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    Naomi Osaka Finds New Motivation Despite a Loss in Miami

    A couple of years ago, Naomi Osaka told Iga Swiatek she was too good to quit tennis. On Saturday, Swiatek proved her right.MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — A little more than two years ago, over dinner during the Australian Open, Iga Swiatek told Naomi Osaka that she wasn’t sure a career in tennis was going to go her way, so she was thinking of going to college. Osaka, who was 22 then and had already won two Grand Slam titles, told Swiatek that was a terrible idea. You’re really good, Osaka told Swiatek, who at the time was still cramming in high school homework. Don’t divert your energy to college just yet, Osaka advised.Swiatek took Osaka’s advice, and good thing she did. Nine months later she came out of nowhere to win the French Open while she was ranked 54th in the world. Saturday, in a clash of styles, narratives and friends in the finals of the Miami Open, Swiatek ended a run that Osaka hopes will mark the beginning of the next chapter of her turbulent career with a 6-4, 6-0 win to cement her remarkable rise to the top of her sport.Next week, Swiatek will officially take over the No. 1 ranking, the first player from Poland to rise to that lofty perch. As she held the winner’s trophy, Swiatek called Osaka “an inspiration” and said she would never have imagined when they were having that dinner that they might actually be playing each other for championships one day.“I think it’s the start of a great rivalry,” Swiatek said.For Osaka, this tournament marked a remarkable turnaround that few saw coming, even if she felt like it was not far off. Just three weeks ago at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, a lone heckler rattled her during her second round match, bringing her to tears and triggering memories of the racist treatment Serena and Venus Williams endured at the event two decades ago.But it also seemed to suggest that Osaka, who lost 6-0, 6-4 to Veronika Kudermatova that night, might not be up for the grind and pressures of the professional tennis tour after a year filled with breaks and setbacks, a disclosure of a yearslong struggle with her mental health and questions about whether playing tennis could ever make her happy.In South Florida though, her home for most of her childhood, a far-steelier Osaka took the court, and she played a lot like she had when she won four Grand Slam tournaments. She won eight consecutive sets on the way to a semifinal match in which she battled back against an opponent, Belinda Bencic of Switzerland, who had beaten her repeatedly for years.Osaka was once more ripping forehands through the court and coming up with unreturnable laser serves when she needed them most. Beyond the tennis, though, there has been a lightness to her experience. Even in defeat Saturday, she could not help but grin as the hometown crowd smothered her with cheers.They were never louder than when James Blake, the former pro and the tournament director for this event, gazed at Osaka during the awards presentation and said, “I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to see you happy again.”Then it was Osaka’s turn. “I know I haven’t been in this position for a little while,” she told the crowd after her first final since the 2021 Australian Open. “The outcome wasn’t what you wanted, but hopefully I can keep working hard and be in a position to do this again soon.”Swiatek entered Sunday’s final on a 16-game win streak.Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the past, she would say later, she would be crying with disappointment following a day like Saturday. Instead, she experienced it as “a sad outcome but a fun day. “It’s cool to see where the level of No. 1 is and to see if I can reach that,” she said.In Swiatek, Osaka ran into a version of a player that didn’t exist when Osaka was last a mainstay of important tournaments.With the sudden retirement of Ashleigh Barty last week, Swiatek earned the No. 1 ranking, owing largely to a white-hot start to the year. Since her loss in the semifinal of the Australian Open, Swiatek has won three masters-level titles, in Doha, Indian Wells, and Miami, events that are just below the Grand Slams.Saturday’s final riding a 16-match winning streak. But it is the manner in which she has managed all the winning that has her opponents leaving the court with a dazed and glazed look in their eyes.Gone is the shaky mind that used to rattle after a handful of lost points or games or a set. She has evolved into a ruthless problem solver who tears through opponents, especially in finals. She has seemingly gained a half-step — or maybe just a willingness to embrace the next level of fatigue — that allows her to extend points and force opponents to hit extra shots when they thought the point was over.She also is just about the only player in the world who can consistently pull off a kind of tennis magic trick when a ball comes rocketing across the net and lands inches from her feet. In a split second, Swiatek squats so low that her skirt is basically on the ground and fires a kind of swinging half-volley that allows her to go back on the attack. She seems to invent a new shot in every match these days. Saturday it was a back-spinning squash shot lob that landed within inches of the baseline.Osaka, who entered the tournament ranked 77th, had little to lose in the final. She had never lost the final of either a Grand Slam or a Masters 1000 tournament, but neither had Swiatek. Osaka positioned herself several steps into the court on Swiatek’s second serve, trying to rely on her quick hands and instinctive skill to punch the ball back and keep Swiatek off balance.The strategy never quite clicked. “I could never really figure out what to do,” Osaka said.Swiatek never faced a break point, and she had Osaka on the defensive from the start. It took Osaka 11 minutes to hold her serve in the first game. On the afternoon, she won nearly two-thirds of the points on her first serve, which hovered in the neighborhood of 120 m.p.h., but just one-third of those on her second, which was often in the mid-70s.Osaka’s next move will be closely watched. The clay court season in Europe is fast approaching. Clay has long been her worst surface. Grass is no picnic for her either. But she said she will travel to Europe later this month to prepare for the Madrid Open, and has an extra week of preparation built into her schedule. After months of questioning what she wanted from her tennis life, she desperately wants to do well, she said. She wants to be seeded for the French Open, which would likely mean being around the top 30. And she wants to be in the top 10 by the end of the year and reclaim the top ranking next year. “It feels kind of good to chase something,” she said. “That is a feeling I have been missing.” More

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    In Tennis, Racket Smashing Gets Out of Hand

    Long accepted as an entertaining idiosyncrasy of the sport, the act of hurling one’s racket has led to some close calls, as ball people and chair umpires dodge injury.After blowing a golden opportunity to break his opponent’s serve late in the second set of his match on Monday at the Miami Open, Jenson Brooksby, the rising American star, whacked his foot with his racket several times in frustration.It was progress for Brooksby, who earlier in the tournament had escaped an automatic disqualification that many tennis veterans — and his opponent — thought was justified after he angrily hurled his racket to the court and it skittered into the feet of a ball person standing behind the baseline.Gets away with it. #Brooksby pic.twitter.com/QGRFA5Uy5w— Tennis GIFs 🎾🎥 (@tennis_gifs) March 24, 2022
    A week earlier, Nick Kyrgios, the temperamental Australian, narrowly missed hitting a ball boy in the face when he flung his racket to the ground following a three-set loss in the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. The ATP punished Kyrgios with a $20,000 fine and another $5,000 for uttering an obscenity on the court, but he was allowed to play a few days later in Miami.Kyrgios was at it again on Tuesday during his fourth-round match against Italy’s Jannik Sinner. He threw his racket to the court on his way to losing a first-set tiebreaker, prompting a warning and a point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct as he shouted at the umpire, Carlos Bernardes. Then, during the changeover, he battered his racket four times against the ground, earning a game penalty.“Do we have to wait until someone starts bleeding?” an exasperated Patrick McEnroe, the former pro and tennis commentator, said recently when asked about the flying rackets.Racket-smashing tantrums have long been accepted as part of the game. Like hockey fights, they are a way for players to blow off steam. But as the broader culture becomes less tolerant of public displays of anger, and with an increasing number of close calls on the court, racket smashing suddenly no longer seems like an entertaining idiosyncrasy.Mary Carillo, the former player and longtime commentator, said the tantrums have never been worse, especially on the ATP Tour, calling them “the most consistently uncomfortable thing to watch.” But chair umpires still resist meting out the most serious punishment.“The reason for conspicuous leniency is that they have to somehow keep a match alive; there are no substitutions,” Carillo said of the chair umpires. “Tennis players, especially tennis stars, know they have incontestable leverage over the chair.”Alexander Zverev smashed his racket on the umpire’s chair after losing a doubles match at the Mexican Open in February.MexTenis, via Associated PressLike most people in tennis, McEnroe was stunned when the ATP recently handed down a suspended eight-week ban to Alexander Zverev, who repeatedly beat on the umpire’s chair at the end of a doubles match at the Mexican Open in February, coming with inches of cracking his racket into the official’s feet.Psychologists have found that expressing anger physically tends to hurt performance and can encourage subsequent outbursts. In an oft-cited 1959 study by the psychologist R.H. Hornberger, participants listened to insults before being divided into two groups. One group pounded nails. The other sat quietly. The group that pounded nails was far more hostile to those who criticized them.And yet these days, racket smashing feels contagious. There was Naomi Osaka’s display during her third-round loss to Leylah Fernandez at the U.S. Open last year. Novak Djokovic’s during the bronze medal match at the Tokyo Olympics. Even Roger Federer has had his moments. Rafael Nadal, by contrast, is famously gentle with his equipment and has said he never will smash his racket.Even Andy Roddick, the former world No. 1, got cheeky on the subject, taking to Twitter last week with a tongue-in-cheek tutorial on how to safely smash a racket and whack a ball without endangering anyone.Smashing and throwing a racket, not to mention swats of the ball — that hit, or nearly hit, and possibly injure people on the court or in the stadium — fall under equipment abuse in the sport’s rule books. To the frustration of some of the biggest names in tennis, those codes are more gray than black and white.Martina Navratilova, the 18-time Grand Slam singles champion who is covering the Miami Open for Tennis Channel, expressed the sentiments of many after Brooksby’s racket made contact with the ball person.“If it hit the ball boy, they need to disqualify him,” she said.Brooksby and Kyrgios lost in Miami on Tuesday, but Zverev advanced to the quarterfinals and has a good chance of winning one of the top titles on the ATP Tour, even though some in tennis believe he should be on the sidelines serving a suspension.A spokesman for the ATP, which does not publicly discuss individual penalties, said Brooksby received a $15,000 fine, $5,000 less than the maximum $20,000 a player can receive for an incident from tournament officials. That amounted to less than half of the $30,130 he guaranteed himself by winning the match, and the $94,575 he ultimately collected for making it to the fourth round.Kyrgios was fined $20,000 for nearly hitting the ball boy following his loss to Nadal at Indian Wells, where he collected nearly $180,000 for making the quarterfinals. He, too, will earn, $94,575 in Miami, less whatever fines he receives for his behavior on Tuesday.Zverev, who has earned more than $30 million in career prize money, had to forfeit his earnings from the Mexican Open, and the ATP fined him $65,000, but the suspended ban has allowed him — in less than two tournaments — to more than triple in prize money what his outburst cost him.The ATP is considering whether, given recent increases in prize money, an increase in fines could deter players. Fines for racket abuse on the ATP Tour begin at $500, compared with $2,500 on the WTA Tour.Other than that, the codes for men and women are similar: No violently hitting or kicking or throwing a racket — or any piece of equipment for that matter, and no physical abuse or attempted abuse against ball people, umpires, judges or spectators.Still, tennis officials have a somewhat ambiguous understanding of when disqualification is warranted. It goes sort of like this: If you throw a racket, or whack a ball at someone intentionally in an attempt to hit or intimidate them, then you are automatically disqualified, whether you succeed or fail. However, if you throw or smash a racket or whack a ball without consideration of its direction, and it ends up hitting someone, then tournament officials have to assess whether an injury has occurred.If someone is indeed injured, as when Djokovic inadvertently hit a line judge in the throat at the 2020 U.S. Open, the player is automatically disqualified. But if no one is injured, as when Brooksby’s racket skittered into the ball person’s foot, the umpires will assess a penalty and tournament officials will fine the player — no disqualification necessary.Both Brooksby and Zverev quickly posted apologies for their actions on social media and personally apologized to the people involved. “I was grateful to have a second chance,” Brooksby told Tennis Channel on Monday.Kyrgios is a repeat offender. In a news conference following the Indian Wells match, he berated journalists who questioned him about the racket toss that nearly clipped a ball boy’s head, and was unapologetic.“It most definitely wasn’t like Zverev,” he said. “It was complete accident. I didn’t hit him.”Only after an avalanche of criticism on social media did Kyrgios issue an apology. The next day, he posted a video of himself giving the boy a racket.Following his match on Tuesday, Kyrgios played the victim, criticizing Bernardes for speaking to the crowd while Kyrgios was trying to serve. He seemed not to understand why the ATP had come down so hard on him for the incident at Indian Wells, given, he said, that Dennis Shapovalov had inadvertently hit a fan with a ball and received just a $5,000 fine. In fact, Shapovalov hit a chair umpire and was fined $7,000.“I can throw a racket at Indian Wells,” Kyrgios said, “didn’t even hit anyone, and I’m getting 25 grand.” More

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    Will Smith Owned the Williams Sisters’ Story Onscreen. Then He Stole Their Moment.

    An Oscar night that should have affirmed Serena and Venus’s rise to stardom instead played out in a way they have seen before — triumph tempered by mixed emotions.The table was set for a moment of family triumph. Venus and Serena Williams were dressed and seated for the grand occasion on Sunday night, and Will Smith, who had played their father Richard with uncanny similitude in the movie “King Richard,” was poised to win the Oscar for best actor.But then, as so often happens with the Williamses, things got complicated — and, through no fault of the sisters, an evening that should have affirmed their against-great-odds rise to stardom instead became about Smith slapping the comedian Chris Rock onstage.When Smith accepted the Oscar, he delivered a tearful, rambling, semi-apologetic speech in which he said that “art imitates life” and “I look like the crazy father, just like they said about Richard Williams.”Serena, watching the speech from a front-row box seat, covered her face with her hand.Unexpected and uncomfortable to watch, Smith’s failure to control his temper or rise to the occasion turned the night into one that the Williams sisters will never forget, for all the wrong reasons.It has often played out like this for these remarkable siblings, with moments of triumph tempered by controversy or mixed emotions.Smith said of the man he played onscreen: “He was a fierce defender of family.” On Monday, he apologized to Rock, the Williams family and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, calling his actions “unacceptable” and “inexcusable” and saying that “violence in all its forms is poisonous and destructive.”“We don’t know all the details of what happened,” Richard Williams, via his son Chavoita LeSane, told NBC News. “But we don’t condone anyone hitting anyone else unless it’s in self-defense.”Will Smith slapped the comedian Chris Rock onstage at the 94th annual Academy Awards.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesRichard Williams, complex and frequently difficult to read, certainly created some of the friction and misunderstandings with the wider world. But, as “King Richard” makes clear, he and Oracene Price — they divorced in 2002 — also laid the groundwork for one of the biggest success stories in sports, and for two incandescent tennis careers who have lasted far longer than one would have imagined considering that neither Venus nor her younger sister Serena had much choice in the matter of their career path.The sisters were raised from birth to be tennis champions, with Richard Williams’s 78-page plan as the blueprint and plenty of help from coaches like Rick Macci, who for four years in the early 1990s polished the sisters’ strokes and tactics and provided the seed capital and the support that helped make the long-shot family dream a reality.Macci said he saw Richard Williams, now 80, at his home in West Palm Beach, Fla., about three months ago and received a visit from him with a documentary crew about a month ago at his tennis academy in Boca Raton, Fla., where the sisters once trained. Macci said Williams was diminished after two strokes, but that they were still able to exchange stories.“There have been a smorgasbord of things that have played out through the years: the good, the bad, the ugly,” Macci, who figured prominently in “King Richard,” said in a telephone interview on Monday. “I think when you’re at the top and you’re unique, or two of a kind in their case, you’re just going to have speed bumps along the way. Last night was just unfortunate because it was just such a celebration of a story that you just cannot make up and unfortunately now that slap is the story. And the story should have been this miraculous thing.”Venus Williams and Serena Williams backstage during the 94th annual Academy Awards.A.M.P.A.S. Via Getty ImagesSome of the speed bumps were bumps of a different sort. In 1997, Venus Williams made her first major impact at a Grand Slam tournament, reaching the final of the U.S. Open at age 17 with white beads in her hair and thunder in her strokes.“I’m tall; I’m Black,” the 6-foot-1 Williams said early in the tournament. “Everything’s different about me. Just face the facts.”But her breakthrough took on another dimension when she and the Romanian player Irina Spirlea bumped into each other on a changeover during their semifinal. In defeat, Spirlea suggested that Venus Williams had an arrogant attitude, while Richard Williams talked about the racism his family had faced on tour and labeled Spirlea a “big, tall, white turkey.”In 2001, the family came to Indian Wells, Calif., and was booed by the crowd after Venus Williams withdrew from her semifinal match against Serena Williams shortly before it was to begin because of an injury. There was speculation at the time that Richard Williams was predetermining the results of his daughters’ matches — speculation that the Williamses denied — but the late withdrawal sparked suspicion and upset spectators. When Serena Williams returned to the court for her final against Kim Clijsters, with Richard and Venus in the stands, there were boos throughout the match, and Richard and Venus said they heard racial slurs from some fans.Serena and Venus Williams have remained remarkably close despite facing off frequently during their professional careers.Jed Jacobsohn /Allsport via Getty ImagesSerena won the title, but triumph again had a bitter taste. She boycotted the tournament for 14 years, returning in 2015, with Venus ending her 15-year boycott the following year.Even without controversy, the sisters’ dual success has been intricate. Remarkably close in their youth, as they remain today, their rise to the top of the game meant that they became frequent opponents, and though Venus Williams was the first to reach No. 1 and the first to win Wimbledon in singles, Serena Williams would prove, as her father predicted, the greater player, winning 23 Grand Slam singles titles to Venus’s seven.Venus handled being usurped with grace, and Serena has always made it clear that she would never have become the champion she did without Venus as her role model and cheerleader-in-chief.“Venus wasn’t at all resentful,” Macci said. “She’s never been like that. And Serena has always looked up to Venus as ‘my big sister’ and even today, they have that. That’s very uncommon. You’re not keeping score, because it’s family and if one wins, we both win. I saw that early on.”Richard Williams arrived before the game started when Venus Williams faced Mandy Minella at Arthur Ashe Staidum during the 2010 U.S. Open.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIt has worked beyond even Richard Williams’s imaginings. Though he predicted greatness and No. 1 rankings for Venus and Serena, he had long maintained that they would retire relatively early to pursue other interests. Instead, they have endured and excelled while pursuing other interests, including interior design and fashion design. Though they are near the end now and have not played on tour since last summer, they remain un-retired. Venus Williams is 41. Serena Williams is 40.Sunday night would have been a time to revel in the length of their journey, the depth of their achievements and Richard’s legacy. Instead, it turned into a night for Serena to cover her eyes, but, cinema, even when it is an Oscar-winning true story, won’t be the last word on the Williams sisters, or their father. More

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    Kylie McKenzie Sues U.S.T.A., Claiming It Failed to Keep Her Safe

    The tennis player claims the organization failed to disclose that her coach may have sexually assaulted one of its employees.Kylie McKenzie, a once-promising tennis player whom an investigation found was “more likely than not” to have been sexually assaulted by a coach at a United States Tennis Association training center, filed a federal lawsuit against the organization on Monday, claiming it had failed to keep her safe from someone with a history of assaulting women.Lawyers for McKenzie, 23, who lives in Arizona, said in the filing in U.S. District Court in Orlando, Fla., that the U.S.T.A. had failed to disclose that the coach, Anibal Aranda, had assaulted one of its employees years before the alleged incident with McKenzie.The employee said that Aranda had groped her and touched her vagina over her clothes at a New York City dance club around 2015, but that she did not disclose the incident to anyone. After the employee learned about McKenzie’s accusations, she regretted not reporting her allegations, she told the investigator for the U.S. Center for SafeSport, the organization tasked with investigating sexual and physical abuse claims in sports.SafeSport suspended Aranda from coaching for two years and placed him on probation for an additional two years after finding it more likely than not that he touched McKenzie’s vagina over her clothes and groped her under the guise of showing her a serving technique in 2018, when she was 19.“As of August of 2018, defendants knew or reasonably should have known of Coach Aranda’s propensity to sexually batter, threaten, harm, assault, and otherwise mentally, physically, and emotionally injure female athletes,” the suit states. Her lawyers say the U.S.T.A. did not live up to its duty of care by failing to engage a chaperone for Aranda’s associations with McKenzie and other female athletes, and allowing him to supervise young women in private “after being provided notice that Coach Aranda was inappropriately touching and inappropriately engaging in sexual communications with athletes.”The lawsuit comes at a time when the national governing bodies for sports are under increasing scrutiny for the people they employ to develop young talent. Female gymnasts who were sexually abused recently reached a $380 million settlement with U.S.A. Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee.McKenzie’s case also calls attention to what some in tennis have long viewed as systemic problems with the development of young players, who often leave home for training academies, where coaches serve as mentors, surrogate parents and guardians on trips to tournaments.Chris Widmaier, a spokesman for the U.S.T.A., said the organization does not comment on pending litigation. Widmaier previously said that the organization first learned about the 2015 incident after McKenzie filed her complaint because its employee had not told anyone in the organization. After McKenzie filed her complaint over the alleged incident, which she said occurred on a back court at the U.S.T.A.’s Orlando training center, Widmaier said the organization acted immediately to suspend and terminate Aranda.In his testimony during the SafeSport investigation, Aranda denied ever touching McKenzie inappropriately, either during or after training. He also said he did not recall touching another employee inappropriately. He suggested McKenzie had fabricated a story because she had been told that the U.S.T.A. was planning to stop supporting her. Accusing him of abuse, Aranda said, would make it more difficult for the organization to cut her off, an assertion U.S.T.A. coaches and McKenzie rejected.“I want to be clear, I never touched her vagina,” Aranda told a SafeSport investigator, according to those records. “I never touched her inappropriately. All these things she’s saying are twisted.”He has not responded to repeated requests for comment.The SafeSport records are confidential, but The New York Times has reviewed a copy of the final ruling, the investigator’s report and notes from the investigator’s interviews with a dozen witnesses, including Aranda. The Times has also reviewed a copy of the police report by an Orlando detective.In an interview with The Times this month, McKenzie said learning that someone at the U.S.T.A. could have warned her to be wary of Aranda had doubled her trauma.“He told me: ‘You’re a champion. I want to work with you,’” McKenzie said of Aranda. “I had every reason to trust him.”The suit also alleges that McKenzie endured inappropriate treatment from two other coaches earlier in her training with the U.S.T.A., with one coach berating her for consorting with boys and instructing her to remove all male contacts from her phone and another joking with her about undergarments and how people might think they were a couple when they traveled alone to Texas for a tournament.McKenzie says she has suffered physical and mental injuries since the incident. Her lawyers argued in the filing that she was entitled to compensation for her physical and emotional distress because the U.S.T.A. failed to implement and enforce proper policies to protect athletes; fostered a culture of inappropriate coach-athlete relationships; and failed to intervene to prevent the escalation of inappropriate conduct. More

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    Despite the Trend in Sports, Don’t Expect Ashleigh Barty to Un-Retire

    When the world’s top women’s tennis player won the Australian Open in January, it became her crowning achievement. Her stunning retirement is a loss to tennis.Tennis, with all its aging and ailing superstars, has been bracing for big farewells for years. But players like Roger Federer, Serena and Venus Williams and Andy Murray have defied the timeline and the expectations, pressing on and rejecting retirement through competitiveness, stubbornness, and a love of the game and the platform.Which is why Wednesday came as such a surprise.Ashleigh Barty, by these new-age standards, was just getting started. At 25, she was ranked No. 1 with three Grand Slam singles titles in the bank, including Wimbledon last year and the Australian Open in January. Already an icon at home, she had the beautiful game and winning personality to one day become a global brand as the majors and seasons piled up.But Barty was on her own timeline, and, after long and careful consideration, she is retiring on top, the very top, which might sound neat and tidy but actually requires the self-awareness and the guts to leave quite a few things unfinished.If Barty remains retired, she will never win a U.S. Open singles title, never win the Billie Jean King Cup team event for Australia, never win an Olympic gold medal, never, with her complete set of tennis tools, achieve the calendar-year Grand Slam that her Australian predecessors Rod Laver and Margaret Court won more than 50 years ago.Barty warmed up on court P4 at the start of the fifth day of the 2019 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut there is more to a champion’s life than a checklist, and, as Federer and his enduring peer group would surely confirm, it is only worth making the trek to such low-oxygen destinations if you genuinely enjoy the journey.Barty, a teen prodigy who won the Wimbledon girls title at age 15, has long seemed like someone whose gift took her farther than she wanted to go.“I’m shocked and not shocked,” Rennae Stubbs, an Australian player, coach and ESPN analyst, said of Barty’s retirement. “Ash is not an ego-driven person wanting more. She’s happy and now comfortable and never has to leave her town and family again. And she’s content with her achievements now.”The journeys, it is true, are longer for Australians, and they had been isolated under some of the strictest lockdowns and quarantine rules in the world during the pandemic.Barty spent all of 2020 in Australia, opting to remain home in Brisbane rather than travel abroad to compete when tournaments resumed after a forced hiatus. She left the country for several months in 2021, cementing her No. 1 status by winning four titles, including Wimbledon. But after losing early in the U.S. Open, Barty, emotionally drained, returned to Australia and skipped the rest of the season.That might have been a hint that early retirement was a possibility; that balance and personal well-being were Barty’s priorities, all the more so with her financial future secure. But then came her return to competition in January, when she ended Australia’s 44-year-drought by winning the Australian Open singles title — without dropping a single set. After her forehand passing shot winner against the American Danielle Collins, she howled with delight.Barty supporters cheered as they watched her defeat Alison Riske during the 2020 Australian Open.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesPerhaps, in retrospect, it was a scream of relief. What looked like her latest achievement turned out to be her crowning one. She did not pick up a racket again, even to practice, after winning the title in Melbourne. She pulled out of the prestigious hardcourt events in Indian Wells and Miami, and then retired on Wednesday, delivering the news in a prearranged conversation with her friend and former doubles partner Casey Dellacqua that was released on social media.“I don’t think Ash has ever been part of a current,” said Micky Lawler, the president of the Women’s Tennis Association, who spoke with Barty on Tuesday before her announcement. “This is not a new trend for her. I think she has always been very determined and very clear on where she stood and where tennis stood in her life.”That clarity has been hard-earned. Barty has matured and learned a great deal about herself through therapy and life experience since she stepped away from the tour and its pressures for the first time at age 17, depressed and homesick. Sports comebacks remain all the rage, as Tom Brady continues to make clear. Tennis stars of the past who retired early — see Justine Henin and Bjorn Borg — did eventually return to competition, however briefly. But the feeling in tennis circles is that another Barty comeback is against the odds.“I would guess that this is her final decision,” Lawler said. She added, “There would be a much bigger chance of her coming back if she lived in the States or in Europe. The fact she’s in Australia and loves Australia and loves being home, I think that plays a big role in how she decided this and when she decided this, and that will make a comeback that much harder.”Barty in action against Sofia Kenin in their semifinal singles match at the 2020 Australian Open.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for The New York TimesLawler said that, in their conversation, Barty also made it clear that she did not want to continue placing travel demands on Craig Tyzzer, her veteran Australian coach.Lawler said she expects Barty to request to be removed from the rankings, likely before the end of the Miami Open, which concludes April 3. No. 2 Iga Swiatek of Poland could become No. 1 by winning her opening match in Miami, but if she loses, No. 6 Paula Badosa of Spain could also become No. 1 by winning the title.Though Swiatek, 20, and Badosa, 24, have powerful games and charisma, Barty’s departure leaves a void. Stylistically, her flowing, varied game was a refreshing change from the big-bang approach that has long prevailed. Barty, though she stood only 5-foot-5, had plenty of power and one of the most dominant serves — and forehands — in the game. But her success was also based on changes of pace, spin and tactics. She could hit over her backhand with two hands, or slice it with one hand and tremendous control, depth and bite.Her full package often bamboozled more one-dimensional opponents. Other young players possess similar variety, including Russia’s Daria Kasatkina and Canada’s Bianca Andreescu, who won the 2019 U.S. Open. But Barty was the most consistent and irresistible exemplar of variety. She was 3-0 in Grand Slam singles finals, although it bears remembering that she never faced a player ranked in the top 10 in any of the Grand Slam tournaments she won.Barty celebrated after she won her first Wimbledon title in 2021.Pool photo by Ben QueenboroughThat was no fault of her own, but her early departure will again make it challenging for the WTA to create what it has lacked for most of the last 20 years: the enduring, transcendent rivalries that have been the hallmarks of the men’s game in the age of Novak Djokovic, Federer and Rafael Nadal.Serena Williams, the greatest women’s player of this era, is 40 and has not played since injuring herself in the first round of Wimbledon last year. She may not play again. Naomi Osaka, her heir apparent in terms of global profile and commercial portfolio, has struggled with her mental health and is now ranked 77th. Emma Raducanu, the talented British teen who was a surprise U.S. Open champion last year, is a sponsor magnet but not yet ready to soar to the top.Perhaps Barty will take on other sporting challenges. During her first hiatus from tennis, she showed her potential to be a world-class cricketer, and she is an excellent golfer who is engaged to Garry Kissick, a professional golfer from Australia. Other women’s tennis stars have switched to professional golf, including Althea Gibson, but that move sounds unlikely given the global travel that sport also demands.The WTA clearly knows how to crown champions and do business without Barty. Despite finishing the season at No. 1 the last three years, she has not been a dominant presence there amid her long breaks from the sport. But however well-considered her departure, it is still sad for tennis that she did not want to carry the torch forward.Her character and game would have worn particularly well. More

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    Kylie McKenzie Speaks Out Against a Former U.S.T.A. Coach

    PHOENIX — Kylie McKenzie, once one of America’s most promising junior tennis players, is for now back where she began, hitting balls on a local court, often with her father, living at home while trying to rescue what once seemed like a can’t-miss future.There is little doubt where that future went astray. In 2018, McKenzie, then 19, was working closely with a top coach at the United States Tennis Association’s national training center in Orlando, Fla.Anibal Aranda liked to take her to the remote courts of the tennis center, where, she said, he praised her and put his hands on her body during their workouts, pressing against her while she practiced her serve.Maybe, McKenzie thought, it was because Aranda had grown up in Paraguay and was less aware of the kind of physical contact considered appropriate in the United States. For six years, Aranda had coached for the U.S.T.A., which had been supporting McKenzie’s career and practically raising her at its academies since she was 12. Its officials trusted him, and she trusted them, and so she trusted him, too.On Nov. 9, 2018, Aranda sat so close to her on a bench after practice that their legs touched, and then he put his hand between her thighs, she said. She later learned she was not the only person to accuse him of sexual misconduct.During the last week, Aranda has not responded to repeated phone calls and text messages seeking comment, sent to a mobile number associated with his name. Howard Jacobs, the lawyer who represented him during an investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which investigates reports of abuse in American sports, said Aranda was no longer a client of his.In his testimony during the SafeSport investigation, Aranda denied ever touching McKenzie inappropriately, either during or after training. He suggested McKenzie had fabricated a story because she had been told that the U.S.T.A. was planning to stop supporting her. Accusing him of abuse, Aranda said, would make it more difficult for the organization to cut her off, an assertion U.S.T.A. coaches and McKenzie rejected.The SafeSport records are confidential, but The New York Times has reviewed a copy of the final ruling, the investigator’s report, and notes from her interviews with a dozen witnesses, including Aranda. The Times has also reviewed a copy of the police report by an Orlando detective.“I want to be clear, I never touched her vagina,” Aranda told a SafeSport investigator, according to those records. “I never touched her inappropriately. All these things she’s saying are twisted.”The incident, which McKenzie quickly reported to friends, relatives, U.S.T.A. officials and law enforcement, led to a cascade of events over the next three years. The U.S.T.A. suspended and then fired Aranda. A lengthy investigation by SafeSport found it “more likely than not” that Aranda had assaulted McKenzie. Police took a statement from McKenzie, stated there was probable cause for a charge of battery, then turned the evidence over to the state attorney’s office, which ultimately opted not to pursue a case. McKenzie said she began to experience panic attacks and depression, which have hampered her attempts to reclaim her tennis prowess.Anibal Aranda, left, with Jose Caballero, a coach, and the tennis player CiCi Bellis, who is a friend of Kylie McKenzie’s, in 2017.John Raoux/Associated PressBut what especially troubles McKenzie, now 23, is something that she only learned reading the confidential SafeSport investigative report on her case. An employee at the U.S.T.A had a similar experience with Aranda about five years earlier, but chose to keep the information to herself.The U.S.T.A. was unaware of that incident because the employee said she did not tell anyone until she was interviewed by the SafeSport investigator for McKenzie’s case.“To know he had a history, that almost doubled the trauma,” McKenzie said last week at a coffee shop not far from her home. “I trusted them,” she said of the U.S.T.A. “I always saw them as guardians. I thought it was a safe place.”McKenzie’s case highlights what some in tennis have long viewed as systemic problems with how young players, especially women, become professionals. Players often leave home at a young age for training academies, where they often work closely with male coaches who serve as mentors, surrogate parents and guardians on trips to tournaments.Chris Widmaier, a spokesman for the U.S.T.A., said any suggestion that its academies are unsafe was inaccurate. He said the organization’s safety measures include employee background checks, training on harassment and how predators target and make potential victims vulnerable to advances, as well as multiple ways to report inappropriate or abusive conduct.“More than three years ago, an incident was reported by Ms. McKenzie and that report was treated with absolute seriousness and urgency,” Widmaier said in a statement. “The U.S.T.A. immediately, without any hesitation or delay, notified the U.S. Center for SafeSport and cooperated in a full and thorough investigation of the incident. The U.S.T.A. suspended the offending party on the day of the report and has not permitted him back on property or at any U.S.T.A.-sponsored function or event since. In addition to promptly reporting this incident, the U.S.T.A. worked with Ms. McKenzie and her representatives to ensure that she felt safe while she continued to train and advance her tennis career. The U.S.T.A. supported Ms. McKenzie before, during and after the incident.”Widmaier said the organization was working to increase the number of female coaches. It has added women to its staff at its national training centers — there are now five women, six men and three open positions on its national coaching staff — and developed a coaching fellowship program in which women must account for half the enrollment.McKenzie has repeated her account of the events on multiple occasions, to friends, U.S.T.A. officials and law enforcement. In finding McKenzie’s account credible, SafeSport investigators wrote that her account had remained consistent and was supported by contemporary evidence, including text messages and U.S.T.A. records.In 2019, SafeSport suspended Aranda, 38, from coaching for two years and placed him on probation for an additional two years. Aranda is one of 77 people involved with tennis on the U.S.T.A.’s suspended or ineligible list because they have been convicted or accused of sexual or physical abuse.‘You’re a champion. I want to work with you.’McKenzie at an international hardcourt juniors championship tournament in College Park, Md., in 2015.Cal Sport Media via AP ImagesMcKenzie started playing tennis at 4 when her father, Mark, put a racket in her hands. By fourth grade she was being home-schooled so she could practice more.When she was 12, coaches with the U.S.T.A., who had seen her at tournaments and camps, offered her an opportunity to train full time at its development academy in Carson, Calif. She moved with the family of another elite junior player from Arizona, leaving her parents and two younger siblings behind.Within a few years she was homesick and burned out. Coaches kept her on the court for hours after training to talk about life and tennis, and one yelled at her while they attended a tournament at Indian Wells when he found out she had kissed a boy at 14.McKenzie left Carson in 2014 and returned to Arizona. But after she won two top-level junior tournaments, officials with the U.S.T.A. persuaded her to move to the training center in Florida.A shoulder injury eventually sent her back to Arizona for 18 months, but in 2018 she returned to Florida, moving in with relatives on Merritt Island. She occasionally spent the night at the home of her friend, CiCi Bellis, then a top American prospect. Bellis was injured at the time, allowing her coach, Anibal Aranda, to work with other players.McKenzie was initially flattered by Aranda’s attention and praise. “He told me: ‘You’re a champion. I want to work with you,’” McKenzie said of Aranda. “I had every reason to trust him.”One U.S.T.A. employee would have said otherwise.During the SafeSport investigation into McKenzie’s incident, the employee, who is not being identified to protect her privacy, told the investigator that a few years earlier, Aranda had groped her and rubbed her vagina on a dance floor at a New York club during a night out with colleagues during the U.S. Open. The employee said that she left the club immediately but that Aranda followed her and tried to get in a taxi alone with her, which she resisted.After the U.S.T.A. employee learned about McKenzie’s accusations, she regretted not reporting her allegations, she told the investigator.Aranda denied touching the woman inappropriately. He told the investigator he remembered the night at the dance club but did not recall details of the evening.What follows is the story that McKenzie told U.S.T.A. officials, a SafeSport investigator, police, and shared with The New York Times last week.By October 2018, McKenzie was training almost exclusively with Aranda, alone with him for several hours every day. Initially, their hitting sessions took place on the busier hardcourts, but he soon moved them to clay courts that got little foot traffic, telling her that the slower surface would improve her footwork. He scheduled training for 11 a.m., though most players practiced earlier to avoid the midday heat.The U.S.T.A. National Campus Collegiate Center in Orlando, where McKenzie trained with Aranda.Matt Marriott/NCAA Photos via Getty ImagesEach day, she said, Aranda increased his physical contact with her. Pats of encouragement moved down her back until he was grazing the top of her buttocks. He brushed against her as they walked to the courts, making casual contact with her breasts.He used her phone to film her practice session, then inched closer to her as they sat on a bench watching the video until their legs touched. Sometimes, she said, he held the back of her hand as she held her phone and intertwined his arm with hers. Then he began resting his arm on her thigh as they talked. Sometimes he would say, “You’re too skinny,” and grab her stomach and rub her sides and waist. He would ask her how her shoulder felt and massage it, she told the investigator.Under the guise of showing McKenzie correct body position and technique, he pushed the front of his body against her back and placed his hands on her hips as she served, moving them to her underwear. Another time, he knelt and held her hips from the front, his face inches from her groin. She dreaded practicing her serve.He also made her repeat daily affirmations. Some were about tennis, but others were not. “He’d say, ‘Say you’re beautiful because you are,’” McKenzie said.Aranda told the investigator he used affirmations in training but only those focused on tennis. He acknowledged touching McKenzie’s hands, feet and hips to teach proper body position but denied holding her from behind or touching her groin.All she wanted was a tennis coach.McKenzie in Anthem, Ariz., where she practices now.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesOn Nov. 9, 2018, McKenzie felt uneasy as she walked to the court for her late-morning training session, certain Aranda wanted to practice serving. He did, she said, grinding against her harder than ever as she practiced her service motion.At the end of practice he asked her if she thought she was pretty. She was wearing leggings and had placed a towel on her lap. Aranda rested his hand on her right upper thigh. Suddenly, she felt it between her legs, “rubbing her upper labia,” according to the report.McKenzie elbowed him away. Aranda then knelt in front of her, and started aggressively massaging her calves and knees. He asked her what she wanted him to be. She told him she just wanted him to coach her and provide mental training, an answer that appeared to agitate him.“Oh, that’s it?” he said, she told the investigator.As they left the court, she said, Aranda asked her to walk to a shed to store the tennis balls. She walked with him but did not enter the shed. A few minutes later, sitting on another bench, he spoke to her about finding an agent and sponsors. He tried to hug her as she hunched on the bench. She did not hug him back, and left.McKenzie went to Bellis’s home and, shaking and crying, told her what happened. They called Bellis’s mother, who urged them to report the incident to the U.S.T.A. Bellis and McKenzie called Jessica Battaglia, then the senior manager of player development for the organization. Bellis helped McKenzie, who struggled to speak, retell the story.Battaglia immediately contacted senior officials with the U.S.T.A., including Malmqvist and Martin Blackman, the general manager of player development, and female employees who needed to be notified, according to her testimony in the report. U.S.T.A. officials informed Aranda that a report had been made and that he would no longer be allowed at the training center.Ola Malmqvist, then the director of coaching for the U.S.T.A., told the SafeSport investigator that shortly after being suspended, a distraught Aranda called Malmqvist and said: “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I made a mistake.” Then, Malmqvist said, Aranda added, “It wasn’t bad,” and also, “But I made a mistake.” Malmqvist also said Aranda “made some comment along the lines of, ‘I got too close to her.’” Aranda later told investigators that he did not recall making those statements.Later on the day of the alleged assault, Aranda texted McKenzie to ask whether she had done her fitness workout and also added her on Snapchat. (She supplied the investigator with screen shots of her phone.) When she did not respond to his messages or pick up his phone calls, he started calling Bellis. The friends went to a hotel that night so Aranda would not know where to find McKenzie.McKenzie gave a sworn statement to the police in Orlando on Nov. 29. The detective wrote in his report that probable cause existed for a charge of battery. But prosecutors wrote to McKenzie in February 2020 to say they did not believe there was enough evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.As the SafeSport investigation unfolded during the first months of 2019, McKenzie continued to train at the center with other coaches. She had persistent stomach ailments and panic attacks, she said, that hampered her breathing when she tried to practice. On many days, she just wanted to sleep. Her love for the game never wavered, though.McKenzie practicing with her father, Mark.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesShe left the center in 2020, when the pandemic forced the U.S.T.A. to cut back. Since then, she has trained with coaches in South Carolina and Arizona. At the moment, she is playing on her own and working out several hours a day at a gym. Sometimes she goes for runs with her mother. She has worked with a therapist and would like to again, but treatment can be expensive, so she is trying to “plow through” on her own, she said.She completed high school in 2020, at age 21, and is considering attending college, possibly close to home, and maybe reviving her career through N.C.A.A. tennis but while gaining an education, a path several top women have taken, including Danielle Collins, who reached the Australian Open final in January, and Jennifer Brady, who did so in 2021 and used to hit with McKenzie on the U.S.T.A.’s courts. As a junior, McKenzie beat Sofia Kenin, the 2020 Australian Open champion.She often thinks of the U.S.T.A. employee with her own story about Aranda.McKenzie, who is soft-spoken and reserved, said she was motivated to speak out because she knows too well what can happen when women don’t.“That probably just empowered him,” she said of the silence that followed the incident at the New York club. “He felt like he was permitted to act the way he did.” More

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    No. 1 Ashleigh Barty, Just 25, Retiring From Tennis

    The three-time Grand Slam champion said in a social media post, “the time is right now for me to step away and chase other dreams and to put the rackets down.”At the top of her sport, Ashleigh Barty is retiring from tennis.In a stunning move, Barty, the No. 1-ranked women’s player who won her country’s major tournament, the Australian Open, in January, announced on Wednesday that she was leaving tennis for other pursuits.Barty, who turns 26 next month, posted a video to Instagram announcing her decision through a conversation with her compatriot Casey Dellacqua, a retired player, one of her closest friends and a former doubles partner. Barty said she also would hold a news conference.“It’s hard to say, but I’m so happy and I’m so ready,” Barty said. “And I just know at the moment in my heart for me as a person, this is right.”She added, “I’m so grateful to everything that tennis has given me — it’s given me all of my dreams, plus more — but I know that the time is right now for me to step away and chase other dreams and to put the rackets down.”It was the third time that Barty had stepped away from professional tennis but the first time that she had announced her retirement. In 2014, at age 17, when she already was one of the sport’s top doubles players, she took an indefinite break from the tour, citing the pressures generated by early success. During that 17-month hiatus, she played professional cricket but returned to tennis in early 2016 reinvigorated and began her climb to the summit.Barty also took an 11-month break from the tour at the onset of the pandemic, remaining in Australia instead of traveling to tournaments abroad even after the tour’s five-month hiatus ended in August 2020.But her surprise retirement announcement, coming with the tour back in full swing and after her latest triumph in Melbourne, is clearly a decision that she has considered at length and from a position of strength.“There was a perspective shift in me in the second phase of my career that my happiness wasn’t dependent on the results and success for me is knowing that I’ve given absolutely everything, everything I can,” Barty told Dellacqua. “I’m fulfilled. I’m happy.”“I know how much work it takes to bring the best out of yourself,” she said, later adding, “It’s just I don’t have that in me anymore. I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want and kind of everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore and I think I just know that I’m absolutely, I am spent.”She is the first women’s player to retire while on top of the singles rankings since the Belgian star Justine Henin unexpectedly announced her retirement in May 2008. Henin, like Barty, was just 25 years old and the reigning champion at two Grand Slam tournaments: the French Open and the U.S. Open in Henin’s case. Henin later returned to the tour in 2010, although she never won another major title.If Barty sticks with her decision, she will be the first player to retire after winning a Grand Slam singles title since Pete Sampras, the American star who did not play another match after winning the 2002 U.S. Open, announcing his retirement nearly a year later.Barty winning the women’s singles final at the 2022 Australian Open.Dean Lewins/EPA, via ShutterstockBarty won 15 career singles titles, including three at Grand Slam tournaments: She won the French Open in 2019, Wimbledon in 2021 and the Australian Open this year.Barty said that winning Wimbledon, long considered the ultimate achievement for Australian tennis players with their country’s close ties to Britain, shifted her outlook on her career. Winning the Australian Open gave her a storybook ending.“To be able to win Wimbledon, which was my dream, my one true dream that I wanted in tennis, that really changed my perspective,” she said, adding, “And there was just a little part of me that wasn’t quite satisfied, wasn’t quite fulfilled. And then came the challenges of the Australian Open and I think that for me just feels like the most perfect way. My perfect way to celebrate what an amazing journey my tennis career has been.”Barty continued, “I’ve given absolutely everything I can to this beautiful sport of tennis and I’m really happy with that. And for me that is my success. And I know that people may not understand it and that’s OK. I’m OK with that. Because I know that for me, Ash Barty the person has so many dreams that she wants to chase after that don’t necessarily involve traveling the world, being away from my family, being away from my home, which is where I’ve always wanted to be.” More

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    Ahead of French Open, an Injury Interrupts Nadal’s Surge

    Two days after the end of his 20-match win streak to start the season, Nadal said a rib injury would keep him out for four to six weeks, a timeline that would disrupt his clay-court season.SAN DIEGO — Rafael Nadal, the 21-time Grand Slam tournament singles champion, announced Tuesday that he had a stress fracture in his rib cage and would not play for “four to six weeks.”Such injuries can be slow to heal and difficult to treat. Nadal, 35 and back up to No. 3 in the ATP Tour rankings after an outstanding start to the season, appears certain to miss a significant chunk of the clay-court season, including next month’s Monte-Carlo Masters and Barcelona Open.Nadal is the most successful clay-court player in history, and 13 of his record 21 major titles have come at the French Open, which begins May 22.“This is not good news, and I did not expect this,” Nadal said in Spanish on Tuesday in a social media post. “I am downbeat and sad because after such a great start to the season, I was coming to a very important part of the year with very good feelings and results. But hey, I have always had this spirit to fight and to overcome and what I will do is have patience and work hard during my recovery.”Nadal said he injured the rib during his grueling three-set victory on Saturday in the semifinals of the BNP Paribas Open over Carlos Alcaraz, his 18-year-old Spanish compatriot. Nadal struggled to breathe without pain during the latter stages of that match, played in blustery conditions in Indian Wells, Calif. He was treated on the court but, still unclear on the severity of his injury, he chose to play in Sunday’s final against Taylor Fritz of the United States.Fritz, 24, defeated Nadal 6-3, 7-6 (5) to win the most significant title of his career. Nadal was clearly diminished: serving at slower speeds than usual. He took a medical timeout off court after the first set and was treated on the court late in the second, wincing as he lay on his stomach during a changeover and a tour trainer worked on him. But Nadal still came within two points of forcing a decisive third set.He underwent medical tests upon returning to Spain on Monday and is now back in an all-too-familiar mode: rehabilitating an injury. Nadal has dealt with injuries throughout his remarkable career and missed most of the second half of the 2021 season because of a chronic foot condition after losing to Novak Djokovic in the semifinals of the French Open. He caught the coronavirus in December but recovered quickly and won his first 20 singles matches of the season, including the Australian Open title.But this is a new type of injury for Nadal, one that could recur and, according to the retired orthopedic surgeon Bill Mallon, could require longer than four to six weeks to heal. “You can’t put your rib in a cast,” Mallon said.Treatment options are limited, though some patients use bone stimulator devices, which use electrical or ultrasonic impulses to try to speed healing, said Nicholas DiNubile, an American orthopedic surgeon. Nadal has never played in the French Open without competing in a preliminary event on clay. But it could be a race against the clock to compete in early May in the Madrid Open or Italian Open.Before announcing the injury, Nadal had withdrawn from this week’s Miami Open, a Masters 1000 event on a hardcourt. Djokovic, back at No. 1, will also miss it because of the United States’ travel ban on unvaccinated foreigners. But Fritz, the rising American star who played Sunday’s final despite a right ankle injury, is expected to play.“With treatment and a late start, he should be good to go,” Paul Annacone, one of his coaches, said Tuesday. More