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    Without Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Men’s Tennis Looks for New Faces

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    For the first time in decades, the ATP Finals will be played without either Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic. Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are poised to take over.In mid-September, just two weeks after Jannik Sinner won the U.S. Open to secure a 2-2 win-loss record with Carlos Alcaraz at the major championships in 2024, Alcaraz was asked if he envisioned his rivalry with Sinner ultimately replicating that of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal.“Well, a lot of people talk about it,” Alcaraz said during the Laver Cup in Berlin. “I like hearing it, I’m not going to lie. I hope that our rivalry is going to be or almost like the Big 3 had during their career. This is the first year that we shared all the Grand Slams. Hopefully, it’s going to keep going like that, sharing great moments, fighting for the great tournaments.”Sinner, the world No. 1, and the third-ranked Alcaraz have played three times this year — at Indian Wells, in the semifinals of the French Open and in the Beijing final in September — with Alcaraz winning all three matches. They could meet again in the ATP Finals, which begin on Sunday in Turin, Italy. The two have yet to face each other in the ATP Finals.Sinner and Alcaraz will be joined in Turin by Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev, Taylor Fritz, Casper Ruud, Alex de Minaur and Andrey Rublev.Zverev, runner-up to Alcaraz at this year’s French Open, is a two-time ATP Finals champion, in 2018 and 2021. Medvedev, who reached the final of the Australian Open in January before falling to Sinner, won the ATP Finals in 2020 and was runner-up to Zverev in 2021.This is the first time in 23 years that neither Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer nor Rafael Nadal will compete in the eight-man year-end championships. Federer, who won the championships six times from 2003 to 2011, retired in 2022 and Nadal, who is retiring after representing Spain in the Davis Cup Finals in Malaga later this month, did not play enough tournaments this year to qualify.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Notable Comebacks at the Australian Open

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      After extended layoffs, Naomi Osaka, Angelique Kerber and others are back on the court.A comeback provides no guarantee of success, but few sports provide more comebacks than professional tennis.They are arriving wave after wave, particularly in the women’s game, where returning to action after maternity has become more common.After the WTA stars Elina Svitolina and Caroline Wozniacki came back last season, the trend is continuing in 2024, with Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber, both former No. 1 players and multiple major champions.Both are new mothers who have been out of the game for more than a year and both will be in the draw as the 2024 season begins in earnest on Sunday with the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam tournament, which Kerber won in 2016 and Osaka in 2019 and 2021.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      An Opportunity at Paris Masters After a Taxing Tennis Season

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      Several players have broken through at the Paris Masters recently to win their first top-tier title. A well-rested Novak Djokovic may stifle that trend this year.It should come as no surprise that tennis’s Big Three — Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer — have dominated the Masters 1000 tournaments with nearly the same record-setting thoroughness as they have the Grand Slams. They’ve won a combined 103 of these top-tier tournaments; throw in Andy Murray and the title tally reaches 117.The Big Three won all but one Indian Wells crown from 2004 through 2017 and, with Murray, 12 of 15 Miami Open championships through 2019. Nadal won 10 times in Rome and 11 in Monte Carlo, with Djokovic winning a combined eight times at those two tournaments. The list goes on, with these legends typically filling a final’s other slot in most years, too.But there’s one slight weakness: the Rolex Paris Masters, which begins Monday. Djokovic has won it six times. But Federer, now retired, won it only once. Murray has won once, and Nadal has reached onlyone final.Last year, Holger Rune, then 19, won his first Masters 1000 in Paris, joining a list of surprising winners that since 2010 includes Robin Soderling, David Ferrer, Jack Sock and Karen Khachanov, none of whom ever won other Masters 1000 singles titles. (Three others — Denis Shapovalov, Filip Krajinovic and Jerzy Janowicz — reached their only Masters 1000 finals here.)Novak Djokovic has won the Paris Masters six times.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesSeveral factors make Paris different, including that it’s the last big tournament of the year. “People are tired,” said Brad Gilbert, an ESPN analyst and former pro. “That brings a lot of unpredictability.”Vedran Martic, Khachanov’s coach, noted that Khachanov was just 22 when he won, explaining that it’s easier for younger (and lower-ranked) players to find success after a long, grinding season. They have not been playing as deep into tournaments week after week as top-ranked players have, which gives them fresher legs. (Older players, he added, may also be more likely to have wives and children eager for their brief off-season to begin.)Craig Boynton, who coaches the world No. 11, Hubert Hurkacz, said the court surface in Paris kept the ball from bouncing high, making it tougher for players to set up shots and win quick points. “That is taxing mentally and on the legs,” he said, emphasizing that the fatigue factor in Paris is typically more mental than physical.“Attitude is most important at this time,” Boynton said. “In the locker room, people say, ‘Who’s crispy?’, meaning ‘Who’s burned out?’” Guys can get to Paris super crispy thinking about their vacation and want to get it over with and move on.”Young players feeling good in the fall can gain confidence and get on a roll, as Rune did last year, Gilbert said. “If you get hot, that’s a good tournament to capitalize on.”Martic agreed to an extent, saying that in 2018 Khachanov had just won in Moscow and was in a good groove. But he added, “It’s difficult to point to one reason: He also plays well indoors and likes Paris and the crowds and atmosphere there.”The calendar matters in other ways, too. Federer withdrew from the Paris Masters or skipped it four times in the 2010s, partly because his hometown tournament in Basel, Switzerland, immediately precedes it. He not only won Basel seven times in that decade (and 10 total), reaching the final two other times, but also devoted extra energy to supporting the event.More significant, Boynton said, is that on the heels of Paris is the ATP Finals for the top eight players. That’s even more prestigious than a Masters 1000. Three of those four times Federer bowed out of Paris, he played in the Finals; Nadal played the Finals four times after either skipping Paris or withdrawing mid-tournament because of injury.Gilbert said that if a strong performance at the Paris Masters could send a player into the ATP Finals, however, “that’s a great motivator.” And, he added, money matters, too, pointing to a new wrinkle this year that will reduce crispiness.The ATP will distribute $20 million among the top 30 players with the most rankings points accrued from Masters 1000 tournaments and ATP Finals. “That’s a significant amount of money, and my guess is that everyone close to the bonus pool will be up for a real battle,” he said.However, any opportunity to break through comes with a Novak-size caveat: Djokovic, the most successful of the Big Three at this level, has reached the finals in seven of his past eight visits.This year, he will be well rested. So, despite prior unpredictability and the factors favoring youth, the odds remain strong that an older man will be playing on the last day in Paris. More

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      At the U.S. Open, the Dwindling Ranks Leave Space and a Solitary Vibe

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      It happens every year. Tennis players, by the hundreds, disappear from Flushing Meadows Corona Park.They arrive with hopes of remaining there at least two weeks, but every two days about half of them vanish until their ranks dwindle to a small, select handful. They walk the eerily quiet back halls, lounges and locker rooms of Arthur Ashe Stadium, tennis’ largest venue, nearly alone. The same phenomenon happens in London, Paris and Melbourne, Australia, each year, until eventually there are only two left to share a giant locker room, player restaurant and court.The Hall of Famer Chris Evert felt that blissful solitude 34 times in Grand Slam singles events, and won 18 of them. The goal is obviously to win their survivor game, but it is still a strange feeling.“It’s lonely and there’s pressure knowing it means you’re the last two women standing,” Evert said, adding, “There are pleasantries and small talk. You don’t want them to see you’re nervous, but you are.”When each of the four major tournaments begins, the many player areas are teeming with competitors, plus their coaches, agents, trainers, family members and hitting partners. It is difficult to get a table in the player restaurant. Preferred times for a practice court or session with the athletic trainer can be hard to come by. People are bumping into one another, stepping over equipment bags, waiting for someone to move so they can reach their locker.“At the beginning, it’s very hectic,” said Andy Murray, who has played in 11 major finals and won three, including the U.S. Open in 2012. “There’s a lot of hustle and bustle.”Even before the first day of the main draw, there are 128 women and 128 men competing in the qualifying rounds, while scores more show up to begin practicing. When the first Monday of the main draw finally hits, it’s a tennis circus. Each locker room at the U.S. Open has roughly 375 lockers, and in the early days all are in use.Space on the practice courts goes from scarce to ample.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesGradually, some of the qualifiers lose and leave, but their spaces are handed over to newly arriving doubles players. Each contestant is allowed one additional person in the locker room, and past champions get two, and sometimes three as the event proceeds.“The first few days it’s crazy,” said Stan Wawrinka, who has reached four major finals and won three, including the 2016 U.S. Open. “The player restaurant is packed, you can’t find a table. It’s so noisy. I’m always trying to stay focused with my team and because of that, I don’t stay on site.”Then the cull begins. After two days, half the singles players have been eliminated. Two days after that, the herd is halved again, and so on. The same happens with the doubles teams and wheelchair players (Juniors have a different locker room, but they and their family members are allowed in the common players areas and restaurants).Day by day it gets quieter, until finally, after two weeks, there are just two left. Murray, like Evert, is a gregarious sort and enjoys the company of others. Roger Federer was known to be one of the livelier players in the locker room, too.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBut the goal is to be the last one alive in this “Squid Game,” and sometimes the isolation adds to the pressure. Before his U.S. Open final against Novak Djokovic in 2012, Murray practiced with his team, but they left him alone in the locker room to go eat while he prepared for his match.“It’s a huge locker room with no one else in there,” Murray recalled. “I remember feeling like I was incredibly nervous, and I wanted some company. At that time, I was still quite young, and I didn’t want to tell them I was nervous. I called my psychologist at the time, and she didn’t answer her phone. I felt really nervous just being in there on my own.”It turned out fine, as Murray won his first major title, but the loneliness is something with which the best players must grapple. Those who revel in solitude, like Pete Sampras, thrived on it. In Steve Flink’s book, “Pete Sampras: Greatness Revisited,” Sampras said, “I loved it on the last week of Wimbledon when nobody was in the locker room. I am a lone wolf.”Tracy Austin went 2-0 in U.S. Open finals, beating Evert in 1978 and Martina Navratilova in 1981, and said there was always cordiality in the locker room before and after matches.Mixed doubles is down to just four players. Jessica Pegula, left, and Austin Krajicek will play for the title Saturday.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesGetting a table in the players’ restaurant gets easier the deeper into the tournament. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesShe described the first week of a major tournament as draining, as much from navigating all the different people and chaotic scenes, as from playing the matches. To reach the end, and see all her colleagues disappear, was energizing.“The solitude is great,” Austin said. “It means you made it to the end and you don’t have to deal with whether you are being social or not. All your energy is focused into your match.”Every player handles it differently. Years ago, when there were fewer “teams” of coaches, agents, physios and advisers, players had more direct interaction, even when they were about to face one another. Evonne Goolagong Cawley sang in locker rooms before finals. Navratilova usually shared her food with Evert.Such collegiality is unheard-of in hockey, football, soccer and other sports, where teams do not dress in the same locker rooms. Golfers do, but that sport is not defined by one-on-one competition, as tennis is. In the same room, tennis players see when their opponent stretches, where they get taped, what muscles they ask the trainer to focus on.“You’re peripherally aware of your opponent and their moves getting ready for the match,” Evert said. “There’s definitely stress in the air and a finality of the moment. We are not one of many matches, we are the match. You are trying to not think about your opponent, but you wonder if they’re nervous, confident, relaxed.”For many players, the end of the first week, when more than 100 players in each draw have been eliminated, marks a turning point. There are still enough people around to have some social interaction, but the throngs have subsided and there is space to think and work.“The first week is the most stressful,” said Stefanos Tsitsipas, who has played in two major singles finals. “My favorite period of the Grand Slam is when the second week kicks in and everything starts to mellow down and become much quieter and more human, in a way.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHiroko Masuike/The New York TimesEric Butorac, a former tour professional, now works as a player liaison for the United States Tennis Association. He is in and out of the men’s locker room every day. He described how attendants hand out locker assignments, with preference to past champions, but they also tend to group countrymen together.Federer, Djokovic and Rafael Nadal were in so many finals over the last 20 years that eventually the locker room would become their own.“The Americans have this corner, the Spanish are here, the French are here,” Butorac said.“You get toward the end of a tournament and it’s like, Novak is around the corner to the left, Rafa is always in the back right, Roger’s is the second from the end over here.”“Going into the restaurant was extremely lonely,” Eric Butorac said of the final days of a tournament. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesThe player restaurant, pulsating with activity in the first week, gradually thins until only the finalists and their teams remain. Nadal and Federer used to relax in the restaurant before finals, playing games with members of their teams, and people knew to give them space. Butorac has been there, too. He reached the men’s doubles final at the 2014 Australian Open, and also warmed up Federer before his semifinal with Nadal.“Going into the restaurant was extremely lonely,” he said. “It was me, my one coach, my partner and his one coach. Federer was way down there and there were 30 empty tables between us. It was actually an eerily lonely feeling to be the last one standing. On TV it’s a big spectacle, but it has an odd feeling to it.”At the U.S. Open, the player garden turns into a desolate patio. The five practice courts, which were overcrowded at the beginning of play, are mostly empty. During the men’s final — the last event of the tournament — the hallways are nearly empty, other than security personnel. The other courts on the grounds are vacant. Even with Ashe packed, it is still the smallest overall attendance of the event, as only a handful of fans watch the big screen from the courtyard.“I love it,” said Daniil Medvedev, who won the U.S. Open in 2021 and has played in three other major finals. “That final Sunday is the best. It’s only you, his team and your team. I don’t feel lonely. If you want to win, you have to be alone at the end.” More

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      Frances Tiafoe Is Ready to Win the U.S. Open and Make Tennis Cool

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      Returning to the U.S. Open after last year’s electric run and crushing defeat, the boundary-busting American thinks he can win it all — and make tennis cool.One year ago, Frances Tiafoe headed to the U.S. Open, beloved within the tennis world but a relative unknown outside it. He emerged as the first American man to reach the U.S. Open semifinals since 2006, and the first Black American man since Arthur Ashe.Tiafoe did it by upsetting the great Rafael Nadal in an emotional, magnetic match in, as a colleague put it at the time, “a stadium packed to the rafters with the sound bellowing off the roof after nearly every point.” When he eventually lost in the semis to Carlos Alcaraz in a five-set banger, Michelle Obama asked to see him afterward, to thank him and console him. And the national media rushed to tell his story — an unusual one in a predominantly white, wealthy sport.Heading into this year’s Open, Tiafoe is the world No. 10. No longer the underdog, he is now contending with the burden and blessing of expectations and the distractions of sports celebrity. I sat down with him one week before the Open, at the Rock Creek Tennis Center in Washington, D.C., not far from where he grew up. We talked about whether his story really represents “the American dream,” if he’s looking forward to Novak Djokovic’s retirement, and … pickleball. This interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.Listen to the Audio Version of This InterviewFrances Tiafoe Is ReadyI am wondering what it’s like at this moment in your career. You’re being profiled in magazines. I just saw you in Vanity Fair. You’ve got N.B.A. stars in your box. It’s got to be pretty wild.Yeah, I talk about it all the time. That saying that your life can change overnight is 100 percent true. After I beat Rafa Nadal at last year’s Open, I felt like I was looked at totally different. You don’t realize what you’re doing, how crazy it is, while you’re doing it because you’re doing it. I think afterward, going home and buying little things at CVS and ladies are like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe this is you.” It’s been crazy. It’s definitely not meant for everybody. It’s definitely a life shift.Can you tell me a little bit about that? I mean, very few people will have that experience.You need to really have solid people around you. Everybody says that but don’t really live by it. A lot of people are going to want to take your time. All of a sudden, everyone wants to be your best friend. The famous guy wants to hang out, and he can do it at that time, but you maybe need to not do that. And I think the biggest thing for me is learning to say no. I still need to do a much better job of that. I’ve seen it eat a lot of people up. It gets to people’s heads.What have you said no to that you wanted to do?Even little things, like an appearance with one of my new brand partners that would have been a cool sit-down with Matt Damon, who I’m a big fan of. But I can’t do it, can’t go. I got to play a tournament. And it’s like, ahhh.You know, like, going on “The Shop” with LeBron — stuff that I’ve wanted to do, but scheduling just hasn’t quite worked out. And then obviously parties. You’ll get invited, but you probably should play a tournament. The reason people know you? You should probably stay on that.When you say you’ve seen other people get pulled off their path —People who are so hot for a second and then you just don’t hear about. And I think that’s the difference between one-hit wonders and people with longevity. It’s just that they’re so obsessed with what they’re doing and what got them to a certain place.I want to talk a little about your back story. You’re the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone. When you were little, your father literally helped build an elite tennis center in College Park, Md., as a construction worker. And then he got a job there as its custodian. And you actually lived there part time with your dad and your twin brother. And you started training there at the age of 5, which is incredible.Tiafoe training with Nikola Andjelic, a footwork coach, in 2012 at the tennis center in College Park, Md., where Tiafoe’s father worked.Matt Roth for The New York TimesThese details of your life are the headline of most articles about you. Does it feel like people get your story right? Are there things that you feel like people don’t understand when they talk about the way you came up?I feel like people do and don’t. People hear it, they know about it, but I don’t think they realize how crazy it actually is. I mean, I really was a big long shot, a huge long shot. And it just goes to show that being great at something is just having a level of obsession, and that’s what I had. I just hope it inspires a lot of people, honestly.You talked about how extraordinary your story is. And I guess there’s a couple of ways that you can think about it. Version one is that this is the American dream, that a family can come to this country, and within a generation their son can be one of the top 10 tennis players in the whole world. But I think there’s another version, which is that without an incredible amount of luck, you could have been just as talented, you could have been just as driven as you are, and yet never have become a professional tennis player.How do you think about the balance between those two versions — that your story shows both the incredible opportunities in America, but also that there are these inequalities that mean that it’s much harder for someone like you to be able to get to where you are?Ironically, I look at it more as the second version.Really? So then what does your story say about why there aren’t more Tiafoes?Well, it’s the lack of access, right? The biggest thing with the game of tennis is that it’s so hard to just start to play. Like very, very tough for people in low-income areas to just play the game of tennis. Shoes, rackets, clothes, stringing, court time. If it’s cold and you play inside, you pay for the court. You pay for coaching. I mean, if I’m a young kid, why wouldn’t I just go and play basketball, where I need three other guys to play two-on-two and a hoop? It’s a no-brainer.I think that’s the crazy thing. I imagine if I wasn’t, as you said, wasn’t in that situation —That your dad got the job at this place that allowed you to have the opportunity to be seen and to play.Think about how many people, if they were in my situation, could be doing what I’m doing. People that come from similar backgrounds as me, could do something special. That’s what I think about. Why aren’t more people lucky enough to be in that position?There have barely been any elite Black American male tennis players. How do you diagnose that problem?That’s why I look at my story that way. I mean, 50 years until an African American male made a semifinal of the U.S. Open? Fifty years. You’re telling me in 50 years a Black male can’t be in the semifinal of the U.S. Open?Granted, it was a great accomplishment for me! But I don’t want to wait another 50.I want to ask you about a separate issue, or maybe you think it’s connected. But there’s a real question about why American male players in general have struggled so much in the past two decades. An American man hasn’t won a Grand Slam since 2003. And until your run last year, there really haven’t been any U.S. stars on the men’s side in the way there were before. Agassi and Sampras, McEnroe, Connors. Why do you think American men in general have had such a hard time?That’s always a funny question. I’ve been dealing with it for a long time.I think it is a bit of a separate issue from what we were just speaking about. My rebuttal to it is always: It doesn’t really matter where your flag is from. Essentially it was four guys winning Grand Slams for a decade. One of the guys is still going at it, however old he is. He doesn’t seem like he’s stopping.He’s 36. Djokovic.Exactly. So I don’t think that’s really a flag issue. I think that’s just an era issue. I mean, the best decade of tennis ever.But we’re at this changing-of-the-guard moment. Roger Federer retired last year. Nadal, who you beat last year at the U.S. Open, is having a tough season with injuries. He’s also talked about retiring. Djokovic is still very much in the mix, but he is indeed 36 years old. Are you secretly glad these guys are winding down?Yes and no. My goal when I was younger, I wanted to beat one of those guys in the highest-level event. You want to be the best, so you’ve got to beat the best. So I’m not like, Oh, man, I can’t wait for these guys to stop. I think that’s a bad mentality. I think it’s I’ve got to get better. I’ve got to beat these guys.I mean, I’m playing Rafa last year. I should have more legs than he has. Should! And it motivates me. Because even if Novak retires, you have new guys. Carlos Alcaraz is very good. There’s always going to be someone who you’re going to have to beat.So, um, nah.Tiafoe, right, playing Rafael Nadal at last year’s U.S. Open. Tiafoe said that after winning that match, he really believed he could win the whole thing.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesI was watching this conversation you had with Chris Eubanks and Ben Shelton, two other young Black American players. And you said, “We’re going to be the reason why the game changes.” What did you mean by that?I just think diversity in sports, right? You bring a whole different demographic to the game. It’s history, and you’re watching it live. It’s the reason why Chris Eubanks’s run at Wimbledon was so big. It’s iconic stuff in a predominantly white sport. So I think we have a bit of a different impact. You start seeing more people of color in the stadium, paying that hard-earned money to come watch because it’s history, it’s different.How does that make you feel, that more people are using their hard-earned money to come to the stands? People of color that you’re bringing into the sport?It means everything to me. It means everything to me, but at the same time it’s like, damn, you feel the responsibility to perform, to be your best self for them.It’s interesting. You’ve just discussed this tension, which is feeling really great to be able to inspire people, but also feeling like it’s a burden. And I think most people of color who are successful would say that it’s really difficult to be the first and the only. Because there is this tension. Do you feel like it pushes you farther, or do you feel like it sometimes can weigh you down?It’s a great question. First off, yeah, as you achieve it, you definitely think about that. I don’t want to be the first and only, as I said earlier. But I think it inspires me, man. It really does. It makes me want to have longevity with this thing at a high level. Because you think about Serena and Venus. That’s why you create a Sloane Stephens winning a Grand Slam. That’s why you create a Coco Gauff, Naomi Osaka. And that’s the position I want to be in, right?But the job doesn’t end until you do the ultimate goal, and that’s to win a Grand Slam.That’s your goal right now? That’s the thing?That’s the only thing that matters, to be fair. If I win a Grand Slam, there’s nothing anyone could say or ask of me after that.So you’ve been pretty vocal about how you think tennis should modernize and bring in new fans. You’ve said you’d like to see the sport borrow from basketball and be more relaxed when it comes to fan behavior. Why do you think that would be a good thing?People are like, oh, that’s not this game, that’s not tennis. Well, the question was how do we bring in younger fans? If you go to a soccer game, you go to a football game, a baseball game, you’re not quiet, are you?No.It’s entertainment. Obviously with tennis you need a little bit more structure. But for example, in between games, when people are standing on top of the stadium and ask the usher, “Well, when can I come down? I’m paying for tickets and I can’t even come and go as I please?”I don’t want to change the whole way of it, but within reason. I think a lot more young people would be like, OK, this is cool. You know, music playing more constantly, maybe in between points or in high-pressure moments.You think about the U.S. Open atmosphere, and they’re doing it anyway. Like, I’m playing in that stadium, it’s rockin’. People are drunk out of their minds, they’re just screaming whenever they want. You can’t control the environment anyway, so you might as well let it rock.But, hey, man, I don’t make the rules.OK, I have a question for you. What do you think of pickleball?[Laughs] I think it’s a sport I should invest in. I don’t think it’s a sport that I like. I don’t think it’s a great sport. But from the business side, I love it.I don’t think it takes very much skill. I go to Florida and I see a lot of older people playing and joking with the kids and having fun, but as far as creating all these leagues and tournaments and pro events, I just feel like tennis players who couldn’t quite do it out here are trying to make something out there.And they’re closing down tennis courts in order to make pickleball courts.For that sport to have an effect on the game of tennis, it’s ridiculous to me.Thank you for indulging me. To get back to your generation: There’s a lot of buzz around Carlos Alcaraz. He’s 20, he’s won two Slams, and it looks like he’s just getting started. Are you worried he’s a player who’s becoming the guy to beat?The man whom Tiafoe calls “the guy to beat,” Carlos Alcaraz.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesA disappointing end to Tiafoe’s emotional run at last year’s U.S. Open.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesNo, it’s good! It’s good. He’s good. He’s good for the game. Hell of a player. He is going to be special. He’s going to be a guy that’s going to push me to always want more and be at my best, because if I want to achieve anything special, I got to go through him. Once Novak leaves, he’s the guy to beat.That brings me to where you are right now. You’re world No. 10. You’ve won a couple of tournaments this year, but you’ve also been knocked out early in others, including a heartbreaker at Wimbledon. How do you evaluate your overall performance this year?I think I’ve had a good year. I’ve won 30-something matches. I’ve won a couple titles. I’m probably the most consistent I’ve been this year as far as week to week. But I’d much rather take more L’s, more losses, with a deeper run in a Slam. So we got one more shot. And obviously I want to go deep and put myself in title contention.How are you preparing for that?I know what I want to do. I know I want to win the event. It’s a matter of beating the guys you’re supposed to beat. But it is what it is. I’m 25. It doesn’t have to be right now.I want to ask you a little bit about the specifics of your game. You changed coaches. You reworked your technique, particularly your forehand. I watched the Netflix “Break Point” episode — that’s the documentary series about the tennis tour — and there was a lot of talk about your focus, about trying to up your consistency. So when you think about how your game has changed, do you think the shift has been more mental or more physical?The physical side has played a part. I’ve gotten much more fit, much more lean in the last couple years. But I think the mental side is the biggest thing. I’ve just made a choice. I made a choice that I’m committing to the game. I made a choice that I’m going to be more professional. I made a choice that I’m going to sacrifice a bit more of my outside tennis activities. Pick your moments of whatever pleasure — trying to just put tennis as the No. 1 priority.So saying no to LeBron.[Laughs] Yes.Of his chances at this year’s U.S. Open, Tiafoe said, “I always feel like I can do something special in New York.”Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWas there a moment when you made that choice?Yes. Going into the pandemic, I was not in a good place. Playing horribly. I was just enjoying life and got really complacent and it showed in my game a lot. It was the first time I really went through adversity as it pertains to the game of tennis. Losing a lot of matches and I didn’t really know how to handle it. So that was very tough.And then, just having a conversation with my boys, looking at the rankings, I’m like, dude, these guys ahead of me, they’re not better than me. Like, this is not reality. This can’t be my reality. And then from that point, I hired coaches. A lot of my team is new. My fitness coach travels with me much more. I started just slowly making choices. Being coachable. Stop trying to act like I know everything. Just slowly break old habits, which is very tough. It’s been a long process, but it’s been good. These last three years have been good. I’ve changed a lot.I want to take you back to last year’s U.S. Open. Because, you know, losing is terrible for everyone, but it feels like it hits you particularly hard. In your postmatch interview after you lost in the semifinals, even though it was this incredible moment, you said, and I’m quoting here, “I feel like I let you guys down.” Who did you feel like you let down?The country.The country?The country. I’ve never felt that much weight. Never felt that much energy. I checked into my hotel three weeks prior to that match. It was kind of like, whatever, nobody was really bothering me. Then at the end, I have security outside my door, people are going crazy, I’m all over New York, can’t go anywhere, everyone’s coming to the match.And I really believed I could do it. After I beat Rafa, after I backed up that win and I gave everything I had. You know, it just wasn’t good enough. And at that particular moment, I genuinely felt that way. I felt like I let those guys down. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself, but I was letting them know that I want to come back and finish the job. It was an emotional moment. It was very tough. No competitor wants to feel like they fell short.And now on the cusp of this year’s Open —I feel like I’m in a pretty good place. Going in, momentum-wise, it hasn’t been a great couple of weeks. But honestly, no matter how I’ve played going in, I always feel like I can do something special in New York. That crowd behind me. There’s something about people getting behind you and wanting it more than you almost do. You feel like you don’t have a choice but to give everything. More

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      A Field Guide to the 2023 U.S. Open

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      With the grass and clay seasons over, the eyes of the tennis world now turn to Flushing Meadows.The U.S. Open, played from Aug. 28 to Sept. 10 in Queens, is the last Grand Slam tournament of the calendar year, giving players one more chance to win a major title. Each year, the tournament creates a buzz around New York City, and it never fails to excite — or wreak havoc on sleep schedules, with marathon matches that can go deep into the night.At last year’s U.S. Open, Serena Williams largely stole the show during the first week as she closed out her storied career by reaching the third round of the singles draw. This year, without Williams, Roger Federer and an injured Rafael Nadal, a largely younger generation of tennis stars is looking to make a deep run in the tournament.Both of the 2022 singles winners are back in the field: Iga Swiatek, the 22-year-old from Poland and a four-time Grand Slam tournament champion, and Carlos Alcaraz, the 20-year-old Spanish phenom with two Grand Slam singles titles under his belt. But while Alcaraz and Swiatek are among those favored to win, you never know when a couple of teenagers could surprise everyone and reach the final.Here’s what to know about this year’s U.S. Open.How can I watch?In the United States, ESPN will carry the action from the first ball of the day until late into the night. Over Labor Day weekend, ABC will also broadcast some matches.Around the world, other networks airing the tournament include TSN in Canada, Sky Sports in Britain, Migu in China, Sky Deutschland in Germany, SuperTennis in Italy and Movistar in Spain.Kids lined up for autographs from Frances Tiafoe in Arthur Ashe Stadium after he practiced on Friday.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times‘Stand clear of the closing doors, please.’For those heading out to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, the No. 7 train, which makes stops in Manhattan at Times Square and Grand Central Station, is one of the easiest ways to get to the U.S. Open.The No. 7 train stops at Mets-Willets Point station, which leads directly to the tennis grounds. (If you see a bunch of fans in Mets gear, turn around because you’ve gone the wrong way.) It also includes an express route, which makes fewer stops than the local trains, and on certain nights an even faster “super express train” is offered back to Manhattan. Another option is to take the Long Island Rail Road to the Mets-Willets Point station.Parking is also available at the tournament, along with designated ride-share spots. But beware: Heavy traffic often means that driving either in or out of Manhattan can take longer than a train ride.Baseball fans and tennis fans will mingle at the Mets-Willets Point subway station.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesCan’t get a ticket to Arthur Ashe Stadium?There is something electric about a night match under the lights of Arthur Ashe Stadium. The court is reserved for the tournament’s top-billed players, who are spurred on by raucous, Honey Deuce-fueled crowds. But a seat in Arthur Ashe can be pricey.Other options include buying a ticket to Louis Armstrong Stadium or the Grandstand, which both host a number of often-underrated matches and offer a closer look at the action. There isn’t a bad seat in either venue.Perhaps one of the best — and more laissez-faire — ways to enjoy the tournament is to buy a grounds pass and hop around from court to court. A grounds pass also offers first-come, first-serve access to the general admission seating in Armstrong and the Grandstand.Don’t sleep on those numbered outer courts, either. At last year’s tournament, Aryna Sabalenka, who won this year’s Australian Open, was down — 2-6, 1-5 — in a second-round match against Kaia Kanepi. The match seemed all but over until Sabalenka fought back to win the second set and eventually the third. Where did this epic comeback go down? Court 5, over by the practice courts.Spectators watched qualifying matches inside the Grandstand on Friday.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesWho’s playing?Novak Djokovic is back. After missing last year’s U.S. Open because he was not vaccinated against the coronavirus, as American travel restrictions required of foreign visitors at the time, the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion returns to seek a 24th title.Djokovic will enter the tournament in strong form after winning the Western & Southern Open in Ohio last week against Alcaraz. In the final, Djokovic was down a set, and he appeared to be suffering badly from the heat, but he rallied and forced a third set, winning on a tiebreaker.In addition to Alcaraz and Swiatek, other big names in this year’s tournament include Sabalenka of Belarus, Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, Daniil Medvedev of Russia, Casper Ruud of Norway and Elena Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan. Some of the top-seeded American players include Frances Tiafoe, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff and Taylor Fritz.Frances Tiafoe made a deep run in last year’s U.S. Open.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesKeep an eye on these story lines.Elina Svitolina, a U.S. Open semifinalist in 2019, missed last year’s tournament while taking time off for the birth of her daughter and raising money for Ukraine, her home country, after it was invaded by Russia. Since returning to tennis this year, Svitolina made an impressive run to the quarterfinals of the French Open, and she defeated Swiatek to reach the semifinals of Wimbledon. (By the way, don’t be surprised if you see Svitolina or any Ukrainian player refuse to shake hands with Russian or Belarusian players.)Gauff, the 19-year-old who was a French Open finalist in 2022, enters the U.S. Open having won two titles this month, in Washington, D.C., and Ohio. In the semis of the Western & Southern Open, she was finally able to beat Swiatek, having lost the previous seven matches against her.Caroline Wozniacki and Venus Williams were both awarded wild-card slots at this year’s U.S. Open. Wozniacki, a one-time Grand Slam singles champion from Denmark, is back after retiring from tennis in 2020 to start a family. Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam singles champion, shows no signs of stopping at 43.On the men’s side, Andy Murray, 36, is another veteran who is keeping on with three Grand Slam titles in tow, and John Isner, the 38-year-old American, was awarded a wild card for what he said will be his final tournament.Someone else to keep tabs on is Jennifer Brady, the 28-year-old American who reached the 2021 Australian Open final. After missing nearly two years with injuries, Brady is back on the tennis scene.Jennifer Brady made her return to tennis this year.Jacob Langston for The New York TimesSome big names are missing this year.One of the most notable absences will be Rafael Nadal, the 22-time Grand Slam singles champion. He is out for the rest of the year with an injury and is eyeing a return next year.This year’s tournament will also lack some recent U.S. Open champions: Naomi Osaka, who won the U.S. Open in 2018 and 2020, will miss this year’s tournament after giving birth to a daughter this summer. Emma Raducanu, who won the 2021 U.S. Open women’s title as a qualifier without losing a single set, is recovering from minor procedures on both hands and an ankle. Bianca Andreescu, the 2019 U.S. Open champion, is out this year with a small stress fracture in her back.Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion, was withdrawn from the tournament because she received a provisional suspension in October after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug during last year’s U.S. Open.Nick Kyrgios, the fiery Australian, withdrew from the men’s draw in early August. Kyrgios, who has played in only one tournament this year, wrote on Instagram that a wrist injury was keeping him out of the U.S. Open.Naomi Osaka at last year’s U.S. Open.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesMark your calendars.The action begins on Monday, with the first, second and third rounds scheduled through Sept. 2. The round of 16 starts on Sept. 3, followed by the quarterfinals on Sept. 5 and 6.The women’s semifinals are scheduled for Sept. 7, with the men’s semifinals on Sept. 8. The women’s final will be played Sept. 9, and the tournament wraps up with the men’s final on Sept. 10.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times More

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      Novak Djokovic Captures the French Open and a 23rd Grand Slam Title

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      Djokovic beat Casper Ruud to win the men’s singles championship, passing Rafael Nadal for the most major tournament titles in the Open era.Novak Djokovic began his day picturing how it would end, holding his children in his arms, raising another Grand Slam tournament trophy above his head and singing his national anthem as Serbian fans chanted and danced and celebrated his third French Open men’s singles title and much more.On Sunday at Roland Garros, Djokovic defeated Casper Ruud, 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5, to capture a record 23rd Grand Slam singles title, continuing a stunning turnaround from a year and a half ago, when he was deported from Australia ahead of the first Grand Slam tournament of 2022, a dire harbinger of the year to come. After Ruud’s final forehand sailed off the court, Djokovic dropped his racket and collapsed onto his back on the red clay. It was easy to appreciate the drama.“The toughest one for me to win,” Djokovic said of the French Open.Moments later, after a congratulatory hug from Ruud, Djokovic knelt in prayer in the middle of the court, then headed for the stands to embrace his family and his coaches. When he came back onto the court moments later, he was wearing a jacket with “23” emblazoned under his right shoulder.Family ❤️#RolandGarros | @DjokerNole pic.twitter.com/Qy42UKC0yQ— Roland-Garros (@rolandgarros) June 11, 2023
      Djokovic, 36, has spent most of the last two decades chasing his rivals Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two other giants who have defined this era of modern tennis. That race has come to an end, at least for now.“Those two guys, the past 15 years, were occupying my mind quite a lot,” Djokovic said as he sat next to the championship trophy.Djokovic surpassed Federer last summer, just a few months before Federer’s retirement, winning his 21st Grand Slam title at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on the grass that Federer had ruled for so long. In January at the Australian Open, Djokovic won again. That 22nd title tied Nadal, the Spanish champion who missed this year’s French Open with an injury.With a cast of stars on hand for the occasion, he made his history on the red clay of the Philippe Chatrier court at the French Open, which Nadal has won an astonishing 14 times. A silver statue of Nadal bullwhipping his forehand stands just hundreds of yards away.The retired N.F.L. quarterback Tom Brady sat next to Djokovic’s wife, Jelena. The French soccer star Kylian Mbappé and the Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic sat a few rows above the court. The American actor Jake Gyllenhaal, the tennis icons Stan Smith and Yannick Noah, and many French actors, singers, businessmen and athletes were also among the spectators.This was a momentous step in a journey filled with self-inflicted crises, epic battles with Nadal and Federer on the court, and early and midcareer fallow seasons, some because he was injured and some when he missed tournaments because he would not waiver from principles that kept him a staunch opponent of the Covid-19 vaccination. His most seemingly impossible task has been winning the hearts of tennis fans who long ago pledged them to the first two members of the so-called Big Three.At the end of 2010, when Djokovic was 23 years old and five years past competing in his first major tournament, Federer had already won 16 Grand Slam titles to Djokovic’s one.But in 2011, Djokovic began to storm the sport, winning the Australian and U.S. Opens and Wimbledon. He put together a 41-match winning streak and a 10-1 record against Federer and Nadal. Tennis has never been the same.Djokovic moments after his 7-6 (1), 6-3, 7-5 victory against Casper Ruud.Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMaybe it was his new, gluten-free diet, or forsaking alcohol, or the time spent in a pressurized chamber. Maybe it was the stretching and calisthenics routine that turned Djokovic into a racket-wielding rubber band and has him “still moving like a cat,” as his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, said Sunday evening.The boulder-sized chip on his shoulder, which Djokovic has said he has carried since growing up during the war in Serbia, hasn’t hurt either.Ivanisevic, a Croat, has described a Balkan fighting spirit in Djokovic’s DNA that no one who has come from outside the region can match in the biggest matches.Boris Becker, the retired German champion who coached him for three years, has said that Djokovic needed to stop punishing himself for an indiscretion that neither Djokovic nor Becker has ever talked about in detail. Once he did that, Becker said, he became liberated, and began winning with abandon.The numbers since then defy simple explanation. With his win Sunday, Djokovic regained the world’s top ranking for a record 388th week. In addition to the record for Grand Slam tournament titles, he also holds the record for Masters 1000 titles. In case any Nadal or Federer fans want to fault him for being a mere compiler, Djokovic has a winning record against both of them.Feeling worn out from his semifinal win over Carlos Alcaraz, Djokovic skipped practice on Saturday and searched for tranquillity on a walk in the woods. It was a good decision.Any hope that Ruud, 24, a steady and determined Norwegian playing in his third Grand Slam final in 13 months, had of turning Sunday into something other than a coronation dissipated at the end of a grinding first set that concluded in Djokovic’s signature fashion. Across all these years and hundreds of Grand Slam matches, Djokovic has lost only five times after winning the first set.Andy Roddick, a former world No. 1, famously said of Djokovic that “first he comes for your legs, and then he comes for your soul.”Ivanisevic added to that assessment Sunday: “Then he digs your grave and you have a funeral and you’re dead. Bye-bye. Thank you for coming.”That was about what Djokovic did to Ruud early on Sunday, on his way to history.Ruud broke Djokovic’s serve to start the match and surged to an early lead as Djokovic played a shaky first few games, muffing overheads and pushing balls off the court as Ruud played the mostly error-free and deceptively dangerous tennis that has characterized the best moments of his career.But then the Djokovic that the tennis world has come to know and fear the past dozen years emerged. With Ruud serving at 4-2, close enough to sniff the first-set finish line, Djokovic indulged in one of those classic grinding rallies, running from corner to corner, forward and back, keeping the point alive long after it should have been over. It ended the way it often does — with an exhausted opponent struggling for oxygen and dumping a ball into the net.“A bit devastating,” Ruud said.In most tennis matches, when a set moves to a tiebreaker, the outcome comes down to a flip of a coin. That is not how it works with Djokovic.Last week, he explained that when a tiebreaker begins, his mind moves to a state of hyper concentration to “stay in the present,” play each point on its merit and give nothing away.He started this one with a lunging forehand winner down the line, and finished it seven points later with another blasted forehand that Ruud didn’t even bother making a run at, not that it would have mattered. When it was over, Djokovic had played 55 points in tiebreakers during this tournament and had yet to make an unforced error.Djokovic soaking in his victory.Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor an hour and 22 minutes, Ruud had gone toe to toe with Djokovic, matching him sprint for sprint and shot for shot for long stretches, and he had nothing but a rubbery set of legs and a damaged psyche to show for it. Ruud stuck around for the scrap, pushing the match past the three-hour mark. But after that first set, it was just a matter of time.In the fog of all this winning, it can be difficult to remember Djokovic’s stretches of strife, even the more recent ones. There were those days when he was in custody in Australia last year as he awaited his deportation hearing. But there was also that ugly time in 2020, when he accidentally swatted a ball into the throat of a line judge and was tossed out of the U.S. Open. The next month, Nadal destroyed him in straight sets in the final of a French Open delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Djokovic appeared headed for another walk in the wilderness.Instead, he came within one match of achieving a Grand Slam, nearly winning all four Grand Slam tournaments in 2021, toppling Nadal at Roland Garros along the way.He has won the first two Grand Slam events this year.“The journey is still not over,” Djokovic said. “If I am winning Slams, why even think about ending the career?”He may be alone with 23 Grand Slam titles, but in his eyes, there is more history to play for.“I wish you win against anybody except me,” Djokovic told Casper Ruud after the match.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images More

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      Even as He’s Out, Rafael Nadal Will Always Be a Part of the French Open

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      Nadal’s reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport.In case, in this distracted era, you only have time to read the first paragraph on your phone, here is the essential from Rafael Nadal: No French Open this year for the first time since 2004; no retirement just yet.But there is, of course, much more to Nadal’s story, particularly at Roland Garros, the Grand Slam tournament he has dominated like no player has dominated any tennis major.His 14 singles titles still look like a typo even for those like me who have watched him build that probably unbreakable record, red brick by red brick.“When you play Roland Garros 14 times you tell yourself you had a good career,” the French veteran Nicolas Mahut said in an interview with L’Équipe. “When you win 14 matches there, that’s not too bad at all. When you get to the second week 14 times you are one of the great players. And when you win the title 14 times, there is no way to comprehend that. There are no words.”Though Nadal is Spanish, even the French Open organizers buckled under the weight of all the hardware and erected a shimmering, larger-than-life statue of Nadal just inside the main entrance of the tournament grounds.His reign in Paris — full of flexed biceps, forehand winners and underrated court craft — is one of the great achievements in any sport, and though a 15th title is a long shot at this late stage, all we know for certain is that Nadal will not be winning it this year.He announced his withdrawal from this year’s French Open at a news conference on Thursday in his home city of Manacor at his eponymous academy: another monument to his tennis excellence.Dressed in jeans and a white, short-sleeved shirt, Nadal, who will turn 37 on June 3, explained calmly and at length that he had lost his latest race against time: failing to recover sufficiently from a core muscle injury he suffered in January at the Australian Open to play.“It’s not a decision that I made, it’s a decision that my body made,” he said.Nadal, still interested in playing only when he has a chance to win, will stop practicing through the pain for an extended period, likely several months. He did not rule out returning to competition later in 2023 — mentioning the Davis Cup Finals that will be held in Malaga, Spain, in November — but above all he is aiming to return for what he said was “probably” going to be his final season in 2024.“I don’t want to put myself in a position to say one thing and then do another thing, but my goal and my ambition is to try to stop to give myself an opportunity to enjoy next year,” he said, sighing audibly midsentence as if he was fighting himself to talk about the finish line.John McEnroe, a more combustible tennis champion, used news conferences as therapy, working through his issues and setbacks via the question-and-answer game. Nadal, left eyebrow arching, did some of the same on Thursday and did it, unlike McEnroe, in Spanish, English and Mallorcan, the dialect of Nadal’s home island and the lingua franca of the Nadal family.“It’s not a decision that I made, it’s a decision that my body made,” Nadal said on Thursday.Francisco Ubilla/Associated PressWhatever the language, the message was the same: Nadal has had enough of gritting his teeth through practice sessions but he craves a happier ending.There are no guarantees considering that his body has been failing him at an accelerating rate. Oft-injured even in his youth, he is breaking down in new places in his tennis dotage: a fractured rib and abdominal injury in 2022 and the hip injury in 2023, sustained midmatch in his straight-set defeats to Mackenzie McDonald in the second round in Australia.Perhaps Nadal should not have played through that pain, but he is as gritty as the red clay that suits his game best. And even if newly married and a new father with a fancy yacht and an impressive golf handicap, he is not yet ready to join Roger Federer, his friend and former archrival, in gilded retirement.“I think I don’t deserve to finish like this, in a press conference,” Nadal said. “I want a different ending and I am going to do my best to make that happen.”He added: “I don’t know if I can be competitive to win a Grand Slam. I’m not an irrational person. I am aware of the difficulty of the situation. But I’m not a negative person either. I want to give myself the opportunity to come back and compete.”Farewell tours have their own perils. Stefan Edberg, the former world No. 1 and six-time Grand Slam singles champion from Sweden, announced well in advance that 1996 would be his final season and ended up regretting it, worn out by the post-match ceremonies and glad-handing. When Edberg coached Federer, he advised him to keep it shorter to make it sweeter, and Federer listened: bowing out at age 41 last September on short notice by playing doubles with Nadal at the Laver Cup team event in London.It was a poignant scene that packed quite a punch with both champions — and plenty of observers — in tears as Federer called it a career. Most other tennis greats — from Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras to Steffi Graf and Serena Williams — have kept their goodbyes compact. In Sampras’s case, he avoided the farewell tour altogether, and won his final tournament, the 2002 U.S. Open.But Nadal is certainly accustomed to bearing the weight of others’ expectations and to politely handling the limelight. He has been a star at home since helping Spain beat the United States to win the Davis Cup at age 18 in 2004 and has been a global star since winning the French Open at age 19 in 2005, his debut in the field.He would likely have won Roland Garros even earlier if he had not been forced to miss the event in 2003 and 2004 because of injuries. But despite all the physical challenges he has faced, he managed to play his signature tournament 18 years in a row, retiring mid-tournament just once in 2016 because of a wrist injury.He has become as much a part of the Roland Garros landscape as the red clay beneath everyone’s feet, but it will be someone else’s domain this spring.Novak Djokovic, who turns 36 on Monday, is the only player to beat Nadal twice at the French Open and remains tied with Nadal for the men’s record with 22 Grand Slam singles titles. But though Djokovic is built to last with his elastic limbs and centenarian’s diet, he has been struggling with elbow pain and has looked far from irresistible on clay this season.The younger set looks like the slightly better bet. Carlos Alcaraz, 20, is back at No. 1 and already a Grand Slam champion after winning last year’s U.S. Open. Holger Rune, 20 as well, beat Djokovic in Rome this week and has elastic limbs of his own. You can add Stefanos Tsitsipas, Casper Ruud, Jannik Sinner or even Daniil Medvedev, formerly allergic to clay, to the short list without ruling out a bigger surprise.Nadal, absent from the draw for the first time nearly two decades, said he won’t watch it all from afar, but he will be keeping tabs.Last year, he drew some criticism from pro-Djokovic quarters for emphasizing that no tournament is bigger than any single player when Djokovic missed the 2022 Australian Open after arriving in Melbourne unvaccinated for the coronavirus and was deported.“The Australian Open will be great Australian Open with or without him,” Nadal said before winning it himself.But he was clearly eager to be consistent on Thursday.“My speech is not going to change,” he said. “Roland Garros will be always Roland Garros with or without me without a doubt.”He continued: “Players stay for a while, and they leave. Tournaments stay forever.”That is true and will seem truer still when some other man with red-stained socks is crowned champion next month in Paris. But there can also be no doubt that Nadal and Roland Garros will be linked as long as there is a Roland Garros. 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