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      Pandemic Speeds Adoption of Automated Line-Calling Systems

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      The accuracy of Hawk-Eye and Foxtenn are allowing tournaments to reduce the number of officials on the court.The ball streaks through the air toward the base line, topspin yanking it down right near the line. “Out,” shouts the line judge.For 15 years, a player who disagreed could protest with a challenge, and fans at the Rolex Paris Masters, and every other major tournament, would then look to the video screens, often clapping rhythmically, building toward when the Hawk-Eye line-calling system would provide true justice.The pandemic has changed the game. For safety, the hardcourt Masters 1000 tournaments this year, as well as the Australian and United States Opens, replaced line judges (backed up by Hawk-Eye for challenges) with a fully automated system, Hawk-Eye Live.Novak Djokovic said he supported the use of the review technology. David Aliaga/MB Media/Getty ImagesThis system, which the ATP debuted in 2017 at its Next Gen Finals, makes instantaneous calls. Automated line calling has increased confidence in accuracy, while raising questions about the game’s human element.A tour ruled by machines is still far in the future, but this temporary fix provides a sense of where line-calling may be headed.To retain some human element with Hawk-Eye Live, tournaments use recorded voices instead of beeps and boops. “It would feel wrong for tennis to become too robotic,” said Ross Hutchins, ATP’s chief tour officer. (One Hawk-Eye executive publicly floated the idea of using sponsor names, so instead of “Out” you might hear “Ralph Lauren.”)The challenge system demonstrated that line judges were right more often than players, but the machines are more accurate still. “Being the most accurate is the most important thing,” Hutchins said. Eliminating challenges also speeds up the game.Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked men’s player, said he liked the system.“I don’t see a reason why we need the line umpires if we have the technology,” Djokovic told ESPN this year. “I support technology. It’s inevitable for the future of tennis.”Removing people provides more space behind the baseline for players, said Pam Shriver, an ESPN analyst and a former professional player, while automated reliability produces fewer distractions for players and thus better tennis: “It gives the players one less thing to worry about.”But Hawk-Eye Live does not actually mark the spot — it uses its cameras and data to project an estimation of where the ball will bounce. Shriver finds the idea of projected estimates disconcerting, given potential distortions like wind gusts. “It sounds like guessing,” she said. “People think what was caught was the physical bounce as it was happening.”An example of the Hawk-Eye technology in use during a match between Roger Federer and Juan Martin Del Potro.Mike Egerton/PA Images, via Getty ImagesRepresentatives from Hawk-Eye claim accuracy within 3.6 millimeters and self-reported 14 mistakes in 225,000 calls at the U.S. Open in 2020.A rival company, Foxtenn, uses cameras to capture the ball’s actual movement.“Our accuracy is perfect, and one thing that makes us credible is that the player sees the real ball bouncing in the replay, not a drawing,” said Félix Mantilla, director of sales and a former player. “I think only one technology will survive in 10 years.”For now, Hawk-Eye remains the dominant player.“We’re continuously innovating our technologies, while delivering the highest accuracy possible,” the company said in a statement.The tour has confidence in both systems, Hutchins said, adding that there was “absolutely” room for two. Yet it took Covid — and the need to limit the number of people on the courts — to push toward live line calling. And plans are to have Hawk-Eye Live as an option on the ATP Tour through only the first quarter of 2022.“This is not close to permanent,” Hutchins said. “We still want to understand the system’s impact more.”Feedback from fans has been mixed, and there are issues about the impact of developing future chair umpires. Hutchins said the cost of Hawk-Eye Live would be difficult for the hundreds of junior, future and challenger tournaments to pay for, meaning line judges will remain. “There will still be a pathway for chair umpires for a very long time.”Mantilla said that while Americans loved advanced technology and embraced these changes, Europeans were more traditional. “I don’t know if it will take 10 or 20 years for there to be no lines people left in major tournaments, but it will take time.” More

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      Messi, After Signing With P.S.G., Is Greeted With Cheers in Paris

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      The soccer great Lionel Messi, speaking at a news conference, said leaving Barcelona had been a “very hard moment” but he was excited to join his new club.PARIS — When Lionel Messi said goodbye to Barcelona, his home since childhood and the place he grew to become one of soccer’s greatest ever players, he was in tears.Three days later, when he was formally introduced on Wednesday by his new club, Paris St.-Germain, any tears in the crowd were expressions of joy.“It’s wonderful,” said Alexandre Marienne, 32, carrying his 8-year-old son Kamil on his shoulders. “He’s going to help us build something incredible — Paris is definitely competing with the big names now.”When Messi addressed reporters, sitting next to the club’s president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, he said leaving Barcelona was “a very hard moment” but that he was “very happy” to be in Paris.“I still want to play and I still want to win,” he said. “I want to keep growing and keep winning titles.”Messi, right, speaking alongside Paris St.-Germain’s president, Nasser Al-Khelaifi, on Wednesday.Stephane De Sakutin/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt was the culmination of stunning few days, in which Barcelona’s fans and players bid farewell in shock to the club’s greatest player, while in the French capital, P.S.G.’s fans hold their breaths, many unable to fathom what was happening.Messi repeated that he didn’t want to leave the club that made him who he is, that he had done “everything to stay.” His devoted fans wanted him to stay in Barcelona. The club wanted him to stay in Barcelona.But the financial forces that drive the game were greater than either individual or collective desire. The club could not afford Messi, even after he offered to cut his salary in half.So here he was, in Paris, about to play in the French Ligue 1, where financial rules akin to those that tied Barcelona’s hands will not come into force for a few more years.“The moment I arrived here, I felt very happy,” he said.Rarely has an athlete in the modern era been so associated with a single team. Maybe Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls is the closest comparison for American sports fans.But Messi’s connection to Barcelona ran deeper: He arrived at the club when he was only 13.Messi wept during a news conference in Barcelona on Sunday.Albert Gea/ReutersSo it was a strange sight to see him holding the jersey other than one sporting the familiar colors of Barcelona.But the legions of fans who greeted him in his new home city opened their arms in an embrace that, for the moment, overshadowed the darker message his transfer sent about the sport that Messi has so dominated.They did not come to discuss the danger posed by the immense advantage a small number of superrich clubs have in buying and keeping players.They came simply to see Messi.Men and women, many with their children by their side, came from all over Paris and other French cities far and near. Some were not from France at all. But they were all bonded by Messi.They gathered at the Parc des Princes, Paris St.-Germain’s stadium, to catch a glimpse of their talisman, who arrived in the French capital on Tuesday and signed a two-year deal with the French club.Mr. Messi called the ecstatic reception “crazy,” and said he was excited to get back to the business of playing soccer with some of the best players in the world.Messi in Paris on Tuesday, after arriving to sign a contract with his new club. Sarah Meyssonnier/ReutersFor many, the signing was no surprise: P.S.G., bankrolled by the state of Qatar, was only one of handful of clubs that could afford the 34-year-old star from Argentina.Yet countless supporters could still not believe it.“It’s just crazy stuff — we were not even dreaming of it,” said Yohan Aymon, a 19-year-old P.S.G. fan and forward for F.C. Sion, a Swiss club, who drove from his native Switzerland overnight.Since Qatar became the main stakeholder of Paris St.-Germain in 2012, supporters have watched the coming of a steady stream of the world’s most expensive players.From Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Neymar, David Beckham to Kylian Mbappé, Gianluigi Buffon to Sergio Ramos, no club has signed as many stars in the past 10 years.That has drawn criticism from countless clubs, players and managers in France and abroad, who argue that the competition is now unfair and biased toward state-sponsored teams like P.S.G. or Manchester City.But none of them, it seems, compares to Messi’s arrival. Fans lined up around the stadium at dawn on Wednesday, chanting and shouting as a giant photo of the player adorned the Parc des Princes, less than a day after Messi’s face was removed from the Camp Nou in Barcelona.“He made football magic, beautiful, and he’s a winner,” P.S.G.’s president said about Messi, as he stood next to him at a news conference on Wednesday. “There’s no secret he’s the best player in the world.”Messi will earn 35 million euros a season, or about $41 million, and will wear the number 30, which he had at Barcelona from 2004 to 2006. Neymar will keep his number 10.“We are entering a new dimension,” said Mr. Marienne, who said he had moved his vacation in southern France with his family to see Messi. “P.S.G.’s possibilities seem unlimited now.” More

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      At the French Open Grounds, a Guided Tour of Change

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      PARIS — In my 30th year of covering the French Open, I am in need of a map.The courts where I have watched so many matches on the crushed red brick of Roland Garros are almost all gone — demolished or remodeled beyond recognition, like the main Philippe Chatrier Court with its retractable roof. Passageways that led somewhere familiar now run into concrete walls or freshly painted gates or take you to new-age landscapes like the sculpture garden behind Chatrier with its rows of ocher deck chairs and its cruise ship vibe.All four of the Grand Slam tournaments have been on a building spree, but Roland Garros at this stage is the major that seems the most transformed.It is the one I know — or used to know — best. I covered it for the first time in 1991, the year Monica Seles defended her title and Jim Courier beat Andre Agassi in that distant time when all-American men’s finals were all the rage in Grand Slam tournaments. Most important for me, 1991 was the year I married Virginie, a Parisian, and moved to France from San Diego.In the early years, we lived in a studio apartment a few blocks from Roland Garros’s back gate. That meant that for two precious weeks a year, a tennis writer could walk to work from home, and I sometimes shared the commute with French players, like Guillaume Raoux, who had the good fortune to play a Grand Slam tournament in their own neighborhood.Roland Garros is technically in Paris, on the southwestern limits of the 16th Arrondissement. But in feeling, it is closer to village life. The vast Bois de Boulogne park is on one border. Low-rise, suburban Boulogne-Billancourt is on the other.Even with the expansion into the nearby botanical gardens in 2019, Roland Garros’s footprint is still the smallest of the Grand Slam tournaments, but the expansion also has made it the most eye-catching of the majors.You could already watch tennis in Paris with the shadows lengthening across the clay in the early evening, one of the most photogenic moments in sports. Now you can watch tennis in a greenhouse, too.It is high time for a visit to the new Roland Garros, and in lieu of a map, I called in a tour guide: Gilles Jourdan, who was once a ball boy at the tournament but is now the silver-haired manager of the stadium’s modernization project.Where’s the Bullring?A packed court one during the third-round men’s singles match between Santiago Giraldo of Colombia and Andy Murray of Great Britain on Day 7 of the 2012 French Open.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesThere was no better seat in tennis journalism than in Court 1. In the front row along the baseline, you were so close to the action that you sometimes had to lean back to avoid a player’s swing on a wide return. Best of all was the venue: a 3,800-seat theater in the round known as the Bullring. It wasn’t the prettiest court in tennis, but it got something the architect, Jean Lovera, a former French junior champion, had not anticipated: acoustics that accentuated the strike of the ball. Courier used to love the unique thwack.“The sound moves and resonates in a bit of a different way,” Lovera told me in 2010. “And as it turns out, I think it lends itself to generating emotions and making temperatures rise and getting reactions from both the players and the crowd that are stronger than usual.”I can only concur, having once watched the Russian star Marat Safin drop his shorts midmatch to celebrate a drop-shot winner. But the Bullring and the sound effects are gone — demolished after the 2019 tournament to provide more space. The idea was to replace Court 1 with an open lawn, a flat French version of Wimbledon’s Aorangi Terrace, better known as Henman Hill. But there is not much open lawn this year. The void left by Court 1 has been filled by paving stones, new walkways, a coffee bar and other diversions.The Musketeers are backThe Place des Mousquetaires, former site of the Bullring.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesRoland Garros was built in a hurry in 1928 because of four men: Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra, Jacques Brugnon and René Lacoste, who was not yet a brand in those distant days. They were known as the mousquetaires (Alexandre Dumas’s novels were even bigger then), and in 1927, they won the Davis Cup in the United States against a team that included Bill Tilden. The Davis Cup, a team event, was as prestigious in those days as Grand Slam titles are today, and a new stadium was constructed in less than a year to accommodate France’s Davis Cup defense.The Italian sculptor Vito Tongiani made bronze statues of the musketeers in the 1980s and the early 1990s. They were put on display at Roland Garros and then stored during renovations. But they are back this year in the new Musketeers Garden, sharing space during the tournament with the deck chairs and a big-screen television. The last buildingThe cottage that is the last of the buildings from 1928 on the grounds of Roland Garros.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“It’s in bad shape,” Jourdan said, standing next to a large, half-timbered cottage with some cracked windows that sits on the northeastern boundary of the grounds.It is largely out of view this year, used for catering supplies, but it deserves the spotlight. After all the demolition and renovation, it is the last building standing that was there in 1928, spared because of its links to the past even though sentimentality has not saved much else.The cottage predates the stadium. It was the clubhouse for a private tennis club whose clay courts became part of the original Roland Garros. “Above all, during the musketeers’ years, they changed in there,” Jourdan said. “It was the locker room.”It later became a gardeners’ shed and then a dormitory for young tennis prospects who were training at Roland Garros. The most famous former occupant is Yannick Noah, who went on to win the French Open in 1983 and become a pop star. He remains one of the most popular figures in France.The AshesGilles Jourdan, the manager of the stadium modernization project.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesA monument to Étienne-Jules Marey that also contains his remains.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesRoland Garros preferred rugby and has his name on a tennis stadium only because his friends wanted to honor his memory; he was an aviator and a fighter pilot who died in combat in the final days of World War I. But the stadium also honors another figure who was not a tennis player: the French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey, who died in 1904 and whose experiments with “chronophotography” helped lay the foundations for modern cinema.A research institute bearing his name, the Institut Marey, was opened on the current site of Roland Garros in 1903 and remained in place for 50 years after the stadium was built, allowing scientists, sometimes in white lab coats, to watch matches from the roof. But it was demolished to make way for Court 1’s construction in 1980, with the agreement that a monument to Marey would remain part of the stadium in perpetuity. The marble bas-relief monument, which contains some of Marey’s ashes, has moved around the grounds through the decades, but it is now in a prominent location in the new garden. “During the construction, Mr. Marey stayed in my office for two years,” Jourdan said with a chuckle, referring to Marey’s ashes. “I’m not sure the family would have approved, but he’s back where he belongs now.”A grander entranceCourt 2 during the 2001 French Open, with the old Chatrier Court in the background.Clive Brunskill/ALLSPORT, via Getty ImagesThe Bullring’s demise is a pity, but the loss that really hurts is the old Court 2. It was my favorite spot: a close-quarters drama magnet where coaches, off-duty players and members of the news media shared the same box, entering through a door that felt like the portal to a secret garden. I once interviewed Boris Becker on a changeover.Built in 1928, it was a two-tiered court, so cozy it seemed that the fans on the upper tier were hovering over the players as they traded blows. But the expansion of the Chatrier Court left no room for Court 2, and its departure has made way for a new main entrance that allows the public to descend into Roland Garros down a wide flight of stone stairs.Jourdan remembers the old entrance, which was nearby. “In those days, the center court had no reserved seating, so as soon as the gates opened it was a sprint for the best spots,” he said. “One year, it rained, so the stones were wet, and people went down in a heap when they ran around the corner. We weren’t laughing then, but we laughed later.”There are no more morning sprints, and as you walk down the stairs, you cannot help but stop to gawk at another new statue: Rafael Nadal in larger-than-life stainless steel, following through on an airborne forehand. Nadal has, of course, turned Roland Garros into his personal playground, winning a record 13 singles titles. It is a measure of Nadal’s achievement that the first thing you see when you enter one of France’s great showplaces is a Spaniard.The oasisA small pond nestled among plants labeled with their scientific names at the entrance to the Jardins des Serres d’Auteuil.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesWe will see how the remodeled grounds work in 2022, but Roland Garros has long been oppressively overcrowded, like a rush-hour commuter train disguised as a Grand Slam tournament. For years, I would sneak away at lunchtime to the adjacent Serres d’Auteuil gardens with my ham-and-cheese baguette (and fondant au chocolat). It was a peaceful moment, although not a silent one. You could still hear the roars from the courts and the chair umpires calling the scores, which was handy in the days before the Roland Garros app.Now, after a long legal battle, one section of the gardens is officially part of Roland Garros. You can walk on a charming cobblestoned thoroughfare flanked by lovely 19th-century buhrstone buildings before arriving at the world’s only show court in a greenhouse: a semi-sunken 10,000-seat stadium that opened in 2019. It is a world apart after a short walk and a stroke of genius if you ask me, even if a few of the exotic plants appear to be wilting under glass and even if my secret picnic spot is definitely no more.Le shoppingThe Grande Boutique, a nearly 1,500-square-meter shopping space under Courts 2 and 3.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesRoland Garros has long had great loot, often too great on a sportswriter’s salary. The prices have not gone down, but the shopping has. A new and sprawling megastore has opened underground this year, and “megastore” sounds a lot better in French: La Grande Boutique. The long walk (or ride)Court 16, the westernmost court in the complex, is used exclusively for practice.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesIt is nearly a kilometer now from one end of the grounds to the other. It is a trek, but the players can make it faster than the masses, because they can travel below ground in the system of tunnels that connects the main Chatrier Court with the hinterlands.Players make part of the journey in golf carts to save their energy. We did it on foot with Jourdan, passing from tunnels to underground parking lots to walkways to a staircase that brought us back into the sunlight at Courts 15 and 16. These are the only fully dedicated practice courts left in Roland Garros, and I used to play here, too, but not on these courts and not on red clay.This area was once a public tennis facility with asphalt hardcourts before the French Tennis Federation took possession, as it has inexorably taken possession of all the nearby property on the same wedge of land as Roland Garros. You can understand the urge when you look at the size of the U.S.T.A.’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center or the plans for the next mammoth expansion of Wimbledon into the adjacent golf course. The competition among the Grand Slam tournaments is real, and one of the reasons the French Open stayed in Paris in 2012 instead of moving to bigger digs in Versailles was the promise of more land. Something still familiarChristopher Clarey in the stairwell leading to the news media seats at Court Suzanne Lenglen.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesJennifer Brady and Coco Gauff facing each other at Suzanne Lenglen Court.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesJourdan, it has to be said, is a great tour guide — witty, convivial and informative. I am no longer in need of a map, but nostalgia is tough to shake. So before heading back to the Chatrier Court with all its glass and steel, I made a final stop at Suzanne Lenglen Court, the second-biggest show court at Roland Garros. The court has been a fine place to watch tennis for nearly 30 years.I saw Roger Federer make his Grand Slam debut on that court in 1999 against Patrick Rafter — and lose in a backward ball cap. Lots of memories there, so I walked up the stairs, turned left and took a seat. No matches were on this late in the second week. The net was down, and a big-screen television was in place, but it still felt reassuringly familiar, and so it will remain until the new retractable roof goes up in 2024, in time for the Paris Olympics.I should have seen that coming. More

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      A Very Strange Version of the Paris Night

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      PARIS — It happens every night, and yet it feels so strange each time.All across the city, as the 9 p.m. curfew part of the pandemic restrictions approaches, chairs and tables at bars and cafes that usually remain open until small hours get stacked and stored.Parisians used to lazy strolls on long summer nights head home. The sidewalks go quiet. The city slams shut as fast as a window.At Roland Garros, where the French Open is holding one match each night for the first time, ominous announcements come through the loudspeakers beginning around 8:30 p.m.“The gates will be closing in 15 minutes,” a prerecorded voice says in French then English. The stands selling flutes of champagne, crepes and pains au chocolat begin to pack it in. A 10-minute warning follows, then a five-minute one then finally, “Ladies and gentlemen, the gates are now closed.”A digital screen, which shows matches during the day, asks spectators to leave and explains the curfew in the Musketeers Square at Roland Garros.“It’s very frustrating,” Benoit Jaubert, a Parisian who comes to the tournament every year with his wife, Anne, said of the curfew and forced exit as he hustled toward the exit on Saturday.Usually they remain on the grounds until night falls and the matches end. This year, even though Roger Federer was about to take the court, the Jauberts were on their way out. “We should be having the late matches and then a party,” he said.The pandemic began turning cities into ghost towns nearly a year and a half ago. There is something especially strange about seeing this nightly routine in the so-called City of Light. This is a place famous for its 3 a.m. jazz sets, where the Lost Generation argued all night about the meaning of life in smoke-filled bars on the Left Bank.For the handful of Americans here on business (if that’s what you can call a cushy sportswriting assignment to cover this elegant tournament), it has felt like drifting back in time a month or two. We left a country that had begun leaving behind masks and pandemic restrictions.The streets of Paris are lively before curfew.Calling it a night at 9 p.m. is about the most anti-Parisian occurrence, especially this time of year, when twilight does not arrive until after 10 p.m. and the last thing anyone wants to do as the sun drifts down is go home.The curfew is no joke though. If you somehow forget to eat and do not have much in the fridge at home, you are out of luck. There are no late-night steak frites to be had. All the kitchens, grocers and ice cream parlors are, unnaturally, locked.Listen to Thibaud Pre. He runs a gourmet pizza joint on the Canal Saint-Martin in the northeast part of the city. It’s where the youngish folks hang out. Think of the northern neighborhoods of Brooklyn, like Williamsburg or Bushwick, or the eastern part of London.On Friday evening, just before 8 p.m., the cool kids and the older adults who wanted to be like them were drinking on the edge of the canals, and in Acqua e Farina, Pre’s pizza place, and all of the other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood.An hour later, they were mostly gone, scurrying home or rushing to the Metro, where, just after 9 p.m., security officials could begin asking for the pass required to be out and about post-curfew.A waiter removing outdoor tables just before curfew at Acqua e Farina.As he stacked the tables and collected payments from the few customers who lingered until the final minutes, Pre said on a usual late spring Friday at 9 p.m. there would be 50 people waiting for a table. He would keep the restaurant open until 2 a.m. and bring in roughly five times as much money as he is right now. Without generous government aid, his business most likely would not have survived.He said his customers had gotten used to the routine after so many months, showing up earlier, filling their stomachs until the regulations say they can’t stay any longer, then morphing into citizens of one of those places like Switzerland where the sidewalks thin long before they should.“For how much longer it goes like this, we don’t know,” Pre said.It has been so long, and so strange, that Pre does not want to bank on the current plan to push the curfew back two hours on June 9, which seems more civilized by Parisian standards, but only slightly.People paused to take selfies in front of a wall made out of Roland Garros’s trademark clay as they leave the stadium complex.In July, the curfew could go away completely, and the sidewalks by the Seine could be alive all night once more, though the nightclubs are supposed to stay closed.Someday perhaps, maybe even by the next French Open if that great night owl of French tennis, Yannick Noah, has any say in the matter, those 3 a.m. jazz sets and the real Paris just might return. More

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      Roger Federer Pulls Out of French Open

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      The 20-time Grand Slam event champion withdrew after a brutal third-round match that lasted until early Sunday morning.PARIS — After winning a grueling third-round match that finished well after midnight, Roger Federer put an end to his French Open, withdrawing from the tournament on Sunday.Federer, 39, was scheduled to face ninth-seeded Matteo Berrettini of Italy in the fourth round on Monday, but decided he did not want to risk pushing himself beyond his comfort zone.Federer, seeded eighth, was playing in only his third tournament in the last 16 months after two knee operations in 2020. Though he won the French Open in 2009 and has had strong clay-court results in his career, he ruled out his chances of winning before this year’s tournament even began, recognizing that he had played too little to be able to succeed on clay in a long series of best-of-five-set matches.Federer, the oldest player in this year’s men’s singles tournament, was also in a brutal half of the draw. It includes his two main rivals: No. 1 seeded Novak Djokovic and No. 3 seeded Rafael Nadal, a 13-time French Open champion.“After two knee surgeries and over a year of rehabilitation, it’s important that I listen to my body and make sure I don’t push myself too quickly on my road to recovery,” Federer said in a statement. “I’m thrilled I have gotten three matches under my belt. There is no greater feeling than being back on the court.” More

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      Injury Forces Ashleigh Barty Out of French Open

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      Barty, the world’s No. 1 player, had to leave the court for medical treatment during her second-round match.PARIS — Ashleigh Barty, the No. 1-ranked player in women’s tennis, is out of the French Open after aggravating a left hip injury during her second-round match with Magda Linette on Thursday.“It’s heartbreaking,” said Barty, who won the French Open in 2019 and did not defend her title last year after she chose to stay at home in Australia instead of traveling during the coronavirus pandemic.Barty lost the opening set by 6-1 to Linette, an unseeded 29-year-old from Poland. Barty then left the court for medical treatment as Linette stayed in her chair, reading the tactical notes she had brought to the court.Barty stopped playing at 2-2 in the second set and told her opponent, Magda Linette of Poland, that she could not continue.Michel Euler/Associated PressBarty returned for the second set, but at 2-2, she walked toward her chair, put down her racket and then approached the net to shake hands with Linette, putting an end to the match.Barty, a 25-year-old Australian, received treatment on her hip during a hard-fought first-round victory over Bernarda Pera on Tuesday.“It’s going to be a little bit tough this week,” Barty had said after that match.She turned out to be correct, explaining on Thursday that she had injured her hip while serving during a practice session just before the start of the tournament.“Completely new injury,” she said. “Something that I’ve never experienced before, even chatting with my physio, it’s something she has not seen regularly either. So we’ve been consulting with people all over the world to try and give us some insight into what the best ways to manage it are. I’m confident we do have a plan. It’s just that we ran out of time here.”Barty pulled out of her first-round doubles match on Wednesday to try to manage the injury.“I just tried to give myself a chance,” she said. “Obviously practicing we’ve had our restrictions and essentially tried to stay as fresh as possible and not aggravate it in any way. But in a match that’s unavoidable at times. It got worse today, and it was becoming at the stage where it was unsafe.”“As hard as it is,” Barty added of the retirement, it “had to be done.”With the French Open just getting started, the top two women’s seeds are out of the tournament. No. 2 Naomi Osaka, who could have challenged Barty for the top ranking with a deep run in Paris, withdrew after her first-round victory because of a dispute over media obligations with tournament organizers that has dominated early coverage of the event.Simona Halep, the world’s third-ranked player and a former French Open champion, withdrew before the tournament began with a muscle tear in her left calf.Aryna Sabelenka, the No. 3 seed, is now the highest seed remaining in the women’s singles draw, but Sabalenka, a power player from Belarus, has yet to advance past the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament. The No. 4 seed Sofia Kenin, a finalist at the French Open last year when it was postponed and played in October, has struggled this year while navigating the difficult decision to stop being coached by her father, Alex.Kenin arrived in Paris without a coach but has shown signs of resurgence and defeated the American qualifier Hailey Baptiste, 7-5, 6-3, on Thursday. Kenin should face a tougher test in the third round, however, when she plays a fellow American, Jessica Pegula, who has been having a breakout season and is seeded 28th at Roland Garros.Sofia Kenin, the fourth seed this year, beat the American qualifier Hailey Baptiste on Thursday.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDespite the attrition and instability at the top, this tournament may not be as wide open as it appears. The defending champion Iga Swiatek is still in the draw and has not dropped a set in two rounds, just as she did not lose a set in any of her seven matches in her run to the 2020 title. Last month, she won the Italian Open on clay, defeating the former No. 1 Karolina Pliskova, 6-0, 6-0, in the final.Barty was, in a sense, defending a title in Paris, too. The tour shut down for five months in 2020 because of the pandemic and when it resumed last year in August, she chose to skip the year’s two rescheduled majors, the United States Open and the French Open.She has held the No. 1 ranking since September 2019 in part because of temporary changes made to the ranking system to protect players during the pandemic. But she has often played like a No. 1 since her return to action in 2021, winning the Miami Open on a hardcourt and the Stuttgart Open, and reaching the final of the Madrid Open, where she lost to Sabalenka.It has been a busy schedule, and perhaps too demanding after her layoff. Injuries have cut short her last two tournaments. At the Italian Open, she retired in the second set of her quarterfinal against Coco Gauff with a right arm injury that she said had occasionally flared up since her teens. She said the arm had not troubled her in Paris, but that did not spare her from more pain.“It’s disappointing to end like this,” she said. “I’ve had my fair share of tears this week.”Barty now has less than a month to recover before Wimbledon, which begins June 28 and where the grass surface should be a fine fit for her varied game. For now, her only Grand Slam singles title is the 2019 French Open.“Everything happens for a reason,” Barty said in her news conference after her defeat. “There will be a silver lining in this eventually. Once I found out what that is, it will make me feel a little bit better. But it will be there, I’m sure.” More

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      At the French Open, Djokovic, Federer and Nadal All Aim to Win

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      Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer are all playing for history, and are almost guaranteed to meet on the way to the men’s final at Roland Garros.PARIS — One of them focuses on numbers, hoping they will produce the validation he has always craved.Another one has come to play on the court that turns him into an apotheosis of his sport, and to protect this place as his personal kingdom.The third yearns for whatever there is left, and prepares for what comes next.The Big Three on the men’s side of tennis — Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer — are playing in a Grand Slam for the first time in 18 months. Through a quirk in the sport’s seeding system, they are all in the same half of the draw. Djokovic could face Federer in a quarterfinal and Nadal in a semifinal. They are not getting any younger. Djokovic and Nadal are 34 and Federer, at 39, is sputtering through his comeback from knee surgery. There may only be a few more slams like this one.For years, they have been blessed with ethereal tennis gifts, so formidable for so long that opponents can feel that they are down a set even before the first point is played. It has been hard for slighter players to imagine beating them, let alone actually doing so.They still love to compete, really love to win (though Federer has won just once all year), and embrace the global celebrity that comes with being a tennis superstar. Any debate about who will end his career with the most Grand Slam singles titles and have a rightful claim to being the greatest quickly becomes reductive.They diverge dramatically, however, when the conversation shifts to what drives each of them to continue playing long after they have made hundreds of millions of dollars and solidified their reputations for history. And these thirtysomethings are well past the sell-by date of the great players of every era that preceded them.Nadal at practice on Friday.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesBut at this singular moment in their careers, with Federer and Nadal tied at 20 Grand Slam wins and Djokovic close behind with 18, only Djokovic is so intently focused on the numbers. Djokovic, who just celebrated his 34th birthday and in the eyes of most experts is the most likely to finish on top, leaves no doubt that the chase for scoreboard supremacy motivates him.“Whether I think about winning more slams and breaking records, of course, of course, I do,” Djokovic said in February, after beating Daniil Medvedev in the Australian Open final. “And most of my attention and my energy from this day forward, until I retire from tennis, is going to be directed in majors, trying to win more major trophies.”That sounded a lot different from Nadal when he spoke about his own motivations earlier that week. Nadal allowed that, yes, he wanted to win Grand Slams. The 13-time French Open champion is always the favorite here on the red clay, but not anywhere else, which may be part of the reason he said that winning more slams than his rivals is not so important. Too much ambition, he said, can leave you frustrated when things don’t go your way.“For me the main thing is to come back home with personal satisfaction that you gave it everything,” he said. “That’s what gives me happiness and makes me stay calm.”The Grand Slam season of tennis takes a long break between the end of the Australian Open and the start of the French Open, which begins Sunday. The break felt even longer this year, as the Big Three skipped a series of major tournaments to nurse injuries or avoid international travel during the pandemic.That left time for the verbal dance that Nadal, Djokovic and Federer engaged in about chasing records and legacies and what it means to outdo the others.In March, Djokovic broke Federer’s record for the most weeks at the top of the world rankings — a ridiculous 311. He then announced that having that mark in the bag gave him the freedom to reduce his schedule and focus on peaking for the Grand Slams, even if it meant losing opportunities to earn rankings points and maintain his perch as the world No. 1.Days later, Federer returned to competitive tennis after more than a year of recovering from knee surgeries. Ahead of his return, he essentially took himself out of any competitive conversation with Nadal and Djokovic, explaining that his obsession had been breaking Pete Sampras’s old record of 14 Grand Slam titles, which he did in 2009.A few spectators watched Federer practice against Aslan Karatsev.Pete Kiehart for The New York Times“The guys are unreal,” he said of Djokovic and Nadal. “I hope they can do everything they possibly want and that they look back with no regret. We want to leave the game with no regrets and I think, from that standpoint, we all sleep very well at night.”He said his goal was to be at his best for Wimbledon in June, and to get that rush of playing for something important, in front of fans, against the best players in the world.Then things began to get interesting.In April, during a promotional interview for a beer sponsor, Nadal said Djokovic was “obsessed” with winning more Grand Slam titles than his rivals.“It means a lot to him, all of this stuff, like he’s always saying and talking about these records,” Nadal said. “It’s not my approach to my tennis career.”He insisted that he did not mean it in a negative way, and yet.Days later, as Djokovic prepared to play the Belgrade Open, he rejected the characterization.“I never found it hard to say: ‘I want to break that record or reach a certain goal,’” he said.Whether playing it cool or caring too much, all will be focused on the same thing over the next 14 weeks, competing on red clay at Roland Garros, the grass at Wimbledon, and the hard courts at the United States Open.For years, Djokovic has been a hero to his homeland and the Serbian diaspora, but, rightly or wrongly, something of a party-crasher to what was once an elite two-way rivalry between Federer and Nadal, and even an occasional tennis villain. Fans are more often against him rather than with him, especially when he plays Nadal or Federer. In the last year alone he defied health safety protocols and put on a tennis exhibition that became a coronavirus superspreader event, and accidentally swatted a ball into the throat of a line judge, earning a disqualification from the U.S. Open.Nearly two decades into his professional career, no one expects him to capture the almost universal adoration Nadal and Federer enjoy, but if he wins more than they do, it will be hard to argue that he is lesser of the three.He is the only one who has a winning record against the other two, though Nadal inched to within one match, 29-28, when he beat Djokovic two weeks ago in a tight match, 7-5, 1-6, 6-3, in the final of the Italian Open.Nadal shakes hands with Djokovic after winning the Italian Open.Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersOnce again, the arena in the park just west of the Eiffel Tower will become their battleground. As they prepared for Paris, each kept true to form.On May 18, Federer suffered a tough loss to Pablo Andujar of Spain, ranked No. 75 in the world, in his first match at the Geneva Open. He tried to lower expectations, pointing toward Wimbledon, where he has won eight times, and will remain a deity, even if he does not win again.“Roland Garros is not the goal,” he said. “The goal is the grass.”Nadal continued to focus on his process and his effort because winning is less predictable. After dispatching Djokovic in Rome, Nadal spoke of bringing passion and effort to the court for each match. In Paris, on Friday, he was focused on his opening round opponent, the young Australian Alexei Popyrin, rather than his statue that tournament organizers had unveiled. “Every round is tough,” he said.Then there was Djokovic, talking big, hunting for another trophy, then quickly hedging, trying not to sound too obsessed.“I think I have a good chance to go all the way in Paris,” he said. Then, realizing just what that meant, he added, “Of course, it’s a long shot.” More