Latest news with #AlexanderShevchenko
Wales Online
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Wimbledon star's wife announced divorce after 'impolite' questions from players
Wimbledon star's wife announced divorce after 'impolite' questions from players Anastasia Potapova opened up on her former relationship with fellow pro Alexander Shevchenko earlier this year after queries from other players forced her into action Alexander Shevchenko and Anastasia Potapova divorced in 2024 (Image: Getty ) Tennis star Anastasia Potapova has disclosed how persistent enquiries from fellow professionals within the sport prompted her to speak publicly about her separation from Alexander Shevchenko. Kazakhstani-born player Shevchenko suffered a first-round exit at Wimbledon this year following defeat by American player Reilly Opelka. Potapova pulled out before her opening match of the tournament. The famed event is now in its second week and British star Cameron Norrie has reason to celebrate after reaching the quarter-finals. Emma Raducanu however endured a tough defeat. Yet there is no All England Club joy for 24-year-old Potapova and Shevchenko, 24, who married in December 2023. Their relationship was first made public in 2022, but they parted ways after the US Open in September 2024. The World No. 41 addressed the breakdown at the start of the year, explaining her decision to speak openly about it. "I guess we had problems," she told Bolshe. "Some couples get over these problems, and some don't. Unfortunately, we were one of the couples that didn't." The Russian reflected on how the separation affected her whilst competing at the highest level, with both parties quickly unfollowing each other on social media before announcing their divorce. Article continues below She also revealed how probing questions, whilst acknowledging them as an inevitable consequence of public life, compelled her to address the situaton. Alexander Shevchenko and Anastasia Potapova are now divorced (Image: Getty ) "My team, my close ones, even me, we were all shocked by how mentally strong I could be," Potapova said. "Every other person came to me and asked, 'So what, you two broke up?' "On tour, outside the tour. Of course, it's not really polite, but it's life and people are curious. It's like a TV show for them I think I needed to put an end to it, to end things officially, so I wouldn't get those questions anymore. I think that was the last step I needed to finally set myself free." Discussing her support system, she continued: "I have incredible parents, who understand me the way I am," she said. "They never judge me, never judge my choices, 'Wedding? OK, we'll have a wedding. Divorce? Sad, painful, but how we help you?' "Mum had a great relationship with Sasha [Shevchenko]. I hope she still does. She actually supported both me and Sasha, worked two jobs, so to speak, and I'm grateful to her for it. Article continues below "Despite everything, I clung onto the last bits of my sanity, walked out on the court and played matches, and I wasn't even doing that bad. Of course, this year wasn't as successful as the previous one. But considering the circumstances, this season game me much more than any previous season of my life." She concluded: "I really wish Sasha - I can say it on camera, I'm not ashamed of these words- I really wish him all the best, and he deserves all the best. I wish him all the best with his career, as well, because he's very talented and he has to keep working and developing as a player." Potapova had been hoping to turn around her recent form on the tour, having failed to reach the quarter-finals in any of her previous nine tournaments. However, following her early departure from SW19, she will have to wait a bit longer for any such turnaround.
New York Times
07-03-2025
- Climate
- New York Times
Tennis bends to the wind's will at Indian Wells as desert weather blows players off course
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — For a tournament that bills itself as a tennis paradise, Indian Wells has a tendency to bring some Old Testament elements to the sport in the California desert. The sun that blazes down in the day is replaced with temperatures that can turn frigid at night. In a part of the world that sees rain around 14 days out of 365, a few always seem to land in the first fortnight of March, interrupting play. Last year, bees swarmed the main stadium. This year, the sworn enemy of tennis players at all levels — that rarely stops play, but defines its rhythm more than any other weather condition — is puppeting the small yellow ball they try to hit inside the white lines and driving them to distraction. Advertisement 'Bloody windy out there,' said Rinky Hijikata, the 24-year-old Australian who credited his childhood in a windy suburb of Sydney for getting through his first-round match with Alexander Shevchenko of Kazakhstan, 6-1, 6-3. Across the complex, 40mph gusts buffeted palm trees, sending serve tosses askew and wobbling balls through the air like a swerving soccer free kick. Hijikata said Thursday's wind wasn't just powerful: it seemed to be coming from every direction. Given that, there was only one way to survive, and it didn't involve taking dead aim at the lines to try to end points quickly. 'You got to give yourself big margins,' he said. 'You've got to hit the ball in the court and get your running shoes on.' Belinda Bencic, who followed her usual strategy as she prevailed over Tatjana Maria, had a similar approach. 'Trying to play with it, not trying to go for risky shots and just kind of playing a big target and working your legs hard.' 'Respect the wind,' she warned. Heat can be exhausting and rain can delay play, but wind is the most capricious. Much like a powerful first serve or groundstroke, its power over tennis means little without knowing its direction. If it's blowing up and down a court, parallel with the sidelines, the effects are more predictable. At one end, players have to be wary of overhitting with the breeze at their back. At the other, they have to be mindful of how much it will hold up their shots. The player receiving a ball with wind behind it needs to react quicker; if it's slowing a ball down, their footwork needs to take them to it and adjust to any sudden changes of direction. It doesn't usually work that cleanly. The breeze can howl off Flushing Bay some days at the U.S. Open in New York; Arthur Ashe Stadium, the main arena, was known for its vortexes before the installation of a partial roof in 2015. At the ATP Tour event held in Estoril, Portugal, just north of Lisbon, the wind off the Atlantic could make a mess of matches. Advertisement The winds in Indian Wells are of another sort, something that somehow slips most players' minds as they wax poetic about what is for many their favorite stop on the tennis calendar. The place is basically a wind machine thanks to its location between two sets of mountains, the San Jacintos and the San Bernardinos, in the Coachella Valley about 120 miles east of Los Angeles. The mountains act like a funnel; the hot air from the desert ground rises, and the cool air from above rushes in to take its place. On the outside courts, it will go in whatever direction it has chosen for the day. On the main arena, Stadium 1, the bowl structure and its doors and openings create currents and vortexes to which players have to adapt on the fly. You can literally see the wind just take the ball over mid-air — Owen (@kostekcanu) March 6, 2025 A desert wind can create other hazards as well. Bencic said she left the practice court last Friday with a mouthful of the desert's finest. 'It was like a sandstorm,' she said. The wind made for a troublesome first match for Joao Fonseca, the 18-year-old rising star from Brazil who is playing the tournament for the first time. Fonseca had to scramble back from break down in the third set against Jacob Fearnley of Britain to win his Indian Wells debut. Fonseca dominated Fearnley in the first set, as the Briton adjusted to the wind and figured out how to play aggressively in it. Fearnley might have expected to have an advantage. He played college tennis at Texas Christian University, which can be plenty gusty in its own right, especially at the T.C.U. home courts, which are built into a kind of bowl. 'A lot of it is mental,' Fearnley said. 'You can't really control what the weather is going to do, so you kind of just accept it and try and use it to the best of your ability.' Advertisement He seemed to have it mastered things, outhitting the Brazilian until a double fault allowed Fonseca to draw even in the deciding set. Fonseca didn't lose another game in the windiest match he could remember, in which his kick serve, jumping out of the ad-court and into Fearnley's backhand, shackled his opponent. His hat blew off at one point; a towel rolled onto the court and interrupted play during another. Players battling the wind as well as each other 🤝 The Towel had enough of this point 😆#Tennisparadise — Tennis TV (@TennisTV) March 6, 2025 'When it's windy, it's just a little mistake, and at this level it's just one point that you won the match,' he said. Still, the wind made Fonseca so uncomfortable that after the two-hour match he headed for the practice courts to hit for another half-hour and try to gain a feel for the ball. After Fonseca and Fearnley finished in the main stadium, it was Emma Raducanu's turn to try to figure out the elements. Raducanu was playing her first match since a spectator was removed from one of her matches for exhibiting fixated behavior toward her in Dubai last month. The person who appeared at her second-round match against Karolina Muchová had 'approached her, left her a note, took her photograph, and engaged in behaviour that caused her distress,' according to a statement from Dubai authorities. Indian Wells brought safety and plenty of support for her. 'I didn't have what happened in Dubai in my head at all today,' she said. Unfortunately for Raducanu, who thrives on rhythm and finding her groove, it also brought the kind of conditions that no player would want for a first match after a break. The wind, and the tricky challenges of Moyuka Uchijima, who mastered the conditions by varying her shots, proved too much in a 6-3, 6-2 defeat. 'Extremely awkward in the wind here,' said Raducanu, who was playing her first match with her new trial coach, Vladimir Platenik. Platenik previously coached Lulu Sun, who beat Raducanu at last year's Wimbledon, and top-15 mainstay Daria Kasatkina. 'A lot of balls that were very, very spinny on these courts in the day and in the wind,' Raducanu said. 'So it was just jumping up a lot, and then kind of short, like, almost like mishits. Advertisement 'I didn't really know what was coming.' As night fell and the temperature dropped, the wind died down. Of course, then the rain came, a cold steady drizzle that caused play to stop around 8:30 p.m. At 9:25 p.m., officials called off play for the night. Prior to the tournament, the BNP Paribas Open's decision to change its court provider had dominated discussion among the players about conditions. At first evidence, the new Laykold surface is still bouncy, with the desert sand and grit in its paint sending balls spinning out of strike zones and roughing up the felt. It's the swings in sun and cloud, hot and cold, and most of all, windy and calm that define conditions that Andrey Rublev has likened to playing four tournaments in one. If the forecast is right — always a big if in the desert — the gusts will be lighter in the coming days, making life on the tennis courts easier to handle. Unless the bees swarm again.
