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      French Open Is Delayed a Week

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      The tournament will begin May 30, about two weeks after France is expected to ease its current national lockdown.The French Open has been postponed by one week and will be played from May 30 to June 13, the second year in a row it has been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.France, which has faced a third wave of coronavirus infections, on Saturday entered a new nationwide lockdown that could last for more than a month. Nonessential shops and schools have been shut, and the authorities have maintained a nighttime curfew that has been in place for months.Organizers said on Thursday that they hoped the new dates would allow spectators to attend in a safe way and give the public health situation more time to improve. The lockdown is expected to lift in mid-May, giving tournament officials about two weeks to prepare for the Grand Slam event.“Every week is important and can make a difference,” the French Open organizers said in a statement.The two-week tournament in Paris, one of the sport’s four Grand Slam events, was supposed to begin on May 23 and run through June 6. It will now start on May 30 and finish on June 13, only two weeks before the start on June 28 of Wimbledon, which will not be delayed.The president of the French tennis federation, Gilles Moretton, also suggested fans would be able to attend the event. The delay, Moretton said, “will give the health situation more time to improve and should optimize our chances of welcoming spectators at Roland Garros.”“For the fans, the players and the atmosphere,” he added, “the presence of spectators is vital for our tournament.”The plan — an agreement with both government officials and international tennis leaders — means that for a second consecutive year the competition will not take place as scheduled. And while Wimbledon will keep to its schedule, the change in France probably will cause some shuffling of the series of grass-court tournaments that precede it.Last spring, organizers shifted the start of the French Open to late September, believing that the pandemic that ravaged western Europe in the first months of 2020 would recede over the summer. The move, made with little consultation with organizers of other tennis events, caught the sport off guard.It also ultimately helped cause several top European players, including the former world No. 1 Rafael Nadal, to skip the United States Open, which took place in early September. Players had little time to recover from a Grand Slam event played on a hardcourt and prepare for one on clay. The move paid off for Nadal, who won a record 13th French Open men’s singles title in October. Organizers limited crowds to just 1,000 spectators each day.For months, as infection rates in France have remained stubbornly high and as the European Union has struggled to distribute coronavirus vaccines, organizers of the French Open have been studying situations for once again holding the signature event in front of smaller crowds. Last week, however, President Emmanuel Macron of France enacted a third national lockdown as the rate of coronavirus infections continued to escalate, imperiling the tournament.Afterward, Gilles Moretton, the president of the French Tennis Federation, said if France’s citizens were still under restrictions next month the organization might have to consider canceling the event.“If we are told a general confinement for two months, we will necessarily have to take measures — at worst, complete cancellation, but I dare not imagine that,” Moretton told Agence France-Presse.Before the new lockdown, Macron had tried to keep France open, hoping that increasing vaccinations would help slow the spread of the virus. Instead, with the country’s death toll from Covid-19 approaching 100,000, he closed all but the most essential businesses, limited citizens to a six-mile radius from their homes, prohibited travel between regions and set a curfew from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Professional sports are still allowed to take place, but without spectators.Rafael Nadal won his record 13th French Open men’s singles title in 2020. The tournament was played in the fall instead of its traditional spring dates.Julien De Rosa/EPA, via ShutterstockMacron has said he hopes to reopen the country by mid-May, which would leave mere days for organizers to prepare for the arrival of hundreds of players from dozens of countries, though many of them would presumably be coming from Italy after having played the Italian Open.Touring tennis players have been living for months in a series of bubblelike settings that each tournament has created with the goal of keeping players and the local populace from transmitting the virus.At the year’s first Grand Slam event, in Australia, which has all but eliminated community spread of the virus, organizers forced players arriving from overseas into a limited quarantine for two weeks before they could mix with the rest of the population, and dozens of them ended up in a hard two-week quarantine, after multiple people tested positive upon arrival.The restrictions have begun to wear on players, who are unable to travel with their usual support teams and family members and must limit their movements to their hotels and the tennis venues.“I understand the reasons for it, but from a physical and mental health perspective I don’t know if it is sustainable,” Danielle Collins, a top American player, said last week after her exit from the Miami Open. “It can be very challenging.” More

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      In Tennis, Tough Decisions as Players Adjust to Shrunken Paydays

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      With less money to be won, many players are working harder than ever, especially those not lucky enough to have million-dollar endorsement portfolios.Lloyd Harris has been on a bit of a roll this year.It’s a good thing, too, because if the 24-year-old from South Africa weren’t, he might be having a hard time breaking even as a professional tennis player these days. Even with his recent success — which includes making the third round of the Australian Open in February, the final of the Dubai Tennis Championships last month, and the second round at the Miami Open last week — his earnings are hardly the windfall they might have been, because prize money in his sport has been substantially downsized during the coronavirus pandemic and expenses are higher than ever.Harris, ranked No. 52 in the world, probably will not be able to go home until November. So he has to support himself on the road and pay for his usual coaching and physiotherapy, expenses that can run into the high six figures for a player of his caliber.“It was definitely tough last year,” Harris said last week after a tight first-round win over Emilio Nava. “This year, with the prize money being so reduced, it can really be a struggle.”Professional tennis may be the most economically top-heavy sport in the world. The best players are fabulously wealthy, in part because of lavish endorsement deals, and any player ranked in the top 30 lives very well.For those ranked between roughly 40th and 70th, a bad few months can cause serious problems. Life for those outside the top 80, and especially outside the top 100, can be precarious.The pandemic has made things more challenging, as cuts in prize money at most tournaments make each win more essential for players fighting for the extra cash that comes with making each successive round.Ann Li of the United States, who is ranked 67th in the world, hustles to earn a living.Rick Rycroft/Associated PressAt the Miami Open, which concludes this weekend, more than 200 players have been vying for $6.7 million. That is among the largest prize purses outside the Grand Slam events and the tour finals, but it is down nearly 60 percent from 2019, when the purse was $16.7 million.Heading into the season, the men’s and women’s tours worked with the players and tournament executives to figure out how to share revenues in an environment where only a fraction of the usual number of tickets can be sold.The professional tours have tried to structure prize payments so that players eliminated in the early rounds can still make a decent wage.In Miami, making the second round yielded $16,000 for a player this year compared with nearly $30,000 in 2019, the previous time the tournament took place. The winners will receive just over $300,000, a healthy payday but down nearly 80 percent from 2019. The tours are helping smaller tournaments avoid deficits by funding prize purses through broadcast rights deals and cash reserves.“It’s obviously a very challenging period of time for everybody,” said Steve Simon, chief executive of the women’s professional tour, the W.T.A. “Our approach was how do we manage this so we have prize money levels in a manner that would support players and make sure our events can operate.”No one needs to take up a collection for players who advance deep into tournaments, but the economics of being a solid professional tennis player can be challenging.Depending on the country where a player lives, roughly 50 percent of income can go to taxes. A decent coach demands $50,000 to $100,000 a year plus travel costs. Fitness training and physiotherapy over an 11-month season can cost an additional tens of thousands of dollars.Danielle Collins, the 27-year-old American ranked 40th in the world, trained with a four-person team before the pandemic — a tennis coach, a hitting partner, a physiotherapist and a fitness coach. With the cuts in prize money, though, Collins is now training largely with her boyfriend, Tom Couch, who is her fitness coach.“We don’t have an organization that pays for coaches, and physios and nutritionists like we would if we were on a team,” she said. “We have financial responsibilities that we are 100 percent committed to. Having to manage through that with the pandemic and ongoing uncertainty and with the prize money reductions, it’s taken a toll.”Danielle Collins, ranked 40th in the world, has had to reduce her support staff.  She says some players may lose money by competing.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersAlso, travel this year figures to be more expensive, given the restrictions and quarantine rules that can change from week to week and country to country.This month the professional tours will shift to the clay- and grass-court seasons in Europe until mid-July. In typical years, players might return home several times during that period, especially if they lose early in one tournament and have a two-week lag until the start of the next event on their schedules. That might prove difficult this year.“If you can get to Europe, you might just want to stay there,” said Ann Li, a 20-year-old American who recently broke into the top 100.Housing abroad is complicated. When players are eliminated from a tournament, they lose their free lodging until the next tournament starts.And the pandemic presents more than logistical challenges.“We’re always at risk of contracting the virus and being in a two-week lockdown in a city far away from home,” said John Isner, a veteran player from the United States. “To do that in an environment where the money is much less is very risky on our part.”There is little choice but to keep competing. Endorsement contracts are often laden with incentives that require players to enter a minimum number of tournaments and earn rankings points by advancing. Collins said these deals — New Balance and Babolat are her main sponsors — had helped sustain many players during the past year.“For players outside of top 100, they might have opportunities to play, but they are losing money by playing,” she said.Harris had to default his second-round match in Miami. In the coming weeks, he plans to use Dubai as a kind of base camp, because if he returned to his home in South Africa, where the virus has been prevalent, he couldn’t be sure which countries would permit him to enter later.He has won nearly $300,000 in prize money this year, bringing his career total to $1.5 million. That may sound like a lot, but Harris turned professional in 2016. He spent far more than he earned during his first four seasons. He was fortunate that his two sponsors, Lotto and Yonex, remained loyal as he grinded through the lower-tier tournaments.Now, after a busy winter, he is trying to set aside his desire for a break, particularly from the restrictions players must follow while competing.“Most of the guys on tour have been very selective about where they can play,” Harris said.But he is finally winning more than losing at the top level. He is climbing the rankings and making decent money. For better or for worse, after a short break, he plans to play on. More

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      Searching for Roger Federer

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      Pilgrims have been coming to Switzerland’s Einsiedeln Abbey since shortly after St. Meinrad, the Martyr of Hospitality, retreated to the secluded “Dark Forest” in a valley between Lake Zurich and Lake Lucerne to establish a hermitage around 835.I visited the abbey in October 2019 at the start of an unusual pilgrimage: to travel in the footsteps of the Swiss tennis player Roger Federer. As Switzerland’s best-known pilgrimage site, it seemed like an auspicious place to start my journey. I had no idea that Mr. Federer had a connection to the place, but when I contacted the abbey to arrange my visit, the monks had a surprise for me. “Did you know our abbot is also named Federer?” asked Marc Dosch, the abbey’s lay representative. I had not. “Yes and he baptized Roger’s children.”Einsiedeln Abbey, in the Swiss village of Einsiedeln.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesThe Baroque interior of the abbey’s church.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesDestiny, indeed.I’ve been a tennis player since the late 1970s, but a knee surgery and a series of health problems have kept me off the court for several years. I was on the road to recovery and was hoping to make a comeback on hallowed ground: the courts where Mr. Federer had trained in Switzerland on his way to winning 20 majors and becoming one of the planet’s most beloved athletes.I’ve been a fan for more than 15 years, but my admiration reached new levels in 2017 when Mr. Federer won two majors at 35 after nearly every tennis writer had already written his tennis obituary. He could have quietly drifted off to the Alps to meditate while counting his Swiss francs, but instead he rededicated himself to the sport and turned the tables on his younger rivals.A knee injury forced Mr. Federer to take more than a year off the ATP Tour. But he returned to competition in Doha, Qatar, a few weeks ago, where he won one match and lost another. It wasn’t a dream return but it was a promising start, and I’m relieved that he appears to be healthy and motivated. Like all fans, I’m hopeful he will have more trophies to hoist — perhaps this summer at Wimbledon or at the Olympic Games.But I also live with the fear that he might retire soon, and so I felt a sense of urgency to make this journey before it was too late to see him play in person.‘We don’t revere people here’Little did I know back in October 2019 that my trip to Switzerland would be the last border I’d be crossing for a long time because of travel restrictions brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. The fact that I was able to walk in Mr. Federer’s footsteps, and sit in a packed arena with 10,000 unmasked fans and watch him play feels like a dream to me now.But as I prepared for my trip, I found myself having to reassure Swiss sources I wanted to meet that I wasn’t a crazed stalker who planned to rifle through Mr. Federer’s trash cans. I assured them that I’m just a normal guy who admires his graceful strokes, his sportsmanship and his willingness to shed tears on the court. I reckoned that traveling across seven cantons to the places where Mr. Federer has lived and played tennis before watching him at the Swiss Indoors in Basel, his hometown tennis tournament, would help me understand not just the man but also Switzerland, that prosperous, heartbreakingly beautiful but enigmatic, four-language outlier in the heart of Europe.Abbot Federer of Einsiedeln Abbey said his branch of the family tree intersected with Roger Federer’s in the 16th century.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesThe village of Einsiedeln.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesI contemplated my journey standing on a hilltop looking down at Einsiedeln, with its twin-spired, Baroque-style church and horses and mooing cows dotting the lush, green hills, before being welcomed by Abbot Federer, who greeted me like an old friend. “You know, before Roger became famous, I always used to have to spell my name,” he told me. “But now everyone knows the name Federer.”Abbot Federer said his branch of the family tree intersected with Mr. Federer’s in the 16th century, but he said that he didn’t discuss their shared ancestry or Mr. Federer’s attendance at Mass (none of his business, he said) with the Swiss star when he visited the abbey. Abbot Federer said the Swiss aren’t comfortable with hero worship. “Roger would be equivalent to something like the royal family in the U.K., but here in Switzerland, we’ve never had a super-famous star, so we don’t know how to treat him because we don’t revere people here,” he said.He was right — I had brought a Roger Federer hat with me, but stopped wearing it after realizing that no one else was wearing one. Just before he ducked into the cathedral to pray, Abbot Federer told me, “I really hope Djokovic doesn’t win any more titles. I don’t want him to catch Roger.”Berneck is a country town of some 4,000 people near the Austrian border where the Federer clan originated.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesAbbot Federer also happened to be a relative of Antonia Federer, the wife of Jakob Federer, a vintner and consultant who invited me for lunch at their home in Berneck, a pretty country town of some 4,000 people near the Austrian border where the Federer clan originated. The German word feder, Jakob explained, means feather or quill, and in the Middle Ages, Federers were scribes. There are about 100 Federers in the village and it’s a common name in the cemetery where Roger Federer’s grandmother is buried behind the town’s ancient Catholic church.Jakob Federer is the vice president of Berneck and he lives just a few doors from the medieval home where Roger’s father, Robert, was raised. He explained that there was a schism in the Federer clan after a fire ravaged Berneck in 1848; one branch of the family was blamed and were expelled.We visited a wine cellar, Jakob Schmid Kaspar Wetli, where Jakob ages his Stegeler brand wine in giant oak barrels. After a vegetarian lunch, the village president, Bruno Seelos, stopped by for a chat. Mr. Seelos explained that the village planned to name something after Roger Federer, but they were waiting until he retired. Jakob and Antonia weren’t convinced this was necessary. “It’s like a cult of personality,” she said.The courts at Tennisclub Felsberg, where Roger Federer has trained.Dave Seminara‘We’re playing on Roger’s court’By the third day of my pilgrimage, I was itching to see if I was fit enough to return to tennis. Using intel I picked up from René Stauffer’s Roger Federer biography and my own research, I identified nearly a dozen tennis clubs around the country that I wanted to visit — many are clubs where Mr. Federer currently trains, others are places where he developed his game as a junior.I found my opportunity that afternoon at Tennisclub Seeblick, a posh club of well-groomed red clay courts with stunning views over Lake Zurich where Mr. Federer is known to practice. I cornered Alan, a club member who was enjoying a post-tennis coffee in the club’s cafe, and convinced him to hit with me for a few minutes. I was rusty, spraying balls around the court with little idea of where they might land.The next day, I made my way by train and bus to the venerable Hotel Schweizerhof, a century-old lodge with a Turkish-style hammam nestled in the picturesque village of Lenzerheide, deep in the Swiss Alps in the canton of Graubünden. Roger and his family moved to the neighboring village of Valbella in 2012, and I wanted to understand why he had chosen to live in this out-of-the-way place, instead of one of Switzerland’s more famous winter resorts like Zermatt, Gstaad or St. Moritz.I was hoping I might get a tryout with Toni Poltera, a gregarious morning host for the Romansch language radio service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and the president of Tennisclub Felsberg, a club where Roger has trained on several occasions. Mr. Poltera drove us south on a snaking country road past villages perched on green hillsides below jagged peaks that would soon be full of snow toward the village of Lain.As we got out to look at a remote playground where Mr. Poltera told me Roger Federer likes to take his family, it was easy to understand why he would want to live in such a place. “You see,” Mr. Poltera said, sweeping his right hand toward a snow-capped peak, “here Roger can have peace, he can play with his kids like a normal person.”Turning north, we ventured into Valbella, a charming little community with a handful of businesses and Alpine-style homes perched across a hillside with views of Lake Heidsee and nearby mountains. I never asked Mr. Poltera to show me Mr. Federer’s house, but he pre-empted any potential request, explaining, “Roger lives here for privacy, that’s why we’re not going to drive by his home.”Tennisclub Felsberg, a half-hour drive down a zigzagging road from Valbella, is an out-of-the-way place with three courts situated along the Rhine. “We’re playing on Roger’s court,” Mr. Poltera said, pointing to a sign above Court 1 labeled “Roger Platz.” He led me to a small dressing room with a humble shower and sink. “You’ll get dressed and take your shower here, just like Roger does.”I muffed several of my first shots but quickly found a groove and fell into a blissful tennis trance.Roger Federer’s birthplace, Basel, at sunrise.Lauryn Ishak for The New York Times‘I don’t take these tournament victories as a normal thing’The next morning I woke up, stoked to finally see Mr. Federer play at the Swiss Indoors tournament in Basel. I sat in an empty train carriage bathed in sunshine as it shadowed the Rhine, past crumbling medieval castles, spiky mountain peaks and hamlets spilling across carpets of green grass.I arrived in plenty of time to watch Mr. Federer demolish the hapless Moldovan Radu Albot in his second-round match at the indoor St. Jakobshalle Arena, where Mr. Federer served as a ball boy as a kid.In between matches, I explored Basel’s charming old town and visited a host of Federer sites, including Villa Wenkenhof, the stately, 17th-century English manor house where Mr. Federer and his wife, Mirka, were married in 2009; the Old Boys Tennis Club, where the tennis star honed his game as a child; and the “Swiss Tennis House” national training center in Biel, where I met Yves Allegro, who was Mr. Federer’s roommate when they trained at the facility in 1997.Villa Wenkenhof is the 17th-century English manor house where Roger Federer and his wife, Mirka, were married in 2009.Lauryn Ishak for The New York TimesA few days later, I went to the five-star Hotel Les Trois Rois overlooking the Rhine, where cheeseburgers at the bar go for $48, and as I walked across the chandelier-heavy lobby, I nearly bumped into one of Mr. Federer’s twin daughters, who were joyfully bounding down a grand staircase with the tennis player’s father, Robert, trailing.On the morning of the final, I took the tram to Münchenstein, the Basel suburb where Roger spent most of his childhood. Daniel Altermatt, a Münchenstein city councilperson, greeted me on the platform wearing a beret and dark sunglasses. He took me on an extensive tour of the town, starting with the small housing development called Wasserhaus, where Mr. Federer grew up.His block felt narrow, too cramped for a person of his stature. Around the corner, on a small street with a canopy of trees, Mr. Altermatt explained how someone had tried to unofficially rename the street Roger Federer Allée. “We have a local regulation prohibiting us from naming anything after anyone who is still alive,” he said. “So if we want to name something after Roger, we’d have to kill him first.”Mr. Altermatt drove me to the arena, where I bumped into Marc Dosch, who was there for the final with Abbot Federer. “I lost the abbot,” he said, and I wondered if perhaps he was giving Mr. Federer a prematch blessing.Whatever the case, Mr. Federer was great once again, dismantling the Australian player Alex de Minaur, a surprise finalist, to capture his record 10th Swiss Indoors title in what seemed like an anticlimactic final until Mr. Federer broke down in tears during his victory speech. He appeared in the pressroom carrying his trophy after the match, and this time he was still in his tennis gear. He had literally won the tournament without breaking a sweat.I showed Mr. Federer a photo of him hoisting a trophy at age 10, that was given to me by Madeline Bärlocher, one of his first coaches at the Old Boys club, and asked him if the feeling of lifting trophies had changed over the years. “It’s similar,” he said, smiling. “It’s been an incredible journey, it definitely hit me hard being here in Basel. I don’t take these tournament victories as a normal thing, I take it as something quite unique and special even though it’s been a lot by now.”And what, I asked, had triggered his tears on court. “When I stand there and look back at everything I had to go through, it really touches me,” he said. Mr. Federer said that he tends to break down depending “on the applause of the people, how warm it is, how much they feel that I’m struggling or not and how much love I get.”As I waited for the tram, it started to rain and I remembered that I had my Roger Federer hat buried in my bag. I hadn’t worn it in more than a week, but now it was time to put my hat back on and return home — a tennis player once again.Dave Seminara is the author of Footsteps of Federer: A Fan’s Pilgrimage Across 7 Swiss Cantons in 10 ActsFollow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More

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      A Big Tennis Tournament Is About to Happen in Miami. Really.

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      The Miami Open is the lone significant North American tennis event before late summer, and a glimpse of what the sport might look like for the foreseeable future.There is a significant tennis tournament beginning its main draw in Miami this week. It is one of the most important annual events in the sport, attracting hundreds of players from all over the world, including multiple Grand Slam winners, competing for one of the largest prize purses of the year.So why doesn’t it feel that way?Maybe it’s because several of the biggest names in the sport — including the grand troika of Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in the men’s game, plus Serena Williams — are skipping the event. Or because attendance will be limited to a maximum of 1,000 spectators a day, compared with nearly 400,000 over two weeks in 2019, despite state rules in Florida that would allow far more.Maybe it’s because the Miami Open is taking place without the opening act of the March winter hard court swing, the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., which officials in the state wanted no part of in the winter when infection rates were surging in Southern California.Or maybe it’s because the Miami Open is a microcosm of tennis in 2021 — an unpredictable puzzle of player scheduling, travel advisories and health precautions in a season that has forced players to set priorities in a way they never have before. Many, especially the biggest stars, now view tournaments not simply as a means to compete or a chance for a paycheck but for whether an event fits into their broader life.“It’s so many different reasons,” James Blake, the former player who is the tournament director in Miami, said when asked what has influenced players’ decisions to play or skip the event. “As a former tour player, I can tell you are programmed to want to compete against the best players in the world. That is always your main motivation.”Except when it isn’t. Williams withdrew Sunday, announcing she had not fully recovered from recent oral surgery. Djokovic, who is the top-ranked men’s player and recovering from a torn abdominal muscle, pulled out Friday afternoon. Djokovic’s management agency, the sports and entertainment conglomerate, W.M.E.-I.M.G., owns the Miami Open, but that was not enough for him to make the trip. He announced on Twitter that he had “decided to use this precious time at home to stay with my family. With all restrictions, I need to find balance in my time on tour and at home.”Daniil Medvedev, the world No. 2 and a 2021 Australian Open finalist, is playing, as are the rising stars Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev. But the women’s draw, which includes Naomi Osaka, Ashleigh Barty and Simona Halep, may provide much of the heat.Nadal announced earlier this month that he was skipping Miami to continue healing his sore back and to prepare for the spring clay-court season, during which he usually excels.Roger Federer, the defending champion in Miami who returned to professional tennis earlier this month after two knee surgeries and a 14-month hiatus, said his goal is to be 100 percent healthy for Wimbledon in late June. A two-week jaunt to the United States for a single hard court event didn’t make sense. He also has not committed to playing much on clay this season.Roger Federer won’t be at this year’s Miami Open to defend his 2019 title.Rhona Wise/EPA, via ShutterstockAustria’s Dominic Thiem, the 2020 United States Open champion, is slumping and taking a pass. Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland, a three-time Grand Slam winner, said he was too tired. Nick Kyrgios lives in Australia, which has strict quarantine rules for travelers, and has yet to figure out how much tennis he wants to play this year.It is the new normal of tennis. To play or not to play is a complicated question, and an unexpected result of that is Miami foreshadows what tennis will look like eventually. No Big Three. No Serena Williams.“It’s always nice to have two of the biggest names in sports on your air, but there is so much talent out there and that gives the chance for different stories to be told,” said Ken Solomon, chief executive of The Tennis Channel, which will air 125 hours of live coverage of the event in the United States. “We get 128 phenomenal athletes competing in this thing, you don’t start thinking about who is not there.”For months in the United States, many sports have more or less proceeded, even as most people faced significant limitations on travel and contact with those outside their households. The N.F.L. held a Super Bowl with 22,000 fans, the N.C.A.A. started two Division I basketball tournaments with 132 teams from across the country descending on the Indianapolis and San Antonio regions, and hockey players scrap cheek-to-jowl on the ice every night.However, with Florida essentially ridding itself of most pandemic-related restrictions, the roles of have flipped. Players arrived in Florida during the past few days along with spring break revelers who are filling Florida’s beaches, bars and nightclubs. The players, who are used to indulging in Miami’s culture, restaurants and nightlife when they are not playing tennis, are living under strict guidelines that the men’s and women’s tennis tours created to keep them as safe as possible.During the tournament, they must live in one of two hotels for players and officials. Had she played, Williams could not have commuted from her home, roughly 75 minutes away. The players’ movement is limited to the tournament and the hotel. No ventures to Joe’s Stone Crab, South Beach or Coconut Grove until they’ve lost.“It does make it harder when you are part of the bubble,” Lauren Davis, the veteran U.S. player, said. “The experience is more draining. There is no outlet for the stress.”Miami Open organizers did not construct the temporary 14,000-seat court inside the Miami Dolphins’ stadium this year. The most important matches will take place on three smaller courts.Prize money has been slashed to $6.7 million from $16.7 million in 2019, though it is among the largest prize purses outside of the Grand Slams and the tour finals. Nearly everyone at the tournament site will have to wear a mask at all times, except for players while they are on the court.Crowds enter and exit South Beach in Miami during the spring break season.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesTennis will likely look this way for some time. The All England Club, the host of Wimbledon, announced last week that players will have to stay in specified hotels for the tournament, set to begin in late June, despite Britain’s success with its vaccine program. Crowd sizes will be reduced and spectators will not be able to line up during the day to search for a ticket.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, ranked No. 5 on the men’s tour, said during last week’s tournament in Acapulco, Mexico, that the tour sorely missed Indian Wells this year because it gathers so many top players in front of rabid and casual tennis fans in the United States during the first half of the year. The opportunity to play in front of a crowd of any size — Acapulco allowed roughly 3,000 spectators for each session — had vastly enhanced the experience.“I feel really connected,” he said of the experience of playing in front of fans. “I feel like I can enjoy the game.”But the challenges of the pandemic have forced Tsitsipas and other players to focus almost entirely on larger tournaments for the time being, and the biggest stars to focus almost exclusively on the Grand Slams. Events like Miami may offer plenty of money and rankings points, but everything is just a little different this year. More

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      Will Newbies Keep Playing Tennis and Golf Now That Other Sports Are Back?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Pandemic Drove People to Tennis and Golf. Will They Keep Playing?Recreational athletes flocked to accessible and safely distanced sports. Leaders in golf and tennis — both of which have had massive public investment — want to sustain their pandemic booms.A group of women played a doubles match in January at Querbes Tennis Center in Shreveport, La. Chris Dudley, who operates the facility with his wife, Amy, said the growth there has been “quick and organic” since reopening full-time. Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesMatthew Futterman and March 11, 2021Updated 8:55 p.m. ETIn 2020, the coronavirus pandemic all but shuttered recreational sports and leisure activities. Fitness centers and yoga studios closed as did movie theaters, museums and concert halls. Games as routine as checkers at a local park or pickup basketball in almost any setting were prohibited. Even playing in ultimate Frisbee leagues became fraught with risk.And yet, golf and tennis, which have struggled to recruit new participants in recent years, flourished as idle athletes sought to play outside, at a safe distance, with some tweaks to accommodate new health guidelines. While more than half of tennis and golf facilities in the United States were padlocked in March and April because of the coronavirus, from June to December in 2020 golf rounds nationwide surged by 75 million as compared to the same period in 2019, a gain of 27 percent.Data from the Physical Activity Council’s recent participation report, which monitors activity in more than 100 sports and activities, showed tennis participation rose 22 percent in 2020, with 21.6 million Americans saying they played the sport at least once. That included nearly 3 million new players and 3.8 million Americans who returned to the sport after a significant hiatus, a 40 percent increase from the previous year.Tennis courts and golf courses have been packed with the people the leaders of those sports have tried to reach for years — beginners and novices whose numbers had been thinning at alarming rates. The newcomers flocked to those sports in large part because of their accessibility. For decades, local school systems and municipal parks departments have built thousands of tennis courts across the country that are free to use and easily located. While golf is often perceived as expensive and exclusive, in fact, 75 percent of American golf courses are open to the public with the average cost of a nine-hole round about $22.The vast public investment in golf and tennis, using taxpayer money and public land, puts an onus on maintaining the pandemic boomlet. As much of the country makes plans to reopen, minders of golf and tennis are focusing on an essential question: how to retain newly hooked participants when other recreational options are available again?Safety measures adopted to stop the coronavirus spread — like prohibiting players from touching or removing the flagstick on each green — sped up the game.Credit…Michael Hanson for The New York TimesNew athletes bring new culture.The growth in participation in golf and tennis is largely being driven by more financially secure people who, in some cases, have the luxury of working from home and the extra time that provides, as well as access to golf courses and tennis courts. But many were younger. There were 3.1 million junior golfers last year, the most ever, with an average age of 12. While new and novice players account for a significant portion of the growth, “new” does not necessarily mean “young.”More than 30 percent of beginning golfers last year were over the age of 40, according to the National Golf Foundation. The players run the gamut, from entire families playing together, women of all ages and lapsed players whose old equipment gives them away. Their arrival during the pandemic compelled golf courses to adopt a faster, more casual and technologically savvy way of operating that many at the top of golf’s hierarchy see optimistically as part of an ongoing cultural shift.“There’s now a different mood about golf,” Jerramy Hainline, the senior vice president and general manager of Golf Now, an online tee-time service with nearly four million registered golfers that also provides technology to more than 9,000 golf courses, said. “The spirit is changing out there.”The pandemic spurred a spirit of experimentation that may become permanent. To keep players adequately separated, for example, golf courses put players in single-rider carts, which quickened the pace of play. Another safety measure — prohibiting players from touching or removing the flagstick on each green — led golfers to putt out in order, speeding up tedious logjams on greens.Many courses also adopted contactless check-ins at arrival, so that players could bypass the clubhouse. Hainline said his company developed a cellphone application, Smart Play, that identified golfers as they arrived in a course’s parking lot and then led them through the steps of checking in, paying for their round and locating their carts — all without entering the pro shop.Operators of tennis facilities also felt a change of their sport’s culture was imperative. The average age of a tennis player is about 32, but local tennis professionals said new and returning players of all ages have come out to play since March 2020.Mike Woody, national tennis director for Genesis Health Clubs, which owns more than a dozen tennis facilities in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, said the key to developing and retaining new players was convincing them that the sport was accessible to people of any age, not just those who took up the game as a youngster.“We have to get rid of this image of what it means to be a tennis player,” Woody said. As far as he’s concerned, if you’ve got a racket and a ball and a space to hit it into — and you enjoy it — then you are a tennis player.“We have to be facilitators of finding people opportunities to play, not compete, but to play,” Woody said.Tennis participation rose 22 percent in 2020, including nearly 3 million new players and 3.8 million Americans who returned to the sport after a significant hiatus.Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesTennis relies on the pied piper effect.As new and novice players have arrived at Querbes Tennis Center in Shreveport, La., its operator, Chris Dudley, said he is doing all he can to make the game a more personal experience. “I’m good with names,” he said. “I know the names of just about everyone who plays here.”Dudley, who runs the facility with his wife, Amy, said the growth has been “quick and organic” since the facility reopened full-time on June 1. Roughly 2,000 people played on the facility’s 11 courts from July to September, including as many as 275 new players. Night play, under the lights, was especially popular during the summer heat.He is one of the more than 11,000 professional coaches the United States Tennis Association hopes can help maintain the uptick in participation by championing the sport locally and ensuring that the people who show up to play have a quality experience. Craig Morris, the chief executive for community tennis at the U.S.T.A., the national governing body for the sport, said there is no silver bullet to retention, but the organization is setting aside several million for grants to public tennis facilities to help equip them with knowledgeable tennis directors.“This is really local level stuff,” Morris said during a recent interview. “You create a good pied piper to deliver great programming for instruction and then connect people to play socially or enter a league.”Dudley is not a high performance coach aiming to produce a Wimbledon champion. Instead, the Dudleys are doing all they can to meet players where they are. Chris Dudley said he has found that, generally speaking, most of the women the club serves want a social experience, to play with people they know at their level, whereas the men yearn for competitions against other local clubs.The Dudleys have held monthly mixers, with food trucks, a bartender, and tables spread out to maintain social distance.Craig Morris, the chief executive for community tennis at the U.S.T.A., said the organization is setting aside several million for grants to public tennis facilities to help equip them with knowledgeable tennis directors.Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesOffering “more flavors” can sustain growth.Leaders in both sports see lessons learned from the surge in participation during the pandemic that can widen the pool of potential devotees.Morris said the U.S.T.A. also remains in close contact with the leaders of U.S.A. Pickle Ball, the national governing body for the fast growing racket sport, figuring that active people who like one racket sport may want to play another. “It’s not us vs. them,” he said.Tim Schantz, the president and chief executive of Troon, a golf management company that serves more than 600 golf courses worldwide, said his course operators have come to understand that they must offer “more flavors of golf,” and let the consumer choose. Schantz mentioned the recent proliferation of par-3 courses or six-hole and nine-hole facilities as well as golf clubs with massive putting complexes for the kind of informal play that can be done with a cool drink in one hand.“It’s another way to get golf into people’s routine and that’s how you really increase retention,” Joe Beditz, the National Golf Foundation president and C.E.O., said.Hainline believes there is an ongoing transformation taking place in golf.“I talk to chief executives of large golf management companies regularly,” Hainline said, “and there is an excitement in their voices that I don’t normally hear at this time of year.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When the Coronavirus Shut Down Sports

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      This article is by Alan Blinder and Joe Drape. Additional reporting by Gillian R. Brassil, Karen Crouse, Kevin Draper, Andrew Keh, Jeré Longman, Juliet Macur, Carol Schram, Ben Shpigel, Marc Stein and David Waldstein. Illustrations by Madison Ketcham. Produced by Michael Beswetherick and Jonathan Ellis.

      This article is by

      Alan Blinder

      Joe Drape

      Gillian R. Brassil

      Karen Crouse

      Kevin Draper

      Andrew Keh

      Jeré Longman

      Juliet Macur

      Carol Schram

      Ben Shpigel

      Marc Stein

      David Waldstein

      Madison Ketcham

      Michael Beswetherick

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      Can Roger Federer Be Roger Federer Again?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCan Roger Federer Be Roger Federer Again?He has 20 Grand Slam titles, but he is 39 and has not played competitively in more than a year. That changes this week in Qatar.When Roger Federer returned from a lengthy layoff in 2017 at age 35, he won the Australian Open right away. His current comeback is expected to be more about regaining his health than winning titles.Credit…AFPMarch 7, 2021, 3:12 p.m. ETIt is one of the great unknowns in tennis, but Roger Federer is finally back to help change that.This week — after more than a year away from the game — Federer will play his first competitive match since injuring his right knee and undergoing two operations in 2020.But will he ever again be the Roger Federer who defined his sport for so many years and won 20 Grand Slam singles titles, eight of them at Wimbledon? Will he still be the ethereal shotmaker, the merciless assassin disguised as the ultimate tennis gentleman, the master of playing tennis without seeming to break a sweat?Because of his history, no one has dared to answer those questions in the negative, not since he made it clear he would play competitively again in 2021.Federer, 39, will take the court this week in Doha at the Qatar Open and begin a phase of his career that he has never truly experienced: where every surprising loss — and there will be surprising losses — will generate questions about whether he should just call it a career.Federer asked for patience at a news conference on Sunday. He is still building, trying to become stronger, better, fitter, faster, with the goal of being at 100 percent by Wimbledon, which is set to begin on June 28.“Everything until then, it’s like let’s see how it goes,” he told dozens of journalists during one of those virtual news conferences that the world has become used to in the past year while he has been nursing his injuries. “Everything starts with the grass.”The tennis world may not share his patience. His every move will be picked apart for hints of whether he can make this comeback something other than a valedictory. In a sense, Federer is a victim of his success. In 2016, a torn meniscus in his left knee and a tweaked back sidelined him for six months. When he returned, at 35, in 2017, there was chatter he had passed his sell-by date.But the Federer who showed up after that layoff had new power and aggression, especially on his backhand, long a weakness that his rival Rafael Nadal took advantage of with his left-handed crosscourt forehands. Federer pushed closer to the baseline during points, pressuring opponents and attacking the net when he saw opportunities to end points quickly.He won the 2017 Australian Open in the first month of his comeback, finishing it by coming back from 3-1 down to Nadal in the fifth set to win, 6-3, in a remarkable display of grit and shotmaking under pressure. Then, in July 2017, he captured his eighth Wimbledon title without losing a set.“I’ve always been a guy who can play very little and play very well,” Federer said.After that comeback, the Federer legend grew even larger, especially among his staunchest competitors.“Roger makes you feel like you’re really bad at tennis,” Nick Kyrgios, an Australian, said of Federer last month at the Australian Open. “He walks around, he flicks his head, and I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m doing out here.”But will he be able to do that once more?Paul Annacone, who coached Federer to a Wimbledon title a decade ago as the player struggled to keep up with Nadal and a rising Novak Djokovic, said he had no doubt that Federer would again have great moments, even stretches of brilliance. The question is, will he be able to sustain them? Will he be able to maintain a high level of play through five matches of a regular tour event or seven matches at a Grand Slam tournament?Federer, pictured in 2019, has won men’s singles at Wimbledon eight times, the last time in 2017.Credit…Andrew Couldridge/ReutersAll pro tennis players can reach a sublime level for stretches, but over the course of a match or a tournament, players are generally only as good as their average level of play. So how good will Federer’s average be?“Historically, it’s been the older you are, the more challenging it is to get back what you have given up, in terms of time,” Annacone said in an interview last week. “But with the great players, you make predictions at your peril.”Annacone has a unique window into Federer’s moment. He also coached Pete Sampras in his twilight in the early 2000s, when Sampras’s ranking was sinking and every loss brought a new round of questions about retiring. Sampras won the 2002 U.S. Open, his 14th Grand Slam title but first in two years, and never played another match.The journey to that title, with those constant questions, was at times a brutal experience, one that Annacone said could sow doubt in the mind of even a great player like Federer.Andy Murray, a three-time Grand Slam event winner and former world No. 1, is going through it now as he tries to recapture his form after hip resurfacing. Murray, ranked No. 123, voiced his frustration last week after a top-tier win at the tournament in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.“I feel like I’m playing for my career now each time I step on the court, which is a motivation in some ways,” Murray said at a news conference after he beat Robin Haase of the Netherlands in three sets. “But it also adds a bit of extra stress.”How Federer manages that stress will go a long way toward determining whether this comeback is a farewell tour or a viable attempt to compete for the biggest championships, especially Wimbledon, where Federer has been at his best because he is so good on grass. He will play in Doha this week, and then perhaps in Dubai, but he has not committed to the spring clay-court season, which concludes with the French Open.Early on, it’s a good bet that he is going to make plenty of uncharacteristic errors. He will shank the occasional forehand, rim some backhands and struggle to nail his targets on his serve or when he fires at a sideline.“Expectations are really low, but I hope I can surprise myself,” Federer said.For him, this comeback was more about regaining his health than winning titles. Of course, he had conversations during the past year about whether embarking on this battle to recapture his old self at 39 was a fool’s errand. But, as he saw it, he needed a healthy knee anyway, so he could ski with his four children, cycle in the Alps and play basketball with his friends.And if he could do those things, then why not try to use that healthy knee to battle again on the tennis court against the best players at the biggest events.“The knee is going to dictate how long I can keep doing this,” he said. “I know it is more on the rare side for an almost-40-year-old to come back.”Like everyone else, he said, he is going to see what comes of the next five or six months. Then, in the fall, if he has played a significant number of matches, he will re-evaluate what comes next. For now, though, he is healthy and eager to take the court. He knows the initial results will not be his best, he said, but when he rises each morning he is full of hope.“I don’t feel like a broken man,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open Offered Unexpected Lessons About Pandemic Sports

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAustralian Open Offered Unexpected Lessons About Pandemic SportsThe goal was to hold a major international sports event without putting public health at risk. Mission accomplished, but pulling it off presented major, unforeseen challenges and many sleepless nights.Naomi Osaka won the women’s singles final, claiming her fourth Grand Slam championship.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Updated 8:06 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The leaders of the Australian Open wanted their intricate safety strategy to teach the sports world important lessons for the coronavirus pandemic: How to hold a major event with big crowds without worsening the dangers to public health.It pulled off its event — a collection of tennis tournaments played over three weeks in a major city of a country that has sacrificed much to minimize infections and deaths. But as the virus inevitably made its presence felt both directly and indirectly, the Australian Open experienced unforeseen headaches and complications that became warnings for the next group that tries to pull off a major international sporting event (hello, Tokyo Olympics).Surprise setbacks are inevitable, and don’t expect to make many friends.As the Australian Open closed Sunday night with Novak Djokovic winning his ninth men’s singles title here, it was clear that the difficulties could last for months or perhaps even years.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said local organizers of the Tokyo Games reached out to him for advice about staging the Olympics, which are scheduled to begin in July. “I just told them, ‘Good luck,’” he said.Tennis Australia officials regularly briefed reporters on coronavirus protocols.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesProblems started even before participants traveled internationally, as tournament organizers had to scramble to make sure they could get to Australia following late cancellations of charter flights. Once the players were in Australia, strict quarantine restrictions got even tighter for roughly 25 percent of the athletes for two weeks. Then there was an unexpected day of isolation and emergency testing just before the start of the marquee event. And a statewide lockdown, prompted by infections that were not related to the tournament, banished fans from Melbourne Park for five days, a move that cost organizers dearly in ticket revenue.Amid the changing dynamics, those involved with the tournament had the persistent worry that if even a few players tested positive the event would have to shut down. That was the ante backing the deal organizers made with government officials to stage the tournament without endangering the public, a prospect that meant strict protecting against a reintroduction of the virus to the Melbourne region, which had emerged from a 111-day lockdown last year and was living life much as it had before the pandemic.Jessica Pegula, who made the women’s singles quarterfinals and whose family owns the Buffalo Bills of the N.F.L. and the Buffalo Sabres of the N.H.L., said the challenge and complexity for those organizing and competing in worldwide events is far more complicated than for domestic leagues and the N.H.L., which has teams in Canada and the United States.Jessica Pegula during her quarterfinal match against Jennifer Brady.Credit…Daniel Pockett/Getty Images“It’s so tough with an international sport having to travel,” Pegula said. “Do all the logistics of going to another bubble, figuring out I got to get tested three days before, I got to get my results, make sure I get tested when I land.”Organizers were somewhat ready to deal with some developments, like a shift to empty stadiums in the middle of the tournament. But other difficulties they were not prepared for at all.“It’s been relentless,” a sleep-deprived Tiley said of the daily problems as he watched the women’s semifinals last week in a bunker beneath Rod Laver Arena. “A roller coaster from the start.”Government officials imposed a hard lockdown for 72 players who were aboard charter flights that carried 10 passengers who tested positive after arriving in Australia. The new restrictions meant those athletes, even if they continually tested negative for the virus, could not leave their hotel rooms at all for 14 days before the first tuneup tournaments before the Open. Some of those rooms had windows that could not be opened, which became a magnified irritation when some of the players were not allowed to leave for any reason.Organizers had also set aside 11 exercise bicycles in case some players were isolated, but after getting more bikes for the players who couldn’t leave their rooms, they got similar requests from the rest of the field since their training was limited to two hours on the court and 90 minutes in the gym each day. So, Tiley needed several hundred bicycles, plus yoga mats, kettlebells and medicine balls.Only one player tested positive, Paula Badosa of Spain, and organizers could not do much for her beyond transfer her to a medical hotel and keep her there for 10 days with no exercise equipment.Once the quarantines ended and the warm-up tournaments began, a security worker in the main hotel for players tested positive. Health officials ordered more than 500 people who were staying there, including many players, to be tested and remain in their rooms for the day. The start of the Australian Open was five days away, and no one knew what another positive result might prompt. Fortunately there were none.But five days into the championship, a small outbreak in the Melbourne region caused health officials to send the entire state of Victoria into a five-day snap lockdown. They allowed the tournament to continue, but without crowds.Tiley said that cost Tennis Australia as much as $25 million in ticket revenue, money that it desperately needed because crowds were already limited to 50 percent of capacity and the tournament has so many extra expenses this year.Each day without crowds, more tarps with the Australian Open logo appeared on the seats in Rod Laver Arena. Workers installed them as soon as manufacturers could deliver them to make the tournament look better on television.An empty Rod Laver Arena on Day 6 of the tournament following a hard lockdown of Victoria to curb a coronavirus outbreak.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThen came the injuries to several top players, especially on the men’s side — Djokovic and Alexander Zverev played their quarterfinal match with tape on their abdomens. Grigor Dimitrov’s back seized during his quarterfinal. Matteo Berrettini of Italy, the No. 9 seed, could not take the court for his fourth round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece. Some players blamed injuries on the quarantine and limited training.“I want to understand what continuation of the season post-Australia is going to look like, because this is definitely not good for the players in terms of their well-being,” Djokovic said.The problem is that what is good for athletes, who thrive on routine and training and normalcy, may not be good for anyone else, and finding a balance that will satisfy everyone will be a major challenge until Covid -19 in no longer the menace it has become.An organization with a seemingly airtight plan to keep everyone safe had to scramble to make it to the finish line. Tiley said it was worth it, because no one can say with certainty that all will be well a year from now. The challenges and the need to adjust on the fly will be with everyone in sports for a while yet.“You can either choose to play and go through whatever you have to go through, or you stay home and practice and that’s it,” Dimitrov said in a philosophical moment. “We all know what is going on in the world, we all know what is going on in every single country. It’s tough. It’s very uncomfortable. It makes life difficult for so many, not only for us as athletes but people around the world.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More