Articles by Steve Tignor

What's at Stake: In Europe, a race for London and some last WTA looks

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 17:21:00 +0000

It only took 10-and-a-half months, but the tours have made the final turn and started down the 2017 homestretch. This week the ATP and WTA make one last trip to Europe for the brief, season-ending indoor season. Very brief, on the women’s side: The tournaments in Moscow and Luxembourg are the last before the WTA Finals begin in Singapore this weekend. While the field for that event is set, the race to qualify for the men’s year-ending extravaganza in London next month is still very much on.

Who will make the cut for the O2? Who will end 2017 with a flourish and build some confidence heading into 2018? The five tournaments this week should start to give us an idea.

VTP Kremlin Cup (ATP)

Moscow
$823,600; 250 ranking points
Indoor hard court
Draw is here

At 26, Pablo Carreño Busta has had a quiet career year. He’s cracked the Top 10 for the first time, reached his first Grand Slam semifinal, at the US Open, and won a tournament, all while staying a few inches below the mainstream media radar. But how does the mild-mannered Spaniard do when he’s the favorite? We’ll get a clue in Moscow, where he’s the top seed. He should be motivated: As of now, Carreño Busta is eighth in the race for the eight-man World Tour Finals in London, less than 100 points ahead of No. 9 Sam Querrey.

Also here: Two players on the rise of late, Andrey Rublev and Damir Dzumhur.

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VTB Kremlin Cup (WTA)

Moscow
$790,208; Premier
Indoor hard court
Draw is here

The women’s edition of the Kremlin Cup can get lost in the pre-Singapore shadows, and none of the Top 8 have made the trip this time. But as a Premier event, it has what you might call a sneaky-good draw, one that could serve as a second-tier year-end championship. It’s filled with players who made memorable runs at various times this season—Kristina Mladnevovic, Coco Vandeweghe, Elena Vesnina, Anastasija Sevastova, Magdalena Rybarikova, Daria Kasatkina, Julia Goerges, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova—but who couldn’t sustain that level long enough to get to Singapore.

That list also includes wild card Maria Sharapova, who won a title this past week in Tianjin, and who will make a rare appearance on home soil. She starts against Rybarikova.

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European Open (ATP)

Antwerp, Belgium
$720,000; 250 ranking points
Indoor hard court
Draw is here

The European Open is only in its second year, and it comes during a tough week, when the best players are just returning from Asia. But it has put together a respectable field.

Local favorite David Goffin is the top seed. Like Carreño Busta in Moscow, the Belgian is on the London bubble. Right now he’s seventh in the eight-man race, 225 points ahead of Querrey at No. 9.

Wild cards trying to make late runs to London: Nick Kyrgios and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga

First-round matches to watch: Denis Shapovalov vs. Ernesto Escobedo; Frances Tiafoe vs. Florian Mayer

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Intrum Stockholm Open (ATP)

Stockholm
$720,000; 250 ranking points
Indoor hard court
Draw is here

It may be tempting, when you remember how it began, to say that Grigor Dimitrov’s 2017 season has been a disappointment. In Australia, he came up just short of reaching his first major final; but while he wouldn’t climb those heights again, he has been solid enough since to put himself at No. 6 in the race to London, a full 700 points ahead of Goffin at No. 7—that’s a definite improvement for someone who has never qualified for the World Tour Finals before.

Dimitrov is also the top seed in Stockholm, but it’s the No. 2 seed, Kevin Anderson, who has the most to gain. Anderson, the US Open finalist, is currently 10th in the race to London, 325 points behind Goffin at No. 8.

Also here: No. 3 seed Jack Sock and No. 4 Juan Martin del Potro. With his semifinal run in Shanghai, the Argentine is up four spots, to No. 19 in the rankings, and seven spots, to No. 18, in the race to London.

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BGL BNP Paribas Luxembourg Open (WTA)

Luxembourg
$226,750; International
Indoor hard court
Draw is here

The news in Luxembourg is that Angelique Kerber, last year’s world No. 1, has taken a wild card after failing to qualify for the WTA Finals. A year ago, she faced Monica Puig for the gold medal at the Rio Olympics; now she’ll face her in the first round in Luxembourg. Win or lose, Kerber will likely be happy to put 2017 behind her and start fresh in the new year. She’s too good not to be in Singapore.

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An in-form Federer won his fifth straight match over Nadal in Shanghai

Sun, 15 Oct 2017 15:11:00 +0000

By now, after 37 meetings, the early signs in a match between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are easy to read. At the start of the Shanghai final on Sunday, those early signs were all pointing one way. The roof was closed, the court was at its quickest, and Federer was sharper than he had been since he won Wimbledon three months ago. Can you guess the result?

Federer couldn’t have asked or hoped for a more auspicious beginning. He broke serve in the opening game with a backhand pass that we might call Vintage Early 2017. He bent low, finished his follow-through high, and passed Nadal with a down-the-line screamer. In the run-up to this match, many of us had wondered how well Federer would hit his backhand. The newly improved shot had been a big key to his three wins over Nadal earlier in the year, but he hadn’t cracked it as crisply over the second half of the season. Now we knew: it was crisp again.

The same couldn’t be said for Nadal. While the signs were good for Federer early, there was one glaringly bad one for Rafa: the thick white band of tape that had materialized just below his right knee. This was his 10th match in 14 days, and the wear and tear had obviously taken a toll. Even during his peak seasons, his knees had balked at having to pound their way through the fall season, and the problem seems to have arisen again. Rafa said the tape was more than just a “precaution,” and that he’s not sure he’ll be able to play his next scheduled events, in Basel and Paris.

But Rafa also said of Federer, “he played very fast and he played well...he just played too good, that’s my point of view.”

It’s hard to argue. Even a full-strength Nadal—or a full-strength anyone—would have faced long odds against Federer on this day, on this surface. If the Swiss' backhand was sharp, his forehand was a scythe cutting through the court. Three times, Nadal hit his backhand as hard and deep as he could, only to see Federer stand his ground and flick an unreturnable forehand past him anyway.

After breaking Rafa to begin, Federer dominated on his own serve, hitting 10 aces and winning 83 percent of his first-serve points. The biggest threat Nadal could mount was to reach 30-30 on Federer’s serve early in the second set. Federer quickly countered by serving and volleying, and taking advantage of Rafa’s deep return position. It was as if Federer had been holding that play in reserve until he needed it. Federer finished with 28 winners, 11 from the backhand side, against just 11 errors. Nadal didn’t serve or hit the ball badly, but Federer still had the all time in the world to make his shots.

“I had no nerves really before the match, which is nice,” Federer said after his 71-minute, 6-4, 6-3 win. “I was pretty clear about how I wanted to play the match. And then I came out and started off very well.”

The title was Federer’s 94th, which ties him for second on the ATP list with Ivan Lendl, behind only Jimmy Connors with 109—there’s a career goal that could keep him around for a while. It was also his fifth straight win over Nadal, his longest so far against his rival, and it brought him to within 2,000 points of the Spaniard for the year-end No. 1 ranking. If Nadal isn’t fit for Basel or Paris, that race could get much tighter heading into the season-ender in London.

In 2006, in his best season, Federer lost just five matches; four of them were to Nadal. In 2017, Nadal, in perhaps his most consistent season, has lost 10 matches so far; four of them have been to Federer. Turnabout is only fair play, after all, in a rivalry that’s lasted as long as this one. Now the 2017 season, which this duo has tossed back and forth like a football, has taken another turn, this time in Federer’s direction.

In their 13-year, 38-match dialogue, Federer and Nadal have never ceased forcing and inspiring each other to become better players. Judging by the heights they reached at the four Grand Slams in 2017, and which Federer reached again on Sunday in Shanghai, they’re not finished yet.

Shanghai Final Preview: Rafael Nadal v. his 2017 nemesis—Roger Federer

Sat, 14 Oct 2017 16:48:00 +0000

Better late than never, even if tennis fans in New York don’t agree. It will be the Shanghai Rolex Masters, rather than the US Open, that will play host to the fourth meeting between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer in 2017.

For an hour or so, it looked as if we might get a repeat of what happened at Flushing Meadows. Just as he had in New York, Juan Martin del Potro won the first set from Federer (with Nadal waiting for the winner). This time, though, rattled by the pro-Federer crowd, the Argentine couldn’t keep landing his forehand missiles, while Federer found a way, with a mix of guile and power, to wrest control of the rallies from him.

That’s also what Federer has done to Nadal in their three meetings so far in 2017. He won in five sets in Melbourne, and in straight sets in Indian Wells and Miami. That recent record, and the fact that Shanghai will be played on a fast hard court, should make Federer the favorite to win again, right?

Nadal may not feel that way. Yes, Federer likes fast courts, but Rafa had the most success against him this year at the Australian Open, which featured a newly quickened surface of its own. Nadal is also on a 16-match hard-court win streak at the moment, and his confidence has grown with each round in Beijing and Shanghai. We know about Federer’s improved backhand; Nadal’s is also as solid as it has ever been right now.

That Federer backhand will be key. Can he hit it with the same deadly-accurate abandon that he did in their first three matches? It hasn’t been quite as good this week, but that doesn’t mean he won’t step forward and crack it when he needs to against Rafa, especially if Rafa leaves his crosscourt forehand short. For his part, Nadal should be ready for the Federer attack. In his close, well-played win over Marin Cilic in the semifinals, Rafa was forced to fend off the Croat’s crosscourt two-handed backhand over and over.

Beyond the forehands and backhands, any match between these two will be a psychological battle. Does Federer now believe, as he once struggled to believe, that he has the advantage over Nadal, or is there still some doubt? Will Rafa’s desire to turn the tables and not go 0-4 against Federer this season inspire him to play better, or make him tighter if he grabs a lead? In the past, it was Federer who was considered the better player historically, despite the fact that he has a losing head-to-head record against Nadal. Now Rafa faces the possibility of finishing the season No. 1 despite going winless against Federer. He’ll do whatever it takes to avoid that.

I liked the way both men looked in their semifinals. Nadal is deep into his second straight week of play, but he moved well and played resourceful tennis to beat Cilic. And while Federer is coming back after a layoff, there was an edge and a cleverness to his play that was missing against Delpo in New York.

Eleven years ago, Nadal and Federer played their most underrated match on this court, in what was then known as the Tennis Masters Cup. Federer won that one, and I’ll give him the slightest of edges in this one as well.

Winner: Federer

Today on Tennis Channel's Court Report—Dominic Thiem clinches a spot in the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals:

Shanghai semifinal previews: Nadal vs. Cilic; Federer vs. Del Potro

Fri, 13 Oct 2017 15:35:00 +0000

Rafael Nadal vs. Marin Cilic

The numbers all point to a Nadal victory. He’s won 15 straight matches dating back to August. He’s 4-1 against Cilic, and he won their only 2017 meeting, 6-1, 6-2, on a hard court in Acapulco. Rafa is also looking to shore up his lead in the race for the year-end No. 1 with Roger Federer before he has to face Federer himself in the Shanghai final. Plus, Cilic’s competition this week—Albert Ramos-Viñolas, Steve Johnson, Kyle Edmund—may not have prepared him for the leap in quality he’ll face in the semis. Still, in theory, Cilic, with his height, serve, and two-handed backhand, has a game that should trouble Nadal at some point. The fast courts in Shanghai may give this year’s Wimbledon finalist a chance.

Winner: Nadal

Roger Federer vs. Juan Martin del Potro

Here’s a Friday the 13th story to scare tennis fans: Delpo falls and hurts his surgically-repaired left wrist. That’s what happened in his three-set quarterfinal win over Viktor Troicki on Friday. Despite his eventual victory, the Argentine wasn’t in a celebratory mood afterward, and later he went to a hospital for an MRI. By the time you read this, Del Potro may have withdrawn and handed Federer a free pass to the final. But if Delpo can play without significant pain, this could be a good one. Federer leads their head to head 16-6, but Del Potro won their last meeting, at the US Open, and he reached the final in Shanghai in 2013.

Winner: Federer

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Fabio Fognini's suspended two-Slam ban and fine: what it is—and isn't

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 21:32:00 +0000

When it comes to events that have been “a long time coming” in tennis, a two-Grand Slam ban for Fabio Fognini is at the top of the list.

On Wednesday, the sport’s Grand Slam Board threatened Fognini with that potential penalty, along with a $96,000 fine, for what it deemed the “major offense of aggravated behavior” and “conduct contrary to the integrity of the game” that he committed at the US Open six weeks ago.

This is the second time Fognini has been punished for using what has been politely described as “extremely derogatory and misogynistic language” toward chair umpire Louise Engzell during his first-round singles match in New York—the less-polite way to describe it is to say that he called her a whore. Later that week, Fognini was kicked out of the doubles draw at the Open and fined $24,000.

Yet this being tennis, where second, third, and fourth chances are the norm for bad behavior, Fognini can still avoid the two-major suspension, and see his fine cut in half, if he doesn’t commit any more major offenses during Grand Slam events over the next two seasons.

From the Grand Slam Board:

Does the penalty fit the crime? More precisely, does it fit the perpetrator? I understand the idea of using the carrot of a suspended sentence to try to force Fognini to change his ways. After a half-hearted initial apology, he has sounded more contrite. He won’t appeal his sentence, he says, and he told Sky Sports Italia, “The gravity of my gesture I understand, I know I did something heavy...there will not be a [next time].”

Still, the carrot that the Grand Slam Board held out should have come with more stick—such as making his two-Slam ban immediate, rather than contingent on future behavior. In the case of a “major offense,” after all, it was within officials’ power to fine Fognini $250,000 and permanently ban him from all majors.

Even that most severe of sentences wouldn’t have come as a surprise to longtime Fognini watchers. The 30-year-old is a lifetime recidivist when it comes to outrageousness and offensiveness. This is a player who, aside from his garden-variety cursing, gesturing, racquet smashing and ball slamming, was fined $29,500 at Wimbledon in 2014 for insulting a chair umpire and tour supervisor; called a Serbian player “gypsy s---t” a few months later in Hamburg; and threatened one of the game’s most respected umpires, Mo Lahyani, in Madrid, for making a call he didn’t agree with—“Come now, don’t be scared,” Fognini said as he motioned for Layhani to meet with him after the match.

Will Fognini suddenly rein himself in after letting it all hang out for much of his 13-year career? There’s also the question of tennis’s divided jurisdiction. If Fognini commits a “major offense” at a tournament run by the ATP (i.e., a non-Slam event), will it count against him with the Grand Slam Board?

Just as important, with women umpires now routinely working men’s matches, and with the memory of Ilie Nastase’s crude behavior at a Fed Cup tie this spring still fresh, the tours need to show zero tolerance for the type of gross sexism that Fognini exhibited at the Open. A suspended ban and a moveable fine fall short of that.

Like Nastase, Fognini is part of a long line of bad actors in tennis who have largely avoided facing serious, behavior-changing punishment. With Nasty, as with John McEnroe, their tempers were often excused as the regrettable but understandable flip sides of their artistic talents. For his part, Fognini has often been cast as a comical sideshow, the ringmaster of a ridiculous but harmless circus that adds flavor to the game. His words and actions at the Open should put an end to that too-kind characterization, both for Fognini and for any other player who believes that crude insults are a natural by-product of heated competition.

A ban has been a long time coming for Fognini. Let’s hope the possibility of one is finally enough to make him pack up his ugly circus and put an end to his tired act.

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Federer shook off some rust to survive his Shanghai opener

Wed, 11 Oct 2017 16:36:00 +0000

You might think, in a match against 25-year-old Diego Schwartman, that 36-year-old Roger Federer would have the advantage when it comes to experience. You might think it would be doubly true in Shanghai. After all, Federer was winning Masters Cups on these quick courts back when Schwartzman was playing 14-and-under events in Argentina.

But as any older player knows, experience is a double-edged sword. Yes, there are a lot of good memories for Federer in Shanghai, but there are some scary ones, too, especially when it comes to opening-round matches. The last time he made the trip, in 2015, he was ambushed by Albert Ramos-Viñolas in three sets in his first match. The year before, he had to stave off five match points to survive his opener with Leonardo Mayer. That year, Federer went on to win the tournament; like I said, experience is a double-edged sword.

As he did in 2014 and 2015, Federer arrived with some rust to shake off; he hadn’t played a tour match in five weeks. While the 5’7” Schwartzman wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the speed of the surface and overpower Federer, the assiduous Argentine would surely test his consistency. Schwartzman, a surprise quarterfinalist at the US Open last month, and a semifinalist in Tokyo last week, also happens to be playing the best tennis of his career.

And he played some good tennis against Federer, too. Even on these courts, Schwartzman had little trouble staying with Federer from the baseline. He passed him successfully, and lobbed him successfully, when he was given half a chance, and he drew errors from Federer’s forehand return. When he went down a break in the first set at 2-4, Schwartzman didn’t cave. He broke back and pushed the set to a tiebreaker. Any Chinese fans who hadn’t seen much of Schwartzman were likely impressed by his understated shot-making skills.

That is, if they were actually watching Schwartzman. As always, the Shanghai fans only had eyes, and voices, for Federer. They screamed for even his most standard-issue winners. They chanted “In! In! In!” when he challenged an out call that went against him. They let out a collective “Awww!” when he lost an important point. In the past, Federer has cited the enthusiasm of the fans in Shanghai specifically as a reason to keep playing tennis, and it was easy to see why on Wednesday.

Federer did show his share of rust. He was hellbent on attacking as quickly as possible; he came over his backhand, fired his forehand into the corners, and wasted little time before getting to net. And he made mistakes because of it. Federer pulled his forehand wide a number of times, and struggled to catch up to Schwartzman’s serve on that side. He committed 12 unforced errors in the first set. But he still had what he’s had all year: His serve. Every time Schwartzman threatened, he was treated to an unreturnable delivery from Federer.

At 5-5 in the first set, Schwartzman won a brilliant rally to level at 30-30. Federer responded with an ace. Down 1-2 in the first-set tiebreaker, Federer hit another ace. And down 15-30 at 5-4 in the second set, serving for the match, Federer came up with the shot of the day: a second-serve ace down the T.

In the end, it was experience that made the difference in Federer’s 7-6 (4), 6-4 win; specifically, Schwartzman’s lack of experience in beating Federer. He was 0-3 against the Swiss coming in, and it showed at just the moment when you would expect it to show: When he found himself in the lead for the first time, at 2-0 in the first-set tiebreaker. On that point, a loose and free-swinging Schwartzman smacked a forehand winner. Faced with the same shot a few points later, though, he tightened up and shanked it wide. When he finally had something to lose, Schwartzman lost it.

Federer has survived his opener in Shanghai. Now he moves on to play Alexander Dolgopolov. The Ukrainian is a talented, unpredictable, and dangerous ball-striker, and he reached the final in Shenzhen a couple of weeks ago. He has played with more determination since allegations of match-fixing arose against him this summer. As with Schwartzman, though, it could be experience that tells the tale. Federer is 4-0 against Dolgopolov.

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John Isner shows he's more than just a server—he's a gamer, too

Tue, 10 Oct 2017 16:34:00 +0000

Dusan Lajovic couldn’t take it anymore. After shanking a simple backhand wide of the sideline, he raised his racquet up and slammed it to the court. But even that wasn’t enough to properly express how frustrated he was. So he took a ball out of his pocket and slammed that to the court, too.

What had enraged the Serbian? Tennis Channel commentator James Blake summed it up in a sentence that every player and fan could immediately understand.

“Those are the trials and tribulations of playing John Isner,” Blake said.

At this stage, Isner and Lajovic were just where you would expect on most days—in a third-set tiebreaker. The problem for Lajovic was that, an hour or so earlier, he had good reason to believe that he wouldn’t need to go the distance to beat the big American on this day. Lajovic won the first set, and in the second Isner had his injured knee strapped. Hobbling from one point to the next, it looked like he was destined for an early flight home, in time to see his beloved Carolina Panthers play on Thursday night.

But that’s the thing about Isner. He doesn’t quit. He knows he has a not-so-secret weapon—his serve—that can keep him in any match, against any opponent, no matter how badly he might be playing or feeling. On a hot day when Nick Kyrgios walked off the court after losing the first set to Steve Johnson and never came back, and Jack Sock retired at the start of the third against Alexander Dolgopolov, Isner stayed put. He kept hobbling, kept plugging, and kept serving.

Most important, he kept winning the points he needed to win. Down a mini-break at 3-4 in the second-set tiebreaker, Isner hit a forehand return winner. Down 4-5, he hit an ace. At 5-5, he hit another unreturnable serve. Finally, at 6-5, Isner really must have galled Lajovic when he won a baseline rally for the set.

Isner was just as clutch in the third-set tiebreaker. Down match point at 5-6, he fired a 137-m.p.h ace, his 29th of the day. Up 7-6, with a match point of his own, he watched as Lajovic put the easiest of backhand volleys into the net. Isner didn’t celebrate. Part of him must have known he had been lucky to escape with a win. Another part of him must have known just how frustrated Lajovic, who shook his head in simmering rage as Isner approached for the handshake, would be to lose this one.

“He’s played better throughout most of this match,” Blake said of Lajovic, who won 109 points to Isner’s 102 and was never broken.

Isner, as long as his knee lets him serve, will move on to the second round, where he’ll face 19-year-old Stefanos Tsitsipas. The 10-year veteran goes up against a lot of Next Gen opponents these days, but for the most part, at 32, he keeps them at bay. Isner has enjoyed a surprising renaissance in 2017. He has a 34-19 record with two titles, and he’s currently ranked No. 16, up 10 spots from a year ago. While Sock and Sam Querrey have had their surges this year, Isner remains the top-ranked American male.

Isner isn’t just a server. He’s a competitor, too, and he’s not done infuriating opponents the world over just yet.

Rafael Nadal and Caroline Garcia continue to rise with big fall wins

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 16:11:00 +0000

“Very long games at the beginning and a good level of tennis,” Rafael Nadal said of the opening of his 6-2, 6-1 win over Nick Kyrgios in the China Open final. “I think after 30 minutes we were only 2-1. Very intense everything.”

In its early moments, Nadal-Kyrgios looked like it could end up being one of the matches of the year. After three games, I was having hopeful flashbacks to Kyrgios’ other classic from 2017, his three-tiebreaker loss to Roger Federer in Miami. That’s obviously not what happened on Sunday; looking back to those opening games, it’s easy to pinpoint two reasons why.

First, by that stage Kyrgios was already distracted by a bad call that had gone against him. He had hit a crosscourt backhand deep and close to the sideline, which was called out. Kyrgios, who was ready to finish the point on the next shot, challenged. When he saw that his shot had caught a millimeter or two of the line, he began a rant that didn’t let up until the second set, if at all, and that eventually earned him a point penalty from chair umpire Mo Lahyani. From the start, if things didn’t go his way, Kyrgios had a reason not to compete.

More important, though, was the fact that Nadal had two very good reasons to compete—not that he ever really needs them. No. 1, he had played poorly in his last match with Kyrgios, a 6-2, 7-5 loss in Cincinnati. No. 2, he wanted to stretch his lead over Roger Federer in the race for the year-end top ranking before Federer could start making up ground in Shanghai this week. With those two things in mind, Rafa set about grinding Kyrgios down, relentlessly working him from side to side.

Rafa’s serve, which his mixed up as well as he has all season, and his backhand, which he hit at sharp angles crosscourt, were especially effective. Kyrgios fought for five games; he’s never better than when he wants to prove that he can beat one of the Big 3. But by the fifth game, he was doing more muttering than shot-making, and the drop shot he flipped into the net at break point looked like a sign of surrender. Nadal won the next eight games to lead 6-2, 5-0.

“I think one of the best matches of the year,” Nadal said of his performance, which earned him his first China Open title since 2005, when he was 19.

“I don’t even remember that one,” Rafa said. “The feeling is probably better this year...Every title later in your career is more special than when you were younger.”

Nadal has never had much success in the fall. This is only the third post-US Open tournament he has ever won, and the first since his title in Tokyo in 2010. But where he once won matches and tournaments in six-month bursts, in 2017 he has smoothed out the dips in his play. Rafa played well on hard courts at the start of the season, dominated as usual on clay, and has now won 12 straight matches on hard courts again. This may not end up being Nadal’s finest season, but it could be his most consistent from start to finish.

In his win over Kyrgios, you could see why Rafa is still winning week in and week out at 31. Through three games, it was “very intense everything” from both players. But only one of them could stay that intense.

Up 2-1 in the second-set tiebreaker against Simona Halep on Sunday in Beijing, Caroline Garcia bent low for a forehand volley. From below net level, she stuck it solidly down the line. The ball didn’t go for a winner, nor was it a particularly spectacular shot. But it was good enough—and different enough—to inspire a roar of excitement from the enthusiastic crowd. “So,” you could almost hear them saying, “that’s what a textbook volley looks like.”

Garcia ended up winning that point, the tiebreaker, and the final over the world No. 1 Halep, 6-4, 7-6 (3).

Garcia’s volley was a good indicator of how she came away with back-to-back titles in Wuhan and Beijing over the last two weeks. The 23-year-old Garcia beat stronger, faster, higher-ranked opponents with a more complete game than they could offer, and a more decisive mindset than they could muster.

“The key was definitely to be aggressive and try to dominate the rallies,” Garcia said. “My serve was really an important thing because she’s a very good returner. I have to be aggressive, but I have to control myself sometimes.”

On Court Report, Tennis Channel looks back at Caroline Garcia's searing two-week stretch:

Garcia’s multi-talents as a shot-maker have always been apparent. At 17, she was touted as a future No. 1 by Andy Murray. But only now has she, as she said, learned to control those talents, and weave them together into a formidable whole.

Service winners down the T. Putaway inside-out forehands. Down-the-line backhand winners. Strong kick second serves. Textbook low volleys. Deep returns. Garcia had all of those things working, and working when she needed them. She and Halep each won 76 points, but Garcia won both sets.

Over the last two weeks, Garcia has beaten five seeded players: Angelique Kerber, Dominika Cibulkova, Elina Svitolina, Petra Kvitova and Simona Halep. She saved a match point against Svitolina, and straight-setted two very different, very in-form players in Kvitova and Halep. It was enough to launch Garcia from No. 19 to No. 9 and put her in the Top 10 for the first time. Suddenly she has a chance to join the Top 8 in Singapore for the WTA Finals at the end of the month. And who would deny she deserves that spot?

“To be in the Top 10 means something because it’s a step in your career that you want to achieve,” Garcia said of joining the WTA’s elite. “It’s an important goal. It means you’re a part of the Top 10 best players in the world.”

Can Garcia join even more elite groups in the coming months and years? In 2015, Garbiñe Muguruza had a similar run of fall brilliance. Many of us wondered then if she would be the WTA’s next new major-title winner. While Muguruza has had her ups and downs since, she made good on that promise. Garcia has different strengths and weaknesses—she’s not as naturally powerful as Muguruza, but she has a more complete and classical game. More importantly, like Muguruza, Garcia can take control of rallies and win them on her own terms.

Is that a formula for success at a Slam? It will be interesting to watch Garcia try. If the spectators in Beijing are any indication, she may show tennis fans around the world a few shots they haven’t seen in a while, and which they may like seeing again.

What's at Stake: Rafa rolled in Beijing—can Roger respond in Shanghai?

Mon, 09 Oct 2017 02:38:00 +0000

The men reach Peak Asia this week, when they convene for their eighth Masters 1000 event of the season, in Shanghai. The women, after gathering for their own Peak Asia week in Beijing, scatter to three smaller events, in Hong Kong, Tianjin, and Linz. While Rafael Nadal tightened his hold on the top ranking last week, and Simona Halep took over that spot on the women’s side, both races for the year-end No. 1 remain alive.

*****

Shanghai Rolex Masters (ATP)

Shanghai
$7,906,170; 1000 ranking points
DecoTurf
Draw is here

At this point, Nadal and Roger Federer aren’t just dominating the ATP tour; they’re carrying it. The Spaniard and the Swiss are the top two seeds in Shanghai, followed by Alexander Zverev, Marin Cilic, Dominic Thiem, Grigor Dimitrov, and Pablo Carreño Busta. That’s a fine lineup of talent, but not exactly the murderer’s row we’ve come to expect from a Masters 1000 event. The men’s tour missed Nadal and Federer when they were out; now they miss Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, and Stan Wawrinka.

Last year it was Djokovic and Murray who sprinted to the year-end finish line (and probably destroyed themselves in the process). This time it’s Rafa and Roger who are in a two-man race for the season-ending No. 1 spot. Nadal extended his lead with his title in Beijing this weekend; can Federer answer this week? The fast surface in Shanghai should help. He won on these courts in 2014, and also when they played host to the World Tour Finals a decade ago. Nadal, by contrast, has been to just one final here, in 2009.

The downside of quick courts is that you have to be ready to go right away, and the danger for Federer is that he hasn’t played a match that matters since the US Open four weeks ago. Three years ago in Shanghai, Federer had to save match points to sneak past Leonardo Mayer in his opener. Two years ago, he wasn’t so lucky, as he was ambushed in his first match by Albert Ramos-Viñolas. This time Federer will face either Diego Schwartzman or Jordan Thompson to start. Either way, Federer’s consistency will be tested immediately.

As for Nadal, he’ll have his own tough tests to deal with in the early going, from gritty Jared Donaldson in his first match, and either Fabio Fognini or Lucas Pouille in the following round. The Italian has given Rafa fits in recent years, and the Frenchman had two match points on Rafa last week in Beijing. If Nadal wins those, he could face Grigor Dimitrov, who pushed him to three sets this weekend, in the quarters.

First-round match to watch: Frances Tiafoe vs. Benoit Paire

Possible third-round matches to watch: Alexander Zverev vs. Juan Martin del Potro; Nick Kyrgios vs. Marin Cilic; Federer vs. Sock; Nadal vs. Pouille

Tennis Channel presents The Look Ahead:

Tianjin Open (WTA)

Tianjin, China
$426,750; International
Hard court
Draw is here

What’s Caroline Garcia’s reward for winning two big titles back to back, in Wuhan and Beijing (aside from the purse-busting paydays, of course)? A first-round date with Maria Sharapova in Tianjin. Is this the end of Garcia’s run—she’s 0-4 against Sharapova—or is it just another step upward for the newest member of the Top 10?

Also here: Petra Kvitova

*****

Prudential Hong Kong Open (WTA)

Hong Kong
$226,750; International
Hard court
Draw is here

Elina Svitolina is the top seed in Hong Kong; she’ll go for her sixth title of 2017. Perhaps more notable is that Venus Williams, who is returning from an injury that kept her out of Beijing, is the No. 2 seed. She could face Naomi Osaka in a crowd-pleasing second rounder. One oddity of Venus’ season: As good as she has been, she has yet to win a title. Could she close out the year with one here?

Also here: Jennifer Brady, Shelby Rogers, Elena Vesnina, Agnieszka Radwanska, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova

First-round match to watch: Caroline Wozniacki vs. Eugenie Bouchard

*****

Ladies Linz (WTA)

Linz, Austria
$226,750; International
Hard court
Draw is here

Had enough of the Asian swing? The WTA has you covered, with this 32-player draw in the heart of Europe. Magdalena Rybarikova is the first seed, followed by Barbora Strycova.

Wild card of note: Belinda Bencic. She’ll start against Kirsten Flipkens.

China Open final preview: Two world No. 1's vs. two youngsters

Sat, 07 Oct 2017 17:25:00 +0000

Simona Halep vs. Caroline Garcia

The finale of the WTA’s fourth Premier Mandatory event of 2017 makes sense. While it doesn’t pit the season’s two best players against each other, it does feature two players who have been playing some of the most impressive tennis of their careers over the last week. The unseeded Garcia is coming off a major win in Wuhan, and she has followed that up with hard-earned and somewhat surprising victories over Elina Svitolina and Petra Kvitova in Beijing. If anything, Halep has cracked an even higher ceiling at the China Open. By beating Maria Sharapova and Jelena Ostapenko, both in one-sided straight-setters, she has avenged two Grand Slam losses from earlier in the year; and, for good measure, she has become No. 1 in the world for the first time while she was at it. Halep is 2-0 against Garcia; if they’re both still playing their best on Sunday, that means Halep should win.

Winner: Halep

*****

Rafael Nadal vs. Nick Kyrgios

This is the final that Beijing and the ATP wanted, but was probably too much for them to actually hope for. Yes, Nadal is No. 1 and the US Open champ, but you never know how he’s going to fare on a hard court. And yes, Kyrgios is a Slam winner in waiting, but you never know how he’s going to fare, or how much he’s going to care, on any type of court. This week, Nadal and Kyrgios have fared as well as possible. Rafa survived a tough draw, a couple of three-setters, and two match points against him to reach the final and extend his lead in the race for year-end No. 1. For his part, in the semis Kyrgios showed that he does care where he stands with regard to his younger rival, Alexander Zverev, who seemed to have passed him in the Next Big Thing sweepstakes this summer. Can Kyrgios muster that same sustained effort against Rafa? He typically plays his best when he has something to prove against a top player. Can Nadal, who was unhappy about his losing performance in their last meeting, in Cincinnati, find an answer on a hard court? The Spaniard and the Aussie are 2-2, and there seems to a pendulum effect to their rivalry. After Cincy, it may be swing back in Rafa’s direction.

Winner: Nadal

Diving into each of the four semifinal matches at the China Open

Fri, 06 Oct 2017 18:35:00 +0000

On paper, the China Open is a lopsided event. While it’s one of the WTA’s big four Premier Mandatory draws, it’s only a mid-level tournament for the men—though a highly lucrative one, of course. Yet Beijing still has the co-ed charm of a dual-gender event. Bringing the men and women together one last time adds a little fun to what can sometimes feel like a mercenary march through the fall season. And with both of the races for the year-end No. 1 ranking very much alive, there’s still something to play for.

Maybe that’s why Beijing has brought us a stellar lineup of semifinals in 2017. Here’s a look ahead at all four of them. If you’re in the States, these should be worth setting the alarm, or at least the DVR, for.

Simona Halep vs. Jelena Ostapenko

The Romanian and the Latvian have met just once, but it was a doozy: This year’s French Open final, which Ostapenko won after trailing by a set and nearly two breaks. Despite being devastated by the defeat, Halep has rallied since, and with new co-coach Andrei Pavel she has played some of her most purposeful tennis of 2017 in Beijing. Halep has already exacted revenge for one Slam defeat this week, against Maria Sharapova. Can she do it again? Much will depend, of course, on Ostapenko’s accuracy, but Halep will likely be determined not to leave it all up to her again. Winner: Halep

Alexander Zverev vs. Nick Kyrgios

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the best Next Genner of them all? The 22-year-old Aussie seemed to have that title locked up this spring, when he beat Novak Djokovic twice in a row. But by August the 20-year-old German had one-upped him with a win over Roger Federer in the Montreal final, and had passed him in the rankings. Zverev still leads in the rankings, No. 4 to No. 20, but Kyrgios still leads their head-to-head 2-1. Is Zverev really the better player? How much does Kyrgios care about staying in front of his younger rival? We’ll find out in this intriguing contest. Winner: Zverev

Rafael Nadal vs. Grigor Dimitrov

On the minus side for Dimitrov, he trails his head to head with Nadal 1-8. Can there be a plus side to that situation? If the Bulgarian is thinking positively, yes—his lone win over Rafa came at this tournament last year, and in their most recent meeting, in the Australian Open semis, he pushed Nadal to five sets in one of the year’s classic matches. While this is just a semifinal at a 500, it still feels like a big test for both of these guys. Nadal is trying to add to his lead in the race for the year-end No. 1 ranking, and also keep his hard-court momentum going as 2018, and another trip to Australia, approaches—it’s never a sure thing how he’s going to play on this surface. As for Dimitrov, this is a chance to try to close the year the way he began it. Winner: Dimitrov

Petra Kvitova vs. Caroline Garcia

The other women’s semi is a rematch; this one is a test of form. Garcia and Kvitova are both playing some of their best tennis of 2017 at the moment. The Frenchwoman won the biggest title of her career last week in Wuhan, while Kvitova has been looking more and more ominous with each round in Beijing, where she has yet to drop a set. Looking at the two of them and their relative shot-making power, you might think Kvitova would dominate Garcia. But she only leads their head to head 3-2. While she did dominate in their last meeting, at the US Open, Garcia won the two prior matches. Winner: Kvitova

The Pliskova Perplex: Can Karolina reach her limitless potential?

Thu, 05 Oct 2017 18:25:00 +0000

Karolina Pliskova had earned her fourth set point, and her first one on her own serve. Surely this time the No. 4 seed would cash it in and push her opponent, unseeded Sorana Cirstea, into a third set.

Pliskova and Cirstea rallied briefly, until Cirstea sent a hard shot to Pliskova’s forehand. Despite being behind the baseline and leaning backward, Pliskova tried to drive a flat forehand at maximum velocity, with no margin for error, crosscourt. The ball ended up in the net, Cirstea came back to break, and two games later she had won the match, 6-1, 7-5. It was her first victory over a Top 5 opponent in four years, and it advanced her to the quarterfinals of the Premier Mandatory event in Beijing.

Cirstea earned it; she did exactly what she needed to do, and what Pliskova didn’t do, to win this match. When Pliskova fell behind early in the first set, she failed to slow Cirstea’s momentum. She committed nine unforced errors in the first three games, and while she has one of the best serves on tour, she was broken three times in that set. Contrast that to what Cirstea did in the second. When she fell behind 0-3, she made sure she gutted out a tough hold so that she could stay in touch at 1-3. She did the same thing when she served at 2-5. Down 0-40, Cirstea came up with two service winners and eventually gutted out another tough hold. As one of the commentators from Beijing said of the scrappy Cirstea, “She has the demeanor of someone who loves to be in a fight.”

That wasn’t Pliskova’s demeanor on Thursday. When the Czech arrived in Tokyo to start her season-ending Asian swing, she admitted that she was tired, and that 20 events, 65 matches, and 10 months of mostly non-stop travel had worn on her. After losing in the quarterfinals of the US Open and failing to win her first Slam in 2017, she had split with her coach, David Kotyza. Pliskova reached No. 1 and won three titles with him, but the two differed when it came to how they saw her future direction. This fall, she has played three tournaments without a coach, and lost before the semifinals at all of them.

On the one hand, a flat finish to a long and mostly successful year is understandable. Pliskova wasn’t afraid to say that reaching her first major final, at the 2016 US Open, made her hungry to win one in 2017. Now that ship has sailed, and she’s reached the part of the season when there are no more Slams to peak for. All that’s left of significance is the WTA Finals in Singapore. Could a strong finish to the year carry over into 2018? Recent evidence is mixed. In 2015, Garbiñe Muguruza got hot in the fall, and went on to win her first major in Paris the following spring; but last year Dominika Cibulkova went out in a blaze of championship-winning glory in Singapore only to retreat again this season. Fortunately, Pliskova doesn’t seem resigned to running out the clock on 2017. She’s going to work with Rennae Stubbs in Singapore.

What does Pliskova, in the prime of her career at 25, need to do to win a major and improve in 2018? It’s a complicated question in part because the answers seem so simple. Be more consistent; develop a rally shot instead of always going for broke; improve your footwork and defense; play the score; show more emotion. All of those things would seem likely to help the placid Pliskova, but if they were easy to implement, she would be doing them by now, right? You can’t say that she hasn’t succeeded with the demeanor and playing style she has.

Maybe the most important thing a coach can do for Pliskova in Singapore is bring some positive energy and upbeat emotion to her game and her mind as she begins to think about 2018. The outgoing Stubbs would seem to be a good choice for that; she’ll obviously have a lot to work with. Pliskova is the rarest of talents, a player who has reached No. 1 in the world, but hasn’t come close to reaching her own ceiling.

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Halep’s ultra-focused win over Sharapova felt like a long time coming

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 15:38:00 +0000

“Rampant” is how the U.K.’s Daily Express described Simona Halep after her 6-2, 6-2 win over Maria Sharapova in Beijing on Wednesday. There’s really no better word for her runaway performance. The result was the Romanian’s first win over the Russian in eight tries, and in the most convincing fashion imaginable.

Halep was dialed in from the first point, and her focus never wavered; if there were any nerves about doing something she had never done before, she didn’t show them. She counterpunched, as she always must against the taller and more powerful Sharapova. But this time Halep counterpunched with purpose and power of her own. She redirected Sharapova’s pace to both corners and forced her opponent to hit on the run. More important, she did it without making mistakes of her own. At the end of the first set, Sharapova had 20 errors and Halep had one. Even worse for Sharapova, she had hit just three more winners—seven to four—than her opponent. Halep wasn’t letting her do anything she wanted to do.

That went for the serve as well. A big part of what Sharapova always wants to do against Halep is take advantage of her floating second serve. Sharapova did it so well in their match at the US Open last month that Halep has dedicated herself to improving that shot. The work paid off today, as Halep made 70 percent of her first serves in the first set, denying Sharapova a chance to tee off on her second ball. Halep also read Sharapova’s first serve well and was in virtually all of the Russian’s service games.

“It was a great match,” Halep said. “I think I played my best tennis against her.”

“I served pretty well, and the work that I did after the US Open, I could see it on court today.”

Sharapova couldn’t argue with that assessment.

“I think she played an incredible match,” she said of Halep, “probably the best she’s played against me in all our previous meetings.”

Looking on was Halep’s new co-coach, Andrei Pavel, a former Romanian player. Do we have another super-coach on our hands? Halep is still strongly connected to her home country, and if he can help her feel a little more at home on the road, all the better. But in finally running rampant over Sharapova, Halep seemed to prove something to herself. New coach or no new coach, this felt like a performance that came from deep within.

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Nadal’s 2017 revenge tour continued with a razor-thin win over Pouille

Tue, 03 Oct 2017 18:34:00 +0000

“It’s a toxic mix for Rafa at the moment,” the commentator who was calling the first-round match between Rafael Nadal and Lucas Pouille in Beijing said. “The combination of rust and Pouille playing out of his skin.”

These words were spoken at the start of the second-set tiebreaker. The Frenchman had won the first set 6-4 and had seemed destined to win the second as well. He had yet to drop serve, and had mostly dictated the proceedings; Nadal, for his part, had spent most of his time scrambling in defense. Only a few resourceful serves and forehands on crucial points had kept Rafa alive.

But even the standard Nadal all-out effort didn’t appear to be enough on this day. Pouille jumped ahead in the tiebreaker 3-1 on a pair of big forehands. He jumped ahead again 5-3 with an ace and a forehand winner. Finally, he reached match point at 6-4 with yet another forehand winner. When Pouille slammed down a first serve and came forward for a sitter forehand, Nadal’s seven-match win streak looked to be at an end.

But Rafa guessed that Pouille, who had hit his last forehand winner down the line, was going to go there again. Pouille may have seen Rafa move out of the corner of his eye, because he did something he hadn’t done all afternoon: He drilled that easy forehand into the net. Pouille’s chance, it turned out, had come and gone. Nadal saved another match point with a nicely carved backhand volley and won the tiebreaker 8-6.

Despite that disappointment, Pouille still refused to be broken. The two men remained neck and neck through the first 10 games of the third set, with the Frenchman throwing the first blows in the rallies, and the Spaniard finding ways to punch back when necessary. Finally, serving at 5-5, Pouille misfired. At 0-15, he had an overhead to end the point, but again Nadal guessed right and delivered a point-winning forehand pass down the line for 0-30. Here, after two and a half hours, was Rafa’s opening. He seized it with one of his best crosscourt backhands of the day, broke at love, and held at 15 for a hard-fought, entertaining, 4-6, 7-6 (6), 7-5, win over the man who had beaten him in a similarly razor-close match at the US Open last year.

“He had two match points, one of them with an easy forehand, more or less,” Nadal said of Pouille. “But it’s like this. I remember the match against him at the US Open, I had 6-all in the tiebreak, an easy forehand I missed at the net, too. That time was for him, today was for me.”

Nadal says he doesn’t play for revenge. He’s already competitive enough; no need to add extra fuel to the fire. But his win over Pouille was the latest in what you might call his revenge tour of 2017. It began in the Australian Open semifinals, with his victory over Grigor Dimitrov, the man who had beaten him in Beijing last season. From there, Nadal turned the tables on a series of players who had beaten him on big occasions in recent years: Fernando Verdasco, Fabio Fognini, Dominic Thiem, Nick Kyrgios, Stan Wawrinka, Juan Martin del Potro, and most importantly, Novak Djokovic. Now he’s knocked off the last man to beat him at the US Open, Pouille.

Every top player, including Nadal, reaches a point where they start to lose to people they’ve never lost to before. But Rafa, like his friend Roger Federer, has now reached the point where he’s beating those same people again. Sometimes, like Nadal said, the difference is just one missed sitter on a crucial point. But the fact that he was on the winning side of that miss today, rather than the losing, is all you need to know about why Nadal’s 2017 has been so much different from his 2016.

As the commentator in Beijing, who had been so skeptical an hour earlier, said of Nadal when the match was over: “He just does not know how to lose right now.”

We haven’t seen the best of David Goffin or Caroline Garcia—yet

Mon, 02 Oct 2017 17:26:00 +0000

If you talk about Caroline Garcia for more than a few minutes, the conversation will eventually come around to the moment when you, and the rest of the tennis world, first heard her name. At the 2011 French Open, as a 17-year-old wild card, Garcia took a seemingly insurmountable lead over Maria Sharapova in their second-round match. Watching from the locker room, a highly impressed Andy Murray tweeted that Garcia was going to be No. 1 in the world someday.

It sounds like a stunning statement now, of course, especially since it came from a guy who isn’t famous for making them. At that moment, though, it was easy to see what Murray meant. For the space of an hour, as the young and casually swaggering Frenchwoman whipped forehands past a hapless Sharapova, Garcia looked poised to become the next big thing, and her game the next evolutionary advance in baseline shot-making.

Too bad a career lasts longer than an hour. Waking up to what she was about to do, Garcia stopped swaggering, stopped hitting forehand winners, and ended up losing to Sharapova 6-0 in the third set. For the next six years, she didn’t do much to make Murray look like a genius in the talent-scouting game, either. Garcia wasn’t big enough, powerful enough, fast enough, consistent enough, or nerveless enough to make a run to the Top 10, let alone No. 1, even a remote possibility. Just reaching the fourth round of a major, which she did for the first time at Roland Garros this year, was tough enough.

Embed from Getty Images

And yet, despite all of that, there was steady progress. Since 2011, Garcia’s year-end ranking has moved from 146 to 138 to 75 to 38 to 35 to 23. Instead of being an instinctively brilliant shot-maker, Garcia has turned out to be a solid and polished all-around performer. She doesn’t play with much of the memorable flair of so many of her fellow Frenchmen and women, and she he doesn’t have any spectacular or unstoppable weapons. But neither, at this stage, does Garcia have any glaring weaknesses. The funks of error-filled play that torpedoed her in the past have mostly been purged from her game.

The results, finally, show it. Garcia has had a career year in 2017. She reached the round of 16 for the first time at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, has made five semifinals on three surfaces, and this weekend she won the biggest tournament of her career, at the Premier 5 event in Wuhan, which had a star-studded draw. Along the way, Garcia upset Angelique Kerber and Dominika Cibulkova, and in the final she came back from a set down to beat Ashleigh Barty, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (4), 6-2.

What has made the difference? The roots of Garcia’s 2017 success may go back to her controversy-generating decision to split with doubles partner Kiki Mladenovic and concentrate on singles. Garcia and Mladenovic had won the French Open doubles title the previous year, and the divorce caused a rift between Garcia and her French Fed Cup teammates. But it has produced results for her.

“It’s been a long journey,” Garica said in Paris this spring. “I’ve learned a great deal of things about myself...A lot of things happened beyond sports, as well.”

“I came to the French Open with a firm commitment. The commitment is to not worry too much about the others. Instead I want to focus on myself and on my game. It feels great, but it’s a long journey and it’s not over yet.”

How far can Garcia’s journey take her? She still doesn’t have the power of a typical Grand Slam champion, but she has the skills for all surfaces—especially, I’d think, for grass, which has traditionally been more friendly to French players than their native clay. She has time; after her birthday in a couple of weeks, she’ll still only be 24.

Garcia’s win in Wuhan took to her a career-high No. 15. Ranking-wise, she hasn’t proven Murray correct yet, and she probably never will. Talent-wise, though, she’s shown that he isn’t such a bad judge, after all.

Embed from Getty Images

One year after Garcia caught the attention of the world for the first time in Paris, David Goffin did the same thing, in the same briefly brilliant fashion, on the same set of courts.

At 21, the unheralded, unprepossessing Belgian entered the French Open draw as a lucky loser. He won his first two matches in five sets, but he didn’t come to the attention of many until he took the first set from Roger Federer in their round-of-16 encounter. Flinging his wiry body around the clay and flicking winners left and right, Goffin gave Federer everything he could handle in a four-set defeat. Afterward, the French fans applauded Goffin’s effort and Federer blessed him as a player to watch.

As with Garcia, though, there wasn’t lot to watch at first. From 2012 to 2014, Goffin lost in the first round at seven straight Grand Slam tournaments, as his ranking dropped out of the Top 100. He had the shots—few have ever hit ground strokes as smoothly—but at 5’11” and 150 pounds, he didn’t have the physical heft to make them effective. Goffin seemed to be a player from another, earlier, and frankly smaller era.

Yet, like Garcia, even as Goffin failed to live up to early sky-high expectations, he progressed. Since bottoming out at No. 113 in 2013, his year-end ranking has moved from 22 to 16 to 11 in 2016. Despite having to pull out of the French Open and miss Wimbledon with a leg injury, Goffin led Belgium back to the Davis Cup final for the second time, and he stands a good chance of making his first trip to the year-end World Tour Finals in London.

Finally, like Garcia, Goffin won what felt like a breakthrough title this weekend, in Shenzhen. It was his first tournament win since 2014, and it snapped a six-final losing streak.

“This one is really special because you know it’s always tough to come back from injuries,” said Goffin, who hurt himself when he ran into a tarp at the French Open, and who was still visibly hobbling at the US Open last month. “To come back from injury to qualify my country for the Davis Cup final and then to win my third trophy, it means a lot.”

Watching Goffin from up close at the Open, and from afar in Shenzhen this weekend, I couldn’t help but think that, at 26, we haven’t seen the best from this gifted player yet. He obviously struggles to win finals, and he struggles to close out top-ranked players. At his size, he’ll never have the self-assurance of a more powerful player like the 6’5” Nick Kyrgios. But that didn’t stop Goffin from beating Kyrgios in a crucial Davis Cup meeting in September.

Could Goffin be the next player, like Rafael Nadal in 2005, Novak Djokovic in 2011, and Murray in 2016, to see his career take off after a Davis Cup title? That will be one of the side-stories to Belgium’s final with France in November.

Goffin’s shots are second to none; he just needs to believe that someone his size can, and should, win big titles. That’s easier said than believed, of course. But Goffin is one of the men who should be in the running at the French Open, if and when Nadal’s grip on the clay there ever begins to loosen.

Murray and Federer said that Garcia and Goffin’s time would come. Maybe that time will be 2018.

What's at Stake: the China Open is key to the rankings race

Sun, 01 Oct 2017 21:03:00 +0000

Were the women in Wuhan or Beijing this weekend? It was hard to tell on Saturday, as Caroline Garcia and Ash Barty were playing a final in one city, at the same time that Maria Sharapova and Anastasija Sevastova were duking it out in a first-round match in the other. Both were three-set thrillers and both were must-see TV, which only made it seem more illogical that they had been scheduled together. We know the WTA’s fall lineup is crowded, and we know that Wuhan was a late-comer to the party, but there must be a way to give its final a time slot of its own.

By now, of course, the women have all moved on to Beijing, where they’ve been joined by the men—the China Open is the WTA’s final Premier Mandatory event of 2017, as well as the last significant duel-gender tournament. The race for the year-end championships and the No. 1 ranking will continue on the women’s side, and both will pick up again in earnest on the men’s. The current holder of that No. 1 position, Rafael Nadal, begins his busy fall campaign this week. Here’s a look ahead at what to watch for from Asia over the next seven days.

China Open (WTA)

Beijing

$6,381,679; Premier Mandatory

Hard court

Draw is here

It may be hard to see from Europe and the States, but with 60 players and $6.4 million in prize money, the women’s China Open is big. So big, it was already well underway by Saturday: It may be hard to top the aforementioned epic first-rounder that Sharapova and Sevastova put on that evening.

But if there’s a tournament that should be rife with competitive matches, it’s this one. Everyone who could make the trip has made it—which basically means everyone except Venus Williams (left knee), Madison Keys (left wrist) and Serena Williams (mom).

In the race for No. 1, Garbiñe Muguruza will try to increase her lead over Simona Halep, who needed three sets to win her opener over Alison Riske. But getting to the final will be an adventure for both women. The Spaniard will start against Barbora Strycova, with the winner facing a rejuvenated Julia Goerges. Meanwhile, Halep will contend with Wimbledon semifinalist Magdaleina Rybarikova, for the right, possibly, to take on the woman who beat her at the US Open, Sharapova. There aren’t a lot of easy paths anywhere in Beijing. As in Wuhan, another surprise final wouldn’t be, well, much of a surprise.

Second-round matches to watch:

Barty vs. Elina Svitolina

Jelena Ostapenko vs. Sam Stosur

Sharapova vs. Ekaterina Makarova

Already out: Johanna Konta and Svetlana Kuznetsova. The Brit and the Russian are in the running for the final two spots in Singapore, but neither could take advantage of the other’s early defeat. Konta has now lost five straight.

China Open (ATP)

Beijing

$4,089,265; 500 ranking points

Hard court

Draw is here

$6 million for the women, $4 million for the men; between prize money and appearance fees, the China Open is putting up some serious money for a week’s work.

While the men make less as a whole, they divvy it up between half as many players. Beijing is a mandatory 64-draw on the WTA side; it’s a mid-level 500 event on the ATP side, with a 32 draw.

Nadal is at the top of that draw. Last year here he was beaten by Grigor Dimitrov in the quarterfinals; he shouldn’t have any problem besting that and picking up some ranking points, right? Not so fast: Rafa will start against Lucas Pouille, and then he could face Karen Khachanov and John Isner before potentially meeting Dimitrov in the semis.

Also here: Juan Martin del Potro, Alexander Zverev, Nick Kyrgios

First-round matches to watch:

Nadal vs. Pouille

Dimitrov vs. Damir Dzumhur, who has had a strong fall

Tomas Berdych vs. Jared Donaldson

Zverev vs. Kyle Edmund

Rakuten Japan Open (ATP)

Tokyo

$1,706, 175; 500 ranking points

Hard court

Draw is here

You might think one $10 million dual-gender event would be enough for one week; but then you might not know tennis very well. Along with Beijing, the men are also in Tokyo. With 500 ranking points available, and typically solid fan attendance, it’s not a small tournament, either.

Tokyo can’t boast top-level star power, but it should boast quality matches. Marin Cilic, Dominic Thiem, Milos Raonic, David Goffin, Kevin Anderson and Sam Querrey are the top six seeds. And they’ll be motivated. With so many top players already out of the ATP’s World Tour Finals in London, guys like Anderson and Querrey now find themselves with a chance to make their first year-end championship.

First-round matches to watch:

Thiem vs. Steve Johnson

Goffin vs. Feliciano Lopez

Querrey vs. Richard Gasquet

The Fighter: Jared Donaldson is finding his place among Next Gen peers

Fri, 29 Sep 2017 15:14:00 +0000

“The Unlikeliest of American Teenagers,” is how the New York Times described Jared Donaldson, in one of the most backhanded of compliments, when the Rhode Island native came out of qualifying to reach the third round at the US Open in 2016.

Thirteen months later, Donaldson is no longer a teenager. More important, he’s no longer the most unlikely of the young U.S. men’s brigade to succeed.

True to form, the no-nonsense, nose-to-the-grindstone Donaldson has started his Asian swing early. While his fellow Next Genners—including Alexander Zverev, Denis Shapovalov, and his countryman Frances Tiafoe, who is ranked 15 spots below him—were yukking it up at the Laver Cup last weekend, Donaldson was preparing to play in front of sparse crowds at the 250 event in Chengdu, China.

And true to form, he fought his way through to the quarterfinals of that event the hard way, with three-set wins over Stefanos Tsitsipas and Kyle Edmund, before falling in another three-setter to Denis Istomin. The wins moved the 20-year-old two steps closer to qualifying for the inaugural Next Gen Finals in Milan. Donaldson is currently sixth in the race to that eight-man, 21-and-under event, and first among the young U.S. men, ahead of the more celebrated Tiafoe and Taylor Fritz.

“I knew that if I played well, if I played my game, I had a really good chance to win the match,” said Donaldson after beating Edmund, a young British player who has always been considered more likely to succeed. “At the end of the day, each match is a new day, it’s a new match.”

Donaldson’s words weren’t as provocative or off-the-cuff as those that come out of Nick Kyrgios’s mouth during any given interview. But that’s true of the American’s game as well; he can’t afford to be as loose, in attitude or playing style, as the Aussie. Donaldson isn’t the most powerful, or talented, or athletic, or physically imposing of the new generation. He doesn’t have Kyrgios’s waterfall serve or Zverev’s elegantly lethal backhand or Tiafoe’s darting speed or Jack Sock’s dive-bombing forehand. Donaldson does everything pretty well, but there’s nothing easy or especially eye-catching about his shots. He has to work for everything he gets; even his aces look effortful.

The upside of having to work for a living is that, if you’re a certain type of person, you learn to enjoy doing just that. So far Donaldson, who moved from No. 105 at the start of 2017 to a career-high No. 51 in August, has been among the most diligent players of his generation. A former student of Taylor Dent’s who now works with Jan-Michael Gambill and Mardy Fish, he has logged a lot of yards on court this season, and a lot of miles off of it. He’s learning the way most people learn: The hard way.

Donaldson has played Challenger tournaments in Hawaii, San Francisco, and Sarasota, and has crashed out in the first round at eight main-tour events, including the Australian Open and French Open. But as any neophyte pro trying to establish himself must do, he has put his head down and moved on from each defeat. Unlike some of his fellow Americans, Donaldson, who trained for a time in Argentina, played a full European clay-court schedule this spring, qualifying for Madrid and Rome. That work began to pay off more handsomely on faster courts over the summer. Donaldson reached the round of 32 at Wimbledon, the round of 16 in D.C. and Montreal, and the quarterfinals in Cincinnati.

Every other day in August, it seemed, Donaldson was on our televisions in another grueling battle. What I came to like about his game is the way he plays with force rather than flash. Donaldson keeps everything in front of him and takes the simplest route he can find to winning a point. While Kyrgios’s motivation waxes and wanes, and Sock’s concentration has peaks and valleys, Donaldson commits to every point. He leaves you with no doubt about his desire.

But desire isn’t always enough. In the Chengdu quarterfinals yesterday, it was Istomin who was able to dictate when he needed to, who had the X-factor forehand and easy power to take over rallies. In the most important moments, he could elevate his game to a place Donaldson couldn’t quite reach.

Donaldson’s strong summer also ended in slight disappointment at the US Open. It was in another dogfight, naturally, this time in the second round with Lucas Pouille. Donaldson came back from two sets down to take the match to a fifth, and a packed and noisy house on Court 17 was ready to help him across the finish line. But he couldn’t make it; Pouille, bigger and stronger than Donaldson, turned the rallies back in his favor and won 6-4.

Still, I liked that the American swallowed his bitterness and didn’t go for a drive-by handshake, as forgivable as it would have been in that moment. Instead, Donaldson looked Pouille in the eye and barked a heartfelt “Good luck.” His manner said he thought he had done everything he could, but it just hadn’t worked out this time. Donaldson isn’t afraid to put himself on the line and come up short. That’s not true of every player, even at the sport’s highest levels.

“There’s room for improvement, which is good,” Donaldson said after his loss in New York. “The fact that I come off the court and say I know there’s things to work on is a good thing, because if I had nothing left to work on, then I’d be in trouble losing that match.

“It’s obviously disappointing. But there’s always tomorrow...I just got to remember it’s a long road. I got to go back [and] work on those things and get better, come back next tournament, come back next year, and be a better player.”

If you’re a a fan of U.S. tennis, there isn’t much more you can ask. And with that attitude, Donaldson’s success is looking a little less unlikely with each passing month.

A back-and-forth rally on substance and style in 'Battle of the Sexes'

Tue, 26 Sep 2017 13:33:00 +0000

This week tennis takes a rare turn on the big screen, in a big Hollywood production: Battle of the Sexes, starring Emma Stone as Billie Jean King and Steve Carell as Bobby Riggs, will debut across the country on Friday.

Joel Drucker, author of Don’t Bet on It and Jimmy Connors Saved My Life, and I give our sneak previews here.

*****

Joel,

I'll start by saying that I liked Battle of the Sexes, and liked it much more than I thought I would when the project was announced. I had half-expected it to be another campy, colorful, over-the-top '70s nostalgia trip, but I was pleased to discover that, like the King-Riggs match itself, there was substance—even melancholy—beneath the style.

The first question with any tennis movie is whether the sport can be conveyed convincingly. That's not easy, but BOTS passes the test. In part, this is because it's not all that hard to mimic Riggs' short and simple pre-war strokes. Carell pulls it off, with some help from body double Vince Spadea. The same goes for Stone and her double, Kaitlyn Christian. There's no need for anyone to learn a Western forehand or a jumping backhand here. The important thing is that the match in the Astrodome successfully recreates the tension of that evening.

Of course, there's a lot more to the story of the Battle of the Sexes than tennis. There's the advent of the women's tour, the then-radical idea of equal pay, the thorny issue of tobacco sponsorship, the beginning of BJK's relationship with Marilyn Barnett and the perils of gambling, to name a few. They're all shoehorned into this movie pretty deftly.

To me, the most interesting aspect of the narrative is how it has been updated for 2017. Instead of gender equality, the focus here is largely on King's sexuality, and her conflicted feelings about her budding relationship with her hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett.

What did you think of the movie, Joel, and what did you find interesting about how the story was told?

Tennis Channel spoke with Emma Stone, who plays Billie Jean King, at the Battle of the Sexes premiere in Los Angeles:

Steve,

I liked Battle of the Sexes very much. I too shared your concerns that the nostalgia-culture aspects would overwhelm the tale, but that wasn’t the case at all.

To me, the movie was very much a story about identity—about both Billie Jean and Bobby trying to understand who they were at that time, and who they were on the way to becoming.

Tennis had shaped each of them so much as individuals. Though the movie doesn’t touch on this, their backgrounds were very similar: two working-class strivers from tennis-rich Southern California, each underestimated by that region’s tennis majordomo, Perry T. Jones. Tennis was the democratic vehicle for becoming a big deal, and each spoke quite loudly with their racquet.

But as the movie shows vividly, the price tag of that democratic success is a certain kind of isolation. One of my favorite quotes regarding tennis comes from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, a book written more than 30 years before the sport was even invented: “Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”

Bobby and Billie Jean were each seeking greater forms of meaning and connection. For Bobby, at least as shown in this film, that meant finding a way to get in on the action of what tennis was becoming in the early ‘70s: a rising sport with drastically increased visibility and money. From all I’ve read and learned from talks with many, it’s doubtful that Riggs was any kind of chauvinist ideologue. He just wanted his piece of the growing tennis pie.

But Riggs is very much the secondary character. Billie Jean is the one at the epicenter, taking a stand with her racquet, her leadership, her persistent willingness to tilt at windmills. The movie depicts all of this wonderfully, a smooth and powerful evocation of those times and conflicts. I’ll be curious to hear what people less familiar with the tale make of all of the tennis politics of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

Even more, though, the politics mattered much less than Billie Jean’s search to understand herself—played out through her relationships with such people as her husband Larry, fashion designer Ted Tinling and, most of all, hairdresser-confidante-lover Marilyn Barnett. For all Billie Jean’s desire to make tennis a big deal, the movie best shows her humanity—the passion of the competitor, the vulnerability of the human. Tennis gives, and tennis takes.

What surprised you about the movie, Steve?

Tennis Channel spoke with Elisabeth Shue, who plays Priscilla Riggs, at the Battle of the Sexes premiere in Los Angeles:

Joel,

You’re right that the core, or cores, of Battle of the Sexes are the personal crossroads—every screenplay must begin at a crossroads, right?—that King and Riggs found themselves in during the early '70s. And I think those situations, and how they’re handled, are what (pleasantly) surprised me most about the movie.

I knew, from reading BJK’s autobragraphy with Frank Deford, and Grace Lichtenstein’s A Long Way, Baby, about the women’s tour in 1973 (both essential books for WTA fans), that she had met Marilyn Barnett by the time of her match with Riggs, and that Marilyn had sat on the court with her at the Astrodome. But I still knew Marilyn primarily from the unfortunate, highly sensationalized end of their relationship, in the early ’80s, when she sued BJK for the equivalent of alimony. I hadn’t connected that relationship with the Battle of the Sexes. The movie’s conceit, essentially, is that BJK needed Marilyn, and needed to find her true self with her, to play and beat Riggs. Whether that’s actually how it happened or not, it’s a smart way to update the tale of the Battle of the Sexes for the era of gay rights.

The same goes for Riggs' side of the story. At first I thought Carell was underplaying Riggs, and not doing justice to the boisterous side of his personality. In the early going, he’s a sad sack has-been heading straight for divorce and Gamblers Anonymous. But I ended up thinking this was an effective way to portray an ex-athlete—Bobby only comes to life when he’s back in the game, either playing it or betting on it. He’s given surprising depth, and isn’t portrayed as a villain, which I liked; but I do think the immediate stakes of the King/Riggs are pushed to the side in the movie. Riggs’ specific point was to show that the senior men’s tour deserved sponsor money more than the women’s tour—a loss by King might have been devastating in terms of how much money the WTA could command.

The villain, according to Battle of the Sexes, was Jack Kramer, who refused to pay the women at his tournaments anything close to what he paid the men. What did you think of his portrayal, by Bill Pullman, Joel, and that of Gladys Heldman? Sarah Silverman is funny as Heldman, and she definitely looks and sounds the part. But I think Heldman was a more substantial character in real life, no?

And finally, what do you think non-tennis fans will take from this movie?

Tennis Channel spoke with Austin Stowell, who plays Larry King, at the Battle of the Sexes premiere in Los Angeles:

Steve,

I watched Battle of the Sexes again, this time at an advance screening in San Francisco. There’s a major local angle to this that’s not overtly present in the movie, but unquestionably significant. The San Francisco Bay Area is important to Billie Jean’s story not just as a locale, but as a place and time that greatly propelled the plot.

Billie Jean and her husband, Larry, moved to Berkeley in the 1965-’66 period so that he could attend law school at Cal. They would live in that area for nearly a decade, including the period covered by the movie. And while Billie Jean’s social consciousness was already high, certainly her sensibilities were shaped by Berkeley and San Francisco’s lively political-cultural spirit—protests, speeches, experimentation, music, innovation.

As for the movie itself, this second viewing helped me see even more deeply the humanity of its protagonists, Billie Jean most of all. There are repeated signs of her vulnerability, of King’s awareness that she is lonely, flawed, uncertain of who she is and who she is becoming; all of this amid the tumult of competition and the quest to make women’s tennis popular and credible.

And while King is the one tilting at windmills, the movie also show—though barely—Riggs’ view: Life itself is a gamble, so why not grab it and compete on your terms? Somewhere, somehow, there’s a serious story about Riggs to be told, about the emotional needs of this champion who wanted his own piece of tennis’ growing pie as the game took off in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. But alas, in this telling, Riggs comes off mostly as a silly opportunist.

Finally, a second viewing of a movie reveals its craftsmanship, especially in the area of pacing. Battle of the Sexes is superb in that department.

As for the portrayals of Kramer and Heldman, I thought they were very much what they needed to be for the movie—distillations of the essence of each and their respective roles in this story. A parallel tale would detail the titanic importance of Kramer and Heldman in the growth of tennis, and how the two of them connected and conflicted.

At times, Gladys and Jack were in harmony; prior to 1968, each advocated for Open tennis. But then, as the movie shows, there came the big flashpoint: in September 1970, Jack, head of the Pacific Southwest Open, announced that the women’s winner would earn 12 times less than the men’s champion, and that there would be no money for women who failed to reach the quarters. This was when Billie Jean and Gladys took action.

And then came an amazing but largely forgotten event that might have been the most important catalyst in the growth of women’s tennis, and even women’s sports: starting on January 1, 1971, cigarette advertising was banned from television. How was Virginia Slims to reach its target audience?

As the movie shows, Heldman got Virginia Slims to sponsor a single women's tournament that September. With money previously allocated for TV ads now available, why settle for one? Thus was born the Virginia Slims Circuit, Gladys front and center with the players in making the tour happen. I like the way the movie shows how engaged the “Original Nine” were in bringing women’s pro tennis to life, not just with their racquets, but by pounding the pavement to get the media to cover events and fans to attend.

To answer your final question, Steve: What will the non-tennis fan make of this movie? First, I’m curious what even tennis fans will think of it. While geeks like you and I constantly hold the game’s history in our heads, most who watch the game occupy the present, scarcely thinking about Pete Sampras’ tennis, much less Billie Jean King’s. One thing I hope they’ll see is what made Billie Jean not just an icon, but a great player.

And those who don’t know tennis at all? Perhaps they might see its allegoric connection to events such as the 2016 presidential election. Or they might merely enjoy it as a time capsule glimpse into a certain time and place, a period when tennis had grown significant enough to serve as some sort of operative metaphor to play out a social issue.

Finally, one thing I really savor about this movie is the way everyone in it thoroughly loves tennis. Such appeared to be the case for players of that era—and golly, they were even happier once money and exposure started to come in. (I’m convinced that’s really what Riggs wanted; he had no social agenda about women’s rights—he just wanted in on the action.)

But Steve, do you think tennis movies set in other eras—from the ‘90s on—are more likely to show the game differently? And for that reason, do you think there will even ever be movies made about the more world-weary aspects of the game, as revealed through the likes of Andre Agassi?

Tennis Channel spoke with Jessica McNamee, who plays Margaret Court, at the Battle of the Sexes premiere in Los Angeles:

Joel,

As you say, the flashpoint between the men and women at the start of the Open era was money. BJK has talked about how much fun she had with the male players on the early, experimental, '60s-era dual-gender barnstorming pro tours, but once real money began to flow into the game, and she started demanding a share of it, all of that changed. As Battle of the Sexes shows, the fact that a woman could make $100,000 a year playing tennis is what originally brought King to Riggs’ attention. Even the much more mild-mannered Rod Laver admitted that he never could have imagined a woman making anything close to what he made playing tennis. BOTS, in which we hear the real Howard Cosell say to a national TV audience that BJK could have been movie star if only she lost the glasses and did something with her hair, reminds us that this seemingly-Neanderthal mindset was the common one not so long ago.

It should be interesting for today’s tennis fans to see how that flashpoint remains with us today, 45 years after the King/Riggs match. Much has changed for the better in tennis; equal pay is the rule at the majors, and dual-gender events have proliferated. But much hasn’t changed. Among the men, the protests against equal pay, and equality between the tours, has never disappeared. Chauvinism simmers just below the surface.

Thinking about the Kramer vs. King duel in BOTS, and how that set the tone for the pro era, makes me think that the fundamental problem is that the sport is split not just between two tours or two genders, but between two companies, the ATP and the WTA. The men’s financial success has never depended on how popular the women’s game is, which means the ATP has never had to care about the health of the WTA. When the women have tried to join financial forces with the man—Kings tried it in the early 70s; WTA chief Larry Scott tried again a decade ago—the ATP has rejected the idea.

This dynamic can be frustrating, but it also makes tennis socially relevant and interesting in a way that other single-gender sports (i.e., virtually all of them) aren’t. The male-female politics of tennis, whether they’re progressive or regressive at any given moment, add a deeper layer of significance to the sport and our involvement in it as fans. And they make Battle of the Sexes a must-see in a way that so many other sports movies aren’t.

What we learned about Federer, Nadal, McEnroe and the new Laver Cup

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 22:24:00 +0000

“Tennis doesn’t have an idea problem,” former US Open tournament director Arlen Kantarian told a group of editors at TENNIS Magazine nearly 20 years ago. “It has a get-it-done problem.”

The idea, and the question, we were discussing that day was an age-old one: Why doesn’t tennis have its version of the Ryder Cup? During the 1990s, golf’s signature, biennial team competition between the United States and Europe had become must-see television for even the most casual sports fans. Yet tennis remained stumped as to how to replicate it. Trying to navigate around established team events like Davis Cup and Fed Cup, and the sport’s alphabet soup of governing bodies, was too difficult even for Kantarian, a hard-charging promoter and former NFL executive who had been brought in by the USTA to try to upset the pro-game apple cart. More than a decade after his exit, tennis’ get-it-done problem remained.

And then, suddenly, over the course of the last three days, the sport got it done. The Laver Cup, which made its debut from Friday to Sunday, is likely the closest thing that tennis will ever have to a Ryder Cup. The format was similar—Team Europe took on Team World in a fast-paced, three-day competition—and so was the unusual intensity that format generated. Like their peers in golf, tennis’ top male pros made the most of their opportunity to cross national boundaries, root openly for each other, and show the emotions that their formal, individualistic sports normally force them to keep in check. You can’t argue with the result: 83,273 paying customers and five sold-out sessions at the O2 Arena in Prague, worldwide headlines and a tidal wave of bro-mantic social-media content. The Laver Cup may have been the most fan-friendly new tennis event in the 50-year history of the Open era.

Court Report—Team Europe wins the inaugural Laver Cup:

What changed? The originating force behind Laver Cup was Roger Federer’s agent, Tony Godsick. With establishment support from the USTA and Tennis Australia, promoters had the means to stage a world-class event at a major arena, in a city starved for tennis. But it was Federer’s prestige, with players, fans and governing bodies, that made the difference. Would Rafael Nadal have made the trip to Prague two weeks after winning the US Open for an event other than Federer’s? Would John McEnroe and Bjorn Borg have served as captains? Would Nick Kyrgios and his fellow Team Worlders have turned themselves into full-time cheerleaders for three days? Would Laver have put his name on the project? It’s impossible to say for sure, but the fact is that none of these things had ever happened before. Tennis is still an alphabet soup of governing bodies, but one thing everyone in the the sport can agree on is Roger Federer.

The upshot is that, for the first time in a long time, we saw something entirely new under the tennis sun—or under the tennis roof—in Prague. Here are four things we learned in the short lifespan of the inaugural Laver Cup:

*****

Not All Exos are Created Equal
In most cases, if a tennis exhibition finishes with a final-set tiebreaker and ends in maximally dramatic fashion, it’s a good bet that the fix was in—in exos, the players aren’t paid to win; they’re paid to give the fans as much entertainment as possible. Laver Cup did indeed end in maximally dramatic fashion, with the weekend’s highest-profile match-up, between Federer and Kyrgios, coming down to an 11-9 match tiebreaker for all the marbles. (Had Kyrgios won, Team World—which needed to win at least three of Sunday’s four matches to have a chance at victory—would have forced a deciding doubles match for the Laver Cup.) But if the fix was in, the players did an exceedingly good job of convincing us otherwise. Nadal, to cite one example, was overjoyed after beating Jack Sock and disconsolate losing to John Isner; and after the final point, he nearly put Federer’s back out again when he leaped into his arms.

I’m guessing that the players began the weekend wanting to do what they could to support Federer’s event, and that as the matches progressed, the competitive juices flowed and their enthusiasm for it became more real. Did Federer really believe, as he said, that winning gave him “a feeling that was on the same level as the biggest moments in my career”? That’s a little hard to believe. But the players’ early insistence that this was a legitimate competition turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now the template—Laver Cup may not be Davis Cup yet, but it isn’t a typical exo, either—has been set.

Highlights—Team World nearly pulls off a stunning Sunday rally:

There’s Room in Tennis for Tradition and Innovation
Too often the sport reacts to any suggestion of change as if it’s an either-or, zero-sum, my-way-or-the-highway proposition. “Down with best of five!” “Coaching goes against what the game is all about,” “No way to no-ad,” “Shorter formats aren’t ‘real tennis.’” The truth is, there has never been one, correct, pure, superior version of the game. Matches played with super-tiebreakers can be just as exciting, or just as boring, as traditional five-setters. And while there’s no on-court coaching on the ATP tour, tennis has never been a purely individual sport. Coaching exists in Davis Cup and Fed Cup, in college and high-school matches, and in adult leagues; it also happens every time someone makes a suggestion to his or her doubles partner. Just as important, anyone who has ever played with a coach on the sideline knows that winning and losing is always in the player’s hands, and the player’s hands alone.

At the pro level, the season is long enough to leave room for tradition and innovation. We can have coaching during WTA matches, but keep the more history-minded Slams free of it. We can have best-of-five at the majors, and still experiment with shorter formats elsewhere. We can enjoy the brand-new Laver Cup, without forgetting about the century-old Davis Cup. In 2017, tennis has begun to realize that experimentation won’t be the death of the sport. The US Open tried a shot clock, the college game has shortened its formats and the ATP’s NextGen finals in Milan will throw everything, plus the kitchen sink, into the mix.

Laver Cup did an especially good job of recognizing that old and new can and should co-exist. The event honored legends like Laver, Borg, and McEnroe, and used regular sets and deuce games. But it also sped things up with match tiebreakers in place of a third sets; put singles players together in new doubles tandems (most notably Federer and Nadal); and encouraged coaching and fanboy-ing from everyone involved.

John McEnroe Should Be Coaching U.S. Players
McEnroe lobbied for years to be the U.S. Davis Cup captain, then gave it up when winning proved to be too difficult. He helped Milos Raonic reach the Wimbledon final last year, only to give that up when it conflicted with his work as a commentator. It’s easy to understand his decision—commentating is easier—but watching McEnroe over the weekend made me think that he could make a difference in the careers of young players like Sock and Kyrgios.

Like other super-coaches, it wasn’t what McEnroe said tactically that mattered. Instead, it was the no-excuses urgency he brought to his conversations. The best thing that former Grand Slam champion or No. 1-ranked players can offer is their complete lack of empathy for anyone who doesn’t believe he can win a Slam or become No. 1, and that was true of McEnroe’s coaching this weekend. Sock and Kyrgios responded to his stern talk with more enthusiasm and positive energy than they’ve showed anywhere before.

Rog and Rafa Can Still Learn New Tricks
Thirteen years after their first singles match against each other, Nadal and Federer player their first doubles match together. They began with a hiccup or two; Nadal nearly decapitated Federer when he reached back for an overhead. But they managed to win that match, and to squeak past the much younger Kyrgios and Sock, 11-9 in match tiebreakers, in singles. In between, they talked tactics, high-fived, laughed, hugged, cheered for each other, and sprayed themselves with champagne when it was over. Nadal and Federer seemed to revel in the chance to try out a new relationship, one where they could put their all-time talents together rather than use them against each other.

Laver Cup showed us there can be something—many things—new under the tennis sun. The best of them was seeing that Rafa and Roger make as much sense as teammates as they do rivals.

Court Report—Federer and Nadal make a victorious doubles debut:

What's at Stake: Races to Singapore, WTA No. 1 are on at Wuhan Open

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 15:33:00 +0000

While the men have spent the last two weekends teaming up for Davis Cup and Laver Cup, the women have been busy getting a jump on the month-long Asian swing that closes out their season. It hasn’t taken them long to make news. On Sunday, Caroline Wozniacki finally won a tournament in 2017, in Tokyo, even as the two US Open finalists, Sloane Stephens and Madison Keys, crashed out in the opening round of this week’s big-money event in Wuhan.

Fortunately, the Americans weren’t the only bold-faced names in the Wuhan draw. Here’s a look at what’s at stake in that well-stocked tournament, as well as at the week’s other three events:

Dongfeng Motor Wuhan Open (WTA)
Wuhan, China
$2,365,250; Premier 5
Hard court
Draw is here

Two years ago, there didn’t seem to be room for another fully-loaded, $2.4 million, Premier 5 draw in the middle of the WTA’s already-jammed fall schedule. But Wuhan’s organizers and sponsors wedged their way in, and the tour’s elite players have followed them to the hometown of Li Na. Eight of the Top 10, including Garbiñe Muguruza, Simona Halep, Karolina Pliskova, Wozniacki, Johanna Konta and Jelena Ostapenko, were in the Wuhan draw to start.

How many will remain by, say, Wednesday? As Keys and Stephens showed in their straight-set defeats, it can take a little while for the players to get their fall-season legs under them. But there will be benefits to anyone who can. The race to the year-end event in Singapore, and the race for the year-end No. 1 ranking, are very much on here. Muguruza, Halep, Pliskova, and Wozniacki are all within striking distance of the top spot.

Second-round matches to watch: Halep vs. Daria Kasatkina; Pliskova vs. Shuai Zhang; Agnieszka Radwanska vs. Julia Goerges

Tashkent Open (WTA)
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
$226,750; International
Hard court
Draw is here

Tashkent can’t compete with Wuhan for prize money, or for players. There are two million fewer dollars on the line, and no one in the Top 40 to compete for them; 41st-ranked Kristyna—not her twin, Karolina—Pliskova is the top seed, followed by 52nd-ranked Timea Babos.

More interesting, perhaps, is the fate of a qualifier, Vera Zvonareva. The 33-year-old Russian, a former Wimbledon finalist and new mother, is in the midst of a comeback after getting married and having her first child last year. She won her first-round match over No. 4 seed Irina-Camelia Begu.

Shenzhen Open (ATP)
Shenzhen, China
$666,690; 250 ranking points
Plexipave
Draw is here

The men start to play catch-up with the women in Asia this week, as a few of the top players make their way across the globe for two tune-up events in China. Alexander Zverev, fresh off his winning efforts in Laver Cup in Prague this weekend, is the top seed in this 28-player draw in Shenzhen. After that flight, will he be ready for Steve Darcis in his opener—or, perhaps, for his brother, Mischa, if they meet in the semifinals?

Also here: No. 2 seed David Goffin and No. 6 seed Damir Dzumhur, who is coming off his first ATP title run, in St. Petersburg.

Chengdu Open (ATP)
Chengdu, China
$1,138,910; 250 ranking points
DecoTurf
Draw is here

Fly to China after Laver Cup to play a 250? Not a problem for the hardest working—or overworking—man in tennis, Dominic Thiem. The Austrian is the top seed in a Chengdu draw that’s heavy on his fellow young gunners. Borna Coric, Andrey Rublev, Taylor Fritz, Kyle Edmund, Mikael Ymer, Karen Khachanov and Jared Donaldson are all present and accounted for. It should be especially interesting to see how the 19-year-old Rublev, who was the surprise breakout performer of the US Open, fairs the rest of this season.

Also here: Peter Gojowczyk, who won his first title this weekend in Metz.