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    Elena Rybakina Defeats Iga Swiatek in Australian Open

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    Iga Swiatek could not find an answer to the power game of Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who is seeded No. 22 in Melbourne.MELBOURNE, Australia — After starting this Australian Open in the hinterlands of Court 13, Elena Rybakina made it to center stage on Sunday for her fourth-round match with No. 1 Iga Swiatek.Rybakina ended up stealing the scene in Rod Laver Arena: pounding big serves and flat groundstrokes and taking away time and Swiatek’s shot at the title with a 6-4, 6-4 victory.“It does not matter so much what court you start the tournament on as it does what court you finish the tournament on,” Rybakina said slowly and calmly a couple of hours later.Rybakina, who is 6 feet and has what tennis people call “easy power,” proved last July what she can do when she gets on a roll, rumbling past a series of Grand Slam champions and better-ranked, better-known players to win women’s singles at Wimbledon.A second major title is within reach if she maintains the form she showed against Danielle Collins in the third round and against Swiatek on Sunday. Lean with long limbs, Rybakina (pronounced ree-BOK-eena) can generate astonishing pace even in relatively slow conditions, and though she seems to take little delight in doing so with her still-water approach to competition, she made it clear in an interview that there was plenty of fire behind her poker-face facade.“What you see is calm, but for sure inside I’m nervous like everybody, and I’m full of emotions,” she said. “I’ve been that way since I was a junior. Sometimes it’s good also to show the emotions, that you are actually there and you are fighting. But this is something where I am different from other players. Most players are trying to learn how to be calm. I already know, and sometimes I’m trying to show more.”There were hints of it Sunday, including the amused smile that flickered across her face as she saw the excitement of the young Australian girl who met her and Swiatek at the net before the match to take part in the coin toss.But for the most part, Rybakina was all business, opening up big breaches in Swiatek’s normally formidable defenses with her big-bang patterns and her ability to take full cuts at the ball inside the court and straight off the bounce.Swiatek has faltered in her two most recent significant tournaments: the semifinals of the WTA Finals and the fourth-round match on Sunday in Melbourne.Joel Carrett/EPA, via ShutterstockShe successfully attacked Swiatek’s forehand: hitting behind her on the run and ripping returns deep and at her body to capitalize on the extreme grip change Swiatek has to make after her serve.“For sure, if I feel physically strong and I’m healthy and I’m playing my best, it’s tough to compete against me, I understand that,” Rybakina said. “But also I’m trying to find my consistency throughout the year because it’s not easy with my big shots to avoid mistakes. But of course I’m trying to do less and less every match because I need to be focused, and it gets more difficult the better players you play.”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.Swiatek, the thoughtful Polish star, is the clear and deserving No. 1. She won the French Open and U.S. Open last year and six other tournaments, winning 37 consecutive singles matches from February to July.But she has faltered in the two most recent significant tournaments: cracking on big points and losing in the semifinals of the WTA Finals to Aryna Sabalenka in November and now losing in the fourth round in Melbourne.She looked edgy: blowing a 40-0 lead in the opening game to lose her serve and blowing a 3-0 lead in the second set to lose the match, striking groundstrokes into the net at critical phases. She has seemed overwrought during the Australian summer: sobbing in her chair after losing to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup team event this month.“For sure, the past two weeks have been pretty hard for me,” she said. “So I felt today that I didn’t have that much to, like, take from myself to fight even more.”Her conclusion: “I felt like I took a step back in terms of how I approach these tournaments, and I maybe wanted it a little bit too hard. So I’m going to try to chill out a little bit more.”If you went by the seedings, Sunday’s result was an upset. Rybakina is seeded 22nd, but that is misleading. She got no ranking points for winning Wimbledon because the tours stripped the tournament of points in retaliation for its decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players after the invasion of Ukraine.Rybakina, born and raised in Russia before switching allegiance to Kazakhstan in 2018, was not affected by the ban, but without the 2,000 points normally allotted to the singles champion, she did not get a rankings boost for her victory.With those points, she would be comfortably in the top 10 and would also have qualified for last year’s eight-player WTA Finals, where another mother lode of points was available.Though she and her team appealed to the WTA to give her a wild card for the event based on her Wimbledon victory, the WTA did not grant the request.“I think she deserved it,” Stefano Vukov, her coach, said on Sunday. “And people also don’t realize that players get big bonuses from their sponsors for finishing top five or top 10 that can add up to millions of dollars, so not getting the points from Wimbledon definitely cost her.”Representing Kazakhstan makes it more challenging to market her globally than if she represented, say, a Grand Slam nation. For Vukov, that is a part of the reason she has received more Off Broadway court assignments than a typical first-time Wimbledon champion.“Where you come from has a big impact on the respect you might get on tour,” he said. “Not to be prejudiced or negative about it, but it is what it is. The biggest markets we have are the U.S. and China. You might get more recognition if you are from the U.S. than maybe from Kazakhstan, which is totally understandable. In Kazakhstan, she gets huge recognition, but worldwide, internationally, it does affect things.”Vukov is an extrovert compared with his player. “That’s why it works very well between me and Elena,” he said. “Whatever she’s thinking, I’m probably expressing it. I hope.”He said he had considered complaining to tournament directors about court assignments but refrained because ultimately “people are going to promote who they want to promote.”“Look, I think we don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” he said. “I think people know her quality and how good she is and how much she can win. She just needs to keep on going down this road, and that’s it and win as much as possible. I see her as a bit the Djokovic of the women: You got to win maybe a couple more Grand Slams to get recognized.”In Melbourne, she will now need to get past another major champion, Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia. Ostapenko, the surprise 2017 French Open champion, outplayed and outslugged the American 18-year-old Coco Gauff on Sunday, prevailing, 7-5, 6-3, as she pounced on Gauff’s second serves, hit 30 winners and repeatedly forced the speedy Gauff into errors with her pace.“I still feel like I’ve improved a lot,” said Gauff, who teared up in her postmatch news conference. “I still feel like when you play a player like her and she plays really well, it’s like there’s nothing you can do.”Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia, right, met with Coco Gauff of the United States at the net after their fourth-round match.William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe other quarterfinal in the top half of the draw will match the two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka against Pegula, the last American woman in singles. But Ostapenko’s quarterfinal against Rybakina on Tuesday is guaranteed to be the higher-velocity affair, and Rybakina will have more support than usual. For the first time at a major tournament, both her parents are in Melbourne along with her older sister Anna.Her parents, based in Moscow, have often been separated from the 23-year-old Rybakina during her pro career. Her two main training bases at this stage are in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Dubai, where she spent the preseason with her expanded team that now includes a full-time fitness trainer. But Rybakina, whose parents have also joined her in Kazakhstan, now has the means to reunite her family more often.“It was not easy in the last years, not only me being new on the tour but also how the world changed with all the pandemic and everything,” she said. “It was really a crazy time for everybody, not only the athletes. But, for sure, it means a lot.”They will all be in her player box on Tuesday: in Rod Laver Arena. More

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      War and Motherhood Sidelined Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina. She’s Ready to Return.

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      Rather than struggling to compete on the WTA Tour most of 2022, the tennis star focused on her new daughter and raising money to help her fellow Ukrainians.Elina Svitolina, the most successful Ukrainian women’s tennis player in history, has not played tennis in 10 months.She is a new mother — her daughter, Skaï, was born in October — and Svitolina is, like many prominent Ukrainians, a crusader, focused on raising money and awareness for her embattled country.Based in Switzerland with her husband, the French tennis star Gaël Monfils, Svitolina has sensed that the wider world is losing interest in the conflict with Russia.“Here in Europe, a couple of times people came up to me and asked if there is still war going on in Ukraine,” she said in a video interview. “This was very, very sad for me to hear. I have close friends and family back in Ukraine, and I know what they are going through.”When hope and energy run low, she thinks of her 85-year-old grandmother Tamara, still in Odesa, the vibrant, strategically vital port on the Black Sea where Svitolina was born and lived in her early years.“The winter is very tough right now for Ukrainians,” Svitolina said. “Obviously, it’s very cold, and they are often without electricity and running water. My grandmother lives on the 13th floor, and she needs to walk all the way up to her apartment because she cannot use the elevator. She could get stuck, or there are no lights at all. I have many friends in different cities, and they tell me the same stories. No lights. No water. They are just sitting at home. Most of the time, the phones die after one day so you cannot connect with them.”With her grandmother and her compatriots in mind, Svitolina is using her clout to help keep the power on. An ambassador for United24, a Ukrainian fund-raising platform, she organized a gala event in Monaco in December that raised 170,000 euros, or about $181,000. She said that 57,000 euros that were raised have been earmarked for the purchase of generators for Ukrainian hospitals.“Without electricity in the hospitals, they cannot perform some essential surgeries,” she said. “Our goal for the generators is 10 million euros.” They have raised 2.9 million so far, she added. “But we need more help.”Svitolina, ranked as high as No. 3 in 2017, was a semifinalist at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2019 and has long been one of the sport’s best movers and counterpunchers. But she has not played since losing in her opening round of the Miami Open in March. Newly pregnant and reeling emotionally after the Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, she said she realized she could not continue to compete. She spent days drained or in tears and has worked with a psychologist and leaned on Monfils and her family but also benefited, she said, from time on her own, time in her own head.“I didn’t touch a racket for seven months,” she said. “I wanted to switch off from tennis. I had maybe too much because of what happened in the end of February and all the nerves and all the pressure. The tournaments I played were probably too much for me mentally, so I was really happy to switch off completely. Right now, for me the goal is to come back, but I’m sure I won’t regret that I took this time off.”Svitolina and Monfils, a luminous, acrobatic talent and intermittent top 10 men’s player, were married in 2021 and are one of the game’s power couples. But Monfils missed much of the last season with foot and heel injuries.Both are targeting comebacks in 2023. Monfils, 36, has often talked about his desire to play until age 40, but, as a new father, he has shortened that timeline. He now plans to continue at least until the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, where the tennis event will be held on the red clay at Roland Garros, the site of the French Open. Svitolina would like nothing better than to win a medal for Ukraine in those Games.But Svitolina, who only recently resumed training, is not planning on a quick return even if the back problems that troubled her before her hiatus are resolved for now.“I will try to be ready for the summer, but I try not to rush things,” she said. “Because I know I need to be very strong to be back on tour, because right now tennis is very physical. All your muscle groups need to be ready and after not playing for over seven months and not doing so much after pregnancy, of course, your body is different now. And I have to really break everything down into small pieces to put together the full strength of my body, which I will need if I want to get back to the top.”At 28, she certainly has time in a sport where more players are competing deep into their thirties and where more women also have made successful returns from childbirth, including Kim Clijsters, Victoria Azarenka, Serena Williams and Tatjana Maria, who reached the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2022 after her second extended break from the game because of pregnancy.“I’m sure that they worked extremely hard to get back where they were and some of them are even better,” Svitolina said. “So that certainly gives me hope and motivation I can do the same.”Svitolina’s only contact with tennis during her break came in July, when she served as the chair umpire in an exhibition to raise funds for Ukrainian children that was organized by Iga Swiatek, the young and increasingly outspoken world No. 1 from Poland.Svitolina has appreciated Swiatek’s public support but remains disgruntled about the pro tours’ decision to allow Russian and Belarusian players to continue competing, albeit as neutrals without national identification. While Wimbledon barred the Russians and Belarusians because of the war it was an outlier and was stripped of ranking points in retaliation by both the men’s and women’s tours, who also fined the tournament and Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association.“I was shocked to see this,” she said. “The U.K., they always supported Ukrainians; they helped so many Ukrainian refugees to find new homes. I think the tours should have respected Wimbledon’s decision rather than punish them, but it’s really hard to see what will change the tours’ position, even if I don’t agree or understand it.”Through her personal foundation, she said she had been involved in helping more than 100 young Ukrainian players and their families find new training bases even if some have had to return to Ukraine. But she has no illusions about the challenge ahead and is all too aware of the destruction. She lived in her early teens in Kharkiv, recently reoccupied by Ukrainian forces but one of the cities that has suffered the most damage during the war. The arena in which she and her Ukrainian teammates once played Fed Cup matches has been destroyed by bombing.“Our athletes and our sports have been thrown back at least four or five years, because all the stadiums, all the facilities in Ukraine were destroyed,” she said. “After the war is finished, I really want to help to build a tennis center that kids can use to train. And it’s not just facilities that were destroyed. I think our kids have mentally been destroyed as well. Some of them lose their parents. Some of them are homeless. They see these explosions, these shootings. A whole generation I think mentally is really facing a big struggle.”It has been a year to rue but, for Svitolina, a year also to savor.“The most horrible year with the war and also the most happy I would say with welcoming our first baby in October,” she said. “So, it’s a mixture of everything, but we are here right now, and for me it’s just important to do everything possible every single day that I can. And for now, the goal is for the Ukrainian people to at least have a little light in their lives.” More

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      With the Australian Open Set to Begin, All Eyes Are on Rafael Nadal

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      The defending champion, Nadal has lost six of his last seven tour singles matches and is struggling with his timing, confidence and composure. But don’t count him out.MELBOURNE, Australia — The first collective gasp of this year’s Australian Open came Thursday afternoon, four days before the tournament officially begins.The hubbub came at the start of the men’s singles draw when Jack Draper’s name appeared in the second slot in the 128-man field. That meant Draper’s first-round opponent was guaranteed to be Rafael Nadal, the reigning Australian Open champion and the No. 1 seed in the absence of the injured Carlos Alcaraz.The buzz in the room was a sign of the left-handed Draper’s gathering strength — a 21-year-old Briton, he is in form and up to No. 40 in the world — but also a reflection of Nadal’s disarray.One of the greatest champions in any sport, Nadal has lost six of his last seven tour singles matches, struggling with his timing, confidence and even his composure as he has been defeated by, in order, Frances Tiafoe, in the fourth round of the U.S. Open; Tommy Paul, in the first round of the Paris Masters; Taylor Fritz and Felix Auger-Aliassime, in round-robin matches at the ATP Finals; and Cameron Norrie and Alex de Minaur, in the recently completed United Cup team event.None of those six men has reached a Grand Slam singles final and neither has Hubert Hurkacz, who dealt Nadal his latest defeat — even if it was only in a practice match — in Rod Laver Arena on Thursday evening in front of a few thousand spectators (and a chair umpire).Hurkacz, a flashy shotmaker with an unflashy personality, is no pushover. He is seeded No. 10 in Melbourne and will forever be the last man to face — and defeat — Nadal’s friendly rival Roger Federer in singles.Hurkacz defeated Federer in straight sets in the quarterfinals of Wimbledon in 2021, and he looked considerably looser and more relaxed on Thursday evening than Nadal, who kept casting concerned glances at his main coach, Carlos Moyá, after missing groundstrokes and first serves.“Rafa is certainly vulnerable,” said Todd Woodbridge, the Australian former star who is now an analyst for Australian television. “He had that faraway look on a changeover against Tiafoe at the U.S. Open and it looked like he had it again in the match against de Minaur last week.”But as Woodbridge and everyone else in tennis have learned repeatedly over the past 19 years, you cannot count out a player of Nadal’s talent and inner drive. He has repeatedly risen from the depths, most recently at the 2022 French Open, which he entered injured and slumping but then managed to win his 14th men’s singles title at Roland Garros.Another title run here in Melbourne looks far less likely, however. The opening hurdle is high with the 6-foot-4 Draper, who advanced to a semifinals match on Friday in the lead-in event in Adelaide.The son of Roger Draper, a former chief executive of Britain’s Lawn Tennis Association, Jack Draper was once considered uncertain to break through to the highest level because of his movement. But he has improved his quickness and court coverage significantly in recent seasons.Jack Draper of Britain will face Nadal in his opening match.Mark Brake/Getty Images“It will be amazing to play on a big court against him; he is a great champion,” Draper said in Adelaide about his first chance to play Nadal. “Whatever happens it will be a special occasion for me. I’m still very young in my career, so it’s great to have these sort of experiences and exposure to playing Rafa on a big arena.”Get past Draper, and Nadal could face the rising American Brandon Nakashima in the second round, Tiafoe in the fourth round and the former No. 1 Daniil Medvedev in the quarterfinals in what would be a rematch of their topsy-turvy, five-set Australian Open final last year.Nadal’s experience, grit and ability to problem solve in best-of-five-set matches should not be dismissed, and he has been focused on shortening points and coming to the net in his pretournament sessions this week. He pushed forward often against Hurkacz on Thursday.“I need to win matches, for sure, but the preparation is going quite well, practicing a lot and I’m in good shape,” Nadal said. “Then you need to demonstrate that in the matches in the official tournaments, but I am confident that if I’m able to have the last week of positive practices, why not?”Draper is not the only British player with a high-profile match in Melbourne. Andy Murray, Nadal’s contemporary and a former No. 1, will face the former Wimbledon finalist Matteo Berrettini in the opening round. Emma Raducanu, the big-surprise U.S. Open women’s champion in 2021, could face seventh-seeded Coco Gauff in the second round if both win their openers (and if Raducanu’s injured ankle continues to improve and allows her to take part in the tournament).Gauff, 18, struggled with her forehand and confidence at the end of the 2022 season, but had a productive off-season and on Sunday won the singles title in Auckland, New Zealand. The event was played indoors and outdoors because of frequent rain and lacked many of the other leading Australian Open contenders.The favorite in the women’s draw remains No. 1 Iga Swiatek despite her lopsided and emotional defeat to Jessica Pegula of the United States in the United Cup. But Swiatek, who faces the German all-court player Jule Niemeier in the opening round, is in a thorny section of the draw. Her eighth includes the Grand Slam singles champions Bianca Andreescu and Elena Rybakina as well as Danielle Collins, who lost in the final last year in Melbourne to Ashleigh Barty, who retired last March.There will be newcomers as well, including the 15-year-old qualifier Brenda Fruhvirtova, the youngest woman in the tournament and part of the Czech Republic’s big wave of young talent that includes her sister Linda Fruhvirtova, 17, who is also making her Australian Open singles debut.Jessica Pegula, at No. 3, is the highest-seeded player from the United States among men and women.Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse via Getty ImagesThursday’s draw delivered another rarity: a first-round match between two former Australian Open singles champions: Victoria Azarenka, the Belarusian veteran who won in 2012 and 2013, and Sofia Kenin, the American who won in 2020 but has since dropped outside the top 100. That matchup was all the more extraordinary considering that Azarenka and Kenin are the only Australian Open women’s singles champions in the draw. The seven-time Australian Open champion Serena Williams is now retired (or at least evolved). The two-time champion Naomi Osaka and the 2016 champion Angelique Kerber are pregnant, and so is Barty, although that happened after her surprise retirement at age 25.Much can change in a hurry in tennis, as Nadal knows well, and this year’s tournament is already a sea change from last year’s because Novak Djokovic is in the draw after being deported by the Australian government on the eve of the 2022 event because he was unvaccinated for the coronavirus.Now, after a change in government policy and after winning the warm-up event in Adelaide, Djokovic, still unvaccinated, can chase his 10th Australian Open singles title. He will face the unseeded Spaniard Roberto Carballés Baena in the opening round on the opposite side of the draw from his longtime rival Nadal.Based on current form, Djokovic winning his 22nd major singles title sounds a lot more plausible than Nadal winning his 23rd. More

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      WTA Chief Talks Money, China and Why Tennis Needs More Female Coaches

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      Even without China’s “zero-Covid” policy, Steve Simon said that unresolved concerns about Peng Shuai would keep women’s tennis away from Shenzhen and a lucrative 10-year-deal to stage the Finals.FORT WORTH — The WTA Finals, the elite season-ending women’s tennis tournament, was supposed to take place in Shenzhen, China, for 10 years and fill the WTA’s coffers.It has not worked out as planned.China’s “zero-Covid” policy continues to keep nearly all international sports events out of the country. Even if China did reopen, women’s tennis has suspended all tournaments in the country, once one of its key markets, because of unresolved concerns about the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who last year accused a former top Chinese government official of sexual assault.“We’ve made a strong stand, and we stand behind that stance, and we’re not going to compromise our principles,” Steve Simon, the WTA’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview. “Clearly when we did it, we understood eyes wide open what it could mean.”Last year’s WTA Finals were moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. This year’s event, which was scheduled to finish on Monday night, was staged on short notice at the 14,000-seat Dickies Arena in Fort Worth with attendance that built from woefully low early in the tournament to modest, but enthusiastic, crowds of close to 6,000 in some of the later sessions.Some coaches and players, including No. 1 Iga Swiatek, said they understood the challenges but were disappointed with the turnout. Swiatek, who was defeated by the seventh-ranked Aryna Sabalenka in the semifinals on Sunday, also cited the big gap in prize money between the WTA Finals, which offers $5 million, and the equivalent men’s tournament, the ATP Finals, which starts Sunday in Turin, Italy, and will offer an event record $14.75 million. The 2019 WTA Finals, the only time the tournament was held so far in Shenzhen, offered $14 million in prize money, which was $5 million more than the 2019 men’s event in London.“It’s just pretty sad the WTA kind of got hit by Covid and by not having the place to play before and organize everything properly,” Swiatek said. “But on the other hand, you have an example in the ATP that they were able to do everything and even increase the prize money. So, hopefully for next time, we’re going to be kind of more prepared.”But the ATP did not bank as heavily on China, and at this stage it seems unlikely the WTA will soon return to the country where it staged nine tournaments in 2019. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, doubled down on the “zero Covid” policy last month, and Simon reaffirmed in Fort Worth that the tour’s suspension of tournaments in China will not be lifted until there is a credible and transparent inquiry into Peng’s allegations, which were made in November 2021 on her Chinese social media account, as well as a chance for tour officials to communicate with her independently.“We’re still in the same place,” Simon said. “If they come forward with something else we should look at, of course we are open to it. But we haven’t seen it so far. I’m hopeful we do find a resolution. That’s the goal, to find the right resolution. What’s the truth? Then we can move forward.”Peng, a 2014 U.S. Open singles semifinalist who made public appearances during the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February, has since recanted the assault allegations, citing a misunderstanding. Now 36, she announced her retirement earlier this year. But the WTA remains unconvinced that she is able to act and speak freely and it has still not been able to make direct contact with her.“We know she’s safe, and she’s in Beijing and doing OK,” Simon said. “We haven’t spoken directly with her.”If the stalemate continues, Simon said the tour would seek a longer-term solution for the Finals, which have traditionally been a key revenue stream. Instead, the WTA was obliged to provide the $5 million in prize money in Guadalajara and again in Fort Worth: quite a downturn from Shenzhen providing it all in 2019.“It’s just pretty sad the WTA kind of got hit by Covid and by not having the place to play before and organize everything properly,” No. 1 Iga Swiatek said.Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty ImagesSimon said there was more interest from prospective cities in staging the event on a multiyear basis because of the economics. He said securing sites for a single year has been a challenge despite going to market in March this year. Though Fort Worth and its modern arena were welcome, announcing it so late in the season made it difficult to promote (as did football season in Texas).“We’re not going to continue to do these one-year decisions,” Simon said. “It’s not sustainable. If it looks like we can’t go back to China or aren’t ready to go back, then I do think we will carve out a multiyear situation, because we need to for the business.”The WTA signed a new title sponsor, Hologic, in 2022 that provided crucial funding, some of it up front, but the tour continues to seek other investors and is now in exclusive and advanced negotiations with CVC Capital Partners, a private equity firm based in Luxembourg that could take a stake in the tour and help address the prize-money gap that Swiatek complained about.“It’s just a very complex business decision and business move we need to work through,” said Simon, emphasizing that the deal, if concluded, would not further complicate the governance of a sport already awash in governing bodies.Though the four Grand Slam tournaments and several other top-tier combined events, like the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., offer equal prize money to men and women, the gap has widened between many stand-alone men’s and women’s events.“When are people going to start stepping up and actually following through?” Simon said. “They are saying one thing about support of women athletes and sports and leagues and the need to invest, but when it comes to actually stepping up and treating it the same way and investing that isn’t happening.”Though a merger with the ATP, an idea floated most recently during tennis’ hiatus in 2020 at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, has not materialized, there is increased cooperation, symbolized by the United Cup, the new men’s and women’s team event in Australia in January that was formerly the men’s only ATP Cup and will lead in to the Australian Open.But major equity issues remain, including the persistent dearth of women in coaching. The WTA said that there are only six working full time with the top 100 WTA singles players and top 50 doubles players. The issue is complex. Women have traditionally been more resistant to the year-round travel, and male coaches often still serve as hitting partners for female pros, thus fulfilling two roles and saving money. But Simon sees bias as well, and the WTA launched an initiative last week to increase those paltry numbers, offering an online certification course and opportunities to shadow coaches and players during tournaments.“I think you’re dealing again with one of those stigmas,” Simon said. “Hopefully we can recruit and get more women after they finish playing or they’ve gone through the coaching ranks that they will continue to rise and become a part of the tour.”Simon said the WTA will also soon appoint a new director of safeguarding: a topic at the forefront of women’s sports with last month’s investigative report on the National Women’s Soccer League revealing widespread sexual misconduct and coercion by coaches.In tennis, Pierre Bouteyre, a former coach of the leading French tennis player Fiona Ferro, was charged earlier this year in France with rape and sexual assault against Ferro when she was a teenager.“It’s a critical issue to the tour, and it goes way beyond sport,” Simon said of protecting players from abuse.The WTA has existing programs focused on player education and background checks and credentialing for coaches. But Simon and other tennis leaders believe the sport should do much more collectively. He said the International Tennis Integrity Agency, the independent body that investigates doping and corruption in the game, could add safeguarding to its portfolio.“It’s exploratory for now but serious,” said Simon, who said involving the agency would allow coordinated oversight across the “entire sport” from the junior level to the pro tour.“That’s not the case now, everyone is doing their own thing to the best they can,” Simon said. “One of the education pieces is we need to help ourselves. If you see it, you need to report it, so we can react to it versus just dealing with rumors, because it’s such a sensitive topic, and it’s hard to get people to come forward.” More

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      Iga Swiatek, U.S. Open Winner, Is Ready for Global Stardom

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      At 21 years old and already a superstar in her home country of Poland, Swiatek is a bona fide No. 1 with a package of tennis skills both innate and acquired.Upon arrival in New York for this year’s U.S. Open, I was delighted to return to a city that is on its way back, as ever, after hard times. But I was surprised to keep hearing questions about women’s tennis’s lack of a dominant player.The farewell tour of Serena Williams, the greatest women’s champion of this era, explained the interest in who might fill the void, but if you’ve been following the women’s game this year, there has been plenty of dominance on display.Doha. Indian Wells. Miami. Stuttgart. Rome. Paris.Iga Swiatek has won titles in all those cities this year, and it should be no surprise to anyone, not even an emotional Swiatek, that she added New York to the long list on Saturday afternoon.Her 6-2, 7-6 (5) victory over Ons Jabeur in Saturday’s U.S. Open women’s final was a reminder of what makes Swiatek such a force:Phenomenal, elastic, sliding defense into the corners, often out of the near-splits popularized by Kim Clijsters and Novak Djokovic.Sprinter’s speed moving forward. (She chased down Jabeur’s signature drop shots on Saturday like a cheetah chasing down a wounded impala.)Heavyweight punching power and penetration off the ground, above all the topspin forehand like Swiatek’s role model Rafael Nadal.Big-match mental strength, which has allowed her to find and maintain her focus under duress with the help of her longtime performance psychologist and friend, Daria Abramowicz. She is now 10-1 in tour-level singles finals.That package of skills, both innate and acquired, has created a genuine champion, and what should be genuinely scary to the opposition is that she can still improve her serve, transition game and volleys by big margins.Her 6-2, 7-6 (5) victory over Ons Jabeur in Saturday’s U.S. Open women’s final was a reminder of what makes Swiatek such a force.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAt just 21 years old, Swiatek is a bona fide No. 1 with a huge lead in the rankings over Jabeur, the engaging and gifted Tunisian who will be back at No. 2 on Monday.Swiatek will have 10,365 points to Jabeur’s 5,090: the kind of clear separation that great players like Williams or Steffi Graf have created in the past. And the last woman to win seven or more singles titles in a season was Williams in 2014.“That was my goal, to get to 10,000 points,” said Tomasz Wiktorowski, Swiatek’s coach who joined her team in December and has been one of the architects of her great season.After winning the French Open by surprise in 2020 and then solidifying her spot in the top 10, Swiatek has taken flight in earnest in 2022, reeling off 37 straight victories earlier this season, often by lopsided Grafian margins, and winning a second French Open and — after a short market correction in July and August — her first U.S. Open.With three majors, she is now closing in on Naomi Osaka, the Japanese star and former No. 1 who has won two U.S. Opens and two Australian Opens, as the most accomplished major champion of their generation.But Swiatek, who is three years younger than the 24-year-old Osaka, already has one significant performance edge. While Osaka has never won a tour-level title on clay or grass, Swiatek is a multisurface threat. Of her seven titles this season, three have come on her long-favored red clay, but four have come on hardcourts like those used at the U.S. Open.“I wasn’t sure if I was on the level yet to win actually a Grand Slam, especially on U.S. Open where the surface is so fast,” she said of hardcourts. “It’s something that I wasn’t expecting, for sure. It’s also like a confirmation for me that sky is the limit.”The sky should include Wimbledon. Though Swiatek has yet to get past the fourth round on the grass at the All England Club, she did win the junior title there in 2018 and has the tool set and improvisational athleticism to win the main event there down the road.In her only match with Osaka this season (and in the past three years), Swiatek rumbled past her, 6-4, 6-0, on Osaka’s best surface in the Miami Open final.Osaka has played little since then and struggled with injuries and her timing when she did play. She is ranked No. 44, and yet she remains by far the most globally prominent young women’s tennis star: the highest-earning female athlete, capable of launching her own management company with her agent Stuart Duguid and signing up other players such as Nick Kyrgios.Her high profile is based on achievement to be certain but also on geography, representing a major market like Japan while based in another major market, the United States. She also has been bold and outspoken on social-justice issues and her own mental-health challenges, positioning herself as one of the voices of an engaged generation.It will be intriguing to see if Swiatek, already a superstar in her home nation of Poland, can break out globally, as well. She is smart and empathetic, likes to read and can crack a joke when she is not cracking a forehand. Handed the $2.6 million champion’s check on Saturday, she said, “I’m really glad it’s not in cash.”Though she said in an interview in May in Paris that she was still trying to sort through the best way to use her new platform, she has demonstrated a new willingness and confidence to speak out since then. She organized an exhibition to raise relief funds for young Ukrainians in July in Poland and is the only leading player not from Ukraine to still wear a blue and yellow ribbon on court to mark her support for Ukraine in the war with Russia.“Society, we don’t have a long memory, but, I mean, lives are at stake so I think we should remind people,” she told me at Wimbledon, which barred players from Russia and its ally Belarus.It will be intriguing to see if Swiatek, already a superstar in her home nation of Poland, can break out globally, as well.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut it is her tennis that has spoken the most loudly and eloquently in 2022, and while she swept through the draw to win the French Open, she had to play through stormy weather in New York — coming back to defeat Jule Niemeier and Aryna Sabalenka in three sets — before securing the trophy under clear skies.“For sure, Roland Garros I always feel like I have more control, and I feel like Philippe Chatrier is kind of my place,” she said of the center court in Paris. “Here on Ashe, I still need to figure out the atmosphere. I wasn’t sure before the match if this is actually my place.”There is no doubt that she found her stride in 2022 in a void: rising to the top after the shock exit of Ashleigh Barty, the Australian star who was a firmly entrenched No. 1 when she announced that she was retiring from the game in March at age 25.It was another big blow to the women’s game, which has seen too many stars leave too soon, and Swiatek has expressed regret that she will no longer have the chance to test her power tennis against Barty’s more varied skills. Jabeur has Bartyesque versatility but lacks the Australian’s formidable serve and cannot generate quite the same forceful topspin with her forehand or wicked side-spin when she hits her backhand with one hand.Even during Williams’s quarter century at or near the top, the women’s game often lacked a transcendent rivalry. There has been nothing quite like Graf vs. Monica Seles; certainly nothing like Chris Evert vs. Martina Navratilova, who was in sold-out Arthur Ashe Stadium on Saturday to present the women’s trophy to Swiatek.Swiatek vs. Osaka, or Swiatek vs. Jabeur or Swiatek vs. Coco Gauff all sound like fine ideas for the future. Despite rumors to the contrary, women’s tennis does indeed have a dominant player, one with a long-term plan to stay there. Now it needs other women to rise up consistently to challenge her. More

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      Iga Swiatek Downs Ons Jabeur to Win US Open Women’s Singles Title

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      Swiatek, the world No. 1, beat Jabeur in straight sets to capture her first U.S. Open singles title. It is her third Grand Slam title and first on a surface other than clay.The 2022 U.S. Open will always be remembered — outside of Poland, at least — for its farewell to Serena Williams, long the queen of tennis and the greatest women’s player ever.Beware, though, after Poland’s Iga Swiatek won the women’s singles title Saturday, beating Ons Jabeur of Tunisia Saturday afternoon at Arthur Ashe Stadium, the sport may have a new ruler on its hands.Swiatek, the world No. 1, lived up to her billing and beat Jabeur, 6-2, 7-6(5), to capture her first U.S. Open singles title. It was the third Grand Slam title of Swiatek’s brief career and her first on a surface other than clay.When Jabeur’s last forehand sailed long, Swiatek collapsed on her back after a 1 hour, 51 minute duel that got dangerously close as the afternoon wore on. After a first set that was over in 30 minutes, Swiatek and Jabeur took 81 minutes to finish the second as Jabeur battled back from a service break down twice to get the set into a tiebreaker before Swiatek ultimately prevailed.Swiatek, 21, won the French Open in 2020 and 2022, becoming the first Polish woman to win a Grand Slam singles title. And now she is the first Polish woman to win three and the U.S. Open, where she was the first Polish woman to make the singles final.How young is this new tennis queen? She is Gen-Z to the core. After the extended congratulatory hug with Jabeur, and a little bit of celebrating, she took a seat in her chair, pulled her phone from her bag and texted away as she awaited the trophy ceremony For Swiatek, the victory was the latest success in a season full of them. She won 37 consecutive matches and six consecutive titles from late winter to early summer. Those victories included the so-called Sunshine Double — winning both the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., and the Miami Open in March and April.Those wins, on hard courts similar to those at the U.S. Open, announced Swiatek as a force on courts other than clay, on which she was already dominant. She has won so many 6-0 sets this year — a “bagel” in tennis parlance — that the saying “Iga’s bakery” was coined.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesSwiatek’s surge to the top came at an opportune time. In March, Ashleigh Barty of Australia, a three-time Grand Slam singles champion and the world No. 1, abruptly retired at 25 years old, saying she had accomplished all she wanted in the sport and was ready for a new challenge.In her departure, Barty, then the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open champion, left a significant void in women’s tennis, which has largely been a free-for-all in recent years.No woman has won more than two Grand Slam titles in a calendar year since Williams won three in 2015. Since late 2020, Swiatek has done all she can to bring some order to women’s tennis, winning three of the past 10 Grand Slam titles.Beyond her dominance on the court, Swiatek has assumed a leadership role off it. She has spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine more than any player who is not from Ukraine and has helped raise more than $2 million for relief efforts through her participation in tennis exhibitions, one of which she organized herself.“We’re trying to do our best to be good people,” she said during the trophy ceremony, as red-and-white Polish flags swung throughout the stands.On a lighter note, she was also among the players this summer who led an outcry over the balls that women use at the U.S. Open, which are different from those that men play with.From the start, all the signs pointed to this being Swiatek’s afternoon. During the warm-up, the sound system blasted AC/DC, one of her favorite bands. (Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin also have a major presence on her playlist.)Once the balls started flying, Swiatek gave little reason for anyone to believe that this match would go any differently from so many finals before. Coming in, Swiatek had played in 10 career finals. She has not lost one since her first, way back in 2019. Even more remarkably, she has not lost a set in any of those wins.“Iga never loses finals, so it is going to be very tough,” Jabeur said Thursday night, as Swiatek staged her second comeback in this tournament from a set down in her semifinal battle against Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus, a player she was especially determined not to lose to for a variety of reasons.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAgainst Jabeur on Saturday, Swiatek ambushed from the start. She won 12 of the first 14 points, sprinting to a 3-0 lead. Jabeur climbed back, getting back on serve as Swiatek momentarily lost control of her overpowering forehand. But then Swiatek went right back to business, with a style that has become more clinical than fancy.With Jabeur putting up so little resistance, she didn’t need to do much more than hit deep into the court. Eventually, Jabeur either made an error or landed a shot somewhere around the service line, allowing Swiatek to move in and blast away. The first set was over in 30 minutes.The queens of women’s tennis historically have done this sort of thing.Jabeur, the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam final in the Open Era and to reach the highest level of the sport, has arguably the most creative arsenal in the women’s game. When she is on, she can mix jumping backhand drop shots with a dangerous forehand and a deceptively hard serve that she can land in the corners with nasty movement.She reached the Wimbledon final earlier this summer and held a one-set lead before tightening and getting overpowered by Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan. Ahead of Saturday, she spoke of the lessons she had learned from that match and how she now knew ways to keep her emotions in check.But with Swiatek in top form, there was little that Jabeur, who has become an inspiration for Arab women, could do to stop the locomotive.“We’re going to get that title sometime soon,” she said after losing her second Grand Slam final of the year. “Hopefully this is the beginning of so many things.”The second set followed a similar pattern to the first at the beginning, with Swiatek surging to a 3-0 lead, Jabeur getting back on serve, and then Swiatek, seizing control right back in the sixth game to get within two games of the championshipFrom there, the only question was whether Swiatek’s occasionally shaky psyche might get the better of her or whether a crowd that swung to Jabeur’s side, begging her to extend the afternoon and make their high-price tickets worthwhile, might be able to rattle her.A few random knuckleheads started whistling in the middle of Swiatek’s service motion. A baby cried. Jabeur abandoned the cute stuff. No more variety for variety’s sake. She tried to match Swiatek’s power from the baseline. It worked as she evened the set at four games each.Ons Jabeur was overpowered early in the match but found her game in the second set.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesSwiatek is so different, though, from the fragile player who won her first Grand Slam title as a teenager. She has evolved from a player who cried in the bathroom during toilet breaks in the middle of matches into a problem solver.That player might never have had a prayer of prevailing in New York, where all the noise and commotion — passing trains and planes, fans who feel they have the right to long raucous matches and to help determine the outcome — make winning here such a different task from anywhere else.“It’s New York, so loud, so crazy,” she would say later of both her past two weeks and this match.Just keeping the ball in play was no longer working. Jabeur was sending her back and forth across the baseline and held chances to break Swiatek’s serve in the next game and serve for the second set. And just then, Swiatek figured out how to calm her nerves and dial back the mistakes. It wasn’t pretty, but it solved the problem, or at least stopped too many more from happening.Jabeur would stretch Swiatek, getting as close as anyone has in a Grand Slam final to winning a set. But in the tiebreaker, strokes that had become smooth and steady started sailing. On their final point, Swiatek’s first serve was not even close, and she lobbed in her second ball. The forehand Swiatek hit off Jabeur’s return floated into the middle of the court, but Jabeur couldn’t take advantage of it, and the championship was hers. There should be many, many more. More

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      US Open Women’s Final: Iga Swiatek vs. Ons Jabeur

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      Swiatek will look to affirm her place as the top-ranked player, while Jabeur could become the first African woman to win the U.S. Open.Ons Jabeur of Tunisia also made it to the final at Wimbledon this year.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIga Swiatek of Poland, the No.1-ranked woman, won 37 straight matches over the winter and spring.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesListening to the two women’s finalists in the U.S. Open, it can be easy to forget that tennis is a sport that involves strength, speed, athletic skill and some strategy.To Iga Swiatek, the world No. 1 from Poland, and Ons Jabeur of Tunisia, now a two-time Grand Slam finalist, the game is almost entirely a mental test.Yes, there is an opponent on the other side of the net trying to hit the ball past you. But the real opponent is the one inside your head, the one trying to remind you of the recent run of bad form, or the balls that you’ve had trouble controlling, or the heartbreaking loss you suffered the last time you played in a Grand Slam final.A little more than an hour after Swiatek, 21, outdueled Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus in three sets on Thursday, she reflected on what had made the difference. Sabalenka had overpowered Swiatek in the first set, but Swiatek drew even, then climbed out of trouble in the third set to win the final four games.The key, she said, was not the string of winners she decorated the court with, or an extra burst of energy from a summer training block. It was being able to control her emotions and not panic.“The work we’ve put in with Daria for sure helped,” she said, referring to the sports psychologist Daria Abramowicz, who has helped her find the tools to calm her nerves. “I think that’s basically the most important thing on the highest level.”Jabeur, a 28-year-old veteran whose game has only recently reached the level where she can regularly compete for the most important championships, constantly has her sports psychologist, Melanie Maillard, with her as well.She has been wearing a T-shirt that says “Face Your Fears” around the grounds of the tournament.“Losing finals is one of them,” she said, after thrashing Caroline Garcia of France, a rival since they were juniors, in the semifinals. “Face all the stress. I think the most important thing is accept that I’m playing a big final and accept all the emotions that are going to come my way.Familiarizing herself with that fear may be a worthwhile exercise. Swiatek has made 10 finals during her first three years as a full-time professional. She has won nine of them.“Iga never loses finals,” Jabeur said. “So it’s going to be very tough.”It’s fair to say that neither player expected to do all that well in this tournament, given their form in late July and August.Swiatek won 37 consecutive matches and six straight tournaments through the late winter and spring of this year. But the grass at Wimbledon, a surface she is still figuring out, threw her for a loop, causing a level of discomfort that has taken her all summer to recover from. She lost early in three tournaments, including in her hometown competition in Warsaw.Then she came to North America and struggled to control the kinds of balls that the U.S. Open uses. Less than two months removed from one of the best winning streaks in the modern history of the sport, she found herself not trusting her game.“My level of trust should for sure be higher,” Swiatek said. Instead of panicking, or crying in the bathroom between sets as she said she used to do, she has tried to accept her uncertainty and move on.“Maybe I’m the kind of person who is never going to trust myself,” she said.For Jabeur, the challenge in Saturday’s final is twofold. She has to manage Swiatek’s powerful forehand and unmatched ability to cover the court and hit backhands from a split, and also try to push to the recesses of her mind the baggage and scar tissue from losing in the Wimbledon final after winning the first set.She is the most creative player at the top of the game, capable of all kinds of tricks and spins. Sometimes she can too be creative, forgetting that she can also simplify the game and rely on her own powerful forehand and serve. Jabeur has won all six semifinals she has made this year, but just two of the finals. She would like to make it three on Saturday, but has already adopted a mind-set that will prevent her from getting too low if it doesn’t go that way.“I’m going full in. I’m going for everything,” she said of her mental approach. “I feel very positive about this one. The most important thing is not to regret, because I’m going to give it all on this one. Even if this one is not going to happen, I’m very sure that another one will come.” More

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      Ons Jabeur Will Play Iga Swiatek for the U.S. Open Women’s Singles Title

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      Top-ranked Swiatek will play for her third Grand Slam title. Jabeur, who lost this year’s Wimbledon final, will get another chance to win her first major title.There will be a new U.S. Open women’s singles champion this year, and Ons Jabeur and Iga Swiatek remained in contention in very different ways on Thursday night in Arthur Ashe Stadium.Jabeur needed just 66 minutes to dispatch Caroline Garcia, a quick-striking Frenchwoman who likes to imitate an airplane after her victories but was grounded by the weight of this occasion. Swiatek needed more than two hours to scrap and come back against Aryna Sabalenka, the Belarusian star who is a force of nature and one of the exceedingly rare ball-strikers powerful enough to dictate terms to the explosive Swiatek.But Swiatek, still the world No. 1 by a cavernous margin, found a way to navigate in heavy weather, rallying from losing the first set and from falling behind by 4-2 in the third to prevail by 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 and reach her first major final on a surface that is not red and slippery.She has won two French Opens on clay, the first out of close to nowhere in October 2020 and the other as the heavy favorite this June. But Swiatek, who has won six tournaments during this breakthrough season, can take her campaign and career to a new level if she can win her first hardcourt major on Saturday night.She said she was proud that she had learned to adjust on the run and at rest; sitting on changeovers with her eyes closed while trying to solve tennis riddles. It is a method she has long emphasized in her work with Daria Abramowicz, her performance psychologist.“Earlier I felt like my emotions kind of were taking over and I was panicking a little bit when I was losing,” Swiatek said. “For sure I grew up. I learned a lot, and the work we’ve put in with Daria for sure helped. Right now it’s just easier for me to actually logically think what I can change. And I feel like I have more skills to do that than one type of way to play. So I’m pretty happy that it changed because I think that’s basically the most important thing on the highest level.”Jabeur has also worked on her body and mind and has been rewarded with the best season of her career. Sitting at No. 2 in the yearlong points race behind Swiatek, Jabeur, whom her fellow Tunisians have nicknamed the Minister of Happiness, brought some more sunshine to her country and her season on Thursday.Garcia had the hottest hand in tennis with a 13-match winning streak. But Jabeur met the moment with power and precision; with variety and guile. She won the first set in 23 minutes as Garcia pressed and Jabeur slammed aces and chipped backhands that skidded low on the blue Arthur Ashe Stadium hardcourt.She closed out the match, 6-1, 6-3, d punctuating the rout with a shout and a tumble before rising quickly to embrace Garcia, a friend, at the net.Jabeur, who is good company as well as an increasingly great tennis player, has many friends on tour. And there is much to celebrate. After reaching her first Grand Slam singles final in July at Wimbledon, where she lost to Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, Jabeur has followed that up with a run to the final in New York.But Swiatek, 21, deserves to be the favorite on Saturday, even though she and Jabeur have split their four previous matches and Jabeur has had a more straightforward run to her first U.S. Open final.“Two in a row feels amazing,” Jabeur said in her on-court interview. “After Wimbledon, there was a lot of pressure on me, and I’m really relieved that I can back up my results.”Jabeur, seeded fifth after being ranked as high as No. 2 earlier this year, is not only a symbol for Tunisia. She is a symbol for a region and a continent as the first Arab and African woman to reach a U.S. Open singles final.“I take it as a great privilege and as good pressure for me,” she said in a recent interview. “I love that I have that kind of support, and I always try to be positive in my life and see even bad things in a positive way. I don’t just play for myself. I play also for my country.”But the goal, as Jabeur’s poised and relentless performance made clear Thursday, is a first major title. She has made her serve a bigger weapon and though Garcia leads the tour in aces this season, Jabeur had the edge on Thursday, finishing with eight aces to Garcia’s two. Though her first-serve percentage was below 50 percent, she won 83 percent of the points when she put her first serve in play while Garcia, who played far below the level she had shown in recent weeks, struggled to win points quickly with her serve. Garcia finished with 23 unforced errors and just 12 winners despite her aggressive tactics. Jabeur had 21 winners and 15 unforced errors.“She knows now where she’s going, and she knows now what she wants,” said Melanie Maillard, a French performance psychologist who has worked with Jabeur since 2016. “She’s given herself the means. She’s dedicated and so determined.”Jabeur was poised and relentless, closing out the match in 66 minutes.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesIt has been a long haul for Jabeur, 28, to believe that someone from a modest background and a nation that had never produced a top-10 tennis player could hit the highest notes in a global sport. She spent long stretches training in France and away from home despite her close connections with her family and her roots.But Jabeur knew what she had been hearing since her youth about her talent: her innate feel for the ball; her capacity to create angles and change speeds and spins, even on the move.“I’ve always believed in mental coaching,” Jabeur said. “I had a mental coach since the age of maybe 12 or 13, long before Melanie, but we’ve been working together with Melanie for a long time, and I’m very lucky I found the right person who could push me through and know me much better. It’s all about the connection between both of us. We did a great job, and we’ve come a long way. But I’ve always been someone who believed in the importance of mental health.”As at Wimbledon, Maillard was in Jabeur’s player box on Thursday night alongside Jabeur’s coach, Issam Jellali, and Jabeur’s husband, Karim Kamoun, who is also her fitness trainer.”Though Thursday’s duel in Ashe Stadium represented new ground for Jabeur and Garcia — neither had been in a U.S. Open semifinal — it also was a flashback. They were junior rivals who played in the U.S. Open girls event in 2010 in the quarterfinals and also played three more times in junior Grand Slam events.Jabeur won all those matches and has now beaten Garcia three times on the pro tour, all in major tournaments. Garcia said that though Jabeur’s spin and variety clearly posed her problems, she was not thinking back during Thursday’s defeat:simply struggling in the present to find solutions and let her game flow freely.“It helped and not at the same time,” Jabeur said of her long-running head-to-head edge. “Because I know she was playing amazing tennis, and that puts a lot of pressure on you.”The pressure should be bigger still against Swiatek, who is gathering strength after failing to win a title since the French Open. Against Sabalenka, Swiatek’s quality of defense and returns ultimately made the small difference, and though Sabalenka has shored up her faltering serve in New York, she was still unable to put first serves in play when she needed them most in her closing service games.The loss hit her hard. Sabalenka arrived at her post-match news conference wearing mirrored sunglasses and kept them on for the entirety of her interview as she spoke in tones much more subdued than her high-intensity, high-volume approach to thumping tennis balls.This was a big opportunity indeed: a wide-open major tournament. But only two players still have a chance to win it, and it seems fitting that they have been, on balance, the two best players of the season.“She has different game style than most of the players,” Swiatek said of Jabeur. “She has a great touch. All these things mixed up, she’s just a tough opponent. She fully deserves to be in the final. I think it’s going to be a great battle.” More

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      U.S. Open Semifinals: The 4 Women Left

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      Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesCaroline Garcia, 28, of France, beat Gauff on Tuesday, adding to an exceptional summer that has included victories in Cincinnati, Warsaw and Bad Homburg, Germany. She also reached Wimbledon’s round of 16, but this will be her first Grand Slam semifinal. More