Pegula, Jessica (1994- )

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      At Wimbledon, Everyone’s Chasing Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina

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      Expect the three top-ranked women to dominate the tournament. But at least one, the defending champion Elena Rybakina, says she isn’t taking any opponent for granted.LONDON — Elena Rybakina was nervous. She was embroiled in her first match on Wimbledon’s Centre Court as defending champion. She was facing a tough opponent in Shelby Rogers. The roof was closed and she was recovering from a virus.Even more daunting, one of the greatest players ever to walk that court, Roger Federer, was now sitting just a few feet behind her, in the royal box, watching her struggle.“Yeah, maybe that’s why I was nervous,” Rybakina said after she recovered to beat Rogers on Tuesday, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2.Federer, now retired, was back at Wimbledon for a visit. As a player, he was a member of the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis, along with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. As a spectator, he was watching a player whom some experts, including Chris Evert, believe is part of an emerging big three of women’s tennis.Rybakina, the third-ranked player in the world, along with No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, comprise the top of the women’s tennis pyramid. Together, they have won the last five major tournaments, and the eventual winner of this year’s Wimbledon is expected — but obviously not guaranteed — to come from their elite group, as well.Those who think it is premature to crown a triumvirate of women’s tennis will find the 24-year-old Rybakina in agreement.“I think it’s too early to say anything about just three players because it’s not like it was Roger or Djokovic,” Rybakina said. “It’s still too far.”All three players are under 26, and all have the necessary tools to win multiple tournaments and remain at the top of the rankings. Left out of the grouping are players like Jessica Pegula, ranked No. 4. But Pegula said she agrees that the top three are the class of the women’s game and deserve the recognition, even if she would like to expand the number to four someday.“I think it’s exciting to have something for us to talk about and for fans to get involved in and hopefully be excited to watch them battle it out,” Pegula said on Saturday. She beat Lauren Davis in the first round on Monday. “But I hope I’m part of that conversation at some point. I guess that’s all I have to say.”Ons Jabeur looked to repeat as a Wimbledon finalist again this year, but with a different outcome.Andrew Couldridge/ReutersOns Jabeur, who lost to Rybakina in last year’s Wimbledon final and to Swiatek in the U.S. Open final, is a solid grass court player, who could also stake a claim to this year’s Wimbledon title. Jabeur is another who believes that Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina have set themselves apart.“For me it’s inspiring to see them doing great,” Jabeur said. “You can learn a lot from them.”Coco Gauff, who is only 19 and ranked No. 7, could also intrude into the mix one day. But not yet, not after she lost to Sofia Kenin, a former No. 4 player who is 24, in the first round on Monday.As Rybakina said on Tuesday, “anyone can still beat anyone.”As Wimbledon opened under rainy skies, each one of the three top players had at least one question to answer on court before she could lift the trophy. Swiatek, 22 and from Poland, has struggled on grass and never made it past the fourth round in her three attempts here.She demonstrated good form at Bad Homburg, a grass-court tournament before Wimbledon, but became ill and had to withdraw after winning a quarterfinal match. She looked fully recovered in her first-round win over Lin Zhu on Monday and a title here would give her three of the last four majors.Rybakina won Wimbledon last year with an amazing run of confidence and form, defeating Jabeur in three sets for her first Grand Slam title. But her conditioning remains in doubt. A virus forced her withdrawal from the French Open last month, and she said the condition worsened afterward. She is OK now, she said, but she had to lighten her workouts leading up to Wimbledon.Sabalenka did not even play at Wimbledon last year. She is from Minsk, in Belarus, and the tournament banned all players from Russia and Belarus from competing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s cooperation with that military incursion.The amiable Sabalenka opened her news conference on Saturday, before the tournament started, by saying she would not answer questions about politics because she had already done so several times. (Rybakina was born in Moscow but plays for Kazakhstan).Aryna Sabalenka hit a between-the-legs shot with her back to the net against Panna Udvardy.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSabalenka said she could barely even watch the tournament last year during her impromptu staycation.“I didn’t watch Wimbledon a lot,” she said. “I felt so bad, and I just couldn’t watch it. Every time if Wimbledon would be on TV, I would cry.”Hence, she has played only eight matches on grass the last two years, including only two this year leading up to Wimbledon, and has gone 5-3. Perhaps more concerning than the surface was her devastating loss at the French Open last month. Serving for the semifinal match at 5-2, she allowed Karolina Muchova to come back and win.Sabalenka, 25, who won her first major tournament at this year’s Australian Open, was asked this week about her level of confidence on grass, and said, “I don’t like to speak about confidence.”She continued, “For me it’s a little weird. I just want to say that I have strong belief that I can do well on grass. I already did it. I feel good on grass.”She certainly played well on it in her first-round victory on Tuesday. Federer left after Andy Murray won and missed seeing Sabalenka hit a masterful between-the-legs shot from the baseline, with her back to the net. Her opponent, Panna Udvardy of Hungary, was ready at the net to volley it away for the point. Sabalenka smiled and raised her fist to salute the artistic rally, on her way to a straight sets victory, 6-3, 6-2.“I missed this place a lot,” she said on court afterward, “that’s why I played my best tennis today.” More

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      Months Before Hamlin’s Collapse, Bills’ Co-Owner Also Suffered Cardiac Arrest

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      In an essay, Jessica Pegula, a top-ranked tennis player, described the health ordeal of her mother, Kim Pegula, president of the Buffalo Bills. Hamlin, a defensive back, went into cardiac arrest at a Jan. 2 game.Jessica Pegula, the professional tennis player, has revealed details for the first time about the health of her mother, Kim Pegula, a co-owner and president of the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres, describing how she went into cardiac arrest last year and is still struggling to recover.In an essay published in The Players’ Tribune on Tuesday, Jessica Pegula said she was writing about it now because she wanted to be more open after Damar Hamlin, the Bills defensive back, went into cardiac arrest during a game on Jan. 2. He was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 11.In her essay, titled “I Want to Talk to You About My Mom,” Pegula, 28, said that when she was at the Australian Open last month, she texted her husband about Mr. Hamlin’s ordeal. “The situation with my mom,” she wrote in the essay, “was weighing on me.”“When can we start talking about it?” she wrote. “When can I tell her story, my story, my family’s story? Everyone just keeps asking me. I really need to get it off my chest.”Jessica Pegula at the Australian Open last month. She is currently ranked fourth in the world.Sandra Sanders/ReutersKim Pegula, 53, and her husband, Terry, bought the Bills from the estate of the team’s founder, Ralph Wilson, in 2014. The couple paid $1.4 billion, then a record for an N.F.L. franchise.Terry Pegula, a billionaire businessman, made his fortune primarily in natural gas and in real-estate development. The Pegulas bought the N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres in 2011, as Jessica was turning 17.Kim Pegula and her husband, Terry Pegula, were introduced as the new owners of the Bills in 2014.Mike Groll/Associated PressIn 2022, the Pegulas acknowledged publicly that Kim had been facing significant health issues since the summer, without providing details.That changed with Jessica Pegula’s essay in The Tribune.“This is a story about my mother, my family and the past year,” she wrote.It started in June, when Jessica Pegula flew back to Florida after playing in the French Open. Her sister Kelly called her at about midnight, saying their mother was headed to a hospital in an ambulance after going into cardiac arrest. Her sister had given her CPR until the ambulance arrived and medics took over.“She saved her life,” Jessica Pegula wrote.Then came what she described as a “waiting game,” with months of uncertainty over the long-term impact on their mother’s health. After about a week, she was moved out of intensive care.“She was aware, talking a little, but a long way from her normal self,” Jessica Pegula wrote.Jessica Pegula, who is ranked fourth in the world, reluctantly went off to compete at Wimbledon. She had what she said were a “few good wins” amid the stress of her mother’s recovery, while fielding rumors that her mother had died and answering questions about her health.“Today, my mom is still in recovery, and although it is the same answer every time someone asks me, it is true, she is improving every day,” Jessica Pegula wrote.“She is dealing with significant expressive aphasia and significant memory issues,” she added, referring to a condition in which people struggle to speak in complete sentences or find the words they are looking for. “She can read, write and understand pretty well, but she has trouble finding the words to respond.”Jessica Pegula said her mother was behind her father’s success.“She jumped into this journey with him and learned many lessons along the way, breaking a lot of barriers,” Jessica Pegula wrote. “She was the shift in culture, positivity and the heartbeat of many of the employees. She gave everyone so much of her time and effort.”“Now we come to the realization that all of that is most likely gone,” she wrote. “That she won’t be able to be that person anymore.”At the Australian Open last month, Jessica Pegula wore a patch with Hamlin’s jersey number, 3. “Ironically, yes, I was ranked No. 3 in the world,” she wrote. “However, it didn’t feel like it was just for him, it felt like it was for my mom as well.”Jessica Pegula said that when she heard what had happened to Hamlin, it was a “bizarre, messed-up, full-circle moment,” considering what her mother had also endured.“Again, I usually don’t get too much anxiety, but the thought of what Damar and his family were about to go through hurt my heart,” she wrote.Jessica Pegula said that her family had always been private but her mother’s health scare had weighed heavily, creating a “massive void” in her family and in the Bills and Sabres organizations and a “harsh reality” for everyone else involved, including employees and fans.“I wanted to tell them all that you have no right knowing what happened, but at the same time people wanted to know because they were scared,” she wrote. “Their leader, boss, friend, co-worker, all suddenly didn’t answer her phone, or emails, and all her meetings were canceled.”Kim Pegula is now home, her daughter wrote. She gets to watch the Bills, the Sabres and Jessica’s tennis matches. Jessica Pegula said her mother was improving but her prognosis was uncertain.“Thank you to the Buffalo community for your patience,” she wrote. “I know you have wanted answers and it took us a while to get there but it finally felt like it was time.” More

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      Jessica Pegula Flies Under the Radar at the Australian Open

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      Jessica Pegula leads a cohort of players into the quarterfinals that few outside the locker room were paying attention to before the tournament. In this intensely mental sport, that was a good thing.MELBOURNE, Australia — Jessica Pegula does not land on many magazine covers. Her steady game does not produce a lot of highlight-reel moments. She is the world’s third-ranked player but has floated largely under the radar during her steady rise to the top of tennis.At the Australian Open this year, that approach is looking more and more like a secret to success.Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, lost Sunday in the fourth round and became the latest top-ranked player to talk about the burdens of being at the top.Ons Jabeur and Maria Sakkari, stars of the recently released Netflix series “Break Point,” failed to make it to the second week. Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American star, has her face on billboards at nearly every tournament even though she is ranked seventh in the world and has never won a Grand Slam or a Masters 1000 tournament. Neither have most teenagers, but not surprisingly, organizers scheduled three of her four matches in Rod Laver Arena, the tournament’s center court, and a fourth in Margaret Court Arena. She, too, lost Sunday in the fourth round.Who is still around? A diverse collection of big-hitters and all-court players who are both young and older but hardly A-list celebrities. They include Elena Rybakina, last year’s Wimbledon champion who has been largely snubbed by the tennis world the past six months; Jelena Ostapenko, the hard-hitting French Open champion whose days of being expected to win ended a few years ago; Donna Vekic of Croatia, a talented veteran currently ranked 64th in the world.On the men’s side, if someone had said a week ago that three Americans would make the quarterfinals but their names would not include Frances Tiafoe or Taylor Fritz, a breakout star of the U.S. Open and world’s ninth-ranked player, that would have sounded strange. But it’s the much less heralded Tommy Paul, Sebastian Korda and Ben Shelton who are alive.Tommy Paul celebrated his fourth-round win at the Australian Open. He will meet Ben Shelton, a fellow unseeded American, in the quarterfinals.Lukas Coch/EPA, via ShutterstockThen there is Pegula, who made the quarterfinals of three Grand Slams last year and lost to the eventual champion and world No. 1 each time but has never commanded much attention. She said last week that she had heard that Netflix cameras might be following her around to gather material for the second season, but hasn’t noticed them.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam event runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Victoria Azarenka’s Deep Run: The Belarusian tennis player has taken a more process-oriented approach than in the past. The outcomes have been good so far.Behind the Scenes: A coterie of billionaires, deep-pocketed companies and star players has engaged for months in a high-stakes battle to lead what they view as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to disrupt the sport.Endless Games: As matches stretch into the early-morning hours, players have grown concerned for their health and performance.A New Style Star: Frances Tiafoe may have lost his shot at winning the Australian Open, but his swirly “himbo” look won him fashion points.“I’m definitely interested,” she said. “I want to have more exposure.”But does she really? In tennis, there is a long history of success and exposure crushing champions or sucking the joy out of them (See: Osaka, Naomi).Swiatek, who won 37 consecutive matches last year in addition to the French Open and the U.S. Open, said Sunday that recently, and especially in Australia, she found herself wanting to not lose rather than to win.“I felt the pressure,” she said.Ostapenko, who blasted Gauff off the court in straight sets Sunday, knows something about that. After she came out of nowhere to win the French Open in 2017, her life turned upside down. She felt like everyone expected her to win every tournament, “which is crazy, because you are still a human and you cannot feel great every day,” she said. “A lot of attention from everywhere outside the court, like photo shoots and all those kinds of things. You became more popular in your country. Everybody is watching you.”Currently ranked 17th, Ostapenko said she came to Australia hoping to begin a climb back into the top 10.It’s worth noting that inside the locker room, no one is under the radar. Every player knows every other player’s strengths and weaknesses, who’s hot, who’s nursing an injury or having a crisis of confidence.Both Gauff and Pegula said that they were not at all surprised that Rybakina, who played her first two matches on outer courts, just as she had for much of the summer and fall, had taken out Swiatek with her flat, thumping power that is ideally suited to the court conditions here.“It’s a motivation to win even more,” Rybakina said last week of her court assignments.Likewise, everyone in the locker room knows Pegula, who beat Swiatek earlier this month, has been playing the best tennis of her life, moving fast across the court, giving away so few points, forcing opponents to take whatever they can get from her, which hasn’t been much.“That locker room is the most educated place in the world,” said Pam Shriver, the Grand Slam doubles champion who recently started coaching Vekic part-time.Like everyone else here, Shriver, who was courtside Monday as Vekic beat Linda Fruhvirtova, a gifted 17-year-old from the Czech Republic, is pondering the so-called Netflix curse. No player featured prominently in “Break Point,” which was released 10 days ago, made it past the fourth round. Three withdrew with injuries just days before the tournament. Shriver wondered whether the players who had decided to participate in the series had taken the time to think through the effects that being part of a high-profile series might have on their psyches on the eve of the year’s first Grand Slam.“There are self-promoters and there are contenders,” she said. “Contenders don’t generally work on raising their profile or becoming influencers.”Often an athlete’s profile will grow organically based on results, but that doesn’t mean they do not have to manage the challenges of fame.Gauff has been in the spotlight since she was 15 years old and upset Venus Williams at Wimbledon.“There’s definitely a difference,” she said last week. “I feel like without being in the spotlight, you come more under the radar, less pressure, you don’t feel as many people online are probably going to, like, hate you if you lose.”Gauff laughed as she said that. But two days later, in the hours after her loss to Ostapenko, when she teared up during her post-match news conference and talked about how frustrated she was after working hard in the off-season, that joke seemed to hit closer to home.Donna Vekic is playing in her 11th Australian Open. “I’m kind of on the map again,” she said.Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesVekic, 26 and playing in her 11th Australian Open, knows about pressure on a teenage tennis star. As a 15-year-old, she was one of the sport’s next big things. In early 2021, she had knee surgery and struggled for more than a year to manage the pain. Her game finally clicked again in San Diego in October, when she rolled past a series of top-20 players, beating Sakkari; Aryna Sabalenka, ranked fifth in the world; and Danielle Collins, the 2022 Australian Open finalist, on her way to a three-set loss in the final to Swiatek.“From the end of last year, I’m kind of on the map again,” she said in an interview Monday.Coming into this tournament, Vekic just wanted to play at a high level, regardless of her results. Then she woke up Monday to text messages from two close friends telling her she was going to win the Open, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. She told herself that if she beat Fruhvirtova, she was going to turn off her phone.Even that might not do much good at this point. In the final eight of a Grand Slam, there is nowhere to hide, especially for Pegula. She is the highest seed left and plays the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka in the quarterfinals. By the numbers, she is the favorite now, even if there are three other players who have won Grand Slam singles titles still in the mix, who, like her began this journey outside the spotlight.“Doesn’t really feel like I’m the highest left,” she said, “though I guess that’s a cool stat.” More

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      Jessica Pegula Is Peaking Just in Time for the WTA Finals

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      After winning her second career singles title a week ago, the American player with world-class timing on the court has found herself the world No. 3.The tennis partnership between Jessica Pegula and David Witt got off to a roaring start. Only a few days after their first practice session, Pegula arrived in Washington, D.C., for the Citi Open with Witt, her new coach, and went on to win her first WTA singles title.That was in 2019, when Pegula was ranked No. 79 and still learning to trust her body and talent after major knee and hip injuries.“In the beginning, it was more me pounding it into her head that she’s really good,” Witt said. “And that she can beat these people and that there’s nobody better and whether they are top 10 or 20, it doesn’t matter.”Three years later, Pegula is a genuine member of the tennis elite: at No. 3 in the world in singles a week after winning her second career singles title in Guadalajara, Mexico, and beating four former Grand Slam singles champions along the way.The top-ranked American, Pegula is one of the headliners of the WTA Finals — the year-end championships of the women’s tour, reserved for the top eight players — beginning Monday in Fort Worth. It will be her first appearance in the exclusive event, and that has extra resonance for Pegula because it comes at the relatively advanced tennis age of 28.“Of course, I would have liked success younger, but I don’t know if it would have panned out the same,” she said in a recent interview. “I don’t think it would have. So, I’m particularly appreciative of it now. If I didn’t go through all the stuff I went through, I don’t think I would have developed the kind of strength that I think I used to help me do well now.”Pegula comes from an overachieving family. Her parents are Terry and Kim Pegula, the billionaire owners of the N.F.L.’s Buffalo Bills and N.H.L.’s Buffalo Sabres. Terry Pegula made a fortune in natural gas and real estate and married Kim, who was born in South Korea but abandoned by her biological parents and later adopted at age 5 by a family in the United States.“I think my mom was left on police station steps,” Jessica Pegula said. “It’s a crazy story. It could be like a movie.”Kim has been facing significant health issues since the summer, which the Pegulas have acknowledged publicly without providing details. Jessica, tearing up, dedicated her victory in Guadalajara to her mother.“My mom always kind of joked I was the first sports team as far as helping me with my tennis career growing up,” Pegula told reporters in Guadalajara. “I definitely wanted to dedicate it to her. She’s had a really tough year. I know she was watching.”Pegula after defeating Maria Sakkari at the Guadalajara Open.Ulises Ruiz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPegula plans on giving her mother plenty more tennis to watch in the next two weeks. After the WTA Finals, she will travel to Glasgow to lead the United States in the finals of the Billie Jean King Cup team event.It will be a grueling finish to a busy season, one that No. 1 Iga Swiatek will not attempt. Swiatek declined to play in the King Cup finals for Poland, explaining that the tight, intercontinental turnaround put her at risk of an injury.Pegula agrees that the scheduling is far from ideal. She wants the team experience she missed last year when she had to withdraw from the King Cup finals; she tested positive for the coronavirus shortly after her wedding to Taylor Gahagen in October and had to spend what she called “a Covid honeymoon” at home in Boca Raton, Fla.“I definitely want to go,” she said of Glasgow. “I think it’s a good problem to have if I’m in the finals of both. So, it’ll be a tough turnaround, but it’s a tough two weeks and then I’m done. It’s like a reward.”Pegula’s best season has been about juggling it all: newfound success, newlywed life, her skin-care business and a spot on the WTA player council in the midst of a politically and financially fraught time for the tour.She is eager to develop skills that could translate into a role with her family’s sports franchises after her tennis career is finished. She said she has learned to feel at home outside her comfort zone.“Player council, I was really nervous,” she said. “I didn’t know if I knew enough, but I felt that if I was afraid to do it, then I should probably do it. I like to put myself out there and learn through different experiences. At one point, I’m probably going to have to say no, but I like saying yes, and my mom always told me to say yes and to do a lot of things and put yourself in different situations too.”Her agenda will be packed again this week. Pegula has qualified in singles and in doubles with Coco Gauff, her 18-year-old compatriot. Pegula and Gauff, who is ranked No. 4 in singles, are the only competitors playing both events in Fort Worth.Pegula and Gauff each extol the benefits of playing both events regularly on tour for fine-tuning their games and lifting some of the pressure from the singles result. They have teamed up to win three doubles titles in 2022, also reaching the French Open final.Asked for one word that summed up her partner, Gauff thought for a while before settling on “resilient.”That rings true despite Pegula’s privileged upbringing, which alleviated concerns about the training and traveling costs that pose obstacles for many other tennis talents.“It doesn’t matter how much money you have,” Witt said. “It’s something inside that drives you to want to win. A lot of people probably say, she doesn’t have to play tennis, but what would somebody do to satisfy that competitiveness if they didn’t play a sport or challenge themselves with something? I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there that would have never thought in a million years that Jessica would be top 10 or top five. But they don’t know her as a person. They don’t know how hard she works.”Witt, a 6-foot-3 former touring pro from Florida who had a huge serve and forehand, struggled to duplicate his junior success on the main circuit. But he has now proved himself twice as a top-drawer coach, working with Venus Williams, first as a hitting partner and then as a coach, for 11 years before they split at the end of the 2018 season.Dave Witt coached Venus Williams for 11 years before they split in 2018.Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesPegula and Witt clicked from the start; they have become regular golfing partners and often travel without any other support team members.“Dave’s very calm, laid back a little bit, but at the same time super competitive,” Pegula said. “He’s a good fit for me because I’m kind of similar. Not a lot of things get me fired up or revved up, but I’m also very competitive. A lot of times growing up, I didn’t really know how to balance that. It was like, ‘You need to show more emotion.’ But that’s not me.”Pegula is not an explosive, acrobatic mover like Gauff or Swiatek; she’s not a flashy shotmaker like No. 2 Ons Jabeur. But Pegula is a clean hitter with world-class timing and plenty of pop in her groundstrokes and improved serve. Unlike some baseline bashers, she also has a Plan B and C and is ever more comfortable at net. In Witt’s view, her even-keel approach (with the exception of the occasional thrown racket) allows her to channel her energy effectively during matches. Her progress with Witt has been steady and increasingly heady. She was ranked No. 62 at the end of 2020 and No. 18 at the end of 2021 after reaching her first major quarterfinal that year at the Australian Open. She is now within range of the No. 2 ranking after reaching three more Grand Slam quarterfinals in 2022, losing to the eventual champion in all three — including another loss to Swiatek at the U.S. Open in September, after which she sipped a beer in a downbeat post-match news conference.Pegula now expects more. The thought of winning a major singles title still makes her uncomfortable, but that seems all the more reason to increase the pace of the chase. Stagnation, as Novak Djokovic once said, is regression.“Exactly,” Pegula said. “That’s perfect.” More

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      The Great U.S. Open Ball Debate of 2022

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      The Open is the only Grand Slam tournament where women use different balls than men, and the Wilson ‘regular-duty’ ball has gotten into some players’ heads.Tennis players are the Goldilocks characters of sports.The balls are too big, or too small. The courts are too fast, or too slow. It’s too cold, or too hot, or too sticky, or too sunny.“Some weeks you don’t play well, and you got to blame it on something,” joked David Witt, who coaches Jessica Pegula, the American who reached the quarterfinals on Monday with a win over Petra Kvitova.And so it has been at the U.S. Open this year as the women — well, some of them — have waged a rebellion over the Wilson balls they have used for years at the tournament. This is the only Grand Slam event where the women and the men use different balls.These yellow spheres are loved and loathed.Pegula, who has lost just one set in four matches, and that one in a tiebreaker, happens to love the balls. Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, has called them “horrible.” That is so tennis. Rarely is there any consensus. Players often make contradictory complaints in the same tournament, or even the same day, about the same thing.You are officially forgiven if you have lived your life thinking all tennis balls are created equal but with different names and numbers stamped on them. But now, a quick tutorial in tennis ball technology.The men at the U.S. Open use what is known as an “extra-duty” ball, which means the felt on the outside of the ball is woven slightly more loosely than the “regular-duty” ball the women use.Iga Swiatek and her sports psychologist have talked about the challenges posed by the regular-duty balls.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesEverything else about the balls is the same — their core construction, their size and weight, how they rebound and how quickly they deform, according to Jason Collins, the senior product director for racket sports at Wilson Sporting Goods.However, the regular-duty balls “play faster,” Collins said through a spokeswoman for the company. Felt that is woven more tightly doesn’t fluff up as much and can wear away, so there is not as much friction when those balls make contact with the ground or the strings of a racket.The additional friction of a fluffy ball allows players to create maximum spin. Those who rely heavily on that spin can struggle to make a regular-duty ball travel the way they want it to, especially after a few games, when the ball begins to lose whatever fluff it had right out of the can and gets smaller.Players who hit a flatter ball, like Coco Gauff, or Pegula or Madison Keys, don’t have this problem as much. But some still do. Paula Badosa, who was seeded fourth and lost in the second round, hits as flat as anyone. She said she hated the balls.“You feel more like you’re playing Ping-Pong sometimes,” Badosa said after her first-round win. Two days later, she was out of the tournament.Another point of complication and confusion: Regular-duty balls are always used on clay courts and other surfaces that are moist because they don’t collect the moisture the way the looser felt of the extra-duty balls do. Extra-duty balls are the balls of choice for outdoor hardcourts, like those at the U.S. Open, except when they are not.And then there is one more complicating factor: Tennis is run by seven separate organizations, with tournaments all over the world, many of which have different companies that pay for the right to supply the balls. That means players can end up playing with a different ball from a different manufacturer from one week to the next. And every ball is just a little bit different, and behaves differently depending on heat and humidity and air pressure.According to the United States Tennis Association, which owns and organizes the U.S. Open, the women have played with a different ball than the men for as long as anyone can remember; the WTA Tour has always wanted it that way, and the tournament abides by the tour’s preference.Stacey Allaster, who is the U.S. Open director and was the chief executive of the WTA from 2009 to 2015, said the sports science experts on the women’s tour have long felt that the faster, more aerodynamic ball helps limit arm and shoulder injuries.Every year, Allaster said, the U.S.T.A. asks the WTA what balls it wants to use, and the answer has always been the same. “As far as we know, a majority likes it, so we could end up trading one problem for another.”Amy Binder, the chief spokeswoman for the WTA, confirmed that the players and the sports science teams have favored the faster regular-duty balls, but executives have heard from “a select number of our athletes that they would like to consider a change.”The WTA will continue to monitor and discuss the matter, Binder said, though she said the decision on the ball ultimately rested with the U.S.T.A.The ball controversy has had previous iterations. After Ashleigh Barty won the Australian Open in January, her coach, Craig Tyzzer, said she would never win the U.S. Open as long as the tournament used the Wilson regular-duty balls. (Barty retired in March at age 25, while ranked as the world No. 1.) The latest gripes started earlier this summer, when the players began playing with these balls in the lead-up to the U.S. Open.Tennis, though, is all about making adjustments and finding solutions as the conditions change throughout a match, and a tournament, and a season. The challenge can be as much mental as it is physical.A tennis umpire examined one of the tennis balls during a fourth-round match.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesPegula kept switching rackets in her match against Kvitova on Monday, experimenting with different string tensions in search of one that felt just right as the humidity and the condition of the balls changed. Looser strings hold the ball for longer (think of a trampoline) and provide more time to spin the ball.“Something feels off, you have to make a change,” Pegula said “It’s important not to let it frustrate you too much.”That has been the challenge for Swiatek, who travels with her sports psychologist, Daria Abramowicz. They have talked plenty about all the challenges created by these balls that Swiatek so despises.Abramowicz does not tell Swiatek not to think about the balls because then the first thing she will think about is the balls.“It’s like I would tell you right now not to think about a blue elephant for a minute, and literally the first thing popping into your mind is this blue elephant,” Abramowicz said. “You accept the thought, because it’s already there, and move on, refocus, find anchor in something else.”Pegula and Swiatek will meet Wednesday in the quarterfinals, a match that could become a test between Pegula’s flexibility and Swiatek’s ability to think about other things besides the balls. Or maybe the balls will have nothing to do with the outcome.What will happen with the balls next year is anyone’s guess, but Allaster said the WTA would need to decide what to do soon. Wilson has already been asking which balls the U.S.T.A. needs in 2023.Someone is not going to be happy. More

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      What You Missed at the U.S. Open While You Were Glued to Serena Williams

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      In case you missed it: The defending women’s singles champion, Emma Raducanu, is out, and a few players not named Serena retired, too.The Serena Williams show has come to an end, quite likely for good in competitive tennis. Even if Williams continues to say “you never know” and her current coach Eric Hechtman and long-ago coach Rick Macci have their doubts.“As of now, I guess we could say it’s over, but in her own words, the door is not slammed shut and locked, right?” Hechtman said on Saturday. “I’d say there’s a crack open.”“Just my hunch, but I think she and Venus are still gonna play doubles,” said Macci, whose Florida tennis academy was the sisters’ longtime base in their youth. “They have two of the best serves in the world and two of the best returns in the world, and in doubles you only have to cover half the court. When the Williams sisters play together, it’s the greatest show on earth. Anything’s possible.”The Williamses are indeed full of surprises and enjoy springing them. But what is 100 percent clear is that they are both out of this U.S. Open and that Serena’s prime-time farewell epic will no longer be the mega-story that blocks out all the light in the press room (or at least the American press room).“It’s completely her tournament, in my opinion,” said Daniil Medvedev of Russia, the No. 1 seed and defending U.S. Open men’s singles champion.But there has been a great big Grand Slam tournament going on for a week in New York. Let’s catch up on what you might have missed:Last year’s fairy tales are not this year’s fairy talesIn 2021, two multicultural teenagers made just about anything seem possible in tennis (and beyond). Leylah Fernandez, an unseeded 19-year-old Canadian with roots in the Philippines and Ecuador, knocked off favorite after favorite to reach the women’s singles final. Emma Raducanu, an 18-year-old Briton born in Canada with roots in China and Romania, defeated Fernandez in that final, becoming the first qualifier in the long history of the game to win a Grand Slam singles title.But midnight struck early this year, and the carriage turned into a pumpkin in the first round for Raducanu, who lost to the veteran Frenchwoman Alizé Cornet, and in the second round for Fernandez, who fell to Liudmila Samsonova of Russia.There was no dishonor in either defeat. Cornet is playing the best tennis of her career at 32 and upset No. 1 Iga Swiatek at Wimbledon. Samsonova, 23, won two hardcourt titles leading into the U.S. Open.But the early exits certainly do underscore how wild and crazy the Open was last year. Truly.Sam Querrey was one of a handful of players who said they would retire after the U.S. Open.Vera Nieuwenhuis/Associated PressSome players are retiring and locking the doorWhile Serena Williams was dragging her sneakers and talking about “evolving away from tennis,” some of her lesser-known peers had no trouble being more direct, including two longtime American pros, Christina McHale and Sam Querrey.Serena Williams at the U.S. OpenThe U.S. Open was very likely the tennis star’s last professional tournament after a long career of breaking boundaries and obliterating expectations.Glorious Goodbye: Even as Serena Williams faced career point, she put on a gutsy display of the power and resilience that have kept fans cheering for nearly 30 years.The Magic Ends: Zoom into this composite photo to see details of Williams’s final moment on Ashe Stadium at this U.S. Open.Her Fans: We asked readers to share their memories of watching Williams play and the emotions that she stirred. There was no shortage of submissions.Sisterhood on the Court: Since Williams and her sister Venus burst onto the tennis scene in the 1990s, their legacies have been tied to each other’s.McHale, a thoughtful 30-year-old from New Jersey, announced her retirement discreetly after losing in the first round of the qualifying tournament. She turned pro at 17 and soon reached the third round of all four majors, peaking at No. 24 in the world in 2012.“I am so grateful to have had the chance to live out my childhood dream all of these years,” she said on her Instagram account.Querrey, a 34-year-old Californian with a laid-back manner and a power game best suited to fast courts, won 10 tour singles titles and peaked at No. 11 in the singles rankings in 2018, the year after he rode his big serve to the semifinals at Wimbledon. The All England Club was also where Querrey recorded his biggest victory: upsetting No. 1 Novak Djokovic, who then held all four major singles titles, in the third round in 2016.Germany’s Andrea Petkovic, also 34, had some big victories of her own and broke into the top 10 in 2011 after reaching the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and the U.S. Open. She came back from a major knee injury early in her career and became a hard-running baseliner. She has been a fine player but probably an even better wordsmith: writing articles and giving interviews full of wisdom and wit in German and English, as she did again at the U.S. Open after her first-round loss to Belinda Bencic of Switzerland.“I think I brought everything to the game that I had to give,” she said. “Obviously it’s not in the amount as Serena, but in my own little world, I feel like brought everything to it, and my narrative was done.”She may play one final European tournament to give her European friends and family a chance to help her say farewell, but she looked like an ex-player already this week with a beer in hand at the beach.“First day of retirement,” she wrote on Instagram. “Enjoying my six-pack while it lasts.”And maybe there are some advantages to retiring in America after all, despite Europe’s bigger social safety net.“Every American that I encountered and told them I’m retiring, their first reaction was, ‘Congratulations,’” Petkovic said. “Every European I told this, they were, ‘Oh my God, what are you going to do now?’ I have to say the last few days I’ve embraced the American way of looking at it a little bit more.”Iga Swiatek remains the favorite to win the women’s singles title.Peter Foley/EPA, via ShutterstockThere will be a new champion and she just might speak FrenchThere will be no seventh U.S. Open singles title for Serena Williams, but someone is winning their first. None of the women who reached the fourth round have taken the singles title at Flushing Meadows.If Iga Swiatek continues to rumble, she deserves to be the favorite. Swiatek is No. 1 in the rankings by a huge margin after a 37-match winning streak earlier this year that included three hardcourt titles. The new champ could be American: Jessica Pegula, the new top-ranked American, and the big-hitting Danielle Collins, who reached the Australian Open final in January, are both contenders.So is Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American who is seeded 12th and reached the quarterfinals in style after defeating Zhang Shuai of China, 7-5, 7-5, and covering the court like few women have covered it before. But the player rising the fastest is actually Gauff’s next opponent: the 17th-seeded Caroline Garcia, a French veteran who has been steam-rolling the opposition.Garcia, 28, once a top-five player, has been back on the rise since June and became the first qualifier to win a WTA 1000 event when she took the Western and Southern Open title last month in Ohio. She is playing with near-relentless aggression, standing well inside the baseline to return, frequently pushing forward to the net and ripping her groundstrokes, above all her potent forehand. It is all clicking, and she is on a 12-match winning streak after defeating Alison Riske-Amritraj of the United States, 6-4, 6-1.“I’m afraid to get too close to you,” said Blair Henley, the on-court interviewer. “Because you are red hot.”Garcia’s signature airplane-inspired celebration — arms spread wide — seems quite appropriate. She is in full flight, but Gauff has beaten her in their two previous matches and will have the nearly 24,000 fans in Arthur Ashe Stadium behind her on Tuesday in what will be the first U.S. Open quarterfinal for both players.Should be a good one. Could be a great one.Victoria Azarenka of Belarus will face Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic on Monday in the round of 16.Cj Gunther/EPA, via ShutterstockWimbledon was a different worldIn the last major tournament, Wimbledon barred Russians and Belarusians from participating because of the invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. Open did not follow that lead to the dismay of some Ukrainian players.One week into this major, no Ukrainians are left in singles, but Russians and Belarusians comprised a quarter of the remaining singles players in the fourth round.Ilya Ivashka of Belarus and Medvedev, Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov, all of Russia, reached the men’s round of 16.Victoria Azarenka and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Samsonova and Veronika Kudermetova of Russia reached the women’s round of 16. One other big difference from Wimbledon: Novak Djokovic, the men’s singles champion at the All England Club, is absent from New York because he was not allowed to enter the United States due to his remaining unvaccinated against Covid-19. More

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      Ukraine Team Finds Escape, and Almost an Upset, Against U.S.

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      A supportive tennis crowd in Asheville, N.C., watched the Ukrainians nearly pull off an upset of the United States in a Billie Jean King Cup qualifier.ASHEVILLE, N.C. — The Ukrainian comeback attempt had come up just short, and Dayana Yastremska and her four teammates were preparing to pose for their final formal photograph at this Billie Jean King Cup qualifier.The blue and yellow ribbon representing Ukraine that had been stenciled onto the tennis court by special permission was no longer visible, obscured by the red, white and blue streamers that had fallen to the ground as part of the Americans’ celebration after their 3-2 victory Saturday night.The Ukrainians, with some help from the United States’ team captain, Kathy Rinaldi, cleared away some of the streamers. But as another official began removing them altogether, Yastremska insisted that they remained next to the ribbon for the photograph.“They were in the colors of U.S.A., and I wanted to leave this near the Ukrainian colors,” she said in an interview. “Because I think it’s a good sign of the support we got here and a sign for peace. I wanted it to stay.”It was that kind of week in Asheville: The symbolic gestures were more indelible than the results, and the usual rules of engagement were rewritten in an attempt to dull the edges of a national team competition.“It’s been hard not to cry,” said Billie Jean King, 78, the American who once starred in this competition, which was formerly known as the Fed Cup long before it was renamed for her in 2020. She visited both teams on Friday shortly before play began. “I just hope the Ukrainians had a moment of escapism.”After Russia invaded Ukraine in February, United States Tennis Association officials offered to postpone this qualifying-round match. The Ukrainians demurred, but when it came time to book hotels in Asheville, they conceded they no longer had the money for the usual visiting team expenses.“We said, ‘No problem, we will cover all your local costs,’” said Stacey Allaster, the chief executive for professional tennis at the U.S.T.A., which also provided support staff to the delegation. “With the war, it’s so horrifying what’s going on. What can any individual do? But we can all do little things, and what we can do is provide a platform for the Ukrainians to demonstrate that they are strong and fighting and are not going to quit.”The posters around this city in the Blue Ridge Mountains did not read, “U.S.A. vs. Ukraine.” They read, “U.S.A. hosts Ukraine.” On changeovers, the scoreboard flashed information on how to donate to the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund, and about $225,000 was raised in connection with the matches. The American cheering squad supported individual players instead of chanting, “Go U.S.A.!”“We were just trying to find the proper tone and balance,” Allaster said.The Ukrainian players, all of whom still have family members in their embattled country, felt the job was done right: from the informal dinner for the teams at an Asheville restaurant on Tuesday night to the stirring a cappella rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem by Julia Kashirets that left members of both teams in tears minutes before the matches began.Julia Kashirets sang the Ukrainian national anthem at the Billie Jean King Cup qualifier on Saturday.Eakin Howard/Getty Images“We came here to play not against the U.S.A. but with the U.S.A. for Ukraine, and that’s how it felt to me,” Katarina Zavatska said. That was in part because of the numerous fans with Ukrainian connections and flags. Christina Dyakiv, 15, from William Floyd High School in Mastic Beach on Long Island, traveled to Asheville with her Ukrainian-born parents. Juliia Sherrod, a Ukrainian former leading junior player who now lives in Knoxville, Tenn., made the two-hour drive on short notice.“Every little win counts in any field for Ukraine right now,” said Sherrod, 35, who also goes by Yulia. “In the big scheme of things, a tennis match is no big deal, but it still means a lot.”In that supportive atmosphere, the Ukrainians nearly managed the upset. After falling behind, 0-2, on Friday, they won both singles matches on Saturday in straight sets. Yastremska, a former top-25 player now ranked 93rd on the WTA Tour, often overwhelmed No. 14 Jessica Pegula. More surprisingly, the 201st-ranked Zavatska defeated No. 46 Shelby Rogers.That meant the concluding doubles match would be decisive, and Pegula and Asia Muhammad, making her King Cup debut, earned a 7-6 (5), 6-3 victory over Yastremska and Lyudmyla Kichenok.“All day we just really felt that fighting spirit of Ukraine,” Rogers said. “It was really special to see, but really tough to go against. I’m just so proud of my team for stepping up to that, having nerves of steel.”Asia Muhammad, left, celebrated with Jessica Pegula after winning the concluding doubles match that qualified the U.S. team for the Billie Jean King Cup finals.Susan Mullane/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe first set of the doubles match came down to very little. With Muhammad serving at 5-6, 30-30, the Americans had to scramble to win the longest, most spectacular rally of the match, and at 5-5 in the tiebreaker, Kichenok’s full-cut passing shot struck the very top of the tape.“She wanted to take a little bit of risk,” Yastremska said, making a tiny space between her right thumb and index finger. “Just like this, in the net!”The victory qualified the Americans for the 12-team King Cup finals in November, but the Ukrainians are not necessarily eliminated. One wild-card slot is available, and depending on which nation is selected to host the finals, it might be available to Ukraine.A full-strength Ukrainian team could be formidable: No. 25 Elina Svitolina and No. 53 Marta Kostyuk, the country’s two highest-ranked singles players, missed this match because of injuries and personal issues.“I don’t want to be arrogant, but maybe we deserve this,” Zavatska said.Russia won the King Cup last year before being barred from this year’s competition because of the invasion. Olga Savchuk, the Ukrainian team captain in Asheville, believes tennis needs to take the next step and bar Russian players from individual events as well, something Wimbledon is considering.“Why is somebody who works in McDonald’s in Russia losing their job because of sanctions and the tennis players are exceptions?” Savchuk said.Zavatska, 22, who is based in southern France, believes the Russians need to take responsibility and “feel discomfort too, as long as people and children are dying in Ukraine.” She said some Russian and Belarusian players had told her the news of atrocities coming out of Ukraine was “fake.” The guilt some of the players felt in the first month at being safe while other Ukrainians were in so much peril has been superseded by the belief that they can be sporting ambassadors.“With people watching us back home on TV, you want them just to take a couple of hours to enjoy the tennis and to see that some Ukrainian girls are fighting for the country as well,” Yastremska said.Katarina Zavatska of Ukraine celebrated her win against Shelby Rogers of the United States on Saturday, which put the countries in a 2-2 tie.Susan Mullane/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSusan Mullane/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe arena in Asheville, in scale and design, reminded Savchuk and Yastremska of where the Ukrainian team played home matches in Kharkiv, which has been heavily damaged by Russian bombardments.Savchuk, now based in London, was born and raised in Donetsk in the disputed Donbas region and her father remains in Donetsk. “He decided to stay because it’s home,” said Savchuk, who said her relatives have spent long stretches in bomb shelters.Kichenok fled the country after the war started and needed 31 hours to get from Kyiv to Moldova with her parents. Her twin, Nadiia, also part of Ukraine’s team, left Kyiv just before Russia invaded, traveling to California with her husband.“It was two days of hell for me until they got to a safe place,” Nadiia said of her family. “I had constant panic attacks. I never experienced anything like that, like 40 minutes your body is shaking, and you don’t know what to do besides deep breaths.”The Kichenoks’ father, who is 64, has since returned to Ukraine and tried to volunteer for the military despite exceeding the age limit.“They told him, ‘Grandfather, go back home,’” Nadiia Kichenok said. “‘We have too many people here. We will call you when we need you.’”Yastremska, 21, fled Odesa, her home city, with her 15-year-old sister, Ivanna, crossing into Romania after saying goodbye to their parents on the Ukrainian side of the Danube River. The sisters have been traveling on tour together for nearly two months while their parents remain in Odesa, where one of their tasks has been organizing relief efforts through Yastremska’s charitable foundation.Unable to return home, the Yastremska sisters remain without a fixed training base, but they will head next to Madrid to prepare for the clay-court season. The Kichenok twins will travel to Stuttgart, Germany, for a tournament, and Zavatska will return to Cannes, France, where she is sharing her small apartment with her mother and other relations who fled Ukraine.After a week of togetherness and a final night of karaoke with the Americans on Saturday, the Ukrainians will move on, but with the hope that Asheville and the wider world do not move on too quickly.“I don’t want people to get used to this grief that we are experiencing,” Nadiia Kichenok said. “We don’t want people to be sorry for us. We want them to stay strong with us, fighting for freedom and humanity.” More

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      Madison Keys Defeats Barbora Krejcikova at Australian Open

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      The unseeded American upset No. 4 Barbora Krejcikova to advance to the semifinals, where she will face No. 1 Asheligh Barty.MELBOURNE, Australia — Before Madison Keys plays a match, her new coach Georgi Rumenov likes to remind her that “there is no need to, there is no have to.”The message is that it is not about the implications or the expectations. It is all about the rally, the shot at hand.That is easier said than achieved for Keys, an American tennis star who despite all the thunder in her serve and groundstrokes, has long struggled to find peace in the matches that matter most.Last year, she found herself obsessing over results and comparing herself to her peers, tossing and turning at night and trying to calm her anxiety.“I wasn’t sleeping as well,” she said. “Felt like there was literally a weight on my chest just because I became so focused and obsessed with it that I wasn’t enjoying really anything, because it’s all that I was thinking about.”But even though tennis has one of the shortest off-seasons of any professional sport, it was long enough for Keys to change her thinking and form with Rumenov’s help.After winning just 11 singles matches in 2021, Keys has won 11 in less than a month in 2022: taking the title in Adelaide and sweeping back into the semifinals of the Australian Open on Tuesday with a dominant victory, 6-3, 6-2, over Barbora Krejcikova, the No. 4 seed and reigning French Open champion. She will meet the top seed, Ashleigh Barty, in the semifinals. Barty beat the American Jessica Pegula, 6-2, 6-0.“It means a lot,” said Keys, 26, who is unseeded this year after being ranked as high as No. 7 earlier in her career. “Last year was really hard, and I did everything I could with my team to really reset this off-season and focus on starting fresh and new and really just starting from zero and not worrying about last year. And wow, that’s going well so far.”Ashleigh Barty beat the American Jessica Pegula to reach her second Australian Open semifinal.Mark Metcalfe/Getty ImagesKeys has long played a high-risk game and she has, to her detriment under duress, often taken too much chance when in command of a point. There have been signs of progress in that department this year, as she has hit with more topspin and net clearance, and opted for placing the ball rather than pounding it.“I’ve been working on it,” Keys said when asked about her approach. “As you said, it’s not something that I used to necessarily do in the past. Really just trying to be a lot more measured and just playing within myself a little bit more, not necessarily trying to hit a winner on that ball, just constantly trying to set the point up to get to the net to try to finish off on even the next ball. If it happens to be a winner, then it happens to be a winner.”The winners keep coming in bunches. Her easy power remains. Keys hit 11 aces against Krejcikova, one of the world’s premier returners and a doubles champion before she became a singles champion. Keys dominated the short exchanges and as an Orlando resident seemed far more at ease in the humidity and heat with the temperature on-court surpassing 90 degrees.Krejcikova struggled, putting her ice-filled towel not only around her neck on changeovers but on top of her head. Down 2-5 in the opening set, she called for the trainer and was also attended to by a tournament doctor, who took her blood pressure and temperature. Though her coach Ales Kartus was telling her from the stands that she should retire from the match, she persevered as the errors piled up.Krejcikova declined to explain what was troubling her.“I have been struggling with something,” she said. “Yes, it was happening, and I didn’t feel good. I just don’t want to talk about it, because I think Madison, she really deserves the win, and she really deserves to get the credit.”Krejcikova also struggled with breathing and dizziness on a muggy night in New York last year in a tempestuous fourth-round victory over Garbiñe Muguruza at the U.S. Open.Barbora Krejcikova tried to cool down during a break in her quarterfinal match.Andy Brownbill/Associated PressKrejcikova said she was not experiencing the same issues on Tuesday. “Today it was the heat that started to bother me after five games,” she said. “From there on, I just couldn’t put it together. Still, I didn’t want to end it up. I wanted to finish up. I wanted to try to do my best. I wasn’t really able to do that.”Tuesday’s defeat guaranteed that Krejcikova, a tactically astute Czech player, cannot displace Barty at No. 1 in the next rankings. But she continues her rapid rise nonetheless. Outside the top 100 in 2020 in singles, Krejcikova has become a consistent threat in a women’s game filled with upsets and unexpected plot twists: Consider British qualifier Emma Raducanu’s run to the U.S. Open title last year.It is Keys’s turn to be the surprise so far in 2022. After dropping out of the top 50 by the end of last season, she is back in the final four in Australia, where she reached her first Grand Slam semifinal in 2015 at age 19.“It mostly feels different because I’m seven years older, and it’s not my first semifinal of a Slam,” she said. “I think I’m a little bit more prepared this time around than I was all those years ago.”Her opponent in that 2015 semifinal was No. 1 Serena Williams, the greatest women’s player of this era, who defeated her, 7-6 (5), 6-2, on her way to the title. Williams, now 40, is not playing in Melbourne this year, but Keys will face another No. 1 in Barty, who won two of their three previous meetings.Keys, who lost in the 2017 U.S. Open final to her close friend Sloane Stephens, has long been considered a potential Grand Slam champion. She is back in range again.Chris Evert, who has known Keys since she trained as a teenager at the Evert Tennis Academy in Boca Raton, Fla., said it is apparent that Keys is enjoying herself on the court more than last year.“I’m seeing a very calm and focused Madison who is in control and managing her emotions like never before,” Evert wrote in a text message. “I’m seeing a fit and healthy Madison who is moving really well in and out of corners and not hitting risky shots because she can’t get back in the court. Her serve is almost unreturnable.”Evert added: “She had to find this place of calm herself, in her own time, no one could teach her this. I am thrilled for her. No one deserves a crack at a Grand Slam title more than her.”But Keys has been on tour long enough to know that thinking ahead is not the right approach for her. As Rumenov keeps telling her, “there is no need to, there is no have to.”Staying in the moment is the focus.“I think that’s really important,” she said. “I think it’s still something that I don’t think anyone is perfect at. You can kind of lose that even throughout a match, just getting a little bit ahead of yourself. I think I even did that today early in the second set. I think the biggest key is just being able to reel it back in and then refocus very quickly and catch yourself.” More