Chun 'staying present' on cusp of Grand Slam
Entering the weekend at the Chevron Championship, Amy Rogers catches up with In Gee Chun about her chances to achieve the career Grand Slam at The Club at Carlton Woods.
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New York Times
30 minutes ago
- New York Times
Coco Gauff's French Open title and a journey into the tennis unknown
ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — When it happens twice, it's not an accident. Coco Gauff is on her way. Nearly two years after after her breakthrough win at the 2023 U.S. Open, Gauff staged a stirring comeback against the world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at the French Open, to capture her second Grand Slam title 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4. Advertisement After 2 hours and 38 minutes of tense and tight, often messy but occasionally breathtaking tennis from one of the great athletes on the planet, Gauff watched one last Sabalenka ball fly off the court. She collapsed on the the clay and rolled over face-first in the red dirt. She cupped her mouth with her hand in disbelief. She looked up at her parents, her father pumping his fist in the air; her mother jumping for joy. There was a hug for Sabalenka, who had made her way around to Gauff's side of the net, and another for Spike Lee, the film director seated in the front row, one of dozens of celebrities who had come to Paris for this, because that's what happens when Gauff plays in a match of this magnitude. And then came the joyous stroll up into the stands to find her parents and the rest of the crew. To find the people who had lifted her out of the dark moments last year, when she had to confront the fact that what happened on a September night in New York might never happen again. Gauff's win was for everyone who has ever looked in the mirror and felt that they are going backwards, not forwards. That what carried them to some early success isn't working anymore. That playing a long game, falling behind in the beginning, can make all the difference to coming out ahead at the end. It was also a win for everyone who has ever fought hard to keep their cool when things aren't going their way, when mistakes are coming hard and fast, when the conditions attached to a dream aren't the ones they wanted. That's what Gauff did on a windy and wild day in Paris, as Sabalenka did the opposite. The world No. 1 came unglued, screaming at her coaches. Then she announced to the world Gauff had not won because she had played well, but because Sabalenka had played terribly. All of this has been nearly a year in the making and anything but guaranteed. Change, especially the kind Gauff needed, carries plenty of risk. But the bigger risk lay in not trying something new, even if trying something new involved entirely remaking the two most important shots in tennis while trying to stay at the top of the sport. Advertisement Last September, just under a year on from her first great triumph, Gauff sat in a media room after hitting 19 double faults and missing countless forehands in a fourth-round defeat to Emma Navarro. The rest of the WTA Tour knew then that if they just stayed with her, put pressure on her serve and attacked her forehand, at some point, the house of cards would collapse. 'I don't want to lose matches like this anymore,' she said. Nine months later, through some long stretches of doubt, she has a second Grand Slam trophy for her parents to store at home in Florida. 'I didn't think honestly I could do it,' she said from the center of Court Philippe-Chatrier during the trophy ceremony. In her hotel room Friday night, trying to make herself believe, she wrote down over and over: 'I will be the French Open champion 2025.' Gabby Thomas, the Olympic 200-meter sprint gold medalist, had done her version of this ahead of the Paris Olympics last summer. 'I was just like looking myself in the mirror and I was telling myself just trying to put it in my brain, so I had that belief,' she said. How she did that involves the rarest of innate athletic ability, but also some even rarer qualities in a person as young as Gauff. An honesty about who she is as a tennis player and a person. The drive to see how good she might really be, even if she has already earned enough money and fame to live without ever enduring another weight or track session in her life. Even before the 2023 U.S. Open, Gauff was so much more than a tennis player. She is an avatar for a certain type of worldly, TikTok savvy, Gen-Z female strength. The first Grand Slam boosted her stature tenfold, landing her on the cover of Vogue and the red carpet at the Oscars. She is the world's highest-paid female athlete. That's not what Gauff is in this for. So she plunged headlong into the unknown. Advertisement Out went the big-name coach, Brad Gilbert, who had helped her to that maiden Grand Slam title in 2023. In came a virtual unknown named Matt Daly, who, along with her longtime coach Jean-Christophe Faurel, convinced her that she was capable of big things once again — if she embraced change. How radical? How about changing the way she holds her racket when she serves, even if she's been doing it one way for a decade? How about leaning in on her forehand and seizing the initiative, instead of leaning back and resorting to defense too often. A metaphor if ever there was one, because this has always been about more than tennis for Gauff, a Black American athlete trying, in her words, 'to use her racket to change the world.' 'There's a lot going on in our country right now,' Gauff said in her post-match news conference, the shiny silver trophy beside her. She was here to represent people who look like her, 'who maybe don't feel as supported during this time period, and so just being that reflection of hope and light.' Last fall, at the start of all those changes, it looked like getting an opportunity to do that might take a while. Four months, maybe six. Maybe more. But, eventually, the serve was going to be more assured and she was going to be able to boss her way around the court as she never had against the best players in the world, being the aggressor rather than the counterpuncher, if that was what the moment required. Very quickly, Gauff was all in. She doesn't do much halfway, and she didn't on Saturday, on the court or off it, even if this was a match in which she had to inhabit the role of supporting actor in the face of Sabalenka's desire to play first-strike from the off. She'd won one of these Grand Slams already, but she said this one was harder. In between, she'd had five more shots at a second, and the closest she had come was a semifinal. She didn't want to be a one-hit wonder, and she really wanted this title. With her speed, endurance and willingness to fight the wars of attrition that red clay can require, she had heard for years that this tournament offered her one of her best shots at a major. Advertisement 'I just felt like if I went through my career and didn't get at least one of these, I would feel regrets,' she said. She'd already had plenty of those. Before facing Iga Świątek in 2022, she cried, because she was so nervous. She struggled to breathe. She knew she'd lost before she'd even hit the first ball. Świątek rolled her over and went on to dominate this tournament as few have done. Until this year, when Sabalenka under the roof proved one set too many. On Saturday, Gauff said she felt ready to leave her heart and her lungs on the court, and regardless of the result she could leave proud. Gauff fell behind early in the first set but clawed her way back as Sabalenka's errors mounted, and she grew more confident that she could put the ball past her when she needed to. She also began to weather Sabalenka's blistering returns, watching more and more of them pound into the net. She started reading the drop shots and legging out the net battles. Still, she ended up on the short end of a 77-minute first set when Sabalenka grabbed the last three points of a tiebreak. No one knew it then, but that would be as good as it got for Sabalenka. Gauff sat on her chair and told herself to take the pressure off the match. Losing would not be the end of the world. She hates losing, but it happens. She'd go home, she'd see her boyfriend, she'd reset. 'I was able to loosen up after that and play a little bit freer,' she said. In weathering the Sabalenka storm but losing the set, she had also forced her opponent to confront her own discomfort. A 6-1 or 6-2 blowout and Sabalenka, who was less able to deal with the intangibles of wind and weather than Gauff, would have been relaxed. The grind she got pulled into sent her into a spiral from which she could not recover. Gauff embraced Sabalenka's descent from a first-strike machine with a lethal drop shot into a player swinging from side to side, trying anything to keep Gauff off balance but, in doing so, sending the American into the side-to-side defense dance that she can do better and longer than anyone in the world. Gauff applied just enough pressure to let the wind and Sabalenka's brain do the work. Advertisement When it was over, Sabalenka's mind was still a jumble, claiming that some supernatural force had sent ball after ball off the frame of Gauff's racket into the corners of the court, 'like somebody from above was just staying there laughing, like: 'let's see if you can handle this.'' The person asking her if she could handle this was actually on the other side of the net. Gauff knew it had been a decade since her inspiration, Serena Williams, — or any other American — had won this title. Williams helped her dream that she could one day do it. With 15,000 people in the stadium chanting her name as the win grew closer, she had her chance to do that for someone else, 'to represent the Americans that look like me and people who support the things that I support.' Nine months after the start of her journey into the unknown, she found out what it was all for. Deep down, she had always known.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Aryna Sabalenka's ‘terrible' French Open final and the intangibles of tennis
ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — Aryna Sabalenka made no effort to hide her disappointment after losing the French Open final to Coco Gauff Saturday, repeatedly calling her performance 'terrible' and saying it was 'the worst tennis I've played in the last, I don't know how many months.' 'It's just a joke,' she said. Advertisement She offered that analysis once she'd left Court Philippe-Chatrier, after a 6-7(5), 6-2, 6-4 defeat. In her on-court interview, Sabalenka eschewed the usual platitudes and the customary opening line congratulating the winner and their team, and went straight for self-flagellation. After fighting back tears, she said: 'Honestly guys this will hurt so much, especially after such a tough two weeks, playing great tennis and in these terrible conditions playing such terrible tennis in the final — that really hurts.' 'Coco, congrats in these tough conditions. You were the better player than me. Congrats on a great two weeks,' she said. In her news conference, Sabalenka went for the jugular again. This time, she focused not on her own shortcomings, but on the weather conditions that had defined the type of tennis being played. 'Conditions were terrible, and she simply was better in these conditions than me. I think it was the worst final I ever played.' Advertisement Sabalenka's devastation was understandable. She is the world No. 1 and has now lost two Grand Slam finals in a row, both in three sets, both having been the big favorite. Five months ago, Madison Keys beat her in Melbourne to win her first major, and in Paris Gauff thwarted Sabalenka's bid for the non hard-court slam that would rubberstamp her evolution into an all-court player. The match was on her racket, but Sabalenka hit 70 unforced errors compared to just 37 winners as she struggled to cope with the factors outside of her control. Namely the wind, an inspired Gauff and the pressure of what was at stake. Given the chance to praise Gauff's inspired defensive showing, Sabalenka said that her opponent had won the match 'by running and playing those high balls from the frame,' before saying directly that Gauff had framed, or mishit, numerous shots. 'She was hitting the ball from the frame. Somehow magically the ball lands in the court … Yeah, it's just, you know, like — it felt like a joke, honestly, like somebody from above was just staying there laughing, like, 'let's see if you can handle this.' Advertisement 'I think she won the match not because she played incredible; just because I made all of those mistakes from if you look from the outside, from easy balls.' Tennis is seen as a 50-50 battle, but matchups and gamestyles mean that this is not always the case. Gauff won Saturday's final by assuming the role of supporting actor to Sabalenka the protagonist, knowing that the match was not on her racket and making her greatest assets — her court coverage, lateral movement, and baseline defense — the most important things in the match. She played the conditions. Sabalenka did not, saying afterward that as the match wore on and it got windier, she became 'overemotional.' She compared her unraveling to the last time she played Gauff in a Grand Slam final, at the U.S. Open two years ago. 'Another terrible performance from me against Coco in the final,' she said. Sabalenka added that had the four-time champion Iga Świątek beaten her in Thursday's semifinal, 'I think she would go out today and she would get the win.' Advertisement In her own news conference, Gauff responded. 'I mean, I don't agree with that. I'm here sitting here,' she said. 'Last time I played — no shade to Iga or anything, but I played her and I won in straight sets. Yeah, I don't think that's a fair thing to say, because anything can really happen.' This leaves Sabalenka in a strange place. She remains world No. 1 by a distance, but she hasn't won a Grand Slam title and has been way below her best level in both finals. Throughout the match, she seemed uncomfortable with the shifts in momentum occasioned, in part, by the complicated conditions. But a similar shift happened against Świątek: in both matches, Sabalenka led 4-1, had a point for 5-1, and was pulled back into a tiebreak, one under the roof and one in the open air. Against Świątek under the roof, Sabalenka reset, one less intangible to fight. Against Gauff, the collection of intangibles — the weather, the stakes, the history — appeared to overwhelm her. And for regular watchers of her matches, her reaction to Saturday's defeat was essentially an extension of how she reacts to smaller moments of disappointment within matches: berating herself and not accepting that occasionally her opponents will be too good. This kind of mentality is part of what drives great champions. But is showing it always helpful? Advertisement Her performance coach Jason Stacy was asked this question in a news conference Friday and pointed to one of the team's mantras: 'Don't fight it, don't feed it.' He expanded by saying: 'We don't want to fight this, because the stress, anxiety, the pressure, the mistakes, all those things are going to be there, so you can't pretend it's not going to be a thing, but you don't want to feed it either and give it too much energy or power.' Asked if Sabalenka's frustrations were a boost, Gauff said that she didn't read too much into it, but: 'Obviously when you see your opponent frustrated in any circumstance, if it's tough or not, obviously it does uplift you just because you know that they're frustrated.' Sabalenka will head to the Greek island of Mykonos to recharge and in her words indulge in 'tequila, gummy bears, and swimming.' She laughed as she said that she would be 'like the tourist for couple of days'. But even as she tried to lighten the mood and look ahead to her holiday, she couldn't help but go back to lambasting the events of the previous few hours. Advertisement 'I just need couple of days to completely forget about this crazy world and this crazy — if I could swear, I would swear right now, about this crazy thing that happened today,' she said. 'I think everyone understands. I'm just trying to be very polite right now, but there is no other word that could describe what just happened today on the court.' All things being equal, Sabalenka is undoubtedly the best player in the world. But tennis matches are not equal. It's how she manages the intangibles that can shape them that will define the next phase of her career. This article originally appeared in The Athletic. Tennis, Women's Tennis 2025 The Athletic Media Company
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Sabalenka takes out Swiatek to reach French Open final
Aryna Sabalenka has reached five of the past seven Grand Slam finals [Getty Images] French Open 2025 Dates: 25 May-8 June Venue: Roland Garros Coverage: Live radio commentaries across 5 Live Sport and BBC Sounds, plus live text commentaries on the BBC Sport website and app World number one Aryna Sabalenka moved a step closer to a maiden French Open title by taking out four-time champion Iga Swiatek in a blockbuster semi-final. Sabalenka will meet second seed Coco Gauff in Saturday's showpiece after the American ruthlessly ended French wildcard Lois Boisson's incredible run. Advertisement Belarus' Sabalenka earned a 7-6 (7-1) 4-6 6-0 victory to end fifth seed Swiatek's 26-match winning run at the tournament. After a slow start on the Roland Garros clay, Poland's Swiatek fought back to level but Sabalenka dominated a 22-minute deciding set. Sabalenka, whose three Grand Slam titles have all come on hard courts, has never reached the Paris final before. "It feels incredible but the job is not done yet. I'm thrilled with my performance," the 27-year-old said. "Iga is the toughest opponent, especially at Roland Garros, I'm proud I managed to get this win." Advertisement Gauff, runner-up to Swiatek in 2022, won 6-1 6-2 against world number 361 Boisson, who was appearing in her first Grand Slam main draw. Sabalenka dominance underlines Swiatek uncertainty This was the potential match that everyone had their eye on when the French Open draw was made: the 'Queen of Clay' against the world number one in the crunch stages. Swiatek and Sabalenka have claimed six of the past 10 majors between them and dominated the WTA Tour over the past three years. But with Swiatek dropping to fifth in the world after a turbulent season, it was Sabalenka who came into Roland Garros as the favourite. Advertisement The magnitude of the eagerly-anticipated encounter appeared to affect both players in an edgy opening set. With the roof closed because of the wet weather in Paris, Sabalenka initially settled quicker in the heavier conditions that suit her game. The pace of Sabalenka's returning was too hot for Swiatek and allowed the top seed to quickly move a double break ahead. Swiatek took a step back in her baseline position to better absorb the pace and, after being a point away from going 5-1 behind, battled back. Iga Swiatek saw her serve broken eight times during the match [Getty Images] The tweak helped a sharper Swiatek elongate the rallies and put more pressure on Sabalenka's serve, with the Pole winning the next three games to move 5-4 ahead. Advertisement With both players looking tight, momentum continued to fluctuate. Swiatek's serve buckled, Sabalenka could not serve out the set at 6-5 and a nervy encounter was ultimately decided on a tie-break dominated by the Belarusian. Three successive breaks - down to quality returning as much as poor serving - began the second set before Swiatek settled down to maintain the advantage and force a decider. However, Swiatek's serve suddenly dropped off again and allowed Sabalenka to quickly reach her fifth final in the past seven Grand Slam tournaments. "I think I lost my intensity a bit," said Swiatek. Advertisement "She played as strong as in the first set, but I didn't react to that well and just couldn't push back." Boisson's thrilling run comes to an end For the first time since 2011, fans had a home player to cheer in the women's semi-finals - and nobody could have guessed it would be Boisson. The 22-year-old's journey from an unknown player returning from serious injury to a Grand Slam semi-finalist competing with the world's best is extraordinary. Boisson was set to be a wildcard entry last year but had to pull out after tearing an anterior cruciate ligament just a week before the French Open began. Advertisement But 12 months on, she returned to make a remarkable run that will never be forgotten by French fans. Taking the scalps of third seed Jessica Pegula and sixth seed Mirra Andreeva put her into a first career semi-final on the biggest stage of all. However, Gauff proved to be a step too far. Despite having the backing of a raucous crowd on Court Philippe Chatrier, the energy provided was not enough to compensate for Boisson's lack of quality. Gauff dominated the rallies, breaking Boisson's serve six times before wrapping up victory in one hour and nine minutes.
