Ra Diaz: From Bass to Ace
From Bass to Ace
From Bass to Ace
Korn’s Ra Diaz ups his game—and his string count.
Korn’s Ra Diaz ups his game—and his string count.
By Jeffrey Silverstein
October 29, 2026
Ra Diaz: Basses and aces. // Instagram
Ra Diaz: Basses and aces. // Instagram
For Ra Diaz, music and tennis are intertwined. The current Korn bassist and former Suicidal Tendencies member grew up in Chile during a golden era for the sport, when Marcelo Rios’ rise to world No. 1 helped popularize tennis on a large scale. Though he didn’t begin playing seriously until later in life, Díaz has since made the game a regular part of his routine, seeking out coaches, challenging better players, and finding courts wherever his busy touring schedule takes him. Here he discusses the connection between music and tennis, the value of learning through competition, and how the game offers a welcome escape from life on the road.
Did you grow up around tennis?
I was lucky. I was born in ’84, which means in the mid-’90s I was roughly 10. In Chile we had Marcelo Rios, the first-ever South American No. 1 in the world. Tennis was everywhere in Chile at that point. Soccer is the No. 1 thing in most of South America, but when Marcelo Rios was around, it was the first time that families would gather together to watch a match.
My grandpa was the president of a tennis club in our city, in Viña del Mar. I didn’t play or anything, but I would hang out at the club and watch matches. They would have tournaments and some pros would show up. Whenever my grandpa was playing, I would be a ball boy and he would give me a couple of bucks. I never had formal lessons, but I knew how everything worked.
You had a clear visual.
Not even just of the sport, but of the club, dynamics, and people. In a lot of places tennis has this reputation of being somewhat elite, but because of what happened in the ’90s with Marcelo Rios, now everybody wanted to play tennis, and it became huge. After Marcelo Rios, we had Fernando Gonzalez and Nicolas Massu; they won gold medals and it just kept going from there.
The first time I thought, “Oh, tennis can be cool,” was when I saw Agassi and the Chili Peppers. Remember that [Nike] ad? Being a bass player, the Chili Peppers are one of my favorite bands ever. I saw the “Higher Ground” music video and was grabbing stuffed animals, putting them in my pants like Flea. Me and my mom would celebrate Flea’s birthday. I saw that crossover and was like, “Wait, tennis can be like rock and roll?”
So Agassi was big for you?
I lived in Vegas for a short period of time and always thought if one day I run into him, I’ll cry. That was my dude. To the point where when we were kids we were planning a trip to visit family in France. My family was like, “Hey, we’re going to make a quick weekend trip to Italy.” At that time, the juniors Agassi racquet was out. It was yellow and black. I told them I don’t care about Italy, I want to buy the racquet. They said you can either go to Italy or you get the racquet. And I decided to get the Agassi gear. My brother went to Italy and I stayed with my cousins in France.
Your love for the game took off when you met your wife, is that right?
When my wife and I started dating, she mentioned that she played D1 tennis. At the time, I didn’t even know what that meant. She started explaining it to me. I told her, “I love tennis. I watch it all the time.” She’s like, “Oh, really?” When I was visiting her here in Boston, before I even moved here, she said we should go to the park around the block and hit. I’m like, yeah, but what am I going to do? It didn’t actually go that bad. She was like, “Dude, you can hit!” She was also the first person to tell me something that, to this day, I don’t even know what it means—she told me, “You hit like a South American.” I’ve heard the same phrase from two or three other people. I think it’s good.
So you’re living in different cities but trying to be together and play as often as you can…
When I would visit and she was at work, I would grab the bus and go to a club that did drop-in clinics.I would go every day. When she would visit Vegas, we found the Darling Tennis Center, an amazing place.
Was there anything about being a bass player that transferred to tennis right away?
I think so, but at the same time, all that stuff kind of clicked without me even trying. It was just somewhere in my brain, maybe from watching as a kid. All of a sudden you’re accessing that. I read a study noting that musicians make good tennis players and vice versa because of timing.
The way you get better at anything is by playing with people who are better than you. How did this look for you with both tennis and music?
I had to learn fast. I found a group where I knew they were good, or at least better than me. I stuck to that group and would test myself every time. I became friends with some coaches on the ATP Tour. I would send them videos. I got the opportunity to hit with people that are at a professional level. I would tell them, “I’d rather have you destroy me so I know what I have to do or work on than play mini tennis for fun.” That’s where someone’s growth potential lives. With music, when I was 12, I was jamming with 50- and 60-year-olds.
Do you have a practice regimen for either?
If I’m going to be honest, I practice more tennis than bass now. With tennis I found a club with a solid group of people. I try to go three times a week. There’s a tennis academy here, mostly for kids, but I became friends with the coaches. When we have time, we meet up to hit and they give me advice. Most of them are originally from Colombia. One of them, Ricardo, shout out to him, he’s awesome. He was like, “Dude, I want to go to your show in Colombia. I don’t want to miss that.” And I’m like, “Well, why don’t you come and you can hit with me there?” We were on the same flight and everything. When we got there I met him and his brother, who is also a great tennis player. We found a court and played every day.
What’s your approach for finding places to play while on tour?
The first step for me is reaching out to people I already know. If I’m going to, say, Germany, or a city I’ve never been to or played tennis in before, I’ll ask a coach, like, “Hey, do you happen to know someone there who I could connect with?” A month ago or so, I went to Nashville for a day and went to this academy called Farm & Forge, which is incredible. It’s like a paradise for tennis players. One of the coaches there is Tennys Sandgren. Every time I’m in town, I hit him up. He’s like, “Dude, I’ll link you up with Dustin Brown,” another German player, one of two people that were undefeated against Rafa Nadal.
Sometimes it’s getting connected through someone you know; sometimes it’s finding out what hotel we’re staying at and getting onto Google Maps. Finding the nearest club, deciding which one looks more friendly. The problem, at least in Europe, is that everything is member-oriented.
I’d imagine having your own outlet outside of your band/crew can provide a nice balance.
You have to keep in mind that we’re a band, but we’re also 30 people traveling together. I love everybody, don’t get me wrong, but it’s nice to do your own thing for a couple of hours and shut down your brain, shut down your phone, just kind of not think. Being on tour, it’s just so active. There’s so much buzz all the time.
What racquet are you currently using?
Recently I switched to the new Wilson Blade, the V10. Every time I’ve made a change it’s because a coach or a pro has told me, “You are progressing, and at this level, this racquet is not going to help you.” A few months ago I happened to be in Nashville again—that same place, Fire & Forge—and the guy that strings racquets in the pro shop is a freaking wizard. He was watching me play from the balcony, then approached me afterwards and said, “You’ve got to change that racquet.”
A couple of years ago, through someone that worked with the band, I became friends with someone that works at Wilson. They noticed that I’m trying to do my best when it comes to tennis. They’ve helped me out with a lot of gear, which has been amazing.
What’s a part of your game you’ve been putting a lot of work into?
In the last few months, I would say my backhand. I switched from one hand to two. The last time I went to Nashville, it’s the same people that saw me six months ago. They were like, “Dude, you’re hitting differently.” I put in the effort. It’s nice to be noticed, but it’s more of me against me. I want to prove to myself that I can do it. It’s not necessarily for approval, you know? I want to be able to hang with good players. I’m not going to be the one ruining the experience for everybody. When I was a kid I wanted to learn and become better so I could hang out with the people that I considered to be great. I wasn’t going to be the one that, “Oh, he showed up, so now the jam is going to suck.” If I play with Dustin Brown next week, I’m never going to beat him. But it’s not about beating him. It’s just proving to myself we can rally, I can survive this, I belong.
Social media has made people believe they should be good at things right away.
In tennis, right away doesn’t exist. If you don’t play for one week, you regress two months. It takes a lot of dedication and commitment. Now that I’m seeing my progress, there is always the fear that if I stop, I’m going to lose that. So I have to keep going.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
The Great Indoors
The Great Indoors
The Great Indoors
A lament on the lack of specialists under one roof.
A lament on the lack of specialists under one roof.
By Simon Cambers
Oct 28, 2026
Indoor specialist Boris Becker at Paris Bercy, 1997. // Getty
Indoor specialist Boris Becker at Paris Bercy, 1997. // Getty
The indoor season is upon us; a time for serve and volleying to prosper, for chip and charge to rush the servers, for risk and reward where players let the surface do much of the work. Wait, sorry, my mistake. I forgot. Those days are gone. Indoor courts have slowed, the balls fluff up much faster, and the heavy-hitting baseliners can do what they do best with no fear of being harried out of their comfort zone.
This used to be my favorite time of the season to watch men’s tennis. Flick through YouTube and you’ll find some of the best examples of contrasting styles on fast courts; from Ivan Lendl against Boris Becker, to Andre Agassi against Pete Sampras, to Roger Federer against Lleyton Hewitt. And when you find some of the Becker-Sampras battles of the mid-1990s, well, it’s tennis at its purist. Now, though, if you turn on the TV to watch any tournament in the next month, the chances are you will see the world’s best players hammering it out from the baseline, with volleys few and far between.
Rose-tinted glasses, you say? Maybe. But bear with me. Over the past five or 10 years in particular, indoor tennis has been a mirror image of the rest of the ATP Tour. Jannik Sinner tops the list indoors with a win-loss record of 54–8, numbers to match the likes of Becker or John McEnroe back in the day. Sinner has won all five of his slams in that time, on hard and grass, and is comfortable on all three surfaces. Novak Djokovic is 34–6 in that time, which is good in itself, but especially so considering he was 34 to 38 years old at the time. In his career, Djokovic is 202–50, a win-loss percentage of just over 80 percent (that’s better than Becker, by the way). Daniil Medvedev, Felix Auger-Aliassime, and Alexander Zverev round out the top five.
For all their brilliance everywhere, it could easily be argued that Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were indoor specialists. Connors won almost half of his 109 titles indoors, while McEnroe won more than two-thirds of his 77 inside. (And Yevgeny Kafelnikov was quick to remind me that he won 12 of his 26 titles indoors.) Indoors can still benefit big servers and the biggest hitters, of course. The fact that Rafael Nadal didn’t win the ATP Finals in his career and that Carlos Alcaraz still has yet to do so is testament to that.
But what pains me most is that there is no longer such a thing as a real indoor specialist, mostly because the court speeds have slowed so much, in tandem with the advances in string technology and the constitution of tennis balls.
It was all so different in the 1990s and early 2000s. Goran Ivanisevic loved playing indoors. With his stunning lefty serve, he was a threat everywhere and, of course, eventually won Wimbledon in 2001. But he was lethal indoors, where he won 15 of his 22 titles. Swede Thomas Enqvist was a man with a funky technique on his forehand, but indoors he was a winning machine. Eleven of his 19 career singles titles came under a roof, including wins in Paris and Stuttgart.
Frenchman Guy Forget did very little at the Grand Slams but played out of his mind indoors several times, beating Sampras to win in Bercy in 1991 and then helping France to victory in the Davis Cup final the same year. Big-serving lefty Greg Rusedski served Sampras off the court to win in Paris in 1998, and Tim Henman won Basle twice (and lost in the final on another occasion), beating Federer in 2001 (albeit before Federer became Federer). In the 1980s, big-serving American Tim Mayotte won eight of his 12 titles indoors. Further back, the Flying Dutchman, Tom Okker, won 13 of his 35 career titles indoors.
Robin Soderling, another Swede with an unorthodox technique, won seven of his 10 titles indoors. With a big serve and flat ground strokes, he was able to outhit far better players. Richard Krajicek won eight of his 17 titles indoors. For Karel Kucera it was three of six, while Radek Stepanek won two of his five inside, including one in San Jose. That San Jose event had one of the fastest courts around. It was so quick, in fact, that the tournament director, Bill Rapp, used to hold a wild card for Sampras several years after he retired, just in case he fancied banging down a few more aces on a responsive surface. It produced brilliant tennis.
Because of its proximity in the calendar to the ATP Finals, especially when it was played in London, the Paris Masters courts were slowed down to match the one inside London’s O2. Speaking last year on the podcast Served, with Andy Roddick, Federer bemoaned the slower court speeds but admitted he was partly at fault himself.
“I [blame] myself because I was a part of that decision-making, but we need to fix it,” he said. “What we would want to see is Alcaraz or Sinner figure it out on a lightning-fast court and then have the same match on super slow and see how that matches up. That’s how the ranking points used to be, remember, back in the day. Only 12 tournaments counted, so everybody would play on their favorite surface, and then they would sometimes meet, and those were the best matches, when you had the attacker against the retriever. Now everybody plays similar, because tournament directors have allowed [it], with the ball speed and the court speed that every week is basically the same. That’s why you can just go from winning French, Wimbledon, US Open and just play the same way.”
With Sinner out for the rest of this year due to injury, there may be room for a few different champions across the all-to-brief indoor season. But the chances of an indoor specialist with an unusual technique emerging to take on the all-round stars is remote, to say the least. Tennis is the poorer for it.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Leylah Fernandez: Waiting to Click
The Click That Sticks
The Click That Sticks
Leylah Fernandez is trying to make a habit of winning.
Leylah Fernandez is trying to make a habit of winning.
By Carole Bouchard
Oct. 27, 2026
Leylah Fernandez looks to continue her winning ways in Tokyo this week. // Getty
Leylah Fernandez looks to continue her winning ways in Tokyo this week. // Getty
Despite being a perennial member of the Top 30, Leylah Fernandez remains an enigma.
Watching Fernandez, I think, “Damn, she is way too good to not be winning loads of big tournaments.” The Canadian’s 2021 US Open final is not that far in the past, nor is her run to the Roland-Garros quarterfinal in 2022 on a fractured foot. Now, as the 2026 campaign is winding down, she is finally finding her form. With her title in Singapore and a final in Ningbo, I again wonder why her game doesn’t click like this more often.
Still only 24, Fernandez owns six titles, including three WTA 500, an objectively already impressive string of results. But when she’s in a flow state, she seems to possess Top 10 skills. She’s not the tallest and the strongest, but is Maja Chwalinska? Was Dominika Cibulkova? And so many others. It would be unfair to wonder about all this if Fernandez weren’t openly wondering the same, not satisfied with where she has landed, always wanting more. As 2026 is coming to a close, Fernandez is again showing that she still has a lot of upside.
Leylah Fernandez cares. She cares about winning, about delivering her best game, and about what people think. “That’s what people will remember, that’s what people will see on the internet. Whether you win or lose. It doesn’t matter what you feel. It doesn’t matter what happens,” she told me earlier in the season. It’s a lot of pressure summed up in a few sentences.
She had a horrific Grand Slam year until the US Open, having lost in the first round in Melbourne (Janice Tjen), Paris (Alycia Parks), and Wimbledon (Tjen). She struggled to get going anywhere else, either, except for a quarterfinal in Stuttgart, Madrid, and Strasbourg and a fourth round in Toronto after losing her Washington title in the second round. Enough to stay afloat but nothing to satisfy her ambitions. Fernandez cried a lot after these Grand Slam losses when it was time to talk about them. The distress of someone knowing how good she can be but being made to look at how she can’t make it again and again, without understanding why. I’ve had that talk so many times with her that we ended up cracking up (a good distraction from the tears). Is it a coach issue? Having a parent in that role is never easy. Does she need to reinvent her game? Is it a confidence issue? A fitness issue? A serve issue? Fernandez would sigh and shrug and repeat that she trusts her team, has sat down with them many times, and that everything had regularly been put on the table. She tried everything and has been working incredibly hard.
She takes the blame on herself, about playing “horribly” and not doing what she’s supposed to do. And she can get tired of it all: “I’m a little tired of the defeats,” she told me at Wimbledon. “It’s really about finding the solution as soon as possible, and to go back to good feelings. Right now I’m not playing well, so I’m not very happy.” It would echo what she said at Roland-Garros: “I’m a perfectionist. If something doesn’t work, I fight against myself. Sometimes I have to calm down and see the positive. There will be days when nothing works, but you have to find a way. No matter what you feel, no matter the situation, you have to move on to the next round. Some players go through difficult things off the court, but they know how to put that aside and move on to the next round.”
Fernandez is a bundle of energy, with one of the fastest left arms out there and incredible footwork. She’ll hit angles some don’t even know one can reach, and will do it at the speed of light. She has great hands, as also shown by her doubles résumé. Once on PlayStation mode, she’s a force to be reckoned with. And so we’re seeing it again, as once more in her young career she’s trying to get closer to the light at the end of what has, for her, felt like a tunnel. She was unstoppable in Singapore after reaching the third round at the US Open. She defeated Mirra Andreeva and Maja Chwalinska on her way to the title. A trophy welcomed with relief: “It’s about time! There’s been a lot of work and a lot of adversity faced this year. It’s just a lot of pride. I worked very hard to get my confidence back, my movement back, keeping healthy, not only physically but also mentally. It’s also been a lot of hard work in finding that right balance between attacking and defending, and then today everything just clicked in the right place at the right time.”
Everything just clicked. And that’s exactly what’s been missing: the click. Completing the puzzle. So she’s back to chasing. Right now she’s anchored to it with a fourth round in Wuhan and a final in Ningbo, where Fernandez was finally stopped in the final by Elena Rybakina, a player she still has beaten twice in four matches despite the obvious contrast in power.
Fernandez cares about it all, and tennis people care about her journey too. For many reasons, but also as it seems to defy logic that you can be that good and still be struggling. It’s even as if she needs to make it for many others to keep believing they can too. Like Chwalinska, Fernandez has a different game and a different type of athleticism, which tennis also needs. You watch her hit these crosscourt angles at the highest speed, and you again watch her ranking and Grand Slam achievements since 2022 in disbelief.
“Growing up, I was a crybaby,” she said in Singapore. “Even now I’m a little bit of a sore loser, but that also drives my competitiveness to not forget the losses but to use them as fuel to keep training. My dad has always said, from the very beginning, you win a match because of you, you lose a match because of you, and the very next day, you start from zero.” She starts from zero so much that one could think she lost a lot of confidence along the way. When the results are the only judge, it’s a slippery slope. That inner fire that can light up a draw at any moment is the reason why she can be struggling and remain a Top 30 player. That tells you what she could achieve without the struggles. Will the end of 2026 be the click that sticks?
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Maja Chwalinska Backs It Up
Charming Tennis
Charming Tennis
Maja Chwalinska backs it up.
Maja Chwalinska backs it up.
By Giri Nathan
October 23, 2026
Maja Chwalinksa is not a clay court specialist. // GETTY
Maja Chwalinksa is not a clay court specialist. // GETTY. // Getty
Gun to your head: Name the runner-up in women’s singles at Roland-Garros this year. Wow! Congrats. Despite a direct physical threat, you summoned a memory of the moonballing gameplay of Polish qualifier Maja Chwalinska. I’m impressed by your calm in this moment of panic. You should be proud of yourself—now you’re batting away the gun to inform me that she was ranked No. 114 heading into the tournament, and that she had played only two Grand Slam main draws before that one? And, even more shocking still, she had played only three total tour-level matches since the start of 2025 up to the start of Roland-Garros? This is all fascinating context. I’m very sorry. Let’s put away the weapons and have a more constructive conversation. I have a lot to learn.
As thrilling as it was to see Maja Chwalinska upset four seeded players en route to the final in Paris, it also, even within the category of Cinderella runs, felt a bit fragile and fluky. Mostly because Chwalinska had no previous track record of even competing against top 50 players, let alone beating a slew of them in a single fortnight. But also because of the way she was winning those matches: with the deep guile of a diminutive lefty. These were hard-won points, built on her flawless anticipation of the opponent’s next shot, her unpredictable changes in depth and height, her choppy two-handed backhand drop shots, her drop-shot-lob combos, her moonballs, her defensive squash shots, and her willingness to expend lots and lots of effort chasing down the shots hit by much bigger hitters. This is a charming way to play tennis—maybe my favorite kind of tennis to watch these days—but, as I found myself thinking in June, perhaps it is also a brand of tennis that only wins on a clay court, when your opponents have no scouting report on you, and you’re ambushing everyone with junky style. Nothing about her performance, for all its brilliance, screamed “repeatable.”
Well, I was still eager to see if she could go out and repeat it. In a bizarre sign of her abrupt rise, Chwalinska needed a wild card to enter Wimbledon a few weeks later—and once she got in, she was the No. 20 seed. She was very close to acting the part and assembling a routine first-round win. She led 6–2, 5–2, holding a match point on return, only to twist her ankle. After losing that return game and failing to serve out the match, she took a medical time-out to get the ankle wrapped, but, with her movement severely compromised, she lost in three sets to qualifier Mananchaya Sawangkaew. Her grass major was as cursed as her clay major had been blessed. Then came the North American hard courts: only one win in five matches, while feeling “miserable” all the while, due to the increased pressure and attention on her, she later revealed.
Maybe she just needed some time to adjust to her new reality. Late September brought the first signs of life since Paris: a semifinal appearance in Singapore, on indoor hard courts, which are theoretically less friendly to her style of play than the clay where she made her name. But the real triumph was in Wuhan, where Chwalinska turned 25 years old and won her first-ever WTA title, at the 1000 level, no less. I could see how she adapted her style to the hard courts. Her game is still built on tenacity, variety, and rally tolerance—you’ll still see plenty of squash shots and lobs—but she also found ways to apply her own pressure. To wit: Even though she can’t hit a big ball like a Sabalenka or Rybakina, she can instead hug the baseline and take the ball on the rise, rushing opponents in her own style. If you don’t have power, it helps to have impeccable timing and ball control. And she seemed to get a little more comfortable finishing points as the tournament went on. The forehand gets surprisingly heavy when she wants to dial it up, the backhand flattens out nicely, and she has all of her old change-of-pace tricks to rely on when she needs them. Maybe she won’t be confined to clay after all. In Wuhan she routed Iva Jovic, another peer who wins without top-end pace, and she even defeated her countrywoman Iga Swiatek. I watched the six-time Slam champ try to blast through her compatriot’s defenses and fail, though she was clearly bothered by a left leg injury, too, and took the loss to her old friend graciously. A compelling three-set win over Sonay Kartal in the final ensured that the Roland-Garros final was no one-off feat. Chwalinska is now up to No. 11 in the world. As she said in an interview with the WTA in the aftermath of Wuhan: “I could hear the voices of others that I’m only good on clay, but I feel people sometimes are just trolls, and they just want to speak because no one listens to them.” That one shut me up.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina Summits the Hill
The Jester is King
The Jester is King
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina summits the hill.
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina summits the hill.
By Owen Lewis
October 19, 2026
Sublime: Foki in Shanghai. // GETTY
Sublime: Foki in Shanghai. // GETTY
[Shakes head in wonder, clears lump from throat, wipes tear from eye] Alejandro Davidovich Fokina is a three-time titlist. He’s a Masters 1000 champion. The last time we covered him here at The Second Serve, Foki was at the height of misery. The image of him resting on his haunches, mired in despair before he’d even officially lost to Alex de Minaur in the Washington, D.C., final last year, is still seared onto the back of my eyeballs. Foki had three championship points that day, and when he lost, it seemed like he’d never win an ATP title—a terrible underachievement for a player of his talent, but also forever haunting given how close he’d come. Foki had tendencies to self-immolate that were so bombastic and poorly timed that you’d half expect him to turn to us, wink, and shake his head after a given disaster. But there was too much at stake to be in on his own joke, too much accumulated misery from finals played and lost. Until this glorious summer.
Foki broke the duck with a title at the Mallorca Championships in June—not the most prestigious tournament, and beating Adam Walton, a Grigor Dimitrov who suddenly seems washed outside of Wimbledon, Fabian Marozsan, and Ethan Quinn was not exactly a gauntlet. But I don’t think Davidovich Fokina would have cared if it was me in the final. When he followed up the crowning achievement of his career with a second championship in Chengdu, he already carried his talents more lightly. In the final against Hubert Hurkacz, Foki stared down four set points in the second set and erased them all with nerveless aggression, putting the match to bed in straights. This underarm serve-prone head case had somehow tapped into a Djokovician well.
But it’s this third title in Shanghai that most boggles the mind and is easily the most impressive of Foki’s troika of triumphs. Just look at the heads he sent rolling: Rafael Jodar in the final, after losing nine of the first 12 games of the match. Alexander Zverev in the semifinals, also after losing the opening set. Hurkacz again, this time via 8–6 in a do-or-die tiebreak. Frances Tiafoe, in the exact same fashion. That is a run, packed with stronger names than a couple Sincaraz titles this year.
It almost didn’t happen. During the Tiafoe match in the third round, Davidovich Fokina received treatment on his back. Tiafoe then held match point at 6–5 in that third-set tiebreak, only to lose his footing and tumble to the ground. Two points later, Tiafoe eviscerated his racquet on the hard court while Fokina shouted bone-rattling vamoses to his team. The difference between fury and salvation is unfavorable friction between shoe and cement on one point in the early rounds of the Shanghai Masters.
There were plenty of other highlights in Foki’s run—outdueling Hurkacz and his huge serve in a third-set tiebreak, annihilating slappy forehands down the line (a bit reminiscent of Medvedev’s forehand at its best, but with more venom) to get Zverev onto the run. After each win, he wrote vague messages on the camera, which he seemed to confirm on Twitter was to underline that he’s yet to be chosen for Spain’s Davis Cup team. Their loss. No other player can pack such a jagged emotional range into such a short spell of points. The final few against Hurkacz resembled a horror movie for jump scares, featuring a missed smash (after which Foki also lost his balance) on one match point, an errant sprawl on another that looked like it resulted in an ankle injury, and a sublime backhand pass. Everybody in the Davis Cup crowd would have simultaneously scorched their vocal cords screaming.
But let’s drill down on the final. There’s a good chance it was the best opportunity Foki will ever have to win a Masters 1000. Even then, he was the underdog. At 19 years old, Jodar is already ranked higher than Foki has ever been, is more gifted than Foki ever will be. His main vulnerability is that he is 19, and throws in the occasional stinker match between return-of-serve master classes. That didn’t happen here. Jodar not only rolled through the first set 6–1 but secured a break at 2–2 in the second: essentially, maximum psychological damage. You had the opener to show that Foki couldn’t even get close, the break in the second set to show that Foki holding twice didn’t actually mean he was growing into the match. At that point, the best Foki could hope for seemed to be holding serve until 4–5, then praying that Jodar got tight serving it out.
Instead, Davidovich Fokina broke back right away. He condensed his athletic gifts into one sublime sprint on break point. Jodar flicked a forehand drop shot with Foki behind the SHANGHAI lettering on the baseline, but Foki not only got there, he stabbed a backhand down the line for a winner. Plenty of players wouldn’t have gotten to the dropper; plenty of others would have gone crosscourt with their riposte, as happens what feels like 90 percent of the time when a pro runs down a drop shot to their backhand. Foki’s speed carried him off his feet, and he wound up in snow-angel pose after conjuring the winner. His fist pump from a seated position showed he knew that shot marked the end of a Jodar demolition job and the beginning of an even fight. Neither player could separate himself until 5–5 in the tiebreak, at which point Jodar got tight: a neutral +1 forehand sent over the baseline. Davidovich Fokina made it count, firing down an unreturned serve on set point. From there, Foki was the stronger in the third set.
Just watch the point at 30–love when Davidovich Fokina served for the match. That’s where it all unraveled for Foki against de Minaur in D.C., as if the prospect of three consecutive match points was such a frightening idea his body actively rebelled against it. Here, it injected his ground strokes with new life. In the first set, he’d been getting killed in crosscourt backhand rallies on big points. But on this point, Foki was the first to step into a vicious strike down the line. It knocked Jodar onto one knee.
Then it turned out that 40–love wasn’t so scary after all: Foki casually converted the second championship point on a huge serve. His reaction reflected how far he’d come. Just raised arms and a stoic expression, then a delighted little smile. Nothing too crazy even for the biggest victory of his career, since he now knew he could do it. Foki has actually managed to push the rock to the top of the hill, and I can’t wait to see what he does now that he’s no longer bound by mountain and stone.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
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.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
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.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
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.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
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.
PURE, ORIGINAL TENNIS — SIGN UP!
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.