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No. 8 seed Karolina Pliskova will face No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, and No. 1 Ashleigh Barty will play No. 25 Angelique Kerber on Thursday, for a chance to make the women’s singles final at Wimbledon.WIMBLEDON, England — Karolina Pliskova, the only woman to reach this year’s Wimbledon semifinals without dropping a set, is learning to appreciate what she’s done, rather than dwelling on what she hasn’t. More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka vs. BradyWomen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Women’s Doubles Champion Says She’s Going SoloAfter Aryna Sabalenka and her partner, Elise Mertens, won the Australian Open, Sabalenka said she was breaking up their team so she could focus on her singles career.Aryna Sabalenka will move into the No. 1 ranking in women’s doubles just as she stops playing it.Credit…Kelly Defina/ReutersFeb. 19, 2021, 9:40 a.m. ETAryna Sabalenka and her partner, Elise Mertens, won the Australian Open women’s doubles final, 6-2, 6-3, over Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova on Friday afternoon at Rod Laver Arena.The win will move Sabalenka to the No. 1 ranking in doubles for the first time, with Mertens close behind at No. 2.But after the title, the second Grand Slam triumph they have won together, Sabalenka said she would no longer play doubles and instead put her “whole focus on singles,” in which she is ranked seventh.“I just want to manage my energy,” Sabalenka said. “When you go out for doubles, you’re still there for competing, to put everything you have. Sometimes it’s not really working well with me.”Sabalenka is the only WTA or ATP player currently ranked in the Top 10 in both singles and doubles. She has been one of the most consistent players at WTA Tour events, where she has won nine singles titles. She reeled off 13 straight wins on tour across the end of last season and the beginning of this one.But at Grand Slam events Sabalenka has fallen far short of her expectations. She has only reached even the fourth round in singles twice in 13 main draw appearances, including at this Australian Open, where she lost, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4, to Serena Williams.“It was a great match against Serena — I’m not really happy with the end of the first and third set. I think I could do it better — but I think it was great experience,” Sabalenka said Friday. “It was a great lesson.“I think I’m getting better on the Grand Slams side of the results,” she added. “I just want to keep it up. I just want to try to do something else to make sure I improve my singles.”Mertens, who is ranked 16th in singles, voiced no objection to Sabalenka’s breaking up their dominant team.“It’s her decision, I really respect that,” Mertens said. “Doubles takes some energy away, that’s true. On the other hand, for me, I just like to play matches.“I mean, she can definitely try and we’ll see,” Mertens added. “If she still likes to play doubles, I’m here.”Sabalenka said that not prioritizing doubles had been one of the keys to her success in the discipline.“From my side, I would say I was pretty relaxed on doubles,” Sabalenka said. “I was doing whatever I want to. I didn’t care about winning or losing.”“She didn’t care about me,” Mertens interjected with a laugh.Sabalenka said that though she was more relaxed, being in a second competitive environment was still taxing.“I know that doubles, it’s not that hard, you’re not moving that much,” she said. “It still takes a lot of energy. I just want to save it for singles. I just want to try something different this year and see what happens on the Grand Slams.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySerena Williams Turns Back Time at Australian OpenAgainst Aryna Sabalenka, Williams called back to a much earlier phase of her career, well before she was the undisputed queen of her sport.Serena Williams beat Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open after several times looking close to defeat.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 14, 2021Updated 9:47 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams became a time traveler on Sunday, pulled back to the past to essentially face down her much younger self.Across the net from her in the fourth round of the Australian Open stood the 22-year-old Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, who turned pro at 14, like Williams, and whose strategy called to mind Williams’s game plan at the same age: If at first you don’t succeed, hit harder.Williams, 39, stared down Sabalenka, and after two gripping hours, Sabalenka blinked. In the 10th game of the deciding set, Sabalenka mustered one point on her serve as Williams, a seven-time champion, seized the break and a 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 victory to set up a quarterfinal meeting with Simona Halep, who dispatched the 19-year-old Iga Swiatek in three sets.Williams’s longevity makes it easy to forget that before she was the game’s grande dame, she was its whiz kid, collecting nine WTA singles titles, including one Grand Slam, before she was out of her teens.Sabalenka, a nine-time winner on the WTA Tour, and Swiatek, the reigning French Open champion, are the latest in a long string of polished phenoms threaded through Williams’s career. One of the biggest stars to emerge, Naomi Osaka, saved two match points to beat Garbiñe Muguruza on Sunday. Still, from Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles to Maria Sharapova and Sloane Stephens, Williams has watched many young talents come and go and, on occasion, stray far from tennis.A sport with a history of suffocating its young has not stifled Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles whose love for the game seems to have deepened over time. Against Sabalenka, she studied a page of written notes during changeovers as if she were back in high school. She fiddled with her “Queen” necklace. She dug balls out of the corners and ran from side to side as if she were on a school blacktop at recess.Darren Cahill, one of Halep’s coaches, described Williams’s movement as the best he had seen from her “in a long, long time” and said, “If you can stay in more points and get more balls back, stay alive, then she’s got the power to turn those points around.”What Williams is doing is also inconceivable to the younger Americans, three of whom have followed her into the second week. Marveled, one of the three, the 28-year-old Shelby Rogers: “What she’s been able to accomplish is absolutely incredible because some days I wake up now and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m not 21 anymore.’”Williams’s serve usually allows her to win her share of easy points. But against Sabalenka, her main weapon continually misfired. Williams put 52 percent of her first serves in play and recorded eight double faults, including one in the fifth game of the third set, which gave Sabalenka two break points.With the state of Victoria in Day 2 of a hard lockdown, no fans were in the stands, but the restrictions placed on the local populace did not extend to Williams’s inner circle, which includes her husband, coach, agent, hitting partner and older sister Venus, 40, who lost in the second round.Williams didn’t need to be told by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, that her entourage qualified as “essential workers,” a classification that made it possible for them to attend the match. Her team is elemental to her success, and she looked over often to where everyone was seated. When she was down 15-40 in that fifth game, Venus raised both hands as if signaling a touchdown and they locked eyes.Williams’s sister Venus Williams was in the stands for support at crucial moments during the match.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersWilliams’s most recent Grand Slam championship came at Venus’s expense at Melbourne Park in 2017, when she was two months pregnant with her first daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian. Since becoming a parent, Williams has found her voice as an advocate for working mothers everywhere, speaking openly of the hardships, both physical and emotional, that she and others on the WTA Tour — and in the wider world — confront daily while balancing their jobs and child-rearing.But in that telepathic moment between the sisters, Serena was not tennis’s earth mother. She was transported back in time to her early years as a pro when she looked to Venus for direction.“When I hear her voice, it just makes me calm and confident,” Williams said. “Yeah, I think there’s something about it that just makes me feel really good.”She got her first serve in on the next three points and won them all, earning an advantage with a 126 mile-an-hour ace. Williams closed out the game on a frazzled Sabalenka’s forced error.Sabalenka fought back, winning the next three games to draw even at 4-4. At that point, she said: “I felt like I should win it. I felt like I was fighting really well.”But so was Williams. She held, and with Sabalenka serving to stay in the match, Williams got enough balls back to fluster her younger opponent, whose service game ended with a double fault and two forehand unforced errors.“I just needed to play better on the big points,” Williams said. “I knew that I could. I still hadn’t reached my peak. I was like, ‘OK, Serena, you got this. Just keep going.’”Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus threw her racket in frustration as she missed opportunities against Williams.Credit…Hamish Blair/Associated PressAfter 23 major singles titles and hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements and motherhood, how does Williams find the motivation to keep chasing a tennis ball?The answer could be found in how Williams spent her off day. After her Saturday practice, she put her daughter down for a nap and then made work calls to the United States, finalizing orders and obsessing about fabrics for her fashion line, S by Serena, which she described as her “second career.”There’s a method to Williams’s multitasking. She has been doing it her whole life, she said. She never played a full tennis schedule as a junior and has never played a full schedule as a pro.“I still went to college, I still did a lot of other things,” Williams said. “I had other careers. It was impossible to burn out.”Convention holds that Williams continues to play because she has Margaret Court’s career record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles in her sights. But the truth might be simpler.“I like my job,” she said. “I like what I do. It’s pretty special I get to come out and still get to do it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story2021 Australian Open: What to Watch on Thursday NightThe third round of the Australian Open gets underway, featuring Naomi Osaka, Serena Williams, Dominic Thiem and Novak Djokovic.Naomi Osaka has lost a total of just eight games through her first two matches at the Australian Open.Credit…Paul Crock/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 11, 2021, 7:07 a.m. ETHow to watch: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern on the Tennis Channel and 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. on ESPN2 in the United States; streaming on the ESPN+ and ESPN3 apps.As each singles draw dwindled to 32 players, some former major champions lost their hopes of snagging one more Grand Slam title. The 17th-seeded Stan Wawrinka lost his second-round match to Marton Fucsovics, and the eighth-seeded Bianca Andreescu fell to Hsieh Su-Wei.Although the field has shrunk, plenty of promising youngsters and past major champions remain.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are best estimates and certain to fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Rod Laver Arena | 7 p.m. ThursdayAryna Sabalenka vs. Ann LiAryna Sabalenka, the seventh seed, has equaled her best result at the Australian Open by reaching the third round. She has yet to make it to a Grand Slam quarterfinal, despite how consistently well she plays on tour. Sabalenka won three hardcourt singles titles in 2020, and started 2021 by winning the Abu Dhabi Open. Her aggressive style can help her on faster-paced courts, although on her poorer days it can create plenty of unforced errors.Aryna Sabalenka is the seventh seed.Credit…Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesAnn Li, the world No. 69, has had a fantastic run of results in the past few weeks. Last week, she won the Grampians Trophy in Melbourne with a walkover in the final. Then, in the first round of the Australian Open, she upset the 31st seed, Zhang Shuai, while dropping only two games. Although her second-round match against Alizé Cornet required a bit more from her, Li played well, pushing through a tough second set tiebreaker in which she faced two set points. One more upset would put her in her first round of 16 at a Grand Slam event.John Cain Arena | 10 p.m. ThursdayNaomi Osaka vs. Ons JabeurNaomi Osaka, the third seed, has won a Grand Slam event in each of the past three years, all on hardcourts. The fast pace of play suits her, as she pins opponents into the back corners of the court with her flat shots. Osaka did not play in the French Open in October, citing concerns related to the pandemic. She is back into a groove at the Australian Open, dropping just eight games across her first two matches.Ons Jabeur, the 27th seed, became the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal at last year’s Australian Open, losing to the eventual champion, Sofia Kenin. Jabeur’s adaptability can be very difficult for opponents to handle; she can unravel an array of opponents’ weaknesses. To beat Osaka, Jabeur will need to have a strong start and not allow her opponent to get into a rhythm.John Cain Arena | 3 a.m. FridayDominic Thiem vs. Nick KyrgiosDominic Thiem, the third seed, won the United States Open in September, supplanting Marin Cilic (2014) as the most recent first-time male Grand Slam champion.A four-time Grand Slam finalist, Thiem has slowly been chipping away at the hegemony of the so-called Big Three of Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Though Thiem’s U.S. Open victory came on a hard court, that is not considered his best surface. And with the unusually quick conditions in Australia, he may struggle to return to the final, where he lost to Djokovic last year.Dominic Thiem is the third seed in men’s singles.Credit…Brandon Malone/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNick Kyrgios, an Australian ranked 47th in the world, was often stereotyped as an uncouth punk for his perceived lack of interest in the sport of tennis. As the coronavirus pandemic shut down the ATP Tour, Kyrgios became a loud advocate for health and safety precautions, openly criticizing both his peers and legends like Boris Becker for choosing to socialize or complaining about safety measures. Now Kyrgios is playing in front of home crowds, and the fast-paced courts in Melbourne will aid his aggressive baseline style. However, after barely squeezing past the 29th seed, Ugo Humbert, in five sets, Kyrgios will be challenged to break down Thiem’s exceptional defensive play.Margaret Court Arena | 3 a.m. FridayDenis Shapovalov vs. Felix Auger-AliassimeDenis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime, the two youngest members of the Canadian delegation at the Australian Open, are both aggressive, full-court players who rely on their athleticism to get through tough matches.Shapovalov, the 11th seed, reached his first Grand Slam quarterfinal at the U.S. Open before losing in five sets to Pablo Carreño Busta. Although Shapovalov, 21, lost both of his ATP Cup matches — a singles match against the seventh-ranked Alexander Zverev and a doubles match — they were tightly contested. After an impressive five-set win over the fellow up-and-comer Jannik Sinner, Shapovalov looks prepared to reach the second week of play.Felix Auger-Aliassime is the 20th seed.Credit…Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesAuger-Aliassime, 20, has skated through his first two rounds, convincingly dismantling his opponents without dropping a set. The last time he faced Shapovalov on tour, he lost in straight sets in the first round of the 2019 U.S. Open. A year and a half later, this match will be a good test of whether he can usurp his close friend as the top Canadian men’s player.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on:Serena Williams vs. Anastasia Potapova — 9 p.m.Milos Raonic vs. Marton Fucsovics — 1 a.m.Simona Halep vs. Veronika Kudermetova — 3 a.m.Novak Djokovic vs. Taylor Fritz — 5 a.m.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTennis Players Mull Competition or Rest at Start of New SeasonWith the Australian Open looming, the first big decision for 2021 contenders was whether to play in the first tennis tournaments of the year.Aryna Sabalenka was among the players who decided to compete in the first tournaments of the tennis season. Some are skipping the events to focus more squarely on the Australian Open.Credit…Francois Nel/Getty ImagesJan. 10, 2021, 1:00 a.m. ETFiguring out where and how to start the tennis season is usually pretty easy for the world’s top players. They catch a flight to Australia around Christmas, spend a few days getting over the jet lag, then compete for two weeks in warm-up tournaments ahead of the Australian Open.But with the sport’s calendar upended by the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted a three-week delay of the Australian Open, players have had to make difficult calculations about the value of traveling to compete now, as infection rates are still soaring in many parts of the world.As the 2021 professional tennis season began this week, several of the top players opted not to attend the only opening tournaments before they have to quarantine for two weeks in Australia. This year, they cannot simply show up in Australia and compete right away.Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 among the men, remained on their practice courts rather than venturing to Turkey or Florida for the first events on their tour (Roger Federer is out with a knee injury). Andy Murray of Britain, a three-time Grand Slam winner, was supposed to play in Florida, then grew skittish about traveling during the pandemic and pulled out. On the women’s side, the American stars Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka skipped the event in Abu Dhabi.The plans for those three tournaments were announced only in late December, as the organizers of the Australian Open decided that the start of their Grand Slam event would be delayed until Feb. 8 and that all participants would be required to heavily restrict their movements for two weeks ahead of the tournament.“I was ready to go and ready to play matches,” said Cam Norrie of Britain, who played in the Florida tournament, the Delray Beach Open, after practicing indoors in London since late November. “But for a lot of players since it was sprung on them a bit last minute, they were not ready and didn’t want to compete.”The schedule follows an off-season that, for most players, was longer than the usual six-week break. The pandemic forced the women’s tour to cancel its fall Asia swing. On the men’s side, for all but the top players, there has not been a tournament since early November.Sofia Kenin, 22, the reigning Australian Open champion, went to Abu Dhabi and said at a news conference this week that opting to play was a “last-minute decision” motivated in part by a desire “just to get out of the house.”Also competing there were Karolina Pliskova, a former world No. 1, and Coco Gauff, the rising American teenager.For most top players, the decision to play or not to play this week ultimately came down to whether they thought playing real matches now would help them get mentally and physically prepared for the rigors of a Grand Slam.“I need some time to get back into rhythm and play more matches,” Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, who won the last two tournaments of 2020, told reporters as she competed in Abu Dhabi this week. She won her 11th consecutive match on Friday.The open question for Sabalenka and other players is how their individual choices during the first weeks of the season might play into the unusual routines for this Australian Open.During the quarantine, players will be allowed to practice for only two hours each day, initially with just one practice partner and then with two more in the second week. They will also get to spend about two hours in the gym, and one other hour at the tennis center in Melbourne. They must spend the 19 other hours in their hotel rooms.After the quarantine, the men’s and women’s tours will hold three competitive events in Melbourne in the week before the Open.Craig Morris, a former coach for the Australian Samantha Stosur, who won the 2011 U.S. Open, said that given how little tennis took place last year, competition this month would be valuable. “Anything they can get under the belt is going to help,” he said.Tennis players are constantly searching for the optimal rhythm — to hit the ball cleanly on nearly every shot and to feel confident about their strokes regardless of the situation. It’s not something that can easily be turned on and off, and for many players that zone is reached through the right combination of practice and match play.The coronavirus is just the newest twist to that hunt.Murray, 31, was ready to play this week, but announced in a news release on New Year’s Eve that he was too concerned about the pandemic to make the trip.“Given the increase in Covid rates and the trans-Atlantic flights involved, I want to minimize the risks ahead of the Australian Open,” Murray said.Several other notable players, including the Italians Matteo Berrettini and Fabio Fognini, plus John Isner of the United States and Adrian Mannarino of France, were competing in either Turkey or Florida.Plenty of players competed this week because they knew they could use some prize money after so many competitive opportunities were canceled last year, when the tour was shut down for about five months. Many also wanted to see if the off-season work they put in was paying dividends on the court.Leylah Fernandez, 18, a fast-improving Canadian, said making the trip to Abu Dhabi was “a very difficult decision,” but with all the uncertainty hanging over the tennis schedule — and all sports in 2021 — she and her team took the bird in hand.“We wanted to get as many matches under my belt as we could,” Fernandez said after winning her first match on Wednesday.Tommy Paul, an American who spent the off-season training at the tennis complex in Delray Beach, Fla., said the realigned schedule had shifted his approach to the weeks leading up to a Grand Slam. Paul, 23, said in an interview Wednesday that he spent the off-season trying to turn himself into more of an all-court player by coming to the net more often.The Delray Beach tournament, he said, offered him an opportunity to measure his progress and figure out what he still needs to work on. The two-week quarantine in Australia, where his hitting partners will be the Americans Steve Johnson and Sam Querrey, will give him the chance to work on the weaknesses he identifies in competition at the Delray Beach event. Paul won his first round match Thursday over Nam Ji-sung of South Korea, 6-1, 6-4.“If there is something I don’t like about my game I have time to fix it.” Paul said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
