Return of a Queen
Return of a Queen
Return of a Queen
Qinwen Zheng reestablishes her reign with a title in Beijing.
Qinwen Zheng reestablishes her reign with a title in Beijing.
By Giri Nathan
October 16, 2026
The queen and her court. Qinwen Zheng ahead of the China Open final. // David Bartholow
The queen and her court. Qinwen Zheng ahead of the China Open final. // Getty
What couldn’t Qinwen Zheng do? Heading into the summer of 2025, China’s superstar was settling in at the top of the WTA. Her heavy-topspin slugging had made her a staple of the top 10, an Olympic gold medalist, an Australian Open runner-up. But it had also, at that point, brought her many, many months of severe right elbow pain. The resulting arthroscopic surgery in July blew up her whole 2025 season. By her own admission, Zheng returned from injury too early, rushing back to play for the home crowds at Beijing in late September. She called it quits again almost immediately, after just one win and one mid-match retirement. Later she revealed that she still didn’t have full extension or flexion of her elbow at that moment and wasn’t sure she ever would recover it again.
Zheng wouldn’t return to tour again until February 2026, this time with an elbow that bent and flexed, even if she wasn’t yet pain-free. She chugged along, picking up a win here and there. But at Roland-Garros, where she was defending a quarterfinal result, Zheng lost the first round, which sent her cascading down the rankings. (At least she had the consolation of watching the victor, qualifier Maja Chwalinka, go all the way to the final.) She spent the grass season bobbing between No. 122 and No. 160 in the world. Queen-wen, as she is known to her English-speaking fans, was headed back to a commoner’s life: qualifying draws. After crashing out of the first round of qualifying in Toronto, she was informed by her coach, Pere Riba, that her tennis wasn’t where it needed to be to compete. She claimed she had all the “pieces” of her tennis but hadn’t yet found a way to put them together; Riba said they needed practice to put those pieces together. So instead of trying to qualify Cincinnati, the team decamped to Florida for a training block, where Zheng said some workdays started at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 8 p.m.
Then it was time to fly to New York for US Open qualifying. “Psychologically it was very difficult to accept,” the former seeded player said of her humble new status. But qualify for the main draw she did, and thus began one of the most thrilling comeback runs in recent memory. Zheng trailed 0–5 in the deciding set of her third-round match against Madison Keys…only to reel off seven straight games and win. In her next match, after just 20 minutes, she trailed Iga Swiatek 0–5 in the opening set…only to reel off seven straight games and win that set, plus the next one. After beating Swiatek she made a puzzle piece gesture to her team, a callback to their previous talk during her struggles with form.
Tough one to verify, but I’d feel comfortable asserting that this is the only time in professional tennis history that a player has ever won consecutive sets after trailing 0–5 in each. She lost a close quarterfinal to eventual champion Elena Rybakina, but reaching that stage of the tournament launched her to just outside the top 50, and on a pure emotional level, those back-to-back comebacks from the brink were among the most memorable storylines of the entire Open. The vicious battles throughout the tournament reenergized her. “The second time when I came back [from injury], I had totally lost the dynamic of how to compete as an athlete. I had been every day living a life—okay, training—but without any pressure. Without any adrenaline,” Zheng said. She left having gotten what she needed; that Open run was the sort of adrenaline shot you don’t see outside Pulp Fiction.
That was the momentum she brought to Beijing this year, arriving in very different circumstances from last year, when her recovery wasn’t complete and her elbow didn’t yet work. Here instead was a great player announcing her abrupt return to greatness, in the span of just two tour events. In her nation’s capital, she celebrated her 24th birthday, won her first 1000-level title, and became the tournament’s first-ever Chinese champion. The whole tournament was a showcase for the volcanic offensive tennis she produces at her best. Zheng has one of the tour’s deadliest first serves: She currently leads the WTA in ace rate and first serve points won over the past 52 weeks, edging out Rybakina in both categories. Even though that particular weapon began to falter by the final—only 38 percent of first serves in, which could have something to do with the shoulder injury she announced after the tournament—her baseline play was superb all week, and it was that skill that carried her past Mirra Andreeva to the title on Sunday. Zheng’s 243 cumulative winners were the highest tally for any player at a WTA event this season; whether she’s serving bombs or simply lining up a rally forehand, she has the pace to take the racquet out of any opponent’s hands. After winning the biggest tour title of her career, she treated the Beijing crowd to some pitchy karaoke. The physical toll of the past few weeks forced her to pull out of her hometown event in Wuhan this week, but I doubt she has any complaints about her current lot in life. Newly restored to the top 25, the days of qualifying are long past, and the queen reigns once more.
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The Status Quo Has Been Restored
The Boys Are Back In Town
The Boys Are Back In Town
With titles this for Djokovic and Alcaraz, order is restored at the top.
With titles this for Djokovic and Alcaraz, order is restored at the top.
By Giri Nathan
October 9, 2026
Darlin' don't you go and cut your hair. // David Bartholow
Carlitos was all business on his way to the title in Tokyo this week. // David Bartholow
When power is completely consolidated in two players at the top, all it takes is two injuries to throw the entire tour out of whack. That’s why the past few months felt so wonky, as Carlos Alcaraz recuperated from a wrist injury and Jannik Sinner was sidelined by his ongoing knee injury. Summer 2026 was like a sealed-off simulation world, delivering oddball results that feel quite irrelevant when making predictions about the champions of the 2027 season. Absent Sincaraz, the field was so open, and the titles were all growing in trees, ripe for the plucking. Anyone could go grab one. Francisco Cerundolo, coming off a six-match losing streak on grass, won Queens Club; that same day, Frances Tiafoe, breaking a three-year title drought, won in Halle. Sure, one could argue that an Arthur Fils 1000-level title was a matter of time, but it was that pillowy Cincinnati draw that made it actually happen; when the chief obstacles are Alex de Minaur and Flavio Cobolli, they can indeed be overcome.
Of course, the most simulation-world story of all was Sascha Zverev, appearing in three consecutive Slam finals and winning two. After years of fruitless toil against better players, he achieved the one goal that had painfully eluded him. Of course, during that stretch, Sinner briefly restored reality by beating Zverev in the Wimbledon final, but that wound up being the last match that the Italian played in 2026. This week he announced his withdrawal to undergo a course of treatment on his knee. And that announcement had historic consequences. It ensured that Sinner would relinquish the No. 1 ranking, and Zverev would soon replace him, becoming the 30th player ever to hold that prestigious office. It must be said that Zverev will hold that ranking without having beaten Sinner (0–5), Alcaraz (0–1), or hell, even Novak Djokovic (0–1) this year. In fact, when playing top 10 players in 2026, Zverev is 2–8, and he’s still about to become the top player in the world, an honor he is mathematically guaranteed to hold at year’s end. We can accept what the ranking points say, but in our hearts we know the truth of the matter. (Even Zverev openly admitted the truth, with the US Open title freshly in his grasp.)
But this week on the ATP, even without Sinner’s help, we were delivered out of the simulation and back to hard reality, which announced itself with twin trophies for Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic. The status quo has been restored! Titles are only for the all-time-great players again. As great as it would have been to see them square up in the same draw, to see where they both stand at this juncture of the season—Carlitos still ramping up to full speed after a wrist injury, Novak navigating an undisclosed illness and the general reality of being 39—they picked different stops on the Asian swing. It was a profitable choice for both men, who extended their own records of success. Carlitos won his second title in Tokyo (first man since Pete Sampras in 1994 to win back-to-back), and Novak won his seventh title in Beijing (where he is now an astonishing lifetime 34–0).
Djokovic hadn’t played this tournament in 11 years before showing up again this year to improve on past perfection. It was as if his bizarre US Open first-round crash never occurred, as he went right back to his favorite old pastime: defeating the best male tennis players born in the 1990s. There were close matches, won by superior execution, that vintage lockdown Djokovic in crunch time at the end of a set. He beat Zverev in a three-set quarterfinal—clarifying the true order of the world—and in the following two rounds he led each match before his opponent prematurely bowed out. Daniil Medvedev was disqualified after hitting a ball into the stands and striking a person in the eye, and Alex de Minaur retired with an adductor injury. Weird circumstances, but his level was there to win regardless. This was Djokovic’s first title of the year, extending his streak of 21 seasons with at least one title won; it was, overall, the 102nd title of his career. In terms of skill level, this sport has given him absolutely zero indication that he needs to leave it anytime soon, so long as his body can sustain it.
But if there’s anything you needed to wash out the artificial tastes of this ATP summer, it was the championship run in Tokyo. It’s often been said that tennis missed Alcaraz, and it’s the sort of thing that sounds like a cute cliché, uttered thoughtlessly, until one day you’re staring at the court and having your face melted off by his shot selection. Truly no one else is doing this. No one else could. I don’t think that in any single Tokyo match he reached the unreal peak he hit around this time last year—that may well have been the best tennis that he, or any man, has ever played—but taken as a body of work, this was still a pretty convincing title run from the shaggy-maned Spaniard. Smiles were kept to a minimum and tactics were disciplined.
There were difficult matches against red-lining players, and there were still bizarre moments—let’s all remember when he stepped up to serve out the first set of his semifinal against Jaume Munar and proceeded to lose 14 consecutive points—but this result should reassure anyone who had been concerned about his wrist injury impacting his long-term prospects. The point-ending power appears to have been injected back in his forehand, and his serve speeds were ticking back up into the 130s, with superb consistency and placement, too. Those features of his game were fatally absent during his quarterfinal loss to Ben Shelton in New York, but if they’re back, then he is. Every opponent looks solvable for a player with an infinite tool kit, which has now won him the 27th title of his career at the mere age of 23. Thank God the kid and the old man restored some order to this unruly tour.
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The Post-US Open Blues are upon us.
Seasonal Affect
Seasonal Affect
Like an autumn cold, the Post-US Open Blues have arrived.
Like an autumn cold, the Post-US Open Blues have arrived.
By Owen Lewis
Oct. 2, 2026
The roof is closing on the 2026 season. // David Bartholow, Tokyo
How it can feel waking up in the middle of the night to watch the Asian swing. // David Bartholow
It feels a bit scandalous that the tennis season extends beyond the US Open. This month’s WNBA playoffs, and then the NBA after it? Players are free once their postseason run ends, should they even qualify: You’ve lost your shot at the big prize, go rest up in Cancun, try again next season. Likewise with the MLB, the NFL, the NHL. I myself take most of the year off from exercise. The Open is the last of the year’s four majors, so there’s a world in which the tour hibernates till January, then rouses to get ready for the next big one, in Melbourne. Having covered the 15-day extravaganza that was this year’s Open myself—by the end, I felt like I’d stayed too long at a party—I can attest that everybody involved deserves a long break.
Alas, tennis gonna tennis. We’ve got the Beijing Open this week (WTA and ATP), with almost all of the top women in action, and a few of the dudes. Carlos Alcaraz is playing the Japan Open. After that, we’ve got Wuhan (WTA), Shanghai (ATP), Ningbo (WTA), Tokyo (WTA), and (takes deep breath) Almaty, Lyon, Brussels, Vienna, and Basel (all ATP). That only takes us to the start of November, by the way, at which point a bevy of indoor tournaments awaits.
Is anyone else a little exhausted? I’ll watch these tournaments, don’t get me wrong. (Readers of this fine newsletter know how I feel about the offseason.) But I think it’ll be with the kind of detached obligation that accompanies the last days of school in a year I’m ready to be done with. The shiniest trophies are distributed, the injuries are many, and the wanting wells of motivation and health make it hard to know how much meaning to ascribe to any result. Not that there aren’t things to watch for. Alcaraz matches remain precious this early in his comeback from more than four months off, Novak Djokovic is on constant puke watch, there’s the possibility of a match—please, God, just one match—between Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek. But the stakes are lower and weirder now than at any other point in the season.
There’s extra pressure to enjoy October, since the indoor swing is consistently the gnarliest watch of the season. I like to play on those courts—my limp forehand suffers from conditions like “outside,” my serve dies valiantly under “sun”—but they tend to flatten what’s interesting about the professional game. Indoor tournaments further amplify the already formidable power of a serve, thanks to both the controlled conditions and the quick, skiddy bounce of the courts. Sometimes an indoor court is bizarrely molasses-slow. I’m a slow-court apologist—watching the defensive player immediately neutralize their opponent’s offense at Laver Cup last week, forcing the eventual victor to employ patient attrition, was a nice change of pace from the serve-plus-one meta these days—but so deep in the overlong season, forcing players to work that hard to kill points feels sadistic.
So the quicker stuff is necessary, if not especially stimulating. I clock in, watch exhausted players trade service winners with mild disinterest for the first hour, perk up a bit for the tiebreak (the equivalent of lunchtime), then coast through the rest of the day. Sometimes you get the sense that the players are doing the same thing. In the past 16 years, the Paris Masters have produced the following: serve-and-volleyer Michael Llodra as a semifinalist; Denis Shapovalov as a finalist; Jack Sock as a champion. The tournament hosted the first ATP-level Sincaraz match in 2021, won by Carlos, who proceeded to lose in the next round, from 5–0 up in the second set, to Hugo Gaston and a rabid French crowd. He is 3–4 at the tournament since then and most recently crashed out in his opening match despite being in the middle of the finest patch of form of his career so far (the surface happened to be, for no apparent reason, clay-slow last year). At least here on the East Coast the sun is bright and the days are long. Wake me up in January.
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Review: Coco Gauff's "The Zina Effect"
The Torchbearer
The Torchbearer
Review: "The Zina Effect"
Review: "The Zina Effect"
By Takashi Williams
Oct. 1, 2026
Zina Garrison during her run to the Wimbledon final in 1990. // Getty
Zina Garrison during her run to the Wimbledon final in 1990. // Getty
On Feb. 6, 1993, the tennis world was devastated to lose one of its greatest champions far too soon. After five strenuous years battling AIDS/HIV, Arthur Ashe passed away from AIDS-related pneumonia. Ashe was only 49 years old. His untimely death left not only a void in the sport, but an even larger expanse in the world of Black tennis.
With him gone, who will carry the torch? Perhaps the second-ever Black man to win a Slam and a former protégé of Arthur’s in Yannick Noah. A young MaliVai Washington showed promise. Or maybe the space should be left vacant until a generation produces a Black man worthy of the mantle—a player who can display the qualities Ashe did, not only on the tennis court, but far away from it as well.
Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, Arthur’s wife of 16 years, thought otherwise.
“Now the torch has been passed towards you to put on the wisdom to the younger Black kids,” Zina Garrison recalls Jeanne telling her over the phone.
Her reaction?
“I don’t want that! I’m not ready.”
Garrison was by far one of the most successful Black players—male or female—of her generation. The Texas native boasts a gold and bronze Olympic medal, 14 singles tour-level titles, 20 doubles tour-level titles, three Grand Slam mixed-doubles titles, and a career-high ranking of No. 4 in the world. And still, Garrison didn’t know if she was the one to fill that vacancy. A role that takes into account so much more than the amount of trophies lifted in a career. It’s more so about how those earned trophies can be used as a wedge to keep doors open for others like you.
Jeanne reassuringly replied, “Yes, you are.” Two weeks later, Zina Garrison assumed the role and has relished the responsibility ever since.
Available on TennisChannel.com, its app counterpart and Amazon Prime Video, the latest addition to the Tennis Story vault explores Zina Garrison’s career and impact through the directorial lens of Vashni Korin. The short-form documentary succeeds in not only giving a legend from the past her flowers, but linking her impact with the greats after her.
Venus and Serena Williams? Both coached and influenced by Garrison. Even a couple generations after the Williams sisters, Coco Gauff—the executive producer of this project—asserts in her opening narration that “without [Zina Garrison], we don’t have me for sure.”
The doc begins with Gauff listing the aforementioned accomplishments of a woman she considers to be “one of the founding mothers of Black tennis.” She falsely attributes “two glorious Olympic gold medals” to Garrison, but hey, a medal’s a medal. Nonetheless, her appraisals of Garrison’s significance in the sport could not be more spot-on. Before even reaching the tour, Garrison was breaking barriers as the first Black junior World No.1.
After Gauff, Garrison’s introduction comes with a surprising admission that she never wanted to be No. 1.
So many tennis documentaries and books cover the pain, sacrifice, and determination involved in the pursuit of becoming the greatest tennis player in the world. The Wolf in Winter provides fans with scenes of Novak Djokovic, a father of two, leaving his wife and kids en route to Grand Slam events. Netflix’s Rafa reveals to us that the 22-time Grand Slam champ endured severe bouts of anxiety and essentially played on a numb foot for the latter stages of his career. There is even a current series on Tennis Channel highlighting the stories of all 30 men who have been World No. 1 since the ATP rankings were introduced in 1973.
For Garrison, these boundaries and sacrifices were still present. However, they differed from those faced by players such as Djokovic and Nadal.
She ponders aloud what her career would have been like if she didn’t suffer from bulimia for the majority of her career. Maybe she would have been more successful if she didn’t feel as lonely on tour due to being one of the few women of her complexion competing. She openly discusses the feelings of isolation that came from major sporting brands not blinking an eye at a top American due to her lack of “blue eyes and blonde hair.”
It wasn’t until the night before her 1990 Wimbledon singles final that she received an endorsement deal.
The doc makes it clear that as great as Garrison was on-court, there is an additional aspect that must be taken into account when evaluating the careers of Black players like herself: the mental and emotional effects of being the only one. More candidly, the hurdles that are present for a Zina Garrison or a Coco Gauff are not present for a Novak Djokovic or a Rafael Nadal, regardless of how deserving they all are of their respective sporting achievements.
Arthur Ashe surely felt it during his career. Althea Gibson faced the reality of having to be twice as good because of these hurdles, telling a 15-year-old Garrison when they first met that she “wasn’t working hard enough.” Garrison felt similarly, and as a result prioritized being No. 1 in another regard.
“I was in a world where I couldn’t say too much or I couldn’t do too much. But I always wanted to be No. 1 as far as giving back to my community, because my community gave back so much to me,” she explained.
The stigma is still present in the tennis world, but it’s gotten better. There is more representation and more opportunities. The documentary sifts through scenes of Garrison coaching young Black girls at her own home base of the Zina Garrison Academy, watching Serena’s comeback at Wimbledon earlier this year, and even gardening with them as well.
Crediting the Williams sisters for this, tennis is now a space where even the executive producer of this film has been given a platform to highlight careers like Garrison’s. More personally for Gauff, her career and success are a testament to all the sacrifices made by Garrison and those before her. And with this success follows the expectations Jeanne Ashe had of Zina Garrison all those years ago. The torch must always be passed. And instead of a hesitant week or two when that question is posed of who will carry the torch next, it seems as though the two-time Grand Slam champion and entrepreneur may already have a hand on it as we speak.
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Kei Nishikori: A Wizard Prepares to Disappear
A Wizard's Last Spell
A Wizard's Last Spell
Kei Nishikori Prepares to Disappear.
Kei Nishikori Prepares to Disappear.
By Giri Nathan
Sept 25 2026
Kei celebrates victory over Novak Djokovic in the 2014 US Open semifinals. // Getty
Kei celebrates victory over Novak Djokovic in the 2014 US Open semifinals. // Getty
Every time I step up to hit a two-handed backhand, I have a specific one in my mind. When I ask friends about their favorite two-handers in ATP history, I am bound to hear odes to Marat Safin, David Nalbandian, Andre Agassi, and all with good reason, I love those shots, even as I see Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic vie for the ultimate crown. But none of those legendary backhands have dislodged the one in my mind. That one belongs to Kei Nishikori. Economy of movement—here is a monument to it.
The racquet dips down unceremoniously, it comes up smoothly, and in between, all it does is make pure contact with the ball. The wrists are lax, and the timing is anything but. If racquet head speed is a game of getting the racquet to travel through a lot of space very quickly, he appeared to have found the most elegant solution, with the least moving parts, nothing superfluous that could crack under pressure. It is a vicious shot. Go back in time and ask Djokovic midway through the 2014 US Open semifinal what he thought of it. In an era where most backhands could be plotted on a spectrum from “liability” to “slightly above neutral,” that Nishikori backhand was an outright weapon, suited for all scenarios: taking the ball on the rise (especially), redirecting pace, making his own pace, jumping up to high balls, dipping the passing shots, springing for sudden winners. It’s on the short list of tennis shots I could watch all day. Half in real time, and half in slow motion, just for some variety.
In my various stops on tour, I’ve always made a point to catch some of a Nishikori match up close, no matter the opponent. If what your brain needs is a few minutes of ground strokes struck to perfection, he’s the medicine. Given that he was such a gifted baseliner operating in the era of baseline-dominant tennis, it’s no surprise that Nishikori hit No. 4 in the world. And as he brought Japanese tennis into the 21st century, he was met with colossal wealth and fame. It is tempting to hunt for reasons why this man didn’t accomplish even more than he did—12 titles, none above the 500 level—but you will find those reasons without much struggle. It’s because those perfect ground strokes were attached to an injury-prone, serve-mediocre 5-foot-10 frame. And also, of course, because he was so often stymied by the three best players ever. He shares that plight with the other big ATP names retiring this year, Gael Monfils and Stan Wawrinka, who all maintained great levels well into their 30s but could not outlast these timeless GOATs. At the time that Nishikori collected the runner-up trophy at the 2014 US Open, he was up 2–1 against Novak Djokovic and 2–1 against Roger Federer; then came the 0–16 and 1–7 records he would compile from then on.
But for a guy who wasn’t getting any free points, who was grinding away in both service and return games alike, trying to win by virtue of raw baseline meritocracy, Nishikori took his career about as far as his physical tools could take him. Would his body hold up? That question supplied most of the narrative tension of his career, on the scale of an entire tennis season, a Slam, or an individual match. Nishikori was known for a rough bill of health, and was sidelined by a variety of injuries for long stretches of his career. But he also had a historically good record in deciding sets, and survived so many marathons in style. You could always rely on him for an unnecessary but electrifying five-set victory in week 1 of a Slam. By the time week 2 rolled around, it became clear he hadn’t played the energy conservation game quite right. Of an impressive 12 Slam quarterfinal appearances, Nishikori won only three. Despite mastery of the dominant style of his era, he had to fight just a little bit too hard en route to finish the job.
By the tail end of his career, they had started producing dudes who had technically sound ground strokes like his but were also much bigger and stronger, and realistically, there was no keeping up with where tennis was going. Nishikori enjoyed a brief but brilliant peak in the middle of the last decade, battling the greats from the baseline, before the game moved just beyond his grasp. (Perhaps we can at least speculate, as his old coach Michael Chang trains the current Nishikori avatar: Learner Tien, another baseline artist of modest stature, scraping by without a great serve.) These days, I suspect many tennis fans are hitting exhaustion with serve-dominant tennis, and they crave the salvation of raised nets or nixed second serves. As I revisited moments of Nishikori wizardry, I was reminded by what we actually look for in tennis, this thrilling interplay between opponents, rather than glassy serve-plus-one execution. We want to see the players not just play past one another but play against one another, to outwork and outwit one another, and even if the present parameters of the sport don’t optimize for that, we will always remember the players with that gift. When Nishikori retires in Tokyo next week, it’s those memories that will endure, the great balm of flawless ball-striking.
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Pete Sampras: Wanna Bet?
Wanna Bet?
Wanna Bet?
Tennis is sinking into prediction market hell—and Pete Sampras is your guide.
Tennis is sinking into prediction market hell—and Pete Sampras is your guide.
By Owen Lewis
September 24, 2026
Pistol Pete turns to the dark side. // Getty
Pistol Pete turns to the dark side. // Getty
Not many athletes have stayed out of the public eye after retirement as well as Pete Sampras. It’s a rare champion who chooses silence over taking every interview in sight, where they spout quotes that clickbait farms quickly aggregate and splash onto graphics. Over the past 20-odd years, Sampras hasn’t approached the spotlight often. He played a couple of exhibitions in the aughts; in one of them, he and Andre Agassi had such a tense exchange that their doubles partners in Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal were visibly uncomfortable. The salt is still feeding various tennis fans. More recently, Sampras took to social media to ask for well-wishes to his wife, Bridgette Wilson, who’d been diagnosed with ovarian cancer late the previous year. But for the most part, Sampras has done more than enough to earn his card to the Michael Jordan club. In some ways, he’s been even more reclusive—no Pistol Pete documentary dropped right after Federer won a 15th major, no sir.
But Sampras’ latest public endeavor suggests he may not be much unlike other celebrities after all. Earlier this month, the US Open announced a partnership with the prediction market Kalshi, on which suckers can risk their money (essentially betting, though the company has insisted their model of “trading” with other users is functionally different) on anything from sporting events to the weather to the results of elections to the status of the Strait of Hormuz. Given the rampant corruption in the wake of legalized sports betting, I’m sure we can all agree that turning events that hold numerous lives in their hands into financial incentives has no possible downside. Clearly Sampras thinks that, because when Kalshi posted about the new Open partnership on social media, the ad was chock-full of old Sampras footage, and who was voicing the ad but the 14-time major champion.
Likely aware of their odious business model (though who can say?), prediction markets are adopting a Trumpian strategy: Flood the zone. It’s vital information that Donald Trump Jr. advises and invests in both Kalshi and Polymarket, and advocates for his father’s government to keep its hands off. LeBron James recently announced a deal with the latter, posting an ad in which a who’s who of celebrities appear, for as little as a second in some cases, some of whom don’t seem to fit into the sports-themed commercial—Emily Ratajkowski? Craig Robinson? Kalshi has its deal with the Open, but to them, even the humble Tennis tweeter is a potential source of marketing. Social media freelancer Bastien Fachan’s feed has been corrupted by Polymarket odds recently, which he posts as if they’re gospel. The queasy logic is easy to read on the part of both company and shill: Get enough people behind this thing, and people will associate Kalshi with their favorite personalities; if you’re just one of many bending over to advertise the prediction market, it’s harder for people to single you out and judge you.
It may be tempting to give Sampras a pass on the assumption that he needs the money from the Kalshi ad to pay for his wife’s cancer treatment, as some online have done, though that assumes he’s (a) broke (prize money made during career: $43,280,489) and (b) had no more ethically sound way to make money. What that dubious grace misses is something that gets increasingly lost as more and more celebrities partner with Kalshi: In a functional society, the company would not exist. Nobody cares about bad press anymore. A net worth that exceeds a billion dollars and a very predictable negative reaction didn’t stop LeBron from hopping in bed with Polymarket. Sydney Sweeney, fresh off multiple agonizing news cycles for dubious commercials, recently went nude to advertise a prediction market that attempted to differentiate itself by only allowing trades on sports. “Sports…sports…sports,” Sweeney repeated. Somehow it sounded like she was saying “You are in hell” by the end of the ad.
The arbiters of the downfall of society have figured out that people have a high tolerance for bullshit. I’m not sure what it would take for a sicko tennis fan to actually stop watching the sport, but at this point we know it’s more than Kalshi partnerships, Mark Petchey insisting on Tennis Channel’s BetMGM desk that Alexander Zverev’s odds to beat Jannik Sinner seem lower than he’d have thought, subscription fees, and now one of tennis’ icons debasing himself by lending his voice to a Kalshi ad. That says something wonderful about the fan’s affection for the game, but it’s also alarming, because those behind these partnerships will recognize that they can push the bar deeper into hell before losing a significant number of fans. At some point those of us who love the sport and want it to get better will have to push back. This might be a good way to start: The next time new USTA CEO Craig Tiley or Sampras ducks into the public eye, someone needs to ask them why they participated in an ad for a company that had to clarify it does not “offer markets that settle on death.”
Vaguely disquieting, Kalshi keeps its vigil over Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. // David Bartholow
Vaguely disquieting, Kalshi keeps its vigil over Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. // David Bartholow
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Coco Gauff: Prophecy in Progress
Prophecy in Progress
Prophecy in Progress
Despite the pressure, the former phenom closes the gap.
Despite the pressure, the former phenom closes the gap.
By Carole Bouchard
Sept. 17, 2026
Coco's game is coming in to focus. // Getty
Coco's game is coming in to focus. // Getty
Coco Gauff is the Chosen One, but the prophecy is taking its sweet time to bear fruit—not that things have been going all that badly. Touted for greatness since she stepped onto the Wimbledon stage as a 15-year-old phenom, she just might be the game’s biggest name at 22. Given the outsize expectations, when Gauff’s serve and forehand started to betray her along the way, the WTA economy got a bit twitchy, and adjustments were made. Now the just-completed Grand Slam season leaves us with two truths: Gauff has significantly closed the gap between her and the Rybakinas and Sabalenkas of this world, but nevertheless the wait goes on.
By any metric, Gauff’s career is already a success. She won her first Slam—the US Open—at 19, at a time when people had been impatient for major results for years. Fans were still wondering what was wrong with her game when, at 21, she won her second, this time at Roland-Garros in 2025. By then Gauff had already won the WTA Finals and a slew of WTA 1000s, so why wasn’t she ranked No.1 yet? For the past couple of years, it’s been all about her serve and forehand struggles, despite the big trophies collected on the way. She won at Roland-Garros, outraged at her game and playing through gritting teeth. Finally, this year she did what she had to do to complete the puzzle: She fixed that serve. Gauff hired biomechanics expert Gavin McMillan, the man who got Aryna Sabalenka’s career back on track, and she went to work. We saw the tears and the setbacks, from getting three games out of Elina Svitolina in the quarterfinals in Melbourne to losing to Anastasia Potapova in the third round in Paris.
If you look at Gauff’s season and especially her Grand Slam season, you might be tempted to say there’s been no progress and that it might even be a step backward because there’s been no major titles. But I’ll strongly disagree because since Wimbledon, it has been the best Coco Gauff I’ve seen play the game, finally in control and executing the flashier brand of tennis she always envisioned for herself. She was fascinating on the grass until she missed that match point in the semifinals against Karolina Muchova, hitting through everything, serving without shaking, and unlocking a net game that will be a game changer. She’s so good there! It was like watching her have an epiphany and swing free again. “Hate me or love me, you can’t deny the progress that’s been made this tournament,” she said.
She proved things were really clicking by winning the title in Cincinnati. Gauff, the defender, found the key to go from “You shall not pass” on that bridge to “Let me kick you out of here real quick.” She entered that US Open as the favorite, and now here’s hoping that losing won’t blur her tennis reality. A year ago, against an on-form Elena Rybakina, Gauff would have been obliterated. This year, she closed the gap. She has never been closer to turning into the player the sport and its insanely high standards have been waiting for.
“This US Open will be about going back and seeing what I can improve on and what I need to try to implement in the Asian swing. I want to be a consistent player. I want to give myself as many opportunities to lift a trophy,” she said after the loss. “I think I played almost every match on my terms. The worst was maybe the quarterfinal where I fell back into some old habits [12 double faults!], but I was able to switch that. It’s confidence to continue to improve. I’m looking at the other semifinalists: They’re older than me. I’m just trying to think of how much work I put in, how far I’ve come, and now I’m excited to keep putting the work in and see where I’m at at 24, 25, and where my game can take me. Hopefully it will be on the winning end of matches like this.”
Don’t freak out, I have time has always been Gauff’s message to tennis. It also takes time to digest the technical work she’s been doing. She’s just 22. So 2026 might be a Slamless season for her, but she looks way more on track to Grand Slam regular glory now than a year ago with the Roland-Garros trophy in hand. Her game is now standing tall on its own. It’s easy to understand why we care about Coco Gauff’s on-court success: Tennis needs Coco Gauff to win more and more often. She knows it. Everybody in the game knows it, her rivals included. The game cannot afford for the Gauff prophecy to misfire. It’s a lot of pressure on one’s shoulders—unless Alexandra Eala and Victoria Mboko come to share the weight of it all.
If you want to build an ideal tennis scenario, you end up with Coco Gauff; it’s that simple. Her charisma and how outspoken she’s been for years on issues that her peers refuse to touch, even with a pole, are bringing Gen Z, media, and all the luxury brands to the WTA yard. Fans are descending in a frenzy on stadiums to watch her play, then descending on social media to talk about her, her brand deals, her magazine covers, her win, or directly to her. In off-court earnings, she was, for 2025, the most bankable female player out there, overall only beaten by Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz. It’s still the case in 2026 if you look at Serena Williams’ Forbes comeback as a unique circumstance. In the interview room, nobody talks better than she does. She overshares, she jokes, she has perspective, she suffers openly, she doubts, she fights back, she brags when she wishes. She’s real, and it works. So when tennis searches for a face and a voice, it falls on Coco Gauff before anyone else.
Gauff and her team have done everything right to follow that Chosen One playbook. She built the social media following, the media coverage, and the reputation, got bigger than tennis, made all the money, turned CEO and investor, went to Hollywood, got brands to design collections for her, wore the high fashion, and so became one of the professional athletes out there whose voice matters and scales. And yet, a crumble remains in the machine, because she doesn’t get all the wins she’d need for it to match her status. Tennis doesn’t get to see Gauff, its best business case and the leader it’s dreaming of, enough as a dominating force fighting for titles and winning them all season long, and building strong rivalries and storylines.
The WTA, hoping to be saved by the U.S. market after both China and Saudi Arabia’s deals have deflated, needs Coco Gauff’s prophecy to turn real. She’s the symbol, the blueprint, the fairy tale, the inspiration, the bridge to the mainstream, and all of the above. Nobody put this much weight on Sabalenka, Rybakina, or even Swiatek’s shoulders despite their résumé, but Gauff gets it all. Unfair, but also makes sense. The game has always needed to turn Gauff into its poster child, and so you look at the 2026 version of Coco Gauff like, damn, so close… Of course, it’s too much pressure on the champion she already is, and it says more about the state of tennis (business plan) than Gauff’s development speed. Yet prophecy and legacy need trophies, so this Major-less 2026 ain’t ideal, but what if it was the year that spurs the book of tales?
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Ben Shelton & Frances Tiafoe: Top Dawgs
Top Dawgs
Top Dawgs
Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe vie for history.
Ben Shelton and Frances Tiafoe vie for history.
By Takashi Williams
September 11, 2026
Sheltiafoe // Getty
Sheltiafoe // Getty
Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album, DAMN., concludes with a song titled “DUCKWORTH.” On the track, Kendrick tells the story of when his father, Kenny “Ducky” Duckworth, first met the man who later signed Kendrick to his first-ever record deal: Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith. Ducky was working at a KFC, and Tiffith liked robbing such establishments—even robbing this very one a few years prior. One customer was shot. So, when Top Dawg would come into Ducky’s KFC, he’d always make sure the meals were on the house. This benevolent yet strategic decision ultimately persuaded Tiffith away from holding up that restaurant a second time.
You take two strangers and put ’em in random predicaments
Give ’em a soul, so they can make their own choices and live with it
Twenty years later, them same strangers, you make ’em meet again
Inside recording studios where they reapin’ their benefits
Then you start remindin’ them about that chicken incident
Whoever thought the greatest rapper would be from coincidence?
Because if Anthony killed Ducky, Top Dawg could be servin’ life
While I grew up without a father and die in a gunfight
Some coincidences are more incredible than others. A young Ben Shelton is hitting his stride in time to face a seasoned Frances Tiafoe, who built a career off advocating for Black people in tennis like himself. These two are not only the sport’s biggest stars but on the verge of ending a Grand Slam drought for a country that would’ve barred them from competing if they came a few generations too soon.
The inception of tennis in the United States came with segregation. Black people were not allowed to play at the very first United States Tennis Championships. Black people were not believed to have the intellectual capability or class to compete with their white counterparts in a sport like lawn tennis. If it weren’t for trailblazers such as Richard Weir and Althea Gibson, the first-ever Black man and woman to play in a USTA-sanctioned event, it may not have been possible for Shelton and Tiafoe to pick up a racquet. But Shelton and Tiafoe are not in the 2026 US Open semifinals by some mere “fast food restaurant robbery last-minute cancellation”-level coincidence.
It’s the 23-year-old Shelton’s second final-four appearance in Flushing Meadows and Tiafoe’s third in five years. Even before their recent professional success, the two grew up ensconced in the sport. Shelton has a former world No. 55 player for a father and an older sister who became tennis-obsessed well before he did. Tiafoe slept at times in the childhood tennis club his father worked at. Shelton didn’t take tennis seriously until around 12 years old. Tiafoe became the youngest-ever Orange Bowl winner at just 15. Shelton committed to the University of Florida as a finance major and was planning to red-shirt his freshman year. Tiafoe turned pro before he could legally vote.
Both had different journeys to this moment. Tiafoe was touted as the savior of American men’s tennis at an age when most are more concerned about not failing a geometry test. For Shelton, he faced the pressure of having a former pro as his father—and later his coach in college. But Shelton was relatively under the radar throughout his junior career. Regardless of respective paths, it led to a historic meeting that cements them as outliers in a sport they are both immensely talented at.
Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton will take part in the first-ever all-Black men’s Grand Slam semifinal. The winner will become the first Black man since Arthur Ashe, half a century ago, to reach the US Open finals. Even through their success, Black players still feel like strangers at events they were not wanted at less than 80 years ago.
Now onto the tennis! Ben Shelton is coming off the biggest win of his life against Carlos Alcaraz. He snapped a dismal 17-match losing streak to top-three opponents against the defending champ. Granted, it was Alcaraz’s first event in more than five months, and it was clear through hands on knees and throwing up in towels that he still has some work to do on the conditioning front. Nonetheless, he pushed Shelton and made him earn the win that came from the latest-ever finish in US Open history.
For Tiafoe, it was an opposite quarterfinal feat. Yes, it was a miraculous comeback win, but should it have been? After an extremely poor serving display in the first two sets, Tiafoe found himself looking down the barrel of a 6’4″ Alex Michelsen serving for the match. If it weren’t for two double faults and a bad case of the yips, there’s a strong argument for Tiafoe not being in New York anymore.
But in the words of 22-time Grand Slam champ Rafael Nadal: “If, if, if doesn’t exist.”
What does exist is that after an abysmal 2025 season, Tiafoe finds himself back in the semifinals of the US Open. With an understanding that there may not be another after suffering two five-set defeats in both past semifinal appearances, Tiafoe is sure to leave it all out on the court.
Will what a questionably fit Tiafoe has left in the tank be enough against a Shelton who John McEnroe claimed was returning like the Novak Djokovic—especially against a seven-time Grand Slam champ at that? To be more specific, a slow start could be the beginning and end of Tiafoe’s lifelong US Open title aspirations.
To echo Owen Lewis here, if Ben can repeat the best tennis of his life for two more matches, the shiny silverware and a bigger-than-sport legacy is cemented. Who knows how many other young Black kids in America will pick up a tennis racquet from this coincidence as well?
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Is Aryna Sabalenka Back?
Tiger Style
Tiger Style
Aryna Sabalenka makes the grade—but tough tests loom.
Aryna Sabalenka makes the grade—but tough tests loom.
By Owen Lewis
September 6, 2026
Aryna Sabalenka is back in the New York groove.
Aryna Sabalenka is back in the New York groove.
For the first time in years, Aryna Sabalenka’s early-round matches at a major held some apparent jeopardy. Between the 2022 US Open and Roland-Garros this year, her record is unmatched: four titles and not a single quarterfinal missed. (Her quarterfinal-to-title conversion rate, of course, leaves much to be desired.) Since the prime of Serena Williams, the WTA has bucked all would-be late-round stalwarts at majors. The field is too deep, the margins in best-of-three too slim, and there hasn’t been a player with little enough variance in their game to simply never lose early. Even Iga Swiatek, she of the 37-match winning streak in 2022, has five third- or fourth-round losses in majors since the end of that season. For a few years there, Sabalenka came as close to upset-proof as a player can get.
Now Sabalenka, the world No.1 for the past 98 weeks, is as vulnerable as she’s been in years. Since winning the Sunshine Double in March, she is a decidedly un-Aryna-esque 20–7 with zero titles. My theory is that despite optimizing her game to a fairly astonishing degree, she realized somewhere in either the Madrid loss to Hailey Baptiste (from six match points up) or the Roland-Garros loss to Diana Shnaider (from 6–2, 4–2 up) that she’d never be able to eliminate her trademark implosions late in majors. I imagine that realization having a trickle-down effect on her game. How engaged can someone’s footwork really be if they’ve just learned that the goal they worked toward for years will forever be out of reach? At Wimbledon, Sabalenka’s quarterfinal streak ended against a supreme Naomi Osaka, and she didn’t rebuild her momentum during the American swing. So, though the story of this Open would ordinarily be Sabalenka seeking a threepeat, she’s instead on upset watch.
At least, she was supposed to be. Through four matches at the Open, Sabalenka is yet to drop a set, or more than four games in a set. Her second-round match may have been against the widely unknown Polina Iatcenko, but Aryna’s 6–1, 6–1 demolition was a tasty vintage of her best runs at majors. She put on a serving clinic in round 3, with 10 aces to just one double fault. On Sunday, against home favorite Taylor Townsend, Sabalenka kept composed despite facing consistent pressure on serve, breaking seven times.
I’d like to be able to say that Sabalenka has her game back, that she’s emerging as the title favorite she really was all along, but there’s still reason to doubt. For one thing, Sabalenka is yet to face a top 50 opponent thus far in the tournament. For another, even in her authoritative wins so far, the little fissures in Sabalenka’s mindset remain visible.
Think about that third-round match against Kamilla Rakhimova, the 60th-ranked Uzbek with three pale green bows in her hair. (Sabalenka would probably react to a ribbon in her hair like it were a killer bee.) There was no real danger of losing. Sabalenka won the first set easily and had plenty of chances to go up a break early in the second. Though she missed them, it was obvious the break was coming. When it came, at 4–4—Sabalenka won a forehand trade—she reacted with annoyance. She’d slipped ever so slightly in the middle of the point, forcing her to roll a forehand crosscourt instead of eviscerating a winner down the line. There was a positive read here: She reacted well enough to the slip to still win the point, a vital point, and in a more arduous manner than simply thumping the ball past her opponent, proving her persistence. But instead she was fixated on a perceived flaw in the court.
Pick any other moment from the match you’d like: muttering to herself the whole walk back to her chair when Rakhimova drilled a backhand winner off the back foot (how could she have let that happen?), hanging her head after missing a first serve, applauding a Rakhimova drop shot retrieval but still haranguing herself afterward. Sabalenka did look happy after the match—she loves being a winner—but it doesn’t look like she loves the process of winning, at least when she encounters anything resembling a speed bump while doing it. The end of a match draws her forward like a magnet, hence her spectacular record in tiebreaks, or her bailing on the last few points of her loss to Sara Bejlek in Cincinnati. I think Sabalenka is still the best hard court player in the world. But it must be incredibly difficult to maintain that perch with a fundamental misunderstanding of how best to do it. Errors are the fabric of this sport, and slamming the panic button each time you encounter the simple fact of play seems exhausting.
She’s chosen chronic perfectionism in a sport that is chronically resistant to perfection. If she could sketch out her ideal version of a match, she would control every single point. That ideal being completely impossible does not stop her from seeking it out, or from unraveling when it (of course) eludes her. Her “Tiger” nickname is apt in so many ways—she’s fierce, she’ll tear you apart—but flawed in that unlike a real tiger, she’s offended when her prey fights back, or even runs away. She’d like for them to simply lie still and accept what she deems the inevitable, so that she can demolish them as completely as possible. Most great players accept the inevitable bad day at the office and use it to work out the kinks in their game. Sabalenka plays as if she feels she is above having kinks to work out in the first place.
All this is to say that I attribute Sabalenka’s form so far more to the fact that she and the Open have been simpatico in recent years—it’s the one tournament where she’s been able to truly banish some ghosts; she’s not lost here since her implosion against Coco Gauff in the 2023 final—and less to the idea that she’s fixed whatever’s been plaguing her since March. Just look at the friction in her press conferences so far, which are not exactly suggestive of a player secure in her form.
Next up for Sabalenka is Linda Noskova: a player who can tolerate the loss of five championship points in the second set of a Wimbledon final and calmly win the third set 6–3. In her last match here, against Marta Kostyuk, Noskova again had to stare into the abyss. She blew two match points on serve in the second set, then three more in the third set, and yet after all that, she found precise first serves on the final two points of the match to put it to bed. Like Sabalenka, she is quick to bruise mentally; unlike Sabalenka, she steels herself before she can bleed.
When they play, Sabalenka will try to blow her off the court, as she does with all her opponents. If that does not work, the world No. 1 will find herself in the type of fight she can’t seem to win lately. Still, Sabalenka has given herself an opportunity to salvage her season at the majors. She is deep enough in the tournament that if she crumbles, it’ll be because of an established weakness rather than a new one. If there’s not a title in that, maybe there’s some relief.
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Stefanos Tsitsipas: Too Soon To Call it a Comeback?
Greek Week
Greek Week
Stefanos Tsitsipas finds his form.
Stefanos Tsitsipas finds his form.
By Giri Nathan
September 4, 2026
Stef is statuesque at the US Open this week. // Getty
Stef is statuesque at the US Open this week. // Getty
I used to closely follow what Stefanos Tsitsipas posted online. This was an interesting time. The year was 2019, and Tsitsipas was then a 20-year-old with his whole radiant future before him, this dynamic attacking player who had just defeated back-to-back defending champion Roger Federer at the Australian Open and had sped into the top 10. Patrick Mouratoglou, who had first seen clips of Stef’s tennis on YouTube, was then acting as a consultant. Speaking of YouTube, Tsitsipas was also quite serious about creating his own videos about his life and his thoughts. He told me that sometimes on court his mind drifted to creating content. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. It’s natural, perhaps even healthy, for the mind to wander even when hard at work. But there were concerning signs. “It’s a very satisfying feeling, to be uploading, to be creating,” Tsitsipas told me then. “It’s a feeling that, basically, makes me—makes me feel alive. I feel that I’m brought to this world to, you know, there’s a purpose in living. And I find it tough to stop it.” I suppose at this point it would have been reasonable to pump the brakes on my expectations for his career.
It feels like several lifetimes have elapsed since then. Tsitsipas spent six seasons perched near the top of the game—and these past two seasons slipping far away from it. His once-fearsome serve and forehand withered away. During his post-2024 slump he has been dealing with serious injuries, shuffling through too many coaches and racquets, and seeking answers. Perhaps he has landed on at least one answer. This year, just before Wimbledon, he finally cast out a longtime head coach—his father, Apostolos Tsitsipas—and declared that this time, unlike last time, their split was permanent. I have heard this move described by someone close to Tsitsipas as an absolute necessity. As a general rule I will always support tennis players firing their dads from their staff. After subtracting dad, Tsitsipas reunited with Mouratoglou, king of the viral coaching clips. He now leads the team, often remotely, but this week he is in the player’s box to watch his old charge try to defibrillate a career.
The US Open is Tsitsipas’ nightmare Slam; he has never advanced past the third round. You might recall his 2020 third-round collapse against Borna Coric, one of the sudden and inexplicable losses of form I’ve ever seen. In 2021 he got wrecked by a juvenile Carlos Alcaraz and reported that he’d never seen anyone hit the ball that hard before. (At least that loss has aged well.) In 2022 he lost to a qualifier in the first round. But none of his US Open struggles have been as dire as his 2025 appearance. After a second-round defeat to Daniel Altmeier in five sets, Tsitsipas couldn’t walk for two days. That back injury forced him to withdraw from the rest of his events for the year. His ranking plummeted. Reflecting this week on his post-Open state last year, he said it was probably the lowest point of his career.
But look at him now. Look at his posts. Look at his scores. According to his seemingly LLM-slickened tweets, he spent the week before the Open watching compilations of Roger Federer and drilling his backhand. He should make a habit of both. Ranked No. 53 heading into the Open, it was Tsitsipas’ first time ever playing this tournament unseeded. And in the first round he had to play a No. 10 seed opponent whose name was being casually thrown into title contender talk: the 22-year-old Arthur Fils, fresh off a Cincinnati title, looking as youthful and dangerous as Tsitsipas did at that age. Fils is also coached by Goran Ivanesevic, who had previously coached Tsitsipas, and who memorably ridiculed his pupil after their partnership ended. I can’t say I expected 2026 Tsitsipas to rise to this grudge matchup, but after going down a set and 2–5, he ran away with the match. The Tsitsipas forehand, among the tour’s finest in some bygone era, was once again the best shot on the court, and even his frequently disastrous one-handed backhand seemed up to the task. A second-round win against Lloyd Harris on Thursday, full of brilliant shotmaking, advanced Tsitsipas to his first third-round at any Slam since 2024. “There’s something in the air in New York,” writes Stefanos. Is it a comeback?