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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

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      Medvedev’s Australian Open Loss Shows the Men’s Tennis Gulf Is Still Strong

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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 storyMedvedev’s Australian Open Loss Shows the Men’s Tennis Gulf Is Still StrongThe players at the top, starting with Novak Djokovic, have yet to be significantly challenged by the new generation.Daniil Medvedev, right, watches as Novak Djokovic accepts an 18th Grand Slam singles trophy, his ninth at the Australian Open.Credit…Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesFeb. 21, 2021, 10:56 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — With a lone tear streaking his right cheek, Daniil Medvedev accepted the runner-up trophy after the Australian Open men’s final on Sunday night. He stepped to the microphone and told an engaging story about nervously hitting with Novak Djokovic for the first time as a young player, when Djokovic was the men’s world No. 1 and Medvedev was on his way to a year-ending ranking of No. 655.It wasn’t a stretch for the Rod Laver Arena audience of roughly 7,000 to visualize the picture that Medvedev, 25, was painting of an overmatched skinny player being schooled by the multiple major winner. What Medvedev was describing sounded strikingly similar to what the fans had just witnessed in Djokovic’s 7-5, 6-2, 6-2 victory against Medvedev in their first meeting in a Grand Slam final.Medvedev, who will ascend to a career-high No. 3 in the new rankings, looked less like a player riding a 20-matching winning streak — snapped by Djokovic — than an outclassed hitting partner. Djokovic returned serves that had gone for aces in Medvedev’s previous matches and he hurried and harried Medvedev into 30 unforced errors against 24 winners, only three of which came off his backhand, which Medvedev usually wields like a hammer to nail points.Djokovic’s elastic arms, which allowed him to stretch for serves that others would just watch fall for aces, increasingly unnerved Medvedev, who had averaged 3.7 aces a set in his first six matches. Against Djokovic, he produced six total. Medvedev’s opening service game set the tone for the match; he put all of his first serves in play and was broken.“It’s the kind of match I won throughout this tournament that he won today,” said Medvedev, who closed out his opponents in straight sets in five of the first six rounds. “Probably he made his game that good today that I couldn’t stay at my best level.”Medvedev had 30 unforced errors against Djokovic.Credit…Mackenzie Sweetnam/Getty ImagesMedvedev lost to Rafael Nadal, who is tied with Roger Federer for the career record of 20 Grand Slam singles titles, in five sets in the U.S. Open final in 2019. And now he has become Djokovic’s latest victim in his run of 18 Grand Slam singles titles — including nine at Melbourne Park.At Medvedev’s age, Djokovic had six Grand Slam singles titles and had lost in the finals of two others, to Nadal and Federer. He had reached No. 1.How deep can the sport be if the only player other than the Big Three in men’s tennis — made up of Djokovic, Federer and Nadal — to hold the No. 2 spot since the summer of 2005 is the 33-year-old Andy Murray?“Of course when you’re out there, you want to beat them,” Medvedev said. “You don’t care that it’s the Big Three or the Big 100. But that’s why they have so many Slams. They’re just really good.”He added: “I’m not shy to say this. It’s just the truth.”Djokovic, 33, described the next generation as “hungry.” It is led by Medvedev, Dominic Thiem, 27, and Stefanos Tsitsipas, 22, who defeated Nadal in the quarterfinals. But only Thiem, the reigning U.S. Open champion who has graced three other major finals, has broken through in the biggest events, and his U.S. Open title came in a tournament that Nadal and Federer did not enter and that Djokovic exited through a disqualification rather than a defeat. What is keeping this generation from feeding its appetite at the Grand Slam banquet?“They have definitely the quality to reach the heights of major tournament trophies,” Djokovic said.He added: “But Roger, Rafa, myself are still there for a reason. We don’t want to hand it to them, and we don’t want to allow them to win Slams. I think that’s something that is very clear. Whether you communicate that message or not, we are definitely sending that vibe out there.”Medvedev’s body language grew increasingly negative as the 1-hour, 53-minute final wore on. He muttered to himself. He looked imploringly at his coach. He smashed a racket. He hurried shots and points. By the third set, Djokovic was everywhere on the court and inside Medvedev’s head.“Next time if I play Novak here in the final, I for sure am going to do some things on the court, maybe off the court also, differently, because at least I would have this experience,” Medvedev said, adding, “So I’ll try to do something better. Doesn’t mean that I will succeed, but that’s the life of a tennis player.”The life in the sport that Medvedev has carved out for himself seemed more distant than a speck on the Mediterranean Sea horizon the day he was introduced to Djokovic in Monaco and began hitting with him.Djokovic arrived late for their first session. And that, Medvedev said, remains the worst thing he can say about him.“He was super nice to me,” Medvedev said. “I was really shy. I was just playing some balls, trying not to miss, for sure really stressed.”From then to now, tennis seems, much like the flat-footed Medvedev on Sunday, several steps behind the players on top.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Novak Djokovic Wins Australian Open Final Over Daniil Medvedev

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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 storyNovak Djokovic Wins Third Straight Australian Open TitleThe victory for the top-ranked Djokovic, in three sets over the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, gave him his 18th career Grand Slam title.Novak Djokovic of Serbia after his victory in the Australian Open men’s singles final against Daniil Medvedev of Russia.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 21, 2021Updated 9:26 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — They come nearly every year now, this new crop of challengers in men’s tennis who so desperately want to begin their time in the sun, to win the championships that everyone in the game values most and beat the three players considered the best to ever play on the biggest stage.And each year, they fall short, making the task seem even more impossible.This is how it went Sunday night at Melbourne Park, where Novak Djokovic did what he always does. Djokovic, the veteran from Serbia ranked No. 1 in the world, both defeated and discouraged the fourth-ranked Daniil Medvedev of Russia, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2, in the Australian Open men’s singles final.The victory gave Djokovic his ninth Australian Open singles championship, a tournament record on the men’s side, and the 18th Grand Slam title of his career. Djokovic has made nine Australian Open finals and won each time, including in the last three years.With this Grand Slam championship, Djokovic is now just two behind Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal in the race to achieve the most major men’s singles titles in a career. Djokovic, 33, is a year younger than Nadal and six years younger than Federer, who will soon begin his comeback from two surgeries on his right knee, though it remains to be seen whether he will be a championship contender or embarking on a farewell tour.Grand Slam titles are the first measuring stick in any discussion of who is the greatest player of the modern and professional era of tennis, also known as the Open era, which began in 1968.The Big Three of men’s tennis, as they are known, have 58 now. Players under 30 years old have just one. The younger ones, like Medvedev, 25, who moments after the loss called Djokovic and his cohorts “cyborgs of tennis,” are all too familiar with the math.“When they are in the zone they are just better tennis players,” Medvedev said.Djokovic was in the zone Sunday night, playing what his coach, Goran Ivanisevic, called “a masterpiece.”It was a victory Djokovic needed badly, Ivanisevic said, after he was disqualified from the United States Open in September for swatting a ball that hit a line judge, and the drubbing Nadal gave him in the French Open final in October.“I have to agree with my coach,” Djokovic said of Ivanisevic’s assessment of the past few months. “I wanted to start this year in the best possible fashion.”His prospects did not look promising.Shortly after arriving in Australia, Djokovic became a public enemy when he requested special treatment for 72 players put on 14-day hard quarantines because 10 people on three chartered flights those players took to Australia tested positive for coronavirus upon arrival.Then came an injured abdominal muscle — doctors, he said, have told him it is torn — that nearly forced Djokovic out of the tournament. Yet he survived a five set test in the third round and a four-set challenge with two tiebreakers in the quarterfinals.He managed the abdominal injury better than he expected, then vanquished the hottest player in tennis. Medvedev had a 20-match winning streak heading into Sunday night.Attempting to place a little more pressure on his challenger, Djokovic called Medvedev “the man to beat” in the tournament. In reality though, few doubted Djokovic’s edge. He entered the match as the two-time reigning champion and with a well-earned aura of invincibility at Rod Laver Arena in the late rounds.Djokovic’s 18 Grand Slam singles titles place him two behind Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer’s career record in men’s tennis. Djokovic is the youngest of the three.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesRod Laver Arena sits a few hundred yards from the Yarra River, and just a few miles from Port Phillip Bay. When evening comes and the lights turn on, gulls flock to the rafters and squawk through the night. With Djokovic playing so many of his matches at night here, it becomes difficult not to imagine those birds as his personal vultures, bearing witness as he slays his latest victim.The reasons for Djokovic’s dominance here are both physical and psychological. The final always takes place at night. Those night matches that the birds come for, along with legions of Serbs who scream the “Olé, olé, olé, olé,” chant when their favorite son most needs it, are often played in cooler temperatures than those that take place during the warm, dry days of the Australian summer. Heat has always tended to melt Djokovic. A cool evening, like the one on which he met Medvedev, is his favorite playing partner.Also, players say the shift in the weather completely changes the conditions of the court. Balls stop popping off the ground, keeping so many of Djokovic’s hard, flat groundstrokes below his opponent’s knees and out of their strike zones. What looks like a simple backhand is anything but, especially when the player hitting the original shot has never lost the ultimate match here, and too often the opponent’s counter ends up wide, long or in the middle of the net.Medvedev made 67 errors, 30 of them unforced, though against Djokovic the difference between a forced error and an unforced one is negligible. Djokovic served just three aces, but he won 73 percent of the points on his first serve and 58 percent on his second serve, numbers that usually translate to a dominant night.Djokovic won seven of 11 break points and 16 of the 18 points when he came to the net. He outsmarted a player considered to be among the smartest and most creative in the game by keeping Medvedev guessing and setting the kinds of traps Medvedev has been known to lay for his opponents, hitting three shots to set up the winner on the fourth.Neither Djokovic, Federer nor Nadal have been beaten in a final to a player currently younger than 30.Dominic Thiem of Austria came close, outplaying Djokovic for long stretches in last year’s Australian Open final before Djokovic prevailed in five sets. That match appeared to hint at a shrinking gap between the veterans and the young players trying to nip at their heels.But as Djokovic lifted the trophy once more in Melbourne, he made it clear that he had no intention of giving up ownership of the crown he claims as his own and the court he calls his second backyard anytime soon.Djokovic said it was a matter of time before Medvedev and his peers started winning Grand Slams, but at the moment he is in a race against history and his two biggest rivals. It drives him, and there is no thought of slowing down.“I don’t feel like I am older or tired or anything like that,” he said.Daniil Medvedev broke his racket in frustration during the second set.Credit…Brandon Malone/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNor does he look it.Before Sunday’s match, Lleyton Hewitt, a former world No. 1 and a two-time Grand Slam champion in the 2000s, said Medvedev was going to need to create a moment to make himself believe that he could beat Djokovic on this night, on this court, like when Hewitt won the first-set tiebreaker against Pete Sampras in his first triumph at a Grand Slam final.The first test came early for Medvedev, after Djokovic broke him in his first service game and cruised to a 3-0 lead. But a game later, Medvedev outclassed Djokovic on a 28-shot rally that had both players sliding from sideline to sideline to get his first chance to break Djokovic’s serve. Minutes later it was 3-3. Game on.Five games later the set appeared headed for a tiebreaker, but the moment of truth for Medvedev arrived sooner. Serving at 5-6 and down a point, he sent a forehand wide with Djokovic pushing to the net, and caught a bad break as what could have been the winning shot on the next point ticked the top of the net cord and gave Djokovic a sitter for an easy passing shot.Just like that, triple set point. Big serves saved the first two, but then Medvedev sent a forehand into the net. The big hill that no one in Medvedev’s generation has been able to summit suddenly seemed that much higher.After prevailing in that first set, Djokovic shifted from a steady run into a sprint. He broke Medvedev three times in the second set and had him breaking one racket, swatting the ground with its replacement and shrugging his shoulders at his coach, as if to say there was nothing he could do.“Even if I would have done better, it doesn’t mean that the score would be different,” he said.On match point, Djokovic rose for a lob, stretched and whipped one last winner past Medvedev. He collapsed in celebration on the court then rose quickly, pumping his arms at his box and the crowd. By March, he will have spent more weeks holding the No. 1 ranking than any other man. The reign goes on, for Djokovic and for the Big Three.“Roger and Rafa inspire me,” Djokovic said as he sat next to the winner’s trophy. “That is something I have said before. I will say it again. I think as long as they go, I’ll go.”And then he just might go some more.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Naomi Osaka Beats Jennifer Brady to Win Australian Open

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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 storyNaomi Osaka Beats Jennifer Brady at Australian Open for Her 4th Grand Slam TitleOsaka, 23, has won every Grand Slam final she has reached.Naomi Osaka has a streak of 21 match victories.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021Updated 10:08 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The most uncomfortable moment for Naomi Osaka on Saturday night was not when she faced a key break point in the first set of her Australian Open women’s singles final against Jennifer Brady. Nor was it when she was serving for the match in the second.It came two hours after she closed out her 6-4, 6-3 victory at Rod Laver Arena. At the start of her news conference, Craig Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, handed Osaka a flute of champagne and proposed a toast to her second Australian Open crown and fourth Grand Slam title.Osaka, 23, brought the glass to her lips and tentatively took a sip, trying unsuccessfully to keep her expression neutral. She has never developed a taste for alcohol, she had explained earlier in the tournament, because she was told as a child that it was bad for her.“Like it’s ruining your body or your liver,” she said. “I just want to give myself an advantage for as long as I can.”Osaka, the pride of Japan who spent much of her childhood in Florida, would appear to have a leg up on the rest of her competition in an increasingly deep women’s game. She is 4 for 4 in Grand Slam finals, a feat achieved in the Open era only by Monica Seles on her way to nine total championships and Roger Federer on his way to 20.“That’s very amazing company,” said Osaka, who held her childhood idol, the 23-time Grand Slam champion Serena Williams, to the same number of games, seven, mustered by Brady, a 25-year-old in her first major final.She added, “You can only just keeping going down your own path.”Osaka, who won her second United States Open title this past September, is halfway to a Naomi Slam. She is unbeaten in her past 21 matches. Her most recent loss in an individual competition came in the third round of this tournament last year when she was upset by the United States teenager Coco Gauff, a defeat that weighed on Osaka’s mind before she took the court against Brady who was the decided underdog like Gauff had been.“I have been in the position that she is in to go into the first Slam,” Osaka said, referring to Brady. “Of course I know the nerves that come with that. But then I was thinking on the other side, for me, I wonder if I’m expected to do better because I have been in Slam finals before. So there was actually a lot of nerves with that.”Both players looked nervous in the early going, missing first serves and racking up roughly two unforced errors for every winner. With Osaka serving at 4-4 in the first set, Brady chipped away at Osaka’s fortress until she had opened a sliver of daylight at 30-40.On break point, Osaka missed her first serve, directed a second attempt at Brady’s body and then took the point with a forehand winner, one of four she’d record in the match. She won the next two points to seal the opening shut.Brady took a 40-15 lead on her serve in the next game, only to be reeled in by Osaka, who broke her when Brady netted a short forehand — an error, she bemoaned, “that happens maybe one in ten times or hopefully less.”For Osaka, the uncharacteristic miss telegraphed Brady’s unease.“My mind just began thinking that she was either really nervous or really pressured and I should capitalize on that by trying to win as many games as I could, pace-wise,” Osaka said. “Because I feel like once a person loses the first set doubts start to creep in, so that’s when you really should put your foot on the gas.”Nobody in the game right now is a better pacesetter than Osaka, who improved to 45-1 in Grand Slam matches when she wins the first set. She raced to a 4-0 lead in the second, needing 36 minutes to close out the match.“She played really well when she had to,” Brady conceded. “She hit good shots when she needed them.”Osaka, who also won the 2019 Australian Open, called it a privilege to be able to play a major tournament given the coronavirus pandemic. “I didn’t play my last Grand Slam with fans, so just to have this energy it really means a lot,” she said, referring to her three-set victory over Victoria Azarenka in New York.Brady, a 25-year-old American, lost to Osaka in a hard-fought semifinal at the U.S. Open. A member of U.C.L.A.’s 2014 national championship team, Brady became the first woman with collegiate experience in this tournament’s final since 1983. She was trying to become the first to win the title since Barbara Jordan of Stanford did so in 1979.Brady, who was outside the top 50 at the start of 2020, entered the tournament ranked 24th in the world, and after her run at Melbourne Park, she will vault to No. 13.Osaka is the first woman since Monica Seles in 1990 and 1991 to win all four of her first Grand Slam finals.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersThe third-ranked Osaka will move to No. 2, behind the Australian Ashleigh Barty, who fell in the quarterfinals. Osaka, who spent long stretches of 2019 at No. 1, said she is not fixated on regaining the top spot.“I feel like I’m at a really good place right now,” Osaka said. “I just want to play every match as hard as I can. If it comes to the point were I’m able to be No. 1 again, I’ll embrace it, but I’m not really chasing it.”Osaka’s path to the final in Melbourne included a close call with defeat in the fourth round, where she faced Garbiñe Muguruza and staved off two match points in a 6-4, 4-6, 7-5 victory. She dropped just 18 games in her final three matches.Among active players, only two women have more Grand Slam titles than Osaka: Williams and her sister Venus, with seven. Osaka’s championships have all come on hardcourts, starting with her victory at the 2018 U.S. Open, where she beat Serena Williams in straight sets in the final. Osaka said the one of her goals this season is to expand her success to other surfaces, starting with clay since the French Open is the next scheduled Grand Slam.“I don’t expect to win all my matches this year,” Osaka said, adding, “I don’t think it’s possible. Tennis players, we go through ups and downs. But for me, I only hope that my ups and downs are less drastic this year.”Osaka’s long-term objective, she said, is to last long enough in tennis to someday face an opponent whom she inspired to take up the sport.“For me, that’s the coolest thing that could ever happen to me,” she said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open 2021: In Defeat, Jennifer Brady Proves She Belongs

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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 2021: In Defeat, Jennifer Brady Proves She BelongsAppearing in her first Grand Slam final, the 25-year-old American started slow against Naomi Osaka, but rallied to go down fighting.Jennifer Brady went toe to toe with Naomi Osaka in the first set before falling behind in the Australian Open final.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 20, 2021Updated 7:16 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — She was playing with house money, a No. 22 seed who spent 15 days confined to a hotel room last month, a former U.C.L.A. Bruin who went to college because she did not have the head for professional tennis at 18 years old and was in need of a backup plan.The old Jennifer Brady was not the one who took the court Saturday night. This Brady approached this match as though she deserved to be here, like she belonged and did not need a participation medal for making it to her first Grand Slam final. Brady took the court believing she could go toe-to-toe with Naomi Osaka, the three-time (make that four-time) Grand Slam champion and the best player in the world right now.Brady had done just that in the semifinals at the United States Open in September, pushing Osaka to three sets and forcing her to come up with everything she had. This was the second Grand Slam in six months where Brady was playing in the final three matches.Brady, 25, predicted she would be nervous at the start of the match, and she was, because she was trying to make something big happen and not just play a supporting role in Osaka’s coronation. She fiddled with her skirt as it blew in the evening breeze. She struggled to find a rhythm while serving. She would land just 48 percent of her first serves.But down 3-1 in the first set, she broke Osaka then knotted the score at 3-3. At four games each, she had Osaka on the ropes on her serve. In one point, she made a lunging service return, then chased down a drop shot from Osaka to loft the perfect lob. She pumped her arm to the crowd, egging them on to raise the volume. They obliged.When Osaka prevailed in that game and Brady netted a forehand from close range to give Osaka the first set, she whacked a ball toward the back wall.“Unfortunate,” she said of that easy ball that somehow ended up in the middle of the net. “Not the way I wanted it to go.”She had been right there, and then she wasn’t. Then, in a flash, she was in a 4-0 hole in the second set.This is what Osaka does. The players who lose to her usually lose for the same reason.Osaka plays so many good shots in the toughest moments that her opponents feel a constant need to hit perfect shot after perfect shot, an impossible task against a player who gives away so little. Serena Williams, the winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles, fell this way in straight sets Thursday, pounding so many forehands into the net. At this point there probably is not one thing Brady does on a tennis court better than Osaka. She is not alone.Down a set and two games away from losing the match, Brady easily could have packed it in. Staring across the net at Osaka, a player who had awed Brady in their youth when they played junior tournaments together in Florida, the underdog could have been forgiven for going away.If there is one thing the tennis world knows now that it did not know six months ago, it is that Brady does not go away. That might have appeared more likely when she went to U.C.L.A., or when she slumped following an early run to the fourth round here and at the U.S. Open in 2017.But she hooked on with a new coach, Michael Geserer, in early 2019, someone she had never met before, and went to work.“Every time she goes on the court, she leaves everything on the court,” Geserer said.So that is what she did near the end. She broke Osaka to get to 4-1, looked at Geserer with a pumped first and made sure he got the message: Still here. After the changeover, she high-stepped to the baseline, ready to fight, and she did, before ultimately falling 6-4, 6-3.On the WTA Tour, Brady is known as one of the hardest workers. That she outlasted all but one other player after spending 15 days in a hotel room only happened because she was working off a base of fitness she had been building since early November, when she began her preparations for this tournament, far earlier than most players.“I belong at this level,” Brady said when asked what she had learned from this experience. “Winning a Grand Slam is totally achievable for me. It is within reach.” There is work to do to improve her skills, she said, so that when she gets to these big moments she does not feel pressure to play perfectly but just well enough to win.Osaka said that after their battle at the U.S. Open, she told her team that Brady was “going to be a problem.”That is one way of looking at it. The other is that Brady has established herself as an extremely tough out in big tournaments, especially on hardcourts, even if she was not nearly as tough as she wanted to be Saturday night. But make no mistake, she has no intention of going away.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open 2021: Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev Meet for the Title

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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 2021: Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev Meet for the TitleDjokovic, aiming for his ninth title in the tournament, should face a strong challenge from Medvedev.Novak Djokovic in his semifinal victory over Aslan Karatsev.Credit…Dave Hunt/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 20, 2021, 7:08 a.m. ETHow to watch: The match is at 3:30 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday on ESPN, ESPN Deportes and ESPN+. There will be encore showings at 8 a.m. and 11 p.m. on ESPN2.The men’s singles final that will wrap up this year’s Australian Open is a battle between the standard-bearer Novak Djokovic and the worthiest challenger the field could have mustered, the surging Daniil Medvedev. Here’s what to watch for as the two face off:Medvedev is on a roll.Medvedev, 25, has put together a remarkable run in the past few months, reeling off a 20-match win streak that includes titles at the Paris Masters, the ATP Finals in London, and the ATP Cup in Melbourne. Twelve of those 20 wins came against top-10 opponents. He has beaten eight of the nine other players in the top 10; only Roger Federer, who has been out of competition for more than a year with knee problems, avoided a loss to Medvedev. Daniil Medvedev in his semifinal victory over Stefanos Tsitsipas.Credit…Patrick Hamilton/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“For the confidence, when you beat everybody it’s just great, because I think people start maybe to be a little bit scared about you,” Medvedev said Friday after thrashing Stefanos Tsitsipas in the semifinals in Melbourne. “At the same time, sometimes there are going to be some that are going to want to beat you even more. It’s a tricky situation, but I’m happy I managed to be on top in all those 20 matches.”Djokovic is in his happy place.Though his name is not quite synonymous with this tournament in the way that Rafael Nadal’s has become with the French Open, Djokovic, 33, is the player of the century (so far) at the Australian Open. It was where he won his first Grand Slam title, in 2008, when he was only 20.Like Nadal in Paris, Djokovic is undefeated in finals in Melbourne, with an 8-0 record. If he wins on Sunday, Djokovic would sit alone in second place, behind Nadal and his 13 French Open titles, on the list of men’s singles championships won at a particular Grand Slam event. Djokovic is currently tied with Federer, who has eight Wimbledon singles championships.Djokovic’s dominance in Melbourne is not just about the surface: He has won only three titles at the United States Open, which is played on fairly similar hardcourts. Serbian fans supporting Djokovic in the semifinals.Credit…Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesIn Melbourne, though, Djokovic gets strong support from a substantial local contingent of Serbian expatriates, whereas the crowds at the U.S. Open in New York often root against him.Medvedev has shown he can handle Djokovic.These days, Medvedev isn’t likely to be intimidated by anyone in tennis, and he has particular reasons to feel comfortable against Djokovic.Medvedev has won three of his seven previous meetings against Djokovic, including a semifinal at the Cincinnati Masters in 2019 on a fast hardcourt that played similarly to the courts in Melbourne this year.In the fourth round of the 2019 Australian Open, he lost to Djokovic, who received extra treatment because of all the exertion and contortion required to beat Medvedev.“It was hard to go through him,” Djokovic said that night. “It was kind of a cat-and-mouse game for most of the match — that’s why it was so lengthy. We had rallies of 40, 45 exchanges. That’s why I think it was physically exhausting, because of the fact that we didn’t really allow each other to think that we can make a lot of unforced errors and give away points.”In the third round this year at the Open, Djokovic sustained an abdominal injury in his match against Taylor Fritz. Djokovic initially spoke pessimistically about his chances of continuing in the tournament, but he has seemed less affected by the injury in each subsequent match, even as his right side remains heavily taped under his shirt.The rankings could be shaken up.To find the last final in which a male player claimed his first Grand Slam title against an older finalist who had already won one, you need to go back all the way to the 2009 United States Open, where Juan Martín del Potro beat Roger Federer. When Dominic Thiem won his first Grand Slam title at last year’s U.S. Open, he did it almost literally by default, after Djokovic had been disqualified from the tournament in the round of 16 when he swatted a stray ball in frustration and hit a lineswoman in the throat.A Medvedev victory, however, could represent a genuine shift. If he defeats Djokovic, he will rise to the No. 2 spot in the world rankings. It would be the first time since Lleyton Hewitt reached No. 2 in July 2005 that anyone but Djokovic, Nadal, Federer or Andy Murray was ranked in the top two.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More