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    Endgame Nears in Bidding for Chelsea F.C.

    English soccer’s biggest soap opera — the bidding war to own Chelsea F.C. — appears to be entering its endgame.The Raine Group, the New York merchant bank appointed to sell the Premier League soccer club on behalf of Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch whose assets have been frozen by the British government, is poised to name its preferred bidder as soon as this week. It will choose one of three groups backed by American investors, each of which has put forth a multibillion-dollar offer.In picking a winner, the Chelsea board, Abramovich and Raine will inch closer to bringing an end to one of the strangest, and richest, takeovers in modern sports history: a beauty pageant that brought together European soccer and American money; Chelsea legends and foreign poseurs; all part of a galaxy of individuals and groups with designs on a team that Abramovich’s billions have turned into a sporting powerhouse during his nearly two-decade reign.The sale, whenever a deal is finally closed, should yield the highest amount ever paid for a sports team, with estimates suggesting a price tag of about $3 billion. Abramovich is currently not allowed to receive any of the proceeds.One of the early front-runners in the race, a group led by Todd Boehly, a billionaire investor and a part owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, remains well placed to prevail. But Boehly and his partners are being challenged by a sprawling consortium bankrolled by Josh Harris and David Blitzer, members of the ownership group that controls the Philadelphia 76ers of the N.B.A., who this week added the Formula 1 driver Lewis Hamilton and the tennis star Serena Williams to their ranks.The third finalist is led by Steve Pagliuca, co-owner of the N.B.A.’s Boston Celtics, and includes Larry Tenenbaum, the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the N.B.A.’s Toronto Raptors, hockey’s Toronto Maple Leafs and Major League Soccer’s Toronto F.C.Representatives of all three consortiums, as well as a group of bankers from Raine led by one of the firm’s founders, Joe Ravitch, were summoned to London this week, where each group was to make a final pitch.The surviving bidders navigated a path now littered with failed suitors, some to be taken seriously and others definitely not. A bid by the Ricketts family that owns Chicago Cubs, for example, had deep pockets but was torpedoed after anti-Muslim emails sent by the family patriarch Joe Ricketts — first reported in 2019 — resurfaced.The M.M.A. champion Conor McGregor offered £1.5 billion (about $1.8 billion) for Chelsea on Twitter, then later deleted the post and, presumably, the offer. A mysterious Turkish businessman who claimed to have spoken with Abramovich’s lawyers about a price, and who boasted that “we will fly the Turkish flag in London soon,” later missed the deadline for bids. He claimed his lawyers had sent his offer to the wrong email address.Chelsea’s manager, Thomas Tuchel, has lamented the slow pace of Chelsea’s sale but acknowledged there is little he and his team can do about it. Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor Chelsea’s players, staff and fans, a decision cannot come soon enough. The club has been working under highly unusual financial constraints since the sanctions against Abramovich, an ally of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, were announced. A special government license that allows the team to operate has left the club holding as many as 10,000 unsold tickets for its home games, and has forced the team to limit its travel budgets and close the team store.The uncertainty over the future has affected the team on the field, too. Chelsea expects to lose two key defenders, Antonio Rüdiger and Andreas Christensen, when their contracts expire at the end of the season. Any talks with potential replacements cannot take place until a new owner replaces Abramovich.“It would be ideal” to have the situation resolved as soon as possible, Chelsea Manager Thomas Tuchel admitted Sunday after a victory over West Ham. “But you cannot pull grass so it grows faster.”The unique nature of the sale, though, means that whichever group is granted preferred bidder status will have only cleared the first hurdle. The British government must bless the sale in order for it to go through, and it will insist on strict rules to ensure that none of the proceeds go to Abramovich. He has said that any money he is due would be donated to new charitable foundation “for all victims of the war in Ukraine,” but plans for the charity remain vague.The prospective new owners then would have to be vetted and approved by the Premier League. That could raise a thorny complication for Harris and Blitzer: They currently own Chelsea’s London rival, Crystal Palace, and would therefore have to divest their stakes before taking control of another Premier League team.Pagliuca, meanwhile, has an investment in Italy’s Atalanta, a team that has appeared alongside Chelsea in the Champions League in recent years.David Klein/ReutersEmpty seats and a shuttered team store are some of the most obvious consequences of the sanctions imposed on Chelsea’s owner.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockChelsea fans protested a bid by the Ricketts family after racist comments by the family’s patriarch resurfaced. The group later pulled its offer.Neil Hall/EPA, via ShutterstockAs deadlines for final offers were extended once, and then again, the process became subject to numerous leaks in the news media, leading some bidders to privately express frustration and make claims of unequal treatment. Raine has not commented on the process beyond an interview with the Financial Times in which Ravitch made a startling, and unsupported, claim about Chelsea’s value.“My guess is that Chelsea and all of the top Premier League clubs will probably be worth in excess of $10 billion in five years,” he said, in what was seen as a bid to drive the sales price even higher. “So I think whoever buys Chelsea today at the prices we’re talking about is getting it for a steal.”Chelsea’s record of success under Abramovich — five Premier League titles and two Champions League crowns — has not come cheaply; his outlay in pursuit of those honors has cost him nearly $2 billion from his personal fortune.It is unclear how the new owners will be able to maintain that record of success without deepening those losses, which during Abramovich’s stewardship amounted to more than $1 million a week. Under the terms of the sale, any new owner will also have to commit to redeveloping the team’s stadium, Stamford Bridge. Abramovich once pledged to finance that project, to the tune of $1.3 billion, before shelving the plan in 2018 amid a visa dispute that has kept him out of Britain for years.The team will also need to rebuild its relationships with some of its key partners. Three, a telecoms company, suspended its sponsorship with Chelsea once the ban against Abramovich was announced, and, fearing that it might be drawn into the sanctions dispute, asked that its logo be removed from the team’s jerseys. Several weeks later — to the growing frustration of Three executives — the logo remains, with the club unwilling to use stickers to cover it up or order new shirts without it.Fans have been central in the efforts of would-be buyers of the club, with several rounds of discussions now having taken place between investor groups and influential supporter organizations, and each bidding group has added local representatives in an effort to stress their Chelsea bona fides. Boehly is working with Danny Finkelstein, a former adviser to the ruling Conservative Party. The Harris-Blitzer consortium was assembled by the former British Airways chairman Martin Broughton, and includes the former Olympics official Sebastian Coe. Pagliuca has won the support of the former Chelsea captain John Terry.But the sensitivity of the process has also highlighted how even a single misstep can prove costly.The former player Paul Canoville, Chelsea’s first Black player, revealed this week in a statement of his own that he had met with multiple groups during the bidding process but had found one after another wanting. He described the ownership efforts of Hamilton and Williams, who have claimed to support other teams, as “disrespectful” to Chelsea; credited the since-withdrawn Ricketts bid for its plans to support the Chelsea foundation; and admitted that a plan by one group to offer fans some sort of cryptocurrency technology “went over my head.”Canoville has now publicly backed the Boehly-led bid. More

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

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

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

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

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    Jane Campion and the Perils of the Backhanded Compliment

    Jane Campion’s comment about Venus and Serena Williams reminded our critic of his own night of ‘botched fanciness’ and racial slights.Something about the way the director Jane Campion went overboard on Sunday to identify with, then insult, Venus and Serena Williams at an awards show brought to mind a night of botched fanciness that happened to me. A couple Fridays ago, I went to see some art: a Faith Ringgold retrospective at the New Museum in the afternoon, with friends; Norm Lewis singing at Carnegie Hall in the evening. (That was a solo trip.) For both, I wore a suit.The Ringgold show requires three floors and includes her 1967 masterpiece “American People Series #20: Die,” a blunt, bloody racial-rampage frieze that would be pure physical comedy about the era’s racial cataclysms were it not for the helpless terror in the faces she’s painted (Black men, women and children; white men, women and children). The scale of the canvas helps. It’s huge. Ringgold has always painted Black women in a range of moods, feelings, conditions, beauty. She gives them faces that feature both personal serenity and indicting alarm.I planted myself in a tight corridor that featured three works at the alarm end of things — the “Slave Rape” trio, from 1972. Each is a warm, sizable canvas of a woman nude and agape, framed by patchwork quilting, a signature of Ringgold. I was taking my time with one called “Slave Rape #2: Run You Might Get Away” — the woman is mid-flight, loosely shrouded by leaves, a big gold ring in each ear — when two strangers (women, white) parked themselves between me and the piece and continued a conversation I had heard them having in an adjacent gallery. They noticed neither me nor the depicted distress nor my engagement with it. I waited more than a minute before waving my hand, a gesture that seemed to irritate them.“Is something wrong?,” one stranger asked.“You’re in my way,” I told her.“Please accept our deepest apologies,” said her friend. If a middle ground exists between sincerity and sarcasm, these two had just planted a flag. But they did move, though not immediately, lest I relish some kind of relocation victory, and kept their talk of real estate and art ownership within earshot.The Faith Ringgold painting “American People Series #20: Die,” from 1967, in an  exhibition at the New Museum.Faith Ringgold/ARS, NY; Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesAfter a drink with my friends I left for Carnegie Hall. A cab made sense. One pulled up, and the driver (male, brown) took a look at me, then noticed a white woman hailing a taxi up ahead and drifted her way, instead. When I jogged over to ask him what just happened — Is something wrong? — I was given no acknowledgment in the way only a guilty cabby can achieve. I chased the car half a block to photograph a plate number that you’d have to be Weegee to get just right. I’m not Weegee.I’d never been to Carnegie Hall. And I liked the idea that Norm Lewis was going to break me in. He played Olivia Pope’s senator ex on “Scandal” and one of the vets in Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods.” He’s got a luscious, flexible baritone that I’d only ever encountered in recorded concerts on PBS. That night, backed by the New York Pops, he gave Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Marvin Gaye the polished jewel treatment and pumped “Ya Got Trouble” with enough breathless gusto to make you wonder, with all due respect to Hugh Jackman, why the current “Music Man” revival isn’t starring him.As a solo performer, this was Lewis’s first show at Carnegie Hall, too. And people were anxious to see him and their beloved Pops. In a queue in the lobby before the show, one such person (woman, white) was making a point to push past me when I turned to ask if she was all right.“We’re going to will-call,” she said of herself and the gentleman she was with.“Ma’am, I think we all are,” I said.“We’re members. Are you?” she asked.I lied, hoping a yes would stanch her aggression.“Of the Pops?”She had me.“I like Norm Lewis,” I told her.“We love the Pops.”Venus Williams, left, and Serena Williams at the Critics Choice Awards; “King Richard,” a movie about their family, earned a best actor award for Will Smith.Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesI was thinking about my night out a week later when one of the world’s great filmmakers saluted two of the world’s greatest athletes in an acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards. Jane Campion had been given the directing prize for a sneaky-deep ranch drama called “The Power of the Dog.” From the stage, Campion (woman, white) saluted Venus and Serena Williams and announced that she had taken up tennis but her body had told her to stop. In her nervous excitement, Campion was charming. She then took curious note of her plight as a woman in the film industry by informing the Williamses that they’ve got nothing on her. “You are such marvels,” she said, through a grin. “However, you do not play against the guys like I have to.”The Williams sisters were in the room that evening because a smart, tangy movie about their family, “King Richard,” was in the nominations mix, alongside Campion’s. “King Richard” is not about the time in 2001 when a California crowd booed and slurred Venus and Serena and their father, Richard, at a top tennis tournament. It’s not about the many mischaracterizations of their bodies, skills and intent in the press and by their peers. It’s not about the insidiously everlasting confusion of one sister for the other, the sort of thing that, just a few weeks ago, took place on a page of this newspaper. It’s not even about their fight, Venus’s particularly, to get women’s prize money even with men’s “King Richard” is about how the sisters’ parents molded and loved and coached them into the sort of people who can handle sharp backhands and backhanded compliments with the same power and poise.Even though Campion’s errant backhand had flown wide, the room lurched into cheers. Some of the applause came from Serena Williams, who has watched many a shot sail long. I had to desist further thought about the meaning of Campion’s aside. It was too confused. Was this a wish for the establishment of gendered guardrails for directors at award shows or the elimination of such distinctions in sports? Are there no men to be contended with in tennis? The line separating argument from accusation and accusation from self-aggrandizement was murky. I thought instead about the costs of the murk.Sunday afternoon, the Williamses got dressed up to celebrate some art. And somebody stood before them and challenged the validity of their membership, here in Campion’s restricted vision of sisterhood. The next day, Campion gushed an apology. These slips and slights and presumptions have a way of lingering, though. Their underlying truth renders them contrition-proof. I had every intention of keeping my date with Faith and Norm to myself. These incidents aren’t rare in fancyland, and therefore don’t warrant a constant spotlight because standing in its glare is exhausting. But Venus. Her face does something as Campion speaks. A knowing cringe. She and her family came out to soak up more of the praise being lavished on art about their life. They were invitees turned, suddenly, into interlopers, presenting one minute, plunged through a trap door the next. Faith Ringgold would recognize the discomfort. She painted it over and over. Run you might get away. But you probably won’t. More

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    Is Tennis Moving Into a New Golden Age? We Can Only Hope.

    It will be hard to let go of aging stars like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams, and troubled ones like Novak Djokovic. But the time is coming, if it is not already here.There was something for everyone. Roger Federer’s linen grace. Rafael Nadal’s punishing power. Novak Djokovic and his single-minded determination. The unwavering way Serena Williams dismantled tired tradition.For two decades, professional tennis bathed in the golden glow provided by an unalterable hierarchy of players with distinctive styles and personalities that combined to define the game in the 21st century.But time, and the coronavirus, changes everything.For the second major championship in a row, as the Australian Open plays out in searing Melbourne heat, Federer and Williams find themselves at home, healing from injuries at age 40. We may never see them play top-flight tennis again.Gone, too, of course, is Djokovic.It’s unclear when the world No. 1 will return to major championship play, and how the scorn of fans will affect a player who has spent his career yearning for adoration. Depending on how the pandemic unfolds, tennis’s most famed vaccine refusenik could end up barred from traveling to the countries hosting the year’s biggest tournaments, imperiling his quest to break well past the 20 Grand Slam logjam he is in with Federer and Nadal.Of the golden quartet, only Nadal made his way to Melbourne. A well-worn 35, he is coming off a foot injury that kept him out of the mix for most of last year.He looked sharp during the Australian’s early stanza, perhaps good enough to summon greatness again and raise the championship trophy for a second time. Even if he does, how much longer can the Nadal we have known be the Nadal we revere?What in tennis can be counted on anymore?Nothing.The days when the game could lean on the showstopping power of its rock star quartet to lure fans and add excitement — the days of penciling them in as locks to make at least the semifinals of every major title — those days are done.Remember when Naomi Osaka was supposed to be the next big thing? Right now, her last major title win, the Australian Open last winter, seems in this time-warped stretch as if it occurred a decade rather than a year ago.She left last year’s French Open midstream, using the occasion to open up about the anxiety and depression sitting heavy on her shoulders. She skipped Wimbledon, needing time away from the grind and glare. She lost early at the U.S. Open and the Tokyo Olympics. Last week, Osaka’s bid to repeat at Melbourne ended at the hands of the world’s 60th-ranked player.Remember Emma Raducanu and Leylah Fernandez, the upstart teenagers who electrified last summer’s U.S. Open by making the women’s finals? Neither has done much since. Fernandez lost in the first round last week. Raducanu got tossed off in the second.Maybe there’s a silver lining in the game’s newfound uncertainty. Free of the shadow cast by the biggest stars, it’s easier to gain enthusiasm for a wider cast.During the initial week at Melbourne Park, that meant marveling at Amanda Anisimova, 20, as she ripped backhand winners past Osaka in an upset win. Or watching Carlos Alcaraz, 18, sprint, slide and stretch to keep a point alive before suddenly hauling off and smacking a full-throttle winner.Uncertainty provided more shine to the young Italian Jannik Sinner, as stunningly gifted an upstart as there is, as he pressed his way through the draw.Ashleigh Barty in action during her fourth-round match against Amanda Anisimova.Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/ReutersIt put more focus on Ashleigh Barty, last year’s Wimbledon champion, possessor of the smoothest game this side of Federer.Will Daniil Medvedev, who crushed Djokovic’s Grand Slam dreams by beating the Serb to win the 2021 U.S. Open, wrest away the world No. 1 ranking? What happens if he becomes one of the game’s consistent standard-bearers?In Melbourne last week, Medvedev flashed his quirky and almost unfathomable game. Several of his strokes look as if they were self-taught and honed at a craggy public park by playing with duffers — the reflex volley with one hand on the racket’s throat, the gawky forehand that sometimes ends with legs splayed and a strangulating follow-through.As Medvedev often has at Flushing Meadows, he showed he can be an engaging champion — witty, open and more than willing to play the villain with a wink.This year, the typically rowdy Australian Open crowd has been using Cristiano Ronaldo’s famed “Siuuu!” celebration shout during matches. That has angered several players, Medvedev included, who thought the chants were boos during his victory over Nick Kyrgios. As we might expect based on his past shenanigans at the U.S. Open, Medvedev raised hackles from the crowd when he scolded them for the chant in an on-court interview.He later explained with his customary willingness to draw ire: “It’s not everybody who is doing it. But those who are doing it probably have a low I.Q.”Imagine Federer saying such a thing about fans. Impossible. But maybe that’s a good and energizing change.It is difficult to let go of a generation.A new era has arrived. All we can do is embrace it, wait patiently, and hope for the best. More

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    Serena Williams Will Miss Australian Open With Injury

    Williams, 40, withdrew from her second straight Grand Slam event, saying, “I am not where I need to be physically to compete.”Serena Williams has announced her withdrawal from next month’s Australian Open, extending her absence from the sport that she long ruled.“I am not where I need to be physically to compete,” Williams said in an announcement on Wednesday as the Australian Open released the list of entered players for the 2022 tournament.Williams, a seven-time Australian Open singles champion, is now 40 and has not played on the WTA Tour since June 28, when she retired late in the first set of her opening round match at Wimbledon because of an injured right hamstring.The injury was slow to heal, and it also kept Williams from competing in this year’s U.S. Open. Williams did not mention the hamstring injury specifically in her statement on Wednesday, saying only that she had decided to withdraw because of “the advice from my medical team.”While Williams confirmed her absence, the Australian Open said that Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 men’s singles player, was entered in the event, which is set to begin Jan. 17 in Melbourne.The state government of Victoria is requiring that all players be fully vaccinated to compete, and Djokovic has declined in recent weeks to reveal his vaccination status or confirm if he will play in the Australian Open, where he has won nine singles titles. But he is on the entry list, only a week after his father decried the vaccination requirement as “these blackmails and conditions” and suggested his son would not play.Williams said she was “excited to return and compete at my highest level,” but it is unclear when or if she will be able to achieve that goal.Williams, ranked 41st, has not won a Grand Slam singles title in nearly five years: She captured the Australian Open in January 2017 when she was two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia. She returned to the tour in 2018 after Olympia’s birth and remarkably reached the singles finals at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 2018 and again in 2019.But though she won her only tour title since her comeback in January 2020 in Auckland, New Zealand, she has struggled to sustain momentum. She has shown flashes of strong form, returning after the tour’s five-month pandemic hiatus in 2020 to reach the semifinals of the U.S. Open, where she lost a taut three-set duel against Victoria Azarenka. At this year’s Australian Open in February, Williams arrived in Melbourne in excellent physical condition and was impressive in the early rounds but was defeated in straight sets by Naomi Osaka in the semifinals.The Australian Open has been the scene of some of Williams’s greatest successes. In 2003, she won her fourth straight Grand Slam singles title in Melbourne. In 2005, she saved three match points in the semifinals in a classic match against Maria Sharapova and went on to beat Lindsay Davenport in the final. In 2007, she came into the tournament unseeded and swept to the title. In 2017, she won while pregnant without dropping a set.But it is now unclear if she will return to the tournament where she has won seven of her 23 Grand Slam singles titles: one short of Margaret Court’s record. More

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    Djokovich, Beware: Tennis History is Rife with Spoiled Slams

    Don’t remember the name? Vinci was one of the greatest spoilers in tennis history, ending Serena Williams’s Grand Slam hopes in 2015.In 2015, Roberta Vinci improbably put an end to Serena Williams’s bid for a Grand Slam at the U.S. Open and called it “the best moment of my life.”Six years later, Vinci has not changed her mind.“People remember me for the Serena match, and I really appreciate that,” Vinci, 38, said in an interview from her home in Milan on Tuesday. “It still gives me a lot of pleasure. They still ask me today how I could have beaten her.”Tennis runs on upsets: the newcomer who shocks the veteran; the outsider who takes down the star. Rarely will a professional tournament go by without at least one surprise, but Vinci’s win was a genuine shock, and it was magnified by the setting and the timing. It came on the largest stage in tennis, Arthur Ashe Stadium, with the top-ranked Williams just two victories away from one of the biggest achievements in sports.Vinci was unseeded at the 2015 U.S. Open at age 32 and had never won so much as a set against Williams in their previous matches. But her 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 semifinal victory is a reminder, as the top-ranked Novak Djokovic takes aim at a Grand Slam in the same stadium this week, that nothing is a given at this level, particularly with the pressure cranked up to new heights.Spoilers lurk, and they have thwarted pursuits of Grand Slams at or near the final hurdle. The Australian players Jack Crawford and Lew Hoad both came within one match of winning all four major singles titles in the same year. Crawford lost to the British star Fred Perry in the final of the U.S. Championships in 1933, before the term Grand Slam had gained wide currency in tennis. Hoad was beaten by Ken Rosewall, another Australian, in the final of the 1956 U.S. Championships. Martina Navratilova, riding a 74-match winning streak in singles, was upset in the semifinals of the 1984 Australian Open by a 19-year-old Helena Sukova when the Australian Open was the final Grand Slam tournament on the calendar instead of the first.“I was more concerned with playing Martina than I was about the Grand Slam,” Sukova said in an interview from her home in Prague on Tuesday. “I was really a newcomer and so I was really concentrating on my own game and improving my game and I was far from thinking about any record or her breaking any record.”Sukova, a big underdog, said her goal was to win five games in a set.“I had never won more than three in any set we had played previously,” Sukova said. “I lost the first set 6-1, but when I got five games in the second set, I looked at my coach and said, ‘I achieved my goal!’”She won that match 1-6, 6-3, 7-5 before losing to Chris Evert in the final. Sukova, a tall player with big power for that era, reached three more Grand Slam singles finals, but lost all three. She and her doubles partner, Jana Novotna, did come to within one match of a Grand Slam in 1990, only to lose in the U.S. Open final to Gigi Fernandez and Navratilova.Consider that payback, but Sukova, now a practicing psychologist, said she wished she could go back and play those matches with her new skills.“I think it would have made a difference if I knew what I know now about the mind, I would have won more,” she said. “But it’s always like that, once you’re older, you’re wiser, but the body is not faster.”Unlike Sukova, Vinci was well aware of the tennis history at stake in 2015, and she believes the looming possibility of a Grand Slam helped her against Williams.“I think it played a big part in that match,” Vinci said. “To win the U.S. Open meant reaching an incredible goal for her, and I think the combination made her play with a lot of pressure.”Djokovic will most likely not face anyone as unexpected as Vinci in the final rounds at the U.S. Open, although he will meet an Italian underdog in the quarterfinals: the huge-hitting Matteo Berrettini.But Berrettini, 25, is the No. 6 seed and an established threat who already has pushed Djokovic hard twice this year in Grand Slam tournaments before losing in the quarterfinals of the French Open on clay and in the final of Wimbledon on grass.“The hammer of tennis,” Djokovic said late Monday night of Berrettini, comparing the power of his serve and forehand to that of Juan Martin del Potro, the 2009 U.S. Open champion from Argentina. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Del Potro, recovering from his latest serious injury, visited the tournament grounds on Tuesday.“Next to Del Potro, he’s probably the hardest hitter of the serve and forehand,” Djokovic said of Berrettini. “If he serves well, which is his biggest weapon, he’s tough. He’s tough on any surface to play against.”Dodge Berrettini’s bullets and Djokovic will likely face No. 4 seed Alexander Zverev, the German who beat him in the semifinals of the Olympic men’s singles tournament and has been playing the best tennis of his career. Winning a potential matchup against Zverev would likely set up a duel with No. 2 Daniil Medvedev, a shock-absorbing hardcourt master from Russia, in the final.Berrettini, Zverev and Medvedev, all big new-generation talents, are not Djokovic’s customary rivals in the homestretch. Neither Rafael Nadal nor Roger Federer played in this U.S. Open. But Berrettini, Zverev and Medvedev certainly would represent quite a 1-2-3 punch and a fitting challenge for Djokovic as he chases his crowning moment in New York.Daniil Medvedev played Tuesday against Botic van de Zandschulp. He is a likely opponent for Novak Djokovic in the U.S. Open final. Justin Lane/EPA, via ShutterstockWilliams was in a similar spot in September 2015, already the most successful player of her era and a clear No. 1. Like Djokovic, she too already had won four majors in a row — the so-called Serena Slam — but had not achieved the Grand Slam by winning all four in the same calendar year. Djokovic also won four majors in a row over two seasons, from 2015 to 2016.Only five players have completed the Grand Slam in singles: Don Budge in 1938, Maureen Connolly in 1953, Rod Laver in 1962 and 1969, Margaret Court in 1970 and Steffi Graf in 1988.Williams put herself in position to join the list by making a series of great escapes at the Grand Slam tournaments in 2015, winning the French Open despite playing much of it with a high fever and leaving her room (and in some cases her bed) only for her matches. Coming into the Vinci match, Williams had won all 11 of her three-set matches at majors in 2015, including a tough three-setter against her sister Venus in the quarterfinals.It was a phenomenal run of gutsy, big-point tennis, but Williams’s luck ran out against Vinci, whose crisply sliced backhand, rhythm shifts and surprise attacks to the net were just the right mix to play tricks on Williams’s timing and mind.Vinci also embraced the occasion: cupping her hand to her ear and shouting to the crowd after prevailing in one extended rally.“I didn’t start the match thinking about winning, but I told myself to try because sometimes miracles happen,” Vinci said on Tuesday. “In the tensest moments, especially towards the end, I tried to think that on the other side of the court it was not Serena Williams but just a person and just to try to hit the ball over the net as often as possible.”She managed it often enough to complete her comeback and reach her first and only Grand Slam singles final, losing to her friend and Italian compatriot Flavia Pennetta in straight sets.Vinci, who retired in 2018, said she and Williams had never discussed their U.S. Open match, but what is clear is that they both will never forget it.“Serena lost to the Grand Slam more than anything else,” Navratilova told me on the night of that upset. “But still, Vinci had to finish it off.” More

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    Serena Williams Is Not at the U.S. Open, but Her Coach Is Everywhere

    Patrick Mouratoglou has become a bigger star than most players, and is building an empire, too. That does not leave much time for coaching, and that may be just how he likes it.Maybe it’s the beard, the persistent, salt-and-pepper whiskers, always trimmed to a perfect length that makes Patrick Mouratoglou initially seem more like a French existentialist philosopher rather than tennis coach.Or maybe he is a tennis venture capitalist. Or a tennis resort executive. Or a tennis “guru,” as Stefanos Tsitsipas, the Greek star, has referred to him. Depending on the moment, Mouratoglou can be all of those things, which can make it difficult for him to also be a coach, at least in the way he thinks a professional tennis coach should coach. That may seem odd for a man best known as one, a man who wrote a book about himself called “The Coach,” but it is the way he always intended it to be.For years, Mouratoglou has been courtside at Serena Williams’s matches. He has coached her since 2012, and was presumed to be her boyfriend for a time. Coaching her from the stands during the 2018 U.S. Open final led to one of the most notorious meltdowns of Williams’s career. She is not at the U.S. Open this year, having withdrawn to recover from a hamstring injury.Mouratoglou, though, has been everywhere, just as he is at every major tennis tournament these days.There he is sitting a seat away from Tsitsipas’s father and coach, Apostolos, during early-round matches against Andy Murray and Carlos Alcaraz. After a match, he grabs a microphone for one of any number of television interviews he does about the state of the modern game. Sometimes he camps out in the plaza of the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and signs autographs for fans who know him better than they know most of the players. Last Tuesday night, he passed a sports drink onto the court of Arthur Ashe Stadium, trying to help relieve the cramps of Holger Rune, the 18-year-old Danish player who trains at his academy, as Rune fell in four sets to Novak Djokovic in the first round.Mouratoglou watching Stefanos Tsitsipas during a match.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesAt age 51, Mouratoglou has become one of the most recognizable stars in tennis, even though he was never more than a middle-rung junior player as a teenager in France. Corey Gauff, the father and coach of the rising American star Coco Gauff, often wears a baseball hat with Mouratoglou’s “M” logo above the brim when he watches his daughter play.He is the rare coach who has turned himself into a brand, which may mean he is better at marketing than he is at coaching. Don’t ask Mouratoglou to boil down his approach to tennis into a simple strategy or formula.“My philosophy is I know nothing,” he said in an interview days before the start of the U.S. Open. “I learn the person and I learn my player. A lot of coaches start with their method. There is one method per player and I need to find it.”Tennis is in an odd spot at the moment. The careers of most of its biggest stars are in repose. Its greatest men’s player, Novak Djokovic, is worshiped in his own country but has never been universally embraced. Naomi Osaka is already a tennis megastar, but she has played little this year and announced Friday night that she was going to take another break from the game.That leaves enough space for a coaching figure like Mouratoglou to fill.Tennis does this every so often, producing a coach who is a savvy marketer and businessman to become far more than a teacher and trainer, usually with the help of television cameras that pivot to them as they watch their star players. Think of the Australian Harry Hopman in the 1970s and the New Yorker/Floridian Nick Bollettieri in the 1980s and 1990s.None though, has reached the level of Mouratoglou.His empire includes the Mouratoglou Academy, in the south of France, which houses 200 student tennis players, many of whom live and attend school and train there full time.He runs camps for another 4,000 players, including some adults, each year. Next year, he will offer an e-coaching product.Mouratoglou stopped for a photograph with fans.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesHe is also a chief organizer of the Ultimate Tennis Showdown, a made-for-television competition that has included several top players and has introduced a faster scoring system for matches.There are Mouratoglou tennis centers at resorts in Costa Navarino in Greece and at Jumeirah in Dubai. He is an investor in the tennis media website Tennismajors.com.With only 24 hours in a day, he recently gave up his gigs as a commentator for ESPN and Eurosport.He is the full-time coach of just one player, Williams, but helps oversee to varying degrees the training and development of several others, including Tsitsipas, Gauff, Rune, and Alexei Popyrin, the 22-year-old Australian who reached the third round of the U.S. Open.Having a portfolio as lengthy as Mouratoglou’s would seem to run counter to someone whose authority flows from his stature as a coach and whose philosophy relies on spending enough time with each player to tailor his methods and strategies to the individual. That approach, Mouratoglou said, requires a deep knowledge of each player’s strengths and weaknesses, both mental and physical, as well as their cultural and family background.The simplest explanation is that Mouratoglou is no longer really a coach, if he ever was one in the first place, with his work for Williams as an exception. But she may not be around for much longer. It’s not a role he ever intended to play. He took it on out of necessity. His vision for his tennis empire was not going to work otherwise.Serena Williams at a practice with members of her coaching team, including Mouratoglou, at the 2021 French Open.Pete Kiehart for The New York TimesAs a child, Mouratoglou dreamed of becoming a top professional, but his parents told him it would be too risky and would not support the endeavor. He quit tennis at 16, pursued his education, and at 20 went to work for his father, a leading French industrialist and the owner of a major renewable energy company.When Mouratoglou was 26, his father told him he was ready to become a partner. Mouratoglou told his father he was quitting. He still had a passion for tennis and wanted to build a tennis empire, beginning with an academy for young players.He partnered with Bob Brett, an Australian coach and a protégé of Harry Hopman. Mouratoglou knew little about coaching and felt he needed a big name to attract players. Then in 2004 Brett quit. Mouratoglou realized if he found another well-known coach to be his partner, the same thing could happen, so he learned how to coach and found some young prospects whose early careers he could help support, like a venture capitalist seeding a start-up company.His early recruits included Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus and Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia. He began working with Williams in 2012, and has used the stature from her unmatched success to build his empire and a new model for the more expansive role a tennis coach might play.Mouratoglou now operates like the chief executive of a company with a player development division, with each player functioning as a separate unit or product. He has 50 coaches working for him at his academy. The top pro players associated with him — the ones whose televised matches he makes sure to attend — each has someone else who functions as their coach. Most have only limited contact with Mouratoglou on a practice court, though he supervises the team of fitness trainers the players work with. His academy can serve as base camp where they can train.Mouratoglou first saw Gauff, 17, when she was 10. He established a relationship with her father, who brought Coco to the academy. He first spotted Tsitsipas, now 23, on YouTube when he was just 16.“Patrick is kind of like the overseer,” Coco Gauff said the other day.She said Mouratoglou usually speaks to her through her father if he has any specific pointers, so she does not have too many voices in her head. “He also helps with getting the right people on my team, figuring out who and what I need to help me succeed,” she added.Mouratoglou with Coco Gauff and her father at the Australian Open last year.Michael Dodge/EPA, via ShutterstockBoth Popyrin and Rune, who has had Lars Christensen as his coach since he was 6, said the most important role Mouratoglou has played is providing them an ideal environment for training.It is a mutually beneficial relationship. The players, who get access to a first-class training center with nearly every possible amenity, are the best marketing devices to attract other aspiring players, who pay for the academy’s array of services, or for tennis enthusiasts, who attend camps at a Mouratoglou tennis center at a resort.There is probably no better way for Mouratoglou to make sure everyone knows about his connection with these players than taking his customary spot in their boxes during their matches. All Mouratoglou’s current players in the main draw lost during the early rounds, though there are several players with Mouratoglou ties in the junior tournaments this week.He has one sacrosanct rule when he attends a match: If he starts with one player, he stays to the end, even if another player his company works with is playing on another court. Leaving midway might send a bad message, he said.It’s also another way of letting the players know if they need anything, Mouratoglou or someone in his growing empire will be there. Popyrin, who has struggled this year and is 73rd in the ATP rankings, said Mouratoglou has lately been a voice of positivity trying to remind him that he can become a top player, perhaps like the third-ranked Tsitsipas, though he added that Mouratoglou usually functions like a tennis Buddha, a sounding board who listens far more than he speaks.“I vent to him,” Popyrin said. “He lets you speak your mind, and when you speak your mind to him, a lot of the time you get the answer yourself.” More