The tennis court at Arthur Ashe Stadium appears smooth, but the microscopic structure of sand granules in the acrylic paint significantly affects match dynamics. The size, shape, and density of the sand dictate the ball’s speed post-bounce, with the U.S. Open surface being “medium-fast,” resulting in fewer long rallies and quicker matches. This pace is deliberately chosen by organizers using devices that measure friction and restitution.
Players like Daniil Medvedev have criticized court speeds, as variations can affect match outcomes. For example, the medium-slow courts at Indian Wells play differently than the medium-fast courts in Miami. Organizers try to control court pace; for instance, Wimbledon switched to 100% ryegrass for firmer courts, and the U.S. Open added sand to the line paint to minimize ball sliding.
Despite these efforts, top players like Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek consistently win regardless of surface speed. The pace affects playing styles, with faster surfaces favoring offense and slower ones requiring defensive skills and patience. Rafael Nadal, dominant on slow clay courts, had to adopt a more attacking style for hardcourts. The U.S. Open resurfaces its courts annually to ensure consistency. The surface, made by Advanced Polymer Technology, impacts the ball’s speed, trajectory, and spin.
Ultimately, mastering tennis requires an all-court style, as top players like Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Alcaraz, and Novak Djokovic have demonstrated their adaptability to different court speeds.
Tennis is on the verge of a belated Moneyball revolution. In the northern spring, the Association of Tennis Professionals, which runs the men’s tour, is planning to open up ball-tracking data from every match to all its players and coaches.
The shift will do much to level an uneven playing field. Until now, millionaire players such as the “Big Four” men have had the opportunity to buy better-quality data analysis than their less wealthy rivals.
One might imagine that access to data would be a basic right for all leading professionals. In fact, anyone wanting to use the information gathered by Hawk-Eye, the leading ball-tracking provider since 2014, has had to pay a £150 ($263) processing fee per match. On top of that, tour rules say you can order data only from matches you played in.
In April, this will change. “We want to give players more equal access to this information,” says Ross Hutchins, the Association of Tennis Professionals’ chief tour officer. “We believe it will improve performance levels. We are looking to bring player and ball-tracking online from every ATP tournament. We’re hoping to make this happen by the second quarter of 2023, and then bring in wearable technology, such as heart monitors and GPS location devices, by the second half of the year.”
Despite the relatively large amount of money at stake, tennis must rank as one of the most backward major sports when it comes to sophisticated data analysis, mainly because there are few economies of scale.
Six-figure sums for data
If you are lucky enough to come from a grand-slam nation such as Great Britain or the United States, you can usually dip into your federation’s sizeable dataset. Otherwise, the only way to gain access to more than a tiny percentage of matches is to hire one of the big analytical companies, such as Golden Set Analytics (GSA), which used to charge Roger Federer a six-figure sum annually for exclusive access to its scouting and performance reports.
“In tennis, the teams are smaller than most other sports, and almost everything has to come out of the player’s pocket,” says Philip Mauerhofer, who runs a well-regarded analytics firm called Tennis Stat. “Unless you’re at the top of the game, adding more expenditure to your coaching and your physio and your fitness training is always going to be a stretch. So to have a trove of data available on every player would be a game-changer.”
Agent Patricio Apey welcomed the ATP plan. One of Apey’s clients – America’s Sebastian Korda – has been able to benefit from his close relationship with the United States Tennis Association, which logs all the information from its home tournaments and has a data-pooling deal with Tennis Australia.
But another of Apey’s stable – Greece’s Stefanos Tsitsipas – has had no such support. Tsitsipas thus needs to spend considerably more to gain the same level of tactical insight. As a top-five player, he can probably afford the difference. Those lower down the ladder are not always so fortunate.
“I’m cautiously hopeful that the governing bodies will see that making this information available to all players and their teams will only make the sport better,” Apey says. “Look at how sophisticated Formula One is when it comes to using data. Maybe in the future we will see cutting-edge analysts in the player boxes doing their work in real time and passing useful feedback to coaches and players during matches.”
Test run for courtside coaching
Tennis has many governing bodies, and at the moment only the Association of Tennis Professionals – as opposed to the grand slams and the Women’s Tennis Association – is committed to opening up its dataset. But the scenario Apey mentions is already here, even if it was used only on an experimental level at last November’s ATP Next Gen Finals in Milan, where coaches were allowed to advise their players during matches, as is becoming the norm on the ATP Tour, and at the two hard-court slams. They were also given an electronic tablet showing live data from the match as it progressed.
“It was challenging to use at first,” says James Trotman, the British coach whose player, Jack Draper, was eliminated in the semi-finals of that event. “There was so much data, whether it be the direction of the serve, the accuracy of the return, or the speed of each player’s forehands and backhands.
“I had to keep it simple, so I just focused on the first of those categories. There was one opponent who was always serving in the same place, so when it came to the tie-break I was able to tell Jack to sit on that return, which helped a great deal.”
Four years ago, Germany’s No. 1 Alexander Zverev said that “all the big guys are using data analysis, they just don’t like to talk about it” – and leading players are still coy about their data support. A rare exception is the world’s best player, Novak Djokovic, who allowed his former analyst, Craig O’Shannessy, to speak publicly about their work together.
The bigger your database, the easier it is to supply reliable scouting reports on every opponent. GSA says it has an automated algorithm that “scrapes” data directly from TV coverage, but for the smaller operators, many thousands of hours have been spent on hand-tagging matches. The going rate for a one-off scouting report from these lesser outfits is $US300.
So what kinds of insight can a big company provide? “A lot of added value is obtained from using data richer than anything the human eye can detect,” says Ben Depoorter, GSA’s vice-president of player analytics. “Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking system generates millions of data points. And the insights that show up are not always what you might expect.
“Contrary to most expectations, Djokovic is outstanding with his backhand on fast returns hit towards his feet, and weaker on loopy balls that land short but with more of an angle, because he likes to hit on the rise. People come in with set ideas about what works – and the only way to disprove their preconceptions is with data.”
Source: The Telegraph, London
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2023-01-14 10:14:492023-01-14 10:14:49Moneyball Comes to Tennis
If you want to get better at tennis and improve your fitness, these gadgets maybe a starting point?
Tennis is a very physical sport. For example, the tennis serve represents a complex movement that requires muscles throughout the entire body to rotate in unison to deliver accuracy and power.
Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned veteran looking to get just a little bit better, there are a handful of tech gadgets you should check out.
These gadgets can track and analyze your swing, keep track of the score, and measure the speed of your serves, among other things.
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2023-01-11 16:51:312023-01-11 16:51:316 Gadgets Which Improve Your Tennis (Maybe??)
ATLANTA — The phrase “future of American men’s tennis” mostly inspires groans these days, as 74 Grand Slams have come and gone since Andy Roddick lifted the U.S. Open trophy in 2003.
Invariably, the burdenof that drought falls on the American youngsters who quickly rise up the rankings, start making an impact on the ATP Tour and then run into the Grand Slam wall that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic have erected over the last two decades.
So let’s not saddle Ben Shelton, just 19, with that kind of albatross. But we can say this: The rising University of Florida junior, who won the NCAA singles title in May, is very, very good. And he’s on the precipice of a career-defining summer that may well put himon a very different trajectory from the one that seemed laid out for him just a few weeks ago.
Shelton, whose father Bryan is a former top-100 player and now is the head coach at Florida, played his first ATP-level match Tuesday, at the Atlanta Open. He won it in pretty straightforward fashion, beating veteran pro Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-2, 7-5 and letting out a big scream as he put away an overhead on match point.
“It’s really special,” said Shelton, who was just a few blocks from the courts of his childhood at Georgia Tech, where his father coached until 2012.
But with each tournament he’s played, the bigger story is that Shelton himself might be special, and his performance could very well force some decisions about his future much faster than anticipated.
As of now, Shelton is slated to return to Florida in the fall. But after performing well in several Challenger-level events and impressively winning his first round here, he’s on a fast track to the top 200 in the world rankings. Brad Gilbert, the longtime pro player, coach and ESPN analyst, wrote on Twitter that Shelton will be “top 50 for sure.” And the U.S. Open already has granted him a wildcard into the main draw, which would be a guaranteed $75,000 in first-round prize money — if he turns pro.
“That’ll definitely be a talk later in the summer with my parents and my team and we’ll make a decision based on where my development is and what’s going to be best for me not just on the court but off the court as well,” Shelton said. “There’s no real results or rankings that are going to sway my decision in a big way.”
There’s plenty, of course, that could bring Shelton back to college. It’s a comfortable place for him, he wants to complete his finance degree and it’s certainly a big deal to play for his father on one of the most successful teams in the country.
But as he goes through the process this summer, it certainly seems possible Shelton and those around him will conclude that he’s just too good to go back to school.
“I’m just a college guy out here having fun,” he said. “I don’t put too much stress on my matches. I’m focused and want to do the best I can, but it’s not do-or-die for me out here.”
Shelton will get a better sense of where he stands on Thursday when he faces No. 25-ranked John Isner, who has won the Atlanta event six times. After going 11-4 against pros ranked mostly in the 150-300 range, this will be Shelton’s first opportunity to see how he stacks up against a top-100 player.
But regardless of how it goes against Isner — and certainly it’s a major step up in class for someone who hasn’t turned pro yet — it’s Shelton’s explosive game at 6-foot-3 that is drawing as much attention as the results.
With a big lefty serve that averaged 126 mph against Ramanathan and the ability to get a massive kick on his first and second serve, Shelton already has a legitimate weapon that can win him matches. But he also appears to be very solid off both of his groundstrokes and is very comfortable coming into the net to finish points behind both his power and slice. Shelton won 15 of 22 points when he came in for a volley or overhead.
“I love to get to net, be able to use some of my hand skills, athletic skills and going up to get the ball (to put away overheads) is one of my favorite things to do,” Shelton said. “I could have done a better job today incorporating my serve and volley and getting to net quicker in points but I think that’s a big part of my game and a big part of my development.”
Only the hardest of hardcore tennis fans would have been watching Shelton on a Tuesday afternoon in Atlanta, but it was easy to see why he’s been a dominant college player, going 37-5 in singles last season. It was also a huge advertisement for other tournaments this summer and fall to offer him a wildcard entry, as Atlanta did. Every tournament wants to boast that it helped launch a great career.
It’s far too early to project that Tuesday’s match was the debut of the next great American champion, but at the very least Shelton appears poised for an interesting and successful pro career. Shelton may have some things pulling him back to college for another year, but if he keeps playing like he has the last several weeks, it will be difficult to turn down the opportunities he’s creating for himself right now.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-07-28 07:39:452022-07-28 07:39:45NCAA champion Ben Shelton
Wimbledon still has a couple of days to go, which is helpful because 48 hours gives us time to have another 48 opinions on Nick Kyrgios, to add to the thousands we’ve had on Kyrgios over the past eight years. This is Australia in 2022: Girt By Nick.
Kyrgios is now a human hottake generator, in that the endless hot takes on him now generate their own hot takes about the earlier hot takes, and on and on until we die. You’re reading one right now, so please watch for any sudden change in your vital signs.
To sum up our rollercoaster journey with the tennis terror from Canberra, let’s go to the social media-speak Nick himself loves so much: It’s Complicated. WTAF. FFS. And so on.
Because let’s be honest: it’s as easy to write the column ‘‘ Ten Reasons To Love Nick Kyrgios’ ’ as it is to write the column ‘‘ Ten Reasons To Hate Nick Kyrgios’’ .
You can sensibly and sarcastically wonder out loud what it is the Kyrgios fans love about him. Is it the verbal abuse? The violent treatment of racquets and balls? The spitting? The tanking? The narcissism? Equally, you can ask the Kyrgios haters what it is they hate. Is it the breathtaking talent? The shotmaking audacity? The charming impudence of his approach to the game’s stuffed shirts? His refreshing honesty that winning isn’t everything? What’s not to love? And what’s not to hate?
Kyrgios contains multitudes, and it is entirely possible that by Monday he will also contain a Wimbledon title, a triumph that will challenge us to reconsider him once again. Rarely have Australian sports fans been presented with a dilemma quite like the one we face this weekend.
As a lifelong tennis nut, my own journey with Kyrgios has been long and complicated. I remember the time he first made me sit up with a start in the middle of the night, saving nine match points on his way to the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 2014. Everything seemed possible then. I loved the guy, and I’ve spent a lot of money supporting him, flying to Darwin to watch him in the Davis Cup, and finding myself sitting next to Ken Rosewall at Rod Laver Arena the night Kyrgios played Nadal at the Australian Open in 2020.
Rosewall (who seemed bemused by Kyrgios more than anything else) never won Wimbledon, but he was a living reminder of a time when Australians always did. From 1922 to 1972, Australian players hoisted the men’s trophy 18 times. In the 50 years since, we’ve managed it just twice, Pat Cash in 1987 and Lleyton Hewitt in 2002.
We desperately want another man to win the greatest title, but Kyrgios – with as much raw talent as any Australian player has ever had – complicates the hope. And some of that is actually quite simple for some of the reactions: it’s racism. But racism does not explain all or even most of the contentious relationship.
I fell off the Kyrgios bandwagon last year, and after eight years of ferocious loyalty I’m finding it very hard to get back on it – even with a Wimbledon title in sight. The eternal promise had given way to eternal complaining. The bad behaviour too often crosses the line. The self-aggrandisement – the boasting about his crowd sizes and his self-proclaimed stature as the saviour of modern tennis – almost echoes Trump in its narcissism.
And so here we are, wondering what comes next.
Perhaps we can look to the past to summon some optimism. Hark back to John McEnroe, who was literally persona non grata at Wimbledon (they refused him the honorary club membership given to all champions) until his genius and his grit turned him into a beloved elder of the sport.
Ditto with Andre Agassi. He even boycotted Wimbledon for years because of the all-white dress code. Then he turned up, wearing white tracksuit pants like a spirit returned from the 1920s, and won the whole show. Agassi 2.0 was born right there on the hallowed London lawns, past demons cast aside.
Could history repeat? Will we come to love Kyrgios like we did those tennis toddlers of the past? We’re about to find out if Nick can wake up to the fact that the grass really is greener on the other side.
Neil McMahon is a freelance writer.
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-07-08 07:46:102022-07-08 07:46:10DO WE LIKE KYRGIOS? IT’S COMPLICATED | SMH
PARIS — On an obscure court at Roland Garros, in a women’s singles match that drew scant attention, 63rd-ranked Irina-Camelia Begu thrust herself into the global spotlight as the latest example of the ugly, potentially injurious on-court outbursts plaguing pro tennis in recent months.
Irked over losing her serve in a pivotal moment, Begu, 31, tossed her racket on the French Open’s red clay, and it ricocheted into the stands and toward a small child, who burst into tears. The chair umpire summoned the supervisor to adjudicate, but Begu was allowed to play on, later cited for unsportsmanlike conduct, despite the fact that her racket “brushed” the child, according to a statement from the tournament director.
Just two days earlier, Andrey Rublev, the French Open’s seventh seed, also got a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct after he smashed a ball in a rage that almost hit a groundsperson.
……
Most pros at the top of the sport, however, come to realize that controlling their anger is ultimately in their interest.
For Rafael Nadal, a five-time recipient of the ATP’s sportsmanship award, behaving on court is something he learned as a child.
“My uncle, my family, never allowed me to break a racket, never allowed me to say bad words or give up a match,” Nadal once explained. “
Probably when I was a kid, they didn’t care much about winning or losing. Of course, all the parents and family, my uncle [who was also his coach] wanted me to win every single match. But probably that was not the most important thing.
The most important thing was the education and the fact that I grow with the values, with the right values.”
For second-ranked Daniil Medvedev, who is still haunted by an epic meltdown he had as a 14-year-old junior, it has been a process.
“At one moment, I understood that it can negatively affect your tennis,” Medvedev said. “But I definitely didn’t understand it [at 14]. It was much later. …
I’m still learning because I have some tantrums, if it’s the right word, sometimes on the court. Usually I’m not happy about it.
The most important is either to know how to react or, better, how not to do them and just stay focused on the match.”
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-05-28 09:12:582022-05-28 09:12:58Tennis has an anger-management problem, and it’s getting worse | Washington Post
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-04-24 11:58:052022-04-24 11:58:05SUPER SENIOR WORLD TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS, FLORIDA 2022
JANUARY 20, 2020
is perfect hair held by a perfect headband against a pressed polo shirt, Roger Federer walked on to centre court at the Queensland Tennis Centre for his first tournament of 2014 to an adoring crowd.
A real-life glimpse of Federer was enough to transfix even the most casual tennis fan but, on this occasion, if you were in the know, it was his equipment that would have held your attention as much as the tennis God himself.
Federer had broken with a decade of tradition and got himself a new racquet.
The whole of 2013 had been a career low for the Swiss champion. Usually No.1 or No.2 in the world, he’d ended the year ranked sixth. A premature exit from Wimbledon, in the second round, had marked the first time in 36 consecutive grand slams that he had not made a quarter-final. He’d lasted until just the fourth round in the US Open, a tournament he’d won five times before.
These results represented, in the minds of some, the start of a career plateau for the then-32-year-old, with back injuries among the factors blunting his dominance.
But Federer arrested the slide.
He hired a new coach – his childhood hero, six-time grand-slam winner Stefan Edberg. He set about mending his body. And, perhaps less obviously until he appeared on court in Brisbane, he changed his magic wand – the racquet he’d wielded through his rise to tennis legend.
For a certain weekend warrior type of tennis player, changing racquets might offer a seductive solution to a subpar game. After all, it’s easier to spend a few hundred dollars on new equipment than it might be to work on a weak backhand or sluggish legs.
And a change can’t do much harm, right?
At the elite level, there is nowhere to hide. Just as any adjustment in stroke will be identified and perfected so will every variable gram, inch or centimetre in a racquet be scrutinised. The racquet is the player’s key weapon and one with which he or she has a symbiotic relationship. If a change is to be made to this set-up, it will be for good reason. And even an improvement of 1 per cent is a good reason in international tennis.
For Federer, at that moment in Brisbane, the stakes could not have been higher.
More recently, in the lead-up to this year’s Australian Open, eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that Serena Williams has stepped out with a new racquet.
How do stars such as Federer, his on-court arch rival Rafael Nadal and Barty and Williams set up their racquets to boost their games? And how have changes in racquets over the years changed the game itself?
Click here to read more –>
https://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/ATPICON150-1.png150150Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-01-16 01:28:522024-01-16 01:29:39Sweet spot: how a racquet can make or break a player
The ITF Seniors Tour is a global tennis Tour that provides players aged 30 and over with a high quality and enjoyable competitive experience. 2019 saw 27,500 registered players and 502 tournaments take place across 70 nations.
ITF Seniors tournaments range from Grade S1000 (aimed at elite players) to Grade S100 (aimed at recreational level), featuring singles, doubles and mixed doubles events for each five-year age increment from 30+ to 90+.
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2022-01-10 08:23:272022-01-10 08:23:27ITF SENIORS TOUR
ATP: while the research focused on running, nevertheless the lessons are the same for tennis. Overplaying, changing rackets (new or poor restrings) or playing consistently with heavy balls or in the wind can significantly increase your chance of injury! Here’s the article—-
According to a new study of how runners hurt themselves during last year’s Covid-related lockdowns, to avoid injuries, runners should try not to change their running routines too much or too quickly.
Most runners are regrettably familiar with the aches, strains and orthopedic consults that accompany frequent running. More so than in many other recreational sports, including cycling and swimming, runners get hurt. By some estimates, up to two-thirds of runners annually sustain an injury serious enough to lame them for a week or longer.
Why runners are so fragile remains uncertain. Some studies point to sudden and substantial increases in mileage. Others find little or no correlation between mileage and injury and instead implicate intensity; ramp up your interval sessions, this science suggests, and you get hurt. Or, as other research indicates, concrete paths could be to blame, or thick-soled running shoes, or minimalist models, or possibly treadmills, group runs, oddball running form or simple bad luck.
But a group of exercise scientists at Auburn University in Alabama and other institutions felt skeptical of the focus of much past research, which often aimed to isolate a single, likely cause for running-related damage. As runners themselves, the researchers suspected that most injuries involve a complex network of triggers, some obvious, others subtle, with elusive interactions between them. They also recognized that until we better understand why running injuries happen, we cannot hope to forestall them.
Then came the pandemic, which abruptly and profoundly changed so much about our lives, including, for many of us, how we run. In the face of lockdowns, anxiety and remote work and schooling, we began running more or less than before. Or harder or more gently, perhaps without our usual partners, and on unfamiliar ground.
Sensing that such a wide-ranging array of hasty and intermingled shifts in people’s running patterns might provide a natural experiment in how we hurt ourselves, the researchers decided to ask runners what had happened to them during lockdown.
So, for the new study, which was published in June in the journal Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, they set up a series of extensive online questionnaires delving into people’s lifestyles, occupations, moods, running habits and running injuries, before and during local pandemic-related lockdowns. They then invited adults with any running experience to respond, whether they were recreational joggers or competitive racers.
More than 1,000 men and women replied, and their responses were illuminating to the researchers. About 10 percent of the 1,035 runners reported having injured themselves during lockdown, with a few individual risk factors popping out from the data. Runners who increased the frequency of their intense workouts tended to hurt themselves, for example, as did those who moved to trails from other surfaces, presumably because they were unfamiliar with or tentative on the trails’ uneven terrain.
Runners who reported less time to exercise during the lockdown also faced heightened risks for injury, perhaps because they traded long, gentle workouts for briefer, harsher ones, or because their lives, in general, felt stressful and worrisome, affecting their health and running.
But by far the greatest contributor to injury risk was modifying an established running schedule in multiple, simultaneous ways, whether that meant increasing — or reducing — weekly mileage or intensity, moving to or from a treadmill, or joining or leaving a running group. The study found that runners who made eight or more alterations to their normal workouts, no matter how big or small those changes, greatly increased their likelihood of injury.
And interestingly, people’s moods during the pandemic influenced how much they switched up their running. Runners who reported feeling lonely, sad, anxious or generally unhappy during the lockdown tended to rejigger their routines and increase their risk for injury, notably more than those who reported feeling relatively calm.
Taken as a whole, the data suggests that “we should look at social components and other aspects of people’s lives” when considering why runners — and probably people who engage in other sports as well — get hurt, says Jaimie Roper, a professor of kinesiology at Auburn University and the new study’s senior author. Moods and mental health likely play a greater role in injury risk than most of us might expect, she said.
This study relies, though, on the memories and honesty of a self-selected group of runners, who were willing to sit in front of a computer answering intrusive questions. They may not be representative of many of us. The study was also observational, meaning it tells us that runners who changed their workouts also happened often to be runners with injuries, but not that the changes necessarily directly caused those injuries.
Perhaps most important, the results do not insinuate that we should always try to avoid tweaking our running routines. Rather, “be intentional in what you change,” Dr. Roper says. “Focus on one thing at a time,” and thread in changes gradually. Up mileage, for instance, by only 10 or 20 percent a week and add a single, new interval session, not three. And if you are feeling particularly stressed, perhaps hold steady on your exercise for now, sticking with whatever familiar workouts feel tolerable and fun.
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2021-07-05 08:40:072021-07-05 08:40:07To Avoid Injuries, Don’t Shake Up Your Routine Too Much
The unseeded Krejcikova, 25, whose name was on no one’s mind at the start of the French Open, was crowned its champion after a 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 victory.
The brilliant Justine Henin and Martina Navratilova, with 25 Grand Slam singles titles between them, looked on from the stands.
Her late coach, Jana Novotna, surely watched from above. And following along from home in the Czech Republic was Barbora Krejcikova’s mother, who gave her daughter the courage to knock on Novotna’s door as a teenager and ask the 1998 Wimbledon champion for help with her tennis. Krejcikova, 25, had drawn inspiration and strength from all these women since childhood — and never more so than Saturday at Roland Garros, where she weathered a tough patch midway through the French Open final to claim her first Grand Slam title with a 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 victory over Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in Paris.
It was only fitting that Krejcikova used the glorious moment, microphone in hand, to honor all the mentors and role models whose presence — whether in body or spirit — gave her strength and inspiration. “Pretty much her last words to me were, ‘Just enjoy and just try to go win a Grand Slam,’”
Krejcikova told the crowd during her on-court interview, recalling the difficult time she spent with Novotna, losing her battle with cancer, as she slipped away in 2017 at age 49. “I know somewhere, she is looking out for me. This happened pretty much because she is looking out for me.” Krejcikova’s name was on no one’s mind at the start of the French Open.
Nor was Pavlyuchenkova’s, apart from avid tennis fans who might have remembered her promise as the world’s top-ranked junior at age 14. But a tennis lifetime had come and gone since then. One month shy of her 30th birthday, the 31st-seeded Pavlyuchenkova was as unlikely a French Open finalist as the unseeded Krejcikova, known until recently as strictly a doubles specialist.
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2021-06-13 14:18:332021-06-13 14:18:33[The Washington Post] Barbora Krejcikova honors late coach and wins a French Open filled with twists and upsets
Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, outlasted Rafael Nadal, the “King of Clay,” in four sets, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4), 6-2, in a match that felt like it should have been a final.
PARIS — “He brings out the best in me.”
That’s what Novak Djokovic said the other night about Rafael Nadal, the 13-time winner of the French Open and the man he would be facing in the semifinal in just under 48 hours.
Djokovic needed his best, and then some, Friday night as he beat Nadal on the court he has treated like his living room since 2005. The score, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3, reflected a wild match that produced some of the most remarkable tennis in years.
In beating Nadal at the French Open, Djokovic pulled off what known as the hardest feat in tennis. Nadal was 105-2 at Roland-Garros and had not lost there since 2015. Djokovic had his number that time too. There is a statue of Nadal outside Court Phillippe Chatrier. During this tournament, his fellow players speak of him with a kind of reverence usually reserved for legends of the past.
And that was how Djokovic spoke of his longtime rival moments after Nadal’s final backhand sailed wide.
“The first thing I want to say was it was my privilege also to be on the court with Rafa for this incredible match,” Djokovic said. “It is surely the greatest match I have played here in Paris.”
Djokovic will face Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in the final on Sunday. Tsitsipas will be playing in his first Grand Slam singles final. Djokovic will be playing for his 19th Grand Slam singles title. A win would bring him within one of Nadal and Roger Federer, who are tied with 20.
It would also put him in solid position to win all four Grand Slams in a single year, something that no man has accomplished in more than 50 years. He won the Australian Open in February and he is the defending champion at Wimbledon, which begins in two weeks. It is a title he has won five times, and he has won 12 Grand Slam titles on hard courts, including three at the United States Open, which will take place in New York at the end of the summer.
It was a match that had everything, even a looming curfew of 11 p.m. that threatened to send the crowd of 5,000 people home in the middle of an epic duel.
Instead, at the conclusion of the third-set tiebreaker, French officials delivered one of the great moments of the pandemic. As the set ended, an announcement was made that an exception had been granted and the fans could remain to see the conclusion of what would either be an upset for the ages or one of the great escapes in the history of the game.
Suddenly, a crowd of 5,000 sounded like one 10 times as large. There was chanting and dancing in the aisles — “Merci Macron” they sang, showing their gratitude to the French president — there were hugs and high-fives, which have been in short supply during a mostly miserable year and a half for sports and much of the rest of the world.
In truth, forcing the crowd to leave would have been cruel after what it had witnessed during the previous three-and-a-half-hours, including a 91-minute third set, in which Nadal seemed to have mounted the beginning of his great escape before Djokovic snuffed it out.
Matches between Djokovic and Nadal are unlike anything else in the sport. Every moment has a crucial feel to it because they both provide so little margin for error for their opponents.
Miss a first serve and the second one is likely to come back down your throat. Leave that deep volley just slightly too far inside the baseline and there’s an unseeable crosscourt angle they will find on a point that looked over just a second before.
Diego Schwartzman, who had lost to Nadal in the quarterfinals, tweeted a question as he watched: “Do we tennis players play the same sport as the two of them?”
This match, the 58th time the two have met, was a four-hour display of tennis one-upmanship.
A near-perfect, running lob from Djokovic was met with a wild sky hook overhead from Nadal. Forehands hit on impossibly tight angles were returned by backhands on even tighter ones. Nadal would hit a drop shot that would settle within three feet of the net. Djokovic would send it back nearly parallel to the net a foot closer. Violently slicing serves met untouchable crosscourt returns.
Nadal had the initial edge, surging to a 5-0 lead that felt eerily familiar to the start of his blowout win over Djokovic in the French Open last year.
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Nadal during the first set.Credit…Pete Kiehart for The New York Times
Early on, Nadal returned two overheads then won a duel at the net. The crowd exploded as it always does when Nadal is doing his thing at Roland-Garros. Djokovic appeared staggered, but he dug in and began to battle, even saving set point after set point.
As the second set began, Djokovic grew more comfortable with every game. If the hardest thing in tennis is to beat Nadal at Roland-Garros, the second hardest may be dealing with Djokovic’s return of serve. All night long he pelted it at Nadal’s feet, forcing him back as he tried to push forward.
But with Djokovic sprinting ahead and serving at 5-4 in the third set, and needing just two points for a commanding lead, Nadal made two down-the-line winners that seemed to foretell a great escape. He broke Djokovic, and he had a set point two games later, but he frittered away a golden opportunity on Djokovic’s second serve. Then in the tiebreaker, he missed a wide-open forehand volley to give Djokovic a 5-3 lead.
“I had the big chance,” Nadal said when it was over. “I missed it and an easy volley in the tie break. These kinds of mistakes can happen but if you want to win you can’t make these mistakes.”
Nadal mounted one last attempt to rescue himself from the rarest sort of loss for him, breaking Djokovic in the first game of the fourth set and grabbing a 2-0 lead. He pumped his fists at the crowd, urging them to give him some intangible edge. Instead, Djokovic played his most dominant tennis of the night, winning the final six games.
When Nadal’s last backhand sailed wide, Djokovic looked to the sky, bent over and grabbed a bit of red clay and rubbed it on his shirt.
Nadal has made very few mistakes like that missed volley over the years at Roland-Garros. Djokovic said the pressure of playing Nadal on what he described as “his court” is unlike anything he has ever felt. “Each time you step on the court with him you know you have to basically climb Mount Everest to win against him,” said Djokovic, who was 1-7 against Nadal at the French Open before Friday night.
That pressure though is the sort of sensation that keeps both him and Nadal pushing each other on the court in their mid-30s, an age when tennis greats of a previous era have called it a career.
“It was one of those matches, that we really play tennis for,” he said. “It inspires us.”
00Robhttps://www.tenniswhisperer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/cropped-LOGOWhisperer1024-300x300.pngRob2021-06-12 10:33:182021-06-12 10:33:18French Open 2021: Djokovic Beats Nadal in Men’s Semifinal
