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      It’s Nadal vs. Djokovic in the French Open, but One Round Early

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      Rafael Nadal, the 13-time champion at Roland Garros, is set for yet another showdown with Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 and his longtime rival. But the title won’t be on the line.PARIS — Roland Garros came alive Wednesday in so many ways.As the French government eased coronavirus-related restrictions, allowing some 5,000 fans to fill Philippe Chatrier Court with rousing chants and sharp Panama hats, it seemed fitting that this would be the day that set up a match that has been anticipated for nearly two weeks.Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic will meet in a French Open semifinal on Friday. Both won gutty matches on Wednesday that were filled with tension, noise and surges of momentum in every direction.Their semifinal match will be the latest showdown in an epic rivalry and the second time in less than a month that they will face each other on red clay, Nadal’s favorite surface. Djokovic, however, gave him all he could manage in their recent three-set clay-court match in the final of Italian Open, which Nadal won for the 10th time.“It is going to be a special match with a lot of crowd, just like it was today,” said Diego Schwartzman of Argentina, who battled valiantly against Nadal on Wednesday only to fall in four sets. “Everyone wants to see that.”They also wanted to see the end of Djokovic’s quarterfinal match with Matteo Berrettini of Italy. But an 11 p.m. curfew intervened. On a changeover at 10:54 local time, with Djokovic leading by a set and up by 3-2 in the fourth, the players headed for the locker room as security workers cleared the crowd, which was about five times larger than on any previous day and had spent the better part of an hour helping to lift Berrettini from a two-set hole.Virtually the same series of events had unfolded during a Djokovic match at the Australian Open in February. Just as then, there was howling and plenty of dawdling to the exits on Wednesday. But after about 15 minutes, the players returned to an empty stadium to complete the business of the night.Djokovic then finished off the ninth-seeded Berrettini, 6-3, 6-2, 6-7(5) 7-5, like a man desperate to save every ounce of energy for his next match.“Very difficult conditions,” a spent Djokovic said when it was over.Now comes the hardest part. Djokovic holds the edge against Nadal, 29-28, though Nadal is far superior on clay, with a 19-7 record that currently looks even more imposing. It’s heating up in Paris, baking the clay and making the ball fly just the way Nadal likes.“We know each other well,” Nadal said after beating the 10th-seeded Schwartzman, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4, 6-0. “Everybody knows that in these kind of matches anything can happen.”Djokovic holds a slight edge in match victories, 29-28, over his semifinal opponent, Nadal.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic said playing Nadal at the French Open was unlike anything else in the sport.“It’s the biggest challenge you can have playing against Nadal on this court,” he said. “Each time we face each other, there is that extra tension and expectation. The vibes are different walking on the court with him.”And yet, because of how players are seeded at Grand Slam tournaments, strictly by the current ranking, the matchup comes in the semifinal, one round before pretty much anyone with knowledge of the sport believed that Nadal, the reigning champion, the No. 3 seed and a 13-time winner of this event, should play Djokovic, the world No. 1.But Nadal skipped the 2020 United States Open because of concerns about the pandemic, lost in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and played a limited schedule after that tournament, allowing Daniil Medvedev to grab the second spot in the world rankings.“That’s a big difference,” Nadal said Wednesday of meeting Djokovic in a semifinal instead of the final. “The winner of that match needs to keep going, and there remains a lot of work to do to try to achieve the final goal here.”Nadal had to put in plenty of work Wednesday to secure his semifinal spot. For a little while, with an intense, late afternoon sun making the conditions deceptively taxing, Schwartzman had Nadal on the ropes.A beguiling player who has gotten the most out of a body that is just barely over five-and-a-half feet tall, Schwartzman is a defender of the first order. What he lacks in leverage and power, he makes up for by having more tricks and spins in his strings than nearly any other player on the tour. His topspin lob, which somehow always seems to land within inches of the baseline, is as good as it gets.He has done one of the hardest things in the sport. He beat Nadal on red clay at the Italian Open last year. He is an extremely popular player in the locker room, a figure of fascination among peers who are generally at least a half-foot taller than he is and who know firsthand how difficult he can be to play, especially on clay. Schwartzman is fearless, and he came to fight Wednesday.The crowd watching Nadal and Diego Schwartzman during their quarterfinal match on Wednesday.Thibault Camus/Associated PressDown a set, he battled to stay in the match, and had a Roland Garros crowd — which treats Nadal as a beloved adopted son — chanting his name. He didn’t disappoint, unleashing his powerful forehand, breaking Nadal three times in the first two sets and shaking his confidence. By the end of the second set, Nadal was sending weak backhands to the middle of the court for Schwartzman to tee off on and repeatedly failing to put away overheads that he usually bounces off the court.Ultimately, though, no part of Schwartzman’s game is better than Nadal’s, with the possible exception of that topspin lob.Down by 3-4 in the third set, Nadal suddenly seemed to remember where he was and what he has accomplished here. He reeled off wins in the next nine games, finishing the match in a manageable 2 hours 45 minutes. In the final set, he won 25 of 30 points.“At the end, he’s Rafa and he’s always finding the way,” Schwartzman said.After Nadal was done, it was Djokovic’s turn to hold up his end of the deal.At first, Djokovic was far more clinical than he had been in his fourth-round match against another Italian, Lorenzo Musetti, who took the first two sets off Djokovic. With arguably the best return the game has ever seen, Djokovic broke Berrettini’s usually troublesome serve early in the first two sets and gave Berrettini few chances to break his.Djokovic has lost after being up two sets to none just once in his career. But with no room for error, Berrettini found the groove on his serve and had Djokovic lunging just to get the rim of his racket on the ball. Under pressure, Djokovic fumbled away a chance to serve out the third-set tiebreaker. Then, with the stadium empty and his anger boiling over, Djokovic outfought Berrettini to barely prevail in the fourth, screaming like a cave man when Berrettini’s final shot hit the middle of the net.Nadal was down by 3-4 in the third set, then found his form and reeled off wins in the next nine games.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic has seen versions of this movie before. In October, he entered the French Open final against Nadal with as good a chance as ever against a player who had never lost the ultimate match at Roland Garros. He appeared in form, and the shift of the tournament to the fall because of the pandemic meant cool playing conditions that deadened the balls, preventing them from jumping into Nadal’s preferred strike zone.Yet Nadal blitzed Djokovic, 6-0, 6-2, 7-5.Goran Ivanisevic, the 2001 Wimbledon champion and Djokovic’s coach, said that loss had staggered Djokovic, especially after his disqualification from the United States Open in September, when he inadvertently swatted a ball into a line judge’s throat.The win gave Nadal his 20th Grand Slam title, tying him with Roger Federer for the most in the history of the men’s game. Djokovic pulled to within two of them in February, when he won his ninth Australian Open championship.Now he and Nadal are meeting with only a berth in Sunday’s final on the line, even if it may not really feel that way. Neither of the two other semifinalists, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexander Zverev, has won a Grand Slam title.At least, the great matchup should be completed with plenty of time before curfew. The Panama hats will be out in force.Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, left, will face Alexander Zverev of Germany in the other men’s semifinal on Friday.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More

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      Coco Gauff Eliminated in French Open Quarterfinals

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      The American teenager, playing her first Grand Slam quarterfinal, was frustrated and defeated by the unseeded Barbora Krejcikova.PARIS — It was the first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal for Coco Gauff and Barbora Krejcikova and, frankly, you could tell.There were tight groundstrokes into the net, errant service tosses and multiple double faults, reversals of momentum and fortune.To sum up, there was tension in the sunlight as fans — remember those? — shouted “Allez Coco!” from high in the stands in the Philippe Chatrier stadium.Gauff, the American 17-year-old, received the majority of the support, but she could not quite manage to give the Roland Garros public what it desired. After failing to convert five set points in the opening set, she went on to lose to the unseeded Krejcikova, 7-6 (6), 6-3.It has been one of the most surprising French Open women’s tournaments in history, and the trend deepened as Maria Sakkari upset defending champion Iga Swiatek 6-4, 6-4 in Wednesday’s second quarterfinal.Sakkari, a muscular Greek who is seeded 17th, has become a threat to the best: She beat Naomi Osaka in Miami earlier this season on a hardcourt. But Sakkari had not yet broken through at a Grand Slam tournament. She did not crack on Thursday, producing a powerful performance against Swiatek, the 20-year-old from Poland who had not dropped a set at Roland Garros in singles since 2019.Maria Sakkari turned in a powerful performance that upset defending French Open champion Iga Swiatek.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Thursday, Sakkari will face Krejcikova and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova will play Tamara Zidansek. All four women are making their first appearance in a Grand Slam singles semifinal.Gauff, who was the last American left in singles, finished with 25 winners, 41 unforced errors and one mangled racket after destroying it in anger with three swift blows to the red clay after double-faulting to fall behind by 4-0 in the final set.“I’m obviously disappointed that I wasn’t able to close out the first set,” Gauff said. “To be honest, it’s in the past, it already happened. After the match, Enzo, my hitting partner, told me this match will probably make me a champion in the future. I really do believe that.”Gauff was brilliant at times and bamboozled at others. She lost 15 straight points at one stage in the second set. That was not entirely her doing. Krejcikova, a former French Open doubles champion, has begun to come into her own as a singles player and has a wide array of shots and tactical options, as well as baseline power when she chooses to summon it.But Krejcikova, too, struggled with her nerves on Wednesday. She has been open this week about her efforts to manage the mental strain of making her first deep run in singles at a Grand Slam tournament.Krejcikova consulted with her psychologist before her match against Gauff.Caroline Blumberg/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore her fourth-round match with Sloane Stephens, she said she locked herself in a room used by the physiotherapists to talk to her psychologist. “I was actually crying,” she said. “I just felt really, really bad, and I don’t know why.”She said she and her psychologist had a long discussion. “She told me, ‘If you can overcome this, what you feel right now, it’s going to be a huge win, and it doesn’t matter if you’re going to win on the court or lose on the court, because it’s going to be a personal win.’” It turned out to be a win-win as she played a brilliant match to defeat Stephens, mixing her spins and decisions expertly, just as Gauff played her best match of the tournament when she defeated Ons Jabeur in the fourth round, winning in straight sets without a double fault.But Wednesday was a different day. Gauff double-faulted on the opening point of the match and finished with seven, often catching her service tosses and working to control her breathing. After falling behind by 5-0 in the second set, she did not go through the motions. She kept fighting, holding serve, and with the crowd behind her, saving three match points to break Krejcikova’s serve in the next game and then saving two more as she held serve to close to 5-3.Gauff smashed her racket after she double-faulted to fall behind by 4-0 in the final set. Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesAnother momentum swing still felt possible given both players’ inexperience at this level of a Grand Slam tournament. But Krejcikova held firm in the next game and when Gauff missed her final forehand, she became the second unseeded player to reach this year’s French Open semifinals after Zidansek.“This one will be on my mind for a couple days, for sure,” Gauff said. “I think just reflecting on it, you know, it’s over, so I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, if I did this, if I did that.’ I think in the moment I did what I thought was the best decision and I have to stick on that.”Gauff will start preparing for Wimbledon, which begins on June 28. It is where she burst to prominence in 2019 at age 15 by defeating Venus Williams in her first Grand Slam singles match.Her progress since then has been steady rather than meteoric. There will be more to learn from Wednesday’s setback. But this was a positive clay-court season and tournament for the usually much more poised teenager. She reached the semifinals of the Italian Open and won the singles and doubles titles in Parma. She was seeded 24th in Paris — her first time being seeded at a major tournament — and won four matches without dropping a set.“Her time will come,” said Krejcikova, who, at 25, knows a thing or two about patience. More

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      French Tennis Chief Defends Handling of Naomi Osaka

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      “I think we did very, very well,” said Gilles Moretton, the new president of the French Tennis Federation. He has faced several challenges during the first French Open of his term.PARIS — Gilles Moretton, the president of the French Tennis Federation, removed his mask and leaned into the conversation across a vast table Tuesday morning at Roland Garros.Three months in, Moretton’s term is not exactly off to a flying start. The French Open, run by his organization, has been blessed with sunshine through most of its first 10 days, but not much else.Pandemic restrictions have reduced the number of spectators allowed on the grounds and cut deeply into revenue just as the federation needed to start paying back hundreds of millions of euros borrowed for the recent renovations at Roland Garros. For the first time in history, no French singles player made it past the second round. The biggest story of the tournament’s first 10 days has been not the matches played, some of them outstanding, but the ones never started.There was the second-round withdrawal of Naomi Osaka, the brightest rising star in the women’s game, following a disagreement with Moretton and other Grand Slam tournament leaders over media duties. Roger Federer, still the biggest draw in the men’s game at age 39, withdrew after three rounds to preserve his postoperative right knee and his energy for Wimbledon.But Moretton, who was once good enough to face Bjorn Borg at the French Open (taking a loss), did not bemoan his timing during an interview in the presidential box with a grand view of the main stadium, Philippe Chatrier Court, however empty.“I have come in at a time when the situation is very difficult because of the pandemic and the results in French tennis,” he said. “But at the same time I see that as an extraordinary opportunity. Because we have a saying that when you are at the bottom of the pool, you are bound to start heading back toward the surface.”Naomi Osaka during her first-round win at the French Open. She withdrew soon after.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesMoretton defended the handling of the second-seeded Osaka’s refusal to participate in news conferences and other mandatory media duties, an announcement she made through social media ahead of the French Open that caught the Grand Slam officials by surprise.Osaka’s initial announcement mentioned a need to preserve her mental health, without offering specifics. According to several tennis officials, Osaka did not respond to multiple requests to explain the situation further. She was fined $15,000 for skipping one post-match news conference in Paris. Moretton and the leaders of the three other Grand Slam tournaments — Wimbledon and the Australian and United States Opens — then issued a stern statement that warned of escalating penalties, including a potential expulsion from the tournament if she continued to abstain.“I think we did very, very well,” Moretton said, adding that the officials had hoped to avoid expelling Osaka. “The goal was not to penalize her. It was to say clearly: Here’s the rule.”Osaka withdrew the next day via social media, where she explained that she had experienced long bouts of depression since winning the U.S. Open in 2018.Rennae Stubbs, a former player who is a coach and an ESPN analyst, said the French federation had “handled this horribly.” She and other former players said the officials should have shown more sensitivity and avoided publicly threatening to penalize Osaka.“I think we would have kept giving her fines,” Moretton said. “I don’t think we would have gone to a tougher sanction, because we understood the situation. But it’s the rule. The rule is there to be fair to all the players.”Osaka has since announced that she would take a break of indeterminate length from the tour.Moretton, 63, said he was concerned about players’ mental health. “The problem she raised is a real problem, a real topic for discussion,” he said.But he said he was also concerned about preserving equal treatment among players and the news media’s ability to cover the sport.“Perhaps we will change the rules, and then everyone only comes to press if they want to,” Moretton said. “You will see that there are not many who will come.”“Everyone will be their own journalist,” he added, “speak when they want to speak, say what they want to say, respond only to questions they want to answer. And I think it’s a serious problem. So yes of course to measures that will provide help and support to players, but let’s keep the freedom of the press to ask a question that might be uncomfortable and that interests the public, who are the ones who provide a living for the athletes and the personalities.”Roger Federer in his third-round win over Dominik Koepfer on Saturday. Federer withdrew from the French Open the next day.Martin Bureau/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAs for Federer’s withdrawal, Moretton said he had “too much respect for Roger” to question his decision. Federer was not fined for the withdrawal. Guy Forget, the French Open tournament director, told the French news organization L’Équipe that Federer had cited his knee as an official medical reason for his withdrawal.“Everyone wants to see him play as long as possible,” Moretton said. “We know he will be 40 soon. It will be difficult. We can see it, and he knows it himself, and he needs to preserve himself.”Moretton is intent on building stronger links with the other Grand Slam tournaments and creating more unity that will give tennis leaders a stronger collective voice. The stern statement on Osaka was perhaps a product of that zeal.The French federation, under the previous president, Bernard Giudicelli, ruffled feathers within the sport last year by moving the start of the French Open from May to September without approval from other tennis entities. The tournament also was moved back a week this year, but Moretton insisted that was done in consultation with other tennis leaders.The one-week postponement this year was made to allow for more fans during the tournament’s second week, when French government restrictions were set to soften. The number of spectators allowed on the grounds will more than double from 5,300 to 13,000 on Wednesday and Thursday, and Moretton said there would be 5,000 spectators at Chatrier for both singles finals.The last night session without fans was on Tuesday, when the fifth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas beat the second-seeded Daniil Medvedev, 6-3, 7-6 (3), 7-5, in a quarterfinal.“Our match was match of the day, and Roland Garros preferred Amazon to people,” Medvedev said, referring to Amazon Prime Video, which has been broadcasting the night sessions in France.Revenue is still way down at an event that normally draws 38,000 spectators per day. In 2019, the tournament generated 260 million euros, or about $316 million. In 2020, it generated about 130 million euros, and Moretton said the numbers would be similar this year.“We are going to be hit hard,” he said.Government relief and loans and the federation’s ample reserves have helped soften the blow and, most important to Moretton, preserve financial support for tennis clubs and leagues in France.Moretton retired from the sports event management business and made two long treks to Nepal before being persuaded by friends to run for the federation’s presidency.Though he is from Lyon, he also considers Roland Garros home. At age 12, he slept in a tent on the grounds when he played in a national junior tournament. He later lived on site for a year, sharing a small house with other aspiring French pros, including Yannick Noah.Noah won the French Open in 1983, and stands as the last Frenchman to do so. Moretton will now try to help develop Noah’s successor and work to make the rest of his four-year term smoother than the start. More

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      What to Watch at The French Open on Wednesday

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      Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Iga Swiatek all feature on the second day of quarterfinals at Roland Garros.How to watch: 5 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Eastern time on the Tennis Channel, streaming on Tennis Channel Plus.Iga Swiatek is the only player remaining in the women’s draw who has previously reached the final of a Grand Slam event. Swiatek, the defending champion, is still the favorite to win the tournament, but the inspired performances of those left in the draw means that it won’t be easy for her to reach the women’s singles final on Saturday.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Phillipe Chatrier Court | 5 a.m.Coco Gauff vs. Barbora KrejcikovaBarbora Krejcikova, the world No. 33, is primarily a doubles specialist, having won two Grand Slam tournament events and reached at least the semifinals on six other occasions. After a fourth-round breakout in singles at the French Open last year, Krejcikova has bettered her performance once again, by outmaneuvering opponents who focus on the power of their shots.Coco Gauff, the 24th seed, has secured a spot on the U.S. Olympic tennis team and is now playing in her first major quarterfinal. She has often impressed with her mental strength and has improved her point construction over the past few years. This match promises to be tactically astute, and a good lesson for any tennis player on how to play patiently.Iga Swiatek after winning her fourth-round match against Marta Kostyuk on Monday.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersPhillipe Chatrier Court | 7 a.m.Iga Swiatek vs. Maria SakkariIga Swiatek, the eighth seed and the defending champion, has barnstormed back into the quarterfinals at Roland Garros without dropping a set, an impressive show of consistency from the 20-year-old.Maria Sakkari, the 17th seed, has reached her first Grand Slam quarterfinal after an impressive upset over last year’s finalist, Sofia Kenin. Sakkari’s powerful baseline shots can unsettle even the steadiest players, and Swiatek will need to counter with some inventive play.Rafael Nadal has looked unstoppable at this year’s French Open.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesPhillipe Chatrier Court | 9 a.m.Rafael Nadal vs. Diego SchwartzmanDiego Schwartzman, the 10th seed, has not dropped a set on his way to the quarterfinals. The clay court specialist reached the semifinals of the French Open last year but lost to Rafael Nadal in straight sets.Nadal, a 13-time French Open champion, has once again looked like an unstoppable force. However, a change in style has become clear this year. When he was younger, Nadal won matches on clay by slowly grinding his opponents down. He has switched to more aggressive points, putting shots away and coming to the net more quickly. This style has won him 35 straight sets over the past couple of years, and it seems likely that he will continue to cruise through to the next round.Novak Djokovic had to fight back from two sets down during his fourth-round match against Lorenzo Musetti on Monday.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockPhillipe Chatrier Court | 2 p.m.Novak Djokovic vs. Matteo BerrettiniNovak Djokovic, the first seed, was pushed by Lorenzo Musetti to five sets in his round of 16 match. Djokovic lost the first two sets in tight tiebreakers as Musetti played an inspired stretch of tennis before Djokovic rallied, losing only one game before Musetti retired in the fifth set.Matteo Berrettini, the ninth seed, had a bit of luck, getting a walkover as Roger Federer withdrew from the French Open ahead of their round of 16 match. Now, well rested, Berrettini will be trying to take the initiative and draw on his striking power to push Djokovic to the edge of his capabilities. More

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      Paula Badosa’s Body Was Ready to Win, but Her Mind Was Not

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      The Spanish player is yet another in the sport who has battled depression and spoken openly about it.PARIS — For Paula Badosa, the winning and accompanying expectations came far too quickly, as they often do for women in tennis, with some pretty terrible effects.In 2015, she became the French Open junior champion, and began to hear all the talk of the glamour and glory that she would soon achieve. Two years later, she was struggling with depression, unsure what future she might have in the sport she loved, even as she tried to believe she could live up to all that had been predicted for her.“It was very tough for me,” she said of that dark three-year period.Badosa, 23, of Spain, lost on Tuesday in her first Grand Slam tournament quarterfinal, coming up heartbreakingly short in a marathon match against Tamara Zidansek of Slovenia, 7-5, 4-6, 8-6. She struggled to hold her serve and could not find precision on her groundstrokes in the biggest moments. At 6-6 in the third set, she had three break opportunities for a chance to serve out the match, but she could not convert them.Tuesday’s other women’s quarterfinal was a close copy of the Badosa-Zidansek match: Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia beat Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, 6-7 (2), 6-2, 9-7.Badosa’s success is especially poignant because she is part of a growing chorus of players who are speaking openly about the toll the game has on their mental health.When Naomi Osaka, a four-time Grand Slam event champion, withdrew from the French Open after a showdown with tournament organizers over whether she would appear at mandatory news conferences, she said she had struggled with depression since winning her first United States Open championship in 2018.The direct beneficiary of Osaka’s withdrawal was Ana Bogdan, 28, of Romania, who got a free pass to the third round. There, she lost to Badosa in three tight sets. Afterward, Bogdan said she completely understood Osaka’s decision because she, too, had battled depression this year.“It’s not something very easy to handle,” Bogdan said.The pandemic has been hard on athletes in every sport, but tennis players have had a particularly rough go. Their sport requires continual international travel. To gain permission to hold tournaments, organizers have had to cut the support staff players can travel with and largely limit player movements to designated hotels and practice and competition venues.The open discussion of mental health issues has rattled some people at the highest levels of the sport. They have pledged to pay closer attention to the mental health needs of the players and significantly improve the resources available to them, especially during such a mentally wearing period.Like so many fans and followers of the sport, some organizers may have forgotten that just because everything might look fine on the outside, turmoil may be just beneath for the teenagers and young adults who compete alone.That is the story of tennis at the moment, and there may be no better example of this than Badosa. On the surface, she would appear to have a near perfect life, blessed with athletic talent, intelligence (she speaks three languages and is learning a fourth) and a stable family.She is nearly six feet tall and often described as extremely marketable, which is what people in tennis say when a female player is very good at her sport and could have a career in modeling. Of course, that does not make winning tennis matches any easier.It is not so different from the treatment Coco Gauff, who made her first Grand Slam quarterfinal on Monday, received when she made the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2019 at age 15.“People came out with a lot of expectations for me, saying I was going to be the next this or next that,” Gauff, 17, said last week. “I realized I’ve just got to be myself.”Badosa had to learn the hard way that success at a young age and good genes did not make her immune to depression.“We are not robots,” she said.“The expectations from outside were tough,” Badosa said.Yoan Valat/EPA, via ShutterstockBorn in New York to parents who worked in the fashion industry, sometimes as models, Badosa spent the first seven years of her life living in New Jersey. She moved to Barcelona at 7, began playing tennis and soon was a top junior in one of the leading countries in the sport.When that French Open girls’ title arrived six years ago, so did the chatter about her future. Badosa heard every word of it.“The expectations from outside were tough,” she said. She added: “You’re 18 and 19 years old. Your head isn’t ready to get that kind of information.”When the wins stopped piling up, she sank into depression. She began therapy and searched for a support team that would value improvement. She found a kindred spirit in a new coach, Javier Martí. Like Badosa, Martí was once tapped to be a future star. He never made it.Martí said when he first began with Badosa, she connected much of her self-worth to the scoreboard.Badosa said the one thing that did not stop during the roughly three years she battled depression was her ability to keep working, though she knows not everyone struggling with their mental health can do that.“‘If I win, I’m great. If I lose, I’m not good enough for tennis,’ was her way of thinking,” Martí said Monday. “She was not enjoying the process.”Now she is, not only because this is the first time she made it past the second round in a Grand Slam event, but because, win or lose, she is trying only to improve a little bit each day. There is not much subtlety to her game. If she can find a way to hit the ball hard, and she nearly always does, she will.It does not always work. Badosa said on Tuesday after her loss that she could not control her nerves in the biggest match of her career. “It’s complicated the first time you are in the quarterfinals of a Grand Slam and you want it so, so much,” she said.If you believe tennis is not simply a sport but a form of self-expression, as nearly every pro does, then Badosa’s play at Roland Garros represents someone who has learned the body cannot do much without a healthy head, no matter how rosy life may appear.She faced a match point against Bogdan but prevailed. In the fourth round, she rebounded after a second set filled with errors to win the third one against 20th-seeded Marketa Vondrousova of the Czech Republic, who started making her own errors as the pressure mounted.“That is the challenge of tennis, because it is very, very mental, all the time playing with your mind,” Badosa said. “If the head is not ready when the body is, the pressure and the anxiety and depression are going to come. It’s just a very tough sport.” More

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      A Very Strange Version of the Paris Night

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      PARIS — It happens every night, and yet it feels so strange each time.All across the city, as the 9 p.m. curfew part of the pandemic restrictions approaches, chairs and tables at bars and cafes that usually remain open until small hours get stacked and stored.Parisians used to lazy strolls on long summer nights head home. The sidewalks go quiet. The city slams shut as fast as a window.At Roland Garros, where the French Open is holding one match each night for the first time, ominous announcements come through the loudspeakers beginning around 8:30 p.m.“The gates will be closing in 15 minutes,” a prerecorded voice says in French then English. The stands selling flutes of champagne, crepes and pains au chocolat begin to pack it in. A 10-minute warning follows, then a five-minute one then finally, “Ladies and gentlemen, the gates are now closed.”A digital screen, which shows matches during the day, asks spectators to leave and explains the curfew in the Musketeers Square at Roland Garros.“It’s very frustrating,” Benoit Jaubert, a Parisian who comes to the tournament every year with his wife, Anne, said of the curfew and forced exit as he hustled toward the exit on Saturday.Usually they remain on the grounds until night falls and the matches end. This year, even though Roger Federer was about to take the court, the Jauberts were on their way out. “We should be having the late matches and then a party,” he said.The pandemic began turning cities into ghost towns nearly a year and a half ago. There is something especially strange about seeing this nightly routine in the so-called City of Light. This is a place famous for its 3 a.m. jazz sets, where the Lost Generation argued all night about the meaning of life in smoke-filled bars on the Left Bank.For the handful of Americans here on business (if that’s what you can call a cushy sportswriting assignment to cover this elegant tournament), it has felt like drifting back in time a month or two. We left a country that had begun leaving behind masks and pandemic restrictions.The streets of Paris are lively before curfew.Calling it a night at 9 p.m. is about the most anti-Parisian occurrence, especially this time of year, when twilight does not arrive until after 10 p.m. and the last thing anyone wants to do as the sun drifts down is go home.The curfew is no joke though. If you somehow forget to eat and do not have much in the fridge at home, you are out of luck. There are no late-night steak frites to be had. All the kitchens, grocers and ice cream parlors are, unnaturally, locked.Listen to Thibaud Pre. He runs a gourmet pizza joint on the Canal Saint-Martin in the northeast part of the city. It’s where the youngish folks hang out. Think of the northern neighborhoods of Brooklyn, like Williamsburg or Bushwick, or the eastern part of London.On Friday evening, just before 8 p.m., the cool kids and the older adults who wanted to be like them were drinking on the edge of the canals, and in Acqua e Farina, Pre’s pizza place, and all of the other bars and restaurants in the neighborhood.An hour later, they were mostly gone, scurrying home or rushing to the Metro, where, just after 9 p.m., security officials could begin asking for the pass required to be out and about post-curfew.A waiter removing outdoor tables just before curfew at Acqua e Farina.As he stacked the tables and collected payments from the few customers who lingered until the final minutes, Pre said on a usual late spring Friday at 9 p.m. there would be 50 people waiting for a table. He would keep the restaurant open until 2 a.m. and bring in roughly five times as much money as he is right now. Without generous government aid, his business most likely would not have survived.He said his customers had gotten used to the routine after so many months, showing up earlier, filling their stomachs until the regulations say they can’t stay any longer, then morphing into citizens of one of those places like Switzerland where the sidewalks thin long before they should.“For how much longer it goes like this, we don’t know,” Pre said.It has been so long, and so strange, that Pre does not want to bank on the current plan to push the curfew back two hours on June 9, which seems more civilized by Parisian standards, but only slightly.People paused to take selfies in front of a wall made out of Roland Garros’s trademark clay as they leave the stadium complex.In July, the curfew could go away completely, and the sidewalks by the Seine could be alive all night once more, though the nightclubs are supposed to stay closed.Someday perhaps, maybe even by the next French Open if that great night owl of French tennis, Yannick Noah, has any say in the matter, those 3 a.m. jazz sets and the real Paris just might return. More

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      What to Watch on Tuesday at the 2021 French Open

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      Stefanos Tsitsipas and Daniil Medvedev will clash as the quarterfinal matches begin at Roland Garros.How to watch: 5 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Eastern time on the Tennis Channel, streaming on the Tennis Channel+.With eight players remaining on each side of the singles draw, two divergent narratives have taken shape. Six women will be making their first quarterfinal appearance in a major event, a record for the Open era. On the men’s side, there will be only one first-timer, and there will be seven players in the top 10. In either case, though, each side is sure to have at least one first-time French Open finalist.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are estimates and may fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Court PhilipPe-Chatrier | 6 a.m.Paula Badosa vs. Tamara ZidansekPaula Badosa, the 33rd seed, defeated the 20th seed, Marketa Vondrousova, in a three-set fourth-round match to reach her first Grand Slam quarterfinal. Badosa, a 23-year-old Spaniard, had plenty of winners, but more often she was forcing errors out of her opponent.Tamara Zidansek, a 23-year-old Slovenian who ranked No. 85, upset the No. 6 seed Bianca Andreescu in the first round to record her first main-draw victory at Roland Garros. Zidansek had tight matches in the third and fourth rounds, and Badosa will pose a tough test for a player who has performed near her peak at this tournament.Elena Rybakina defeated Serena Williams to earn a quarterfinal appearance.Christophe Archambault/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCourt Phillipe-Chatrier | 8 a.m.Elena Rybakina vs. Anastasia PavlyuchenkovaElena Rybakina of Kazakhstan and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia, a doubles team that has advanced to a Wednesday quarterfinal, will oppose each other in a singles quarterfinal the day before.Rybakina, the 21st seed, powered past Serena Williams on Sunday for a straight-sets win that put her in her first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal. The 21-year-old has found success mostly on hardcourts in the past, but she has used flat baseline shots to push opponents around the clay courts of Roland Garros.Pavlyuchenkova, the 31st seed, upset two Belarusian players, Aryna Sabalenka and Victoria Azarenka, in three-set matches on her way to the quarterfinals. Pavlyuchenkova, 29, won two junior Grand Slam titles, but she has never advanced past the quarterfinals of a major event. On Tuesday, in her seventh attempt, she has to hope that her experience will let her outlast her doubles partner.Court PhilipPe-Chatrier | 10 a.m.Alexander Zverev vs. Alejandro Davidovich FokinaAlexander Zverev, the sixth seed, started the tournament by dropping the first two sets rather quickly before clawing back and losing only four more games on his way to victory. The 24-year-old German then won each of the next matches in straight sets, but he looked convincing only in his fourth-round dismantling of Kei Nishikori. With two previous French Open quarterfinals under his belt, Zverev will be hoping to draw on his experience.Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, ranked No. 46, has reached his first Grand Slam quarterfinal after a grueling gauntlet of matches. The 22-year-old Spaniard went to five sets in his second- and third-round matches, and four sets in his round-of-16 slog against Federico Delbonis. Fokina’s aggressive style has put opponents on shaky ground, and it will be interesting to see if he can unsettle a top-10 player with that approach.Stefanos Tsitsipas returned the ball during his fourth-round match.Anne-Christine Poujoulat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCourt PhilipPe-Chatrier | 3 p.m.Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Daniil MedvedevStefanos Tsitsipas, the fifth seed, has lost only one set so far, in the third round against the hard-serving John Isner. The 22-year-old Greek has reached three major semifinals, including at the French Open last year.Daniil Medvedev, the second seed, was knocked out in the first round of the French Open in each of the past four years, but he has lost only one set on the way to the quarterfinals. The 25-year-old Russian appears to have made peace with his least favorite surface, leaning into the strengths that make him such a fearsome opponent on hard courts.Although Medvedev has won six of his previous seven matches on tour against Tsitsipas, only one of those matches was on clay, where Tsitsipas is generally favored. The quarterfinal between these two young stars should be full of shifting dynamics because Medvedev and Tsitsipas tend to spar with the variety of their shots rather than try to overpower each other.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on.Karolina Pliskova/Kristyna Pliskova vs. Katerina Siniakova/Barbora Krejcikova; Court Simonne-Mathieu, 6 a.m.Wesley Koolhof/Demi Schuurs vs. Aslan Karatsev/Elena Vesnina; Court Simonne-Mathieu, 10 a.m. More

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      In Paris, Coco Gauff Is Confident, Consistent, and Off to the Quarterfinals

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      The 17-year-old, the last American player in singles, will face Barbora Krejcikova in her first Grand Slam tournament quarterfinal on Wednesday.PARIS — It was Coco Gauff’s first appearance on the main stage at the French Open, and it was not the classic Parisian scene she had imagined with fewer than 100 fans in the stands at Court Philippe-Chatrier for the opening matches in this pandemic period of limited crowds.But Gauff’s performance was dreamy: a resounding 6-3, 6-1 victory in the fourth round over the 25th-seeded Tunisian veteran Ons Jabeur, a drop-shot artiste who, in theory, loves clay more than Gauff and had beaten her on the surface earlier this year.But Gauff, the gifted American teenager, has shifted into a higher gear since then, improving her consistency and growing more confident after reaching the semifinals of the Italian Open last month and winning both a singles and doubles title in Parma, Italy. You could see the belief in her body language on Monday as she patrolled the red clay, setting a measured pace between points and playing with power, depth and precision once the rallies began.At age 17, she is into her first Grand Slam quarterfinal and is the last American remaining in singles after Sofia Kenin’s 6-1, 6-3 loss in the fourth round to Maria Sakkari and Sloane Stephens’s 6-2, 6-0 loss to Barbora Krejcikova.The 24th-seeded Gauff, who will face the unseeded Krejcikova on Wednesday, has not dropped a set in Paris. Against Jabeur, she did not face so much as a break point and made just nine unforced errors and zero double faults.“Sooner or later, she will win her first Grand Slam title,” Jabeur said.Such comments, however sincere, can be problematic with young talents like Gauff. Focus too much on what she could do, and it is easy to not fully appreciate what she is doing now.So, let’s consider what other aspiring tennis stars her age are achieving. No other women’s player under the age of 18 is ranked in the top 300. Gauff is on the verge of breaking into the top 20 and has locked up an Olympics singles spot.“I just feel this is the most consistent tennis I have played at this level,” Gauff said. “Hopefully I can keep that going.”Gauff believes she’s playing the most consistent tennis of her young career.Ian Langsdon/EPA, via ShutterstockAfter reaching the fourth round of both her first Wimbledon appearance in 2019 and her first Australian Open in 2020, she has now made the final eight in her second French Open.She was asked to compare her mind-set during Monday’s match with her previous fourth-round matches at majors.“To be honest, I think I was just more hungry for it,” she said. “I feel like in the past I felt like I was satisfied with the run I made in the tournament, so maybe I feel like I came into the matches I guess not as hungry, and I know it’s probably not a good thing to say, but it’s the truth. But I think with a lot of young players we tend to get satisfied with just, you know, the small results, not small results but certain results before we realize that we can really shoot for more. My message has always been: Dream big and aim higher.”Gauff has wanted to be No. 1 with a career like Serena Williams’s since her early teens, but her Wimbledon breakthrough at age 15 did not point her straight to the top.Her last visit to Roland Garros in September 2020 was a reminder of the difficulty of the challenge. She lost in the second round to the Italian qualifier Martina Trevisan while making 19 double faults. Gauff has indeed found a better rhythm in recent weeks. “That’s obviously been a hurdle in my game,” she said. “I truly feel like I’m, you know, getting over that hurdle.”She has also shored up her forehand, cutting down on the errors on that less reliable wing and regularly doing great damage with it in midcourt and in extension. She continues to be comfortable at the net, something her father and coach Corey Gauff has long emphasized.“I mean at the end of the day, she’s basically a junior in high school,” Corey Gauff said. “And anybody knows in high school you are still developing and learning so there’s a big growth between 15 and 16 and more big growth between 16 and 17. She just has the uniqueness of growing up on tour and on TV, so every time she does something it’s news, and everybody is watching everything she’s doing. But she’s just developing, and she’s developing actually pretty quickly and playing more matches this year compared to 2020, where she played so few matches, is really helping her develop.”The tour’s five-month hiatus last year was both a burden and a blessing, isolating for a teenager but also a chance to work on improving her weaknesses outside the spotlight. But Corey Gauff said Coco struggled mentally when the tour resumed because of the restrictions.“This year is better,” Corey Gauff said. “Last year was tough. You could see that it was weighing on her. She was ranked high enough that she was more in the senior hotel, and her friends weren’t in that hotel. And the restrictions were much stricter last year than now. You literally just went to the court and came back and that wasn’t a lot of fun for her. It showed up in her tennis, too. She just wasn’t happy, wasn’t as excited being in the bubbles last year.”They are back in the same Paris hotel as in last year’s French Open, back to playing the card game Uno in the evenings, but now able to spend an hour outside the bubble daily. Though Coco has not yet been vaccinated, Corey Gauff said he and his wife Candi have been, which alleviates some concern and testing regimens.“That hour outside the bubble makes a world of difference,” he said.Candi Gauff was not traveling with her husband and daughter earlier in the clay-court season, but she has joined them for Roland Garros, leaving the Gauffs’ two younger sons at home in Delray Beach, Fla., with grandparents. “It’s nice to have her here,” Coco Gauff said. Corey Gauff said that Coco benefits from her mother’s presence and also her expertise. Candi Gauff was a hurdler and heptathlete at Florida State.“She needs her mom,” he said. “Teenage girls need their mother, because those are the ones who help them become young women and help them deal with things and pressures and of course my wife was a world-class athlete, so she understands the pressures and the discipline and preparation and proper nutrition and all the physiology that goes with it. It’s better her mom telling her than her dad telling her.”Iga Swiatek, the defending champion and eighth seed, remains the rightful favorite in Paris and is in Gauff’s half of the draw. Swiatek beat Gauff en route to the Italian Open title, and they could meet again in the semifinals if Gauff defeats Krejcikova and Swiatek defeats Sakkari.Whatever happens next at Roland Garros, Gauff is making progress even if she still prefers hardcourts and grass to clay.“Only thing about clay I don’t like, it’s just whenever you fall you just get all dirty,” she told me.But there were no tumbles or stumbles on Monday on the most important clay court in the world. More