Indian Wells brings Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek different tennis challenges
Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.
This week, Indian Wells dominated the tennis world, with 2024 champions Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek suffering similar fates but contrasting futures. Elsewhere, there was a top-10 reshuffle on the ATP Tour, three American women lining up in the WTA Tour top five and some retirees getting a nice new tournament.
Alcaraz and Swiatek arrived in Indian Wells as heavy favorites. They lost in three sets in the semifinals and their conquerors, Jack Draper and Mirra Andreeva, went on to win the titles.
It would be easy to draw parallels, but other than coming up short on a court where they are generally masterful, Swiatek and Alcaraz are at very different spots in their quests to reclaim their top form and top ranking. That starts with their headspace. Swiatek swatted a ball towards her box in frustration during her semifinal. She looked frustrated during recent defeats and against Andreeva, as when they met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, she failed to convert numerous inroads on her opponent's serve into break points and games. Swiatek has routed all comers and lost tight matches to eventual champions for most of the year, but the level she expects from herself is even higher.
Alcaraz wasn't happy with his loss to Jack Draper either, but he was frustrated with how he went into the match more than how he played it, despite an aberration of a first set. He dominated the second and looked ready to roll through the third, before umpire Mohamed Lahyani fluffed a double-bounce call against Draper on a key point. Draper appealed both the decision and the idea that the call had affected Alcaraz through video review. He was successful on both counts and the delay checked the set's momentum and let Draper gather himself.
Draper also offered to replay the point, but Alcaraz said he hadn't been distracted in a news conference after the loss. Neither Swiatek nor Madison Keys, who won just one game against Aryna Sabalenka in their semifinal, did news conferences after their exits.
Alcaraz and Swiatek's paths diverge most strikingly in what comes next. Alcaraz has big opportunities to pick up points over the next few months. He won't be defending a title until the French Open, after a right arm injury heavily disrupted his clay-court season last year. Swiatek has a lot of defending to do. Once she gets done in Miami, the queen of the red clay will defend WTA 1,000 titles in Madrid and Rome before she seeks a fourth consecutive French Open title.
Head to Luxembourg in October and tennis fans will find the Luxembourg Ladies Tennis Masters, an event that offers recently retired professionals the chance to play in a competitive event as opposed to an exhibition doubles mostly staged for trick shots and banter.
Swedish entrepreneur Marten Hedlund has launched the Legends Team Cup to perform a similar role on the men's tour, but it comes complete with a $12 million (£10.1m) prize pool and player draft of the 18 former tennis professionals involved. They include former Grand Slam champions Dominic Thiem and Juan Carlos Ferrero, and former top-five players including Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
The event will be played in eight different venues across the world, starting in Saint Barths in the Caribbean in June before arriving at New York's UBS Arena from July 16 to July 18. Last week, the event announced that the legendary Bjorn Borg would join as the event's 'Grand Master of Tennis,' a role as open as it is bombastic.
Having stayed out of the tennis spotlight for some time, Borg, now 68, has ensured he will remain visible in the sport for a bit longer and players at last year's Luxembourg event, including Grand Slam champions and former world No. 1s Martina Hingis and Ana Ivanovic, told The Athletic how much they valued having an event that isn't just a hit and giggle. The Legends Cup will have a go at another tennis format, though: matches will be capped at 45 minutes.
Three American women in the WTA Tour top five. Not too shabby.
Coco Gauff, Jessica Pegula and Madison Keys are Nos. 3, 4, and 5 as they head to their home WTA 1,000 in Miami. All of them call Florida home, though only Gauff was born and raised there.
Can they stay in this rare air? That's a tough one to answer. Pegula missed the clay-court swing last year with an injury, so she has a lot of opportunities to corral points over the next few months. Keys is in good shape, too. Sabalenka ended her 16-match winning streak but Keys is a terrific clay-court player.
The biggest question mark could be Gauff. She is comfortable on clay, but she's the only one of the three who is reconstructing her game. She has changed her grip on her serve, which changes her motion; she's still figuring out how and when to play aggressively on her forehand, which has been an attackable weakness for too long. She's been willing to take the one-step-back-two-steps-forward approach but consequently, from match to match, even she doesn't know which version of herself will show up.
Last Thursday was the first time that an ATP Masters 1,000 or a men's singles Grand Slam draw had three semifinalists born in the 2000s, according to Opta.
Draper, Holger Rune and Alcaraz were the 2000s representatives, with only Daniil Medvedev from the 1990s cohort. The '90s generation, also known as the 'sandwich generation,' was already squeezed between the Roger Federer-Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic axis and the rise of Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner; Draper and Rune also making good on their potential would squeeze them further. Medvedev is one of two male players born in the '90s to win a major; Thiem is the other.
Draper took out Taylor Fritz, another child of the '90s, on his way to the Indian Wells title, and his move into the top 10 could be followed by a resurgent Rune and Ben Shelton.
Top-10 '90s stalwarts, including Andrey Rublev, Casper Ruud and Medvedev, are starting to look over their shoulders as the demographics at the top of men's tennis shift.
How to save a break point in a WTA 1,000 final, by Mirra Andreeva.
How Mirra Andreeva beat Aryna Sabalenka to win the Indian Wells title
How Jack Draper beat Holger Rune to win the Indian Wells title
Conchita Martinez accelerating Andreeva's irresistible rise
The Williams sisters' 14-year boycott of Indian Wells, and its end
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Draper (12) def. Rune (13) 6-2, 6-2 to win the BNP Paribas Open (1,000) in Indian Wells, Calif. It is his first ATP Masters 1,000 title.🏆 Joao Fonseca def. Alexander Bublik 7-6(5), 7-6(0) to win the Arizona Tennis Classic (Challenger 175) in Phoenix. It is his third ATP Challenger title.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Andreeva (9) def. Sabalenka (1) 2-6, 6-4, 6-3 to win the BNP Paribas Open (1,000). It is the Russian's second successive WTA 1,000 title.
📈 Andreeva moves up five places from No. 11 to No. 6 after her win at Indian Wells. It is a career-high ranking for the Russian, 17.📈 Draper ascends seven spots from No. 14 to No. 7 after his win. It is a new career-high ranking for the Brit, 23.📈 Belinda Bencic reenters the top 50 after rising 13 spots from No. 58 to No. 45.
📉 Alex de Minaur drops out of the ATP top 10 after Draper's win — the Australian falls to No. 11.📉 Maria Sakkari, last year's Indian Wells finalist, drops 22 places from No. 39 to No. 51.📉 Cameron Norrie, the 2021 Indian Wells champion, drops out of the top 80, falling eight places from No. 77 to No. 85.
🎾 ATP
📍Miami: Miami Open (1,000) featuring Alcaraz, Alexander Zverev, Draper, Djokovic.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
🎾 WTA
📍Miami: Miami Open (1,000) featuring Sabalenka, Swiatek, Gauff, Andreeva.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men's and women's tours continue.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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(AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard) The takeaways from Carlos Alcaraz's fifth-set tiebreaker victory over Jannik Sinner in the riveting and record-breaking French Open men's final were multiple and significant. Let's start with this: Anyone worried about how men's tennis would survive in the post-Big Three era can rest easy. Alcaraz and Sinner produced 5 1/2 hours of evidence Sunday that the game is in good hands — and that their rivalry will be, and perhaps already is, a transcendent one. Advertisement Take it from no less an authority than Roger Federer. The retired owner of 20 Grand Slam titles, and rival of Rafael Nadal (22 majors) and Novak Djokovic (24), began a post on social media by declaring, '3 winners in Paris today,' then listed Alcaraz, Sinner and 'the beautiful fame of tennis. What a match!' No. 1 Sinner and No. 2 Alcaraz could renew their rivalry at Wimbledon This was the 12th Alcaraz-Sinner meeting, the first in a major final. 'Hopefully not the last time,' Alcaraz said. 'Every time that we face ... each other, we raise our level to the top.' It would be shocking if there weren't many more of these to come — perhaps as soon as at Wimbledon, where play begins on June 30 and No. 2-ranked Alcaraz is the two-time defending champion. Advertisement His comeback against No. 1 Sinner from two sets down, then three championship points down, to win 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) was unprecedented at Roland-Garros. It was unforgettable. Alcaraz's coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, described his guy's best trait this way: 'His strength is (to) keep believing all the time, until the last ball is gone.' Carlos Alcaraz has five Grand Slam titles at age 22 Alcaraz's five Grand Slam titles at 22 — that's the age at which Nadal, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras also got to five; no one's done it younger — show how special he is. So does the Spaniard's 5-0 record in major finals, a career start surpassed among men only by Federer's 7-0. Sinner is pretty good, too. 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