Forces of Nature
Forces of Nature
Forces of Nature
Coco Gauff looks to continue to confound on grass.
Coco Gauff looks to continue to confound on grass.
By Giri Nathan
June 13, 2025
Coco Gauff celebrates her Roland-Garros victory. // Sandra Ruhaut, Getty
Coco Gauff celebrates her Roland-Garros victory. // Sandra Ruhaut, Getty
I recently had an eye exam where I had to peer into a device and press a button every single time a pinprick of light appeared anywhere in my field of vision. There were dozens and dozens of those lights flashing on and off, in rapid succession, each one easily identifiable in isolation. But the focus required to identify and respond to each of them, in a timely and accurate fashion, without any false alarms, was surprisingly taxing. I felt myself making the occasional error not because of my eyes—my eyes are working fine, it turned out—but because I was sleepy that day and struggling mightily to stay vigilant about every single pesky, tiny light peppering the field. It was frustrating. Even a little embarrassing. I now wonder if this is how No. 1 seed Aryna Sabalenka felt in her Roland-Garros final against No. 2 seed Coco Gauff on Saturday.
One line you hear often in tennis commentary is the idea that the “ball is on her racquet.” It is used to identify the aggressor in the matchup. The main character, even. She is the proactive player, and the opponent is reactive. She is the one determining her own fate. Every time the ball is sitting on her strings, the question is whether that swing will produce a winner or an error. It’s as though this two-player game has been reduced to the will of a single player. To me the most “ball is on her racquet” matchup in all of tennis is Sabalenka vs. Gauff. It is a match of peerless offense against peerless defense. And this time, just as it did in the 2023 US Open final, defense survived an initial onslaught from offense and then slowly took control of the match. By the end, offense looked hopeless and dysfunctional.
Sabalenka ended the match with just 37 winners to go with her 70 unforced errors. Afterward she seemed to locate the reason for the loss entirely within her own tennis, as if Gauff were just an incidental feature of the match, like a passing cloud. To hear Sabalenka tell it, the wind was a more significant adversary during the final than the human who was the tournament’s No. 2 seed. Sabalenka described herself as “terrible.” She said that Gauff had won the match by “running and playing those high balls from the frame”—shanking the ball, in other words. She also said that Gauff didn’t play all that well: “I think she won the match not because she played incredible; just because I made all of those mistakes from—like, if you look from the outside, kind of like from easy balls.” A day later, she issued a written apology on Instagram.
Personally I enjoy the occasional press conference delivered in the throes of post-match emotion, with plenty of self-flagellation and without much attention paid to etiquette, but these remarks sure did inspire a lot of Discourse. There was the age-old debate about the arbitrary line between “forced” and “unforced” errors; there was a lot of outrage on behalf of the Roland-Garros champion. Here, as always, Gauff has appeared several decades wiser and calmer than everyone doing said Discourse, calmly batting away the various comments from Aryna that were relayed to her. And to take it into pure tennis terms, if I were Coco, I’d be thrilled to learn that the adversary I’d beaten in two Slam finals still hadn’t quite pieced together how I’d done it. That means it could still work again.
In the 2023 US Open final I saw how Gauff’s scrambling defense seemed to shrink the court for Sabalenka. Challenged to keep hitting two or three extra shots in every rally, the mental fatigue accumulated. Sabalenka’s power tennis, which can be flighty even in the best of circumstances, went utterly haywire. It’s not an accident that the match played out this same way in Paris, too. It was by design. You could take my word for it, or you could listen to someone who once lost to a 15-year-old Gauff and has wonderfully articulated what makes her so dangerous. Here’s a bit from Andrea Petkovic’s lovely description of the way Gauff takes away time and space from her opponents: “The unforced errors hit by Coco’s opponents when she’s playing well are actually forced,” she writes. “Except, they are not forced by Coco’s previous shot (which is what usually goes into the forced error statistics) but they are forced by the entirety of her game and presence on the other side of the net and by choices she has made 20 minutes prior to the point of you netting a forehand.”
While I was watching Gauff force these dozens of errors with her consistency, I remembered that the longtime stereotype of American tennis is serve-and-forehand bashers who favor hard courts. And yet, the best American of this generation is a player whose serve and forehand are her most commonly discussed liabilities. And she was winning at the highest level on clay, with sheer court coverage and a sublime backhand. American tennis: not a monolith! Given Gauff’s athletic gifts, her speed and endurance, clay would seem the best surface for her. She might have gotten to this Roland-Garros title sooner were it not for the perennial dominance of Iga Swiatek, who ended her run at this tournament for the past three seasons in a row. Regardless, she finally made good on the prophecy she wrote into her Notes app in 2021: “I had a dream last night that I will win french open.”
Now Gauff moves toward Wimbledon, the one Slam where she has yet to advance past the fourth round, a stage she first reached as a 15-year-old, making her name for the first time. And though she would probably not self-identify as an enthusiast of grass courts, she does have the third-highest win rate on grass among current top 10 players, and the tour’s second-highest grass-specific Elo rating, according to Tennis Abstract. And Wimbledon has been a bit of a free-for-all in recent years. So why not Coco? Maybe she’ll pull it off and then reveal the Post-it note from 2015 predicting it would happen.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
The Final Confessional
The Final Confessional
The Final Confessional
Roscoe Tanner Seeks Redemption.
Roscoe Tanner Seeks Redemption.
By Joel Drucker
June 13 2025
Roscoe Tanner at the American Airlines Tennis Games, Tucson, AZ, 1975.
Roscoe Tanner at the American Airlines Tennis Games, Tucson, AZ, 1975.
Father’s Day promises to be a busy day for Roscoe Tanner. There’s a good chance he’ll go to the church he attends near his home in Orlando. Tanner might also spend time on the tennis courts of several facilities he teaches at roughly 15 hours a week. Perhaps he’ll show a foursome of beginners the fundamentals of doubles. Or help a college player understand the nuances of the serve-volley tactic that took Tanner to a career-high ranking of fourth in the world. And maybe one student will seek to mimic Tanner’s whiplike, left-handed service motion that was once clocked at 153 mph.
But Tanner’s greatest joy on Father’s Day will come from contact with his five daughters—Lauren, Tamara, Anne Monique, Omega, and Lacey. Five women from four mothers, all the children at last on good terms with a man who for decades neglected his spousal and parental responsibilities in ways no one would dare wish upon anyone. From missed child-support payments to bounced checks to multiple jail terms, Tanner has both inflicted pain and paid a heavy price for a series of horrendous choices. He knows this, too, and is now keen to publicly make amends. One step forward: the publication of Tanner’s memoir Second Serve: My Fall From Grace and Road to Reconciliation. “What you’re about to read,” writes Stan Smith in the introduction to Second Serve, “is a brutally honest account of a celebrity athlete who experienced the riches of the world—only to see everything evaporate in his hands.”
“I made some selfish choices,” Tanner told me. “There’s no other way to put it. But I paid for that, and now I’m really lucky that that’s behind me.”
If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Twenty years ago, Tanner attempted a similar reinvention. Then, too, there was a book, that one titled Double Fault: My Rise and Fall, and My Road Back. But soon after, Tanner relapsed and was once again arrested. “I don’t want to go through a blow-by-blow description of the last fifteen-plus years of my life,” he writes in Second Serve. “You can do an online search if you’re so inclined.” Estimated to have roughly 30 percent new material, Second Serve addresses Tanner’s desire to live peacefully and ethically. “Some people learn about faith with a nudge, other people get it with a sledgehammer,” said Tanner. “I think I’m closer to the sledgehammer.”
Those who’ve known Tanner for years, some back to childhood days playing in junior tournaments, speak of him mostly with confusion and concern, largely because they have such fond memories of the confident and well-behaved competitor he’d always been. According to former top tenner Brian Gottfried, a Tanner tennis mate since their days as preteens in the early ’60s, “Whenever you played Roscoe, it was always fair and square.”
The world saw the swashbuckling Tanner, too, and never more gloriously than on July 7, 1979, when he entered Centre Court to play the Wimbledon singles final. A heavy underdog versus three-time defending champion Bjorn Borg, Tanner competed brilliantly, jumping off to a two-sets-to-one lead before eventually succumbing, 6–4 in the fifth. It was a first-rate showcase of a man who’d thrown himself into the arena and also emerged triumphant for his effort. As a postscript, Tanner defeated Borg in the quarterfinals of that year’s US Open.
Alas, as graciously as Tanner conducted himself inside the lines, temptation beckoned and captured. “But away from the court,” he writes, “I cheated on [his first wife] Nancy with abandon…. I needed the comfort of a warm embrace. The tour was a lonely place where wolves were looking to devour lambs on the court.” While surely not the first athlete to commit adultery, after his playing career ended, Tanner overextended himself beyond belief, triggering a cascade of financial troubles that in time led to his arrest and imprisonment.
As a player, Tanner could always put setbacks behind him and march forward with his own brand of focus and confidence. “The glass was always overflowing for Roscoe,” said Dick Gould, his coach at Stanford. Tanner, though, recognizes that the laser-like focus that helped him win so many matches wasn’t always so effective elsewhere. “But when you transfer that stubbornness into different things that you think you can get done outside the tennis world,” he said, “it doesn’t necessarily work properly.”
Documenting his time served in a German prison, Tanner writes, “They say that a person can live thirty days without food, three days without water, three minutes without air, but only thirty seconds without hope.” Having bottomed out in prison, Tanner surrendered to a higher power. As he writes, “I leaned over my bed and clasped my hands. ‘Dear Lord,’ I began, ‘I’ve done so many wrongs that I don’t know where to begin. I want you to know that I’m sorry for what my life has become. I repent of my sins and ask you to come into my life now.’”
Tanner writes that, “I’m now in a place where I’m content doing my thing—giving lessons, coaching players, and imparting advice about a game that I’ve loved since I was a little boy.” The same week I read Second Serve, I watched the movie Catch Me if You Can. This is the tale of Frank Abagnale Jr. In his youth, Abagnale forged dozens of checks before being caught by the FBI, imprisoned, and, eventually, hired by the FBI. Who better to detect a forger than a forger?
As I pondered Tanner’s fate, I wondered if, akin to Abagnale, he might find meaning as a source of counsel for youngsters about to embark on the pro tennis journey, active pros faced with many hedonistic options, ex-players uncertain of the next best step. For the sport is filled with dozens of these solitary souls who create pain not just for themselves, but sometimes also for others. And while forgiveness can be granted with words, trust is rebuilt best by deeds.
A common trope is to compare tennis to democracy: a fair form of competition, all outcomes based strictly on the ability of an individual to effectively perform. But there is also a downside to such a singular community. In the 1830s, a Frenchman diplomat named Alexis de Tocqueville came to America. Ironically enough given the case of Tanner, Tocqueville’s nominal mission was to study the American prison system. But his bigger quest—less than 50 years after his homeland’s own revolution—was to understand how democracy played out in this former British colony.
Though tennis as we know it had yet to be invented, Tocqueville anticipated what Tanner must have felt during those many solitary days and nights he spent competing all over the world and then returning to his hotel room. Writing in his iconic book Democracy in America, Tocqueville noted that, “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.”
“I’ve made some mistakes,” said Tanner. “I paid for it, but let’s all learn from it and go forward.” Now 73 years old, Tanner continues his quest to liberate himself from solitude and cultivate love with the many hearts he shattered and is working earnestly to mend. “I missed a lot of time with them,” Tanner said about his daughters. “On the other hand, I prefer to think about where I am right now, and I’m in a good position with each of them.” On this Father’s Day, light a candle and hope that Roscoe Tanner has indeed authored his final confessional.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Back In Black
Back In Black
Back In Black
Jannik Sinner picks up where he left off.
Jannik Sinner picks up where he left off.
By Giri Nathan
June 6, 2025
Jannik Sinner channels the Official Preppy Handbook during his 2025 Roland-Garros campaign. // Getty
Jannik Sinner channels the Official Preppy Handbook during his 2025 Roland-Garros campaign. // Getty
Jannik Sinner didn’t even want to accept a settlement. Throughout his doping saga, the No. 1 player in the world has proclaimed his innocence. He has said that he took all necessary precautions, and it was only due to the neglect of his support staff that he ended up with the anabolic steroid clostebol in his system. You probably know the story by now, but here’s a reminder of the colorful details. He maintains that his physiotherapist treated a wound on his own finger using a topical spray that contained clostebol; the physiotherapist used that same hand to give Sinner massages; the clostebol got into Sinner’s bloodstream via tiny sores on the player’s skin. The World Anti-Doping Agency, however, sought a ban of one to two years. In the end, Sinner’s legal team convinced the player that it was worth accepting a settlement instead of going back to court, prolonging the process, and risking a much longer ban. And so Jannik, who had just won the Australian Open, took the deal and sat out a three-month chunk of the 2025 season.
It was a convenient chunk of the season, in that Sinner missed no major tournaments, and the first event upon his return to tour would be Rome, where he would enjoy the raucous support of his home crowd. But the suspension was also a profoundly strange time in his life. For the first two months of his suspension, Sinner was subject to strict restrictions on what he could do and where he could appear—even as a mere fan. Though he wanted to spend some of his downtime watching his friends compete in motocross and cycling, he learned he was not even allowed to attend official sporting events. As for tennis, he could not train on courts that were associated with the professional tour, or with any national tennis federation, ruling out pretty much all of his usual haunts. He had to seek out private facilities. He also could not train with any active professional players. But like any tennis player, he had to find a suitable partner. Suddenly the world’s top player was in the same conundrum as a weekend warrior looking for a decent hit.
As it turned out, Sinner had received a message from an old acquaintance: Roberto Marcora, the former world No. 150, who is 12 years his elder and long gone from the tour. Marcora half-jokingly offered his services as a sparring partner. Soon enough, Sinner’s team reached out to him, and they weren’t joking at all. Marcora’s name had to be submitted to WADA for official approval. Because he’d last played professionally at Indian Wells in 2023, Marcora was deemed inactive by the authorities, and they were good to go. In an interview with TennisTalker, Marcora described hitting with an even more advanced version of the kid who had already beaten him in a Challenger final back when Jannik was 17. He said it felt like practicing with Djokovic, but with more power.
After April 13, some of the suspension restrictions were relaxed. Sinner could train with his old pals again. A few days later he was seen hitting with Jack Draper, who was in the midst of a breakout season. The following week, Draper blazed to the final in Madrid, but Sinner was still watching the tour from afar. He made his official return to competition in Rome. In a press conference before the tournament, Sinner did something that shocked me more than any drug test results could. This strenuously private man offered an unprompted update on his romantic life. He’d recently been photographed with the model Lara Lieto, but he took a moment to assure the assembled press that he was in fact single and ready to mingle: “I was also very surprised to see some pictures, which—nothing serious, let’s say it like this: I’m not in a relationship.” Had someone taken our robotic, reticent Jannik and replaced him with this grinning playboy? Or perhaps he was just feeling a lot freer with the doping stress behind him.
Back on court, Sinner picked up right where he left off: beating everyone in sight. It looked as though the stringent limits of his suspension hadn’t detracted much from his game. He murdered his opponents in a tennis-goth, all-black outfit. “I believe it suits me quite well. I like not the yellow and orange and these very bright colors. I like more the darker colors,” he remarked—a clear contrast to his foil Carlos Alcaraz, who often opts for candy-colored kits. On one of his off days during the tournament, Sinner slipped into a dark suit and went to the Vatican to meet the newly named Pope Leo XIV, who loves to play and watch tennis. Sinner gave him a racquet as a gift and offered to volley a bit. The Pope looked around at all the precious objects in the room and decided against it.
The following day, the post-pope Sinner administered a 6–0, 6–1 beatdown to Casper Ruud, the sort of rout you rarely see between two top 10 players. Sinner was so comically, excessively good that Ruud described his play as “next-level shit” and admitted it was “almost fun to witness.” At this point I began to wonder if the three months of rest had in fact given Sinner a leg up on the competition. My speculation cooled off two rounds later, in the final, against Alcaraz, who had dominated the clay season up to that point. This was the most narratively satisfying way for Sinner to return to the tour: a title fight against his archrival, on Alcaraz’s best surface. Sinner stayed neck and neck in the first set, earning himself set points, only to let them slip away. He faded out quickly in the second set. That made four consecutive losses to Alcaraz since the start of 2024. Sinner had suffered only three other losses to the whole rest of the tour during that same span. But he appeared quite happy and relaxed after the match. After all, this was arguably the most challenging test in tennis, and he left it realizing he was “closer than expected” to his goal, despite all that time in exile.
In his runner-up remarks, Sinner paid Alcaraz a compliment: He would be the favorite at Roland-Garros. As we approach the tournament’s last weekend, that may still be true. Alcaraz has lost some sets here and there, but his peak level, seen in his last two rounds against Ben Shelton and Tommy Paul, has been astounding. Sinner, meanwhile, hasn’t dropped a single set through five matches and is barely losing games as of late. They are the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds, sitting on opposite sides of the draw, and they might finally meet in a major final. They have been hurtling toward such a match for quite some time, and it is the most appealing prospect in men’s tennis, though having just spent way too much time thinking about these two dudes, I’m quite biased. The dream final might be just a few days away…unless Novak Djokovic interferes with the proceedings.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
The Devil in the Details
The Devil Is In the Details
The Devil Is In the Details
“To see that your player is improving gives sense to your job,” says Pere Riba, Zheng Qinwen’s coach
“To see that your player is improving gives sense to your job,” says Pere Riba, Zheng Qinwen’s coach
By Carole Bouchard
Jun 2, 2025
Pere Riba pictured at Roland-Garros this year with his charge, Zheng Qinwen. // Getty
Pere Riba pictured at Roland-Garros this year with his charge, Zheng Qinwen. // Getty
Pere Riba has been working with Zheng Qinwen since she was 18, bringing her to the top 10, a final at the Australian Open in 2024, as well as a gold medal at the Olympics and the finals of the WTA’s year-end championship tournament. In 2023, he was on the team that helped Coco Gauff win the US Open. If there’s someone who knows how to develop a top player’s game, it’s the Spaniard. Carole Bouchard caught up with him at Roland-Garros, where talk of Zheng’s evolution had him all smiles.
Qinwen said that she felt it was time to add things to her game this year, such as coming to the net and hitting drop shots. How did you work on developing her game?
You must always be ready to learn. [At 22, she] is still really young and has a big margin of improvement. If there are things you don’t have in your game or things you have but that need to be improved, you need to do it. It’s always the moment to add things. Of course, she is already one of the best players in the world, and she has amazing potential, but you still have to work on these small details. You want to make the player more complete, because the more tools they have, the easier it is to find a way to win the matches.
It’s challenging to find time to work on the game during the season. How do you manage it?
Yes, well, at least you have a good moment in the preseason to make these changes. But even during the season, you have to choose well to find training blocks. It’s getting tricky nowadays because of the WTA 1000s that are held over two weeks, so you really have to plan well. You need the training blocks to make these little changes happen. Then if you don’t have them, you can also use practice sessions. You set goals. You always ensure that you find an intention in the practice. That is really important to avoid going to the court and then just hitting for the sake of hitting. Of course, you have to do the basics, but then you must find the why. That’s how the player goes to the court with the mindset of, “I want to improve that part of my game.”
I don’t believe in being limited by age in some way. Of course, when they are younger, they can listen a little bit more, but I believe that you can always improve. It doesn’t matter the age—24, 25, 26, 30, or 35—you can always improve. We have the examples of Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal to prove it. When you see that this can happen—because they did—then why not others? Women’s tennis is the same. They have to be open to improving all the time, and it doesn’t matter if you are No. 1, No. 5, or if you have won a Grand Slam title. You must be open to the idea of continuing to improve, because if not, others will.
Is it easier with Zheng because she is so ambitious and dedicated?
She is truly open to improvement and change. Especially when she believes in it and when she sees that it’s so obvious. I understand that when the player is growing, when the player is getting better, especially in the rankings, sometimes you can doubt about making changes. Everything is working well, right? Everything you are doing is working, and you’re winning a lot of matches; everything seems fine. Yet there are still small things to improve. You must understand that if you improve, you will become a better player and have a greater chance of winning big events, especially when you are young.
It’s a big responsibility when your player is already in the top 10, having played a Grand Slam final and won the gold at the Olympics…
Yes, it is. But in the end, you have to aim as high as you can. In my opinion, she has to aim to be No. 1 and win Slams. If you want to win these events and be at the top, then the process requires these improvements.
I saw her at the net here, and I was like, “Oh, that’s new!”
She’s going more to the net, she’s doing drop shots, she’s opening the court more, she’s serving much better. And still, she can improve many things. But I’m really happy because for a coach to see that your player is improving gives sense to your job. Every year I watch her, she becomes a better player. Results are another thing because sometimes you can do things well and then have one bad day. However, if you take a global look at the work done over the years, you can see that every year she has been better than the previous one. I have a lot of faith in her.
Did you already have a vision for a game early in your collaboration?
I met her when she was 18. I remember that she was ranked 180 and came from juniors. I saw huge potential, but at that moment, it was a different thing: She had good potential on the shot, but there was something in her game patterns that needed work. I love the process that she went through, and you can now see it in the way she uses her heavy forehand. Now she goes to the court, and she so clearly knows the patterns and what she has to do. Now she’s playing with sense. She knows when to attack and when she has to defend. Of course, she needs to improve a lot because everyone can improve, but I’m so happy with the process, seeing how far she’s come since her junior days. It makes me happy to see how she has evolved and how she continues to evolve.
Long-term work is the only thing that can work…
Well, these days it’s not easy to find because young generations don’t have the patience. They want to succeed right now. But they have to believe in that process and show a little bit of patience during the work, even when the result isn’t coming at the moment they’d have wanted it to. You need to allow time for the process you are undertaking, as things will work out in the long term if you do it correctly. It’s going to come.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Mozart's Outro
Mozart's Outro
Mozart's Outro
Richard Gasquet calls it a career.
Richard Gasquet calls it a career.
Giri Nathan
May 30, 2025
Richard Gasquet's legendary backhand on display during his final appearance at Roland-Garros. // Sandra Ruhaut/Getty
Richard Gasquet's legendary backhand on display during his final appearance at Roland-Garros. // Sandra Ruhaut/Getty
Anonymity might have suited Richard Gasquet better, but he never had a chance to try it. By age 9 he was pictured on the cover of Tennis Magazine in his native France. Young Richard was depicted in tennis whites, about to strike the one-handed backhand that would win him many hearts over the decades to come. Next to his photo was a burdensome headline: The champion that France awaits? At age 12, he took on his peer Rafa Nadal at Les Petits As, an elite junior tournament. The footage of their 1999 quarterfinal is very cute and well-known among tennis junkies; Gasquet prevailed in three sets and went on to win the title. It seemed as though he and Nadal would be evenly matched rivals. When Gasquet was 15, the president of the French Tennis Federation dubbed him the “Mozart of tennis.” By age 16, he had become the No. 1 junior in the world.
France, suffering from a major title drought, supercharged young Gasquet with hype before he’d even ventured onto the pro tour. Later he’d recall that this wasn’t a pleasant experience. “It’s the only thing I regret about my career, that when I was a child, I felt a lot of pressure to play, to practice, really a lot of expectation on my shoulders,” the 38-year-old told The Observer recently. “Everyone wants you to win, so you feel it. Sometimes I felt it a little bit too much.”
On Thursday, in the second round of Roland-Garros, Gasquet concluded his tennis career—a humane ending, painless straight sets, courtesy of the No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner. Now that we have arrived on the other side of Gasquet’s 22-year career, we can see it for what it really was: an impressively long and frequently brilliant effort while coexisting with the toughest competition in ATP history. His highs were high. Gasquet upset Roger Federer at age 18. He had won titles on every surface by the time he was 21. He made three Slam semifinal appearances; in each case he lost resoundingly to a member of the Big Three. He enjoyed two stints in the top 10, first in 2007 and again in 2015. He offered one of the most memorable ever excuses for failing a drug test (went to a nightclub and kissed someone who had used cocaine). He played more than 1,000 matches, incredibly, and won 16 tour-level titles in all, including one unlikely late-career triumph at Auckland in 2023.
We'll likely never see a grip setup like this again. // Getty
We'll likely never see a grip setup like this again. // Getty
It is common to look back at his potential as a youth and portray Gasquet as an underachiever. Perhaps this is true. But perhaps this just says more about the vast differences between junior tennis and the physically mature version of the game. For my part, I suspect that Gasquet performed quite well given the competition in his era and the limitations he had to work around. If you looked only at his signature shot—that casual, omnipotent one-handed backhand—you’d think everything in tennis came easily to him, and that his struggles were only due to a lack of diligence. A closer inspection reveals plenty of other challenges. The forehand technique was not nearly as pure as the backhand. With his modest stature—it seemed as though his six-foot frame consisted of more neck than legs—his serve never won him many easy points. And as the sport became increasingly athletic, he lagged behind the tour’s elite in terms of foot speed and ground-stroke power. I picture him stationed in his preferred zone a few feet behind the baseline, striking technically brilliant shots but struggling to find the offensive depth or defensive court coverage that his top peers could access. It is a testament to his shotmaking and self-preservation that he managed to have as much success as he did, for as long as he did.
He never won a title above the 500 level. But perhaps it’s cooler to be known for a particular shot than for any particular title. Gasquet’s legacy will always be that one-handed backhand. It looks as easy and fluid as the shot you might pantomime with the back of your hand while pacing around your living room, except his version somehow imparts world-class topspin and pace on a very real tennis ball. Given the decisive shift toward two-handers in the modern game, it seems fair to assume we won’t see another backhand like it.
But here I propose that we add just one more element to the Gasquet legacy. It should be familiar to anyone who has ever looked closely at his racquet, perhaps when he was wrapping a new overgrip around the handle at warp speed, as was his ritual during changeovers. The butt of his racquet flares out so dramatically that it looks like he has attached a doorknob to the end. Other pros, like Robin Soderling or Feliciano Lopez, have opted for a light flare, but none have taken it to such an extreme. A friend of Gasquet’s customizes the racquets for him, mummifying the bottom of the racquet in layers of leather grip, which Gasquet then covers with even more blue Tourna Grip. He said he uses this custom grip specifically to suit his backhand. He rests his pinkie finger right on top of the flared butt, and his wrist stays relaxed through the shot. One can visualize this bulbous shape “locking” the racquet in place inside his palm, preventing any slippage, even as he swings freely and expressively. For the sake of posterity, let us remember both components: the legendarily big backhand of Richard Gasquet, and the legendarily big butt that enabled it.
Richard Gasquet during his final appearance at Roland-Garros. // Sandra Ruhaut/Getty
Richard Gasquet during his final appearance at Roland-Garros. // Sandra Ruhaut/Getty
SIGN UP — YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR SECOND SERVE.
Third Time's the Charm
Third Time’s the Charm
Third Time’s the Charm
Artadia’s third annual tennis tournament returns to support artists.
Artadia’s third annual tennis tournament returns to support artists.
By Dominique Clayton
May 25, 2025
Nina Fernandez/BFA.com
Nina Fernandez/BFA.com
Last Monday, L.A.’s art community gathered at the historic Los Angeles Tennis Club for Artadia’s annual tennis tournament, a special initiative launched in 2023 to support Artadia’s regional artist awards, currently activated in seven cities across the U.S. Founded in 1999, Artadia has awarded more than $6 million in unrestricted funds to 430 artists in its program cities in a mission to “strengthen their communities through a proven combination of recognition, grantmaking, community support, and advocacy.” Esteemed curators and arts leaders serve as the selection committee for merit-based unrestricted awards ($15K) aimed to support artists at pivotal times in their careers.
Cochaired by Rafael Flores, Charles Gaines, and Jennie Lamensdorf, this year’s benefit connected about 120 patrons, including art dealers, curators, artists, and collectors. Half the crowd grabbed racquets, joining in a rotating doubles LVBL format on the court. I particularly enjoyed watching art collector and film producer Michael Sherman nail some wins in the doubles match, and curator/writer Larry Earl also showed off his skills with another group across the courts. I lost track of score as the smell of the grill led me upstairs at the club, where I had a better view of both the courts and the taco buffet. L.A. delivered its signature perfect sunny day, making everyone on and off the courts look and feel great.
Over lunch, Claire Malloy, Artadia’s director of advancement, shared that the event, originally set in February to kick off Frieze L.A. week, was rescheduled to prioritize wildfire relief for L.A.-based awardees. Patton Hindle, executive director, shared remarks thanking everyone for their ongoing support and commitment, which is critical especially during a divisive moment in politics and culture. While the spring gala season has many artists and patrons jet-setting and dressing up for black-tie evening events, the Artadia tennis tournament is a refreshing way to gather outside in the sun for the sake of art, fun, and community. This year’s fundraiser generated enough funding to directly support Artadia’s Awards program (three awardees) and ongoing work in Los Angeles.
Takeaways: Tennis makes everyone look great. Wear sunscreen. And say yes to charity games and tournaments. It’s a win-win for all.
Our own Dominique Clayton at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, May 20, for the third annual Artadia fundraiser. // Nina Fernandez/BFA.com
Our own Dominique Clayton at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, May 20, for the third annual Artadia fundraiser. // Nina Fernandez/BFA.com
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
The Rodin of Roland-Garros
The Rodin of Roland-Garros
The Rodin of Roland-Garros
Book Review: The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay, by Christopher Clarey.
Book Review: The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay, by Christopher Clarey.
By Patrick J. Sauer
May 23, 2025
Rafael Nadal during his bounce back campaign at Roland Garros, 2010. // Clive Brunskill/Getty
Rafael Nadal during his bounce back campaign at Roland Garros, 2010. // Clive Brunskill/Getty
The French Open is upon us, and a feeling of loss is creeping in from the shadows of Court Philippe-Chatrier. For the first official time it won’t feature the clay artistry of its greatest sculptor, the Rodin of Roland-Garros, Rafael Nadal. There is a grand farewell planned for kickoff night, May 25, which is both obvious and a little silly, since they already dedicated a statue to his greatness. However, over the course of the tournament, it will be a bit sad and strange to check in on the men’s draw and not see El Matador lancing his opponents. But while it may be so hard to say goodbye, it’s still easier than grasping his overall French Open numbers, equally quantifiable and unfathomable.
Rafa’s armada of fans are well aware of the 14 French Open titles and his 112–4 record, but dig a little deeper in the red clay and things get really salvaje y loco. Behold, a brief sampler from Nadal’s 19 appearances: Of his 112 victories, 90 were in straight sets; his overall sets lead capped out at 333–37; he didn’t drop a set in four different years; he was undefeated in the finals and never even went to a fifth set; between 2005 and 2021 he had match-winning streaks of 31/35/39 on the terre battue; his bagel record is a spotless 24–0; and it was 17 years from his first title, at 19, in ’05, to his last, at 36, in ’21. We could keep tilling statistics, but it would be all to say, when it comes to the level of domination Nadal held over two decades of Roland-Garros fields, there are no words.
Unless you happen to be Christopher Clarey, author of the fantastic new book The Warrior: Rafael Nadal and His Kingdom of Clay. There is no more qualified journalist—at least among American scribes—than Clarey. Not only is he a sportswriter who spent 30 years spanning the globe to cover the entirety of the Big Three era for The New York Times, and he also he married a Parisian in the early ’90s and was able to stroll down the Seine to work.
Clarey—now dropping knowledge at the Tennis & Beyond Substack—crafts the book by splitting the difference between a cradle-to-calling-it-a-career biography of the only man to rank No. 1 in three different decades, and a laser-focused look at Nadal’s favorite surface and venue. He works wonders crocheting these two constructs into whole cloth. It’s been a long, ongoing conversation between Rafa and Clarey, trust built tournament upon tournament, so The Warrior is authoritative and thorough but also feels like it’s happening in real-ish time, given that Nadal’s retirement isn’t even six months old. Clarey’s match-play descriptions are vivid to the point of coming across like live audio—Bud Collins’ voice, naturally—because he was always there, but he’s also no longer hemmed in by Times style and can wax poetically, curiously, or humorously where he sees fit. Nada’s still-shocking 2009 defeat by Robin Soderling (with whom El Matador had beef, who knew?) includes an anecdote of Clarey realizing what was unfolding and sprinting from the pressroom to try to find a seat at the match he’s been ignoring, a personal history of the upsettee, a digression into if it’s the biggest upset in tennis history, and a look at Nadal’s bounce-back 2010 title. It would be No. 5, the one that, LOL, left him one Roland-Garros championship short of all-time leader Bjorn Borg.
In delivering The Warrior while Nadal’s clay footprints haven’t faded away, I think Clarey is astutely marking his authorial territory. Given that his previous book The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer came out the year before Rog hung up the strings, it’s not a leap to presume a Djokovic tome is in the works, definitive markers of the trivalry before the first post–Big Three history is written. Individualizing biographies allows Clarey more space to take readers down relevant rabbit holes, adding layered depth that goes far and beyond the on-court brilliance.
There are different ways the structure plays out in Kingdom of Clay—a fine enough subtitle, but Empire of Dirt was sitting right there, and “I hurt myself, today” is a recurring Rafa theme—and here are two, one big, one small. The former is chapter 4, “The Canvas,” a fascinating 23-page exploration of clay courts, which Clarey believes in an age of homogenization are “still for the grinder, the geometer, and maybe even the deep thinker.” He gets into the nitty-gritty of the annual March Roland-Garros construction, from white limestone to the famed ochre surface, and goes worldwide highlighting different styles of clay, like in India, where there’s a tradition of courts being topped with dried rolled cow pies.
The latter, granular example is chapter 14, “The Rituals.” In six pages, Clarey observes and lists Rafa’s on-court oddities like his career-long wedgie-pulling habit, the evolution of the headband-nose-ear touching, and whatever the hell he’s doing with the sideline water bottles. Turns out it’s not OCD. The service game goofiness is a timing mechanism—first introduced to Nadal as a kid to slow down his warp-speed pace—that took on a life of its own and even irritates the practitioner himself. (Except for the underwear tug: Nadal says, “I could never get rid of. It’s impossible.”) The Evian shuffle thing isn’t superstition either; it’s a way to prevent his mind from wandering during changeovers. Call the tics funny or annoying, but don’t call them without purpose. One legend’s bizarre behavior is the same legend’s decision to sport clamdiggers.
In lesser hands, these detours would be interesting and perhaps a bit superfluous, but Clarey doesn’t waste a sentence. Understanding how clay is made and how ritualisms function gives complexity and nuance in understanding why Nadal owns Roland-Garros. At its essence, it all adds up to Rafa’s unparalleled sliding technique, a primary key to his kingdom of clay. Fitting Nadal’s game, The Warrior is methodical and deliberative; it’s not the dishy, breezy whirlwind circus-come-to-town read of our previous selection, John Feinstein’s Hard Courts. Although, take note, there’s one gossipy headline-making-any-day-now moment late in The Warrior where French Open administrator Gilles Jourdan compares “false ideal son-in-law” Federer with “real deal” Nadal. It’s an assessment Clarey calls “intriguing” while also saying it was never his experience dealing with Roger and probably has something to do with his 0–6 French Open Fedal standing.
If The Warrior sounds of interest, I recommend learning from a reviewer’s grave mistake. I put the book on a page-count deadline clock, knocking it out in four days. I wrong-footed myself. It would’ve been better to let Clarey’s prose unfold over the course of a few weeks, to open it up and let it breathe, to savor it like a bottle of fine French whiskey. (It exists!) Rafael Nadal is going to be deservedly feted throughout this year’s Roland-Garros, and The Warrior is the perfect companion piece. Go roll around in the dirt of the greatest singular achievement tennis will ever know. Rafa, our sweetest friend, will be missed.
But everyone goes away in the end.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Ashe Stadium "Reimagined"
A Glow-up For Ashe
A Glow-up For Ashe
The US Open is getting an $800 million upgrade.
The US Open is getting an $800 million upgrade.
TIM NEWCOMB
May 19, 2025
A Glow-up For Ashe
A Glow-up For Ashe
The US Open is getting an $800 million upgrade.
The US Open is getting an $800 million upgrade.
TIM NEWCOMB
May 19, 2025
Jannik Sinner during the 2024 US Open Final. // Getty
Jannik Sinner during the 2024 US Open Final. // Getty
The USTA has announced an $800 million upgrade to the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, that includes a $550 million refresh for Arthur Ashe Stadium—already the biggest tennis-only stadium in the world—and a new $250 million player performance center next door, connected by a sky bridge.
Work will be completed by the 2027 US Open, said Danny Zausner, COO of the National Tennis Center, who made the announcement Monday.
With structural work already underway, the plan will bring more fans closer to the action on the US Open’s main show court by expanding the courtside bowl from 3,000 to 5,000 seats. To accomplish this, the “luxury” suites will be moved farther up the bowl. The upper concourse serving the loge and promenade levels will also increase in size by 40 percent, while the seating capacity at the highest points will necessarily decrease by 2,800 seats. Zausner says this will create more space for fans to experience completely revamped food-and-beverage points of sale, as well as much-needed new restrooms. There are also plans for a new overlook bar at the top level with views of Corona Park. Plans also call for a new “grand entrance” to the stadium designed by the Rossetti firm and architect Daniel Libeskind.
Zausner told the media that with fewer people upstairs and more fans courtside, the interior bowl will retain its rousing atmosphere, but that the concourses will feature a fresh look and more space. “It is an all-new rebuild. Everything will be a completely new look and feel,” Zausner said. The suites will also get their own dedicated concourses, and plans include two new banks of elevators and two new escalators.
Ashe was originally a temporary structure built for the World’s Fair in 1964. The US Open relocated to Flushing from Forest Hills, Queens, in 1978, and Ashe was first refurbished in 1997. The thinking at the time was that fans would head to the grounds for food, beverage, and retail needs. That hasn’t proved the case, so the USTA is hoping to increase fan comfort in the crowded venue by expanding and adding to the concourses.
A rendering of the refreshed Ashe stadium and new players' center. // USTA
A rendering of the refreshed Ashe stadium and new players' center. // USTA
With the structural components of Ashe considered sound, the USTA wanted to focus on renovations that wouldn’t disrupt access to the site for any of the upcoming US Open events. Any sort of full rebuild of the site would leave the US Open without a viable main stadium for multiple years while costing hundreds of millions of dollars more than the current plan. The upgrades come as the other three Grand Slams have made significant infrastructural improvements in recent years, while the US Open’s main show court has felt a bit stale of late. The renovation is being funded privately.
Players and their entourages will have access to a new, two-level player performance center. Constructed in what is now Parking Lot A, the first two levels will be for parking, with levels 3 and 4 dedicated to the players, including expanded indoor and outdoor fitness and warm-up spaces, redesigned and expanded locker rooms, lounges, a player courtyard, and dedicated café and dining spaces.
As player needs have changed, the USTA says it has struggled to keep up, especially with fitness needs, as players are often seen warming up in the parking lot to get accustomed to the outdoor temperature. The expanded player space is also intended to accommodate the growing number of guests that players now bring to the tournament—nearly 3,000 people each year. As Stacey Allaster, chief executive of the tournament, likes to say, “Happy players, happy fans.”
The US Open in 1978, when the original Armstrong stadium was the main show court. // Getty
The US Open in 1978, when the original Armstrong stadium was the main show court. // Getty
SIGN UP — YOU'RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR SECOND SERVE.
Red-Letter Rout
Red-Letter Rout
Red-Letter Rout
After their clash in Madrid, Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek are moving in opposite directions.
After their clash in Madrid, Coco Gauff and Iga Swiatek are moving in opposite directions.
By Ben Rothenberg
May 1, 2025
Iga Świątek during her loss to Qinwen Zheng at the Paris Olympics last summer. It’s been rough sledding since then. // Getty
Iga Świątek during her loss to Qinwen Zheng at the Paris Olympics last summer. It’s been rough sledding since then. // Getty
When tracing the arcs of tennis history, the red-letter dates are too often assigned to the epic contests, the duels between two warriors going toe to toe for hours on end with nothing separating them, until one narrowly ekes past the other.
But two players being evenly matched doesn’t foretell much, really. More frequently, the most important and decisive battles that prove to be inflection points in history are the routs, the knockout punches, the bloodbaths. Think of 81st-ranked Serena Williams stomping top-seeded Maria Sharapova in the 2007 Australian Open final, and remember that their head-to-head was knotted at 2–2 before that match set it on a course that would end with a 20–2 final tally.
Similarly, when Rafael Nadal smote Roger Federer 6–1, 6–3, 6–0 in the final of the 2008 French Open, it was the most important match the two played that year: The landslide changed the tennis topography enough for Nadal to win their storied Wimbledon final rematch a month later.
The tennis history book’s chapters on Iga Swiatek, still only 23 years old, should be far from over. But inflection points are emerging, and the 6–1, 6–1 thwacking Swiatek received from Coco Gauff in the Madrid Open semifinals on Thursday already jumps off the page.
Swiatek famously idolizes Nadal, and her collection of clay-court laurels pales only to his in this century. But in this phase of her already legendary career, Swiatek evokes Federer more. After years of gliding atop the world, Federer could barely hide his annoyance when Nadal—and then Novak Djokovic—dared to shake the ladder atop which Federer felt so very comfortable. Federer was so regal and so beloved at the top, a rare despot with a sparkling approval rating, that he never relished the muck of nonceremonial reelection campaigns.
Swiatek wasn’t quite as popular as Federer, but she was nearly as dominant. She ruled with such an iron fist—and an iron wrist capable of devastating topspin—for so long that she didn’t need to be gritty. Swiatek made wins short and sweet; her famous “bakery” of 6–0 and 6–1 sets showed a starchy sensibility as a champion. Double-digit win streaks became her norm. She racked up her fifth major title just after her 23rd birthday last spring, winning the French Open after also winning the lead-ups in Madrid and Rome.
But after taking several tough punches, starting with a loss at her beloved Roland-Garros in last year’s Olympic semifinal to Zheng Qinwen, Swiatek has suddenly been exposed as having something of a glass jaw, particularly deep into tournaments.
The autumn suspension Swiatek served for testing positive for a banned substance—not her fault, the tribunals ruled, since it came from provably contaminated melatonin—was only a month long. But because it made the top spot in the rankings out of reach for her, its psychic effects on her seem to have lasted much longer. That loss to Zheng was the first of what’s become six consecutive losses in semifinal matches.
What’s been most remarkable about this chapter has been Swiatek’s wallowing. Her long social media post after her loss in the Indian Wells semifinals read, in parts, like a monologue Parker Posey’s White Lotus character Victoria Ratliff could’ve delivered. Swiatek admitted that, after so long atop the sport, she couldn’t cope with the drudgery of being second-best in the world. When you’ve become accustomed to private jets, I guess, a long-haul flight in first class can feel like steerage. I appreciated Swiatek’s honesty, especially because it wasn’t particularly impressive.
The most jarring status-symbol change for Swiatek might be her matches against Gauff. After all, this head-to-head started out as one that made the Serena-Sharapova matchup look equitable by comparison: Swiatek won 11 of the first 12 matches she played against Gauff. All 11 of those Swiatek wins came in straight sets, and only twice in the 22 sets in those 11 wins did Swiatek even lose as many as five games in a single set. The undecet included five wins on clay and three consecutive wins at Roland-Garros, including the 2022 final.
But since Swiatek’s suspension and subsequent staggering, Gauff has impressively turned the tables on her oppressor in a way Sharapova never could manage. When Gauff beat Swiatek last October in the WTA Finals in Riyadh, it could perhaps be written off as an outlier given the suspension Swiatek had only just finished serving. When Gauff beat Swiatek again in the opening week of the 2025 season, in the United Cup final in Sydney, it was a high-octane affair in which both players were rested and sharp, but Gauff managed to maintain the slight edge she’d had. What had been a series of foregone conclusions was officially interesting again.
But when Gauff made it three in a row on Thursday in Madrid, she beat Swiatek silly in a way that even Swiatek had never quite done to Gauff in those 11 lopsided wins. Gauff lost the first game but belted three clean down-the-line winners during it, and then reeled off 11 straight games to put herself up 6–1, 5–0. Swiatek couldn’t make any dents into the Gauff serves she used to pummel. Instead of Gauff spraying forehand errors, it was Swiatek missing big.
On the penultimate changeover of the match, Swiatek sat sobbing with a towel over her head. The scene was so grim that the normally non-effusive Casper Ruud, fresh off his own win in Madrid, responded to the clip by sending Swiatek some chin-up cheer and a string of peppy emojis on Twitter: “Hey @iga_swiatek keep your head up. Like millions of other people I love watching you play. Not your day today, but you inspire so many and you’ll be back stronger than ever!!”
There are other factors at play, perhaps: hours after the match and after this piece was written, Polish media reported that Swiatek’s grandfather had passed away before the Madrid tournament, which may have affected her this week.
Where Swiatek goes next from here isn’t clear; in the short term, probably down. She could fall to No. 3 if Gauff wins the Madrid final. Then she has another precarious 3,000 ranking points expiring soon from last year’s titles in Rome and Paris. In a worst-case scenario, Swiatek could find herself on the outskirts of the top 10 with early losses the rest of this month.
It would be a jarring change of zip code for Swiatek, who has spent pretty much her entire career as a tour-level player ranked inside the top 2, including 125 weeks at No. 1 that’s already seventh-most in WTA history.
Every inch of prime real estate in tennis is earned, of course, and Swiatek absolutely deserved everything she had. And because she’s still so young and physically healthy, there’s no reason why Swiatek can’t get back to the top again. The main battle she has next, though, is going to be with herself: to prevail over her ego and conquer the feeling that it’s a disaster to be something less than perfect. Foremost, to put it much more bluntly than Casper Ruud did, Swiatek has to stop feeling so damn sorry for herself for not being an untouchable No. 1 anymore.
That’s not an easy battle for any person, especially one accustomed to so much, but it’s what Swiatek has to do to turn the page from this red-letter defeat.
The Hopper
—CLAY Tennis on Beatriz Haddad Maia’s US Open run.
—Giri on Iga Swiatek’s loss to Jess Pegula.
—Jon Wertheim’s mailbag is full this week.
—Sara Errani and Andrea Vavasori have won the US Open mixed doubles.
—Tim Newcomb on Taylor Fritz and Asics.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Dog Days
Dog Days
Dog Days
A fresh look at John Feinstein’s Hard Courts: Real Life on the Profe$$ional Tennis Tours.
A fresh look at John Feinstein’s Hard Courts: Real Life on the Profe$$ional Tennis Tours.
By Patrick J. Sauer
May 1, 2025
Pete Sampras and John McEnroe before their 1990 US Open semifinal, as chronicled by John Feinstein. // Getty
Pete Sampras and John McEnroe before their 1990 US Open semifinal, as chronicled by John Feinstein. // Getty
This past March, John Feinstein, author of 48 books and a Washington Post reporter and columnist for nearly 50 years, passed away at age 69. As any proper sportswriter would have it, Feinstein’s final byline appeared the same day.
In 1986, Feinstein came to national prominence with A Season on the Brink, his behind-the-scenes account of the ’85–’86 Indiana Hoosiers basketball team coached by the tyrannical Bob Knight. Feinstein didn’t pull any punches on Knight’s potty-mouthed authoritarian ways, the ones that would cost him his job and reputation down the line. Season on the Brink was a huge hit, selling more than 2 million copies, spending weeks at No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, and vaulting Feinstein out of the Post toy department to become an author who could cover, in a similar manner, whatever sport he so desired.
In 1990, that meant a calendar year embedded within professional tennis bouncing with the balls to every corner of the globe. The result was Hard Courts: Real Life on the Profe$$ional Tennis Tours. Hard Courts is monumental, and not just because it’s a whopping 456 pages. Its baseline is chronological, but the words flow more as a long and winding riff; it’s a jam-bandy door-stopper packed with everything you’d expect, and a lot you wouldn’t. Mostly, I found it a spirited read with a number of absorbing characters—not named Ivan Lendl or Stefan Edberg—and a mind-bending time capsule for those of us who flipped our cable TV remotes back and forth between the end of the Cold War and Yo! MTV Raps.
Thinking back on the summer of 1990, there was a lot of sitting on my Montana couch hungover reading USA Today to keep up with the tennis goings-on before late-afternoon minimum-wage shifts at the ice-making factory. So in that easily digestible color-coded spirit, let’s break down Hard Courts. Here are eight likes and dislikes, shrewdly labeled “ace” or “fault.”
(1) ACE: Picking the Perfect Details Feinstein always had a brilliant instinct for finding killer small details and anecdotes that would stick with readers long after they’d forgotten 99 percent of the rest of the book. In ascending order of “most likely to be recalled on my deathbed”: At the Queen’s Club, John McEnroe went ballistic on journeyman doubles player Scott Davis for rocket-launching a water balloon, from a fair distance, that exploded—kinda like an IRA special—at the feet of an unsuspecting Vitas Gerulaitis, who was warming Mac up a couple hours before the semifinal; the Virginia Slims of Washington was being picketed by anti-tobacco activists, so loyalists like Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver were instructed by the WTA Grand Poobah to individually let the assembled press know the company never “asked them to smoke or promote smoking,” as if that settled it; and Pete Sampras once told Feinstein he saw Michael Chang’s overbearing mother, Betty, “reaching inside her son’s shorts, with his teammates standing right there, to see if his underwear was wet.”
(2) FAULT: Authorial Money Obsession Feinstein has one annoying bugaboo that he will not let go of: guaranteed appearance fees. Under-the-table envelopes were always part of the game, but those rules had been relaxed, so “fifty-four of the seventy-eight stops on the tour” offered up-front money to stars for participation. Did any player ever fly in, cash the check, play half-assed, crash out, and bolt as if the lower-level tournament was simply a personal benefactor? Sure, but Feinstein doesn’t establish it as any sort of common practice. It feels like more often, tennis players just overextended themselves, but Feinstein is obsessed with the idea that guarantees rob the sport of the competitive spirit. He takes Roland-Garros tennis impresario Philippe Chatrier’s quote that “Money is killing our game, the motivation for true greatness is gone for most players by the time they are eighteen.” You sure about that? Because we have the benefit of living in the future where 44-year-old, $43 million career-prize-earning, seven-time Grand Slam Champion Venus Williams has yet to officially retire.
(3) ACE: Crystal Ball, Men’s Division One great thing about Hard Courts is it captures Sampras at a few magic inflection points when potential and word of mouth morph into a star being born. In February, at 18, Sampras won his first tournament, the U.S. Pro Indoor, and (hilariously, with zero malice) said a few months later of the host, “Nobody remembers who won Philadelphia.” By summer’s end, he would claim his first major, beating future rival Andre Agassi in the US Open. It’s a cool thread knowing the Sampras career to come, but also for the future of the Las Vegas Kid, who comes off horribly in Hard Courts. Feinstein is no fan of Agassi, labeling him “the most unpopular player on tour” and “as rich and arrogant as any superstar who ever played the game.” He has even greater disdain for his brother Phil, “who would have kicked the (hypothetical) homeless person in the head and said, ‘Hey, what do you mean, getting in Andre’s way?’” It’s mostly earned, as Agassi is a massive diva who requests a big security detail in Cincinnati because of the nonexistent “mob” of fans, spits on a US Open chair umpire (and gets away clean), tanks matches when he’s down, skips out on publicity obligations, and constantly gripes and moans about it all, the type of spoiled rich asshole who stiffs taxi drivers. The beauty is, we know he won’t be this guy forever, that even dudes with nobody to answer to can learn to answer to themselves. And Steffi Graf.
(4) FAULT: Crystal Ball, Women’s Division In 1990, youth was served on the women’s side of the net as well. At 16, Monica Seles became the youngest major winner up to that point, taking down Graf at the French Open. Between the ’91–’93 Aussies, Seles would go on an absolute tear, winning seven Grand Slams with a 55–1 overall record. The even younger 1990 comer was Jennifer Capriati, who at 14 lost to Seles in the French semis. By year’s end, the eighth grader would win her first title, in Puerto Rico, finish the year at No. 8, and sign endorsement deals with Diadora and Prince. The enthusiasm Feinstein has for these hypercompetitive young women bounds off the page, but we have the unfortunate knowledge that crystal balls go both ways. If this were a history book, their powerful comeback stories would be told full circle, but Hard Knocks puts us right there when the future for Capriati and Seles was so bright, there wasn’t a dark cloud in the sky.
(5) ACE: Love for the Game’s Great Characters Since Feinstein wasn’t confined by a newspaper deadline or a magazine word count, he could follow his reporter’s whims and zero in on people who bring joy and smarts—like his no-bullshit broadcaster crush Mary Carillo, who, we learn, as a player flipped from amateur to pro on the spot to pay off a hotel bar bill—to the grueling yearlong “season.” My favorite portrait is of Ted Tinling, the World War II spy who became the go-to 1960s–80s female tennis fashion designer and remained a gadfly and life of the tennis party until his death at 79 in May that year. Tinling watched his final tourney in a wheelchair, a Virginia Slims event in Boca Raton where Capriati became the youngest finalist in history. Feinstein adores Tinling, saying “even as his body betrayed him, Ted remained the smartest, funniest person in the sport.” Feinstein was cool with the openly gay Brit, which made him part of the inner Tinling circle; perks included the bawdiest of sex tales, snarkiest of commentary, and bitchiest of asides. At the Aussie, Tinling referred to a young woman from a Sydney newspaper in a halter top as “Miss Orange Tits.” When told by a colleague that the woman overheard him, Tinling replied, “So what? She knows she has orange tits. She designed them that way.”
(6) FAULT: Garden-Variety Journalistic Sexism Throughout his prolific career, Feinstein had a reputation as a proud-and-loud liberal. In Hard Courts, he is on the side of equal pay and generally doesn’t sneer at or condescend to the women’s circuit. And yet, like many reporters of the era, he is continually commenting on female players’ attractiveness. However commonplace it was then, it’s cringe now. Feinstein mentions how John “Mr. Chris Evert” Lloyd caused a row by saying half the women on tour were overweight, then adds his own “walking around the Italian Open” thought that “the number of women who would be well served by losing ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds was striking.” This is on the same page where Feinstein discusses players who have been open about dealing with anorexia and bulimia because “the fact remains that most women players feel tremendous pressure to look good.” Which is a weird enough juxtaposition, but there is no excuse, even in 1990, for this throwaway sentence at another point in Hard Courts: “[Conchita] Martinez was almost as big as [Gabriela] Sabatini but with none of her beauty.”
(7) ACE: Let’s (Barely) Remember Some Guys If you’re a grunge-era tennis sicko, John Feinstein has got some names lost to history—or never found in the first place—for you. In Hard Courts, everyone, no matter how obscure, gets at least a one-line descriptive due before becoming sacrificial lambs to the top dogs. Here are a trio for the ages: Kelly Evernden (“a workman like player from New Zealand who had once owned a bar in Fayetteville, Arkansas”), Martin Wostenholme (“a Yale graduate with a degree in economics who had never quite gotten around to seeing tennis as a life-and-death proposition”), and Markus Zoecke (“Other than having beaten [Jimmy] Connors in Milan in the match where Connors broke his wrist, Zoecke had done little to distinguish himself”).
(8) ACE: Engrossing, Selective Match Scribing Hard Courts was published in August 1991, giving Feinstein plenty of daylight to think through what matches were significant enough to get into, as opposed to who won what title. It isn’t an expressed underlying conceit to the book, but Feinstein could feel a teenage sea change in the ’80s-to-’90s air. It’s why he barely details Sampras’ straight-set US Open Agassi thrashing but goes brilliantly in-depth on the McEnroe-Sampras semifinal. Here was the unseeded (ancient for those days) 31-and-a-half-year-old vs. the 19-year-old upstart, with the frenzied Queens crowd going nuts for their home-borough boy, but it was a four-setter-not-to-be. The changing of the guard laid bare in prose: “In a sense, McEnroe was looking across the net and seeing himself, circa 1979: young and brash, supremely confident, and equipped with one weapon—the serve—that could keep any opponent off balance…. The difference, of course, was in Sampras’ demeanor. He wasn’t bratty at all. He played one point, then another. No flash, no dash, no whining or crying.”
Beyond an engrossing memory-lane lollygag, there’s one compelling argument I can make as to why Hard Courts matters in the here and now. We need to keep these vibes alive. These behind-the-scenes works weaving together a number of disparate characters, capturing a finite amount of time as it happens, don’t get around much anymore. I’m intricately aware of their demise as a reviewer and because, for the past five years, David J. Roth of Defector and I have cohosted a sports books-and-authors show. What started on Zoom in the pandemic went live in 2022 from the back of a Brooklyn beer garden. We’ve featured more than 50 books, and exactly one, Alex Squadron’s Life in the G, takes the Feinstein approach. And as rollicking as it is, the NBA G League is filled with guys who are only household names in their respective households and can use the ink, not exactly the same as, say, the Bill Walton-led 1979–80 Portland Trail Blazers in David Halberstam’s lionized The Breaks of the Game.
The reasons these books are falling by the wayshelf are self-evident, but it’s still a shame books like Hard Courts are becoming as rare as the Seles two-handed forehand. Done right, the sense that real time is unfolding, broadly, game by game and chapter to chapter, delivers readers a sense of immediacy and momentum, but with enough time having passed that moments throughout the season worth revisiting can be judiciously refined and unpacked. Hard Courts accomplished the task and then some.
When my turn finally comes, I look forward to a brief smile of recognition at Michael Chang’s soggy drawers.
John Feinstein, 1955–2025