sessions on days between matches. In 2021, he won his ninth Australian Open after tearing an abdominal muscle in the third round.“Somehow I pushed it through and won the tournament,” Djokovic said. “But it’s different now, obviously. I don’t know how my body’s going to react. I hope for the best. I hope for the positive outcome. I’ll take it day by day, match by match and see how it goes.”Novak Djokovic stretched during his second round-match. “I am worried,” he said later of his hamstring injury.Loren Elliott/Reuters Earlier in the day, Ruud, the affable Norwegian star who reached the French Open and U.S. Open finals last year, could not solve the riddle of Brooksby’s unconventional game.Theirs was a grinding match, full of rallies whose shot count extended into double digits. Though Brooksby won the vast majority of those — quite an achievement against a baseliner as accomplished as Ruud — he could not convert any of the three match points he had on his own serve at 5-3 in the third set.Distraught, Brooksby sat in his chair on the changeover shouting “How, how how?”Ruud won the third set in a tiebreaker, which could have been the cue for Brooksby to fold. Instead, he walked back onto the court after a break in the locker room and broke Ruud twice in a row to take a 3-0 lead. Then, after losing his serve, he broke Ruud again at love to reclaim full command of the match.“I’m just really proud of my mental resolve there, after the third-set battle didn’t go my way, to turn it around,” Brooksby said.It was the standout victory of Brooksby’s career, and it was a bad day all around for No. 2 seeds. Ons Jabeur, the No. 2 seed in the women’s singles tournament, was defeated after midnight, 6-1, 5-7, 6-1, by Marketa Vondrousova, an unseeded Czech lefthander.Tennis is a draining, mood-swinging sport, full of surprises, and the bottom quarter of the men’s singles draw is now a zone of great opportunity for outsiders, including the 66th-ranked Murray and five unseeded Americans: Brooksby, Ben Shelton, J.J. Wolf, Michael Mmoh and Tommy Paul.The surprise is that the American men’s surge in Melbourne does not include their leader: the No. 8 seed Taylor Fritz, who was upset on Thursday in five sets, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-2, by Alexei Popyrin, another Australian wild-card entrant.Popyrin will now face Shelton, the 20-year-old son of the former tennis pro Bryan Shelton. Ben Shelton turned professional last year after winning the N.C.A.A. men’s singles title for the University of Florida, where his father is the coach, and is making his first trip outside the U.S.Brooksby will face Paul, and Wolf will face Mmoh, who made it into the main draw as a lucky loser after a withdrawal. Murray, meanwhile, was wondering if he was ever going to get to sleep.“Thanks so much to everyone for staying,” he said to the crowd after his victory. “It’s ridiculously late.” More