United States Open (Tennis)

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      For Corey Pavin, the Right Club for a U.S. Open Win

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      He took the 1995 U.S. Open when he picked a 4-wood on the final hole and hit a shot that is still remembered.The United States Open, which begins Thursday at the Los Angeles Country Club, has featured plenty of memorable shots over the years. One was the 4-wood struck by Corey Pavin on the final hole of the 1995 Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in Southhampton, N.Y.Pavin, clinging to a one-stroke lead, knocked his approach from about 2225 yards away to within five feet of the pin. He missed the birdie putt but prevailed by two.“The shot of his life,” Johnny Miller of NBC called it at the time.Pavin, 63, who played on the golf team at U.C.L.A., recently reflected on what happened in 1995 and on the course that players will encounter this week.The conversation has been edited and condensed.Where’s the 4-wood these days?The 4-wood is in a nice case in storage at the moment. I had it in a house on display. When we moved, we didn’t have enough room for it.Did you use it after the Open?I used it for a couple more years and then switched to a different club.What options did you consider for the shot?I was carrying a 2-iron in my bag, as well. I said, [to his caddie] “Do you think I can get a 2-iron there?” He said, “No, I don’t. I think it’s a 4-wood.” I said, “I agree.” That was our conversation. It was very short, to the point, with no doubt on what club I should hit.Did you know right away that you were on target?When I made contact with the ball, I knew it was really good. I hit it just the way I wanted to. I had the exact same shot on Friday and hit a 4-wood onto the green, as well. So I had a good picture in my head because I did it on Friday.Did the shot receive so much attention because it was hit with a 4-wood?A fairway wood is somewhat unique to hit a second shot on a par-4 on the 72nd hole. I was 35, had won 12 tournaments at that time and hadn’t won a major, that was a factor as well.“If I had gone my whole career and hadn’t won a major, I would have been bothered by it,” Pavin said.Phil Sheldon/Popperfoto, via Getty ImagesWas it eating away at you that you hadn’t won a major?It was one of my goals, certainly, at that point in my career. I don’t know if eating away is the right way to say it, but I wanted to win a major very badly. If I had gone my whole career and hadn’t won a major, I would have been bothered by it.How do you assess your career?When I started on tour, if somebody had told me, “You’re going to win 15 tournaments with one of them being a major,” I would have told them they were probably crazy. I never had a long-term goal like that. My goal every year was to win at least one tournament, play consistent golf at the highest level I could.Did you play the Los Angeles Country Club when you were in college?We played just a couple of times. It’s a beautiful golf course. I think it’s going to hold its own pretty well.Is there a unique challenge for the guys or is it a typical Open layout?One challenge is that nobody has ever really seen it in tournament conditions. I’m not sure how it’s going to be set up. Chipping out of [the Bermuda rough] is very difficult. And hitting full shots out of it is very hard.Why did the Ryder Cup bring out the best in you?I love the Ryder Cup. The pressure there is 100 times stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. When I feel that pressure it makes me concentrate and focus even better. You don’t get a chance to represent your country very often.Any regrets about your time as captain in 2010?It was a fantastic experience. Of course, I wish we would have won, but I have no regrets on how I went about it. I was as thorough as I could be, gathered as much information as I could and made decisions based on that information. More

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      Why Tennis Matches at the Australian Open Never Seem to End

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      Andy Murray’s second-round match at the Australian Open didn’t end until after 4 a.m. As matches more often go into the early morning hours, some players say it is harming their physical and mental health.MELBOURNE, Australia — It was 4 o’clock on Friday morning at the Australian Open, and Andy Murray and Thanasi Kokkinakis were still playing tennis.It was not a particularly rare marathon match or a vagary of the tournament’s distant time zone. At the U.S. Open last September, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner were still playing at nearly 3 a.m.Professional tennis is the only major sport that puts athletes through all-night competitions and requires them to return less than 48 hours later and put their minds and bodies back on the line.It is a longstanding problem. But as matches stretch later into the morning hours, increasingly players are pushing back, citing concerns for their physical and mental health, and performance. Not to mention fans who are falling asleep in the stands or on their sofas around the world.“It’s crazy,” Jessica Pegula, the American women’s star, said on Friday.Murray’s 5-hour, 45-minute victory over Kokkinakis in the second round ended at 4:05 a.m. It was the third-latest recorded finish in the history of professional tennis, surpassed only by Alexander Zverev’s victory over Jenson Brooksby in Acapulco, Mexico, last year that ended at 4:54 a.m., and by Lleyton Hewitt’s victory over Marcos Baghdatis at the 2008 Australian Open that ended at 4:34 a.m.It will be one of the highlights of the 35-year-old Murray’s late career. But he experienced it, unnecessarily, with mixed emotions.“If my child was a ball kid for a tournament, and they’re coming home at 5 in the morning, as a parent I’m snapping at that,” Murray said. “It’s not beneficial for them. It’s not beneficial for the umpires, the officials. I don’t think it’s amazing for the fans. It’s not good for the players.”He added later, “Rather than it being like epic Murray-Kokkinakis match, it ends in a bit of a farce.”It has been a particular challenge at the Australian and U.S. Open, where both a men’s and women’s singles match are scheduled in each night session, a great move for gender equality, ticket sales and star power.In 2008 when Hewitt finally defeated Baghdatis at the Australian Open in a match that started just before midnight and ended not long before sunrise, Hewitt’s post-match news conference didn’t begin until 5:30 a.m.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.“Obviously, going on that late is not easy for anyone, any players, because it does throw your whole rhythm and clock out quite a bit,” Hewitt said at the time.The toll is heavy on athletes, support staff and spectators with regular jobs, even though a very informal poll of fans coming out of the Murray match at 4:15 a.m. did not reveal any outrage.“We would never leave early,” said Kathie Griffith from Canberra, Australia. “Fantastic tennis.”Australian Open tennis player Alexei Popyrin after his five-set victory over Taiwan’s Chun-Hsin Tseng. The match finished at 2.30 a.m. in front of a small but vocal crowd.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesA small crowd watched a late-finishing match on Margaret Court Arena at 12:22 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesRequiring play into the middle of the night seems contradictory to the sport’s increased focus on supporting players’ mental health. Nick Kyrgios, the Australian star, said his series of late matches at last year’s U.S. Open were particularly draining.“I was always last match, going on court at 10 p.m., finishing matches around, like 1 a.m., then doing media and treatment and eating,” Kyrgios said. “I was not going to sleep before 4 a.m. every night. And I felt as if, you know, I was going out night-clubbing or something. It was like I’m not even getting enough sleep to go and perform the next day.”Decompressing from a late match is a challenge.“I’m staring at the room,” Kyrgios said. “You’ve got so much adrenaline, and it’s incredibly hard to wind down and to do it on a daily basis potentially seven times to win a Grand Slam. It’s exhausting, for sure.”The sport has never had a formal collective discussion about a better, saner approach but it could be coming. On Friday, the Professional Tennis Players Association, the player group recently co-founded by longtime men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic, released a statement saying that “we look forward to exploring alternate means to scheduling that put fans and players and their well-being first.” There are guidelines on both the men’s and women’s tours about not starting matches after midnight, but that still does not preclude long-after-midnight finishes. And while the men play best-of-three sets on the regular tour, they continue to play best-of-five at the four majors in part because that remains a point of separation for the Grand Slam tournaments.Switching to best-of-three for the men (the women already play best-of-three everywhere) would be one of the most effective ways of controlling finish times. But there are less extreme measures available, including starting play earlier, establishing a curfew or playing one singles match in a night session instead of the customary two.After a long night of tennis, David Reyes, 32, waited for his phone to charge so he could figure out how to get home at 1:30 a.m.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesTennis fans waited for cabs outside Melbourne Park after the last match finished at 2:30 a.m. With no public transportation available at that time, the small number of fans that stayed to watch the final point must catch rideshares or taxis home.Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesLong matches are becoming more common, and there are multiple factors. Craig Tiley, the Australian Open tournament director, said the institution of the 25-second shot clock, intended to speed up play, has not necessarily worked that way. “A lot of players are taking full time now between points because they can see the time,” he said. “There’s also the equity of play with so many good players.”Nicolás Pereira, a coach and television analyst, thinks the recent widespread use of analytics in professional tennis may also have made matches more even.Tiley said the sport should consider changes like reducing changeover times or cutting the time between points to 20 seconds. But the biggest obstacle still seems to be that the Australian Open and U.S. Open schedule a men’s singles match and women’s singles match in each night session. That is for gender equality in a sport that was a front-runner in that area but also for entertainment value. If one match is a rout or ends early because of an injury, the other could still be a classic.Tiley said that market research showed that offering just one match on a court in an evening session would be risky.“I think you lose a lot with broadcasters and with fans who would be buying a ticket to risk seeing one match where one player can potentially blow out another player,” he said on Friday in an interview. “All the data and research we have on that indicates that it’s an option that would have a significant impact on the success of the event. We have a number of examples where our first match has gone 56 minutes and if that was your only match that night, I think you start to run a risk in terms of the value you provide.”The French Open, which started night sessions in 2021 that featured only one match, has sparked complaints about gender inequality by scheduling mostly men’s matches in that slot (best-of-five generally gives you more content than best-of-three). But with an 8:45 p.m. start, there have been some late finishes in Paris, too, leaving spectators without public transport and players with the too-familiar late-night routine.Another option in Melbourne and New York would be to schedule one singles match each night, alternating men and women, and pair that match with a doubles match that could be moved to another court if the singles match turns into a marathon.Tiley said the problem is that the doubles events do not start until several days into the tournament. “You’d miss the first three or four nights with that,” he said, also expressing resistance to the idea of scheduling an exhibition doubles match to supplement the main singles match.“I think you would erode interest and the data shows us that,” he said.Fans watched Frances Tiafoe and Carlos Alcaraz late into the night from the plaza outside Arthur Ashe Stadium at the 2022 U.S. Open.Karsten Moran/The New York TimesFans leaving Roland Garros after a night match at the French Open in 2022.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesPlaying a compelling match in the middle of the night does not help local viewing figures. But because of the global audience, it could paradoxically generate bigger audiences elsewhere. When it was 4 a.m. in Melbourne, it was noon in New York and 6 p.m. in Paris. “I am more concerned about the well-being of the athletes playing that late than concerned about who is watching in different parts of the world,” Tiley said. Tiley, like Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, agrees that late finishes like Alcaraz’s in New York and Murray’s in Melbourne are problematic. “Finishing that early in the morning is not ideal,” Tiley said. “I completely empathize with anyone who has to be there that late.”Tiley said the Australian Open could be open to a curfew like the one at Wimbledon, which because of a town edict requires matches played under the lights to be stopped by 11 p.m. But Tiley said players traditionally have been resistant to the idea of stopping a match for the night once it begins.That was once routine at the French Open and Wimbledon when there were no lights and certainly seems a better solution than testing players’ limits and reducing their chances of recovering well for subsequent matches. Alcaraz did manage to win last year’s U.S. Open after beating Marin Cilic and Sinner in matches that finished after 2 a.m., but that is an exception, and that draining effort could have contributed to Alcaraz’s recent struggles and injuries.“If the players want to have a curfew, fine we’ll have it,” Tiley said. “We are open to anything, and we always have been. It’s not a new thing. We’ve always made adjustments.”The Australian Open did recently move up the start of the night sessions to 7 p.m. from 7:45 p.m. But that clearly was not enough change to avoid, in Murray’s words, a “ridiculously late” finish.Matthew Futterman More

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      A Decade After U.S.T.A. Sidelined Her, Taylor Townsend Is Moving On

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      When Townsend was the world’s top junior player, the leaders of tennis in the United States told her to hit the gym. A decade later, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.MELBOURNE, Australia — Taylor Townsend is getting very good at moving on.It is happening more and more these days in tennis tournaments, including this year’s Australian Open, where in the first round Townsend destroyed Diane Parry, a promising French 20-year-old, in every possible way. And she has moved on from the body-shaming and benching by the United States Tennis Association a decade ago, when she was just 16 years old.Townsend, a 26-year-old mother of a toddler, lost, 6-1, 2-6, 3-6, in the second round Thursday to Ekaterina Alexandrova of Russia, the No. 19 seed. But on Tuesday, she delivered a thorough and merciless beating to Parry during a 67-minute, 6-1, 6-1 rout. Her powerful serve topped out at 116 miles per hour, and her lacing backhand painted the lines; Parry never figured out how to handle Townsend’s whipping forehand and could not reach the precise volleys. The win was her first in the main singles draw of a Grand Slam tournament in three years, and the first since Townsend, ranked 135th in the world, became a mother in March 2021.And she’s not done in Australia; her women’s doubles tournament starts later this week.“Taylor is a top-20 player who right now is not in the top 20,” John Williams, Townsend’s coach, said moments after she finished off Parry with her seventh ace. “If you’re that kind of player, you should do top-20 things, like she did today.”Townsend has been the best of the best before, on the junior level. But then she — and her still-developing teenage body — became an early flash point in the debate about what top athletes are supposed to look like, and how much coaches should push their own definitions of fitness on young women.In 2012, Townsend, a star of the U.S.T.A.’s then four-year-old development program, was the No. 1 junior player in the world. That January, she was the girls’ singles champion at the Australian Open. In July 2012, she won the girls’ doubles title at Wimbledon with Eugenie Bouchard of Canada.But just weeks later, as The Wall Street Journal revealed, after a loss in the first round of qualifying at a lower-tier professional event in Canada, coaches at the U.S.T.A. decided the 16-year-old Townsend needed to work on her fitness. They requested her to pull out of the national girls championships and sent her back to their training center in Boca Raton, Fla.Townsend was the girls’ singles champion of the Australian Open in 2012.Lucas Dawson/Getty ImagesThey turned her down that August when she asked for a wild-card entry into the main draw of the U.S. Open, a spot she could have earned had she won the national girls title. They refused to cover her expenses to play in the U.S. Open girls tournament. She paid her own way, made the quarterfinals of the singles tournament and won the doubles.Flash forward a decade, to last September. Townsend is standing at midcourt in Arthur Ashe Stadium at the U.S. Open, accepting the runner-up trophy in the women’s doubles tournament with her partner, her fellow American Caty McNally.The master of ceremonies for the trophy presentation is Patrick McEnroe. Ten years ago, he was the general manager of the U.S.T.A.’s player development program, the guy who sent Townsend back to Boca Raton.The 2023 Australian OpenThe year’s first Grand Slam tennis tournament runs from Jan. 16 to Jan. 29 in Melbourne.Taylor Townsend: A decade ago, she had to contend with the body-shaming of tennis leaders in the United States. Now, she’s determined to play the best tennis of her career.Caroline Garcia: The top player has spoken openly about her struggles with an eating disorder. At the Australian Open she is chasing her first Grand Slam singles title.Talent From China: Shang Juncheng, once the world’s top-ranked junior, is the youngest member of a promising new wave of players that also includes Wu Yibing and Zhang Zhizhen.Ben Shelton Goes Global: The 20-year-old American is ranked in the top 100 after a late-season surge last year. Now, he is embarking on his first full season on tour.“I’ve put in the work, I’ve earned my way to be here, and I think everyone sees that,” Townsend said that day, wearing a body suit without a sponsor name in sight that has become her signature outfit of choice. “And I’m going to continue to put my head down and grind, and this is going to motivate me to go even harder. So watch out for 2023.”Townsend said Tuesday that, until it was pointed out to her, she was not aware of the moment’s awkwardness, her steely stare while on the podium and the seeming chill between her and McEnroe. What she said in that trophy presentation was about making one thing clear to herself and anyone listening.“I’m coming,” she said, sitting on a couch in a lounge above a steamy Melbourne Park after her first-round win. “Everything that I’m working for, all of the goals and everything that I’m doing, is slowly aligning, and I don’t know when it will happen, but I’m coming, and you know to be ready and to be on the lookout because I know inside of myself what I can do and I know, that you don’t know the timing. I believe that things will happen.”Townsend and her doubles partner, Caty McNally, were interviewed on the court at the U.S. Open by Patrick McEnroe, who was the general manager of the U.S.T.A.’s player development program 10 years ago.Danielle Parhizkaran/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIn a text message from Connecticut, where he is working as part of ESPN’s television coverage of the Australian Open, McEnroe said all he had ever wanted for Townsend was success at the highest level. Asked whether his perspective on the fitness issue had changed, McEnroe said:“I could not be happier to see Taylor back on the courts, and continuing to do well. I have always, and will always, continue to wish her nothing but the best on and off the court.” That, he said, has always been his perspective on the issue.Every tennis journey is unique. The sport can seem like a conveyor belt of prodigies who survive the gantlet of development programs and academies followed by years of dues-paying and ropes-learning in the hinterlands, and finally the promised land of the pro tours and the Grand Slam tournaments. Each one has its own bends and twists, setbacks and injuries.Townsend’s, though, is as different as they come. A childhood in Chicago; the pinnacle of junior tennis and the birth of her pro career as a teen in Florida, despite the body-shaming; then several years of struggling to figure out what kind of player she was during the first part of her career; a mother at 24; a stint as a television analyst during her maternity leave; a rise to the top echelon of doubles; and now a slow and steady re-emergence as a singles player. Her goal, she said, is to be better than she was before she left the sport to have her baby.She is getting closer. Last year, Townsend won two tournaments at the International Tennis Federation level, the sport’s third tier. She also made the round of 16 at the Silicon Valley Classic.Williams said Townsend has achieved “clarity” in the last year about who she is on the court. She is an all-court player with a big serve and a powerful forehand that can be especially dangerous since it comes off her left hand and punishes right-handed backhands when she fires it across the court.“The quality of her ball was hard to control,” Parry said Tuesday.As a top doubles player — she and the American Asia Muhammad are seeded 12th in Melbourne — Townsend can come forward when she needs to, as well. In every match, she wants to be the one to dictate the play.Townsend and McNally were runners-up at the U.S. Open in September.Al Bello/Getty Images“She got away from that for a little while,” said Williams, who first worked with Townsend in 2009.Townsend represented the United States at the Billie Jean King Cup last year, enjoying the full embrace of the U.S.T.A. The organization has offered her and Williams whatever resources it can provide to assist in her continuing evolution.Kathy Rinaldi, the national coach for women’s tennis at the U.S.T.A., calls or texts Townsend after all her matches. She has noticed Ola Malmqvist, the organization’s director of coaching, watching her play. Townsend said she has no hard feelings. She wanted to take control of her narrative the same way she tries to take control of matches, to make it mean what she wanted it to mean, and she did.“We’re seeing people succeed who look totally different than the normal, from all industries, from athletics, sports, entertainment, acting, everything,” she said. “The fact that I could be a part of that and to live it and just to be an example for people, that’s the biggest thing for me.” More

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      Simona Halep Suspended for a Positive Doping Test

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      Halep, the ninth-ranked player in women’s tennis, tested positive for an anemia drug.Simona Halep, a two-time Grand Slam singles champion and one of the biggest stars in women’s tennis, received a provisional suspension on Friday after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug during the U.S. Open this summer.Halep, a 31-year-old Romanian, is currently ranked ninth in the world. A representative declined an interview request, but after Halep learned of the suspension on Friday, she wrote on Twitter that news of the drug violation was “the biggest shock of my life.”pic.twitter.com/bhS2B2ovzS— Simona Halep (@Simona_Halep) October 21, 2022
      In a statement, the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which oversees drug testing for the sport, said Halep had tested positive for roxadustat, a drug commonly used for people suffering from anemia, a condition resulting from a low level of red blood cells.The organization said that after the drug was found in her initial sample, Halep requested a test on a second sample, which confirmed the presence of the drug in her system.“While provisionally suspended, the player is ineligible to compete in or attend any sanctioned tennis events organized by the governing bodies of the sport,” the organization said.Roxadustat is on the list of banned substances because it artificially stimulates hemoglobin and red blood cell production, which is a technique for players to gain more endurance. The drug does this by getting the body to produce more of the hormone erythropoietin, commonly referred to as “EPO,” which plays an important role in red blood cell production.Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body. More red blood cells can result in increased endurance, which made EPO a particularly common performance-enhancing substance in professional cycling for years.Halep had never previously received a drug suspension. In her post on Twitter, she stated that “the idea of cheating never crossed my mind once” and that it went against her values. “I will fight to the end to prove that I never knowingly took a prohibited substance,” Halep wrote.Halep’s 2022 season was an up-and-down campaign. She was close to quitting in February, she said, because she had lost her belief that she could compete with the best players in the world. But as she began working with Patrick Mouratoglou, who previously trained Serena Williams, Halep regained her confidence.She entered the French Open in good form but lost her first-round match after suffering what she later described as a panic attack during a three-set battle with Zheng Qinwen of China. At Wimbledon, Halep made it to the semifinals before losing to the eventual champion, Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan, but at the U.S. Open the following month she lost in the first round once more, this time to Daria Snigur of Ukraine.In early September, Halep announced that she had nasal surgery to remove what had been a significant blockage in her nose. The condition had made it difficult to breathe for years, she said on social media, but she had never pursued the surgery because it required three months away from playing tennis.At that time, she announced that her 2022 season was over and that she was looking forward to rejoining tennis in 2023. Those plans will now await the outcome of any appeals she makes regarding the drug violation. As a first time-offender, Halep very likely faces a suspension of up to two years, which would begin roughly at the time of her most recent competition.Athletes in Halep’s position, as Maria Sharapova was when she was found to have taken an illegal heart medication, often claim that a physician prescribed the drug for a legitimate medical reason but the athlete did not realize that it was on the banned substances list. But antidoping regulations hold athletes responsible for anything that is found in their bodies. More

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      Meet Frances Tiafoe and Jack Sock

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      Here’s a 22nd century tennis trivia question: “Who was Roger Federer’s last opponent?”Trick answer. There were two: Jack Sock and Frances Tiafoe.Sock and Tiafoe, both Americans, are definitely the supporting actors in Friday night’s Federer-centric farewell production. But they pose a real threat to Federer going out on a high note.Sock, in particular, has played a lot more doubles in recent years than Federer or his superstar partner, Rafael Nadal, who have long focused almost exclusively on singles.Sock, 29, has a glittering 205-96 career record in doubles and has been ranked as high as No. 2 in the world. He recently won the title in Washington, D.C., with partner Nick Kyrgios and just helped the United States Davis Cup team advance to the quarterfinals by partnering with Rajeev Ram to win two crucial matches.Federer and Nadal have both won gold medals at the Olympics in men’s doubles. Sock’s gold came in mixed doubles in 2016 with Bethanie Mattek-Sands. But unlike Federer or Nadal, Sock has won Grand Slam doubles titles: three in men’s doubles and one in mixed doubles.Sock has a big serve, an imposing forehand with an extreme grip and fabulous touch and reflexes at the net. Despite his solid frame and sometimes sleepy gaze, he also is very quick, which means that he and the speedy Tiafoe will be able to close a lot of gaps in a hurry tonight against Federer and Nadal.But though Tiafoe, 24, just broke through to reach the semifinals in singles this month at the U.S. Open, he could be the weak link in this match. He has yet to win a doubles title on tour and has a losing career record of 23-39.Tiafoe, an extrovert with a flashy game, does like a big occasion and an electric crowd, however, as he proved again in New York this year. He certainly seemed relaxed in the run-up.“I’m just excited to play two up-and-comers tomorrow,” Tiafoe joked on Thursday.Sock already has played those up-and-comers in doubles at the Laver Cup, losing with partner Sam Querrey in 2017 to Federer and Nadal in their first-ever official match together.For Tiafoe, given the circumstances, it will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. More

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      Roger Federer’s Retirement Makes Room for a New Era of Champions

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      Roger Federer’s retirement will auger opportunities for a new generation of players not named Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic.Upon learning that Roger Federer will retire after the upcoming Laver Cup, Judy Murray, the Scottish tennis coach and mother of Andy Murray, one of Federer’s great opponents, noted on social media that it signifies “the end of a magnificent era.”But Federer’s pending retirement, announced Thursday, also foretells the conclusion of a larger era defined by more than just him.For many, it is the greatest era of men’s tennis, one that includes the unsurpassed greatness of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Collectively, the three helped define a transcendent and remarkably durable period in tennis history that also parallels the career of Serena Williams, who announced she was stepping away from the sport last month.On the men’s side, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic’s collective reign, which endured for two decades, was glorious for tennis fans. Their stubborn persistence also prevented numerous “next generations” from finding the spotlight.Nadal, 36, and Djokovic, 35, who won Wimbledon this year, will presumably still carry on a bit longer. But Federer’s announcement on Thursday reminded the tennis world that the end will eventually come for all three of them, leaving the stage to a host of hungry new players, some of whom have already muscled their way into the breach.Carlos Alcaraz, right, keeps a photo of himself with Federer on a bookshelf at his home in El Palmar, Spain.Samuel Aranda for The New York Times“Roger has been one of my idols and a source of inspiration,” Carlos Alcaraz, the new United States Open champion, posted on his Twitter account in tribute to Federer. “Thank you for everything you have done for our sport! I still want to play with you! Wish you all the luck in the world for what comes next!”What comes next is a peek into a future of men’s tennis minus one of its greatest male stars, and eventually all three of them.Alcaraz became the youngest men’s player to reach No. 1 when he captured the U.S. Open on Sunday at only 19. Others — including Casper Ruud, whom Alcaraz beat in the final; Daniil Medvedev, last year’s U.S. Open champion; Jannik Sinner, the promising 21-year-old from Italy; Nick Kyrgios; Frances Tiafoe; Felix Auger-Aliassime; and Denis Shapovalov — now can all ponder the possibilities that tennis mortality presents to them.“It’s been a privilege to share the court with you,” Shapovalov, 23, told Federer on social media Thursday.It will be a different kind of privilege — and opportunity — to play without him.But on the court, Federer’s retirement does not constitute a sudden change in the landscape. There were few expectations that, even if he could have rediscovered his health, Federer would come back to win more majors — not at 41, and not after three frustrating years trying to regain his footing. Nadal and Djokovic, on the other hand, remain the agenda setters in men’s tennis.Since 2019, they have combined to win 12 of the 15 major tournaments that were held. Had Djokovic not been barred from entering the United States this year, he likely would have been favored to win the U.S. Open, and if he had won, it would have given him and Nadal a sweep of this year’s majors.Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic before their French Open semifinal earlier this year.James Hill for The New York TimesTwo of the big three are still as dangerous as ever, and there is no fixed expiration date on either of them. There are concerns, though. Health has long been a nagging issue for Nadal, as it was at the U.S. Open, when he was ousted by Tiafoe in the fourth round after he returned from an abdominal strain that forced him out of Wimbledon.For Djokovic, there is the matter of his refusal to be vaccinated for the coronavirus, which prevented him from competing in this year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open. At least some doubt remains about Djokovic’s availability for those events next year, lending even more hope to the younger stars.So, can promising young players like those previously mentioned, plus No. 6 Stefanos Tsitsipas, No. 5 Alexander Zverev and Dominic Thiem, who won the 2020 U.S. Open, take advantage, as Alcaraz did? For the first time in 20 years, it seems possible, even with Nadal and Djokovic still standing in the way. But tennis has seen this before.In 2017, the A.T.P. launched the Next Generation Finals in Milan. Zverev, Medvedev and Karen Khachanov, who reached a U.S. Open semifinal last week, were all invited, along with Shapovalov, a Wimbledon semifinalist last year, and Jared Donaldson, who retired with an injury. Tiafoe and Tsitsipas were alternates.Since then, only Medvedev, 26, has won a major title. The rest of the time, he and the others were thwarted, often by one of the big three. It was the same for older players, too, like Andy Roddick, Stanislas Wawrinka, David Nalbandian, David Ferrer and Mikhail Youzhny, all of whom played for leftovers.Daniil Medvedev, who beat Djokovic to win the 2021 U.S. Open, is among the emerging generation of stars.Ben Solomon for The New York TimesSince 2004, Federer, Nadal or Djokovic has finished as the year’s No. 1 player except one, when Andy Murray earned the distinction in 2016.In 2018, when Youzhny retired, he said, “Sometimes these guys didn’t give anyone else chances to win. I can’t say I would have won more, but this is a great era for tennis.”Federer came into the game first, turning professional in 1998 and winning his first Grand Slam event at Wimbledon in 2003. Nadal was next, playing professionally since 2001 and winning the first of his 22 majors in 2005. Djokovic turned professional in 2003 and won his first major title in Australia in 2008.It seems natural that they should go out in the same order. Only then can a new generation of stars finally establish a new era, one that has been decades in the making. More

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      Roger Federer Came Along When Tennis Desperately Needed Him

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      Tennis had lost its cachet in the early 2000s before Federer made the classic sport modern and the modern sport classier.This may be it a little hard to remember amid the glow of record attendance at an electric 2022 U.S. Open, but tennis was not in a great spot when a promising young player from Switzerland with a goofy ponytail came along in the early 2000s.Tiger Woods had somehow made golf cool for the masses. But tennis, the hot sport of the 1970s and 1980s, was predominantly a game of the elite, followed and played largely in a rarefied niche.At the professional level, the men’s game essentially had one group of players who bludgeoned the ball and another that counterpunched. Andre Agassi was a rare exception who could do both and had some personality. Like a lot of players, though, he had an ambivalent relationship with the physical and emotional demands of a sport that seemed to make many miserable. There was not much joy to be found on the tennis court.Then, after some rough, temper-filled early years on the pro tour, Roger Federer, with his terrible haircut and tennis outfit two sizes too big, suddenly had people oohing and aahing as the months passed in 2001.“Baryshnikov in sneakers” is how the McEnroe brothers — John, the seven-time Grand Slam champion who had once garnered similarly lusty praise, and Patrick, the solid former pro and television commentator — often referred to Federer, comparing his style and grace on the court to ballet.Cliff Drysdale, another former pro and longtime commentator, began to notice that whenever Federer took the court, the locker room would empty as players either went to the stands or huddled around a television set in the players’ lounge to watch a man who seemed capable of creating shots and playing with a style they could only dream of. Drysdale had not seen that since the days of Rod Laver, the great Australian who had dominated in the 1960s.“When the admiration you receive extends beyond the fans to your fellow players, that is something,” Drysdale said Thursday in an interview. “And the players would watch all of Roger’s matches.”Federer returning a volley from Lleyton Hewitt during a match at the 2005 U.S. Open.Robert Caplin/The New York TimesHere was a player who could play any style from any place on the court. There was an ethereal quality to the way Federer created shots, like a jazz musician, improvising solos.How exactly does one hit a jumping, one-handed backhand on a ball that bounces to eye level? And the movement. Federer seemed to float across the court, the way a world-class sprinter flies down a track in a state of relaxation on his way to breaking a world record.“He elevated the sport at a time when it desperately needed it,” Patrick McEnroe said Thursday. “And I don’t mean this to be a knock on any of the great champions who came before him, including one I know particularly well, but he brought a classic game back to the modern game, and he brought a certain class back to the sport.”Once Federer got a haircut and some decent tennis clothes, his grace extended off the court. He appeared on the covers of fashion magazines. He hobnobbed as easily with C.E.O.s and heads of state as he visited with sick and impoverished children. He launched a foundation that has donated tens of millions of dollars to education in Africa, where his South African mother was born.“I always said that Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith were good players but great people,” said Donald Dell, a co-founder of the ATP, as well as an agent and tennis promoter. “Roger is a great, great player and greater person off the court, who became as good an ambassador for a sport as you could have when it needed it.”The trophies arrived by the truckload. By the end of 2008, when he was still just 27 years old, he had already won 13 Grand Slam titles, one behind the record. He would win seven more Grand Slam singles titles before he was done, and he was still winning them long past the age when anyone thought a tennis player could compete at the highest level.Rafael Nadal arrived to become a chief rival in the early 2000s, and then Novak Djokovic crashed the party and turned tennis into the three-way battle that has brought the sport to unprecedented heights.Federer made people feel like they were watching sport as a form of art. He was not simply playing tennis; he was redrawing the geometry of the court, hitting shots into spots where balls rarely bounced, from angles no one had seen. The novelist David Foster Wallace, who had been a decent junior player growing up in the Midwest, wrote about Federer the way others wrote about Vladimir Nabokov or Vincent van Gogh.The grace hid other qualities that led to his success. During his initial run of Grand Slam titles, wins seemed to come so easily that they masked just how competitive Federer was.That became clear after the 2009 Australian Open. He cried during the trophy ceremony after Nadal beat him in a third consecutive Grand Slam final, a stretch that included their epic five-set duel at Wimbledon in 2008 in what many consider the greatest professional tennis match ever played.Roger Federer wept as Rafael Nadal received the winner’s trophy at the Australian Open in 2009.Oliver Weiken/European Pressphoto Agency“It’s killing me,” he said of the losing streak.He channeled the pain into getting back to the top after everyone had thought his time had passed. He did this not once, but twice, the second time when he was 36 years old and won the last of his Grand Slam titles, and his third after his 35th birthday — an absurd concept then that Federer, Nadal and Djokovic have now made seem practically normal.The grace also masked an assassin-like ruthlessness that could torture opponents. Nick Kyrgios, the temperamental Australian star, has said that Federer is the only player who has ever made him feel like he really did not know what he was doing on a tennis court.Check some of the old score sheets. Amid the carnage is a 6-0-6-0 bludgeoning of Gaston Gaudio of Argentina, a French Open champion, at the ATP Masters in 2005; there is a 6-0, 6-1 destruction of Andy Murray in the ATP Tour Finals in London in 2014.In 2017 during the Wimbledon final, Marin Cilic suffered a blister on his foot midway through the match that rendered him nearly unable to compete. Cilic cried as he sat in his chair and received treatment from a trainer. Federer paced menacingly on the other side of the net, a look of disdain in his eyes, like a prize fighter wanting his opponent to get up so he could hit him again.And yet, as soon as Federer’s matches ended, all of that edge drifted away as the assassin turned back into a statesman — all smiles and gratitude for his opponents, for sponsors, for fans, for the staff at tournaments, even for journalists.“I don’t think the guy has ever had a bad day in his life,” said John McEnroe last month, marveling at how effortlessly Federer handled the demands of celebrity that had nearly crushed McEnroe in the 1980s.Paul Annacone, one of the few people to coach Federer, was asked last year why he thought Federer was attempting to come back from knee surgery at 39 after a long layoff that had coincided with the start of the pandemic. He said Federer simply loved tennis — the competition, the travel, the fans, all of it — and that allowed his personality to flow.Federer signing autographs during Aurthur Ashe Kids’ Day before the start of 2008 U.S. Open.Michael Nagle for The New York Times“His legacy is grace,” said Mary Carillo, a former player and current broadcaster. “Grace in the way he played. Grace under pressure. Grace with children. Grace with kings, with queens. Grace when he moved, when he sat still, when he won, when he lost. In French, in German, in English. In Afrikaans. It was just in his bones to be that way.” More

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      Timing Is Everything for Carlos Alcaraz

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      Alcaraz, the 19-year-old winner of the men’s U.S. Open, said he “worked really hard so that things like this could happen.”The U.S. Open victory party at Carlos Alcaraz’s Manhattan hotel wrapped up before 3 a.m. on Monday, which was early by his standards at this round-the-clock Grand Slam event.“I got to bed at 5:15 a.m. after the Cilic match, and 6 a.m. after the Sinner match,” he explained rather wearily as he sat in the back seat of a sport utility vehicle, shifting his gaze from his interlocutor to the streetscape outside the tinted windows.He was rolling toward Times Square for a rendezvous with his new trophy, and upon arrival, he stepped onto the sidewalk in his jeans and blue-and-white sneakers and was soon holding the silverware high with the photographers — professional and amateur — clicking away as a crowd began to gather.“Numero uno!” shouted someone in Spanish.Alcaraz took note, just as he had after waking up on Monday and looking at the updated ATP rankings on his phone.“I had to be sure,” he said.At 19, Alcaraz is the youngest No. 1 since the ATP rankings were created in 1973. That is quite a feat in a sport that has had plenty of prodigies: from Bjorn Borg to Mats Wilander, Boris Becker to Pete Sampras, to Alcaraz’s Spanish compatriot Rafael Nadal, who also won his first major at age 19 (at the 2005 French Open).But Alcaraz’s meteoric rise to the top has not been due simply to his genius — though the word, which should be used very sparingly in tennis or anything else, does seem to apply in his acrobatic case.His coronation is also due to timing:To Novak Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated for Covid-19, which kept him out of this year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open and four Masters 1000 events in North America.To Nadal’s limited schedule because of a series of injuries.To the extraordinary situation at Wimbledon, which Djokovic won again in July but which earned him no ranking points; the tournament had been stripped of points by the men’s and women’s tours because of Wimbledon’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players over the war in Ukraine.Alcaraz’s situation is radically different from the case of Nadal, who, as the longtime No. 2, had to chase Roger Federer for years before finally securing the top ranking.Alcaraz has reached No. 1 before the end of his second full season on tour and after winning his first major title with a four-set victory over Casper Ruud on Sunday.“Look, I don’t want to take credit away from myself,” Alcaraz said. “But it’s true that Rafa, Djokovic, Federer, they were in a period when they were all playing. I had the luck or whatever you want to call it that Djokovic could not play. Everybody has their reasons, but that is the reality. He could not play much for a while, and Rafa kept playing but not all year, either. But like I said, I don’t want to take credit away from myself. I have been playing all season, playing incredible matches and incredible tournaments, and I’ve worked really hard so that things like this could happen.”In an interview before the season, Alcaraz was asked which major tournament he would most like to win. The U.S. Open was his answer.Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt the end of 2021, Alcaraz was considered one of the brightest young talents in the game and was ranked No. 32. Less than nine months later, he has won the Rio Open, Miami Open, Barcelona Open, Madrid Open and now his first Grand Slam title at the U.S. Open.Along the way, he has beaten the old guard, defeating Nadal and Djokovic in Madrid, and the new wave, defeating the 21-year-old Italian Jannik Sinner, the 24-year-old American Frances Tiafoe and the 23-year-old Ruud in New York.Alcaraz’s latest duel with Sinner in the quarterfinals was the match of the tournament, played at close to full throttle for five sets in five hours and 15 minutes, with Alcaraz saving a match point in the fourth set.It was also the latest-finishing match in U.S. Open history, wrapping up at 2:50 a.m., which is certainly notable but also a dubious honor even if the tournament presented him with a commemorative photo from that record-breaking match on Sunday.Finishing at that hour (and going to sleep at 6 a.m.) is no way for an elite athlete to optimize performance or for a major sports event to maximize its reach even if tennis is a global sport and 2:50 a.m. in New York is prime time in certain parts of the world.On the upside, this was the first time in U.S. Open history that all sessions in Arthur Ashe Stadium were sold out. That was due, in part, to the impact of Serena Williams’s announcement that the end of her career was imminent, which spiked interest in first-week tickets in Ashe Stadium.But Stacey Allaster, the U.S. Open tournament director, said officials would certainly take another look at the night-session schedule before the 2023 Open.But what is clear is that Alcaraz’s three consecutive late-night marathons did not keep him from the championship. He beat Marin Cilic, Sinner and Tiafoe in five sets before defeating Ruud, becoming the third man in the Open era to win a major after winning three consecutive five-setters. (Stefan Edberg did it at the 1992 U.S. Open, and Gustavo Kuerten did it at the 1997 French Open.)Like the elegant Edberg’s and the elastic Kuerten’s, Alcaraz’s powers of recovery were astonishing, and for now at least he plans to play in the Davis Cup for Spain later this week in Valencia after flying home.In an interview with the Spanish publication El País, Juanjo Moreno, Alcaraz’s physiotherapist, said Alcaraz had a “good genetic predisposition that we have managed to bring to its maximum splendor.”Moreno explained that the team paid close attention to Alcaraz’s hydration and energy replenishment during matches, which included the ingestion of caffeine, a legal supplement.But Moreno said post-match recovery was the key: focusing on the use of a stationary bike, hot-and-cold contrast baths, massage and what he calls the “four Rs.” Those are “rehydration, replenishment of muscle glycogen, restoration of lost amino acids and recovery for the immune system.”Quality sleep is also essential. “The other day, we helped him with a sleep supplement because we had given him a lot of caffeine,” Moreno told El País.But Alcaraz said on Monday that other less-scientific factors were also in play.“I’m 19 years old,” he said with a grin. “And I have worked a lot and very hard day to day on recovery, and I have a magnificent team.”He offered his thanks.“But above all, it was going on the court with the adrenaline, the matches and everything,” he said. “You forget the pain. You forget the fatigue, and you push through.”Alcaraz used the Spanish word “aguantar,” which his team kept shouting at him in New York from the players’ box.“Of course, I felt soreness,” Alcaraz said. “After so many matches, it was so difficult, and things are bothering you, but you have to fight through it.”He did so in often-spectacular style, displaying his phenomenal quickness and timing, his ability to adapt on the fly and his rare capacity to take big risks on big points that pay off.“You forget the pain. You forget the fatigue, and you push through,” Alcaraz said.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesIt is quite a skill set, quite a fan-friendly package, and it made for a much happier ending in New York than in his first appearance in 2021 when, after an upset of Stefanos Tsitsipas in the third round, he later had to retire with a leg injury against Felix Auger-Aliassime in the second set of their quarterfinal.“A year ago, I came here as a new guy, a kid who was experiencing everything for the first time, including Arthur Ashe Stadium,” Alcaraz said. “I think I was a player who could win against anyone but was not ready to have the physical, mental and tennis level for two full weeks.“One year later, I have changed a lot. I feel I am ready to hold this level.”The proof was there in Times Square on Monday as he held his trophy aloft, but, above all, the proof was there in Ashe Stadium night after late night as he held off rival after rival with the crowd of nearly 24,000 often making him feel like he was playing at home. (The Tiafoe match was an exception.)“I think my town in Spain has about the same population as Arthur Ashe Stadium,” said Alcaraz, who comes from El Palmar, a suburb of Murcia. “I took a moment during the final and looked around and to see all those people and all those seats filled to the top row was incredible.”During an interview before the season, Alcaraz was asked which major tournament he would most like to win. The U.S. Open was his answer.Mission accomplished even if the love affair may be only beginning.“I feel a special bond,” he said. “I think my game matches up with that court and what the people are looking for when they come. There’s energy. It’s dynamic, and I think they don’t know what I’m going to do next. I think that’s part of the connection.” More