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      The Tennis ‘Pilgrimage’ to the Wimbledon Queue

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      Thousands are waiting, even camping out, in rainy England for a chance to see one Wimbledon match. For some, it is an annual ritual, a pilgrimage for the love of tennis.Tom O’Neill and Roz McArdle stood in Wimbledon’s famous ticketing queue with barely a hope of getting inside the grounds. It was 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, there were 4,000 people ahead of them, and they were told by a steward that it was “enormously unlikely” they would get inside.But they, and hundreds of others, clinging to the tiniest flicker of hope that they might get to see at least one match in the citadel of tennis, persistently inched along the snaking line.“We might as well give it a shot,” McArdle said. “We left work around 4 and got here about 5. If we don’t make it, maybe we’ll come back on Friday.”They were doing what people have done for more than a century, joining a line that weaves through an adjacent golf course and down Church Road to a ticket office, where each person, some of whom wait in line for over 24 hours, can purchase one ticket, for that day only, to attend the most famous tennis tournament in the world.Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and residents who live near the All England Club.Jane Stockdale for The New York Times“It’s totally worth it,” said Shreyas Dharmadhikari, a defense lawyer from Jabalpur in central India. “It is a pilgrimage you make for the love of tennis, for the love of Wimbledon.”With a capacity of roughly 42,000 for the grounds, Wimbledon sells tickets months in advance through a public ballot system, and allocates some tickets to tennis clubs and people who live near the All England Club, and through other select means. It is among the hardest tickets to get in sports, but the tournament does provide thousands of daily tickets to the public, if they are willing to wait hours for one.The queue is one of the longest, old-fashioned box office lines in the world, the sports equivalent to the infamous Studio 54 line, but a lot older.Roz McArdle and Tom O’Neill hoped they would get inside for at least one match on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesShreyas Dharmadhikari and his son Arjun waited 5 ½ hours to get inside.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Dharmadhikari brought his son, Arjun, who wore a sticker given out by stewards that read, “I queued in the rain.” They were given holding cards with Nos. 11,466 and 11,477, waited five and a half hours to get inside and were delighted to see several matches and eat strawberries and cream.But on Monday, some people waited nearly twice that long under periodic bursts of persistent rain on a disastrous opening day for the queue. Tournament organizers blamed the delays, which slowed the pace of the line to a crawl, on heightened security searches due to the threat of a climate protest.A protester threw confetti during a match between Sho Shimabukuro and Grigor Dimitrov on Court 18 on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe ball crew picked up confetti and jigsaw pieces that had been thrown on the court.Tolga Akmen/EPA, via ShutterstockThe threat became reality on Wednesday when two protesters ran onto Court No. 18 and flipped over a box of orange confetti. The protesters were led away rather quickly and the match resumed — but only after another rain delay in a tournament plagued by them. After weeks with virtually no precipitation in London, it rained intermittently during the first three days of the tournament, causing havoc within the schedule and in the soggy queue.But even without special circumstances, the queue can be a long (sometimes over a mile), tiresome, adventurous, wet, fun and uniquely British institution.Two schoolboys, Simon, 10, and his brother Stefano, 8, calmly read comic books as they waited on Wednesday, hoping to see their favorite player, the Italian 21-year-old Jannik Sinner, who beat Diego Schwartzman of Argentina in straight sets on Court No. 1.“We have been waiting for maybe two hours,” Simon said, and his brother asked, “Do you think we will make it?”Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesStewards helped organize the queue on Wednesday.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesAbout an hour later, a steward announced to a group somewhere in the middle of the line that there were 1,600 people ahead of them and that he was informed by a ticket manager only 250 more tickets would be released. Gasps of incredulity and disappointment rang out from the group, but no one immediately left.“How you receive this information is entirely up to you,” said the steward, who did everything short of ordering everyone to go home.That would not have been easy for Danielle Payten and her husband, David Payten, who flew from Sydney, Australia, with their three children. They took no chances of being shut out from the daily queue by doing what hundreds do daily. They camped overnight in tents.David Payten, top center, flew from Sydney with his family and camped overnight in tents.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe tent area, where spectators spend the night to ensure they’ll have a good spot in line the following day, is the more festive area of the queue: People play soccer, cards, cricket or read and sip cocktails. The sun broke out Wednesday afternoon, prompting young men in the line to remove their shirts for some spontaneous sunbathing.“It’s like a carnival atmosphere,” said one steward, who asked not to be named because they are not permitted to speak to reporters.The Paytens arrived at 3:30 p.m. and met some folks from the neighboring tents, one of whom had a dog. They chatted, ate and drank as they prepared for a cricket game on a patch of flat grass later that evening. Danielle’s brother, Chris Kearsley, who lives in London, arrived early to set up three tents for them (only two people per tent are given tickets). His daughter, Eliza Kearsley, lives a 15-minute walk from the same mystical venue that her relatives traveled 10,000 miles to see.She popped over just to see her relatives, for neither she nor her father planned to camp out and attend the next day’s matches.“If I stayed overnight, I’d been too drunk to go inside,” Chris Kearsley joked.But with only about 200 people in front of their group, the Australian cousins were virtually guaranteed entrance for Thursday’s matches.“It’s well worth it,” David Payten said. “It’s an adventure.”One traveler from Japan, who planned to stay for most of the two weeks of the tournament, brought a portable, solar powered clothes washer.Maria Balhetchet, a professional violinist from Dorset in southern England, and Felix Bailey, her tennis-playing son, arrived at 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, aiming for Thursday’s action. They were given card No. 101, meaning only 100 people were ahead of them. Balhetchet camped out last year with her other son, and even though they scored third-row tickets to an explosive match between the eventual men’s singles finalist Nick Kyrgios and Stefanos Tsitsipas, the experience was generally exhausting. Moisture infiltrated the tent, she did not get any sleep and she vowed never to do it again.But there she was on Wednesday.“It’s like giving birth,” she said. “You go through it and say, ‘Never again,’ but then of course you want to.”They were prepared to awake at 6 a.m. Thursday (after being in line almost 18 hours). Campers are given 30 minutes to dismantle their tents and put them in daily storage, then get into the line and wait — wait for it — for four more hours until the gates open. Some people, after watching the tennis, go back to the park, pick up their tents and queue up all over again — hence the need for the washing machine.Among those still hoping to get in on Wednesday was a group of teenage tennis players from the Time to Play Tennis Academy in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. Their coach, Doug Robinson, said the group flew from Harare to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and then to London, where they hoped to see Wimbledon live, and then play some matches around England.Late Wednesday afternoon they were still far back in the queue. The kids sat on the ground chatting, and Robinson sized up the situation.“It’s not looking too good from here,” he said. “But it’s Wimbledon. You have to take the chance.”Jane Stockdale for The New York Times More

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

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

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      At Wimbledon, Everyone’s Chasing Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina

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      Expect the three top-ranked women to dominate the tournament. But at least one, the defending champion Elena Rybakina, says she isn’t taking any opponent for granted.LONDON — Elena Rybakina was nervous. She was embroiled in her first match on Wimbledon’s Centre Court as defending champion. She was facing a tough opponent in Shelby Rogers. The roof was closed and she was recovering from a virus.Even more daunting, one of the greatest players ever to walk that court, Roger Federer, was now sitting just a few feet behind her, in the royal box, watching her struggle.“Yeah, maybe that’s why I was nervous,” Rybakina said after she recovered to beat Rogers on Tuesday, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2.Federer, now retired, was back at Wimbledon for a visit. As a player, he was a member of the so-called Big Three of men’s tennis, along with Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. As a spectator, he was watching a player whom some experts, including Chris Evert, believe is part of an emerging big three of women’s tennis.Rybakina, the third-ranked player in the world, along with No. 1 Iga Swiatek and No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, comprise the top of the women’s tennis pyramid. Together, they have won the last five major tournaments, and the eventual winner of this year’s Wimbledon is expected — but obviously not guaranteed — to come from their elite group, as well.Those who think it is premature to crown a triumvirate of women’s tennis will find the 24-year-old Rybakina in agreement.“I think it’s too early to say anything about just three players because it’s not like it was Roger or Djokovic,” Rybakina said. “It’s still too far.”All three players are under 26, and all have the necessary tools to win multiple tournaments and remain at the top of the rankings. Left out of the grouping are players like Jessica Pegula, ranked No. 4. But Pegula said she agrees that the top three are the class of the women’s game and deserve the recognition, even if she would like to expand the number to four someday.“I think it’s exciting to have something for us to talk about and for fans to get involved in and hopefully be excited to watch them battle it out,” Pegula said on Saturday. She beat Lauren Davis in the first round on Monday. “But I hope I’m part of that conversation at some point. I guess that’s all I have to say.”Ons Jabeur looked to repeat as a Wimbledon finalist again this year, but with a different outcome.Andrew Couldridge/ReutersOns Jabeur, who lost to Rybakina in last year’s Wimbledon final and to Swiatek in the U.S. Open final, is a solid grass court player, who could also stake a claim to this year’s Wimbledon title. Jabeur is another who believes that Swiatek, Sabalenka and Rybakina have set themselves apart.“For me it’s inspiring to see them doing great,” Jabeur said. “You can learn a lot from them.”Coco Gauff, who is only 19 and ranked No. 7, could also intrude into the mix one day. But not yet, not after she lost to Sofia Kenin, a former No. 4 player who is 24, in the first round on Monday.As Rybakina said on Tuesday, “anyone can still beat anyone.”As Wimbledon opened under rainy skies, each one of the three top players had at least one question to answer on court before she could lift the trophy. Swiatek, 22 and from Poland, has struggled on grass and never made it past the fourth round in her three attempts here.She demonstrated good form at Bad Homburg, a grass-court tournament before Wimbledon, but became ill and had to withdraw after winning a quarterfinal match. She looked fully recovered in her first-round win over Lin Zhu on Monday and a title here would give her three of the last four majors.Rybakina won Wimbledon last year with an amazing run of confidence and form, defeating Jabeur in three sets for her first Grand Slam title. But her conditioning remains in doubt. A virus forced her withdrawal from the French Open last month, and she said the condition worsened afterward. She is OK now, she said, but she had to lighten her workouts leading up to Wimbledon.Sabalenka did not even play at Wimbledon last year. She is from Minsk, in Belarus, and the tournament banned all players from Russia and Belarus from competing because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Belarus’s cooperation with that military incursion.The amiable Sabalenka opened her news conference on Saturday, before the tournament started, by saying she would not answer questions about politics because she had already done so several times. (Rybakina was born in Moscow but plays for Kazakhstan).Aryna Sabalenka hit a between-the-legs shot with her back to the net against Panna Udvardy.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSabalenka said she could barely even watch the tournament last year during her impromptu staycation.“I didn’t watch Wimbledon a lot,” she said. “I felt so bad, and I just couldn’t watch it. Every time if Wimbledon would be on TV, I would cry.”Hence, she has played only eight matches on grass the last two years, including only two this year leading up to Wimbledon, and has gone 5-3. Perhaps more concerning than the surface was her devastating loss at the French Open last month. Serving for the semifinal match at 5-2, she allowed Karolina Muchova to come back and win.Sabalenka, 25, who won her first major tournament at this year’s Australian Open, was asked this week about her level of confidence on grass, and said, “I don’t like to speak about confidence.”She continued, “For me it’s a little weird. I just want to say that I have strong belief that I can do well on grass. I already did it. I feel good on grass.”She certainly played well on it in her first-round victory on Tuesday. Federer left after Andy Murray won and missed seeing Sabalenka hit a masterful between-the-legs shot from the baseline, with her back to the net. Her opponent, Panna Udvardy of Hungary, was ready at the net to volley it away for the point. Sabalenka smiled and raised her fist to salute the artistic rally, on her way to a straight sets victory, 6-3, 6-2.“I missed this place a lot,” she said on court afterward, “that’s why I played my best tennis today.” More

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      Carlos Alcaraz Has Been Studying the Grass Court Masters. That Means Andy Murray.

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      On a day many matches were rained out at the All England Club, Alcaraz displayed his continued improvement on grass, and what he has learned from Murray.Carlos Alcaraz took a little time to rest after coming up short in the French Open last month, and then he embarked on the next step toward strengthening one of the few remaining weaknesses in his tennis development — playing on grass.For Alcaraz, the 20-year-old world No. 1, that meant getting enough training sessions and matches on the surface that is at once the most traditional and most quirky in the sport. It also meant hours of watching videos of Andy Murray, the two-time Wimbledon champion and one of the masters of grass court tennis.On a day of rain that caused the cancellation or suspension of nearly every match not contested on the two covered courts at the All England Club, Alcaraz showed that his homework was paying off, and Murray provided the young Spaniard with a fresh batch of study material.Alcaraz has never advanced past the round of 16 at Wimbledon, but he has left no doubt about his goals for his third go-round at this most venerated of tennis competitions.“To win the tournament,” he said after the 6-0, 6-2, 7-5 pounding he delivered to Jeremy Chardy of France. “I have a lot of confidence right now.”An afternoon of play against Chardy, who had announced that he planned to retire after this tournament, was sure to help with that. There was little chance that Chardy was going to provide much of a challenge for Alcaraz at 36 years old, ranked 542nd in the world, and with just one tour level win this year.But for Alcaraz, who grew up mostly playing on red clay, the value of the day came not from the difficulty of his opponent. It came from spending more time on the sport’s most beguiling surface. With each match at Wimbledon Alcaraz gets closer to the inevitable — when the most talented young player becomes every bit as good on grass as he is everywhere else.Alcaraz, left, and Andy Murray at the Erste Bank Open in Vienna in 2021.Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty ImagesThis is where watching videos of Murray comes in. Alcaraz knows how to hit a tennis ball as well as and as hard as anyone, and his drop shot is as good as it gets on clay and hard courts. He’s also just about the fastest player in the game, especially on clay and hard courts. But he has said he needs to learn how to adapt his speed and his repertoire of shots to the grass.Few players have shown how to do that better than Murray, who won the men’s singles title at Wimbledon in 2013 and 2016, and showed why Tuesday afternoon in his 6-3, 6-0, 6-1 dismantling of Ryan Peniston, a fellow Briton.There are others who have conquered grass, of course, namely Roger Federer, who won a record eight men’s singles titles at Wimbledon and spent the afternoon chatting quietly in the front row of the royal box with Catherine, Princess of Wales, after he was celebrated with a video and a standing ovation. Alcaraz has studied his matches, too.And then there is Novak Djokovic, who has won the last four singles titles here, seven overall, and is on a 29-match Wimbledon winning streak. The problem with studying Djokovic is that he moves differently than everyone else on grass.Djokovic has somehow figured out how to glide and slide as though he were on clay or a hard court. When others try to play that way, they often end up on their backsides or with a strained groin. It is a style of grass court tennis that should come with a “don’t try this” warning.Alcaraz didn’t. Not on his way to the title at the grass court tuneup at Queen’s Club two weeks ago, or against Chardy on Tuesday, when he displayed plenty of signs of his Murray/Federer imitation game.Alcaraz took on balls ever so slightly earlier, a necessary move since they barely bounce on grass. He decelerated and turned with a series of quick stutter steps instead of his usual lightning quick plant-and-pivot. He showed off his improving serve, firing 10 aces, with plenty of them sliding off the court, including a final one on match point into the deep-wide corner of the service box that slid off the court before Chardy could move for it.“Every time that I get out to the court playing, it’s better for me,” he said when it was over. “I get more experience that is really, really important on that surface.”Murray does not lack for experience on grass and has almost always looked comfortable at the All England Club, making the third round in his debut in the main draw in 2005, when he was just 18 years old. Tuesday’s win over Peniston provided plenty of grass court study tips.Alcaraz often talks about how he begins every match wanting to play aggressively. Murray showed that on grass, aggression can take many forms beyond Alcaraz’s crushing forehands.Andy Murray in action in his first-round match on Tuesday.Hannah Mckay/ReutersHe played blocked backhand returns of serve that died in the front of the court to set up passing shots and sent drop volleys nearly sideways. In some rallies he produced a series of strokes that passed ever closer to the top of the net, and slid ever lower as they landed on the grass. One passing shot while Peniston was at the net darted toward his feet as though it fell off a table as soon as it passed over the tape. It was all over in two hours and 1 minute, one of Murray’s easier days on Centre Court, though he confessed to feeling nervous early on.“I like to feel that way,” he said “If I was going on the court and felt flat, didn’t have any emotion when I’m walking out there, that’s something that would probably be a bit wrong.”When Peniston committed his final error, Murray celebrated with the slightest of fist pumps and a brief wave to the crowd.He noted that the last time Federer had watched him on Centre Court was in the final of the 2012 Olympics, when Federer was cheering on his countryman and Murray’s opponent that day, Stan Wawrinka.“I was glad to get a few claps today,” Murray said.Murray skipped the French Open to begin his preparations for Wimbledon, the tournament he believes offers him the best chance to play into the second week.Those chances likely improved Tuesday when the match between his potential opponents, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Dominic Thiem, was suspended shortly after Thiem won the first set. They will likely resume Wednesday, with the winner taking on Murray, almost undoubtedly on Centre Court, Thursday.Murray said he does not study draws, preferring instead to focus only on his next match rather than waste time on hypotheticals. If he did, he would find a potential opponent in the semifinals who would be familiar with his tricks.That would be Alcaraz. More

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      After a Fall, Venus Williams Is Eliminated on Wimbledon’s First Day

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      Williams, a five-time Wimbledon singles champion, was vying, at 43, to become one of the oldest women to win a main draw singles match at the sport’s oldest Grand Slam event.She walked onto the court late on a gray and chilly afternoon with that rocking gait that has become so familiar to tennis fans over the past 25 years. With her tennis bag on her shoulder, she pulled at the ends of an elastic band to get in some last-minute upper-body stretches.Venus Williams, a five-time Wimbledon singles champion and a nine-time finalist, was back on Centre Court on Monday at age 43, vying to become one of the oldest women to win a main draw singles match at the sport’s oldest Grand Slam event.That is not how the day went. It ultimately left her limping, an injured symbol of a couple of undeniable truths about this era of tennis.The first: More players are stretching their careers longer than they ever have, into their late 30s and, in the case of the Williams sisters, into their early 40s, thanks to better training, nutrition and compensation. Caroline Wozniacki, 32, a former world No. 1, announced last month that she was returning to tennis after retiring in 2020 and having two children.The second: It’s difficult to stay healthy and win in this brutal sport in your late 30s and early 40s, unless your name is Novak Djokovic.There were members of the older set scattered all across the All England Club on Monday, the first day of Wimbledon, and not simply in the television booths. Williams took Centre Court after Djokovic, 36, had begun yet another title defense in his usual fashion, beating Pedro Cachín of Argentina in straight sets. The American player John Isner, 38, lost in four sets on Court 16 to Jaume Munar of Spain, but two courts over, on Court 18, Stan Wawrinka, another 38-year-old, was giving a clinic to Emil Ruusuvuori, eliminating the 24-year-old Finn in straight sets.Williams came up short in her effort, a hard-luck, 6-4, 6-3 loss to Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in which Williams aggravated an injured right knee early in the match. Williams never regained the form she had shown in the match’s first few minutes, when she grabbed an early lead and gave every sign that a win for the old guard might be in the cards. Last month, Williams, ranked 558th in the world, beat a player ranked in the top 50 for the first time in four years, outlasting Camila Giorgi of Italy in a third-set tiebreaker in Birmingham, England.The victory helped Williams earn a wild-card entry into the Wimbledon tournament, which she won in five of nine appearances from 2000 to 2008. She made the women’s singles final as recently as 2017, and she has not given any indication that she is pointing at a certain end.“I’m a competitor,” a somber and shaken Williams said in her postmatch news conference. “That’s what I do for a living.”She has been doing it since she was 14.Officials assisted Williams after she fell and clutched her right knee in the first set of the match.Zac Goodwin/Press Association, via Associated PressPlaying on grass that was slick from a midafternoon rain shower and the moisture that lingered in the air throughout the day, Williams came out firing serves and lacing hard, flat shots to the back of the court. She broke Svitolina’s serve in the second game. But facing break point in the third game, Williams charged the net and then crumpled onto the grass with a scream as she clutched her right knee, which was wrapped in a support band.Williams remained on the ground for several minutes, with Svitolina placing a towel under her head for support. It looked as though Williams’s afternoon would end right there. But she got up and limped to her chair, where a trainer examined her. Afterward, her movement was far more limited than it had been in the first two games.She hobbled through points and struggled to generate the power from her groundstrokes and her serve that has long been the signature of her game but requires the ability to push and torque with the lower half of her body. The speed of her first serve dropped from 115 miles per hour early in the match to the mid-90s.“I was literally killing it — then I got killed by the grass,” Williams said. “It’s not fun right now.”The sequence of events had an eerie familiarity. Two years ago, her sister Serena walked onto the same court for her first-round match, seeking her eighth Wimbledon title at age 39. The effort lasted just six games: Serena Williams had to withdraw in the first round because of an ankle injury.Serena Williams returned to Wimbledon last year at the start of what seems to have been a final summer of professional tennis, though one never knows these days. She lost in the first round in three sets on an evening that had the feel of a farewell.What was striking about her older sister’s match Monday was how little it felt like a valedictory, and how defiant Venus Williams seemed as she faced the toll that aging exacts on every athlete, regardless of her ability.She said she was in shock at being injured, though older athletes are far more injury-prone.“I just can’t believe this happened,” she said. “It’s, like, bizarre.”She was angry at how the match had ended. On match point, Svitolina hit a ball that was called out, but the chair umpire gave her the match when the Hawk-Eye system showed it was in. Williams’s return of the shot had been wide, and the umpire ruled that the point would not be replayed. Williams skipped the postmatch handshake with the umpire.She said the injury had been so painful that it had prevented her from focusing. She said that she had never considered stopping and that she would have her knee checked on Tuesday. Moments later, she was talking about the difficulty of processing another injury after recovering from a hamstring injury at the start of the year.She has been missing from the tour for a while. It is not what she wants for herself in her early 40s.“Hopefully I can just figure out what’s happening with me and move forward,” she said.For nearly 30 years, that has meant one thing: back to the tennis court. More

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      Novak Djokovic Eyes a Fifth Straight Wimbledon Title

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      If Djokovic can win his fifth consecutive title at the All England Club, he will be three-quarters of the way to a Grand Slam.Novak Djokovic, bent over with a towel in hand, delighted the Centre Court crowd during a rain delay at Wimbledon on Monday when he mopped some moisture from the grass. It seemed appropriate for someone who has been doing the same general thing to his opponents over the last five years at this tournament.Djokovic has not lost a match at Wimbledon since 2017, and with a victory over Pedro Cachin of Argentina in their first-round meeting Monday, he extended his record over the last five Wimbledon tournaments to 29-0. He has won the last four men’s singles titles, and one more this year would set him up to eclipse even more names in the record book.If Djokovic can claim a fifth consecutive title at the All England Club, he will have taken home the first three major trophies of 2023 and increased his chances of winning the first men’s Grand Slam (all four majors in the same year) since Rod Laver did it in 1969. He would also become just the third man to do it, joining Laver (1962 and 1969) and Don Budge in 1938. Three women have accomplished the feat: Maureen Connolly in 1953, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988.Djokovic would also tie Roger Federer for most Wimbledon men’s singles titles (eight) and tie Bjorn Borg for the most consecutive (five). Finally, he would match Court’s record of 24 major titles, and would be the only player to do it entirely in the Open era. (Court won 13 majors before 1968, during a time when professionals were not allowed to play in the majors.)On Monday, Djokovic, the No. 2 seed but the overwhelming title favorite, walked onto Centre Court absorbing a moment that only a happy few have experienced.“It’s a feeling like no other tournament in the world, of walking out on the Centre Court of Wimbledon as a defending champion, on the fresh grass,” he said. “It’s amazing, amazing to be back to a dream tournament, and to be able to get the first match out of the way.”Wimbledon was the first tennis tournament Djokovic watched on television when he was growing up in Serbia, and it has held an allure for him since. And while that is true for thousands of players, few have enjoyed it as much as Djokovic, who ingests blades of grass immediately upon winning his titles (unlike when he wins on the red clay of Roland Garros).Winning on grass, especially in an era when there are so few tournaments on the surface, and the season is so short, is particularly challenging, and Djokovic rarely plays the warm-up tournaments anymore. There are many tactical aspects that make grass distinct from clay and hardcourts, even now, when the Wimbledon surface is much bouncier and faster than it once was.“I had to learn how to move,” Djokovic said about the transition from playing on red clay to playing on grass.Daniel Leal/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Djokovic, who likes to slide across hardcourts and clay as he reaches for balls out wide and at the net, the grass at Wimbledon does not allow for the same kind of horizontal movement. But Djokovic has become as adept as anyone at adjusting from clay to grass in short order.“I had to learn how to move,” he said, “how to walk, how to play, how to read the bounces, etc.”But the grass was actually too slippery for a while on Monday after a light rain fell toward the end of the first set of Djokovic’s victory, 6-3, 6-3, 7-6 (4) over Cachin. It was Djokovic’s toughest obstacle of the day.The match was halted, the tarp spread over the court and the roof rolled closed. Normally the courts dry off in less than half an hour. But the moisture mysteriously persisted on Monday, and tournament officials and the players returned to a still slippery court.In all, the delay lasted almost 90 minutes, a surprising duration for a court with a roof. But Djokovic endeared himself to the disappointed spectators by employing his towel and joking with them, as if he could clean it all up himself. Considering his success on that patch of grass — he hasn’t lost on Centre Court since 2013 — some might have expected him to do it.Some wondered whether his good temper was an indication that Djokovic, with a men’s singles record 23rd major title safely in hand, was now in a more relaxed and jovial mood.“I wouldn’t particularly say it’s quite a unique feeling for me just because I’ve won my 23rd Slam,” he said. “I’ve always tried to have fun in particular circumstances where I guess you can’t control things. I’ve had some funny rain delays in Paris, as well, New York, where I joked around.”He acknowledged being physically and emotionally exhausted after winning the French Open in June. So he and his wife, Jelena, went to Portugal’s Azores Islands to hike and relax. They were even forced to spend an extra day there because fog grounded their original flight home.“It was great because I’ve been through a lot of different emotions during the clay season,” he said, “particularly obviously reaching the climax in Paris, and I needed to get away, get isolated a little bit.”One player Djokovic will not have to contend with this year is Nick Kyrgios, his opponent in last year’s Wimbledon final. Kyrgios, who has been recovering from surgery on his left knee in January, withdrew from the tournament on the eve of the first day after a scan revealed a torn ligament in his wrist.“I think people just forget how strenuous this sport is, how physical it is,” Kyrgios said Sunday, before announcing his wrist injury. “I dare someone to go out there and play four hours with Novak and see how you feel afterward.”Since Djokovic’s current run began in 2018, they’ve all been wiped away. More

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      Ben Shelton Arrives at Wimbledon With His Father as Coach

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      Bryan Shelton guided his son for years as a junior and in college. Now he is taking the reins on the ATP Tour. Next up: Wimbledon.Last year, when Ben Shelton decided to leave college and turn professional, he wondered aloud to his father, Bryan, a former player on the men’s tennis tour, if they ought to embark on a venture together.Sorry, Bryan Shelton told his son, he already had a full-time job coaching at the University of Florida. Bryan Shelton handed the reins to Dean Goldfine, a highly respected coach who had previously worked with the former world No. 1 Andy Roddick. Perhaps, they reasoned, it was better this way, giving the 57-year-old father and his 20-year-old son a healthy distance for his first couple years as a professional.Then Ben became the breakout star of this year’s Australian Open, riding his booming serve into the singles quarterfinals, while Bryan was back home in Gainesville, Fla., readying the Gators for the spring season. It turns out even well-adjusted, middle-aged dads can be susceptible to FOMO. In early June, shortly after Florida’s men’s team was eliminated from the N.C.A.A. Division I tennis tournament, the Sheltons announced that Ben had a new/old full-time coach.“It was the right time,” Bryan Shelton said.On June 12, father and son set out for the grass-court season and the next phase of their relationship, which has a big-stage debut this week at Wimbledon, where Shelton, who has been billed as a star in the making, is scheduled to play Taro Daniel in the first round Tuesday.“We knew eventually this is what we wanted to happen,” Ben Shelton said Saturday at the All England Club.Parent-child relationships can be fraught. Mix in coaching, which is not uncommon in tennis, especially when a parent is a former professional, and they can quickly turn “toxic and tough,” in the words of Bryan Shelton.Stefanos Tsitsipas yelling during matches at his box, with his coach and father, Apostolos, sometimes yelling back, can make spectators feel like uncomfortable guests at an awkward family dinner. Then again, things seem to be working out all right for Casper Ruud, who has made (but lost) three of the past five Grand Slam finals under the tutelage of his father, Cristian. Like Bryan Shelton, Cristian Ruud was a decent pro on the ATP Tour.Looking for the Ruuds between tournaments or on off days? Try the nicest nearby golf course, where they compete like college buddies. Still, after his loss last month to Novak Djokovic in the French Open final, Casper Ruud, 24, said he would not rule out one day getting guidance from someone other than his father.“It can always be good with new, fresh eyes on your game,” he said.For Ben Shelton, there are benefits both on and off the court in having his father around, he said. Given his strapping frame and 12-month rise from Florida Gator ranked outside the top 400 to Grand Slam quarterfinalist, it can be easy to forget just how young and raw he is in tennis years and life experiences.A late bloomer, Ben did not play most of the major junior tournaments growing up. He attended a regular high school rather than a tennis-focused academy. His journey to Australia for the Open and its lead-up tournaments was his first trip overseas.This year’s clay-court swing was his first trip to Europe. On Saturday, he confessed to feeling homesick while traveling without his parents earlier this year.Not only has he never played Wimbledon before, but until the middle of last month, he had never set foot on a grass court. He won one of his three matches on grass the past few weeks, though both losses needed a deciding third set.Expectations for Ben’s Wimbledon debut are high, and arriving alongside his dad, who has coached him before and has won his own matches at the All England Club, may bolster his chances.Ben Shelton trained on the practice courts at Wimbledon on Friday as his father looked on.Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesThe young player’s pounding serve, walloping forehand and his ability to move forward on the court make grass an ideal surface for him if he can figure out how to stay low and master the quick, controlled foot movements that winning on grass requires.The first two days were rough, Ben said Saturday.“My legs were feeling weird,” he said. “And then after those two days, I started having a lot of fun.”Bryan Shelton said he has always told his son that Wimbledon is the game’s most special venue, a place where he had dreamed of playing as a teenager in Alabama watching the famous matches between Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe on television. In 1989, he walked onto a field court to play Boris Becker, who was already a two-time Wimbledon champion at 22, two years younger than Bryan Shelton. Becker beat him in three sets.“Someone pulled up a video on an iPad and handed it to me so we could watch it,” Bryan Shelton said. “Better than I thought it would be.”He made the fourth round of Wimbledon in 1994, his best performance at a Grand Slam tournament, beating the second seed, Michael Stich of Germany, in his opening match.Bryan Shelton said for the past six months he and his wife, Lisa, had been discussing him leaving his college job to work full-time with Ben, but first he needed to make sure Ben still wanted him. He did.During Ben’s early teenage years, father and son would practice before Ben headed off to school, hitting the courts at 6:45 a.m. each morning. Through that experience and during Ben’s college career, Bryan learned a lesson that nearly all parents learn about their children: Despite all that shared DNA, they are not mini-me’s.Bryan loved to drill on the tennis court, honing shots through hours of practice. Drills bore Ben. Competition drives him. He needs to play more points in practice.Bryan said as a junior player there were times when Ben would come home from losing in a tournament and Bryan would ask his son what had gone wrong.This was before Ben had grown to 6-foot-4 and 195 pounds. He would tell his father he just needed to get bigger.Ben Shelton said his father has become good at picking up on the signals that it’s time to switch from coach mode into dad mode. Jane Stockdale for The New York TimesBryan didn’t necessarily like that answer. He would tell his son that there were always things he could get better at, that he should make a list of the elements of his game he needed to improve, the way Bryan had after some of his losses. But that wasn’t how Ben ticked.“I was getting in his way,” Bryan Shelton said. “What I learned that I need to do is let him think about how good he is and know that he will do the work.”Like any coach and player, they have had their moments on the court. There are times when Ben needs to let off steam, and Bryan needs him to be composed. An hour later, someone will apologize, and they move on. They share an understanding that people make mistakes, and they try to maintain their “no grudges” rule.Ben said his father has become good at picking up on the signals that it’s time to switch from coach mode into dad mode. Bryan will set a time limit on a video session, so they aren’t constantly watching and talking about tennis. So far, he’s been happy to let Ben head to dinner with friends while he stays back in his hotel room, orders in and watches golf.“He’s pretty easy to travel with,” Ben said of his father.Good thing. They will be doing a lot of it. More

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      GOATs Are Everywhere in Sports. So What Really Defines Greatness?

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      Athletes from Tom Brady to Serena Williams to LeBron James have all been tabbed the Greatest of All Time. Faced with the term’s pervasive use, our columnist considers how sports heroes become transcendent.If you are reading this column, I have great news: You’re the GOAT!That’s right: Among those who have happened upon this space, I deem you the Greatest Reader of All Time.Then again, if you’re LeBron James, or Serena Williams, or Nikola Jokic — with that sparkling N.B.A. championship ring — well, you already know you’re the GOAT. Everyone has been saying so.“Bahhh, bahhh, bahhh,” goes the bleating of a goat. It’s also the sound made by James’s Los Angeles Lakers teammates when he walks into the locker room. GOAT hosannas are practically the soundtrack of his life.Driven by its pervasive usage around sports, five years ago the wordsmiths at Merriam-Webster entered the term GOAT in the dictionary as an acronym and a noun.LeBron James is considered by many to be the GOAT in men’s basketball.Kyle Grillot for The New York TimesDefining the term as “the most accomplished or successful individual in the history of a particular sport or category of performance or activity,” a Merriam-Webster editor nodded to the pervasive use of Tom Brady’s name along with GOAT in a popular search engine as an example of why the acronym had become dictionary official.Yeah, I know — this GOAT thing, it’s a little confusing. To be the greatest implies singularity, no? But now there are GOATs everywhere we turn.Even worse than the acronym’s overuse is its doltish simplicity. There’s not enough nuance. Too much emphasis on outright winning, not enough on overcoming.What are our options here? Maybe we should ban the use of the term outright in sports, following the lead of Lake Superior State University, which cheekily ranked the hazy, lazy acronym No. 1 on its 2023 list of banished words.“The many nominators didn’t have to be physicists or grammarians to determine the literal impossibility and technical vagueness of this wannabe superlative,” read a statement from the university.Banning doesn’t quite seem like a possibility, however — not when a word has bored a hole this deep into our collective consciousness.No doubt, being a goat isn’t what it used to be. In sports, it was once a terrible insult, a term of shame hung on athletes who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Greg Norman, otherwise known as the Shark, was a goat for coughing up a six-stroke lead in the final round of the 1996 Masters, a tournament he lost by five strokes.Before Norman, there was the Boston Red Sox’ grounder-through-the legs-at-the-worst-possible-World-Series-moment goat, Bill Buckner.Need I say more?According to a Merriam-Webster editor, online searches for Tom Brady’s name and GOAT prompted the addition of the acronym to the dictionary in 2018.Elise Amendola/Associated PressMuhammad Ali is widely credited with first injecting the Greatest of All Time into the mix. When he went by Cassius Clay in the early 1960s, he recorded a comedy album anchored by the title poem, “I Am the Greatest.”After his upset win over George Foreman in 1974, he added a flourish, admonishing his doubters and critics, and reminding them of his status: “I told you I am still the greatest of all times!”But was it really Ali who came up with this particular egotistic flourish?Some say GOAT’s origins actually spring from a flamboyant, blond-tressed wrestler, George Wagner, who was known as Gorgeous George and who in the 1940s and ’50s earned lavish paydays by turning trash talk into fine art.In a precursor to W.W.E.-style braggadocio, Gorgeous George once claimed before a big fight that if he lost, he would “crawl across the ring and cut my hair off!” He added, “But that’s not going to happen, because I’m the greatest wrestler in the world.”Ali said he had learned a good chunk of his boastfulness from Gorgeous George.“A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth,” the wrestler is said to have told Ali after a chance meeting. “So keep on bragging, keep on sassing, and always be outrageous.”This week marks the moment when sport’s most legitimate GOAT talk hovers over tennis and an event its organizers not-so-humbly call the Championships.Wimbledon starts Monday. The men’s favorite, Novak Djokovic, has 23 Grand Slam tournament titles, one short of Margaret Court’s record of 24. If he wins this year, his wildly devoted fan base will confidently proclaim the Serb’s GOAT status.That will drive fans of Rafael Nadal, who is stuck at 22 major titles, to distraction. They will argue that their idol would have won 25 major titles (or more) by now, if not for injuries.Then Roger Federer devotees will wade in. He had losing records against both Nadal and Djokovic. But, by goodness, he’s Roger Federer, fine linen with a forehand with 20 Slams and a raft of epic final-round battles to his name.Not so fast, Serena Williams adherents will remind. Not only does she have 23 Grand Slam titles — including one earned while she was pregnant — Williams braved playing in a mostly white sport and bent it to her will. Besides, she’s as much a cultural icon as an athlete. Can any male player say that?Serena Williams won 23 Grand Slam titles in her career, bolstering her claim to being the GOAT of tennis.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesThen there are the old-school partisans of Bjorn Borg and John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King. Stop the unfairness, they will shout. No more comparing superlative athletes from vastly different eras.Time has changed everything in every sport — better equipment, better training methods, new rules — so how can we reliably compare? Before McEnroe lost to Borg in the 1980 Wimbledon final, neither had the benefit of sleeping, as Djokovic reportedly does, in a performance-enhancing hypobaric chamber.On and on the argument will go.That’s the craziness of it. The foolishness and the fun of it.Who’s the GOAT?Well, to be honest, I’ve got four. Willie Mays. Joe Montana. Williams. Federer.I can remember each for their sublime victories, of course. But also their stumbles. A 42-year-old Mays lost in the outfield. A fragile Montana in his twilight, playing not for San Francisco but Kansas City.I was on hand to see Williams struggle and come up short as she chased that elusive last Slam. I sat feet from Federer as he held two match points against Djokovic in the Wimbledon final of 2019. Then the Swiss crumbled in defeat.“For now it hurts, and it should — every loss hurts at Wimbledon,” Federer said at the post-match news conference. But, he added, he would persevere. “I don’t want to be depressed about actually an amazing tennis match.”No one escapes disappointment and frailty. But if we do it right, we soldier on.You know what that means? It means all of us can be GOATs!Bleat on, my friends. Bleat on! More