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      Jane Brown Grimes, a Rare Female Force in Tennis, Dies at 80

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      She was a top executive at three organizations, including the International Tennis Hall of Fame, where she was later inducted.Jane Brown Grimes, who as one of the rare women executives in tennis in her time modernized the International Tennis Hall of Fame, ran the rule-making body of women’s tennis and was president of the United States Tennis Association, died on Nov. 2 at her home in Manhattan. She was 80.The cause was cancer, her daughter, Serena Larson, said.“Jane did everything behind the scenes,” Chris Evert, who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, said in an interview. “She didn’t crave attention and quietly went about her work. Not a lot of women tennis players know what she did, because she was under the radar.”In 1989, Mrs. Brown Grimes, as managing director of the Women’s International Professional Tennis Council, which governed women’s tennis, headed talks that led to a change in title sponsorship of the women’s tour — from Virginia Slims, a cigarette brand marketed to women, to Kraft General Foods. Both were owned by Philip Morris (now the Altria Group).Anti-tobacco activists, as well as some players, had for years demanded that women’s tennis move on from its tobacco sponsorship, the financial backbone of the tour since the early 1970s, to one that promoted a healthier lifestyle.“Jane was a very strategic, intelligent leader, and she was clear that the council had to move away from tobacco,” said Anne Worcester, who was director of worldwide operations for the Virginia Slims series and succeeded Mrs. Brown Grimes as the council leader in 1991.Pam Shriver, who won 132 titles in her career, acknowledged in an interview that “there were no apologies for Virginia Slims being a sponsor.” But, she added, “By the time Jane was in a key position to make a change, she made it happen.”Mrs. Brown Grimes speaking to Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, widow of the tennis star Arthur Ashe, during a match in 2008 at the U.S. Open in Flushing, Queens. The Ashes’ daughter, Camera, is on the left.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg NewsJane Trowbridge Gillespie was born on Jan. 20, 1941, in Freeport, N.Y., on Long Island. Her father, Samuel Hazard Gillespie, was a litigator who served as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1959 to 1961. Her mother, Ruth (Reed) Gillespie, was the head librarian at the Collegiate School in Manhattan.In her youth, Jane played on her grandparents’ clay tennis court on Long Island and regularly attended the United States National Championships at Forest Hills, Queens — the precursor to the U.S. Open — with her family. She reveled in watching stars like Althea Gibson, Margaret Court, Tony Trabert and Maureen Connolly.“They were my movie stars,” she told The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., in 2009. “They were my idols.”She studied history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and received a bachelor’s degree in 1962. After working as a fact checker for Life magazine and then for a documentary filmmaker, she joined the Manhattan office of the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1977.Starting as an event planner, she became a fund-raiser before rising to executive director of the Hall of Fame in 1981, a post she held until 1986. Working mainly from its Manhattan office, she helped raise money to rehabilitate buildings at the Hall, in Newport, R.I., and was the director of tournaments held on its grounds.After leaving to join the women’s tennis council, Mrs. Brown Grimes returned to the Hall as president in 1991 and stayed through 2000, overseeing the acquisition of tennis memorabilia critical to the Hall’s historical mission and continuing the renovations.She was elected to the board of the United States Tennis Association in 2001 and then rose through its ranks to become volunteer chairman and president in 2007. The second woman to hold that position, she served through 2008. During her two-year tenure she particularly championed youth programs and was involved in the U.S.T.A.’s acquisition of the Western & Southern Open.“Jane was one of the few who paved the way for other women to have leadership roles in tennis,” Ms. Worcester said.Mrs. Brown Grimes was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her sons, Jim Schwarz and Ames Brown; her brother, Sam Gillespie; and five grandchildren. Her marriage to Marshall Schwarz ended in divorce, and her marriages to Ames Brown and Charles Grimes ended with their deaths.Ever curious, Mrs. Brown Grimes continued her education well into her later years. She earned an M.B.A. degree from Baruch College in Manhattan in 2012, then used her knowledge of tennis to earn a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Cambridge in 2015.Her thesis was about the 1986 Federation Cup tournament in Prague, which marked Martina Navratilova’s return to her homeland for the first time since defecting to the United States in 1975 from what was then Czechoslovakia. Mrs. Brown Grimes had attended the tournament.“When it was over and the U.S. had won, Martina was given a big microphone and started her speech in English, but within about 10 seconds she switched into Czech and the place went nuts,” Mrs. Brown Grimes said in an interview with Steve Flink of Tennis.com this year. “Her mother was sitting in front of me, and down a ways, and she was in tears.”When she died, Mrs. Brown Grimes had nearly finished her dissertation in history at Cambridge — about women’s tennis during the Open era, after tournaments were open to professionals and not just amateurs in 1968. More

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      Reilly Opelka

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      There are currently 14 men in the top 100, the most since 1996, but none in the top 20. While the United States may not have any truly elite players right now, it does have youth.It took a while, but after the American Reilly Opelka and his big serve were eliminated in the fourth round of the U.S. Open on Monday by Lloyd Harris of South Africa, I decided to go searching.I had to weave through the big crowds that have happily again been part of the experience at this year’s tournament. I had to work my way up and down the concourse, examining the banners that commemorate, year by year, the past Open champions — most of whom seemed to be named Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer — before arriving at my destination.There, near a coffee stand, dangling from the same post, were banners featuring the last two American men to win the singles title at Flushing Meadows: Pete Sampras in 2002 and Andy Roddick in 2003.It has been nearly 20 years now, the longest gap in the history of this Grand Slam tournament between American men’s champions. I covered both Sampras’s and Roddick’s victories, and there was no suspecting the length of the drought to come.New American men’s stars had always emerged, sometimes with a slight delay but never this kind of delay. There was concern about the future when John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors got older in the 1980s, but then along came one of the greatest generations from any nation: Sampras, Andre Agassi, Jim Courier and Michael Chang, with fine players like Todd Martin and MaliVai Washington playing secondary roles.There was big concern when those players aged out in the early 2000s, but Roddick still managed to reach No. 1 before being left knee-deep by the genius of Federer and the inexorable rise of Nadal and Djokovic.Roddick did his best, no doubt, which was often remarkable, reaching three Wimbledon finals and another U.S. Open final before retiring in 2012.But though Serena Williams, a winner of 23 major singles titles, has given American tennis fans plenty to celebrate since then, no American man has reached a Grand Slam singles final in over a decade as the Europeans have put a chokehold on men’s tennis.“We got a little bit spoiled,” said Brad Stine, the veteran American coach who mentored Courier and now works with the young American Tommy Paul.There has been no room in this upscale neighborhood. The prime real estate has been occupied by the Big Three, which for a time could have been considered the Big Five with Andy Murray and Federer’s Swiss compatriot Stan Wawrinka each winning three major titles.Now a much younger group has emerged that you could call the Next Four: Matteo Berrettini of Italy, Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, Daniil Medvedev of Russia and Alexander Zverev of Germany. If you like, toss in the still-reigning U.S. Open champion Dominic Thiem of Austria and Andrey Rublev of Russia, a top-10 player.They, like the stars they are succeeding, are all Europeans.Tennis is more central to the sports culture in Europe, attracting more interest and presumably a greater percentage of top-quality athletes. There are more professional tournaments, both at the minor league and major league level, in Europe.But this season and this U.S. Open have offered up some evidence for better days ahead for the American men. There are 14 in the top 100 at the moment, the most since 1996. There were 13 in the second round at the Open, the most since 1994 when Sampras, Agassi, Courier and Chang were in full flow.But unlike those halcyon days, none of the new-age Americans are currently ranked in the top 20. There is depth but, for now, no truly elite players. What bodes well is that there is youth. All three of the American men to reach the fourth round here were under 25: Opelka, 24; Frances Tiafoe, 23; and Jenson Brooksby, 20.“In the top 100, we’ve got a huge group of guys there; we just don’t have the world beaters,” Opelka said after his 6-7 (6), 6-4, 6-1, 6-3 loss to Harris. “I don’t think we will have a Sampras-Agassi era of just dominance like that again. It’s rare for any country.”Brooksby, the last American singles player left in the tournament, certainly looked like a worldbeater for a set and a half on Monday night. In his first appearance in Arthur Ashe Stadium, he played with intelligence and resilience to take a 6-1 lead on world No. 1 Novak Djokovic. Brooksby then got back on serve in the second set after breaking Djokovic in an eight-deuce game that felt more like chess than tennis. But Djokovic, chasing the Grand Slam, has been playing best-of-five set tennis for nearly 20 years. Brooksby is just starting out and could not keep pace, losing 1-6, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.“I told him at the net he has a bright future ahead of him,” Djokovic said.Opelka, Tiafoe and Brooksby are not alone. Sebastian Korda is 21 and Brandon Nakashima is 20, and both also have had success this season with Korda reaching the quarterfinals of the Miami Open after beating three seeded players and then winning his first tour title in Parma, Italy. Nakashima made the singles finals in Atlanta and Los Cabos, Mexico, and upset John Isner, the most successful American man of the last decade, in the first round of this year’s U.S. Open.All this might not have been worth celebrating 25 years ago, but it counts as good news now.“I do think we’re moving in the right direction,” said Stine, who has coached privately and with the United States Tennis Association. “Ideally for U.S. tennis we want to have as many guys as we possibly can inside the top 250, which means we’re flooding the qualifying rounds of the Slams. And then from there, we need as many in the top 100 as we can get. It’s a numbers game, ultimately. You could ask, would you rather have 14 in the top 100 with none in the top 20? Or only six in the top 100 and all in the top 20? I think you’d obviously go with the six, but I do think we’re making progress.”They are a diverse group with varied game styles. Consider just the three American men to reach the round of 16. Opelka, who should break into the top 20 on Monday after the Open, is nearly seven feet tall with a big-bang game that can make him a nightmare to face. Tiafoe, who lost in four sets to Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada on Sunday night, is a compact power server from College Park, Md., with quickness and dynamic groundstrokes who has had a resurgent season under his new coach Wayne Ferreira.Brooksby, the newest arrival at this level, is a northern Californian who made good use of his wild card into the Open.“I think Brooksby is our best,” said Opelka, who picked Brooksby and Korda as the most likely Americans to win a Grand Slam title down the road.Brooksby has an unconventional game based on consistency, great defense and abrupt rhythm shifts rather than the power baseline style that predominates on the men’s tour.“Is his swing beautiful? No. But is it repeatable? Absolutely, and that’s the most important thing,” said Stine, who has known Brooksby since he was 11. “The contact point is clean, and he makes a million balls. He plays the game really at the simplest form there is. I’m going to miss fewer balls than you are. I’m going to run and get to all the balls you hit, and I’m going to make you hit one more ball. And it’s been extremely effective and extremely irritating to his opponents.”The next challenge for the young Americans is beating enough opponents to start going deep, truly deep, in the tournaments that matter most. More

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      Mardy Fish Can Relate to What Naomi Osaka Is Going Through

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      Anxiety forced Fish to withdraw from the 2012 U.S. Open. Now he is open about his mental health and works with the U.S.T.A. to provide more resources for players.The fourth-round singles matches at the U.S. Open were underway on Sunday, and Mardy Fish, the Davis Cup captain and former tennis star, was remembering the moment nine years ago in New York when he sat in the car sobbing with his wife, Stacey, and decided, with her help, that he could not play in the fourth round against Roger Federer.“It was just crazy anxiety, crazy, crazy, just how am I going to walk out on this court?” he said by telephone from his home in Los Angeles. “But it never, never would have crossed my mind, if my wife wasn’t there with me, that I wouldn’t play. We’re so trained to never show weakness, never show fear, to the other side of the court. But my wife saying, ‘Well, you don’t have to play’ — that part right there was like, right away, just instantly, I felt better, like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.”Fish is now 39, a parent with Stacey of two young children. He works in finance and is still involved in professional tennis as the U.S. Davis Cup captain. But he is also a mentor, sharing his experience as a prominent athlete who had to deal with mental health problems when the subject was close to taboo in professional sports.“The reason why I’m so vocal or open about it now is that I didn’t have that success story to lean on when I was going through it,” he said.He is friendly with Naomi Osaka and her agent Stuart Duguid, and empathized when Osaka announced tearfully on Friday after her third-round defeat at the U.S. Open that she planned to take an indefinite break from the game that no longer brings her joy, even when she wins.“I would tell her, do whatever makes you happy,” Fish said. “She doesn’t have to hit another tennis ball the rest of her life, and if that makes her happy, that’s what she should do. I think she would regret that, but it’s whatever makes her want to get up in the morning and be happy. And whatever she’s been doing for the last couple months, or however long it’s been, is not doing that for her right now. So hopefully she finds peace and comfort.”Fish spent months housebound with repeated anxiety attacks after his withdrawal in New York. He received therapy and medication.After playing intermittently on tour, he returned to the U.S. Open in 2015 and won a round. It was the upbeat closure that he desired and is part of the journey he shares in a documentary that will be released on Tuesday as part of the Netflix “Untold” series.“To educate is really the most important thing,” Fish said. “To try to reach people that have never understood mental health or had issues with it or people around them who have had issues with it. To just educate them and just understand that Naomi Osaka is not going to pull out of the French Open just because she doesn’t want to talk to the press. And Simone Biles is not going to compete in the Olympics just because she doesn’t want to lose. The people that think that, and there are lots of them, it’s just unfortunate.”For Fish, one of the keys is to stop regarding mental health as separate from physical health.“It’s just health,” Fish said. “They call it mental health, but your brain is part of your body. It’s an injury. You just can’t see it.”Long considered one of the most talented players of his era, Fish improved his fitness and broke through in 2011 to reach the top 10 and qualify for the eight-man tour championships. But he said his rise also created new expectations and stresses.“My life changed, for the better initially, and then just my body and brain, the way I’m put together, couldn’t handle it,” he said.In 2012, he began experiencing a racing heartbeat that would wake him in the middle of the night and was diagnosed as a form of arrhythmia. Though he was treated for the condition, the underlying issue was an anxiety disorder, and while playing tennis was a refuge, he also began experiencing panic during his third-round win over Gilles Simon at the 2012 U.S. Open.“It was like my only comfort was taken away from me that night and it put me into basically rock bottom, zero serotonin left in my brain,” he said.“It’s not about being tough. I practice kickboxing and muay Thai right now, like, come on, I’ll take anyone on in the ring. You can punch me in the face all you want, and I’ll hit you back. I train that stuff. It’s not about being weak. I was strong mentally. I was a bulldog. To win, I would have sacrificed anything. I’ll put my competitiveness up against anyone’s. It’s not about that. It’s actually the opposite. Showing weakness and that vulnerability is actually showing strength, in my opinion.” Fish is working as a mentor during the U.S. Open as part of a new initiative from the United States Tennis Association to provide more mental health resources for players, including on-call psychologists. Claudia Reardon, the U.S.T.A.’s new mental health consultant, is overseeing the program.Mardy Fish walked off the court after losing to Feliciano López in five sets at the 2015 U.S. Open.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times“Athletes who talk about their own use of mental health resources or their own struggles with mental health symptoms or disorders really do a wonderful service to sport in general in terms of demystifying and normalizing that experience,” Reardon said in an interview. “To have mental health symptoms is not incompatible with high-level sports, and it’s actually a sign of strength to reach out for help.”Fish said no player had yet contacted him during the tournament, but he said “tons of people” had contacted him since he began speaking openly about his condition.“People you’ve heard of; people you’ve never heard of,” he said. “Coaches, players, from tennis and other sports. It’s been really nice to be helpful in that way. I’ve made some great relationships because of it, so it’s been comforting in that way, to know I wasn’t alone and that other people wanted to be vulnerable as well, just not to the world.”Osaka, like Fish, has taken a more open approach, revealing this year that she struggled with anxiety and depression since winning her first Grand Slam singles title at the 2018 U.S. Open. In a round-table discussion before this year’s Open, she, Fish, Nick Kyrgios and Billie Jean King talked about multiple topics, including mental health and media relations.Though Osaka spoke before and during the Open about her desire to focus on the positives of being a world-class player, she struggled with her emotions in her loss on Friday to the Canadian teenager Leylah Fernandez. She tossed her racket and knocked a ball into the stands in frustration and then teared up at a news conference. She said she did not know when she would play her next tennis match.“Recently, when I win, I don’t feel happy,” she said. “I feel more like relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad, and I don’t think that’s normal.”Fish was watching and listening.“That last press conference was her being really open,” he said. “I think it’s really important to put yourself first and what you feel is important to you and what makes you happy, and hopefully tennis is in there for her. I think it is. I know she understands her place in history. But the stuff outside the court has now gotten to her more than just wins and losses, and it’s unfortunate, but it’s important for her to make sure she feels comfortable again and happy again.” More

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      Tennis Programs at Historically Black Colleges Receive a Boost

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      The U.S.T.A. has initiated a grant program with the ultimate goal of enhancing opportunities for players of color, especially women, to become coaches and grow the game.Rochelle Houston had an advantage. Her father, Joe Goldthreate, is a legendary tennis coach in Nashville, who taught her not only how to play the game, but how to coach it, too.Houston is now the head of tennis at Florida A&M, which until recently meant she coached both teams. But the men’s team was cut in 2020 due to a lack of funding, and the women’s team makes do. It certainly does not enjoy the lavish facilities and recruiting budgets of many large Division I programs.That is typical of many, if not all, of the 38 historically Black colleges and universities that have tennis programs. To help address that, the United States Tennis Association has initiated a grant program to contribute funding to those college programs, with the ultimate goal of enhancing opportunities for players of color, especially women, to become coaches and grow the game.“There is a desperate need,” Houston said Wednesday from her office in Tallahassee, Fla. “We don’t have a lot of funding. We barely get by. This program will help significantly.”The grant is named after David Dinkins, the former mayor of New York who was a board member of the U.S.T.A. and longtime tennis player, fan and active supporter. Had it not been for Dinkins’ advocacy and intervention, the U.S. Open might not even be in New York anymore, and might not have its showpiece venue, Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest in tennis.The U.S.T.A. David N. Dinkins H.B.C.U. Coaching Grant will initially offer grants of up to $2,500 for each school, but that figure could increase if funding does. The money can be used for a wide range of areas where many H.B.C.U. tennis programs are underfunded, including for recruiting and basic equipment.“Our recruiting budget is very limited,” Houston said, “But maybe this can help us get new rackets for the girls, or strings and uniforms, things like that. Sometimes we can’t afford it.”The U.S.T.A. will announce the grant on Thursday as part of a day to celebrate Dinkins, who died in November 2020 at age 93. Dinkins met his wife, Joyce, who passed away in October 2020 at age 89, when both attended Howard University, one of the premier H.B.C.U.s. The U.S. Open will feature “H.B.C.U. Live” events throughout the day on Thursday, including a performance by the Howard band inside Ashe Stadium before the night matches.Dinkins, a former mayor of New York, watching a match at the U.S. Open in 2014.Andrew Gombert/EPA, via Shutterstock“This is really heartwarming for our whole family,” said David Dinkins, Jr., a senior vice president for sports programming at the Showtime network. “This has been a really tough year since mom and dad died, but the love and support that we have received, including things like this, are incredibly thoughtful and have made it a little easier to bear.”Dinkins added that his father’s support for tennis extended beyond the U.S. Open to grass-roots tennis, and that the grant program would have been especially meaningful to him.“He would have really loved this,” Dinkins, Jr. said.The concept was the idea of Marisa Grimes, the U.S.T.A.’s chief of diversity and inclusion. Although she did not attend an H.B.C.U. (she went to the University of Maryland), she came into the new job in January looking for a way to help support H.B.C.U. tennis programs and increase the ranks of coaches of color, particularly women.“This is a way for us to bring more people of color and women into the coaching profession,” Grimes said. “It’s an opportunity to tap into players who have a level of experience, but maybe have not seen a pathway to coaching. A lot of H.B.C.U. programs are underfunded.”Grimes said college players can get financial help through the coaching certification process that will help them not only after they graduate, but could also provide them with income while coaching at camps and clinics in the summers. Once an H.B.C.U. program reaches a certain threshold of players going through those coaching certification workshops, the school will be eligible for a Dinkins grant.The hope is that with more coaches of color and more women coaches spread throughout the tennis community, it will encourage more participation. Only four of the top 100 players on the women’s tour had a female coach in 2019, according to the Women’s Tennis Coaching Association.“For young people to see coaches that look like them and reflect their background is a big deal,” Grimes said. “We want to make sure there are role models for those young players, who can say, ‘Oh, maybe this sport is for me, too.’”Houston, the Florida A&M coach, said she is an example of that, primarily because her coach was her father Goldthreate, who was inducted into the Black Tennis Hall of Fame last year. Houston played at F.A.M.U. and was the team’s No. 1 women’s singles and doubles player, and in 2002 was named to the all-Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (which includes Howard) team in 2002.She went back to coach in Nashville but returned to Tallahassee to coach at F.A.M.U. in 2015. She said her experience, having learned from her father, made it easier for her, but others don’t have the same role models.“Anything that will help other young players recognize that they can become coaches, will help,” she said, “especially for women. Things have gotten a little better in that regard, but we have a ways to go.” More

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      Stefanos Tsitsipas Is Being Criticized for Mid-Match Bathroom Breaks

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      Andy Murray says his Monday opponent employs stall tactics too often for too long. Reilly Opelka says Tsitsipas is probably just changing his socks.It wasn’t his opponent’s dazzling foot speed or the velocity of his serve that Andy Murray was still dwelling on a day after his match. The statistic that stuck with Murray, the 2012 U.S. Open champion, was how long his opponent, Stefanos Tsitsipas, took during his off-court breaks.“Fact of the day. It takes Stefanos Tsitipas twice as long to go the bathroom as it takes Jeff Bazos to fly into space. Interesting,” Murray posted to Twitter on Tuesday morning, misspelling both the name of his opponent and the Amazon billionaire, but adding emojis of a toilet and a rocket ship for clarity.On Monday, the third-seeded Tsitsipas had defeated Murray 2-6, 7-6(7), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a match that turned early in the fifth set following an off-court break by Tsitsipas. Though two off-court breaks are allowed by the rules during best-of-five-sets matches, Murray was incensed when he saw Tsitsipas leaving the court after the fourth set, which Tsitsipas had won.“Why are they allowed to do this?” Murray asked chair umpire Nico Helwerth with exasperation. “Why?”Murray, 34, sat on his bench in Arthur Ashe Stadium, changed his shirt, draped an ice towel over his neck and hydrated, repeatedly glancing toward the court entrance. After a few minutes of sitting and bouncing his legs, Murray rose and wandered behind the baseline, bouncing a ball and hitting it gently against the video wall behind the court.“What’s your opinion on this?” Murray asked Helwerth. “You’re umpiring the match. Give me an opinion: you think it’s good?” Murray then asked Grand Slam supervisor Gerry Armstrong, “You think this is OK, what’s happening?”When Tsitsipas finally returned more than seven minutes after the last point had been played, he went to his bench, then walked to a cooler to get a bottle of water. He then sat down on his bench, and Murray shouted “Get up! What’s going on, get up!”When the fans began to boo, Murray pumped his arms to encourage them.Murray, still steamed, dropped his serve in the following game, and Tsitsipas held onto that break advantage the rest of the set. Murray said he had been prepared for Tsitsipas to take long breaks if the match wasn’t going his way, for which he believed Tsitsipas had a reputation.“It’s just disappointing because I feel it influenced the outcome of the match,” Murray said. “I’m not saying I necessarily win that match, for sure, but it had influence on what was happening after those breaks. I rate him a lot. I think he’s a brilliant player. I think he’s great for the game. But I have zero time for that stuff at all, and I lost respect for him.”Told of Murray’s comments, Tsitsipas, 23, said he hoped to speak to him directly.“If there’s something that he has to tell me, we should speak, the two of us, to understand what went wrong,” Tsitsipas said. “I don’t think I broke any rules. I played by the guidelines, how everything is.“I don’t know how my opponent feels when I’m out there playing the match; it’s not really my priority,” Tsitsipas added. “As far as I’m playing by the rules and sticking to what the ATP says is fair, then the rest is fine.”Tsitsipas said his time off the court had simply been “the amount of time it takes for me to change my clothes and to walk back to the court.”Acknowledging that players are often accused of abusing bathroom break or medical timeout rules to change the momentum of the match, Murray said he and other members of the player council had discussed rule changes that might make gamesmanship more difficult.“If everyone else feels like that’s totally cool and there’s no issue with it, then maybe I’m the one being unreasonable,” Murray said. “But I think it’s nonsense. And he knows it, as well.”Murray waits for Tsitsipas to return to their match.Elsa/Getty ImagesIn a statement, the United States Tennis Association said it “regards pace of play as an important issue in our sport,” citing its past implementation of visible serve clocks and warm-up clocks in recent years. “We need to continue to review and explore potential adjustments to the rules, whether for bathroom breaks/change of attire or other areas, that can positively impact the pace of play for our fans and ensure the fairness and integrity of the game,” the statement said.Though tennis players are generally loath to weigh in on each other’s controversies, several couldn’t resist.“Andy is right!” Milos Raonic, a Canadian who is missing the U.S. Open with a right leg injury, posted to Twitter on Monday night.Asked after his first-round win on Tuesday if he felt Novak Djokovic was the favorite to win the U.S. Open, Alexander Zverev managed to fit in a dig at Tsitsipas in his answer.“I think Stefanos can play well if he doesn’t go to the moon and back for a toilet break, that will also help,” Zverev said with a grin.Zverev had previously leveled accusations of his own at Tsitsipas during their semifinal match at the Western & Southern Open in August, accusing him of using a mobile phone off court to illegally communicate about tactics with his coach and father, Apostolos.Zverev reiterated his suspicions on Tuesday. “He’s gone for 10-plus minutes; his dad is texting on the phone,” Zverev said. “He comes out, and all of a sudden his tactic completely changed. It’s not just me but everybody saw it. The whole game plan changes. I’m like, either it’s a very magical place he goes to, or there is communication there.“But I also don’t want to disrespect him,” Zverev added. “He is a great player.”Tsitsipas denied cheating on Monday.“I have never in my career done that; I don’t know what kind of imagination it takes to go to that point,” Tsitsipas said. “That’s not something I want to take seriously because it’s absolutely ridiculous to be thinking about that.”Tsitsipas received support from the American player Reilly Opelka, who also took a lengthy break during his first-round win.“We’re hydrating a lot; we have to use the bathroom,” Opelka said. “To change — my socks, shoes, my inserts in my shoes, shorts, shirt, everything, the whole nine yards, hat — it takes five, six minutes.“If people don’t understand that, then clearly they’ve never spent a day in the life of a professional athlete or come close to it,” Opelka said.Murray, who has spent most of his days in the life of a professional athlete, ended his news conference by saying that it was a shame that a five-hour match between two top players was eclipsed by stall tactics.“I’m sitting in here after a match like that against one of the best players in the world, and rather than talking about how fantastic he is, how good he is for the game, how great it was for me that I was able to put on a performance like that after everything that’s gone on the last four years, I’m sitting in here talking about bathroom breaks and medical timeouts and delays in matches,” Murray said. “That’s rubbish. I don’t think that that’s right.”Murray complains to an official between sets.Seth Wenig/Associated Press More

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      U.S. Open Tightens Protocols, Fans Must Provide Proof of Covid Vaccination

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      Under pressure from the New York City mayor’s office, the U.S.T.A. reversed its rules for fans attending the tournament, which will have full capacity.Under pressure from Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city leaders, the United States Tennis Association reversed its lax coronavirus protocols for the upcoming U.S. Open tournament, which opens to thousands of fans on Monday.Originally, the tournament did not require any proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test for fans to enter, and there were no mask mandates, either. But the mayor’s office stepped in over the past two days and demanded stricter protocols.On Friday evening, the tournament announced on its Twitter account that proof of at least one vaccine shot would now be required for entrance to the grounds for all fans age 12 and older. No masks are required.The mayor’s office was adamant that fans entering Arthur Ashe Stadium, the largest venue on the grounds of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, be vaccinated. But the U.S.T.A. took it a step further and made it a requirement for all fans entering the grounds of the tournament.“Today, the U.S.T.A. was informed that the New York City mayor’s office will be mandating proof of Covid-19 vaccination for entrance to Arthur Ashe Stadium,” the statement said. “Given the continuing evolution of the Delta variant and in keeping with our intention to put the health and safety of our fans first, the U.S.T.A. will extend the mayor’s requirement to all U.S. Open ticket holders 12 years old and older.”De Blasio was not the only city official concerned about the potential for a large coronavirus outbreak. After the tournament announced on Wednesday that no vaccines or masks would be required, Mark Levine, a City Council member from Manhattan and chair of the health committee, said he was “alarmed” that the U.S. Open could become a super spreader event, especially with so many visitors from around the world and the country visiting the tournament in Queens, and also going into Manhattan during their visits.Reached after the tournament reversed course on Friday, Levine was pleased by the reversal.“I feel enormous relief,” he said, “and it’s just in the nick of time with crowds due to arrive on Monday.”Levine pointed out that because ticket holders were only required to get one shot, they had time before the tournament started, if they were motivated to get it.“No fan is excluded unless they want to be,” he said. “This is not a draconian measure.”Tournament organizers said they would add “extra measures” to expedite the process of checking vaccination records at entry points to the grounds.The U.S.T.A. said it had developed its original protocols for fans within guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the city’s Department of Health and the mayor’s office. But since then, it said, the mayor has introduced the Key to NYC Pass, requiring patrons and employees of indoor dining, entertainment and recreation to prove that they have received at least one dose of the vaccine.The mayor was particularly concerned about fans filling up Arthur Ashe Stadium with the roof closed. The U.S.T.A. claims that the ventilation inside the stadium is sufficient for it to be considered an outdoor venue — like one of New York’s two baseball stadiums — even when the roof is closed.The mayor insisted that the U.S.T.A either mandate proof of one dose of a Covid vaccine, or keep the roof open at all times, which could have caused scheduling headaches in the event of rain.Players are not required to be vaccinated, but they are tested upon arrival at the tournament and every four days after that. If they test positive, they must withdraw from the tournament.Ticket holders who do not wish to provide proof of vaccination may seek a refund.“I feel like that should be always a personal decision, whether you want to get vaccinated or not,” said Novak Djokovic, who enters the tournament looking to become the first player, man or woman, to win a Grand Slam since Steffi Graf in 1988. “So, I’m supportive of that. Whether someone wants to get a vaccine or not, that’s completely up to them. I hope that it stays that way.” More

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      Will Newbies Keep Playing Tennis and Golf Now That Other Sports Are Back?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Pandemic Drove People to Tennis and Golf. Will They Keep Playing?Recreational athletes flocked to accessible and safely distanced sports. Leaders in golf and tennis — both of which have had massive public investment — want to sustain their pandemic booms.A group of women played a doubles match in January at Querbes Tennis Center in Shreveport, La. Chris Dudley, who operates the facility with his wife, Amy, said the growth there has been “quick and organic” since reopening full-time. Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesMatthew Futterman and March 11, 2021Updated 8:55 p.m. ETIn 2020, the coronavirus pandemic all but shuttered recreational sports and leisure activities. Fitness centers and yoga studios closed as did movie theaters, museums and concert halls. Games as routine as checkers at a local park or pickup basketball in almost any setting were prohibited. Even playing in ultimate Frisbee leagues became fraught with risk.And yet, golf and tennis, which have struggled to recruit new participants in recent years, flourished as idle athletes sought to play outside, at a safe distance, with some tweaks to accommodate new health guidelines. While more than half of tennis and golf facilities in the United States were padlocked in March and April because of the coronavirus, from June to December in 2020 golf rounds nationwide surged by 75 million as compared to the same period in 2019, a gain of 27 percent.Data from the Physical Activity Council’s recent participation report, which monitors activity in more than 100 sports and activities, showed tennis participation rose 22 percent in 2020, with 21.6 million Americans saying they played the sport at least once. That included nearly 3 million new players and 3.8 million Americans who returned to the sport after a significant hiatus, a 40 percent increase from the previous year.Tennis courts and golf courses have been packed with the people the leaders of those sports have tried to reach for years — beginners and novices whose numbers had been thinning at alarming rates. The newcomers flocked to those sports in large part because of their accessibility. For decades, local school systems and municipal parks departments have built thousands of tennis courts across the country that are free to use and easily located. While golf is often perceived as expensive and exclusive, in fact, 75 percent of American golf courses are open to the public with the average cost of a nine-hole round about $22.The vast public investment in golf and tennis, using taxpayer money and public land, puts an onus on maintaining the pandemic boomlet. As much of the country makes plans to reopen, minders of golf and tennis are focusing on an essential question: how to retain newly hooked participants when other recreational options are available again?Safety measures adopted to stop the coronavirus spread — like prohibiting players from touching or removing the flagstick on each green — sped up the game.Credit…Michael Hanson for The New York TimesNew athletes bring new culture.The growth in participation in golf and tennis is largely being driven by more financially secure people who, in some cases, have the luxury of working from home and the extra time that provides, as well as access to golf courses and tennis courts. But many were younger. There were 3.1 million junior golfers last year, the most ever, with an average age of 12. While new and novice players account for a significant portion of the growth, “new” does not necessarily mean “young.”More than 30 percent of beginning golfers last year were over the age of 40, according to the National Golf Foundation. The players run the gamut, from entire families playing together, women of all ages and lapsed players whose old equipment gives them away. Their arrival during the pandemic compelled golf courses to adopt a faster, more casual and technologically savvy way of operating that many at the top of golf’s hierarchy see optimistically as part of an ongoing cultural shift.“There’s now a different mood about golf,” Jerramy Hainline, the senior vice president and general manager of Golf Now, an online tee-time service with nearly four million registered golfers that also provides technology to more than 9,000 golf courses, said. “The spirit is changing out there.”The pandemic spurred a spirit of experimentation that may become permanent. To keep players adequately separated, for example, golf courses put players in single-rider carts, which quickened the pace of play. Another safety measure — prohibiting players from touching or removing the flagstick on each green — led golfers to putt out in order, speeding up tedious logjams on greens.Many courses also adopted contactless check-ins at arrival, so that players could bypass the clubhouse. Hainline said his company developed a cellphone application, Smart Play, that identified golfers as they arrived in a course’s parking lot and then led them through the steps of checking in, paying for their round and locating their carts — all without entering the pro shop.Operators of tennis facilities also felt a change of their sport’s culture was imperative. The average age of a tennis player is about 32, but local tennis professionals said new and returning players of all ages have come out to play since March 2020.Mike Woody, national tennis director for Genesis Health Clubs, which owns more than a dozen tennis facilities in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri, said the key to developing and retaining new players was convincing them that the sport was accessible to people of any age, not just those who took up the game as a youngster.“We have to get rid of this image of what it means to be a tennis player,” Woody said. As far as he’s concerned, if you’ve got a racket and a ball and a space to hit it into — and you enjoy it — then you are a tennis player.“We have to be facilitators of finding people opportunities to play, not compete, but to play,” Woody said.Tennis participation rose 22 percent in 2020, including nearly 3 million new players and 3.8 million Americans who returned to the sport after a significant hiatus.Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesTennis relies on the pied piper effect.As new and novice players have arrived at Querbes Tennis Center in Shreveport, La., its operator, Chris Dudley, said he is doing all he can to make the game a more personal experience. “I’m good with names,” he said. “I know the names of just about everyone who plays here.”Dudley, who runs the facility with his wife, Amy, said the growth has been “quick and organic” since the facility reopened full-time on June 1. Roughly 2,000 people played on the facility’s 11 courts from July to September, including as many as 275 new players. Night play, under the lights, was especially popular during the summer heat.He is one of the more than 11,000 professional coaches the United States Tennis Association hopes can help maintain the uptick in participation by championing the sport locally and ensuring that the people who show up to play have a quality experience. Craig Morris, the chief executive for community tennis at the U.S.T.A., the national governing body for the sport, said there is no silver bullet to retention, but the organization is setting aside several million for grants to public tennis facilities to help equip them with knowledgeable tennis directors.“This is really local level stuff,” Morris said during a recent interview. “You create a good pied piper to deliver great programming for instruction and then connect people to play socially or enter a league.”Dudley is not a high performance coach aiming to produce a Wimbledon champion. Instead, the Dudleys are doing all they can to meet players where they are. Chris Dudley said he has found that, generally speaking, most of the women the club serves want a social experience, to play with people they know at their level, whereas the men yearn for competitions against other local clubs.The Dudleys have held monthly mixers, with food trucks, a bartender, and tables spread out to maintain social distance.Craig Morris, the chief executive for community tennis at the U.S.T.A., said the organization is setting aside several million for grants to public tennis facilities to help equip them with knowledgeable tennis directors.Credit…Dylan Hollingsworth for The New York TimesOffering “more flavors” can sustain growth.Leaders in both sports see lessons learned from the surge in participation during the pandemic that can widen the pool of potential devotees.Morris said the U.S.T.A. also remains in close contact with the leaders of U.S.A. Pickle Ball, the national governing body for the fast growing racket sport, figuring that active people who like one racket sport may want to play another. “It’s not us vs. them,” he said.Tim Schantz, the president and chief executive of Troon, a golf management company that serves more than 600 golf courses worldwide, said his course operators have come to understand that they must offer “more flavors of golf,” and let the consumer choose. Schantz mentioned the recent proliferation of par-3 courses or six-hole and nine-hole facilities as well as golf clubs with massive putting complexes for the kind of informal play that can be done with a cool drink in one hand.“It’s another way to get golf into people’s routine and that’s how you really increase retention,” Joe Beditz, the National Golf Foundation president and C.E.O., said.Hainline believes there is an ongoing transformation taking place in golf.“I talk to chief executives of large golf management companies regularly,” Hainline said, “and there is an excitement in their voices that I don’t normally hear at this time of year.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      An American Made Week 2 at the Australian Open. He Avoided Djokovic and Nadal.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn American Made Week 2 at the Australian Open. He Avoided Djokovic and Nadal.The next generation of American men are still searching for a big win on a Grand Slam stage against the best players.Mackenzie McDonald was the only American man to make it to the fourth round of the Australian Open.Credit…Andy Brownbill/Associated PressFeb. 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — American men had an awfully good start at the Australian Open. They won seven of 10 matches, placing the most male players from the United States in the second round of the tournament since 2017.Then things got real in a hurry.Only Mackenzie McDonald, 25, a former N.C.A.A. champion out of U.C.L.A. who is battling his way back from hamstring tendon surgery, and Taylor Fritz, a big-serving Californian who is 23 and still evolving, survived to Round 3. By late Saturday afternoon, only McDonald remained.The names of the two men responsible for a lot of the American carnage are familiar: Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. In the span of roughly 55 hours from Wednesday afternoon through Friday night, Djokovic and Nadal dispatched Francis Tiafoe, Michael Mmoh and Fritz.Those wins continued what has become more than a decade of mostly frustrating efforts for American men going up against the game’s so-called Big Three — Djokovic, Nadal and Roger Federer — especially in the Grand Slam tournaments.According to Greg Sharko of the ATP, the master of match records for men’s tennis, the last American to beat Djokovic at a Grand Slam event was Sam Querrey, who bested him in the third round of Wimbledon in 2016. Since then, Djokovic has won 16 straight matches against American men at all tournaments.Nadal’s win over Mmoh was his 10th straight over an American. The last American to beat Nadal was John Isner, the 6-foot-10 serving machine, at the 2017 Laver Cup. Earlier that year, Querrey beat Nadal at a tournament in Acapulco, Mexico. At the time, Nadal had won 16 consecutive matches over Americans, dating to the summer of 2011.Federer has not lost to an American in a Grand Slam tournament in the past 15 years. Andre Agassi beat Federer at the 2001 United States Open, when Federer was 20.There is, of course, little shame in struggling against Djokovic, Nadal and Federer, who skipped the Australian Open to recover from knee surgery. They are the best of the game’s modern era, the winners of 57 Grand Slam singles championships. For years, they mostly lost to one another in the biggest events.But the failure of an American man to register the kind of signature win that can imbue a fledgling career with invaluable confidence is emblematic of the larger struggle. A country that once dominated the sport has struggled for years to find a successor to Andy Roddick, the last American man to win a Grand Slam tournament, at the 2003 U.S. Open, even as American women continue to thrive.Isner, 35, is the lone American in the top 30. In the 1990s, just as tennis was becoming a truly global sport, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jim Courier were mainstays of the top 10. Canada, which is about one-tenth of the size of the United States, has three men in the top 20. Also, the Australian Open takes place on a hardcourt, the surface that most Americans grow up playing on.“I think I’m more than capable, but it’s a matter of not what I do against Novak but what do you do every day,” Tiafoe, 23, said after he had lost his hard-fought four-set, three-and-a-half-hour battle with Djokovic. “Those matches, losing matches, I don’t think I should.”Fritz came a step closer to beating Djokovic on Friday night, pushing him to five sets as Djokovic struggled through an injury he described as a torn muscle on the right side of his midsection. Fritz appeared to have Djokovic beaten early in the fifth set but fell short as Djokovic began pounding serves and ripping forehands into the corners, as he had early on in the match.An hour after it ended, Fritz remained distraught over too many missed first serves and errors off his forehand. He had taken Djokovic to a tiebreaker in the first set and had then lost seven of the next eight points.“It’s very motivating that we’re so close, but at the same time, we are so far,” Fritz said. “These guys are so good.”And so it was that McDonald, perhaps the most unlikely of all of his countrymen, became the last hope to put an American into the second week of the year’s first Grand Slam. McDonald showed promise three years ago when, not long after leaving U.C.L.A., he made it to the fourth round of Wimbledon, where he lost to Milos Raonic of Canada.Less than a year later, he sustained a torn hamstring tendon while playing doubles at the French Open and underwent surgery. After the operation, he couldn’t leave his apartment for three weeks, and he couldn’t walk for the better part of two months. Slowly, week by week, he began to allow his leg to bear more weight.During the last two years, he has clawed his way back, training at the United States Tennis Association complex in Orlando, Fla., and playing a mix of lower-, middle- and top-tier tournaments. He was No. 192 in the world rankings entering the Australian Open, where he has played nearly flawless tennis and has also been blessed by a friendly draw.His highest-seeded opponent, Borna Coric of Croatia, was the No. 22 seed. After beating Coric in four sets in the second round, McDonald faced Lloyd Harris, 23, of South Africa, who was playing in the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time and is ranked No. 91. It was close early, as McDonald won the first set in a tiebreaker, but not after that. McDonald cranked 12 aces and punished Harris with deep, hard backhands all afternoon.In the fourth round, he gets Daniil Medvedev, the crafty and powerful Russian who is searching for his first Grand Slam title. With Djokovic ailing and Nadal battling a balky but improving lower back, many experts consider Medvedev a favorite to win this tournament.After his win over Harris, McDonald insisted that American players had the raw material to challenge the greats, and everyone else who reaches the later rounds of a Grand Slam event.“The talent is there,” McDonald said. “We just have to stay focused and keep working hard.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More