Zverev, Alexander

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    Alexander Zverev’s On- and Off-Court Drama

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    He’s a diligent player. He has also recently worked through an abuse claim and an on-court tantrum — and a serious injury at last year’s French Open.When Alexander Zverev left the French Open last year, it was in a wheelchair. He was in tears.After tearing ligaments in his right ankle while running for a ball, Zverev was forced to retire in the semifinals to the eventual champion, Rafael Nadal. Zverev had hopes of winning his first major title after twice winning the ATP Finals and capturing a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics. He was also the runner-up at the 2020 United States Open.Zverev has faced plenty of adversity, much of it self-inflicted. A public feud with a former agent over money was settled out of court. Allegations of domestic abuse by a former girlfriend dogged him for about two years, prompting an investigation by the ATP, which eventually found no substantial evidence of the claims. And after throwing an on-court tantrum following a doubles loss last year, Zverev was fined $40,000 and put on 12 months of probation for “unsportsmanlike conduct.”Yet Zverev remains one of the most diligent workers on tour.The following interview has been edited and condensed.You are known for your physical strength on court. But the game is mental, too. Which is harder for you?I always feel like when I do the work, I am mentally prepared as well. Once I’ve done everything I can to be ready to win, there’s nothing to be nervous about. If you don’t play well, you don’t play well. Sometimes things happen out of your control in any sport, especially in tennis because it’s a singular sport.You’ve been super competitive since you were a child. How much of that has helped you on the ATP Tour?I hated losing. That has helped me because when somebody younger or better was coming up, I tried to outwork them. When I work more than everybody else, I’m going to be better than everybody else. Which isn’t always the right thing. I’ve learned that with age.Alexander Zverev at the Madrid Open. Zverev has defeated some of his fiercest peers, including Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Carlos Alcaraz.Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEverybody talks about your father’s influence on your game, but wasn’t it your mother who taught you technique?She had a bigger effect on me than my dad did, because she was the one who taught me the game from a young age. More people talk about my father because he’s my true coach now, along with Sergi Bruguera. But my mother had a much bigger influence than my father.Of all the men you’ve beaten — Nadal, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Daniil Medvedev — who is the most difficult?They all have their own difficulty. When Rafa’s playing well on clay, he’s unbeatable. I’ve played Novak on a lot of surfaces, but when he is in the zone, he is also very difficult. With Roger, everything just happens so fast. You feel like you’ve just started the match, and you’re already down a set and a break, and you have absolutely no idea how it happened. Medvedev just doesn’t miss. It doesn’t matter what position in the court you put him in, he’s always going to put the ball back, so you have to win the matches yourself. And Carlos Alcaraz, with him it’s obviously the power. You honestly can’t name one that is most difficult.With everything you’ve been through over the last several years, from your personal problems to your injury, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself?When you’re young, you’re naïve. You think everybody’s your best friend, that they’re there because they really like you. But tennis is a business, which, unfortunately, is not always the nicest thing in the world. I have a very close circle. I don’t let people in that much anymore. I only have people who I truly 100 percent trust. I had to learn to go into myself, to get the noise out of my head to be able to compete.What about this game gives you the greatest joy?It’s that you’re really you. You win by yourself, you lose by yourself. You can’t hide behind your teammates. A lot of players say they play for the money and they don’t really love tennis. I’m somebody who absolutely loves what I do. I can’t imagine doing anything else. For me, there’s no better life. More

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      Tennis Injuries Present Top Players with Serious Challenges

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      Getting hurt is part of the game, but sometimes it can take years for top players to return to form.It didn’t take long for Alexander Zverev to realize his situation was dire.After hours of scintillating shot-making, Zverev and Rafael Nadal were set to begin a second tiebreaker in their semifinal match at last year’s French Open.But suddenly, Zverev ran wide for a forehand, rolled his right ankle on its side and let out a bellow. He stumbled to the ground, red clay caked to the back of his black sleeveless top, and cupped his ankle in his hands.“I knew immediately that I was done because my ankle was basically three times the size it normally is,” said Zverev by phone of the injury that took him from tennis for the rest of 2022 and dropped his ATP ranking from No. 2 to outside the top 20. “It wasn’t a nice feeling.”Zverev is hardly the first player to be forced into an extended layoff because of a serious injury.His opponent that day, Nadal, hasn’t played a tour match since he hurt the psoas muscle between his lower abdomen and upper right leg during the Australian Open in January. After repeated attempts to rehab the injury over the last four months, Nadal — who has also suffered from chronic foot pain, a cracked rib and a torn abdominal muscle in the last 18 months — withdrew from the French Open on May 18. He is the 14-time Roland Garros champion and has played the tournament every year since 2005. He also indicated that he does not plan to play Wimbledon and that 2024 will likely be his last year on the professional tour.Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open in January, where he injured his psoas muscle. He recently announced that he will not compete in the French Open. Manan Vatsyayana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesEmma Raducanu, who won the 2021 United States Open, has been frequently injured ever since, and recently underwent surgery on both of her wrists and one ankle. Andy Murray, a Wimbledon and U.S. Open champion, announced before the 2019 Australian Open that he would retire after the tournament, only to come back, first playing doubles, then returning to singles following a successful hip resurfacing surgery.Bianca Andreescu, who beat Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open, has suffered injuries to her adductor, ankle, foot, back, and right shoulder, causing her to question whether she should stop competing. And Stan Wawrinka, a three-time major champion, contemplated retirement following multiple surgeries on his knee and ankle. Once ranked world No. 3, Wawrinka is now fighting to stay in the top 100.Injuries, surgery and rehab are dreaded words in any athlete’s vocabulary. For professional tennis players, who are not protected by a team sport’s comprehensive rehabilitation coverage but are instead treated as independent contractors, working their way back onto the ATP and WTA Tours can be grueling physically, mentally and even financially.“I had never experienced an injury from the time I started, and I played with high intensity every day,” said Dominic Thiem by phone. Thiem, who beat Zverev to win the 2020 U.S. Open, suffered a debilitating wrist injury in June 2021 and was sidelined for months. Once ranked No. 3, Thiem lost seven straight matches when he first returned to the ATP Tour, and his ranking plummeted to No. 352, forcing him to play lower-level Challenger tournaments.“With an injury, the whole system comes to a stop,” said Thiem, who is now ranked just inside the top 100. “You can’t do your job, and you no longer have a clear plan. After I returned, it was like never before. You have to lower your expectations, but that’s very tough because for all those years you set for yourself a certain standard, not only from the tournaments you play, but also how you feel the ball. Basically, everything changes.”The process of returning from a layoff can be just as difficult as the injury itself. Readjusting to the rigors of constant travel and the pressure of playing matches at all hours of the day and night, along with worrying about the possibility of reinjury, can impact a player’s recovery.Andreescu knows that. Plagued by back troubles through much of 2022, she had finally begun to rebound at the Miami Open in March. But during her fourth-round match against Ekaterina Alexandrova, Andreescu tumbled to the court, clutching her left leg and screaming in agony.“I’ve never felt pain like that,” Andreescu said by phone as she prepared to return to the tour three weeks later in Madrid. “The next morning I knew what happened, but I was just hoping that I was waking up from a bad dream. Then I felt the pain, and I knew this was real.”Andreescu has rehabbed her body many times before, but she is also convinced that the mind-body connection is just as important.Bianca Andreescu at the 2023 Miami Open. Andreescu has suffered multiple injuries since beating Serena Williams to win the 2019 U.S. Open.Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via Reuters“I believe that everything starts in the head and that we create our own stress and, in a way, our own injuries,” she said. “There can be freak accidents, but if you can get your mind right, then it’s easier to come back from those injuries.”The WTA takes injury prevention and rehabilitation seriously. The tour has programming and staff devoted specifically to athletes’ physical and psychological well-being. According to Carole Doherty, the WTA’s senior vice president, sport science and medicine, all its players receive comprehensive medical care, with services that include cardiology, checkups with dermatologists, bone-density exams, and nutrition and hydration advice.When a WTA player is out injured, or pregnant, for at least eight consecutive weeks, she can apply for a Special Ranking, which means that upon her return she will be ranked where she left off and can enter eight tournaments over a 52-week span with that ranking. The ATP has a similar protocol called Protected Ranking.Becky Ahlgren Bedics, the WTA’s vice president of mental health and performance, is keenly aware of the psychological toll an injury can take.“Injuries take you out of training and competition and force you to regroup and prioritize your life differently,” said Bedics, who encourages players who are off the tour to delete WTA rankings from their phones, so they won’t see where they stand as compared with their peers. “It’s tough for an athlete whose only thought is, ‘How can I get back, and what happens if I don’t?’”Bedics and her mental health team encourage players to manage their expectations upon their return to play.“There are so many stressors in this game, including financial ones,” Bedics added. “Our athletes are typically very young and not going to be doing this for 50 years. Sometimes they are supporting their families. So, what we help them do is listen to ‘what is,’ not ‘what ifs.’ We want them to look forward, but also to look backward to see how far they’ve come.”Daria Saville tore her ACL while competing in Tokyo last September. “Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” she said.Kiyoshi Ota/Getty ImagesDaria Saville understands the play-for-pay nature of tennis. She has suffered from repeated Achilles’ tendon and plantar fasciitis issues since 2016. She had surgery after the 2021 Australian Open, which kept her from playing for nearly a year. Then, while competing in Tokyo last September, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament, requiring more surgery.“Every time I get injured, I think about my life and wonder what it will be like without tennis,” said Saville, who also had ACL surgery in 2013. “On tour, life is not so hard. Everything is done for you, so you don’t have to overthink. The worst thing that happens is you play bad and lose a match.”Fortunately, for Saville, the financial burdens have been lessened by the support she receives from her national federation, Tennis Australia, which pays for her physiotherapist and strength and conditioning coaches. She also gets pep talks from her coach, the former tour player Nicole Pratt.When Thiem thinks back on his wrist injury, he connects the dots to when he won the U.S. Open. Having achieved that goal, Thiem said, he suddenly lost his passion and motivation to play, prompting him to practice with a decreased level of intensity, ultimately leading to the injury. Trying to come back has been difficult.“I can’t forget,” Thiem said, “that all the time when I didn’t play, the other players were playing, they were practicing and improving and moving ahead of me. That makes it even harder to come back.” More

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      Investigation Into Alexander Zverev Finds Insufficient Evidence for Abuse Claims

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      The ATP Tour won’t discipline Zverev after a 15-month investigation into allegations made by his former girlfriend.The men’s professional tennis tour will not punish Alexander Zverev, the German star, in connection with allegations that he assaulted his girlfriend in 2019.After a 15-month investigation, the ATP Tour announced Tuesday that there was insufficient evidence to substantiate the allegations and that it would take no disciplinary action against Zverev.The ATP commissioned the investigation after Zverev’s former girlfriend Olya Sharypova, a Russian former tennis player, said that Zverev repeatedly abused her during confrontations in New York, Shanghai, Monaco and Geneva.The investigation was conducted by The Lake Forest Group, a third-party consultant, working with the ATP’s outside legal counsel, the Florida-based firm Smith Hulsey & Busey. The ATP issued a news release but did not publish a full report.Zverev and Sharypova both cooperated with the investigation, which included extensive interviews with them, as well as family members, friends and other tennis players. Investigators also reviewed text messages, audio files and photos, some of which came from a forensic analysis of Zverev’s phone. Sharypova did not file criminal charges against Zverev.Zverev has denied the allegations and said he supported the ATP carrying out an investigation. The allegations appeared both on social media and in a lengthy article in Slate published in 2021.“From the beginning, I have maintained my innocence and denied the baseless allegations made against me,” Zverev said in a statement Tuesday. “I welcomed and fully cooperated with the ATP’s investigation and am grateful for the organization’s time and attention in this matter.”Zverev has also sued Slate, and a German court ruled after a preliminary hearing that the evidence presented in the article was not sufficient under German law to justify the impact on him. That decision stated the article needed to have enough balance that it did not leave the impression that Zverev was guilty of the acts Sharypova accused him of committing.Zverev, the Olympic gold medalist in men’s singles in 2021, continued to play during the investigation and recorded some of his biggest wins during that time, including at the tour’s season-ending ATP Finals. He severely injured an ankle in June 2022 in the semifinals of the French Open but returned to playing competitively late in the fall; he played in January in the Australian Open, where he lost in the second round. After the loss, he said he had yet to regain his fitness or his form from before the injury.“I am grateful that this is finally resolved and my priority now is recovering from injury and concentrating on what I love most in this world — tennis,” he said in his statement Tuesday.Sharypova did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the investigation. In 2021, she said she did not want to discuss her story, writing in a message, “I don’t want to live in my memories of the past anymore, because it’s too hard for me. I want to live in the present and be engaged in making myself happy.”Massimo Calvelli, the chief executive of the ATP, said the tour had pursued an “exhaustive process” in the investigation. He said the investigation had “shown the need for us to be more responsive on safeguarding matters,” including protection of players, their partners and anyone directly connected with the tour. The ATP plans to hire a director of safeguarding in the near future. More

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      Nick Kyrgios to Appear in Court on Assault Allegation in Australia

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      The accusation landed on the eve of perhaps the most important match of Kyrgios’s controversy-filled career, a quarterfinal showdown with Cristian Garín.WIMBLEDON, England — The spotlight on the Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios, whose confrontations with opponents and Wimbledon officials have made his matches can’t-miss theater for the past week, grew hotter Tuesday when news emerged that the police have begun legal proceedings against him after a former girlfriend accused him of assaulting her in December.The accusations landed on the eve of one of his most important matches, a quarterfinal showdown with Cristian Garín of Chile that he is favored to win, and less than 24 hours after he survived a five-set challenge from the American Brandon Nakashima on Monday.That match was largely uneventful by Kyrgios standards, mostly lacking the battles with umpires, the racket smashing and even the spitting in the direction of fans that often occur when Kyrgios signs up for a tournament.After the 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-2 win Monday, Kyrgios spoke of how good he felt, how he had reached a kind of equilibrium in his life after years of turmoil and how he has been able to enjoy moments on the tennis court in a way he rarely has in the past.“That’s probably the first time in my career where I wasn’t playing well, regardless of playing Centre Court Wimbledon, fully packed crowd, I was able to just say, ‘Wow, look how far I’ve come,’ to myself,” he said. “I was bouncing the ball before I served. I really just smiled to myself. I was like, ‘We’re here, we’re competing at Wimbledon, putting in a good performance mentally.’”Hours later, news broke in Australia that Kyrgios had been charged with one count of common assault related to an incident with an ex-girlfriend, Chiara Passari, according to The Canberra Times and a statement from the police. Kyrgios is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 2.“While Mr. Kyrgios is committed to addressing any and all allegations once clear, taking the matter seriously does not warrant any misreading of the process Mr. Kyrgios is required to follow,” Pierre Johannessen, a lawyer for Kyrgios, said in a statement Tuesday evening.Kyrgios did not register for a practice court on Tuesday, unlike the other players who have qualified for quarterfinals, including his opponent, Garín.On Instagram, where Kyrgios is active and has posted statements during previous controversies, he posted a picture of himself speaking with a young girl at a tennis tournament and added the caption, “This is why I play ❤️ to all my youngsters out there, believe in yourself.”The charge against Kyrgios — he is accused of grabbing Passari during a dispute — carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.The charge creates an awkward situation for Wimbledon, but also the ATP, which organizes the men’s professional tour.A spokesperson for the All England Club said Tuesday: “We have been made aware of legal proceedings involving Nick Kyrgios in Australia, and as they are ongoing, we are not in a position to offer a comment. We are in touch with Nick’s team and he remains scheduled to play his quarterfinal match tomorrow.”The ATP in the past has waited for the legal process to unfold before penalizing a player for behavior off the court.But it came under pressure to take action after allegations surfaced that Alexander Zverev had attacked a former girlfriend twice in hotel rooms during tournaments, even though the woman had not filed charges with the police and said she would not do so. Zverev has denied the allegations.The ATP, which did not comment on the Kyrgios charge because, a spokesman said, the legal process is not resolved, announced last year that it was conducting an independent investigation of Zverev. The organization has not announced anything related to it other than to say it was continuing. Zverev continued to compete on the tour until he injured an ankle in a semifinal match at the French Open last month against Rafael Nadal.Tournament officials at Wimbledon have fined Kyrgios $14,000 for two infractions this year: $10,000 after spitting in the direction of a fan after his first-round win and $4,000 fine for using an obscenity in his third-round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas.He has also violated Wimbledon rules against having colored clothing by walking onto the court wearing — though not playing in — red sneakers and baseball caps that have been black or red.“More attention for me,” he said Monday when asked about a potential penalty for the dress code violation. “What’s that saying? Any publicity is good publicity, right?” More

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      Nadal Reaches French Open Final on Zverev’s Abrupt Injury

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      Rafael Nadal and Alexander Zverev had taken more than three hours to get toward the end of a second set. Then Zverev twisted his right ankle and had to stop.PARIS — Sweat dripping off their faces as the grueling rallies piled up, Rafael Nadal and Alexander Zverev played for more than three hours in the Paris humidity and appeared set, whether they liked it or not, to play for hours more.Égalité, the French word for deuce, began to sound more like a mantra than the score as the chair umpire kept repeating it, game after close game.But then suddenly, this French Open semifinal, which looked ready to run and run, came to an abrupt and painful halt as Zverev, the tall and lanky German star, rolled his right ankle chasing a Nadal forehand late in the second set.Zverev screamed, released his racket and tumbled to the red clay. Nadal who had just won the point, quickly stopped pumping his fist and crossed to Zverev’s side of the net and stood nearby. He was somber as Zverev was helped to his feet and carted off the Philippe Chatrier Court in a wheelchair in tears for treatment and examination.It was tough to observe and surely much tougher to experience for a 25-year-old man like Zverev who was within range of his first Grand Slam title and the No. 1 ranking.Several minutes later, he reappeared on crutches, his right foot bare and his eyes red from crying, with Nadal walking by his side, to inform the chair umpire that he was retiring with Nadal leading, 7-6 (8), 6-6.Nadal, already a 13-time French Open champion, is back in the final at Roland Garros, which has come to feel like a Parisian rite of spring. But this was certainly not the way he wanted to celebrate victory on his 36th birthday.“Of course, for me, as everybody knows, being in the final of Roland Garros one more time is a dream without a doubt,” Nadal said in his on-court interview. “But at the same time, to finish that way, I have been there in the small room with Sascha before we came back on court, and to see him crying there is a very tough moment. So just all the best to him and all the team.”Nadal, who first won the French Open at 19 in 2005, is now the oldest men’s singles finalist at Roland Garros since Bill Tilden in 1930. Nadal could become the oldest man ever to win the title if he defeats the No. 8 seed, Casper Ruud, on Sunday.Ruud, 23, became the first Norwegian man to reach a Grand Slam singles final with a victory, 3-6, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2, over No. 20 Marin Cilic, the 2014 U.S. Open champion who has been resurgent in Paris at age 33.The match was interrupted for about 15 minutes when a young protester attached herself to the net during the sixth game of the third set. In a statement, the French Tennis Federation said that “the security team needed to formally identify the objects she used to get onto the court before they could remove her.”Both players left the court, but when they returned, Ruud, the more natural clay-court master, maintained control as Cilic’s unforced-error count kept climbing.It will be the first meeting on tour for Ruud and Nadal, but they know each other well. Ruud has trained regularly at Nadal’s academy in Mallorca for several years, and Nadal has been his inspiration for his skill, sportsmanship and combative spirit.“He’s been my idol for all my life,” said Ruud, who has played numerous practice sets with Nadal.Asked how many of Nadal’s 13 French Open finals he had watched, he replied, “probably all of them,” reeling off the names of most of his opponents.Ruud, whose father and coach, Christian, is a former professional player, had not been past the fourth round in a Grand Slam tournament until now. He rose into the top 10 last year for the first time on the strength of his victories in regular tour events.But he took full advantage of his spot in the more welcoming bottom half of the men’s draw in this French Open and now will try to do what no man has ever managed defeat Nadal in a French Open final.“It might sound like an impossible task. But of course I will give it a shot like the other 13 people before me,” Ruud said. “We all know what a great champion he is and how well he plays in the biggest moments and the biggest matches. I’m just going to try to enjoy it. I will be the underdog, and I will try to tonight and tomorrow night dream about great winners and unbelievable rallies, because that’s what it’s going to take if I want to have any chance, and I will need to play my best tennis ever.”Nadal managed to come through the gantlet in the top half, defeating Felix Auger-Aliassime in the fourth round in five sets and then ripping his forehand with vintage depth and precision in the quarterfinals to defeat his longtime rival Novak Djokovic.The third-seeded Zverev, who had played some of his finest and gutsiest tennis in a quarterfinal victory over the Spanish teenager Carlos Alcaraz, was another big hurdle, all the more so under a closed center-court roof that traps the humidity — call it the greenhouse effect — on a rainy day like Friday.The heavy conditions keep Nadal’s extreme topspin from kicking quite so high off the clay, but he adapted by using slices and drop shots to bring Zverev forward out of his comfort zone.“Lots of people think incorrectly that slow conditions are better for clay-court specialists,” Nadal said. “But it’s quite the contrary. Slower conditions and heavier balls favor the guy who hits it flatter with the more direct strokes..”The lack of wind under cover also helps a powerful server like Zverev. At 6-foot-6, he has one of the best first serves in the game (the second one is quite a bit shakier), and he had beaten Nadal in three of their four previous encounters, two of them indoors.But Zverev, for all his evident talent and his Olympic gold medal from Tokyo last year, has yet to beat Nadal or the other members of the Big Three — Djokovic and Roger Federer — in a Grand Slam tournament in which singles matches are best-of-five sets instead of best-of-three.“He started the match playing amazing,” Nadal said. “I know how much it means to him, to fight to win his first Grand Slam.”The first set was one of the closest and longest imaginable in the tiebreaker format, lasting 91 minutes with breaks of serve and extended rallies the rule. Nadal was dripping sweat after just a few games, and the set would have ended much more quickly if Zverev had been able to convert more of the big opportunities he created with his serving and phenomenal two-handed backhand that Nadal termed “probably the best in the game.” (Others would surely still vote for Djokovic’s two-hander.)But Zverev’s finishing skills, particularly in the forecourt and at the net, are still hit or miss. Serving at 4-3 and up a break, Zverev moved forward to put away a short forehand and clubbed it wide as his racket slipped out of his hand to face a break point, which he lost by missing another short ball.It was a big opportunity squandered and hardly the last. Up 6-2 in the tiebreaker, Zverev failed to convert four set points as Nadal rallied and closed out the set on his sixth set point with a fast-twitch forehand passing shot winner down the line that left even Nadal standing statue-still for a moment in surprise. The shot also left a few spectators, most of whom were Nadalites on Friday, with both hands on their heads in disbelief.It was a big finish to an up-and-down set, and to Zverev’s credit, he got right back to work and to pushing Nadal to his considerable limits from the baseline. One exchange in the third game of the second set lasted 44 strokes before Zverev cracked. After just over three hours of play, Zverev was on the cusp of another tiebreaker, but there would be no more tennis in this match after his injury.It remains unclear how badly injured Zverev is or how long he will be out of the game: Wimbledon begins in little more than three weeks. But there is no doubt what comes next for Nadal: a chance at No. 14 against a Norwegian of all things.Endure long enough and all sorts of surprises await. More

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      Alexander Zverev Beats Carlos Alcaraz at the French Open

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      PARIS — Alexander Zverev, the No. 3 seed, returned to the semifinals of the French Open with a 6-4, 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (7) victory over Carlos Alcaraz on Tuesday, ending the Spanish 19-year-old’s stirring run at Roland Garros.Zverev, a 25-year-old German, also snuffed out Alcaraz’s rousing comeback in this quarterfinal. Zverev, beaten by Alcaraz in the Madrid Open final ahead of the French Open, was the more consistent and convincing player for nearly three sets. “I think letting him go ahead in the match and letting him get the confidence was going to be a very difficult thing for me to come back from,” Zverev said.But Alcaraz, on the brink of being quickly eliminated, did lift his game. As usual, that was quite a sight, as he produced delicate drop shots, audacious returns, reflexive volleys and full-cut forehand winners that left the 6-foot-6 Zverev staring wistfully at the ball marks on the red clay court.Alcaraz, like the top-seeded Novak Djokovic, is half tennis player, half gymnast. And with a flurry of brilliant and acrobatic tennis, Alcaraz, the No. 6 seed, took the third set. With another surge late in the fourth set, he broke Zverev’s serve when he was serving for the match at 5-4. This all-court duel, by this stage, was well worthy of a tiebreaker, and both men produced excellence under duress yet also cracked.Alcaraz had a set point at 6-5 in the tiebreaker and failed to convert it when he made an unforced error with his backhand into the top of the net. Zverev missed a backhand of his own on his first match point during the tiebreaker.It was now 7-7 and the chants of “Carlos, Carlos” were only getting louder. But Zverev, with the crowd and the flow against him, steeled himself, winning the next two points to close out the match. He finished off the victory with a bold backhand return winner down the line that Alcaraz, one of the quickest men in tennis, could not come close to reaching.“It is one shot I like, it’s true,” Zverev said, grinning throughout his post-match news conference, which he started by raising both his arms in triumph.“I’ve done it a lot in my career,” he said of his backhand return winner. “But I had to win the match myself, I felt I was going to either miss it by a country mile or hit a winner, and I hit a winner, which I’m quite pleased about.”Alcaraz, in the midst of a breakthrough season, has still played in only four Grand Slam tournaments.“I leave the court, leave the tournament with the head very high,” he said. “I fight until the last ball. I fought until the last second of the match, and I’m proud of it.”But the best-of-five-set format remains another type of challenge than the best-of-three-set variety played on the regular tour. For now, Alcaraz’s best results in the majors are quarterfinal runs at the U.S. Open last year and now in Paris.“I didn’t start well, and in this level, quarterfinal of a Grand Slam, you are playing against the best players in the world, so you have to start the match better than I did today,” Alcaraz said. “I have to take the lesson. I mean, I have to improve to the next Grand Slam or next matches. But I would say I’m not far away to reach a semifinal or be able to win a Grand Slam.”Zverev, a semifinalist at Roland Garros last year, clearly felt the odds were against him on Tuesday in light of Alcaraz’s recent results. Alcaraz had won the Barcelona and Madrid titles back-to-back on red clay and resumed rolling at Roland Garros after saving a match point against his Spanish compatriot Albert Ramos-Viñolas in the second round.“I knew I had to play my absolutely best tennis today from the start, and I’m happy I did that,” Zverev said. “Obviously he kept on coming back. He’s an incredible player. I told him at the net, he’s going to win this tournament a lot of times, not only once, and I just hope I can win it before he starts beating us all, and we’ll have no chance at all.”Zverev, despite his fine performance (and evident relief) on Tuesday, is still a long way from winning his first Grand Slam singles title. In the semifinals, he will face the winner of Tuesday’s second match: a night session between Djokovic and the fifth-seeded Rafael Nadal, who has won the French Open a record 13 times.“It’s not really getting easier from here,” said Zverev, still looking delighted. “But I said a lot of times, I’m not 20 or 21 years old anymore; I’m 25. I am at the stage where I want to win, I’m at the stage where I’m supposed to win, as well.” More

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      Two High Seeds Need Five-Set Thrillers to Win at French Open

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      Alexander Zverev and Carlos Alcaraz saved match points in the men’s singles tournament before turning things around.PARIS — The thrills were separated only by a short stroll through the formal gardens at the French Open on Wednesday.First, Alexander Zverev saved a match point and won in five sets on the main Philippe Chatrier Court. Then, Carlos Alcaraz did the very same thing on Simonne Mathieu Court, covering the red clay like few men have ever covered it at Roland Garros as he sprinted into the corners and seemingly beyond.The fresh-look French Open, revamped to the point that old hands could use a guided tour to avoid running into a new wall or a freshly planted shrub, has certainly not lost its capacity to test its combatants to the limit.The old guard, led by the world No. 1 Novak Djokovic and the 13-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal, has had it relatively easy so far in the men’s tournament, but the leaders of the new wave have been right on the edge of breaking.On Tuesday night in the first round, the No. 4 seed, Stefanos Tsitsipas, champion in Monte Carlo and finalist in Rome, had to rally from two sets down to shake free of Lorenzo Musetti, a young Italian whose one-handed backhand is pretty enough for the Uffizi but whose legs do not yet seem sturdy enough for the rigors of best-of-five-set matches.There are calls to scrap best-of-five altogether from those who consider it ill-suited to the digital age of social media highlights and entertainment overload.But the format favors the better players over the long run and certainly worked plenty of long-form magic in the second round on Wednesday. Zverev, the No. 3 seed, dueled with Sebastian Baez for 3 hours 36 minutes before prevailing, 2-6, 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, 7-5, after saving a match point with a big and bold serve up the T that Baez failed to return in the 10th game of the final set.“You just have to find a way,” said Zverev, who is 8-1 in five-set matches at Roland Garros, which is both good news and bad news (perhaps he should not be going the distance quite so often).“Some players, the greats, Rafa, Novak and Roger, always find a way in the most difficult moments,” he added. “That’s why they are who they are. I’m never going to be at that level, but I’m just trying to get closer to them.”Alcaraz, the No. 6 seed, dueled with his Spanish compatriot Albert Ramos Viñolas for 4 hours 34 minutes in what certainly looked like the match of the tournament so far.The Mathieu Court is nicknamed the Greenhouse because it was built amid botanical gardens and is surrounded by exotic plants. But the Funhouse may have been more fitting in this instance as Alcaraz extended rallies far beyond the probable with his foot speed and improvisational skills on the run that recall Nadal in his vamos-barking, scissor-kicking youth.It was not Alcaraz’s best match of 2022. Far from it. But it certainly looked like his grittiest as he found a way to advance, 6-1, 6-7 (7), 5-7, 7-6 (2), 6-4.“These are the kinds of matches that help you grow in your career,” said Alcaraz, a 19-year-old who started the season being considered a star of the future but has become a star of the present instead.He has won four titles, including the Miami Open on hardcourts and the Barcelona Open and Madrid Open on clay. He beat Nadal and Djokovic back to back in Madrid before taking a break to rest and recover for Paris.For all his self-evident talent, it is quite a challenge to arrive at a Grand Slam tournament in your teens as one of the favorites. And Alcaraz often did look tighter than usual on Wednesday: forcing the issue with his groundstrokes and drop shots, rather than waiting for the prime time to strike.Meanwhile, Ramos, a 34-year-old lefthander with a yen for clay, expertly changed pace and shuffled tactics. Ramos looks like a lightweight — slight to the point of gaunt — but his full-cut, inside-out forehand is a heavyweight’s punch, and he overwhelmed even Alcaraz with it time and time again.But after carefully and cleverly building the platform for an upset, Ramos could not quite finish the construction job. Serving for the victory at 5-4 in the fourth set, he had a match point and tightened up just enough on his forehand to hit the tape instead of clearing the net.Two points later, Alcaraz evened the set at 5-5 and then dominated the tiebreaker after failing to convert three set points in the 12th game.The momentum seemed clearly with the youngster, but Ramos, to his credit, refused to buy into that line of reasoning, jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the fifth set before Alcaraz roared back to 3-3 with his rare blend of offense and defense.They traded breaks of serve again, but Alcaraz was not done running and digging. With Ramos serving again, Alcaraz produced his most dazzling defense of the match: stretching to slap a forehand in one corner and then sprinting across the clay to extend the rally again, which gave Ramos, understandably on edge by now, the chance to miss a volley in the net.“Great point,” Alcaraz said. “Long match. To be able to run like this and get the point like I did, it’s amazing.”The comeback was still not complete, however, and in a match full of abrupt shifts in momentum, another turn was hardly out of the question in the Funhouse. But Alcaraz instead made it no fun at all for Ramos. With the crowd chanting “Carlos” between points, he served out the victory at love with a forehand winner and three aces.Next challenge: Sebastian Korda, a 21-year-old American whose star is also rising and who is the only man to have beaten Alcaraz on clay this season, defeating him in three sets in the second round of the Monte Carlo Masters last month.“I’ve obviously played a lot of matches on clay and played many more hours on the court since then,” Alcaraz said. “I am feeling good.”So is Korda, who defeated the French veteran Richard Gasquet, 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-3, on Wednesday in 2 hours 19 minutes.It would come as no surprise if his rematch with Alcaraz took quite a bit longer than that. More

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      In Tennis, Racket Smashing Gets Out of Hand

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      Long accepted as an entertaining idiosyncrasy of the sport, the act of hurling one’s racket has led to some close calls, as ball people and chair umpires dodge injury.After blowing a golden opportunity to break his opponent’s serve late in the second set of his match on Monday at the Miami Open, Jenson Brooksby, the rising American star, whacked his foot with his racket several times in frustration.It was progress for Brooksby, who earlier in the tournament had escaped an automatic disqualification that many tennis veterans — and his opponent — thought was justified after he angrily hurled his racket to the court and it skittered into the feet of a ball person standing behind the baseline.Gets away with it. #Brooksby pic.twitter.com/QGRFA5Uy5w— Tennis GIFs 🎾🎥 (@tennis_gifs) March 24, 2022
      A week earlier, Nick Kyrgios, the temperamental Australian, narrowly missed hitting a ball boy in the face when he flung his racket to the ground following a three-set loss in the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Calif. The ATP punished Kyrgios with a $20,000 fine and another $5,000 for uttering an obscenity on the court, but he was allowed to play a few days later in Miami.Kyrgios was at it again on Tuesday during his fourth-round match against Italy’s Jannik Sinner. He threw his racket to the court on his way to losing a first-set tiebreaker, prompting a warning and a point penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct as he shouted at the umpire, Carlos Bernardes. Then, during the changeover, he battered his racket four times against the ground, earning a game penalty.“Do we have to wait until someone starts bleeding?” an exasperated Patrick McEnroe, the former pro and tennis commentator, said recently when asked about the flying rackets.Racket-smashing tantrums have long been accepted as part of the game. Like hockey fights, they are a way for players to blow off steam. But as the broader culture becomes less tolerant of public displays of anger, and with an increasing number of close calls on the court, racket smashing suddenly no longer seems like an entertaining idiosyncrasy.Mary Carillo, the former player and longtime commentator, said the tantrums have never been worse, especially on the ATP Tour, calling them “the most consistently uncomfortable thing to watch.” But chair umpires still resist meting out the most serious punishment.“The reason for conspicuous leniency is that they have to somehow keep a match alive; there are no substitutions,” Carillo said of the chair umpires. “Tennis players, especially tennis stars, know they have incontestable leverage over the chair.”Alexander Zverev smashed his racket on the umpire’s chair after losing a doubles match at the Mexican Open in February.MexTenis, via Associated PressLike most people in tennis, McEnroe was stunned when the ATP recently handed down a suspended eight-week ban to Alexander Zverev, who repeatedly beat on the umpire’s chair at the end of a doubles match at the Mexican Open in February, coming with inches of cracking his racket into the official’s feet.Psychologists have found that expressing anger physically tends to hurt performance and can encourage subsequent outbursts. In an oft-cited 1959 study by the psychologist R.H. Hornberger, participants listened to insults before being divided into two groups. One group pounded nails. The other sat quietly. The group that pounded nails was far more hostile to those who criticized them.And yet these days, racket smashing feels contagious. There was Naomi Osaka’s display during her third-round loss to Leylah Fernandez at the U.S. Open last year. Novak Djokovic’s during the bronze medal match at the Tokyo Olympics. Even Roger Federer has had his moments. Rafael Nadal, by contrast, is famously gentle with his equipment and has said he never will smash his racket.Even Andy Roddick, the former world No. 1, got cheeky on the subject, taking to Twitter last week with a tongue-in-cheek tutorial on how to safely smash a racket and whack a ball without endangering anyone.Smashing and throwing a racket, not to mention swats of the ball — that hit, or nearly hit, and possibly injure people on the court or in the stadium — fall under equipment abuse in the sport’s rule books. To the frustration of some of the biggest names in tennis, those codes are more gray than black and white.Martina Navratilova, the 18-time Grand Slam singles champion who is covering the Miami Open for Tennis Channel, expressed the sentiments of many after Brooksby’s racket made contact with the ball person.“If it hit the ball boy, they need to disqualify him,” she said.Brooksby and Kyrgios lost in Miami on Tuesday, but Zverev advanced to the quarterfinals and has a good chance of winning one of the top titles on the ATP Tour, even though some in tennis believe he should be on the sidelines serving a suspension.A spokesman for the ATP, which does not publicly discuss individual penalties, said Brooksby received a $15,000 fine, $5,000 less than the maximum $20,000 a player can receive for an incident from tournament officials. That amounted to less than half of the $30,130 he guaranteed himself by winning the match, and the $94,575 he ultimately collected for making it to the fourth round.Kyrgios was fined $20,000 for nearly hitting the ball boy following his loss to Nadal at Indian Wells, where he collected nearly $180,000 for making the quarterfinals. He, too, will earn, $94,575 in Miami, less whatever fines he receives for his behavior on Tuesday.Zverev, who has earned more than $30 million in career prize money, had to forfeit his earnings from the Mexican Open, and the ATP fined him $65,000, but the suspended ban has allowed him — in less than two tournaments — to more than triple in prize money what his outburst cost him.The ATP is considering whether, given recent increases in prize money, an increase in fines could deter players. Fines for racket abuse on the ATP Tour begin at $500, compared with $2,500 on the WTA Tour.Other than that, the codes for men and women are similar: No violently hitting or kicking or throwing a racket — or any piece of equipment for that matter, and no physical abuse or attempted abuse against ball people, umpires, judges or spectators.Still, tennis officials have a somewhat ambiguous understanding of when disqualification is warranted. It goes sort of like this: If you throw a racket, or whack a ball at someone intentionally in an attempt to hit or intimidate them, then you are automatically disqualified, whether you succeed or fail. However, if you throw or smash a racket or whack a ball without consideration of its direction, and it ends up hitting someone, then tournament officials have to assess whether an injury has occurred.If someone is indeed injured, as when Djokovic inadvertently hit a line judge in the throat at the 2020 U.S. Open, the player is automatically disqualified. But if no one is injured, as when Brooksby’s racket skittered into the ball person’s foot, the umpires will assess a penalty and tournament officials will fine the player — no disqualification necessary.Both Brooksby and Zverev quickly posted apologies for their actions on social media and personally apologized to the people involved. “I was grateful to have a second chance,” Brooksby told Tennis Channel on Monday.Kyrgios is a repeat offender. In a news conference following the Indian Wells match, he berated journalists who questioned him about the racket toss that nearly clipped a ball boy’s head, and was unapologetic.“It most definitely wasn’t like Zverev,” he said. “It was complete accident. I didn’t hit him.”Only after an avalanche of criticism on social media did Kyrgios issue an apology. The next day, he posted a video of himself giving the boy a racket.Following his match on Tuesday, Kyrgios played the victim, criticizing Bernardes for speaking to the crowd while Kyrgios was trying to serve. He seemed not to understand why the ATP had come down so hard on him for the incident at Indian Wells, given, he said, that Dennis Shapovalov had inadvertently hit a fan with a ball and received just a $5,000 fine. In fact, Shapovalov hit a chair umpire and was fined $7,000.“I can throw a racket at Indian Wells,” Kyrgios said, “didn’t even hit anyone, and I’m getting 25 grand.” More

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      Zverev’s Swings Merited More Than a Slap on the Wrist

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      After striking the umpire’s chair during an outburst at a tournament in Mexico, Alexander Zverev can avoid a fine and suspension if he does not commit further violations for one year.SAN DIEGO — Somehow, the men’s tennis tour is allowing the German star Alexander Zverev to play on. He will be in the field for the BNP Paribas Open, which begins this week in Indian Wells, Calif., despite his frightening, unacceptable abuse of an official just two weeks ago after a defeat in doubles in Acapulco, Mexico.“The conduct of Zverev was the most egregious example of physical abuse of an official that I have seen in my decades working in and observing men’s professional tennis,” said Richard Ings, a former executive vice president for rules and competition at the ATP Tour.After cursing at the chair umpire Alessandro Germani following a questionable line call, Zverev took four big swings at the umpire’s chair with his racket after the match. The first three blows landed close to Germani, causing him to flinch and shift his feet at one point to avoid being struck. After Zverev took a short break to curse at Germani some more, he returned for one more swing at the chair.He was appropriately defaulted from the tournament after winning his subsequent singles match, fined $40,000 and docked the prize money he would have earned from the event. But though the follow-up investigation by the ATP rightly determined that Zverev, 24, had committed a “major offense,” he received the equivalent of a suspended sentence on Monday.Zverev has been fined an additional $25,000 and given an eight-week suspension, but both the fine, a pittance to a top-10 player like Zverev, and the suspension will not be levied if he avoids further code violations for unsportsmanlike conduct or physical or verbal abuse for one year after the date of his outburst in Mexico.This is, at best, a firm slap on the wrist, and it is hard to think of another major professional sport that would opt for such half-measures if an official were physically threatened to this degree by a player. Tennis does not shrink from suspending players for gambling on matches or for doping. But the sport has been sending inconsistent signals on protecting umpires for too long now, and the recent uptick in players confronting officials may be one of the consequences — see Daniil Medvedev’s and Denis Shapovalov’s outbursts at this year’s Australian Open. With the wider use of electronic line calling, tension between players and umpires should be dropping, not increasing. But Zverev raised the temperature far too high in Acapulco.“Suspended sentences are a good tool when the player has a good conduct history, and I’ve used them, but in this case the misconduct was egregious and physically directed at the official in their place of work,” said Ings, who was in his ATP role from 2001-5. “A line has been crossed, and previous history is irrelevant. I would have imposed a four-week suspension, and I’ve held the exact job that made such decisions for the ATP.”Miro Bratoev, the ATP’s current senior vice president of rules and competition, did not provide an explanation for Monday’s ruling. He is relatively new to the role, which he assumed in 2020, but several factors could have nudged him toward leniency.Although Zverev has broken plenty of rackets, he has committed no major offense violations until now. The ATP investigation into accusations that Zverev abused his former girlfriend, Olga Sharypova, is ongoing, and thus could not play a role in Monday’s penalty.Zverev’s apology after the Acapulco incident also was profuse. “It is difficult to put into words how much I regret my behavior during and after the doubles match yesterday,” he wrote on social media. “I have privately apologized to the chair umpire because my outburst towards him was wrong and unacceptable.”There is also the matter of tennis precedent. Bratoev’s predecessor, Gayle David Bradshaw, favored probation and also chose the suspended-sentence route in 2019 with Nick Kyrgios, the combustible Australian player, after a series of tantrums that included Kyrgios verbally abusing the chair umpire Fergus Murphy and spitting in his direction. Kyrgios was given probation even though he already had been suspended once for a “major offense” after showing a serious lack of effort in a match in Shanghai in 2016 (that suspension was reduced from eight weeks to three after Kyrgios agreed to see a sports psychologist).Other leading players also have struck the umpire’s chair with their rackets in anger without being suspended. Karolina Pliskova, a former world No. 1, smacked the side of the chair after a loss to Maria Sakkari in Rome in 2018 and received only an unspecified four-figure fine from the women’s tour. Medvedev, now the ATP No. 1, struck the chair twice during the 2020 ATP Cup and was given a point penalty and a fine.But though both of those incidents also deserved stiffer penalties, neither Pliskova nor Medvedev came nearly as close to striking the chair umpire or to displaying the same level of fury as Zverev.“If a player breaks his racket on the umpire’s chair, and he is literally a few centimeters away from hitting the umpire’s leg, he should not be allowed to get on a tennis court until he’s gone through some kind of rehab, some kind of time,” said Mats Wilander, a former No. 1-ranked player and a Eurosport analyst, before the ATP ruling was announced. “We need to punish him accordingly and allowing him to come out and play professional tennis the week after — or two weeks after — that is too soon.”Zverev played in the Davis Cup in Brazil last week.Sergio Moraes/ReutersSerena Williams spoke about Zverev’s outburst in an interview with CNN last week, saying there was “absolutely a double standard” and that she “would probably be in jail if I did that — like, literally, no joke.”Monday’s soft punishment of Zverev likely did little to change her view, but its relevant to remember that Williams also avoided suspension in 2009 after a profanity-filled tirade against a lineswoman during her U.S. Open semifinal loss to Kim Clijsters. Williams, despite threatening to shove the ball down the official’s throat, was fined $82,500 and placed on probation for two years.Zverev, ranked No. 3, already has competed since the incident in Acapulco, representing Germany in a Davis Cup match in Brazil last week. The Germans won, but Zverev complained afterward that the crowd had crossed a line by directing personal abuse at his family and support team.Sharypova, a Russian player, has not brought formal charges against Zverev since her accusations of domestic abuse were first reported by Racquet Magazine in November 2020. He has denied abusing her, and the ATP did not announce its investigation until nearly a year later. The inquiry is, according to ATP officials, being conducted by an outside party.It has been a tense time for quite some time for Zverev, but he has managed to produce some brilliant tennis: He won the gold medal in singles at last year’s Summer Olympics, pushed Novak Djokovic to five sets in the semifinals of the 2021 U.S. Open and then defeated Djokovic and Medvedev to win the prestigious season-ending ATP Finals in Turin, Italy, in November.But this season has not begun auspiciously for a player who has yet to win a Grand Slam tournament singles title. One of the big favorites at the Australian Open, he was upset in the fourth round by Shapovalov in three error-strewn sets, demolishing a racket in frustration in the second.Then came Acapulco and a much more serious failure to control his temper. It should have cost him more than a default, a middling fine and probation, but the ATP has missed the opportunity to send the right message to its public, to its players and — above all — to its officials.“Umpires need to be protected in their workplace,” Ings said. “Player abuse of officials is growing based on recent incidents, and this soft sanction will do nothing to deter future misconduct.” More