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    The WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia: An Opportunity or a Controversy?

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    In a country that is often criticized over its treatment of women, the tennis world debates the pros and cons of holding the elite women’s tournament there.It took some time before Judy Murray was convinced that going to Saudi Arabia was the right decision. Murray, a professional coach and the mother of a former world No. 1, Andy, and his doubles-specialist brother, Jamie, is a well-known advocate of women’s rights and women’s sports.But as a community ambassador for the Women’s Tennis Association, Murray’s job is to travel wherever the tour goes and introduce tennis to those who have had limited exposure to it. So she will go to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the WTA Finals, which begins on Saturday.“We have a really big opportunity to make some great things happen over there,” Murray said during a video call last month. “It’s a bit of a blank canvas, and a lot of the things at the grass-roots level are starting from scratch. We’re creating relationships, and once you do that you can make things happen.”The WTA Finals are the culmination of the yearlong WTA Tour and involve the top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams. The singles competitors this year are Aryna Sabalenka, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff, Elena Rybakina, Jasmine Paolini, Jessica Pegula, Zheng Qinwen and Barbora Krejcikova.Aryna Sabalenka, center, and Jessica Pegula, right, who played each other in the U.S. Open final in September, will both be playing at the WTA Finals.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesSabalenka, who retook the No. 1 ranking from Swiatek two weeks ago, enters as the top seed. Paolini, who is paired in doubles with Sara Errani, is the only player entered in singles and doubles.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Importance of High-Pressure Tennis Tiebreakers

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      Experts say that players need to take their time to succeed. “The athlete who rushes during a tiebreak gets into trouble,” Pam Shriver says.The WTA Finals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, brings together the year’s top players for one final showdown. Just because the tournament features only the game’s best doesn’t guarantee close sets — in the last two years, about as many sets have been decided 6-0 or 6-1 as they have 7-5 or 7-6.But it is success or failure in those 7-6 sets, decided by a seven-point tiebreaker, that can make or break a player’s season and their season finale.“The mind-set is the most important part of the tiebreaker,” said Pam Shriver, a Hall of Famer, ESPN analyst and coach for the 19th-ranked Donna Vekic. Shriver, who won 21 Grand Slams in doubles, said having someone by her side helped her remain calm and clear during tiebreakers. “When you take your time, things fall into place. The athlete who rushes during a tiebreak gets into trouble.”Iga Swiatek dominated Jessica Pegula 6-1, 6-0 last year in the tournament’s final, and she is also the best in tiebreakers among the elite eight: In the last two years, Swiatek is 6-2 in tiebreakers against top 10 players, which may give her a critical advantage in this tournament. (The third-ranked Coco Gauff is 4-2 and may also have an edge.)“You need to be extra focused in tiebreaks, especially on the first point because you want to start well,” the sixth-ranked Jasmine Paolini said. (She’s 2-2 in tiebreakers versus top 10 players over the past two years.)Shriver says most players include tiebreakers at the end of practice, but many don’t emphasize how to cope in those situations. However, Paolini said she did not really practice for tiebreakers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: The Tennis Player Emma Navarro Is Getting Someplace Fast

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      Navarro, 23, has been steadily climbing up the tennis world rankings and will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.As speedy as Emma Navarro is on the tennis court, she is never in a rush.By her own admission, Navarro isn’t very good at time management. But she defends herself by explaining that her most enduring trait, one of the reasons she has catapulted from playing low-level challenger tournaments to being ranked just outside the world’s top 10, is that she makes it a point to stay in the here and now.“I’m naturally very present, which makes it hard to plan ahead,” Navarro, 23, said by video call from Toronto earlier this month. “But I think it helps with just taking one thing at a time and feeling like I’m not in any rush to be anywhere that I’m not yet.”Navarro has been one of the biggest surprises in women’s tennis over the last 16 months. In January 2023, she was ranked 149th and playing in a $25,000 tournament in Naples, Fla., which she won. Now she is ranked 13th. She will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.Navarro has never advanced beyond the first round of the main draw at the U.S. Open and has won only one match, in the junior tournament in 2019. Last year she lost in the first round to Magdalena Frech.She was born in New York City, and her family left Manhattan for Charleston, S.C., shortly after 9/11. It was there, at age 14, that Navarro began working with Peter Ayers, who remains her coach.Navarro lost to Amanda Anisimova in a semifinal game at the National Bank Open in Toronto earlier this month.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Micky Lawler, a Longtime Tennis Executive, Turns to Basketball

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      She was a force at the WTA and is now the commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league.Micky Lawler knows a thing or two about starting over.As a child, Lawler, whose father was an executive with a Dutch electronics company, lived in seven countries: the Netherlands, where she was born, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, France and Belgium.But the move that impacted Lawler the most came when she was 24 and returning to the Netherlands after finishing graduate school in Delaware.“As the plane pushed back, I could see my friends, who had come to the airport to say goodbye, standing by the gate, and I realized that I would miss them much more than they would miss me,” Lawler, now 63, wrote in an email last month. “For me, this departure entailed closing a very important chapter and leaving behind everyone I held so dear.”Lawler felt the same chapter-closing emotions when her position as president of the Women’s Tennis Association was eliminated last December, months after the WTA announced its partnership with the venture capital firm CVC Capital Partners. That ended a 38-year career in tennis, during which Lawler was instrumental in overseeing the growth of tournaments, sponsorship, marketing and broadcast deals for the largest women’s sports entity.But Lawler has already moved on. In June, she was named commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league to debut next January.Unrivaled is designed to be a complement, not a competitor, to the W.N.B.A. It was founded by, among others, Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty forward, and her United States Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier, a forward with the Minnesota Lynx. The league features three-on-three play on a court that is about 70-feet long, two-thirds the size of a traditional basketball court. Each hourlong game consists of four seven-minute quarters designed to attract the devotion of younger, goldfish-attention-span fans. Media rights deals are still being worked out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For the WTA and ATP, 2024 Could Be a Year of Formative Change in Tennis

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      Tennis is trying to reposition itself by altering tournaments and spreading more money around.Steve Simon was feeling optimistic.Despite a 2023 season that ended with an avalanche of grumbling following the WTA Finals in Cancún, Mexico, which featured bad weather, a potentially dangerous center court and unrelenting complaints from the players, Simon, the chairman and chief executive of the women’s tour, was doing everything he could to move forward into 2024.“The WTA is very fine,” Simon said by video call in mid-December, just after it was announced that the WTA will soon separate the roles of chairman and chief executive, with Simon becoming executive chairman. He no longer will be in charge of day-to-day operations and instead will be tasked with, as he said, “working on strategic geopolitical issues, which are now very prevalent and affecting our business in many different ways.”There are formative changes coming to the WTA and ATP this year. The ATP has put into place its OneVision strategic plan designed to align the interests of players and tournaments with an eye toward enhancing the fan experience while also creating more lucrative media contracts.Part of the plan involves increasing the duration and draw size at several ATP tournaments. Madrid, Rome and Shanghai all went from one-week, 56-player-draw events to 12-day, 96-draw tournaments in 2023. Canada and Cincinnati will do the same in 2025. Indian Wells and Miami are already staged that way.All are Masters 1000 tournaments, the highest level in terms of prize money and ranking points other than the four majors — the Australian, French, and United States Opens and Wimbledon. Several of the tournaments are combined men’s and women’s events. Other tournaments, like ones in Dallas, Munich and Doha, Qatar, are increasing in value while still others, including Atlanta and Newport, R.I., are falling off the calendar after this year.Daniil Medvedev after winning the Qatar Open in Doha last year. The tournament is one of several ATP events increasing in value this year.Mohamed Farag/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      In Tennis, Bookends of Drama in 2023

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      The year was full of unlikely winners and exciting team competitions.There was no champagne courtside. So, as Matteo Berrettini embraced Jannik Sinner after Sinner’s victory over Alex de Minaur last month to clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years, their teammate, Matteo Arnaldi, did the next best thing: He shook a water bottle and poured it over Sinner and Berrettini.Sinner, 22, ended the season with his 20th win in his last 23 matches. This year, he had a 64-15 record, won four tournaments, reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up at the ATP Finals in Turin, Italy. He had wins over the three top-ranked players — Novak Djokovic, whom he beat twice in two weeks, Carlos Alcaraz and Daniil Medvedev. Starting 2023 at No. 15, he ended it at No. 4.Djokovic sorely wanted to lead Serbia to just its second Davis Cup title. But in the semifinals, he fell to Sinner after squandering three match points and then teamed with Miomir Kecmanovic to lose the deciding doubles match to Sinner and Lorenzo Sonego. The loss sent Italy into the final, where it beat Australia.Jannik Sinner helped clinch Italy’s first Davis Cup title in 47 years this year. He also had a 64-15 record and won four tournaments.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDjokovic was devastated by the defeat.“For me, personally, it’s a huge disappointment because I take the responsibility, obviously having three match points, being so close to win it,” he said after the match. “When you lose for your country, you know, the bitter feeling is even greater.”It is ironic that the season began and ended with exciting conclusions at the men’s and women’s team competitions. The Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup have been under siege in recent years as many of the game’s top players, including Alcaraz, Taylor Fritz, Iga Swiatek, Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula, shunned the historically heart-thumping, pride-producing finals because of scheduling conflicts. The U.S. women lost early in the finals, and the U.S. men didn’t even qualify as one of the top eight teams.Still, despite the player defections and a merry-go-round of format changes, both competitions provided some of the most striking moments of the year.Leylah Fernandez’s five wins helped lead Canada to its first-ever Billie Jean King Cup.Raul Caro/EPA, via ShutterstockLeylah Fernandez rode a wave of patriotic passion, winning five matches to lead Canada to its first Billie Jean King Cup. Her teammate, then-18-year-old Marina Stakusic, who had never won a WTA Tour match, became an overnight star when she won three matches against opponents ranked in the top 70.If 2022 was billed as the season of King Carlos when Alcaraz went from No. 32 to No. 1 on the strength of his U.S. Open championship, then this season mostly belonged to Djokovic.He is considered by many in the game as the greatest player ever. The statistics prove it.At 36, Djokovic had one of the best seasons of his career. For the third time since 2015, he reached the finals at all four majors, falling just shy of attaining the Grand Slam.In January, a year after being removed from Australia because of his refusal to be vaccinated against Covid-19, Djokovic returned to Melbourne Park and captured a record 10th Australian Open title by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final. With the 14-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal injured for most of the season, Djokovic won his third French Open in June by beating Alcaraz and Casper Ruud.After falling to Alcaraz in a scintillating five-set Wimbledon final, Djokovic bounced back and beat Medvedev at the U.S. Open to earn his 24th major, surpassing Serena Williams. He is now just one win away from breaking the men’s and women’s major record held by Margaret Court for 50 years.Djokovic captured his record 10th Australian Open by defeating Stefanos Tsitsipas in the final.Quinn Rooney/Getty ImagesIn all, Djokovic played just 12 tournaments in 2023 and he won seven of them. He did not lose from mid-July until mid-November, when he fell to Sinner during the round-robin portion of the ATP Finals. He then beat Sinner in the final after assuring the year-end No. 1 ranking for a record-extending eighth time.Alcaraz, who won six titles in 2023 on three different surfaces and reached the semifinals at the French and U.S. Opens, in addition to his Wimbledon win, ended the year ranked No. 2. But he was candid after he lost to Djokovic in the semifinals in Turin.“I am not at his level on an indoor court,” Alcaraz, 20, said in November. “He has shown why he is the best player in the world. I have to practice more to be a better player.”With his 66 wins, Medvedev led the ATP in match victories. He won 19 straight, and reached the finals at Indian Wells and the Miami Open, which he won. He also won at Rome and reached the semifinals at Wimbledon and was runner-up to Djokovic at the U.S. Open. He ended the year ranked No. 3.Two upstart players — the Americans Ben Shelton and Chris Eubanks — used their wide grins and whopping forehands to envelop the sport in a giant bear hug. Shelton, about two years away from leading the University of Florida to an N.C.A.A. championship, reached the quarterfinals at the Australian Open. He then reached the semifinals at the U.S. Open before falling to Djokovic. Eubanks, another former collegian, upset Cameron Norrie and Tsitsipas to reach the quarterfinals at Wimbledon.There was no shortage of compelling story lines among the women. Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka spent the season battling for tour supremacy.Sabalenka, only a year removed from serving woes so severe that she resorted to serving underhand during matches, won her first major at the Australian Open, a day she called the “best of my life.” She grabbed the No. 1 ranking after reaching the U.S. Open final.“It was amazing to see Sabalenka, who was basically laughed off that same court a year earlier, confront those demons and take responsibility,” Lindsay Davenport, three-time major winner and former No. 1, said by telephone last month.Swiatek took her third French Open and won six titles. But she faltered at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open before regrouping by the WTA Finals, snatching the year-end No. 1 from Sabalenka by beating her and Pegula to take the title. Pegula, for her part, was one of just two players, along with No. 4 Elena Rybakina, to notch multiple wins over Swiatek this season.Marketa Vondrousova, who endured long stretches away from the game because of two wrist surgeries, became the first unseeded women’s Wimbledon winner when she beat Ons Jabeur in the final.Coco Gauff, 19, beat Aryna Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesBut it was Gauff and her wise-beyond-her-years attitude who transcended the sport in a way that only Williams has done. When Gauff, 19, beat Sabalenka in three sets to win the U.S. Open, the nontennis world, including the former first lady Michelle Obama, went wild. In her acceptance speech, Gauff, who had struggled early in the season, addressed her doubters.“Thank you to the people who didn’t believe in me,” Gauff said. “To those who thought they were putting water on my fire, you were really adding gas to it.”It was the kind of bold statement that left even former major winners stunned. One of them was Davenport, who admitted to having tears run down her face while she did match commentary on television.“To me, the story of the year was Coco,” Davenport said. “Players come along once in a generation. When you have all the expectations on you at 12 and 15 years old and you are able to handle everything and then elevate your game to win, then you really are truly something special.” More

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      WTA Finals Finds a Last-Second Home in Mexico

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      Mexico landed the event this year at the last second, the third year in a row the tournament has been in limbo. That creates havoc with players’ schedules.It was early September, and Iga Swiatek had no idea where her season would end.For the third year in a row, the WTA Finals were in limbo through the start of the United States Open.“For sure, it’s pretty unfortunate and annoying we don’t have any decision yet,” Swiatek said in late August, shortly before the WTA announced that Cancún, Mexico, would host this year’s championship for the world’s top eight singles players and top eight doubles teams. “We, as players, are not involved in all of the discussions.”Professional tennis players are highly structured athletes who plan their schedules months, sometimes years, in advance. Because the WTA Tour competes in nearly 30 countries across six continents with barely an off-season, the women spend much of their lives on the road, crisscrossing time zones and navigating their complicated travel. Knowing when and where they are going to compete is essential to their well-being and injury prevention.In 2019, the WTA began what it thought was to be a 10-year deal for the Finals to be held in Shenzhen, China. When Covid hit the country was shut down. Then, when Steve Simon, the chief executive of the WTA, said the tour would not return to China until it could establish the safety and whereabouts of the former player Peng Shuai, who had disappeared after accusing a high-ranking government official of sexual abuse, the situation became precarious. Peng eventually resurfaced and retracted her claims of abuse.Now the deal is officially dead. The big question is, will it move to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and, if so, when?Current and former players have mixed feelings about moving the Finals to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesThe WTA board supported a move for this year, but it was scuttled before the announcement was made. Simon then traveled to Riyadh during the tour’s China swing earlier this month to work out details. But then war broke out in the Middle East, delaying an announcement.While the ATP Tour is playing its Next Gen ATP Finals in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, starting at the end of November, there has been dissension among the women. Many current players, including Jessica Pegula, Aryna Sabalenka and Ons Jabeur, are willing to go.“Unfortunately, a lot of places don’t pay women a lot of money and, like a lot of women’s sports, we don’t have the luxury to say no to some things,” Pegula, a member of the WTA Players’ Council, said during the U.S. Open.“I think if the money was right and the arrangement was something that we could get behind, where we could go and create change, then I would be OK playing there,” she added.Maria Sakkari said she thought players needed to be more open-minded. “If the WTA can help women there move forward, then it’s a win for both of us,” she said by phone two weeks ago.Some former players don’t agree.“Why would the leading sport for women go to a country with such a poor track record for women’s rights?” Pam Shriver, a 10-time WTA Finals doubles winner with Martina Navratilova, said by phone. “They’re compromising a payout with core values.”Navratilova wants to see progress before play.“I’m all for opening up a dialogue,” Navratilova, also an eight-time WTA Finals singles champion, said by phone. “But I need to see a commitment to women. I want to know their goals and their education plans. You can’t just go in good faith. If they’re just going for money, it’s a big mistake. The WTA will lose credibility for looking the other way and ignoring Saudi’s human rights violations.”Sabalenka and Jabeur are scheduled to join Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz in an exhibition in Saudi Arabia called the Riyadh Season Tennis Cup in December. They will play at Kingdom Arena, which has a seating capacity of about 40,000.The cost of the tournament, including $9 million in total prize money, is to be divided among the WTA, the promoters and the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancún is.Daniel Berehulak for The New York TimesBy comparison, the WTA Finals will be played in a 4,300-seat temporary stadium in Quintana Roo. The venue, on the grounds of the Paradisus Cancún hotel, will also feature two on-site practice courts for the players. Operational costs are estimated to be $6 million, which includes building the stadium. The cost, including $9 million in total prize money, is to be divided among the WTA, the promoters and the state of Quintana Roo, where Cancún is.“Staging the WTA Finals in Cancún was one we could meet and tick off lots of boxes,” said Fabrice Chouquet, a director of the tournament. “The culture, the fans, giving players from around the world the opportunity to be in Mexico, where we have great weather and good conditions to host the event and vibrant hospitality because that’s also the signature of Mexico.”Two years ago, the Finals were held in nearby Guadalajara and won by Garbiñe Muguruza. Last year, after much delay in announcing the venue, the event was moved to the 14,000-seat Dickies arena in Fort Worth, which experienced a dearth of attendance until the final weekend. Caroline Garcia won the title.For more than 20 years from 1979-2000, the year-end championships were played at Madison Square Garden in New York and routinely attracted more than 15,000 fans.This year, total prize money for singles and doubles will be $9 million. If the champion goes undefeated in round-robin play, she will pocket $3 million.This year’s singles competitors include the Australian Open champion Sabalenka, the French Open winner Swiatek, the U.S. Open champ Coco Gauff, the Wimbledon winner Marketa Vondrousova, Elena Rybakina, Pegula, Jabeur and Sakkari. Karolina Muchova was the eighth qualifier, but she was forced to withdraw last week because of a wrist injury, allowing room for Sakkari.Sabalenka, Swiatek and Sakkari are playing for the third straight year, while Pegula, Gauff and Jabeur are second-year competitors. Rybakina and Vondrousova are making their Finals debut this year.One other issue facing the WTA Finals this year is its proximity to the Billie Jean King Cup, the international team competition for women, which begins in Seville, Spain, just two days after the end of the Finals in Cancún. Pegula, Gauff and Swiatek have declined to play in the King Cup. It is the second year that the two signature events have conflicted.“We’ve had our date for a long time,” said King in a video conference this month. “I think we all need to figure out a better calendar for the players and everybody knowing what’s going to happen because you can’t start making these decisions on the Finals in September. It’s only fair.”Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic has a busy end of the season.Sean M. Haffey/Getty ImagesThe issue is requiring masterful juggling, not to mention mental gymnastics, for Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic. After reaching the final in Zhengzhou, China, two weeks ago, Krejcikova flew 1,000 miles to Zhuhai, China, where she was the top seed in last week’s WTA Elite Trophy, a year-end competition for 12 top singles players and six doubles teams who just missed the cut for the WTA Finals.But Krejcikova and her partner, Katerina Siniakova, also qualified for doubles at the WTA Finals, which begins on Sunday. That requires a 9,000-mile trip from Zhuhai to Cancún.Then, as soon as the WTA Finals end, Krejcikova will fly yet another nearly 5,000 miles from Cancún to Seville for the Billie Jean King Cup. But she will at least have company as her Czech teammates Siniakova and Vondrousova are also playing in Cancún and Seville.Regardless of scheduling difficulties, travel headaches and the politics involved in choosing tournament sites, players who qualify for the WTA Finals relish the opportunity to compete.“I always felt that it was a celebration, a reward for a great season,” said Sakkari, who reached the semifinals last year with wins over Sabalenka, Pegula and Jabeur. “It’s huge. There are just seven other players there, and you’re playing against the best of the best. That’s very unique.” More

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      Coco Gauff Won the U.S. Open and Became a Symbol

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      She won the U.S. Open and seized the spotlight as a symbol of her generation.Hours after winning her first United States Open tennis championship, in September, Coco Gauff took her Tiffany trophy for a nighttime swirl around the tournament grounds.Dressed in the summer’s hot color — pink — she lip-synced to the No. 1 single from Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice:“I’m bad like the Barbie/I’m a doll, but I still want to party.”At 19, Gauff met the cultural moment and made it her own.“That’s what great content creators do. They capture the essence of moments,” said Kirby Porter, the founder of New Game Labs, a marketing firm that helps start-ups work with athletes. “First, she embodied that in winning. And then that video? I literally downloaded it, and I was like, ‘Yes, Mood!’ That’s exactly how I feel.”Born into a new generation of athlete creators, Gauff became the M.C. for Gen Z with her unscripted authenticity at this U.S. Open. She not only raised her own profile, but lifted women’s tennis in need of a new celebrity after the retirement of Serena Williams.“To me, it’s been in a lull for a couple of years now, without having any personality,” said Zina Garrison, who at Wimbledon in 1990 became the first Black woman to play a major final since Althea Gibson.“It’s like the Women’s Tennis Association didn’t have an identity, and she’s bringing back the identity,” Garrison said of Gauff.Gauff returning a shot during the 2023 China Open in Beijing this month.Yanshan Zhang/Getty ImagesA relentless defender on the court and a self-assured voice off it, Gauff, who was not available to comment, proved that she is primed to make a long-term impact well beyond sports. Inspired by her grandmother Yvonne Lee Odom, who integrated her Florida high school in 1961, Gauff has used her platform to promote social justice, including Black Lives Matter, gender equity and climate change activism.Now ranked No. 3 in the world, Gauff enters this week’s year-end WTA Finals in Cancun, Mexico, with a more immediate question: Has she recovered from a shoulder injury from a tournament in Beijing this month?After winning 16 straight matches this summer and fall, Gauff lost in the semifinals of the China Open to No. 2-ranked Iga Swiatek. Gauff then withdrew from another tournament in China.Her agent, Alessandro Barel Di Sant Albano of Team8, said in an interview that Gauff had a “minor muscle injury” and that she would be ready for Cancun. “She’s going with the mind-set of, ‘I am going to win this tournament,’ ” he said.Team8 has also been busy fielding calls for her.“There’s been at least 100 brands that have reached out,” Barel Di Sant Albano said, adding that Gauff already had seven partnerships, including New Balance, which created her signature shoe.“We’ve always taken the approach of ‘fewer, bigger, better’ and the idea that it doesn’t come and go away overnight,” he said. “If you focus on what happens on the court, it will become much more off the court down the line.”Gauff taking pictures with fans at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif., in March.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressGauff turned pro in 2018 at age 14. She had her breakthrough the following year at Wimbledon, upsetting Venus Williams in the first round and running to the fourth round in a stunning debut. She also won her first W.T.A. tournament in 2019.Gauff marked that four-year anniversary by posting a video on X, formerly Twitter, of her celebrating the moment with the quote: “I want to hug her.”For Gen Z, the social media scrapbook has the receipts. See: Gauff as a bubbly 8-year-old dancing in the stands at the 2012 U.S. Open to “Call Me Maybe.” Nearly 750,000 people followed her Instagram account in the last three months, a rate of growth that ranks first among female tennis players, according to MVP Index, a valuation and data measurement company that focuses on sponsorships in sports and entertainment.On TikTok, ESPN’s replay of Gauff protesting what she said were her opponent’s delay tactics to the chair umpire in her opening match at the Open went viral, drawing 2.7 million likes.In 2022, viewership on ESPN reached record levels during Serena Williams’s farewell in a third-round loss. How would the Open fill that void?According to ESPN, Gauff’s three-set championship victory against Aryna Sabalenka was ESPN’s most-seen women’s tennis final. It peaked at 3.5 million viewers, according to MVP Index.That far surpassed the peak of the men’s final — 2.7 million — when Novak Djokovic trounced Daniil Medvedev. In a summer of surging interest in women’s sports, including in soccer’s World Cup and the W.N.B.A., Gauff’s championship averaged 2.8 million viewers compared with 2.3 million for the men, MVP Index calculated.She tried to FaceTime her brother Codey after she won. During the trophy presentation, Gauff thanked her parents, poking fun at her father for crying, acknowledged Venus and Serena Williams for inspiring her and thanked the trailblazer Billie Jean King, whom the Open was celebrating for making equal prize money possible for women 50 years ago. Gauff won $3 million.But when Gauff delivered her most memorable message, “the whole tone of her voice changed,” said Garrison, who was doing radio commentary. She went from lighthearted to “I have something to say,” Garrison recalled.That’s when Gauff addressed her critics who thought she would not fulfill her potential. They thought they were throwing water on her fire, but were actually throwing gasoline: “I’m really burning so bright right now,” she said.“We could not have scripted the 2023 U.S. Open any better,” said Stacey Allaster, the tournament director, who credited Gauff for understanding her platform. “And then she leans in and she inspires hundreds and thousands of girls to believe in themselves. Let’s just drop the mic.”Joe Favorito, a sports marketing consultant and a former executive with the W.T.A. and U.S. Tennis Association, wondered why he hadn’t seen more of Gauff in advertisements since the Open.“You have to take advantage of things while the spotlight is on you,” he said. “Those are legacy opportunities.”But Garrison disagreed. “I don’t think you have to push it with Coco,” she said. “She’s not going anywhere. Coco’s here to stay.” More

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      How to Watch the U.S. Open Final: Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka Play for the Championship

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      Gauff, 19, is the first American teenager to reach the singles final in New York since Serena Williams in 2001.Follow live updates on the U.S. Open women’s final between Coco Gauff and Aryna Sabalenka.The U.S. Open women’s singles final is set: Coco Gauff, the 19-year-old American, will play Aryna Sabalenka, the No. 2 seed from Belarus.The championship match, which is scheduled for Saturday at 4 p.m. Eastern, will be Gauff’s first appearance in a U.S. Open final, making her the first American teenager to reach the final in New York since Serena Williams in 2001. Gauff has already played in a Grand Slam final in 2022, when she lost the French Open to Iga Swiatek.Sabalenka, 25, will also be playing in a U.S. Open final for the first time after reaching the semifinals of the tournament in 2021 and 2022. Sabalenka has performed well at Grand Slams this year. She won the Australian Open in January for her first Grand Slam title, and she reached the semifinals of the French Open and Wimbledon.Here’s what to know about the match.Their roads to the final.Before the semifinals, Sabalenka had sailed through the tournament, winning her first five matches without dropping a set. That streak ended in the semifinal on Thursday against Madison Keys, who took the first set from Sabalenka 6-0 in a swift 30 minutes. But Sabalenka fought back, winning the next two sets on tiebreakers.Gauff’s matches have not been as straightforward. She played a full three sets in the first round against Laura Siegemund, in the third round against Elise Mertens and in the fourth round against Caroline Wozniacki.But since then, Gauff has had back-to-back straight sets wins. In the quarterfinals against Jelena Ostapenko she won 6-0, 6-2, in just over an hour. In the semifinals, Gauff beat Karolina Muchova 6-4, 7-5.Gauff leads the head-to-head.Sabalenka and Gauff have played against each other five times, and Gauff has won three of those matches. The final will be the first time the two have played each other at a Grand Slam tournament.Sabalenka won their most recent match in straight sets in the quarterfinals of Indian Wells earlier this year. After her match on Thursday, Sabalenka said that she hadn’t thought about that win because Gauff had improved since then.Gauff arrived at the U.S. Open this year after winning titles in Washington, D.C., and at the Western & Southern Open in Ohio.“It’s a different player,” Sabalenka said. “Going into this final, I think I just have to focus on myself and prepare myself for another fight. No matter what, just keep fighting and keep playing my best and do my best.”There’s a spotlight on Gauff.Since Gauff turned pro at 14, she has been under a near-constant spotlight and has often been described as an heir apparent to Serena Williams. Gauff affirmed those descriptions for many when she reached her first Grand Slam singles final last year at the French Open at just 18 years old.Now, as the last American woman standing in the tournament, the focus is on Gauff yet again. Gauff said after her match on Thursday that she had been avoiding social media to block out the expectations people have for her.“I have just been really focusing on myself,” she said. “I really believe that now I have the maturity and ability to do it. Regardless of what happens on Saturday, I’m really proud of how I have been handling the last few weeks.”Still, Gauff is seeking her first Grand Slam tournament title, and after winning on Thursday, she said on court that the “job’s not done yet,” a reference to the basketball star Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash in 2020.“That’s the mentality that I have,” Gauff said. “I’m trying to enjoy the moment, but also knowing I still have more work to do. Yes, the final is an incredible achievement, but it’s something that I’m not satisfied with yet.”Don’t count out Sabalenka.After losing the first set of her semifinal match on Thursday without winning a single game, Sabalenka found herself down 4-2 in the second set against Keys. But Sabalenka willed her way back, forcing a tiebreaker in the second set, and then again in the third set.“I’m really proud that I was able to turn around this match,” Sabalenka said.Thursday night was not the first time Sabalenka had pulled off such a comeback. At last year’s tournament, Sabalenka was down — 2-6, 1-5 — in a second-round match against Kaia Kanepi. The match had been Kanepi’s to lose until Sabalenka fought back to win the second set and then the third.Sabalenka said the best way to practice comebacks is in tournaments, but even in practice, she will visualize being down 4-1 in a set.A world No. 1 spot awaits.Even if Sabalenka were to lose the final on Saturday, she would become the new women’s world No. 1 on Monday when the WTA rankings are updated. Sabalenka is guaranteed the top spot after Swiatek, who reigned as the No. 1 player for 75 weeks, was eliminated from the U.S. Open in the fourth round.After her fourth-round match against Daria Kasatkina on Monday, Sabalenka said she wasn’t thinking about the No. 1 spot yet.“I don’t want to celebrate anything before the end of the U.S. Open,” she said. “I just want to focus on this tournament more than on world No. 1.” More