The Top Ten For Vicky Mboko
The Whole Deal
The Whole Deal
Vicky Mboko's unique strength? Winning tennis matches.
Vicky Mboko's unique strength? Winning tennis matches.
By Giri Nathan
February 13, 2026
The youngster Vicky Mboko in Doha this week. // Getty
The youngster Vicky Mboko in Doha this week. // Getty
When watching a new player, it’s usually not that hard to determine Their Whole Deal. Tennis players usually find a way to play that emphasizes certain weapons and masks certain deficiencies. And with young players in particular, you tend to see a large gulf between the things they’re good at and the things they’re bad at. They are rarely so mysterious. But I must confess that I watched a whole lot of Victoria Mboko last season and ended the year still unsure what sort of tennis player she was, just aware that she was uncannily good at winning close matches. And now that I have watched much more Mboko this week—two scintillating top 10 wins in Doha over Mirra Andreeva and Elena Rybakina—I remain as confused as ever.
Let’s at least attempt the exercise. Weakness: a little bit of inconsistency on the forehand, maybe. Strengths: the remainder of tennis? The reason I had difficulty pinning down her game is because it incorporates so many different elements. Her movement is superb, as is her ball-striking, as is her feel. Depending on the match you catch, one of those aspects might be taking over, and the others receding. She never looks to be out of any point, and she can turn it around in an instant. To watch her for an hour is to see her take over rallies in any number of ways: defensive squash shots, a driving forehand slice, topspin lobs, an inside-out backhand ripper. She can counterpunch or play the aggressor. She can play with shape, or she can slap it. She can take big risks, like stepping well inside the baseline to return the imposing Rybakina serve—and then cracking it, over and over, like few players ever have.
There are players in recent history who have accomplished more on court by her age, but there have not been many with such a well-rounded skill set. I’m banking on this Canadian eventually winning the biggest titles in the sport. I suppose that’s not a terribly bold statement to make about a player who first broke out in August of last year and now already has a 1000 title, a 250 title, and a 500 runner-up to show for it; a player who has now already four wins over top 10 players. She’ll be among them soon enough. Depending on how the rest of the Doha tournament goes, next week she will either enter the top 10 or linger just one spot outside it. The speed of her ascent has been astonishing. After winning Montreal in August, she went on a four-match losing skid. After that point, she has gone 20–4.
I was recently asked in an interview which of the rising teenagers on tour would have the best future. At the time, it felt impossible to argue with Mirra Andreeva’s résumé, so I picked her. She’d been performing well at the majors since she was 15 years old. She picked up back-to-back 1000 titles last season. And moreover she was a full year younger than Mboko, whom she had also defeated (albeit in an injured state) in the Adelaide final in January. But their more recent encounter in Doha, which Mboko won in a third-set tiebreak after erasing one match point, has made me far less secure in that answer. Mboko has a bit more firepower. This was, ideally, a preview of one of the great rivalries over the next decade, now tied at one win apiece. I now think that rivalry will be very evenly split.
From there, Mboko went on to upset the recent Australian Open champion, Elena Rybakina, in the quarterfinal. She did it by fearlessly attacking the best serve on tour, breaking it six times. I don’t know if it’s just the echoey acoustics on the court, but this looked like some of the hardest ball-striking I’ve seen in some time and will probably wind up one of the highest-level matches of the season. And any 19-year-old who can step up and match Rybakina’s power without getting overwhelmed is on a fine trajectory. The players have now split their four matchups to date.
In her brief tour-level career, Mboko has often appeared resistant to scoreboard pressure, and she won both these matches despite having trailed by a break in the deciding set. “Yeah, I feel like there’s been so many times where I’m down a match point, or the opponent has a match point, but I don’t really think much of it,” the Canadian said in press after defeating Andreeva. “I just think of it as any other point in the match.” Very easy to say, harder to exemplify that perfect equanimous tennis mind, but that she has: After turning these two matches around, Mboko is now 7–1 in three-setters this season. If they manage to come up with new ways to be good at tennis, I’m sure she’ll be promptly adding them to her never-ending list.
On Friday, she routined Jelena Ostapenko—last year’s Doha runner-up—to qualify for her second 1000-level final. Her reward was that most precious and scarce WTA commodity: a gracious hug from a freshly defeated ‘Penko. Who doesn’t love Mboko?
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Love Bomb
Love Bomb
Love Bomb
A mysterious call in 1984 robbed Ivan Lendl of a potential double bagel in Rotterdam.
A mysterious call in 1984 robbed Ivan Lendl of a potential double bagel in Rotterdam.
By Simon Cambers
February 13, 2026
Ivan Lendl plays Jimmy Connors during the Rotterdam final in '84, before the match was suspended. // Alamy
Ivan Lendl plays Jimmy Connors during the Rotterdam final in '84, before the match was suspended. // Alamy
The ABN/AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam has always been one of the most prestigious indoor stops on the ATP Tour, dating back to 1972, when the great Arthur Ashe beat the flying Dutchman, Tom Okker, in the inaugural final. Its honor roll reads like a who’s who of men’s tennis; from Ashe to Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors; from Stefan Edberg and Boris Becker to Roger Federer, Jannik Sinner, and, last year, Carlos Alcaraz.
But Rotterdam’s Ahoy Arena is also the venue for one of the more bizarre moments in ATP Tour history and one of the great stories (and myths). In the 1984 final, Ivan Lendl was leading Jimmy Connors 6–0, 1–0, seemingly cruising to another title, when the match was interrupted. “Don’t panic,” came the voice of Nico Dijkhuizen over the loudspeaker, explaining that there was a bomb threat. “Leave the hall calmly and quietly.” The same words were carried on the scoreboard.
The threat had reportedly come from an anti-capitalist, but after a quick check, it was clear it was a hoax, and the green light was given for the match to resume. The fans filed back into the stadium, maybe hoping for a famous Connors comeback, while probably expecting Lendl to complete the demolition job. But the match never restarted.
“By the time the spectators were allowed back in, Connors and Lendl were already together on a private jet at the nearby Zestienhoven Airport,” former pro Marcella Mesker told The Second Serve this week. “They were taking off for the United States, where they were scheduled to play their next tournament.”
According to a New York Times report at the time, Connors had been willing to resume, but Lendl felt it unsafe. The pair were each awarded runners-up ranking points, but Lendl asked that the prize money—$50,000 for the winner and $25,000 for the runner-up—be put into a vault until the match could be completed. Mesker, a top singles and doubles player and now a leading commentator for Dutch broadcaster NOS, confirmed this week that Lendl did make that request but said Connors did not agree. “Lendl did like his money,” she said. “It’s a bit unknown what happened. But the story here is that they split it.”
Considering that Connors still holds the record for the most titles won on the ATP Tour, with 109, and that Lendl sits fourth on the list with 94, giving up the chance to win another title would doubtless not have come easy to either man. Years later, Peter Fleming, half of one of the greatest doubles teams in history alongside John McEnroe, told the story of the final on Sky TV and had a unique take on the incident. “If you ask Lendl, even to this day, he still thinks someone from Jimmy’s team made the phone call,” he said, tongue, perhaps, firmly in cheek.
If Lendl does still believe that, though, he is not saying so in public. “I remember the match,” he told The Second Serve this week. “It seemed like a serious situation, so we didn’t have any choice about continuing the match. But I would not have minded [doing so], since at the time, I was up a set and a break. We never finished the match, and I don’t know if they were ever able to determine what happened.” Connors did not respond.
Deprived of watching the completion of the final, the spectators were later given 15 guilders (about $6) as compensation. “And they did have the doubles to watch,” Mesker said. For the record, Kevin Curren and Wojtek Fibak won that one.
“It’s an iconic part of the history of the tournament,” Mesker said of the story. “It seems funny to us [that it comes up every now and again], because we all know it well.”
Lendl was, of course, one of the most ruthless players around, and being denied a double-bagel win over one of his greatest rivals would surely have rankled. However, his disappointment didn’t last long; a couple of months later, he beat Connors 6–0, 6–0 in Forest Hills and went on to win his first Grand Slam title that summer, at Roland-Garros, when he came from two sets down to beat McEnroe in the final.
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A Future For France
A Future For France
A Future For France
Moise Kouame is the young hope of French tennis.
Moise Kouame is the young hope of French tennis.
By Giri Nathan
February 6, 2026
The youngster Moise Kouame in Montpellier this week. // Getty
The youngster Moise Kouame in Montpellier this week. // Getty
Hyping a young prospect never ends well for me. But as far as the men’s tour is concerned, it’s a good time to peer far into the future. With nine straight Slams won by either Carlos Alcaraz or Jannik Sinner, and—with respect to Novak Djokovic—no sign that the pattern will break anytime soon, many fans are rooting around to figure out who their true challengers will be. They are just 22 and 24. I don’t think they will be troubled by any of their direct contemporaries. I’ve watched Ben Shelton lose 22 straight sets to Sinner, and I can’t be convinced that the gap is closing. As for the even younger players, the 19-year-old ball-striking prodigy Joao Fonseca lags behind in terms of movement (and, currently, health). While 20-year-old Learner Tien has endless touch and guile, will he ever have enough point-ending power? Many seek the Novak Djokovic figure who will complicate the Sincaraz reign, and while I’m not sure that the future will rhyme with the past so neatly, it’s at least worth noting that Novak is a full six years younger than Roger Federer. So maybe the promised one is still a long way out.
Which is partially why I welcome the buzz around a player six years younger than Carlitos: the French 16-year-old Moise Kouame, who this week made it into the main draw in Montpellier. On those loud blue-and-pink hard courts, Kouame cut a striking figure, clad in purples. He stands 6-foot-3, with speed, balance, and elegant technique. Despite his age he appears to already have the legs to tolerate some grindy pro-level rallies, and the sudden power to find a winner when he sees the opening. He says he looks up to Novak Djokovic and Jannik Sinner. While it’s way too early to tell, his play style tempts me to place him in that same lineage. I can envision a baseline crusher very hard to hurt on either wing.
In the qualifying rounds, Kouame played two difficult three-setters, which were his first two wins over players ranked inside the top 200. These weren’t the prettiest matches, but they secured a historic result. There’s little recent precedent for a kid this age making it into the main draw of an ATP tournament. Kouame became the sixth-youngest qualifier for a tour event since 2000. The only names ahead of him are Richard Gasquet (twice), Ryan Harrison, Rafael Nadal, and Rudolf Molleker (a 25-year-old now ranked No. 442). So you never know what will happen. But perhaps he stands to benefit from having one of those men, the recently retired Gasquet, as his coach. Ivan Ljubicic, another former great, now director at the French Tennis Federation, has been singing Kouame’s praises for a long time. It’s clear that France thinks he’s their future.
Heading into the main draw at Montpellier, Kouame had won 12 consecutive matches, in ITFs and in ATP qualifying. In his first main-draw match on Wednesday he faced world No. 56 Alexander Kovacevic, who was, by a huge margin, the highest-ranked opponent he had ever taken on. Kouame played a superb first set, lost his way in the second, and put up a good fight for his life at the end of the third, before losing. The flaws are the ones you might expect from a young player—conditioning issues and a serve that needs tinkering—but the foundation is already astonishingly good, and the highs are incredibly high. Perhaps by the end of 2026 we could see him competing at the Challenger level regularly. Sinner and Alcaraz were winning Challenger titles at 17. Can Kouame stay on that trajectory? The successes of this week will bump him up to just outside the top 500. There’s still a very long way to climb.
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Film Review: Islands
Ominous Strings
Ominous Strings
Film Review: Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands
Film Review: Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands
By Patrick J. Sauer
February 6, 2026
A still from Islands.
A still from Islands.
It was, as native New Yorkers say, mad brick outside, so I decided to escape the Brooklyn tundra by partaking in some Canary Island tennis. All it required was a subway ride and a willingness to commit mind-over-frozen-matter while settling in for Islands, the new English-language movie from German director Jan-Ole Gerster. Set in the Spanish archipelago, specifically Fuerteventura, it opens on Tom, a local sun-dappled mid-tier resort tennis pro, passed out in the dunes somewhere near where he drunkenly abandoned his car for whatever after-hours was supposed to deliver. He isn’t sleeping off a huge bender, either. Tom’s routine of hungover lessons, midday hidden Scotch bottle bracers, and evening post-session-beers-into-late-night-vodka-shot-pumping, line-bumping client-humping has more or less become his life.
Tom (Sam Riley, best known as enigmatic, doomed Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control) isn’t motivated to change much, even if he doesn’t seem to buy into the constant tourist avowal that he’s got it made in the paradisiacal shade. He’s in a rut, paradoxically kick-started by the game that brought him there. A shoulder injury thwarted a promising professional career, but thanks to a reliable big serve, he beat a vacationing Rafa Nadal in an impromptu “can you get five of 10 past El Matador?” challenge. It’s the story of his nickname, Ace—which we will be using henceforth—one he’s sick of hearing, but one that, if he doesn’t soon shake off the morning shakes, will be his legacy.
To paraphrase English poet John Donne, “No man is an island, not even in the Canaries.” Enter Anne (Stacy Martin), an icy blonde looking to get her passive, lonely 8-year-old son Anton (Dylan Torrell) moving around out on the courts. As luck would have it, Ace is really great with kids, which means more quality time with the woman he swears he’s seen before. Anne and her unctuous, arrogant, “calls everyone bro” Brit husband, Dave (Jack Farthing), are slumming it among the hordes at an all-you-can-eat-buffet getaway spot with the idea to stabilize their crumbling marriage foundation via a weeklong getaway. Always a good plan, especially when a hot tennis pro who’s always down to go to a second location is added to the mix.
Ace is clearly intrigued by Anne and, upon Dave’s whining about the view-of-the-dumpsters accommodations, upgrades their room for free. This leads to dinner, as the slowest of sunburns takes over Islands and it becomes a Hitchcockian character study. On his one day off, Ace takes the family on an excursion to the gorgeous non-touristy lava caves and crashing-wave beaches—virtuoso cinematographer Juan Sarmiento had me absolutely pining for the Atlantic Ocean—on the other side of Fuerteventura, a spot he sheepishly admits to Anne he hasn’t visited in years. (Yep, and on the sly, Ace rubs lotion on her naked back.) He even brings Anton to take a camel ride at a farm owned by his friend Raik (Ahmed Boulane), who, in addition to being the guy who drags the Rafa story out of Ace, is constantly having to hunt down one of their lumbering beasts, who wanders off whenever there are volcanic tremors from the nearby island of Lanzarote. It’s a full day, one that should’ve ended when Anton and Anne went to bed but carries on with Dave well into the wee hours at a loud all-night techno club, Waikiki. The off-the-chain lightweight’s intentions are clear: bottle service, selfies, sexy dance partners, and to see where it goes until daybreak. What’s not clear is where the hell Dave ended up.
When Ace rouses to life on a poolside lounger the next morning, Anne is already in full panic mode trying to find her wayward partner. At first, the local policia assume another honey-rum-soaked idiot ended up in a stranger’s bed, but when Dave’s Hawaiian shirt (of course) turns up on shore, an all-out criminal investigation, complete with helicopter searches, gets underway. Gruff, no-bullshit Inspector Mazo (Ramiro Blas) comes in from the mainland, and the clues, coincidences, and convoluted timelines start adding up, all pointing toward Ace’s Ripley-esque infatuation. In fine Patricia Highsmith form, Gerster keeps the sociopathy at arm’s length, just enough for Ace to question his belief in Anne, drifting through life on Tinto de Verano bubbles, and if Dave’s dead, even at her murderous hands, whether they’re going to fuck.
I don’t want to give much more away, other than to say there’s a jaw-dropping moment with the wayward camel that brilliantly resets the movie, sending Ace off on a boozy exorcism of Nadal’s ghost. Unlike so many half-baked, phoned-in streaming thrillers, Islands isn’t constructed around illogical arbitrary twists. It methodically builds to a satisfying conclusion, even if not quite everything works in full.
Visually, our femme fatale commands the screen, but as a human character, Anne is underwritten, even if somewhat mysterious by necessity. As for Anton, after setting the wheels in motion, he gets stowed away and forgotten for a big middle chunk in the Kid’s Club. (Points for parental verisimilitude, I suppose.) And in the early going, the volcano metaphor is laid on thick, with Dave asking Ace, “Is it gonna erupt?” à la tempers, marriages, cuckolds, penises, and maybe, with a homicidal visitor, Fuerteventura itself. However, these are mild critiques as Ace’s response, “You never know,” captures what Islands does so well, including being a rare film that walks it off with a perfect last line.
Ace’s Islands unraveling makes for a bewitching balmy noir, where nothing—or everything—is as it seems. It definitely satiated my wintry need for sweltering tropical climes backed by ominous strings. Which, come to think of it, would make for a great sequel title if ever Ace goes looking for Anne again.
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Elena Rybakina Summons the Ghosts
Back in a Major Groove
Back in a Major Groove
In the Australian Open final, Elena Rybakina summoned old ghosts.
In the Australian Open final, Elena Rybakina summoned old ghosts.
By Carole Bouchard
January 31, 2026
A victory that will haunt Aryna Sabalenka. // Getty
A victory that will haunt Aryna Sabalenka. // Getty
It was a blink-and-you-missed-it situation. Blink, and you missed Elina Rybakina crumbling from one set and 4–4 up to one set all and 3–0 down. Then blink, and you missed Aryna Sabalenka collapsing from 3–0 up in that third set to lose a second Australian Open final in a row and so a third Grand Slam final in the last four she played. Blink, and you also missed Stefano Vukov, Rybakina’s coach, who was banned for a year, being celebrated during the trophy ceremony.
In that remake of the 2023 Australian Open final, Rybakina ended up getting revenge on Sabalenka in a three-setter in which neither player played their best at the same time, resulting in an error-laden performance. Both being in the same lane of “everything you hit, I can hit it harder” kind of tennis, you knew you wouldn’t get a lot of rallies. But in 2023, their final had also shown that “go big or go home tennis” could find its own version of being both entertaining and steady. This time, not so much.
Yet the third set’s drama made up for the up-and-down nature of that final. It was tough to imagine Rybakina adding a second Grand Slam title to her résumé after Wimbledon 2022, when she started to spread unforced errors all over that Rod Laver Arena as Sabalenka seemed to sprint toward a fifth Grand Slam title. The world No.1 was proving how many more options she had built into her game against an opponent whose A game is lethal, as seen in a flawless first set, but left on its own when things go south. But Rybakina showed more guts in the money time, banking on her ability to go for her shots. And it delivered: The backhand down the line started to fire up again, the forehand-to-forehand battle turned in her favor, and that service came clutch at last. Rybakina’s forever-cool face won against Sabalenka’s forever-on-the-edge look.
Rybakina confirms the feeling of the end of 2025 when she beat Sabalenka already to clinch the WTA Finals title: She’s getting that groove back and has learned consistency since 2022. The new Australian Open champion became the first female player since Naomi Osaka in 2019 to go all the way after beating three top 10 players (Swiatek, Svitolina, Sabalenka). “They’re tough opponents, have great results, and for so long they have been at the top and stable,” Rybakina said. “I’m happy that now I’m getting back to this level, and hopefully I can be stable again throughout the whole season and keep on showing great tennis, good results. It’s a lot of tough matches I had here. Yeah, I’m glad I could manage to take the opportunities I had and win in the end.”
Is she a different player today? No. Has she improved her game in the same vein as Sabalenka? Absolutely not. Is she still the biggest hitter on that tour with an unmatched ability to hit winners from anywhere on the court? Totally. Is she getting closer to perfecting her game style enough to deliver it without a glitch in the biggest events? A resounding yes. With now 38 wins, she owns the most victories on tour since the end of Wimbledon. She can get unplayable, and it’s always mostly going to depend on her, which wasn’t a situation suited to her victim of the day.
It’s impossible not to think that Sabalenka’s 2025 ghosts came back to haunt her when she was on serve at 3–1 and then 3–3 in that third set. She had done everything right to get her hand on that final, and yet it derailed again. She couldn’t find a first serve (52 percent in that set), then rushed the rest and missed, so that in no time she had lost five games in a row, left aghast as, after Melbourne and Roland-Garros 2025, another Grand Slam final was slipping through her fingers. “It was really aggressive tennis, and in that moment she had nothing to lose, so she stepped in, and she played incredible points,” Sabalenka said. “Maybe I should have tried to be more aggressive on my serve, knowing I had a break and could put pressure on her, but she played incredibly. She made some winners. I made a couple of unforced errors. Of course, I have regrets. When you lead 3–love, and then it felt like in a few seconds it was 3–4…great tennis from her. Maybe not so smart for me. Today I’m a loser, maybe tomorrow I’m a winner, maybe again a loser. Hopefully not.”
Sabalenka has been the best player in the world by far for the past two years, but under the highest pressure in the biggest tournament, there’s this glitch that can land at any time. “I was really upset with myself, because once again, I had opportunities. But I feel like I played great. I was fighting. I did my best, and today she was a better player…. But level-wise and in the decisions I was making and my mentality, I think I made huge improvements and that I’m moving towards the right direction.”
Put in the same pressure cooker, Rybakina and her ice-cold demeanor have now won two majors out of three chances, and that cannot be a coincidence. Back on the wall, she figures out how to summon her A game, and that’s what Sabalenka figured out at the US Open but still can’t do on demand. After taking down both Swiatek and Sabalenka here, on the heels of that great end of 2025, Rybakina’s confidence is going to rise at a very dangerous high for the rest of the field. “I always believed that I could come back to the level I was. I think everyone thought I would never be in the final or even get a trophy again, but it’s all about the work. Of course, when you’re getting after some big wins against the top players, then you start to believe more and get more confident.” Warning received.
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The Happy Slam Is in a Funk
The Happy Slam Is in a Funk
The Happy Slam Is in a Funk
The vibes are a bit off at the Australian Open this year.
The vibes are a bit off at the Australian Open this year.
By Simon Cambers
January 30, 2026
Fans sense a vibe shift at the usually Happy Slam. // Getty
Fans sense a vibe shift at the usually Happy Slam. // Getty
On the eve of this year’s Australian Open, Roger Federer, back at the tournament for the first time in six years to play in an exhibition as part of the opening ceremony, was reminded that he had coined the phrase “Happy Slam” for the first major of the year. That was back in 2007. Almost 20 years on, Federer said he was glad it had stuck and explained why he’d said it.
“It felt like a very normal thing to say because a lot of players, they’re happy to escape the European winter,” he said. “Finally you’re happy to maybe see the other players again [after a break], so it just feels very happy. The weather’s good, people are incredibly excited and pumped up about the Australian Open, we the players can feel that, the vibes are incredibly happy, nobody’s exhausted and tired [except for travel]. It stuck, and I’m happy it’s still the case because I still think the players are super happy to be here.”
As the 2026 edition heads toward its finale, the Happy Slam vibe remains relatively intact, although some of the gloss, it seems, has been rubbed off. While the increase in prize money across the board will doubtless have gone down well—total prize money is up to a record AUD $111.5 million ($78 million) from $96 million ($67 million) last year—around the fringes there has been some grumbling.
Not least from some of the players, irritated by what they see as the Big Brother feel of the Australian Open, where cameras are everywhere and privacy is limited. Coco Gauff, angry at her performance in losing to Elina Svitolina in the quarters, thought she was being considerate in not breaking racquets on the court. Instead, she smashed one in the corridor in the player areas, near the locker room. Unbeknown to her, it was immediately clipped up and sent around the world on social media.
“I feel like certain moments…they don’t need to broadcast,” Gauff said. Novak Djokovic, asked about the proliferation of cameras at Melbourne Park, went further. “I’m surprised that we have no cameras while we are taking [a] shower,” he said.
Of course, it’s a two-way street. Broadcasters, who are paying more and more each time for rights to show the tournament, want more bang for their buck, and behind-the-scenes footage fits the bill. Players might not like it, but the ever-increasing broadcast rights boost prize money. It will be interesting to see if there is any row-back on the cameras, but as Djokovic suggested: Don’t hold your breath.
Record crowds have flooded through the gates this year. Up to and including Friday, the main draw alone has seen more than one million people attend. It would have been more had it not been for a couple of days of 40-plus degrees Celsius (104F), when people wisely stayed away.
That’s been fueled by ground passes being on offer at very affordable prices (in week 1 they were around AUD$69 ($48). On the face of it, that’s a good thing, of course. Ordinary working people should be able to afford to come. And the result of that has been a huge buzz around the tournament. However, on several days, it was almost impossible to move around the grounds, so tightly packed was it.
And once on site, the prices were, well, pricey. Not as bad as at the US Open, as we outlined on the eve of the event. But still, fans were not happy at having to fork out AUD$14 ($10) for a small can of Asahi beer. Or up to AUD $25 ($12.70) for a Shake Shack burger.
Players do love coming to Melbourne, but the cumulative load on their bodies is also taking its toll. There have been six injury retirements to date in the men’s event, plus one walkover, and two retirements and one walkover in the women’s singles. Some, like Jack Draper and Holger Rune, didn’t make it here, and others, like Emma Raducanu, had shorter-than-usual preparation due to injury. It didn’t help that local heroes Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis withdrew with injuries. Players are supposed to be arriving in rude health, but that’s not always possible.
The heat may also have been a factor in the unusually low number of exciting matches. Until the men’s semifinals, which were both incredible contests, the tournament was low on intrigue, low on shocks. Six of the top eight seeds made the semis in both events for the first time in the Open era, but with the exception of Stan Wawrinka, who even at 40 can still be relied upon to entertain, most matches felt a little flat. Playing in high temperatures is rarely conducive to great tennis.
There’s no question that players (and traveling media) are well-treated here. In addition to prize money, all players in the singles and doubles events (including qualifying) receive a check for AUD$10,000, along with a nice gift bag, to help with their travel and subsistence. Obviously the top players don’t need it, but it’s very useful for the lower-ranked players who come down to try to qualify, especially doubles players.
One thing to note, though, is the future of Craig Tiley. Tournament director since 2006 and CEO of Tennis Australia since 2013, Tiley is regularly thanked by the players for going above and beyond. However, Tiley is heavily rumored to be about to be named as the new CEO of the United States Tennis Association.
The weather may be great (largely) and the facilities second to none, but how Tennis Australia replaces him will go a long way to ensuring whether the Happy Slam remains a thing.
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Iva Jovic: A Calm Contender
A Calm Contender
A Calm Contender
A fourth round loss at the Australian Open doesn’t make Iva Jovic any less of a sensation.
A fourth round loss at the Australian Open doesn’t make Iva Jovic any less of a sensation.
By Owen Lewis
January 27, 2026
Peak Iva Jovic is already fearsome. // Getty
Peak Iva Jovic is already fearsome. // Getty
You have to be a special player for your opponent to praise you wholeheartedly after she has just beaten you 6–3, 6–0. The player in question is 18-year-old Iva Jovic, whose breakout run at the Australian Open ended at the hands of Aryna Sabalenka in the quarterfinals. Jovic didn’t drop a set in her first four matches but came up against a version of Sabalenka hell-bent on destruction. Points ended immediately after Sabalenka struck a forehand the way she wanted to, which was all of them. She threw in a low backhand slice that forced an error from a charging Jovic. A spookily good drop volley drooped over the net for a winner. Jovic did not quit, or grow visibly demoralized, or even, I thought, drop her level dramatically. None of it mattered.
This was peak Aryna, no doubt about it, the kind of performance that could make someone pull the trigger on the premature, irresponsible prediction that she’ll hold the No. 1 ranking for the whole of 2026, as she did in 2025, in a group text. (Whether someone actually did make this call, I’ll leave to your imagination.) But Sabalenka was telling the truth when she said in her on-court interview that the score is a poor indication of how hard she had to work. She added in press that she couldn’t recall playing better in too many matches. (The list, for me, pretty much begins and ends with the third set of her 2025 Roland-Garros semifinal with Iga Swiatek.) “The second set I felt like I have to step in and put even more pressure on her, because I can see that she’s young, she’s hungry, and I could tell during the match that no matter what’s the score, she’s still going to be there trying and trying to figure her way,” Sabalenka said when I asked her about that spotless second set. “Yeah, that was definitely amazing performance in the second set.”
Sabalenka had reason to feel she needed to step on the gas after the first set. She came out of the gates sharp, and after taking a 3–0 lead, she looked destined for a bagel in the opener.
Only Jovic didn’t play along. She saved a break point to hold for 1–3, then two more to hold for 2–4. When she held from deuce to get to 3–5, the match 50 minutes old by that point, it suddenly felt close. Jovic poured on the pressure in the next return game, dragging Sabalenka into a protracted deuce battle that required her to hit multiple aces to prolong it. On her third break point, Jovic hit a second-serve return into the top of the net. Immediately, she doubled over, practically twisting herself into a pretzel in her horror. It was the preternaturally calm teenager’s only demonstrative reaction of the match.
Yet it was her first time at Rod Laver Arena. Jovic had an excuse to totally wilt, particularly in 95-degree temperatures (it’ll be 114 later, whee) under such a pale blue sky I can’t imagine it ever being any other color. Seagull feathers regularly spiraled down from above, as if portending the skin that would later flake off sunburned spectators. Jovic had enough meaningful crowd support, too—more than Sabalenka—to add the pressure of satisfying her fans. Though she gets no credit on the scoreboard for it, Jovic played well enough that Sabalenka saw no option other than to pay her the painful compliment of annihilation.
This loss doesn’t make Jovic, a Californian born to Serbian and Croatian parents, any less of a sensation. At its outset, if asked which 18-year-old would go furthest in this tournament, all of tennis’ fans and media would have answered as one: “Mirra Andreeva, and I would put a month’s rent on it.” But the Russian phenom is developing a tad slower than her two WTA 1000 titles early last year forecasted, and she lost in straight sets to an imperious Elina Svitolina on Sunday night. In Melbourne, it was Jovic who found the steadier level of tennis, and her equilibrium more easily when under duress.
Jovic came into the tournament as the 27th seed thanks to a 35–13 run since Roland-Garros in 2025. (She’s now 20th in the live rankings.) The maturity of her game belies her age. She is comfortable playing several feet behind the baseline, making her hard to hit through, but doesn’t push. Her forehand is one of the more interesting shots I’ve seen recently. It lacks the power of Sabalenka’s or Elena Rybakina’s but has a ton of weight on it, so the opponent (except Sabalenka, apparently) always seems to be playing catch-up with it, whether they’re trying to run the ball down or merely change direction with it. Jovic is also armed with a tip from Novak Djokovic himself to open up the court with angles as well as depth. She can rip the aerial backhand return with a violent two-handed swing; it’s almost as though she’s flying when she strikes that shot.
Peak Jovic is already fearsome. Her demolitions of Hon and Putintseva, in particular, were clean and ruthless, artworks typical of the seasoned veteran who has smoothed out all the flaws in their game. Down 6–0, 3–0, and break point to Jovic, Puntintseva fatalistically threw her racquet at an unreachable forehand pass. If Jovic is breaking opponents’ resistance at 18 years old, we may need to allow her opponents a free courtside psychologist when she hits her prime.
Maybe the most alarming attribute Jovic has, though, is that temperament. Before this tournament, she’d never been past the second round of a major. As she has won the matches that have propelled her to the quarterfinals, her reactions have been…happy? Satisfied? A show of emotion, after she beat Jasmine Paolini, lasted approximately a quarter of a second. She has rarely seemed exuberant. She may have exceeded her expectations by making the quarterfinals, but the way she did so has felt routine. “I don’t really feel like there is a lot of house money or underdog mentality that I’m feeling, because I don’t feel like I have been playing anything outside of my comfort zone or outside of my normal level,” Jovic said, after dropping one game to Putintseva. Terrifying stuff.
Jovic was calm in press after losing to Sabalenka, aware of the fact that this match wouldn’t have defined her career even if she’d won. When asked what she tried to emulate from Djokovic’s game, she identified “the way he is able to almost suffocate opponents.” (Again: terrifying.) She said Sabalenka’s power forced her to operate at an extreme, which she struggled to adjust to given that she’d hoped to “drift a little bit in the middle.”
“There’s always next time,” she added with a smile, “which is nice.”
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Zeynep Sonmez Brings the Ruckus
Home Court Advantage
Home Court Advantage
Zeynep Sonmez brings the ruckus.
Zeynep Sonmez brings the ruckus.
By Giri Nathan
January 23, 2026
Zeynep Sonmez celebrates her second round win at the Australian Ope this week. // Getty
Zeynep Sonmez celebrates her second round win at the Australian Ope this week. // Getty
The crowd is the third participant in every tennis match. It has the power to bend the outcome. My favorite crowds: when an athlete playing far from home syncs up with some huge diasporic pocket of their people. That’s one of the beautiful things about the fact that the US Open is set in Queens, the most diasporic place in the world—every player’s got a cheering section in their native tongue. You can sit down at an outer court and see the Astoria Serbs going head-to-head with the Flushing Chinese, a battle parallel to the one on court.
All the Slams have some version of this, even the one Slam that is not located in a major global metropolis. Melbourne is the capital of the Australian state of Victoria, and as it turns out, Victoria is home to Australia’s largest Turkish population. Immigration surged in the ’70s and ’80s, and according to the 2021 census, there are now more than 47,000 people in Victoria with Turkish ancestry.
Judging by the noise, at least half of those people have been attending the recent matches of Zeynep Sonmez, the 23-year-old from Istanbul who has been trailblazing for a country with limited tennis lineage. A fleet-footed aggressor with flat strokes and a knack for net play, Sonmez became just the second Turkish woman ever to claim a WTA title when she won the 250 in Merida back in 2024. She took another step forward in 2025, when at Wimbledon she became the first Turkish player ever to reach the third round at a Slam, and in October she hit a career high of No. 69 in the world.
By the time this Australian Open rolled around, her ranking had slid and she was bound for the qualifying rounds. She cruised through all three matches there, and in the first round of the main draw she dispatched the No. 11 seed, the slap-happy Ekatarina Alexandrova. That was just the second time she’d beaten a top 20 player. (Mid-match, Sonmez also rescued a ball girl who was just a few seconds away from fainting in the heat.) After her second-round win over Anna Bondar, Sonmez reflected on the absurd crowd support she has enjoyed in Melbourne. “I’ve never experienced something like this,” she told the press. “At first I felt like I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts. It was very, very loud.” But after refocusing, she said, she was able to draw on their support to get through tight moments in the match.
When I tuned in to her third-round match against Yulia Putintseva, dozens of red flags were flapping in the stands, chants of “Turkiye” were booming, the energy was unbelievable, and then I looked at the score and saw that Sonmez was already down a set and a break. That’s how a truly passionate crowd will behave. Even when the player is that distant from victory, they’re still causing a ruckus. I later learned that Sonmez had just won a spectacular point involving a Putintseva tweener, hence the cheers, but really, they didn’t need a specific reason, the volume was turned all the way up the entire match.
Perhaps the Sonmez faithful did not read the scouting report, however. Their energy might have energized the opponent, too. Putintseva, short-statured and delightfully rude, is not one to be cowed by a partisan crowd. She had just taken down two opponents with massive fan support, and she seemed eager for the opportunity to antagonize yet another diasporic community (Brazilian, French, now Turkish). Sonmez went on to level that second set and win it in a tiebreak. Sonmez, who was spotted last season reading Descartes during a changeover, studied her notebook as Putintseva took the customary momentum-breaker bathroom trip.
Though Sonmez had more power than her opponent, there were moments where her feet seemed asleep—a classic by-product of nerves—and she didn’t have the right spacing to the ball. And while it was a rough day from the baseline, to the tune of 73 unforced errors, Sonmez showcased an almost Alcarazian attitude to the net. She timed her approaches well and volleyed beautifully, winning 29 out of 35 points in the front court. It’s that layer of her game that most impressed me, that sets her apart from most of her contemporaries, and that makes me think that perhaps there’s a top 30 ranking in her future.
Nevertheless, she was broken early in the third, and Putintseva took over. The last few games went fast, and when Putintseva completed the 6–3, 6–7(3), 6–3 victory, she celebrated as only she could. She dropped her racquet, put her hand up to her ear, blew fat kisses, and did a little dance as the crowd showered her with boos. A crazy juxtaposition with Sonmez, who was waving her teary, heartfelt goodbye and signing flags, after achieving this career milestone, her second appearance in the third round of a Slam. Eventually the booing switched over to soccer-style cheers of “Zeynep,” and the atmosphere improved drastically. If Sonmez continues on the present trajectory, they’ll have plenty more opportunities to go wild in Melbourne in the years to come.
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Ethan Quinn's Card Gets Pulled
Rainbow Roll Roulette
Rainbow Roll Roulette
Ethan Quinn Gets His Card Pulled.
Ethan Quinn Gets His Card Pulled.
By Ben Rothenberg
January 21, 2026
Ethan Quinn's wallet is a tad lighter. // Getty
Ethan Quinn's wallet is a tad lighter. // Getty
On the eve of the 2026 Australian Open, after the luck of the draw and before the luck of the netcords, 10 of the top American men’s tennis players had a risk-ready appetite, hungry to let fickle fingers determine their fate once more.
They were full otherwise, having just put down their chopsticks at Nobu in Melbourne’s Southbank neighborhood after a Saturday night dinner. One of them, though, was about to get a bitter dessert: They put 10 credit cards in the middle of the table for what’s become an annual game of credit card roulette.
When the unlucky card was pulled, many around the table flinched: It belonged to 21-year-old Ethan Quinn, who only broke into the top 200 at the start of last season. Though he’s made his way up to 80th in the rankings, he’s spent less time at these high-rolling affairs than any of the rest.
“I was trying to pay for it, to be honest,” Ben Shelton, who has made more than $11 million in prize money alone, told me of when he saw who had lost. “But tradition is tradition, I guess.”
Taylor Fritz, 19th all-time on the ATP’s prize money leaderboard with more than $29 million, felt similarly. “I felt really bad that he lost—with everyone at that table,” Fritz said of Quinn, who is 726th on that all-time list.
Fritz, who recently slipped behind Shelton but has been the highest-ranked American man for most of this decade, has taken on the role of organizing the dinner—“which sucks,” he said of that responsibility—to keep an annual ritual going.
“I’ve tried to kind of branch it out and invite all the guys,” Fritz said. “I don’t have every American guy’s number, and there’s new guys that come up. So I put six or seven of the guys in the group chat—and everyone is invited; I’m getting the big table. Whoever can come, comes.”
When first held around 2018, the dinner was at Chin Chin, a delicious and pretentious Thai restaurant on Flinders Lane. Fritz shifted the venue to Nobu, where he’s mostly kept the tradition going each year. Last year Fritz admitted he “slacked” and didn’t organize it; two years ago the group agreed to split the bill between two players, only for it to land on two of the lowest-earning: 57th-ranked J.J. Wolf and 101st-ranked Aleks Kovacevic.
“I felt awful there, too,” Fritz said.
Quinn told me he was braced for a rough number as he glanced at the bill for the 10-person party at Nobu. The receipt was more than a foot long, including two steaks, seven miso-marinated black cod, 40 wagyu tacos, dozens of pieces of sushi and various other sides. But when Quinn saw the amount—and then converted it into U.S. dollars, which are only about 67 cents on each Australian dollar—he was relieved.
“I was expecting worse: It was $2,500 U.S.,” Quinn told me. “Not as bad as I was expecting. I was expecting 8 grand, to be perfectly honest with you…. No one drank, so that’s kind of what helped.”
What may have especially helped, Quinn said, was a possible 11th dinner guest who was absent: Frances Tiafoe, who skipped out on the annual occasion because he was scheduled to play his first-round match on the opening Sunday and is taking things more seriously lately.
Quinn thanked Tiafoe when he saw him at the tournament.
“I was just like, ‘Dude, if you were there, that bill is going to be three times what it was’—and he thought that was funny,” Quinn said.
Quinn savors having a seat at the table—and getting to make fun of guys who are still well above him in the rankings and earnings. When he sees Tiafoe around this Australian Open, it means making fun of his infamously enormous personal water tankard.
“I feel like I’m pretty comfortable now with a lot of the Americans, and I asked him this week: ‘Oh, did you check your water bottle? Put it business class on the way over here?’ And everyone was laughing. It was fun having that dinner [too], having that full American squad out there. We’re all really close, and it’s just a good time being together with each other.”
Quinn’s loss was bad news, the group knew, for someone else: 23rd-seeded Tallon Griekspoor, who was Quinn’s first opponent. Quinn, who had lost to Griekspoor twice last year, smoked the Dutchman like Gouda: 6–2, 6–3, 6–2.
“Once I stepped foot on court I didn’t think about it at all,” Quinn said of paying back his debt. “I probably would’ve if I lost and walked off the court like, ‘Damn, now I lost and am out $2,500 from a dinner.’”
The first-round win upped Quinn’s prize money for the event by around $50,000, putting him about $47,500 in the black on the trip.
Tiafoe said he had felt “not at all” bad for Quinn for losing—“You’re making money out here, you will be all right”—but enjoyed seeing him win.
“Hence why he got Griekspoor out of the way: He needed to recoup that,” Tiafoe said. “So that’s good.”
Fritz agreed with that assessment.
“He had some extra motivation to win the match today, so that was good,” Fritz said.
Fritz knew how it felt, having lost credit card roulettes twice at the start of his time on tour.
“People need to understand: I took two Ls very early on in my career, too—back-to-back years,” Fritz said. “It all comes around. I told Ethan, ‘Keep coming back every year. You’ll get some free dinners, too.’”
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Taylor Fritz Sees the Game Differently
Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Taylor Fritz sees the game differently.
Taylor Fritz sees the game differently.
By Giri Nathan
January 16, 2026
Taylor Fritz at the Japan Open, 2025. // David Bartholow
Taylor Fritz at the Japan Open, 2025. // David Bartholow
It’s the central question of the ATP season: Can any player end the Sincaraz dominance at the Slams? I don’t expect to see it happen, and if it is coming, I can’t see it happening at the Australian Open. But I do think there are a handful of players capable of playing some interesting matches along the way. One such player is Taylor Fritz, who enters as the No. 9 seed in the draw and took Alcaraz to an extremely competitive four-setter at Wimbledon last year. (He also beat Carlitos at Laver Cup, for whatever that’s worth.) On Thursday, the 28-year-old spoke to me over the phone for roughly the duration of a changeover, and since he’s one of the best commentators on the nuts and bolts of tennis, I asked him a few questions that were on my mind.
It’s hard to believe, but you’ve been a pro for a decade now. So looking at the tour in general, what have been the big technical and tactical shifts in the ATP from 2016 to 2026? What feels most different? What do you find yourself thinking about or talking about your coach with that you weren’t thinking back then?
I mean, a lot. I think I see the game a lot differently now than I did back then. I think a lot of that is just, you know, the understanding of having played for so long. I think about a lot of stuff nowadays that I didn’t think about back then, and that’s really standard stuff, like how the balls are affecting how you play, how the court speeds are different. I wasn’t thinking about that as much when I was 18, 19 years old; I would just show up and just play. And I’ve become so much more—like I just notice all those little variables and changes so much more now.
But if we’re talking specifics, really, about the game of tennis, one thing I talk about a lot nowadays is I think people’s second serves have changed so much from when I started playing. I think people used to just kick in their second serve all the time when I was younger. And I think people have gotten so much better at taking that kick serve early on the backhand, even people that have bad backhands. I feel like I’ve gotten pretty good at being able to take that return early and attack it. And I think nowadays, if people don’t, if you’re not playing someone who has a massive kick serve, most people just kind of slide it into the body and keep it lower. I really think the second serve has changed a lot.
This is a personal theory, as a viewer of tennis. Over the past, you know, 15 years, I feel like the footwork has changed dramatically. And I see a lot of sliding on surfaces beyond clay, and I’m wondering if that resonates with you as well. If so, do you think there were certain players who are influential in bringing that about?
To be honest, I don’t actually know when it started. If we go back quite a while ago, sliding on hard court wasn’t a thing always, and now it is. So I can’t speak to exactly who started it and when it started, but I’d say it’s a huge part of the game nowadays. If you can’t—I think if you’re like 6’5″ or smaller, and you can’t slide on a hard court, I think you’re putting yourself at a massive disadvantage just moving-wise. You’re just so much quicker to be able to recover after that ball when you slide into it; it makes such a massive difference. And you know, I’m extremely jealous of the people that can open-stance slide on their left foot to the backhand. That’s something that I just am not able to do—a lot of players aren’t able to do it, but I’m not able to do it. And it, yeah, it’s something I’m really jealous of.
When you think about where the game is right now, where do you see things going over the next five to 10 years, over the latter half of your career?
I’d say a lot of sports are kind of moving in the direction of: bigger, stronger, faster. I think most of the time, players were more like, you have one thing but don’t have another thing. If you’re really tall, you maybe can hit the ball big and you serve big, but you’re not as fast. And nowadays it’s just like, everyone can do everything. I think there’s more complete players, people that are tall and fast and powerful, and people that are smaller can still pop a serve and crush the ball. And I think that’s kind of just the direction that it’s moving: People can kind of do everything. I think there’s a lot less holes in people’s games.
To touch on the exo [THE MGM SLAM] that you guys are playing in Vegas, when you play a match like this, do you ever think, “Hey, I’m going to use this to work on some specific aspect of my game”? Or are you more just trying to have fun and put on a good show?
No, I mean, I’m definitely just going out there and trying to win. Especially when there’s a prize pool like there is in the Vegas event, I’m 100% going out there and trying to compete, competing and trying really hard. And that’s going to put on a good show in itself, for the crowd, which I’m excited for. And yeah, I’m, I’m there to win. I want to play it like it’s any other event.