Latest news with #StefanosTsitsipas
The Hindu
a day ago
- Sport
- The Hindu
Stefanos Tsitsipas appoints Goran Ivanisevic as coach to arrest slide
Stefanos Tsitsipas appointed Goran Ivanisevic as his new coach, as the former world number three looks to resurrect his career after a string of disappointing results at the Grand Slams. Former French Open finalist Tsitsipas suffered a second-round defeat by qualifier Matteo Gigante at Roland Garros on Wednesday, making the 26-year-old Greek player's his earliest departure from Paris since 2018. With two match wins in total in his last four Grand Slams, Tsitsipas has turned to the former coach of Novak Djokovic to turn his fortunes around. 'This exciting collaboration comes just in time for the 2025 grass court season, as the Greek star looks to elevate his performance on one of the most prestigious surfaces in the sport,' read a statement from the Iconico Talent Agency, which Tsitsipas posted on Instagram on Thursday. Ivanisevic helped Djokovic claim nine of his 24 Grand Slam titles before leaving his team in March last year and then had a short stint with Elena Rybakina this 2025 season. ALSO READ | French Open 2025: Zverev wards off De Jong challenge to sail into third round The Croatian, who won Wimbledon in 2001 as a player, has also coached Marin Cilic, Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic. Tsitsipas, once considered a future major champion, is ranked 20th in the world -- the lowest he has been in almost seven years -- and following Wednesday's loss he will drop outside the top 20 for the first time since 2018. Wimbledon will begin on June 30.
The Star
2 days ago
- Sport
- The Star
Tennis-Tsitsipas appoints Ivanisevic as coach to arrest slide
Tennis - French Open - Roland Garros, Paris, France - May 28, 2025 Greece's Stefanos Tsitsipas in action during his second round match against Italy's Matteo Gigante REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes PARIS (Reuters) -Stefanos Tsitsipas appointed Goran Ivanisevic as his new coach, as the former world number three looks to resurrect his career after a string of disappointing results at the Grand Slams. Former French Open finalist Tsitsipas suffered a second-round defeat by qualifier Matteo Gigante at Roland Garros on Wednesday, the 26-year-old Greek player making his earliest departure from Paris since 2018. With two match wins in total in his last four Grand Slams, Tsitsipas has turned to the former coach of Novak Djokovic to turn his fortunes around. "This exciting collaboration comes just in time for the 2025 grass court season, as the Greek star looks to elevate his performance on one of the most prestigious surfaces in the sport," read a statement from the Iconico Talent Agency, which Tsitsipas posted on Instagram on Thursday. Ivanisevic helped Djokovic claim nine of his 24 Grand Slam titles before leaving his team in March last year and then had a short stint with Elena Rybakina this 2025 season. The Croatian, who won Wimbledon in 2001 as a player, has also coached Marin Cilic, Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic. Tsitsipas, once considered a future major champion, is ranked 20th in the world -- the lowest he has been in almost seven years -- and following Wednesday's loss he will drop outside the top 20 for the first time since 2018. Wimbledon will begin on June 30. (Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in ParisEditing by Christian Radnedge)
Straits Times
2 days ago
- Sport
- Straits Times
Tsitsipas appoints Ivanisevic as coach to arrest slide
Tennis - French Open - Roland Garros, Paris, France - May 28, 2025 Greece's Stefanos Tsitsipas in action during his second round match against Italy's Matteo Gigante REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Tennis - French Open - Roland Garros, Paris, France - May 28, 2025 Greece's Stefanos Tsitsipas in action during his second round match against Italy's Matteo Gigante REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes PARIS - Stefanos Tsitsipas appointed Goran Ivanisevic as his new coach, as the former world number three looks to resurrect his career after a string of disappointing results at the Grand Slams. Former French Open finalist Tsitsipas suffered a second-round defeat by qualifier Matteo Gigante at Roland Garros on Wednesday, the 26-year-old Greek player making his earliest departure from Paris since 2018. With two match wins in total in his last four Grand Slams, Tsitsipas has turned to the former coach of Novak Djokovic to turn his fortunes around. "This exciting collaboration comes just in time for the 2025 grass court season, as the Greek star looks to elevate his performance on one of the most prestigious surfaces in the sport," read a statement from the Iconico Talent Agency, which Tsitsipas posted on Instagram on Thursday. Ivanisevic helped Djokovic claim nine of his 24 Grand Slam titles before leaving his team in March last year and then had a short stint with Elena Rybakina this 2025 season. The Croatian, who won Wimbledon in 2001 as a player, has also coached Marin Cilic, Tomas Berdych and Milos Raonic. Tsitsipas, once considered a future major champion, is ranked 20th in the world -- the lowest he has been in almost seven years -- and following Wednesday's loss he will drop outside the top 20 for the first time since 2018. Wimbledon will begin on June 30. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
New York Times
2 days ago
- Health
- New York Times
How tennis players manage a rapid rise, fall and the climb back after injury or loss of form
ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — They are everywhere in tennis these days. Flying up the rankings not so long ago, ready to take over the sport. Now they are in their mid-20s, a combination of chastened and determined, embarking on the next quest — one a little different from that first, carefree rise. On Wednesday, Americans Amanda Anisimova and Reilly Opelka and Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece all took their turns on the comeback trail, with Anisimova leading the way. Advertisement Anisimova was a semifinalist here in 2019, when she was just 17 and tennis felt like an ever-upward adventure. That was before her father and coach, Konstantine, died of a heart attack at 52. That grief, injuries, and disillusionment with the toll of professional tennis led her to take an extended break from the sport. Her journey carried her to the top 25 in her teens, then brought her down to the 400s. Now, she is surging once more, with a career high of No. 16. On Thursday, Denis Shapovalov of Canada and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain, two flashy players with occasional magic in their hands that has sent them up and down and now back up the ladder, were trying to turn their runs of bad luck or bad health or bad decisions, or even a combination of all three, into something positive. So were Sofia Kenin and Markéta Vondroušová, two Grand Slam champions finding a new way, as Anisimova has done better than just about anyone out there this year. 'I think back then when I was younger, there just wasn't much pressure and everything was kind of new to me,' Anisimova said in an interview Wednesday following her 6-0, 6-2 win against Viktorija Golubic on Court 14, the fourth-choice assignment at Roland Garros. She said there is an upside to the roller coaster quality of her career. 'I've played on all these big stages and I can trust my game,' she said. 'It's more about the experience and trying to take that with me and use that to my advantage.' Davidovich Fokina and Vondroušová neatly encapsulated the difficulty of the second rise. Davidovich Fokina, who has beaten then-world No. 5 Jack Draper and pushed world No. 3 Alexander Zverev and No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz this clay season, fell to Jiří Lehečka in four, mostly one-sided sets despite threatening a comeback. Vondroušová took the first set against Poland's Magdalena Fręch 6-0, lost the second, but emerged victorious in the third. Advertisement For most players, pursuing a tennis career isn't like climbing the corporate ladder. There are fits and spurts, peaks and valleys, burnout, injuries and a host of other challenges. Most often, tennis is about falling and rising back up again. Learning from what happened and applying those lessons to what comes next is just as important as adding a couple of extra miles per hour to a first serve. The art of the tennis comeback can involve radical and organic alterations. Davidovich Fokina changed just about everything — his coach, his fitness trainer, his physiotherapist, his agent, his daily routines, his attitude. He even moved out of his lifelong home in Málaga, Spain, to Monaco, choosing the opportunity to practice with the best players in the world (Jannik Sinner, Zverev, Grigor Dimitrov, occasionally Novak Djokovic) over hang time with his posse. During an interview in Rome this month, Davidovich Fokina said that he was in his 'comfort zone' in Málaga. 'It took me a couple of years since I started in ATP to realize what I want to do with my life, what I want to do with myself, with everything,' he said. He said he has plenty of regrets. He wishes he had moved to Monaco or Dubai sooner, or spent some time there to see how differently the best players lived and trained. On the practice court, he said he brings purpose to every drill and every ball. In matches, he has cut out the silly stuff – no more wild attempts at winners from 10 feet behind the baseline. No more underarm serves at 8-8 in a fifth-set tiebreak against Holger Rune at Wimbledon. Davidovich Fokina is trying to emulate players who come to the court with patience and without anxiety. 'If I'm relaxed, playing solid, I can play aggressive but not like crazy,' he said. Some tennis reorgs go better than others. Advertisement Tsitsipas has changed just about everything, too. That involved firing his father, who had been his coach for a decade, and switching from a Wilson to a Babolat racket and then back again to Wilson when the Babolat racket didn't produce for him on clay the way it did on hard courts. The 2021 French Open and 2023 Australian Open finalist is down to No. 25 in the rankings. He lost Wednesday to the world No. 167, Matteo Gigante of Italy, in four sets, struggling to hit his once lethal backhand much beyond the service line on points he had to win. 'It's a constant puzzle,' Tsitsipas said in his news conference. 'Things have definitely changed over the last couple of years, and I am in a completely different position now. 'I just need to use my experience a little bit more wisely. My experience sometimes kind of stabs me.' Several players trying to climb back up the mountain struggle with the false memory of themselves. They imagine that they were once a perfect player. 'I'm not the same guy that I was seven years ago,' said Shapovalov, who is 26 and has been working his way back from a knee injury for more than a year and a half. 'Physically, tennis-wise, everything.' Shapovalov didn't make many radical shifts. He spent last year chasing rankings points, skipping the Olympics in Paris because the tournament didn't offer any points and it was on clay, his worst surface. Better to get a jump on the North American hard-court swing in Washington, D.C. and be ready to go for his home Masters 1,000. Opelka, who was No. 17 in 2022 before two wrist surgeries, is in the same boat, strategically using his protected ranking entries into the tournaments that will help him optimize his ranking. He's 11-9 on the year and has gone up 200 spots, but at No. 93, is still far from where he wants to be. Advertisement 'Once you have one surgery on your wrist, let alone two, you're never going to be the same player,' he said. 'You're pretty much done.' Opelka, a big server who is nearly 7 foot, said he just wants to stick around long enough to see if he has anything left. He lost Wednesday to Mariano Navone of Argentina. 'If it's anything like this, it won't last long. I didn't play tennis to be the 90th best player in the world,' he said. Neither did Shapovalov. He's seeded 27th at this French Open. A year ago, he was ranked No 118. Like Anisimova, he's found that, having made the climb once before, his blood pressure doesn't rise the way it once did when the big tests come. 'I don't get as anxious as I used to early in my career,' he said. Kenin, the Australian Open champion in 2020 and a finalist here that year, is getting back to that spot, too. She won so often at 21 that she didn't think the ride would ever end. Then it did, and she didn't know how to make it stop as she fell into the 400s. She's up to No. 30 now and faces Victoria Azarenka Thursday. She didn't have a plan to deal with the decline. It took a while to come to terms with having to work harder on the practice court and in the gym. 'You're not always going to be a tennis player, so obviously it's for your future as well,' Kenin, 26, said in Paris. Vondroušová, the 2023 Wimbledon champion, had thought that future had arrived for her. Last year, she couldn't swing a tennis racket after surgery on her shoulder. She would try to play. The pain would return. Another surgery wasn't an option. She had spent hours in the gym doing physical therapy without the payoff of actually playing tennis. 'It's not fun,' said Vondroušová, also 25. 'I had to be very patient.' Three months ago, she got a dog, an Italian greyhound named Milo. That helped, and the payoff finally came Tuesday, when she played and won her first Grand Slam match in a year. At this point, just being able to compete without intense pain feels like the biggest payoff, though Thursday's upset of Fręch in the second round was a nice bonus. Advertisement 'Very surprised,' said the woman who was on an operating table nine months ago, when everyone else was playing the U.S. Open. There was a bit of discomfort in her shoulder, and when the match got tight in the third set, she wasn't sure if she'd remember how to compete under pressure. She told herself that's what she came to Paris for and to forget about how exhausted she was. 'That's what you cannot get in practice,' she said. 'I was like, 'OK, let's try, you know to do it this way.' You need those matches.' Vondroušová said she and her physio tweaked their routine with more stretching and less stress. If something hurts, they stop doing it. The health of the body is everything. That's about where Anisimova is, after managing back pain in recent months and, for the first time, hiring a full-time physiotherapist. It's not anything she had to worry about when she was a teen phenom. 'It's just part of learning and adjusting how to manage certain things and when to take time off,' she said. 'You're always trying to figure out how to stay on top.' (Top photo of Markéta Vondroušová: Alain Jocard / AFP via Getty Images)
New York Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The twilight of the tennis sandwich generation, foiled by the Big Three, Sinner and Alcaraz
ROLAND GARROS, PARIS — The 'sandwich generation' of men's tennis increasingly look like the lost boys. They are the players born in the 1990s who were tipped for big things, but suffered a double misfortune of circumstance. The first was that they entered the sport when it was in the vice-like grip of the Big Three: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Those three hoovered up titles for longer than anybody expected, and no sooner had their collective powers waned than Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner arrived, seemingly fully formed, to steal away the promises that were made to the children of the 1990s. Advertisement In the last couple of days at the French Open, their diminishing hopes of staying among the truly elite have dwindled further. Daniil Medvedev, 29 and the only one still active to win a Grand Slam, lost on Tuesday to the world No. 81 Cameron Norrie. On Wednesday, Casper Ruud (26) was beaten in four sets by world No. 41 Nuno Borges, and revealed afterwards that he's been suffering for almost two months with a knee problem. Stefanos Tsitsipas (26), a two-time Grand Slam finalist and one-time Next Big Thing, was beaten by Matteo Gigante, the 23-year-old Italian No. 167 who has never been inside the world's top 100. As the second round winds down, world No. 3 Alexander Zverev (28) and No. 15 Andrey Rublev (27) remain, but neither are in great form. Twilight has fallen in Paris on a cohort of tennis players whose window of opportunity has less slammed shut than never truly opened. Only two men born in the 1990s have won a Grand Slam — Medvedev and Dominic Thiem, who retired in 2024 and attributed his relatively early exit from the sport to the demands of keeping up with Federer, Nadal, Djokovic and Andy Murray. They arrived in the middle of the 2010s, when the ATP Tour was in need of a crop of young players to offer a future for a sport that had become more relevant than it had been for some years, thanks to the Big Three's rivalries. Zverev, Tsitsipas, Medvedev and Matteo Berrettini, the Italian who had to miss this French Open through injury, were chief among them. Ruud and Rublev were never quite tipped in the same way, but Ruud's three Grand Slam finals — one defeat to Alcaraz, one to Nadal and one to Djokovic — before turning 25 changed the record. All of them have had great results along the way, with Medvedev spending 16 weeks at world No. 1 as well as winning the 2021 U.S. Open. All of them have won ATP Masters 1,000 titles and all of them bar one has has reached a Grand Slam final, but, Zverev aside, all of them feel further away from winning one than ever. Advertisement In the long view, the Big Three won 66 Grand Slam titles between them; Alcaraz and Sinner have shared the last five majors. Of the original four, Medvedev's 16 weeks at world No. 1 pale in comparison to a combined 1,034 for the Big Three, Alcaraz and Sinner — 947 between Federer, Nadal and Djokovic; 36 for Alcaraz and 51 and counting for Sinner. More immediately and concerningly, all of them are showing signs that the unfulfilled expectations and desires are getting to them. Medvedev, like many players — Zverev included — has complained about the balls on the ATP Tour. He believes that they are so slow and heavy that players can no longer hit winners, except for players like Alcaraz or Sinner who can generate frightening pace from just about anywhere on the court. The Russian has started changing his strings mid-match in the hope that doing so might give him an edge, and did so on Tuesday against Norrie, but ultimately to no avail. It's true that a combination of slower balls and faster courts favors players like Alcaraz and Sinner once rallies begin, because they are able to go on attack or use the front of the court more effectively than players who have less power, or more discomfort at the net. Where Medvedev had an edge was his serve. Together with Zverev, his ability to win free points and then counterpunch — or employ his octopus-like defense to steal more points — fundamentally altered men's tennis, relegating one-dimensional big-servers to irrelevance and testing Nadal and Djokovic, who had perfected baseline tennis in their primes. What was once revolutionary eventually looks out of date. 'It's just tennis,' Medvedev said in a news conference after losing to Norrie, and he's right: the game changes and players who cannot keep up are left behind. Tsitsipas also acknowledged pre-tournament that the rest of the field is stronger. 'I feel like the lineup right now is much more difficult than it was back then (2021),' he said in a news conference. Advertisement 'Players are so much more mature. Shots have changed. Players have second forehands in this very moment. I have to adapt my game. 'Tennis is very much different now than it was before Jannik and Carlos come around the corner.' After losing to Gigante, Tsitsipas said that he needed to use his experience on the tour 'more wisely,' explaining that of late it 'stabs him,' rather than being of use. Where Medevdev changed his strings, Tsistipas tried to find salvation in a new racket. He changed it earlier in the year and waxed lyrical after winning the Dubai Tennis Championships in March. But he found that the new racket was causing him lower-back pain when the clay swing started, and so he reverted to the old one. And after losing to Gigante, Tsitsipas will drop out of the world's top 20 for the first time since August 2018. Ruud, who like Medvedev will be out of the world's top 10 when the rankings update a week on Monday, can identify with the feeling of the tennis world passing him by. At the ATP Tour Finals last November, Ruud said in an interview that Sinner and Alcaraz's way of playing had made him reconsider everything. 'They can turn around the point with one shot on the run, even from the forehand or backhand,' he said. 'That's something in the next weeks and months I'll try to keep working on. But I'm not going to change my game in one day or one week. It's going to take time.' Five months later, Ruud hadn't made much progress. 'My game style is vulnerable to big hitters,' he said in a huddle at the Madrid Open. 'For flat hitters and those guys who play aggressive. When it goes in for them, I struggle to find answers.' Ruud went on to win the Madrid Open, his first at 1,000 level, a rung below the Grand Slams. Then he faced Sinner, on the Italian's return to tennis in Rome. The world No. 1 eviscerated the Norwegian 6-0, 6-1, with Ruud's gently disbelieving reaction betraying a player watching their specialism pass them by. Advertisement Rublev, who reacted similarly after João Fonseca dismantled him at the Australian Open, has sought to manage the self-flagellating anger that has marked his worst moments on court, but still feels further away from the top of the sport than ever. On Tuesday, after a spotty four-set win over world No. 227 Lloyd Harris, he said of Sinner and Alcaraz: 'They're the best players at the moment. I don't know what else to say. I mean, I'm trying to improve, get better. We'll see.' Then there's Zverev, who is in a different but no less difficult place. He reached the Australian Open final in January, and the French Open final last year and is, in theory, closer than ever to winning that elusive first Grand Slam. It doesn't feel that way. The pasting he took from Sinner in Melbourne four months ago underlined the chasm that exists between Zverev and the top two. The German talked about trying to change his mindset ahead of that final, putting in extra practice to try and bridge the gap. The end result was the same. 'I wish I would not have had the three greatest players of all time for the first 10 years of my career, because I think I would have won maybe one or two Slams by now,' Zverev said in his pre-French Open news conference. 'At the same time, it was a privilege playing them and I enjoyed every moment of it.' What is happening to Zverev and his cohort happened to generations before them and will happen to Alcaraz and Sinner one day. But enjoying every moment? It doesn't feel like that right now. (Top photo of Stefanos Tsitsipas: Aurelien Morissard / Associated Press)
