Shapovalov, Denis (1999- )

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    An Opportunity at Paris Masters After a Taxing Tennis Season

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

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      Bum Knees, Stress Fractures and Mental Anguish. Oh, Canada.

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      Canada has been striving to become a top tennis nation for two decades, and with two Wimbledon finals appearances and a U.S. Open title it seemed to be working. Then things quieted down.It may be a little hard to remember, with all the injuries, career detours and mystifying losses, but there was a time when everything seemed possible for Canadian tennis.Every time a tennis fan looked up, it seemed, another wildly talented or gritty Canadian had made a Grand Slam final. Bianca Andreescu even won one, beating Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open when she was still a teenager, playing with a style so creative she left tennis aesthetes drooling.Lately, with all the bum knees (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime), stress fractures (Leylah Fernandez) and the mental anguish (Milos Raonic and Andreescu) that so many players struggle with these days, even Fernandez’s improbable run to the 2021 U.S. Open final can feel like it was a long time ago.And then there was a day like Wednesday at Wimbledon, with the rain finally going away long enough for outdoor tennis to happen, for Shapovalov and Raonic to show why there had been so much fuss in the first place. Both came back from a set down to win in four sets, giving Shapovalov a chance to reminisce about what it had meant to him to be a junior player from a country known mostly for its prowess in sports with ice (hockey and curling) and watching Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard nearly go all the way on the Wimbledon grass.“It kind of put a real belief in mine and Felix’s eyes that it’s possible as a Canadian,” Shapovalov said, after beating Radu Albot of Moldova 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in a match that began on Monday. “And I’m sure with the generations, you know, following me, Felix, Bianca. Leylah, I’m sure there’s much more belief in the country, that it is possible even if the country is cold or is mostly wintertime.”Apparently, Canadians missed the string of champions that Sweden, hardly a temperate locale, produced during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, such as Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg.Shapovalov and Raonic, who played and won his first match at a Grand Slam tournament in two and a half years Monday, beating Denis Novak of Austria, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-1, will be back at it on Thursday. Both men will play second-round matches, as will Fernandez. Andreescu will be out there, too, finally playing her first-round match against Anna Bondar of Hungary.Leylah Fernandez will play Caroline Garcia of France in the second round.Adam Davy/Press Association, via Associated PressAuger-Aliassime, who has been dealing with a sore knee all year, lost in the first round at the All England Club for a second consecutive year. The nagging injury and the latest loss count as major disappointments for Auger-Aliassime, who broke out in his late teens and whose powerful serve and movement should allow him to excel on grass.But a Wimbledon schedule filled with Canadians is what the nation’s higher-ups in the sport were shooting for when they set out to make Canada a top-level tennis country nearly 20 years ago. Other than long, cold winters, Canada seemed to have everything a country needed to achieve big things in tennis — wealth, diversity and a commitment to spend money on building facilities and importing top coaches.It built a tennis center in Montreal and satellite facilities in other major cities and began to focus on developing young children and teenagers. It hired Louis Borfiga, a leading tennis mind from France who was Borg’s hitting partner, to oversee player development.Blessed with the good fortune of players with natural talent and parents willing to support it, Canada had Bouchard and Raonic rolling by the mid-2010s and Shapovalov, Andreescu and Auger-Aliassime tearing up the junior rankings, with Fernandez not far behind.The success — last year Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime led Canada to its first Davis Cup title — and the struggles have bred a camaraderie among the players. They know when the others are playing even when they are not in the same tournament.“I’m guilty of following the results of all my fellow Canadians,” said Fernandez, who remembers just a few years ago seeing Auger-Aliassime training a few courts down from her in Montreal and thinking, “Oh, this is inspiring.”When Fernandez was injured last year, one of the first texts she received was from Andreescu, who has been battling all sorts of ailments seemingly since she won the 2019 U.S. Open. Andreescu told Fernandez that she was there for her whatever she needed and that Fernandez was headed for a tough time, but would get through it.Earlier this year, when Andreescu rolled her ankle and suffered what looked to be a devastating injury at the Miami Open, Fernandez sent the support right back. “I was like, ‘Bianca, you’re strong, you’ll get back, you’re a great tennis player, and a great person.’”Rain forced Denis Shapovalov to play his first-round match over two days.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressOn Wednesday, Shapovalov and Raonic found each other in the locker room, trying to manage the rain delays that have disrupted the tournament all week.Raonic said he had forgotten his old routine because it had been so long since he had dealt with something like that. At first he tried to keep moving to stay loose, but then thought he might have been burning too much energy.He sat down for a bit with Shapovalov, who was passing the time with his coach by answering animal trivia questions. Raonic jumped into the game and said everyone was entertained to learn which sea animal can breathe through its rear end. (Turtle). There was also a spirited argument about the killing power of a mosquito versus that of sharks. Shapovalov was firmly on the side that sharks are scarier than a malaria-carrying insect.Eventually, the rain subsided along with the zoology debate. Then it was time for Raonic to head back to the court and deliver the sort of victory that once happened all the time, wearing down Novak with his blasting serve and big forehand. Later in the afternoon, when Shapovalov found his rhythm on those smooth, graceful strokes, Albot never had a chance.In a symbol of how tenuous Canada’s tennis efforts have become, both Shapovalov and Raonic easily might not have been at the All England Club this year.Shapovalov has been limping on and off in recent months and had to cut his practices short on grass when the pain grew too intense.Raonic said through his injury struggles during the past few years he had come to terms with the idea that his life after tennis had begun. But he drove by a tennis court each day near his home in the Bahamas, or would see tennis on television while he worked out at a local gym, and he figured he might as well give it another shot.On Wednesday, he said he was annoyed with himself for not enjoying the moment more, being back at the All England Club, playing in the Grand Slam where he had his greatest success and helped make Canada believe. In his words, it was easy to detect a larger message about the often fleeting nature of success, on a single day, or during an era.“You just get caught up with the whole process of competing and trying to find a way to win and that passes by really quickly,” he said. “Then you don’t really get to enjoy the match.” More

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      The Same Work but a Lot Less Pay for Women. Welcome to Tennis in 2023.

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      At the Italian Open, women will compete for less than half as much money as the men. Organizers say they intend to fix that, but not for two years.The best tennis players in the world descend this week on Rome, where men and women will play in the same best-of-three-sets format, on the same courts and in the same tournament, which sells one same-price ticket for both men’s matches and women’s matches.There is one massive difference between the two competitions, however: Men will compete for $8.5 million while the women will compete for $3.9 million.The huge pay discrepancy comes after two months of tennis that included three similarly significant tournaments in California, Florida and Madrid that featured men and women competing for the same amount of prize money. Men and women also get paid the same at the four Grand Slam tournaments, where men play best-of-five sets and the women play best of three.But not in Rome at the Italian Open. And not yet in the Cincinnati suburbs at the Western & Southern Open. Or in Canada, at the National Bank Open, where the men and women alternate between Toronto and Montreal each year.Angelo Binaghi, the chief executive of Italy’s tennis federation, announced recently that the Italian Open was committed to achieving pay equity by 2025 “to align itself with other major events on the circuit,” even though an expanded format will bring in additional money this year. For the next two editions of the tournament, women will have to do the same work for a lot less pay, which makes them feel, well, not great.“I don’t know why it’s not equal right now,” said Paula Badosa, a 25-year-old from Spain who is among the leaders of a nascent player organization, the Professional Tennis Players Association. “They don’t inform us. They say this is what you get and you have to play.”A spokesman for the Italian federation did not make Binaghi available for an interview.“It’s really frustrating,” Ons Jabeur, who made two Grand Slam finals last year and is seeded fourth in Rome, said during an interview Tuesday. “It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better.”Steve Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the WTA Tour, which organizes the women’s circuit on behalf of the tournament owners and players, said the disparate prize money was a reflection of a market that values men’s sports more highly than women’s, especially for sponsorships and media rights. He said the organization was working toward a solution that would strive to achieve pay equity at all of tennis’ biggest events in the coming years.“There is still a long way to go but we are seeing progress,” Simon said in an interview Monday.The explanations — and blame — for women in tennis continuing to be so shortchanged include ingrained chauvinism, bad agreements with tournament owners and the eat-what-you-kill nature of the sports business, where owners, officials and organizers often blame the athletes (rather than their incompetence) for not generating enough revenue. Then they use it as an excuse not to invest in the sport and keep athlete pay and prize money low.In tennis, women often receive second billing in mixed tournaments — less-desirable schedules on smaller courts, sometimes even lesser hotels. In Madrid last week, the participants in the women’s doubles final did not get a chance to speak during the awards ceremony. The men did.Organizers often tell the women they lack the star power of the men. At the French Open last year, Amélie Mauresmo, the tournament director and a former world No. 1 in singles, scheduled just one women’s match in the featured nighttime slot, compared to nine men’s matches, then explained that the men’s game had “more attraction” and appeal than the women’s game. She later apologized, but when second-billing can make it harder for women to achieve stardom, this self-fulfilling prophecy can lead to lower pay.In March, Denis Shapovalov of Canada, currently ranked 27th, published an essay in The Players’ Tribune criticizing the sport’s leaders for not being more unified.“I think some people might think of gender equality as mere political correctness,” wrote Shapovalov, whose mother has coached him and whose girlfriend, Mirjam Bjorklund of Sweden, plays on the women’s tour. “Deep down they don’t feel that women deserve as much.”The WTA has committed some unforced errors. At the most important mixed tournaments, attendance is mandatory for women and men. The WTA only requires participation at tournaments in Indian Wells, Calif.; Miami Gardens, Fla.; Madrid and Beijing, but not in Rome, Canada or Ohio, even though those events rank just behind the Grand Slams in importance. Also, the WTA awards slightly fewer ranking points than the men’s tour does in Rome, Canada and Ohio, where the women’s champion receives 900 points compared with 1,000 for the men.These minor differences have given tournament officials an excuse for paying women so much less, even though nearly all of the top women play the big optional events, unless they are injured. Organizers, however, say that without mandatory participation they can’t market the tournament as effectively, so local sponsors and media companies will not pay as much.“It’s time for change. It’s time for the tournament to do better,” said Ons Jabeur, who is seeded fourth in Rome.Marijan Murat/DPA, via Associated PressMarc-Antoine Farly, a spokesman for Tennis Canada, cited that difference when asked recently why the National Bank Open offered men $5.9 million last year, compared with $2.53 million for the women. Despite that difference, Farly said, “Gender equity is very important for our organization.” He pointed to Tennis Canada’s recently released plan to seek gender equity at all levels during the next five years and to offer equal prize money at the National Bank Open by 2027. “Over the next few years, Tennis Canada fully intends to be a leading voice with the WTA on a development plan to close the WTA/ATP prize money gap.”Like most aspects of the tennis business, the formula for prize money requires a somewhat complicated explanation. Tournament owners guarantee a portion of revenues from tickets, domestic media rights and sponsorship sales for prize money. The tours contribute a portion using money from their own media rights and sponsorship deals as well as the fees the tournament owners pay the tours to acquire the licenses for the events. Simon said the WTA brings in substantially less money than the men’s circuit, the ATP Tour, which means it has substantially less money to contribute to prize money.That said, if equal prize money is important to tournament owners, they can choose to pay it. That is what the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, owned by the computer technology billionaire Larry Ellison, has agreed to do for more than a decade under his contract with the WTA.“The tournament views the event as a single product,” said Matt Van Tuinen, a spokesman for the tournament. “Paying them equally is the right thing to do.”Same goes for IMG, the sports and entertainment conglomerate that owns both the Miami Open and the Madrid Open. Both pay equally.In addition to Italy’s and Canada’s tennis federations, the United States Tennis Association, which has long bragged about its leadership in pay equity, did not award equal prize money at the Western & Southern Open, the main tuneup for the U.S. Open. Last year, men competed in Mason, Ohio, for $6.28 million. Women competed for $2.53 million. The U.S. Open became the first of the Grand Slam tournaments to offer equal prize money, in 1973, and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event in grand fashion this summer. The U.S.T.A. ran the Cincinnati-area tournament for more than a decade.Chris Widmaier, a spokesman for the organization, said the prize money was “dictated by the commensurate level of the competition as determined by each Tour.”In other words, since the Western & Southern was not a mandatory WTA event and the women competed for 10 percent less rankings points, paying them roughly 40 cents for each dollar the men received was justified.The U.S.T.A. last summer announced it was selling the tournament to Ben Navarro, the South Carolina financier and tennis enthusiast. Through a spokesman, he declined to be interviewed for this article.Help may be on the way.Earlier this year, CVC Capital Partners, the private equity firm, bought 20 percent of a WTA commercial subsidiary for $150 million. The investment, which will be used to enhance sales and marketing efforts, combined with a strategic plan being finalized that would eliminate the discrepancies between the men’s and women’s competitions at the mixed events, is supposed to help the WTA grow its revenues. That will allow the tour to contribute more to prize money and hopefully get tournament organizers to commit to pay equity in the coming years.The plan requires some patience, which is running thin among the players.“I don’t see why we have to wait,” Jabeur said. More

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      Felix Auger-Aliassime Seeks Major Success at the French Open

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      For years, tennis experts have heralded the promise of Auger-Aliassime, a young Canadian. But can he reach the top in the era of Carlos Alcaraz?PARIS — Before there was Carlos, there was Félix.It is not so easy to recall now, through the haze of the pandemic and the aftershocks of Carlos Alcaraz’s meteoric impact on tennis of late. But there was a time, beginning in roughly 2015, that the tennis cognoscenti raved about a young Canadian named Félix Auger-Aliassime, calling him a potential heir to Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic.After a quality start to the year but a rocky late winter and spring for Auger-Aliassime, that concept never felt farther away than during his first two sets of the French Open on Sunday. Auger-Aliassime came out flat and wild for the first men’s match on the main stadium court. For 88 minutes he was lost against little-known Juan Pablo Varillas of Peru, 25, who is ranked 122nd and had his opponent complaining to himself and anyone else who would listen.Then, with a few flicks of his forehand, a few blasted serves and some deft drop shots, Auger-Aliassime was back, displaying his unique mix of power, precision, touch and speed. He prevailed, 2-6, 2-6, 6-1, 6-3, 6-3, in a 3-hour-14-minute scare that made for a very Félix-like afternoon.Auger-Aliassime made the final of the Roland Garros junior tournament in 2016, at age 15, and then won the U.S. Open boys’ title later that year. He was 6 feet 2 inches (on his way to 6-4), with long arms and fast feet. He could switch directions like a wide receiver. He had broad shoulders that left plenty of room for his torso to fill out and add even more power.He was also polite and courtly, approaching the game with a humility that coaches said drove him to train hard every day. Watching him play a match in his teenage years, Gastão Elias, a longtime Portuguese pro, said Auger-Aliassime “has been an adult since he was 12.”Auger-Aliassime may one day fulfill all the promise of his teenage years. He is just 21, ranked ninth in the world and the youngest member of the top 10 not named Alcaraz. But if he does, the journey will have involved plenty of fits and starts, including losses in his first eight finals and other moments when he seemed about to take off only to fall flat.“The toughest part is always what’s ahead of you, isn’t it?” Auger-Aliassime said. “What you haven’t done before.”Denis Balibouse/ReutersAnd now, as he strives to reach the level of the Big Three — along with Stefanos Tsitsipas, Alexander Zverev and so many others — there is Alcaraz to contend with, a 19-year-old charging from the rear, piling up trophies and wins against the game’s greats and making that last, hardest step look easy. In mere months, Alcaraz has changed the calculus for all the 20-somethings, though Auger-Aliassime’s bigger problem of late is inconsistency, not Alcaraz.“Before, it was just Nadal and Federer and Djokovic,” said Louis Borfiga, a longtime French tennis teacher and the architect of Canada’s modern tennis development machine. “Now there is an incredible player coming. He has to work very hard, and he has to stay positive, to believe in himself and his game.”Auger-Aliassime has no illusions about the difficulty of the next step.“The toughest part is always what’s ahead of you, isn’t it?” he said one afternoon last month in Portugal, before being upset in a quarterfinal at a small tournament in which he was the top seed. “What you haven’t done before.”If he can take the final step, Auger-Aliassime could be the sport’s perfect celebrity, a multiracial star with roots on three continents. He grew up in the largely French-speaking province of Quebec, the son of an immigrant from Togo, where he donates hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to children’s causes.He has since moved to Monaco and spends plenty of time in France and Spain, making him a new favorite in Europe.“Allez Félix!” the fans yelled on Sunday as he tried to come back in his match.And the proximity of his childhood to New York, among his other attributes, has endeared him to the U.S. Open crowd, earning him an invitation to last year’s Met Gala, where he wore a white dinner jacket on the red carpet.“We still have borders, but I consider myself a citizen of the world,” he said.Auger-Aliassime was as good as anyone in the world in the first six weeks of the year, leading Canada to the championship of the ATP Cup, getting to match point against Daniil Medvedev (the eventual finalist) in the Australian Open quarters, then seemingly breaking through by winning the Rotterdam Open, his first title.Auger-Aliassime playing Medvedev in an Australian Open quarterfinal match in January. He had a match point but eventually lost.Morgan Sette/ReutersNadal and Federer are invested in his success. Auger-Aliassime occasionally trains at Nadal’s academy in Majorca, working with Nadal’s uncle and former coach, Toni Nadal. Federer texted Auger-Aliassime in February when he finally won his first tournament. “I’m happy for you, well done,” Federer wrote.But more downs than ups have followed, with early losses on hardcourts, which are supposed to be his best surface, and then on clay in Marrakesh, Monte Carlo and Estoril, Portugal, where he was the top seed.“After January, we did not expect the losses, but we know consistency is very difficult,” said Frédéric Fontang, Auger-Aliassime’s coach since 2017. “He does have an ability to absorb and keep learning and always do his best, and that is the first talent that a top player must have.”This is the way it has always been for Auger-Aliassime, ever since his father, Sam Aliassime, a tennis coach in Quebec, introduced him to the sport when he was a boy. Aliassime coached his son until he was 13. Auger-Aliassime then moved to Montreal to train with Canada’s suddenly vibrant development program.Borfiga first saw Auger-Aliassime play as a 6-year-old, but it was four years later that his potential became apparent. Borfiga said he already had a “heavy ball,” a term tennis coaches and players use to describe someone whose strokes naturally produce shots that mix power and spin in a way that makes them difficult to return.Auger-Aliassime’s coach said his physical gifts and his huge serve, big forehand and soft hands made his success nearly inevitable.Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesAuger-Aliassime said he began to grasp how good he might one day be when he won an international junior tournament in Auray, France, when he was 11.“From then on, the belief was there,” he said.His success and personal appeal have attracted plenty of blue-chip endorsements, including a partnership with BNP Paribas, the international bank that is among the biggest sponsors in tennis. For every point Auger-Aliassime wins on tour this year, the bank donates $15 and Auger-Aliassime donates $5 to children’s education in Togo.“He represents the youth,” Jean-Yves Fillion, the chief executive of BNP Paribas USA, said of Auger-Aliassime.And yet there are those vexing defeats — coughing up a two-set lead to the Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev at the 2021 Australian Open; an early loss to Max Purcell, the 190th-ranked player, at the Tokyo Olympics; and a second-round loss at the 2021 National Bank Open on home soil in Toronto to Dusan Lajovic of Serbia. And then there was Sunday’s nervy escape during his first appearance on Philippe Chatrier Court.Auger-Aliassime’s team, led by Fontang, built his schedule in 2022 around opportunities for victories, including more smaller tournaments. If he can start winning those, then maybe winning will become a habit.Fontang wants Auger-Aliassime to be even more aggressive, to take advantage of his power and size by coming to the net more and finishing points.Ettore Ferrari/EPA, via ShutterstockFontang said players with an aggressive style like Auger-Aliassime’s might take longer to reach their full potential because they were more prone to mistakes, though few players are more aggressive than Alcaraz. He said Auger-Aliassime’s physical gifts made his success nearly inevitable in his mind. But Fontang wants Auger-Aliassime to be even more aggressive, to take advantage of his power and size by coming to the net more and finishing points, though that could hasten further inconsistency. “Of course, the future we cannot know, but he just can’t be static,” Fontang said. “What you see with the best players is that there is no part when they are standing still.”Auger-Aliassime has no intention of doing that, even though he knows the path to the top keeps getting narrower the higher he climbs. Tennis math, simple as it is, is exceedingly cruel. There are only 10 players in the top 10, and only one can be No. 1.“The elite,” he said with a shake of his head, “are just so consistent.” More

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      Rafael Nadal Falls Apart on Clay, Just in Time for the French Open

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      Nadal, playing in pain in a loss to Denis Shapovalov at the Italian Open, came away downbeat and pensive with the year’s second Grand Slam event less than two weeks away.ROME — Quick and dominant in the first set against Denis Shapovalov, Rafael Nadal was quite the opposite down the stretch at the Italian Open on Thursday night.Late to the ball. Limping between points. Grimacing and wincing even on changeovers. His distress was so visible as the double faults and unforced errors piled up late in the final set that even the Canadian fans sitting high in the center court stands were offering up sympathetic applause for Nadal as their compatriot Shapovalov put the final touches on his victory, 1-6, 7-5, 6-2, in the round of 16.Shapovalov, an elastic and explosive left-hander ranked No. 16, has the tools to trouble even a healthy Nadal. He beat him in their first match in 2017 when Shapovalov was still a teenager, and should have beaten him in last year’s round of 16 at the Italian Open when he failed to convert two match points. He also pushed Nadal to five sets at this year’s Australian Open.But this was far from a healthy Nadal, with his chronic left foot problem, known as Müller-Weiss disease, resurfacing on his favorite surface. With the French Open looming, his mood in the aftermath was as downbeat and pensive as I can recall in nearly 20 years of following his career.“I imagine there will come a time when my head will say ‘Enough,’” Nadal, a 10-time Italian Open champion, said in Spanish, pursing his lips and shaking his head. “Pain takes away your happiness, not only in tennis but in life. And my problem is that many days I live with too much pain.”Nadal said he also had to live with taking “a ton of anti-inflammatories daily to give myself the ability to train.”“That is my reality,” he said. “And there have been many days, like today, when the moment comes that I can’t do it.”Nadal struggling in the third set against Shapovalov.Fabio Frustaci/EPA, via ShutterstockHe finished with 34 unforced errors and just 13 winners on Thursday, and the question now is whether the most successful clay-courter in history will even be able to play at the French Open, the Grand Slam tournament he has won a record 13 times.“I’m going to keep dreaming about that goal,” Nadal said of the tournament. “The negative thing is today it’s not possible to play for me, but maybe in two days things are better. That’s the thing with what I have on my foot.”The French Open will begin in nine days on May 22, although Nadal might not have to play until May 24 because the French Open, which starts on a Sunday, stages its first round over three days.Though Nadal, who will turn 36 next month, has often shown astonishing fighting spirit and recuperative powers, this will be a challenge like no other for him in Paris in the springtime.“Definitely tough to see him in pain there at the end; I never want to see that, especially with a great legend like Rafa,” said Shapovalov, who still had to produce bold tennis and big serves to win on Thursday. “Hopefully he’s OK. He brings so much to our sport. Hopefully he’s fit and ready to go for the French.”The only time Nadal has triumphed at Roland Garros without winning a clay-court tournament earlier in the year was in 2020, the pandemic-shortened season when the start of the French Open was moved to October and nearly the entire clay-court season was canceled.This year, the schedule has been back to normal but not for Nadal. After a torrid start to the season, with 20 straight victories and a record 21st Grand Slam singles title at the Australian Open, his clay-court campaign was delayed by a stress fracture in his ribs that kept him from competing or practicing normally for six weeks.He returned for the Madrid Open this month and was upset by the 19-year-old Spanish sensation Carlos Alcaraz in the quarterfinals and has now experienced his earliest defeat at the Italian Open since 2008, when Juan Carlos Ferrero, a former No. 1 who is now Alcaraz’s coach, surprised Nadal in the second round.Nadal went on to win the 2008 French Open anyway, overwhelming his archrival Roger Federer in the final, but Nadal had already won the titles in Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Hamburg that year.This season, he is short on matches and victories on clay while established threats like Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas, and new ones like Alcaraz, have established firmer footing.Shapovalov, left, chatting with Nadal at the end of their match. “Definitely tough to see him in pain there at the end,” Shapovalov said.Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press“Ultimately even the greatest players can’t beat Father Time,” said Brad Stine, the veteran American coach now working with Tommy Paul. “It’s getting to that point for Rafa. What he did in Australia was beyond exceptional, but I think we have been seeing the collateral damage of his great start to the season. If healthy, he is still a favorite week in and week out, but that if is a big one. ‘If the body breaks down’ is not included in Kipling’s poem.”That is a reference to “If,” an excerpt from which is posted at the players’ entrance to Wimbledon’s Centre Court.It is difficult after 15 years of watching Nadal nearly always prevail over adversity and the opposition at Roland Garros to imagine that he truly won’t find a way to pose a challenge.“I will fight for it,” he said grimly. “I will continue to believe during this week and a half.”What is clear is that, for a change, he should not be the favorite. “No way,” said Mark Petchey, the veteran coach and analyst. “Lots of co-favorites and players with genuine chances to win.”His longer list includes the defending champion, Djokovic; last year’s other finalist, Tsitsipas; Alcaraz; Alexander Zverev; Casper Ruud; and the young Italian Jannik Sinner.Nadal, since losing to Djokovic in a four-set semifinal in Paris last June, has played just five matches on clay, losing two of them.Watching him struggle, then eventually hobble on Thursday, was a reminder that nothing is eternal, not even Nadal on the surface that he has made his own. 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      Rafael Nadal Beats Denis Shapovalov Amid Charge of Favoritism

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      Nadal beat Denis Shapovalov to reach the semifinals, then rejected his opponent’s complaints about unfairness, saying, “I think he’s wrong.”MELBOURNE, Australia — After missing the game he has long played with such passion, Rafael Nadal has had ample opportunity to get reacquainted with tennis at this Australian Open.At age 35, his latest comeback from injury now finds him in the semifinals, just two victories from breaking his three-way tie with Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer and claiming his 21st Grand Slam singles title.But it also briefly found him on the defensive Tuesday after his opponent, Canada’s Denis Shapovalov, said Nadal had benefited from favoritism in their quarterfinal, which Nadal won by taking command of the fifth set to prevail, 6-3, 6-4, 4-6, 3-6, 6-3, in four hours and eight minutes.Nadal politely rejected the accusations by Shapovalov, a young Canadian. “I think he is wrong,” Nadal said.Shapovalov, who certainly did not help his cause by playing an edgy, error-filled game to drop his serve early in the fifth set, did not take the defeat well, smashing his racket to the blue hardcourt in Rod Laver Arena immediately after his final volley drifted wide. It was a stark contrast with Nadal, who has never broken a racket in anger during a match in his nearly 20-year professional career.Shapovalov argued with the umpire at multiple points, complaining that Nadal was being allowed too much time during breaks.Michael Errey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut Shapovalov was both crestfallen and disappointed with Nadal, the Spanish champion whom Shapovalov first met as a nine-year-old ball boy during the Canadian Open in Montreal and then defeated, Hollywood-style, in the same city in their first match in 2017.However wide-eyed Shapovalov might once have been about the Spaniard, he did not hold back on Tuesday: complaining during and after the match that Nadal was being allowed more time between points than permitted.After winning the first set, Nadal changed his clothes and was slow to leave his chair after the umpire, Carlos Bernardes, called “Time.” Shapovalov took the balls and prepared to serve as he waited, and when Nadal finally made it on court about 45 seconds after Bernardes’s announcement, Shapovalov approached Bernardes and said Nadal should have been penalized for the delay.Bernardes did not agree, and Shapovalov returned to the baseline and then approached Bernardes again, saying Nadal still was not ready. Bernardes answered: “You’re not ready to play either because you come talk to me.”“Are you kidding me?” Shapovalov said as he retreated. “You guys are all corrupt.”Shapovalov, 22, received no code violation for the comment, although he could be fined or sanctioned by the Australian Open after further inquiry. Shapovalov later said, apologetically, “I think I misspoke.” He was involved in another exchange with Bernardes as Nadal prepared to serve the second game of the second set even though there were still several seconds on the serve clock. Nadal came toward the net. Shapovalov met him there and after a brief exchange play resumed.“It was nothing against Rafa,” Shapovalov said. “Rafa was serving, and I would expect the umpire to be looking at Rafa, and the umpire was staring me down. It didn’t make sense to me.”But Shapovalov was not done complaining about Nadal, arguing with Bernardes after the fourth set that Nadal, who had been examined briefly on court for stomach problems, was stretching the spirit of the rules by taking an extended break off court before the final set for a combined medical evaluation and toilet visit.Nadal explained later that he began feeling poorly late in the second set, most likely because of the hot, humid weather and his long break from the game. He returned to the tour this year after missing five months with a chronic foot problem and then contracted Covid-19 in late December at an exhibition in Abu Dhabi. He is seeded sixth in Melbourne, where he won the title in 2009.Shapovalov quizzed Bernardes at length as they awaited Nadal’s return, saying that he had not been allowed to combine the two breaks at a past tournament. Nadal served seven minutes after the fourth set had been completed.Asked at a post-match news conference if Nadal received preferential treatment, Shapovalov answered “100 percent he does” and said there needed to be boundaries.“Every other match that I have played, the pace has been so quick because the refs have been on the clock after every single point,” Shapovalov said. “This one, I mean, after the first two sets it was like an hour and a half just because he’s dragged out so much after every single point. He’s given so much time in between sets and all this.”Players are allowed 25 seconds between points when serving but chair umpires have discretion on when to start the shot clock. When returning serve, players are expected to play to the server’s “reasonable pace,” a phrase in the tennis rule book that leaves plenty of room for interpretation.“I respect everything that Rafa has done and I think he’s an unbelievable player,” Shapovalov said. “But there’s got to be some boundaries, some rules set. It’s just so frustrating as a player. You feel like you’re not just playing against the player; you’re playing against the umpires, you’re playing against so much more. It’s difficult. I mean, it was a big break after the fourth set and for this reason the momentum just goes away.”“They are legends of the game,” Shapovalov said of stars like Nadal, “but when you step on the court it should be equal.”Bernardes, a veteran chair umpire from Brazil, did give Nadal a time violation for taking too long before serving in the fourth set. Bernardes and Nadal have not always been in agreement, and Bernardes was kept from working Nadal’s matches during a cooling-off period in 2015. But that informal ban soon ended.Nadal rejected Shapovalov’s accusations of favoritism and said it was standard practice to take a bit more time to change clothes and equipment after a set played in such steamy conditions.“I think he really was wrong,” Nadal said in Spanish of Shapovalov. “When you lose a match like this, you are frustrated. I have a lot of affection for Denis. I think he’s a good guy with lots of talent, the talent to win multiple Grand Slams. In no way do I want to get in an argument with him. But I think he’s wrong. He’s young and when one is young, one makes mistakes.”Rafael Nadal beat Denis Shapovalov to advance to the semifinals. He is two wins from his record 21st Grand Slam title.Andy Brownbill/Associated PressNadal observed that the rules had been tightened in recent seasons to make it harder to show favoritism to the elite or any player because of the advent of electronic line-calling, shot clocks between points and, this season, stricter time limits on toilet breaks.“You have less room now to influence anything,” said Nadal, who added that he was not interested in getting an advantage on court.“I really believe that on the court you don’t deserve better treatment than the others,” Nadal said. “And I really don’t want it, and I don’t feel I have it.”Nadal was often far from his best in the second half of Tuesday’s match: missing some of his familiar forehand passing shots on the run by large margins. He also had 11 double faults, a large amount by his standards. But he was able to serve well when he needed it most, including coming up with an ace to save a break point in the opening game of the fifth set and saving two more break points in the third game.“I was destroyed honestly, physically, but my serve worked well,” Nadal said. “For me, every game that I was winning with my serve was a victory.”He got the overall victory, too, and will now have two full days to recover before facing No. 7 seed Matteo Berrettini or No. 17 seed Gaël Monfils in the semifinals on Friday afternoon. Nadal usually prefers to play in the daytime, where conditions are typically quicker and help his topspin forehand penetrate the court. But he looked as if he would have been delighted to play in the shade against Shapovalov.“I’m not 21 anymore,” Nadal said wearily in his post-match interview on court.But 21 could still be his magic number in Melbourne, where he is just two matches away from breaking a tie. More

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      The Next Generation of Men’s Tennis

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      Fixing this and that in their games, these 10 players could join the elite.Novak Djokovic dominated men’s tennis this year, but with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal wearing down physically, 2021 also signaled a changing of the guard: Stefanos Tsitsipas reached the French Open final; Matteo Berrettini reached the Wimbledon final; Alexander Zverev won the Olympic gold medal; and Daniil Medvedev reached the Australian Open final and then won the United States Open. All are 25 or younger.Now a new crop of youngsters, 24 and under, is charging up the rankings, but some will stall.To separate themselves from their peers, each must refine his game; these 10 are most likely to join the sport’s elite, if they improve one aspect of their game. Following is an assessment of each player from coaches, analysts and former professionals. Rankings are through Thursday.Casper RuudNorway, age 22; world ranking: 8Ruud’s speed and all-around game shine on clay, said Tom Shimada, a coach at the Van Der Meer Tennis Academy in South Carolina, “but now he has to figure out how to play on the quicker services.”Ruud needs more free points on serve, said Jimmy Arias, director of the IMG Academy’s tennis program in Florida and a Tennis Channel analyst. “He still has to grind on his serve and in three-of-five set tournaments that makes it difficult.”Patrick McEnroe, a director of the John McEnroe Tennis Academy in New York and an analyst for ESPN, was pleasantly surprised by Ruud’s serves and instead feels Ruud needs “more firepower on his forehand, whether it’s more power or more spin.”Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockHubert HurkaczPoland, age 24; ranking: 9Hurkacz turned heads with his Miami Open win this year, but Arias said he needed to retain consistency because he sometimes lost to lesser players.McEnroe sees that as a lack of assertiveness despite his rise in the rankings: “He needs to be more aggressive with his shots, but also with his attitude. He could use a little swagger.”Matthew Stockman/Getty ImagesJannik SinnerItaly, age 20; ranking: 11Sinner himself said he could not pick just one thing to improve. “I’m only 20 years old; I have to improve everything,” he said. “I have to improve the serve, my volleys and mixing up my game as well.”McEnroe and Arias said he needed variety and creativity in his approach. “He’s missing the subtleties of the game,” McEnroe said, “when to hit the ball at 60 percent or to slice it down the middle and make the other guy come up with something.”Carmen Mandato/Getty Images Felix Auger-AliassimeCanada, age 21; ranking: 12He sometimes gets tight, leading to service breaks at crucial moments. “He will just hand you a service break with two double faults and two inexplicable first-ball errors,” Arias said.McEnroe said Auger-Aliassime was a true student of the game, so he sometimes overthinks things. “He’s looking for the perfect shot, so he makes errors,” McEnroe said. “He needs to relax, just let it go and play with more freedom, trusting his athleticism.”Carmen Mandato/Getty ImagesDenis ShapovalovCanada, age 22; ranking: 13Shapovalov has been captivating fans since he shocked Nadal as an 18-year-old at the 2017 Canadian Open, but Shapovalov’s power and style can work to his detriment. “He has tremendous weapons, but he’s going for a lot,” Shimada said. Trying to blast winners is “a tough way to consistently beat the guys who play unbelievable defense.”McEnroe said Shapovalov needed more high-percentage shots on his service return: “He tends to take big swings and has to be more consistent on the return, playing smart, neutral or even defensive shots to get in the rally.”Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesReilly OpelkaUnited States, age 24; ranking: 26Opelka needs confidence. “To reach the next level will require an evolution of his mind-set,” Shimada saidArias recalled watching Opelka double fault twice in a row in Atlanta this summer, then mutter repeatedly to himself, “I should have played team sports.”McEnroe said that at 6-foot-11, Opelka needed to maximize his size and power, going bigger on forehands, returns and serves. “He jokes about not wanting to be a ‘serve-bot,’ but he should play like one more often,” McEnroe said. “To beat the top players, he has to overpower them.”Scott Taetsch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSebastian KordaUnited States, age 21; ranking: 38Korda soared from 119th this year, but his continued climb requires a better serve, Shimada said, citing his loss to Karen Khachanov at Wimbledon, where Korda was broken seven times in the fifth set as Exhibit A.“You can’t have that happen,” McEnroe said. “The serve has to get better, and he needs to get stronger and impose himself more.”Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesCarlos AlcarazSpain, age 18; ranking: 40Even for this article, which is essentially nit-picking, Arias, McEnroe and Shimada were stumped when it came to the dynamic Alcaraz, who jumped in the rankings from 141 this year.“If I had to pick one guy where you can’t come up with one thing, it’s Alcaraz,” McEnroe said. “He can do it all, and he has moxie.”Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressJenson BrooksbyUnited States, age 21; ranking: 56He believes he needs to commit to being physical and running through the ball in points to avoid going on the defensive. “That’s what I’m working on the most,” Brooksby said.While Shimada, McEnroe and Arias are dazzled by his movement and feel, and his unusual strokes and style, they said his big problem was really his serve.“For his size, [6-foot-4], his serve is mediocre at best,” McEnroe said.He will need a dangerous serve to win a major, but if he improves there, Arias said, look out.“With a bigger serve, he could be the American Daniil Medvedev.”Grant Halverson/Getty ImagesLorenzo MusettiItaly, age 19; ranking: 65He is straightforward in his self-analysis. “I need to improve my serve, but especially my return and especially on hard courts,” said Musetti, a clay-court specialist. “With my one-handed backhand, I need to work on stepping to the ball.”Give him points for self-awareness. “He just doesn’t do enough with the serve,” Shimada said, while Arias said that with a one-handed backhand, Musetti needed to at least get to neutral on returns (hit them harder so he does not start rallies at a disadvantage).McEnroe said Musetti “doesn’t step in as naturally as some other guys and needs to take the ball a little earlier.” More

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      Canadian Tennis Players Excel at the U.S. Open

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      Canada’s high-performance tennis program is achieving its goal of producing elite players, several of whom have advanced at the U.S. Open.The Canadian flag is everywhere at the U.S. Open, where Canadian players are winning on courts across the grounds and beyond.On Saturday, Bianca Andreescu won in Louis Armstrong Stadium while Denis Shapovalov waited to play there in the night session. On Friday, Felix Auger-Aliassime beat Roberto Bautista Agut in Armstrong, Vasek Pospisil won at doubles on Court 10, and three Canadian girls won junior qualifying matches at the Cary Leeds Center in the Bronx.The biggest win took place in Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday, when Leylah Fernandez, a French Open junior champion two years ago, beat No. 3 seed Naomi Osaka to muscle her way toward the front of Canada’s booming tennis program, an assembly line of players that includes four men in the top 60 and six girls in the top 100 of the junior rankings.Not bad for a country with about a tenth of the population of the United States. But Canadian players are pouring over the border and making New York their temporary home.“I’m just glad that there’s so many Canadians going deep in this tournament,” Fernandez said shortly after she had showed the steely nerve it took to oust the defending champion in the world’s biggest tennis stadium. Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday, is the latest young Canadian to captivate the tennis world, following in the path of Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open; Auger-Aliassime; Shapovalov; and, before them, Milos Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard.A country of about 37 million, Canada has made a concerted effort over the past several years to develop elite players, and it is working. Most of them pass through Tennis Canada’s high-performance development program, and many were either immigrants themselves or the Canadian-born children of immigrants.Fernandez belongs to that list, too, although her route is unique. Her father and coach, Jorge Fernandez, was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and moved to Montreal with his family when he was a small boy. Fernandez’s mother, Irene Exevea, is of Filipino descent from Toronto.Jorge Fernandez describes himself as a former journeyman professional soccer player in the lower levels of the game, mostly in Latin America. He never knew anything about tennis until his daughter showed interest as a schoolgirl.“She played some soccer in Montreal,” the elder Fernandez said in a telephone interview Saturday, “but I didn’t want her to just follow me. I wanted her to find her own passion.”That turned out to be tennis, but Leylah struggled to gain the favor of the local tennis associations. She was part of a Quebec-based development program for a while, but it dropped her, Jorge said, in part because she was tiny. She still wanted to play.“I told her, ‘It’s OK, we’ll do it ourselves,’” her father said.They plunged ahead on their own, and soon enough, Leylah Fernandez was tearing through the ranks of her age group and several years above it, winning so many tournaments that Tennis Canada officials finally invited her to train with them.But as often happens when parents hand their children over to tennis federations, there were differences of opinion, especially over how much Leylah should play. Ultimately, Jorge Fernandez took his daughter out of the program, although amicably, he says.“I told them we would meet up again,” he explained, “and look, we have.”He continued: “It’s OK to have disagreements. We all wanted the same thing, which is for Leylah to be successful. We just had a different idea of how to do it, for a while. But they have been doing great work. I tip my hat to them with all the success they have had with so many Canadians going through the program.”Bianca Andreescu playing on Saturday.Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah’s mother thought their daughter would be one of those successes, too. According to Jorge Fernandez, Exevea thought he was crazy to remove his daughter from a program that provided free coaching and more. But he was committed to doing it himself, so he and Leylah and her younger sister, Bianca Jolie, who is 17, continued to train on their own in Montreal. (The oldest, Jodeci, is a dentist in Ohio and did not play tennis competitively).That left the chief bread-winning duties to Exevea, who, unlike Jorge Fernandez, has a university degree. She moved to California so she could earn U.S. dollars and stayed there for three years while Jorge tapped into his knowledge as a former professional athlete to coach his daughters.“Those were difficult years, because they only saw their mother maybe two times a year,” Jorge said. “We finally decided to move to Florida. It’s the Mecca of tennis, and we could have the whole family together again.”To learn the art of tennis and coaching it, Jorge Fernandez immersed himself in the sport, reading texts and watching videos on the internet. His goal was to cultivate a balance between work and fun to ensure that Leylah never got burned out. He taught his daughter, who is 5 feet 6 inches, to study Justine Henin, who is listed at 5-6¾, because it seemed like an appropriate blueprint for success.Despite her size, Leylah Fernandez is a potent ball striker. Her father claims that, pound for pound, Leylah is “the best power hitter on the tour,” and she derives confidence from her strength. Even before she took the court against Osaka, she said she knew she could beat the four-time major champion.“From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone,” she said Friday night, before noting that it was past her bedtime.When she won the French Open junior title in 2019, Leylah Fernandez asked her father if they could celebrate at McDonald’s. Always diligent about nutrition, and in a city known for its culinary expertise, Fernandez chose the fast food restaurant as a way to splurge. Her father agreed.“It was just the two of us,” Jorge said. “It was sweet, but at the same time, the whole family should have been there. It’s one of the difficult things of the tennis life, all the travel.”Jorge Fernandez could not attend his daughter’s victory over Osaka. He was in Florida attending to business. But before she took the court, Leylah called him for the strategic game plan, and he was true to his ethos.“He told me to go on the court, have fun,” she said, and she followed the advice perfectly, flashing a brilliant smile during a relaxed but exuberant speech after the match.For a time, her family had debated moving to Ecuador so that the girls could play for that country. Instead, they retained their loyalty to Canada, and Leylah Fernandez plays on the Canadian team for the Billie Jean King Cup. On Sunday, she will play No. 16 seed Angelique Kerber, a three-time Grand Slam tournament champion, for a spot in the quarterfinals.Already, she and her compatriots have helped raise the profile of Canadian tennis a notch higher.“Our goal here is just to have fun on court,” she said, “to do our best. Hopefully we can inspire kids in Canada to keep going.” More

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      It’s Novak Djokovic vs. Matteo Berrettini in Wimbledon Final

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      Djokovic, the world’s top player, has a chance to reach 20 Grand Slam titles to tie Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. His Italian opponent has the opportunity to play spoiler.WIMBLEDON, England — Denis Shapovalov was serving for the first set in the semifinals of Wimbledon on Friday, and Novak Djokovic was sliding to his right, bent forward with his left hand on the Centre Court dirt. More