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      When Will Federer and the Williams Sisters Call It Quits? Maybe Never.

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      Advances in physical preparation keep their bodies in the game, and so can the changing nature of sports business and celebrity.WIMBLEDON, England — Most tennis professionals are retired by their mid-30s. But last week, there was Serena Williams, at almost 41, grinding against a competitor a little more than half her age for more than three hours at Wimbledon.Venus Williams, too, is here. She played mixed doubles, with tape on her right knee and not so much spring in her step at age 42. Roger Federer, who has not played since limping away from Wimbledon last year, is angling to return to the tennis tour in September, when he will be freshly 41. Rafael Nadal is threatening a deep Wimbledon run and eyeing the Grand Slam at 36 after a medical procedure that deadened the nerves in his troublesome left foot.To varying degrees, the biggest names in tennis keep going. Why is it so hard, with their best years behind them, to leave the stage and kick back with their millions? And it’s not just tennis. Tiger Woods, with an estimated net worth of $1 billion, is struggling to come back from devastating leg injuries at 46. Tom Brady can’t stay away from football. Regular working people go through life believing that retirement is the endgame. Not so with professional athletes.It is not just advances in physical preparation and nutrition keeping their bodies in the game. The changing nature of sports business and celebrity is conspiring to keep stars at it far longer than they have in the past. But there is also another element that has remained constant across the generations.“I get it 100 percent why they want to keep going,” said Martina Navratilova, a longtime No. 1 and 18-time major singles champion who retired at 37 in 1994, came back to play doubles and did not retire for good until she was almost 50.“You really appreciate it, and you realize how lucky you are to be out there doing what we do,” Navratilova said. “It’s a drug. It’s a very legal drug that many people would like to have but they can’t get.”Serena Williams exited Wimbledon in the first round for the second consecutive year, far from her fittest and gasping for air down the stretch. She and Federer soon face having no ranking in the sport they dominated for decades. Venus Williams decided at the last minute to play in mixed doubles at Wimbledon. But there have been no announcements on exit strategies; no target dates on end dates.“You never know where I’ll pop up,” Venus Williams said Friday, before she and Jamie Murray lost on Sunday to Alicia Barnett and Jonny O’Mara in a third-set tiebreaker in the round of 16.Earlier Sunday, at a ceremony at Centre Court, Federer, who has a men’s record eight Wimbledon titles but has not played a match in a year, said he hoped to play Wimbledon “one more time” before he retired.Roger Federer, 40, has not played since limping away from Wimbledon last year. He said on Sunday that he hoped to play another Wimbledon before he retired.Hannah Mckay/ReutersIt is a new sort of limbo: great champions well past their primes but not yet ready to call it a career while outsiders occupy themselves with speculation on when the call will come. Nadal, who has generated plenty of retirement chatter himself and said he was close to retiring only a couple of weeks ago because of chronic foot pain, understands the public’s quest for clarity. Famous athletes “become part of the life of so many people,” he said after advancing to the third round of Wimbledon.Even Nadal said he felt unsettled after seeing his friend Woods become only a part-time golfer. “That’s a change in my life, too.” But Woods, and the Williams sisters, like other aging and often-absent sports stars, remain active, not retired. There can be commercial incentives to keep it that way. Official retirement not only terminates a playing career. It can terminate an endorsement contract or a sponsorship deal and reduce a star’s visibility.“Typically, it’s black and white that when you announce your retirement, that’s clearly giving the company a right to terminate,” said Tom Ross, a longtime American tennis agent.But there are exceptions, Ross said, and champions who are late in their careers and of the stature of Federer and Serena Williams often have deals that provide them with security even if they retire before the deal expires. Federer’s 10-year clothing contract with Uniqlo is one example. He, like Serena Williams, also has the luxury of time.Nearly any other tennis player without a ranking would not be able to secure regular entry into top tournaments if they did decide to continue. But Federer and Williams have access to wild cards with their buzz-generating cachet, and can thus pick their spots.Nike, as Federer and some others have discovered, is disinclined to commit major money to superstars close to retirement, favoring active athletes with longer runways. But Mike Nakajima, a former director of tennis at Nike, said that Williams, still sponsored by Nike, was in an exceptional position. She has her own building on Nike’s campus.“Her building is bigger than the Portland International Airport,” Nakajima said. He added, “She’s had her hands in so many different things, so many interests, so many passions, that I think in a lot of ways it won’t matter when she stops. Serena will always be Serena.”This week, EleVen by Venus Williams, her lifestyle brand, started a Wimbledon collection of all-white clothing that was not hurt by the fact that Williams was actually playing at Wimbledon, if only in mixed doubles, after more than 10 months away from the tour.“Just inspired by Serena,” Venus Williams said.Venus Williams and Jamie Murray during their mixed doubles match at Wimbledon.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNavratilova, like many in the game, believes that Venus and Serena Williams will retire together when the time comes. If it comes. The advantages of formally announcing retirement are few: a temporary surge in publicity and an end to random drug testing. It can, in some cases, start the clock on your pension or on making you eligible to be elected into a sport’s Hall of Fame.Retirement is perhaps more a rite than a necessity. John McEnroe, for one, never officially retired, a technicality which, in his case, did allow him to keep earning more for a time from some existing contracts.“Well, look how well retirement worked out for Tom Brady; it got a lot of attention and then it was, ‘Oh, I changed my mind.’ OK!” Navratilova said with a laugh. She added, “Do you ask a doctor or a lawyer how much longer are you going to keep practicing? People put thoughts in your head that might not be there otherwise.”Federer has been hearing retirement questions since he finally won the French Open in 2009, completing his set of singles titles at each of the four Grand Slam events at age 27. Venus Williams, who went through a midcareer dip partially linked to an autoimmune disorder, has been hearing them for over a decade, as well.“When it’s my last, I’ll let you know,” she said at Wimbledon last year.Here she is, back for more, just like her kid sister, although perhaps even the Williamses don’t know how much more. Navratilova does not recommend giving too much advance notice. When she announced that 1994 would be her last season, she regretted it.“If I had to do it over again, I would definitely not say anything, because it was exhausting; it was much more emotionally draining than it would have been otherwise,” she said. “For your own good, forget whatever it may do for or against your brand. I wouldn’t announce it until that’s it.”And it was not it. She came back and ended up winning the U.S. Open mixed doubles title with Bob Bryan in her real last tour-level match at age 49, one of tennis’s better final acts.“My thing is, if you enjoy playing and really get something out of it still, then play,” Navratilova said. “Venus has been playing and people say she’s hurting her legacy. No, those titles are still there.” More

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      What’s Next for Serena Williams?

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      A second consecutive first-round exit at Wimbledon leaves the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion looking human, but suggesting she has more tennis left to play.WIMBLEDON, England — Most likely, it was not truly the end. Chances are there will be some more tennis, maybe even another major tournament at the end of the summer.It is long past the beginning of the end.What happened at Wimbledon though, where Harmony Tan of France beat Serena Williams in a third-set tiebreaker at the tournament she had won seven times, signaled the end of the Serena Williams that the world, both within tennis and outside it, has known.For the better part of two decades, Williams dominated her sport unlike anyone else. She won 23 Grand Slam singles titles — the most recent, the Australian Open in 2017, when she was pregnant — and she has won nearly $100 million in prize money.She transcended tennis as a dominant cultural figure, informing debates on gender, race and celebrity. She became a successful businesswoman and a mother. On Tuesday, she was a player trying to gut out a victory against a relatively unknown competitor a little more than half her age.When people would describe Williams as perhaps the greatest female tennis player ever, she would say, “tennis player,” to suggest that she should be compared to Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Few argued with her.The memory of that Serena Williams, now 40 years old and ranked 1,204th in singles, has remained alive for a year and half, ever since she lost definitively, decisively, but still fighting with her signature mix of power, grit and mystique against Naomi Osaka in the semifinals of the 2021 Australian Open. Conventional wisdom held that in the right tournament — say, Wimbledon — with the right draw, she could be that Serena Williams once again.She had struggled with an Achilles’ tendon injury ahead of that tournament anyway. Her fourth-round loss at the French Open to Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan came on the slow, red clay at the French Open, a surface she never cared for much. She had not won a title in Paris since 2015.Then came the hamstring tear five minutes into her opening match at Wimbledon a year ago, a freak injury.Williams had won a Grand Slam tournament during her first trimester of pregnancy. Some of the most dominant tennis anyone has ever played came after she nearly died from a hematoma and pulmonary embolism.Four times she had been a match away from winning a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title, though she long ago ended any debate about whether she was the greatest ever. That elite serve and forehand, her fist-pumps, her glare, the visceral screams that come out in a way that both inspire and terrify, all of it was still there, wasn’t it, there for her to summon when her health and the planets aligned, even after 11 months away from the game?Williams after winning a point against Harmony Tan.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressPerhaps that Serena Williams will appear once more. But Tuesday did not provide many hints that it would. The Williams that her fellow players, so many of them so much younger, speak of with awe and inspiration, is now more of an idea than an actual opponent.“If I can win one or two games that would be really good,” Tan said of her mind-set before the match, her first at Wimbledon.For certain stretches on Tuesday evening, the Williams of old appeared on Centre Court. She used her forehand to dictate parts of the match, and chased balls with the footwork of yesteryear. A feathery drop shot late in the third set showed the touch that appears infrequently now.But too often Williams looked every bit her 40 years. She had to lean on her racket to catch her breath after so many points. She hunted for the inner assassin she once summoned without notice. Williams was once so clinical against an overmatched, inexperienced opponent like Tan. That Williams is no more.That, of course, is just the tennis side of it.The Serena Williams of the past two decades has been so much more than a gifted athlete who knew what to do with 11 ounces of carbon fiber in her right hand. Even during the long periods when the rankings did not have a the No. 1 next to her name, she defined and set the bar for her sport, and for women’s sports more broadly.She was Muhammad Ali in the 1960s and 1970s, Tiger Woods of the past quarter century, a one-name brand who graced the covers of sports, fashion and newsmagazines with an overall income somewhere in the mid-eight figures.“Changing the game was not something I set out to do, but somehow I did it,” Williams said late Tuesday night.That part of the Williams persona, the trailblazer, trendsetter, the voice that can say so much with few words, will go on, with new wrinkles. In addition to her usual slew of sponsors, Williams announced earlier this year that her early-stage venture capital firm, Serena Ventures, has raised an inaugural fund of $111 million to invest in founders with diverse points of view and backgrounds.Her fund has already financed 60 companies that include Sendwave, a money transfer app; MasterClass, which offers online lessons in several topics; and Daily Harvest, a food delivery service. The fund’s limited partners include some of the biggest names in tech finance. “King Richard,” the movie based on her father that she helped produce, won Will Smith an Oscar for best actor this year.The other side though, the tennis side that started it all, a force as reliable as the heat in Australia and the cool, late summer nights of the U.S. Open, has fallen victim to what eventually overtakes all of the greatest. Ted Williams and Michael Jordan ultimately fell to the relentlessness of time, and the power of rising youth. Williams must, too, just as she did against Tan, a part of a deeper-than-ever WTA Tour where anyone can beat, or lose, to anyone else.Williams once summoned power without notice, but must now settle for flashes of it.Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFew want to see Williams decline, even those who have lost to her more than they have won.“I think it’s great that we have her back,” said Maria Sakkari of Greece, who called Williams a great role model. “For me she’s the best female athlete — not tennis player — athlete in the Open era.”“Great that she’s trying to come back,” said Nadal, who has 22 Grand Slam singles titles, one fewer than Williams.Like Williams, he has battled back from potentially career-ending injuries of late. He is nearly five years younger than Williams, but is one of the few people who can understand what is going through Williams’s heart and mind.“The only thing that shows is passion and love for the game,” Nadal said of her comeback attempt. “Just being here shows that she has a lot of love for her work and for this game. And I think that’s a great example.”There were flashbacks on Tuesday. Williams surged to an early lead in the deciding set, then minutes later, she was fighting, down a game, though on serve, against the 115th-ranked player in the world, a 24-year-old who grew up watching her on television. Williams even served for the match after more than two and a half hours on the court, at 5-4. Serving comes from the legs, and Williams’s legs had lost their power. She sprayed errors wide and into the net, suddenly unable to handle Tan’s slicing strokes.She would save a match point on her serve two games later with a classic swinging forehand volley as she charged the net. But in the tiebreaker, she frittered away prosperity once more, allowing a 4-0 lead to become a 9-7 deficit. Then came one last forehand into the net at the 3-hour, 11-minute mark.Williams packed up her bags, waved to the crowd, and then, in an interview room a little while later, said the idea of playing in New York at the U.S. Open later in the summer, after some time on the practice courts, carried plenty of appeal. She, at least, still believes. Retirement, for now, did not come up.“It’s actually kind of like, ‘OK, Serena, you can do this if you want,’” she said. “Lots of motivation to get better and to play at home.” More

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      Who Is Harmony Tan, Who Beat Serena Williams at Wimbledon?

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      Tan, 24, had merely hoped to take a game or two off Williams, a seven-time Wimbledon singles champion. Instead, she won and has a chance to reach the third round of a major for the first time.The matchup seemed lopsided on paper. Serena Williams, possibly the greatest tennis player ever and the winner of the most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open Era, matched up with Harmony Tan, No. 115 in the world, in the first round of Wimbledon. Tan, playing in her first Wimbledon, had not advanced further than the second round in any of her six previous appearances at a major. Even Tan admitted in her on-court interview that she was “really scared” upon seeing that she was scheduled to face Williams and had hoped she could win one or two games Tuesday.Williams was asked in a news conference ahead of the match if she was disappointed that she didn’t draw a more challenging opponent.“Every match is hard; every match,” said Williams, who was competing in her first singles match on tour since tearing a hamstring in last year’s opening round of Wimbledon and retiring from the match. “You can’t underestimate anyone or any match.”Tan, 24, proved Williams’s words true, spoiling her return to tennis and quest for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title. Tan defeated Williams, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). For Williams, 40, the loss was the second of her career in the first round of Wimbledon.Tan, a Paris native with Cambodian and Vietnamese parents, said she watched Williams often while growing up. Tan turned professional when she was just 14, but this was her first matchup against Williams, and she had never faced a player with career accomplishments even approaching those of Williams.The highest-ranked player she has faced is Elina Svitolina of Ukraine, who was No. 17 in the world at the time of their matchup at this year’s Australian Open. Tan retired in the third set of the match after suffering an injury.For this matchup with Williams, Tan had a slight advantage in the form of her coach, Nathalie Tauziat.Tauziat, the 1998 Wimbledon women’s singles runner-up, who was ranked as high as No. 3 in the world, faced Williams three times, beating her once at the Paris Open final in 2000. Tan didn’t mention in her post-match interview whether or not Tauziat gave her specific pointers based on her experience against Williams. Still, she thanked Tauziat for supporting her after the win.“I’m really surprised today,” Tan said of her win in the on-court interview.She will have the opportunity to advance past the second round in a Grand Slam tournament for the first time in her career when she faces Sara Sorribes Tormo, a Spaniard seeded 32nd. The two faced each other earlier this year in Monterrey, Mexico, with Tan losing, 6-2, 6-2. More

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      Serena Williams Exits Wimbledon in the First Round, Again

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      Williams, who had not competed in singles on tour since withdrawing from Wimbledon last year with an injury, lost in three sets to Harmony Tan of France.WIMBLEDON, England — It was the 21st time that Serena Williams has played Wimbledon. It was Harmony Tan’s first time, but Tan will be the player heading to the second round at the All England Club.Tan, a Frenchwoman ranked 115th who is little-known even in her country, defeated Williams, the greatest women’s tennis champion of her era, 7-5, 1-6, 7-6 (10-7). Williams had not played a singles match on tour since retiring in the first round of last year’s Wimbledon in tears with a hamstring injury, but she got to play plenty of tennis on Tuesday evening on the Centre Court where she had won seven Wimbledon singles titles. Her grueling duel with Tan was a stylistic contrast that lasted 3 hours and 11 minutes. What was missing for Williams was the upbeat, reaffirming finish, and she did not hesitate when asked if she was OK with this being her final Wimbledon memory if that was the way it turned out.“Obviously not. You know me. Definitely not,” Williams, 40, said. “But today I gave all I could do, you know, today. Maybe tomorrow I could have gave more. Maybe a week ago I could have gave more. But today was what I could do. At some point you have to be able to be OK with that. And that’s all I can do. I can’t change time or anything.” She did succeed in changing the momentum on Tuesday in a match that was played under open skies for the first set and then under cover the rest of the way after the roof was closed to provide the stadium lighting necessary to continue. Williams dominated the second set but Tan fought back in the third while Williams’s level and energy dipped even if her fighting spirit did not. Though she saved a match point on her serve late in the final set and jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the super tiebreaker, which is new at Wimbledon this year, she could not hold on, missing too many crucial shots, including a forehand into the net on Tan’s second match point.“I think physically I did pretty good,” Williams said. “I think the last couple points, I was really suffering there, but I feel like in just those key points, winning some of those points, is always something mentally that you have to have, that you kind of need. I did pretty good on maybe one or two of them, but obviously not enough.”Tan’s clear-thinking poise under big-match pressure was remarkable for a player with so little experience and who was making her first appearance on Centre Court. But she said she had to struggle within herself to believe that she really could defeat Williams.“When I saw the draw I was really scared, because it’s Serena,” said Tan, 24. “She’s a legend, and yeah, I was like, ‘Oh my God, how can I play?’ If I can win one or two games, it was really good for me.”She won two sets instead, turning what could have been a feel-good story for Williams into a narrow defeat that will repose the question of how much more professional tennis Williams intends to play. She will turn 41 in September, and her quest for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title seems increasingly far-fetched. A longtime No. 1, she is now ranked 1,204th and will soon have no ranking at all. But she provided no definitive answer to whether this was her final Wimbledon appearance. “That’s a question I can’t answer,” she said. “I don’t know. Who knows where I’ll pop up?”But at least she can leave the All England Club with a less painful memory than what she took from last year’s Wimbledon, when she tore a hamstring after slipping in the first set of her first-round match with Aliaksandra Sasnovich, hobbling off Centre Court in great distress. She did not play competitively again until last week when she returned to play doubles in Eastbourne, England, with Ons Jabeur. Tuesday’s match against Tan was Williams’s first singles match in a year, and to her credit, she scrapped and hustled through the peaks and valleys.“It was definitely long, a very long battle and fight and definitely better than last year,” Williams said.It was a ragged but ultimately admirable performance as she tried to shake off the rust and solve the myriad riddles posed by Tan, who had watched Williams only from afar until their duel. “Seeing her next to me before we walked out on court was really intimidating, because she’s so imposing,” Tan said in French. “It was difficult and even at the end, when we shook hands, she was still imposing.”“When I was young I was watching her so many times on the TV,” she said in her on-court interview. “My first Wimbledon is wow!”Harmony Tan, a Frenchwoman ranked 115th, lacks pure power but understands tennis geometry.Alberto Pezzali/Associated PressThat Williams came close to victory was more a tribute to her willpower than her power as she failed to dominate with her first serve or full-cut returns and instead battled her way through extended rallies and compromised situations in the third set, digging low for Tan’s crisply sliced shots and hustling into the corners. Williams served for the match at 5-4 and was two points from victory at 30-15 only to lose the next three points and her serve when she hit an unconvincing forehand approach shot that Tan slapped past her for a backhand winner. Williams and her player box full of family, friends and team members, including her new coach Eric Hechtman, were not able to celebrate. She fought off a match point when serving at 5-6, 30-40 with a forehand volley winner. She then had to navigate the tiebreaker despite the weariness in her legs and the tension in her gaze. She jumped out to a 4-0 lead before Tan reeled off the next five points by keeping Williams off balance. Tan, coached by the 1998 Wimbledon finalist Nathalie Tauziat, lacks pure power and has a puffball second serve, but she understands tennis geometry and has an unconventional tool set that is well suited to grass. She also had a good scouting report: Tauziat is 54 and long retired but she faced Williams three times in singles, defeating her in the final of an indoor tournament in Paris in 2000 on a fast, low-bouncing surface. Tauziat understood the importance of keeping Williams out of her prime hitting zones and of keeping her on the move.“Thank you, Nathalie,” Tan said in her on-court interview, looking toward Tauziat in the player box.From the start, Tan had Williams guessing and stretching, mixing often-exquisite drop shots with forays to the net; towering lobs with counterpunched backhand passing shots; sideswiping forehand slices with looped topspin.“Any other opponent probably would have suited my game better,” said Williams, who was rarely able to settle into power-baseline duels or any particular pattern of play for long.No one but Tan knew what was coming. Williams, who has lost to such variety-loving players even in her prime, often looked befuddled in the early going. She also looked as tight as piano wire, struggling to let her natural power flow and missing swing volleys and approach shots by the bunch while laboring to move laterally.That was certainly understandable in light of her long layoff, and the crowd reacted with awkward silence at first. The grand tennis theater where Williams has experienced so many highs and a few lows through the decades was nearly half empty at the start but as the match turned into a marathon, it was filled with support and emotion as Williams tried to avoid only the third first-round exit of her career in a Grand Slam tournament.She could not quite manage it, despite all her evident desire, and there may not be many more major tournaments to come, although Williams did not rule out a return to the U.S. Open, where she won her first Grand Slam singles title in 1999 at age 17.“Your first time is always special,” she said, speaking slowly and softly. “There’s definitely, you know, lots of motivation to get better and to play at home.” More

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      How a Tennis Nerd Gave Serena and Venus Williams a New Lease on the Game

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      Eric Hechtman, a club professional from Miami, has signed on to help two champions chase success far beyond the usual finish line of a tennis career.WIMBLEDON, England — Already coaching one American tennis icon, Eric Hechtman added another: logging the extra miles and the extra hours to try to help both Venus and Serena Williams get the most out of however many matches or seasons they have left.“If they are both good with it, I’m absolutely good with it,” Hechtman said in an interview at Wimbledon last week. “They are family. They are super close with each other. It’s been great so far.”Hechtman, a 38-year-old club professional and father of three from Miami, jokes that he is “old” but he is younger than both his star pupils.Venus is 42. Serena is 40. But neither is ready to retire even if Venus has not played on tour in nearly a year and Serena has not played singles on tour since last year’s Wimbledon.Both sisters are back in London, however, with Serena set to face Harmony Tan, an unseeded Frenchwoman, on Centre Court on Tuesday in the first round. Venus, who practiced on the grass at the All England Club over the weekend, is not playing in the singles or women’s doubles tournaments but could still take a wild-card entry into the mixed doubles.The sisters like to keep their plans private for as long as possible, but it seems doubtful that Venus would have made the long trip across the Atlantic just to attend a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert on Sunday with her sister, Isha Price, and Hechtman.“Lots of fun,” said Hechtman, who did not confirm Venus Williams’s Wimbledon plans but did confirm that she is not ready to call it a career.“I don’t want to necessarily speak for their plans, but they are definitely not ready to retire,” Hechtman said. “Look, they both love the game. They are both champions. They both love working hard and putting in the work. So, as long as you’ve got that, who’s to say you can set parameters on things, right?”Venus Williams arriving at the All England Club on Sunday.Julian Finney/Getty ImagesThe Williamses were raised to ignore the usual tennis boundaries: playing very little junior tennis before turning professional and being encouraged by their parents, Richard and Oracene, to actively pursue outside interests. There were skeptics early, just as there are skeptics now as both sisters have become part-time players at best in their 40s, but there is no arguing with their achievements or their staying power. And while Serena clearly has the superior body of work, with 23 Grand Slam singles titles to Venus’s seven, Wimbledon is where their resumes are most closely aligned.Venus has won five singles titles; Serena seven; and they have joined forces to win six doubles titles, going 6-0 in finals (they are 17-0 in all their Grand Slam and Olympic doubles finals together).“They’ve broken barriers for everything, for women, for the way the game is played,” Hechtman said. “They transcended tennis from a power perspective, and they are continuing to do it at their age. And I don’t think they even think about that. They are just homing in on themselves, and what they want to do, and there you go. To me, the more I can learn from those types of people, the better it is.”Hechtman, a self-described “tennis nerd,” was a successful junior who went on to play at the University of Miami.Evan Zeder, a longtime friend and former junior rival, has known Hechtman since they were 8.“He has always been brutally honest, for better or worse, and I think that has to be refreshing for people like Venus and Serena who are two legends to have someone who can be brutally honest without an agenda,” said Zeder, now head of global tennis sports marketing for New Balance.Zeder remembers Hechtman wearing basketball shorts and a Legionnaire cap on court. “The kind Ivan Lendl used to wear,” Zeder said. “And he just kind of beat to his own drum.”He also had grit. Zeder remembers Hechtman getting severe cramps late in the decisive set of one of their matches as 18-year-olds and refusing to quit, taking massive cuts at the ball going for winners because he could no longer run. Zeder said Hechtman kept looking across the net and smiling.“He was trying to get in my head, and it worked,” Zeder said.“After Eric served it out, he ended up in a full body cramp and was taken to the hospital, where he spent the whole night with an I.V.,” Zeder said. “He came out and could barely walk in the finals and got smoked, and I was fresh as a daisy and had to play for third place.”Hechtman said he had offers from other Division I programs but chose to stay at home to support his mother Brenda, who had cancer and died during his sophomore year.He tried to play on the pro tour for about six months after college. “To be honest, I didn’t give myself a fair shot,” Hechtman said.He went to law school but began working as a teaching professional as well and eventually received an offer to become the tennis director at the Royal Palm Tennis Club, a private club in Miami with a strong junior program.“I didn’t have a passion for law,” he said. “My passion is definitely tennis, and when that opportunity came up, it wasn’t that tough a choice.”He has spent much of the last 15 years developing junior players and said more than 50 of his pupils had gone on to play in college. But he also has worked as an occasional hitting partner for professional players. He said he was introduced to Venus Williams around 2008 and met and eventually hit with Serena as well, but both sisters had their own long-term coaches: Venus was working with the American David Witt and Serena with the Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou.Serena Williams during a training session on Saturday.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesBut after Venus split with Witt, she hired Hechtman in 2019 and after Serena split with Mouratoglou earlier this year, she hired Hechtman with Venus’s approval.Still the director of tennis at Royal Palm, Hechtman said he has been getting up before dawn, making the two-hour drive north to Venus’s home in Jupiter Island to train with each sister in separate sessions and then making the two-hour drive home to work at the club.He and his wife, Alexandra, have three children, sons Noah, 7, and Chase, 5, and daughter Madison, 3.“I make sure I’m at home by 6,” he said.This is the kind of multitasking to which the Williams sisters can relate with their outside businesses and in Serena’s case, her daughter Olympia, 4, with her husband Alexis Ohanian.Serena has yet to speak publicly in detail about her new coach, but she was asked on Saturday what it was like to be back at Wimbledon without Mouratoglou, who helped her win 10 Grand Slam singles titles in their nearly 10 years together.“Oh my,” she said. “I didn’t even think about it. I don’t know. It feels good. I’m having a wonderful time here.”Hechtman said he respected Witt’s and Mouratoglou’s previous work. “I’m not the type of guy who’s going to steal someone’s job,” he said. “I have my business ethics, but when an opportunity like this comes along I’m not going to say no for sure.”Hechtman said he occasionally shares the court with Richard Williams, who though diminished by a stroke, still attends some of his daughters’ practices.“Sometimes he’ll throw in some coaching and obviously he’s got a unique eye for the game,” Hechtman said. “He made his mark in the history of the sport. He belongs in the Hall of Fame. He coached them from scratch to becoming two of the greatest ever.”Hechtman, too, would one day like to take a player from beginner to the top of the pro game, but for now his task is much shorter term: helping two champions chase success far beyond the usual finish line of a tennis career.“You can just see it in their eyes, the passion for it,” Hechtman said. “I’ve been on the court with any type of person you can imagine from kids that don’t want to be out there to kids that are motivated to adult recreational tennis players. This is the best experience so far, and you can take what they’ve accomplished out of the equation. It’s about their attitude and how a practice goes. If you’re a tennis nerd, it’s as good as it gets.” More

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      Serena Williams Discusses Her Return to Wimbledon

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      Ahead of her 21st Wimbledon appearance, Serena Williams discussed coming back from a tough injury, but steered away from political discussions.WIMBLEDON, England — At first glance, it certainly looked like business as usual at Wimbledon on Saturday.Two days before the start of this Grand Slam tournament, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal were practicing on adjacent grass courts with the steeple of St. Mary’s Church for a backdrop.As the two longtime rivals trained in the English sunshine, Serena Williams took a seat under the spotlights in the main interview room, as she has scores of times before.But though his will be her 21st Wimbledon, it will be an occasion like no other for Williams. She is returning to the All England Club at 40, having not played a singles match since last year’s Wimbledon, when she tore her right hamstring after slipping during the first set of a first-round match that she was unable to complete on Centre Court.I asked Williams how much she was motivated during her comeback by the desire to give herself a different memory at Wimbledon?“It was always something, since the match ended, that was always on my mind,” she said. “So it was a tremendous amount of motivation.”Centre Court, now 100 years old and still the most atmospheric showplace in the professional game, has been the stage for many a triumph for Williams, who has won seven Wimbledon singles titles.But it was all about pain and disappointment last year. She was in tears as she tried to continue after her injury and was in tears again after being forced to stop the match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Though Williams was able to limp off the court, she stumbled as she left the grass and needed assistance to reach the passageway leading to the exit to the clubhouse.Williams left the court in tears last year when she was forced to withdraw from Wimbledon because of a torn right hamstring.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“You never want any match to end like that,” Williams said. “It’s really unfortunate, but it was definitely something that’s always been at the top of my mind.”It has taken a year for her return to the tour, withdrawing from three straight Grand Slam tournaments and sparking understandable speculation about whether she intended to continue playing tennis at all.“I didn’t retire,” she said on Saturday, picking her words with particular care. “I had no plans to be honest. I just didn’t know when I would come back. I didn’t know how I would come back. Obviously, Wimbledon is such a great place to be, and it just kind of worked out.”Since her last appearance at the All England Club, she has hardly been at rest: juggling motherhood — her daughter Olympia is now 4 — and business endeavors, including Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm with an emphasis on investing in companies whose founders come from historically underrepresented backgrounds.“A part of me feels like that is a little bit more of my life now than tournaments,” she said of her interests outside tennis. “When you do have a venture company, you do have to go all in. It definitely takes literally all my extra time. And it’s fun. I’m currently out of office for the next few weeks, so if you email me, you’ll get the nice ‘out of office’ reply. Everyone knows that I’ll be back in a few weeks. But it’s good.”Williams also has split with Patrick Mouratoglou, the high-profile Frenchman who has coached her for the last 10 years. Mouratoglou is now working with Simona Halep, a former No. 1 who produced perhaps the finest performance of her career to defeat Williams in straight sets in the 2019 Wimbledon final.Williams is now coached by Eric Hechtman, a former University of Miami tennis player who is the longtime director of tennis at the Royal Palm Tennis Club in Miami. He has known both Williams and her older sister Venus for nearly 15 years and has been coaching Venus Williams since 2019.Now Hechtman is coaching them both, although Venus Williams, 42, has yet to play a match on tour this year and will miss Wimbledon for the first time since 2013. Hechtman said the decision to begin coaching Serena Williams was made with Venus’s blessing. Though this is his first tournament with Serena, he clearly understands the goal is not simply to make an appearance and improve on last year, no matter how long Serena has gone without competing.Williams, who has been practicing at Wimbledon ahead of the tournament, has won the Grand Slam seven times.Neil Hall/EPA, via Shutterstock“She’s a champion, right? And she’s playing Wimbledon for a reason,” he said. “Just like I think anybody that walks into the tournament, their goal is to win the event. And that’s our goal.”Williams made that clear, as well, when asked what she would consider “a good outcome” at Wimbledon this year?“You know the answer to that,” she said, smiling. “C’mon now.”Still, Williams was vague by design through much of Saturday’s news conference, declining to give a precise date when she decided to play Wimbledon, saying only that she made the decision before the French Open, which began in late May.She also steered away from political topics. Some prominent American women’s athletes, including the soccer star Megan Rapinoe and the track star Allyson Feix, have voiced their opinion on Friday’s Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade.Rapinoe has expressed opposition to the court’s decision, which removes the constitutional right to have an abortion, but Williams chose not to offer a viewpoint.“I think that’s a very interesting question,” she said. “I don’t have any thoughts that I’m ready to share right now on that decision.”It was unclear why Williams chose not to respond. She is a Jehovah’s Witness, a religious faith whose members identify as Christians and who believe that the Bible teaches them to remain politically neutral. But Williams did not cite her religion on Saturday as a reason for reserving her opinion.As Coco Gauff has been preparing for Wimbledon she has spoken out on political issues like the overturning of Roe v. Wade.Clive Brunskill/Getty ImagesHer reticence was in sharp contrast to the American Coco Gauff, 18, who made an appearance in the main interview room later in the day. Gauff, like another of tennis’s young stars, Naomi Osaka, has been eager to use her platform to speak out on social issues and made an appeal to end gun violence during the French Open on her way to the final earlier this month.“I’m obviously disappointed about the decision,” Gauff said of the Supreme Court ruling. “Obviously I feel bad for future women and women now, but I also feel bad for those who protested for this I don’t even know how many years ago, but who protested for this and are alive to see that decision be reversed.”Gauff added: “I feel like we’re almost going backwards.”But she urged activism. “I still want to encourage people to use their voice and not feel too discouraged about this because we can definitely make a change, and hopefully change will happen.”Williams also demurred when asked about Wimbledon’s decision to bar Russian and Belarusian players this year because of the war in Ukraine. The list of those who have been banned includes Sasnovich, the Belarusian who faced Williams last year on Centre Court.“Another heavy subject that involves a tremendous amount of politics, from what I understand, and government,” Williams said. “I’m going to step away from that.”What she will do at Wimbledon is step back into Grand Slam tennis. Her first-round match against 113th-ranked Harmony Tan of France is scheduled for Tuesday, most likely on Centre Court. And though Williams, long No. 1, now has a ranking in the quadruple digits (1204), she will be the favorite on the grass despite her layoff.She is back, no doubt. The question is for how long? Asked if this was her final Wimbledon, Williams remained in tune with her Saturday mood: elusive.“You know, I don’t know,” she said. “I can only tell you that I’m here. Who knows where I’ll pop up next? You’ve just got to be ready.” More

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      Returning to Singles, Serena Williams Will Face an Unseeded Player

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      After a year away from singles, she risked drawing the world’s No. 1, Iga Swiatek, in the first round. Instead, she will face a player ranked 113th.In her first singles match in a year, Serena Williams could have faced one of the new leaders of the game that she once dominated.As an unseeded wild card at Wimbledon, Williams could have been drawn to play No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who has won six tournaments in a row. Or Coco Gauff, the 18-year-old American who is on the verge of breaking into the top 10 and just lost to Swiatek in the French Open final.But when Friday’s draw was done, Williams was spared an established threat in the first round. Instead, she will play Harmony Tan, an unseeded French 24-year-old who is ranked 113th and will be making her main-draw debut at Wimbledon.The match will almost certainly be played on Centre Court, where Williams has won seven Wimbledon singles titles, six women’s doubles titles and two Olympic gold medals when the All England Club staged the tennis event at the 2012 London Games.But though Tan will be stepping on to that famous patch of grass for the first time, Williams will also be in new territory. At age 40, she remains arguably the biggest star in women’s tennis (Naomi Osaka makes it a debate), but Williams has played very little tennis in the last three years and played none at all on tour for nearly a year until returning in Eastbourne this week for two doubles matches with Ons Jabeur.They won them both before Jabeur withdrew with a right knee injury as a precautionary move before Wimbledon, where unlike Williams, Jabeur is one of the leading favorites for the title despite never reaching a Grand Slam final.That is a reflection of Jabeur’s shotmaking talent and recent victory at the grass court tournament in Berlin, but it is also a reminder that the women’s game is in transition. The reigning Wimbledon women’s champion, Ashleigh Barty, sent shock waves through the sport by retiring in March at age 25, weary of the travel far from her home in Australia and lacking the drive to continue pushing for the biggest prizes.Iga Swiatek, celebrating her French Open victory, has won 35 straight matches going into Wimbledon.Thibault Camus/Associated PressSwiatek, a 21-year-old from Poland, has stepped convincingly into the gap, winning 35 straight matches, and she could make it 36 by defeating a Croatian qualifier, Jana Fett, in the first round of Wimbledon. But Swiatek has played little on grass at this early stage in her career and below her, the hierarchy on tour is constantly shifting.In winning her six straight titles, Swiatek beat six different players in the finals. Anett Kontaveit, seeded No. 2 at Wimbledon behind Swiatek, has lost in the first round in three of her last four tournaments and has not played a match on grass this season, attributing her recent struggles to her continuing recovery from Covid-19.This year’s Wimbledon, which begins Monday, will not offer a full-strength field for women or men. Wimbledon barred Russian and Belarusian players from competing, in part because of pressure from the British government after the invasion of Ukraine.The tours responded by stripping Wimbledon of ranking points for the first time, and despite extensive discussions, both sides held firm to their positions.Wimbledon has maintained its prize money at normal levels, and though there was speculation that players might skip the tournament because of the lack of points, that has not materialized. Of the highest ranked players, the only ones who will be absent are either injured, like Alexander Zverev, Leylah Fernandez and Osaka or barred, like Daniil Medvedev and Aryna Sabalenka.Wimbledon is the only major tennis tournament to bar the Russians and Belarusians, and the ban has excluded four of the top 40 men, including No. 1 Medvedev and No. 8 Andrey Rublev, both of Russia. But Novak Djokovic, who has won the last three editions of Wimbledon, and his longtime rival Rafael Nadal are both in the men’s field. So is Andy Murray, now unseeded and trying to recover from an abdominal injury after an encouraging run to the final on grass in Stuttgart.Roger Federer, an eight-time Wimbledon singles champion who is still recovering from knee surgery at age 40, will miss the tournament for the first time since 1997 (he won the boys title in 1998 before playing in the main draw in 1999).Djokovic, who has a good draw, will face Kwon Soon-woo of South Korea in the first round. Nadal, playing Wimbledon for the first time since 2019, will face Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina. Murray, the British star, will face James Duckworth of Australia.Wimbledon’s ban has excluded six of the top 40 women, including No. 6 Sabalenka, a Belarusian who was a Wimbledon semifinalist last year; No. 20 Victoria Azarenka, a former No. 1; and No. 34 Aliaksandra Sasnovich, who was Serena Williams’s most recent opponent at Wimbledon.Sasnovich advanced last year when Williams retired in the opening set of their first-round match after reinjuring her right hamstring in a slip on the fresh grass on Centre Court. Partly in response, Wimbledon, for the first time, allowed players to train on Centre Court before the tournament to wear in the grass and improve the footing during the early rounds.Williams, who has played more at Wimbledon than anyone in the women’s field, already knows her way around the grass, but she has been increasingly prone to injuries and will now have to try to find form in a hurry.Williams will face the unseeded Harmony Tan of France, who is ranked 113th in the world, in the first round at Wimbledon.Miguel Sierra/EPA, via ShutterstockTan, despite her world ranking, has the tools to create some doubt and trouble. She is an effective counterpuncher who likes to change pace with slices and drop shots and could force Williams to dig low and move more than she might like at the beginning of her comeback.Williams, with her first-strike power and deep experience, certainly looks like the favorite, but if she gets past Tan, she will quickly run into clearer threats. She could face No. 32 seed Sara Sorribes Tormo, a tenacious Spaniard, in the second round and could then face No. 6 Karolina Pliskova, who lost to Barty in last year’s Wimbledon final. Williams has never played Tan or Sorribes, and she has split her four previous matches with Pliskova, losing to her in the semifinals of the 2016 U.S. Open and quarterfinals of the 2019 Australian Open.Advance past the third round and Williams could face Gauff for the first time, in a match that would certainly generate major interest. But it seems most premature to start talking about the fourth round when Williams has played no singles at all in a year. This is the second longest break of her remarkable career, ranking only behind the 13-month break she took after winning the 2017 Australian Open when she was already two months pregnant with her daughter, Olympia.She looked understandably rusty and slow off the mark in the early stages of her doubles matches with Jabeur in Eastbourne, but she soon found her timing and came up with some trademark first serves under duress in both victories. Her ball striking when in position was often solid, but the trick will be putting herself in prime position in singles, where there is so much more court to cover and the potential for extended rallies if Williams cannot dominate with her serve and full-cut returns.The new wave of women’s players, led by Swiatek, have adapted to the power and generate plenty of it themselves. A deep Williams run would be quite an achievement, but if there is any Grand Slam where she could achieve it with so little preparation, it would be Wimbledon. More

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      Serena Williams Plans to Play at Wimbledon

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      Williams hasn’t competed since she was injured during the first round of Wimbledon last year.PARIS — Serena Williams, absent from competitive tennis for nearly a year, said on Tuesday that she intends to return for Wimbledon, which begins on June 27.Williams, 40, has not played on tour since leaving a match in considerable pain with a right leg injury during the first round of Wimbledon last year against Aliaksandra Sasnovich.Sasnovich, a Belarusian, is one of the players banned by Wimbledon this year because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been supported by Belarus. But Williams plans to return, and Wimbledon confirmed on Tuesday that she was receiving a wild card to play singles.If she does indeed take part, it will be her 21st appearance at Wimbledon, where she has won seven singles titles and seven doubles titles, six of the doubles titles with her older sister Venus Williams.It is unclear whether Venus Williams, 41, is also planning on returning to the tour. She has not competed since last August in Chicago.Because of the inactivity, both sisters’ rankings have dropped far from their usual zones. Venus Williams is No. 571. Serena Williams is No. 1,208, which explains why she required a wild card to gain entry to Wimbledon.In her brief Instagram post on Tuesday announcing her plan to play Wimbledon, Serena Williams also tagged the Eastbourne International tournament. That suggests that she intends to return to competition for the WTA grass-court event in Eastbourne, England, which begins on Saturday. That would give her at least some match play before Wimbledon. More