History – Heavy Topspin

The Tensions of Exhibition Tennis

*The 2019 Laver Cup. Credit: Sportsfan77777*

2024 was a good year for exhibition tennis. The Saudi-banked Six Kings Slam set a new standard for prize money. Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz took the long tradition of Las Vegas tennis challenges to Netflix. The Ultimate Tennis Showdown made three glitzy stops. Novak Djokovic helped Argentina celebrate Juan Martin del Potro. Even Scandinavia got involved, with a home-and-home duel showcasing Casper Ruud and Holger Rune.

The tennis season is long. Put enough money on the table, though, and it can always get longer.

Exhibitions tend to highlight the gaps between the game’s haves and have-nots. Even the official tours are headed in that direction. The ATP and WTA aim to trim the number of small events to better focus attention on longer, 1000-level tournaments. Rumors persist of a Premier League-style “super tour” that would go even further.

It’s a delicate balance. You can’t hold exhibitions without bona fide stars. You can’t have stars without universally recognized events like Wimbledon. And you can’t have Wimbledon without a thriving ecosystem of tournaments that both identify contenders and allow future champions to develop. The Six Kings Slam was about as far as you could possibly get from an ATP 250 in Santiago, but one relies–however indirectly–on the other.

These tensions are not new. There has always been a scarcity of megastars whose celebrity transcended a couple dozen standard tour stops. Though the ultra-bankable Big Four is fading into history, other trends–exemplified by Saudi money and Netflix-style starmaking–will continue to raise the incentives for exhibition-style tennis. It’s too early to tell whether things will get better or worse, but they’ll almost certainly get different.

How did we get here?

For nearly as long as there have been tennis champions, there have been promoters trying to put them in front of more fans for more money. In 1926, Suzanne Lenglen, the greatest woman player up to that time, became the first superstar to go pro. Her 40-stop series was more like a modern concert tour than anything in the tennis world. She made $100,000 for three months’ work, the equivalent of nearly $2 million today.

Lenglen soon hung up her racket, but the template had been proven. For the final four decades of the amateur era, a rotating cast of standout players from Bill Tilden to Rod Laver slogged through grueling barnstorming tours. Apart from occasional appearances in New York, London, and Australia, it wasn’t glamorous. But it was a more reliable living than taking under-the-table “expense money” from organizers of amateur events.

It didn’t take long before the business model became clear. A pro tour could support four athletes: Two big names (preferably rivals), plus two more who could play a warm-up match, then later join their colleagues for doubles. The tour did best when one of the headliners was a recent Wimbledon champion. It wasn’t unusual for the newly-minted titlist at the All-England Club to sign a contract within days of collecting his trophy.

Attempts to broaden the base of professional tennis usually failed–or, at least, didn’t become any more than another quickie tour stop. To fill out a proper tournament field, promoters had to invite retired champions and teaching pros. The would-be pro “majors” had an appeal not unlike a senior tour event, giving fans a chance to see, say, Don Budge far past his prime.

Amateur officials, as you might expect, detested this state of affairs. Wimbledon was turned into a glorified qualifying tournament, the winner to receive a six-figure check to never appear at SW19 again. While they could have stopped the exodus by offering prize money, it’s easy to sympathize. The pro tour was a parasite, trading on the fame of stars it did nothing to create.

Won’t get fooled again

The Open era kicked off in 1968, quickly consigning amateur tournaments to also-ran status. A few players began to get rich, and it was possible to make a living as a second-tier tour regular. Within a decade, though, exhibition tennis threatened the burgeoning pro circuit.

The tennis boom of the 1970s created vast numbers of fans, and with the help of television, the era’s stars became more famous than ever before. The 1973 Battle of the Sexes was not just a turning point for women in sport. It proved the potential of a one-off spectacle. Why bother with a whole tournament when you could pit Jimmy Connors against Rod Laver at Caesar’s Palace?

In the early 70s, there wasn’t much tension between the tours and exhibitions, because the unified tours didn’t exist. A national federation might gripe about a big name skipping a circuit stop in favor of a bigger payday elsewhere, but federations were losing their grip on the sport. There was little they could do about it.

Soon, though, battle lines formed. World Team Tennis muscled their way onto the stage in 1974, offering players guaranteed contracts to play up to 60 dates from May to September. WTT was expansive enough to accommodate lesser names alongside the box office draws, but the very nature of the league made the pecking order clear. Superstars demanded six-figure deals and often forced trades so that they could play for a chosen franchise. WTT could be nearly as grueling as the old pro tours, but it beat the procession of smaller events between Wimbledon and the US Open.

By the end of the decade, the ATP and WTA had organized themselves into circuits that resemble what we have today. Stars like Chris Evert and Bjorn Borg were raking in prize money. The problem was, on the exhibition market, they were worth even more. Borg, in particular, would cash in at any opportunity, sometimes playing dozens of exhibition matches in a single season.

The men’s tour eventually responded by requiring that players enter a minimum number of sanctioned events each year, one factor in Borg’s early retirement at the age of 26. But most players were willing to compromise, entering a couple dozen official tournaments, then jetting from Europe to Japan and back to pad their bank accounts.

The compromise

Six Kings aside, we’re still far from the peak era of exhibition tennis, when Borg and Ivan Lendl played one-nighters for well-heeled fans around the globe. The ATP has steadily tweaked its rules–no exhibitions that clash with bigger tour events, for instance–while upping its own prize money.

The tours have also indirectly limited exhibitions by their own natural growth. One of the biggest exho markets in the 70s and 80s was Japan, where an increasingly rich population wanted a taste of what Westerners could enjoy at home. As the tours gave more prominence to sanctioned tournaments in Tokyo, Osaka, and elsewhere, there was less demand for one-off player appearances.

That, in short(?), is how we got here. Stars are able to play non-tour events, but only sometimes. They hardly need to, since an athlete with any kind of box office value is making seven figures in prize money, not to mention endorsements. Most localities that can support a top-tier event have got one, within the framework of the official tours.

However, it wouldn’t take much to render this equilibrium unstable.

Threat models

The biggest immediate danger to the existing structure of pro tennis is Saudi money. The nation’s Public Investment Fund basically blew up golf, poaching stars for a rival tour and leaving the sport fractured.

Fortunately, tennis officials were able to watch and learn. The Saudis have been welcomed as partners, hosting the WTA Finals and the ATP NextGen Finals, as well as sponsoring both tours’ ranking systems. The Six Kings Slam doesn’t seem like so much of a threat in the context of so much collaboration.

If the Saudis decide to make a bigger move, even that will likely be in partnership with the majors–the so-called “super tour” proposal. The resulting circuit would probably have fewer, higher-paying tournaments. By extension, it would support a smaller group of players. Breaking onto the tour would be more lucrative than ever, but many currently-fringe competitors would be stuck on an expanded version of the Challenger tour.

Maybe a super tour is imminent. I have no idea. It would certainly change the face of the sport, though not beyond recognition.

The bigger threat, as I see it, is in the longer term. Sports–not just tennis–have learned to promote their biggest stars, earlier and more persistently than ever before. Think of all the “NextGen” hype tennis fans have been subjected to for more than a decade now, since Grigor Dimitrov was a teenager. Now we’ve entered the “Drive to Survive” era, where every sport wants Netflix to do what it did for Formula 1. To grow the game–the thinking goes–stars need to develop into global icons, thus attracting new fans. Can’t just sit around and wait for the next Federer to manage it himself.

The risk is that by marketing a superstar, the value accrues to the superstar, not the sport. If more people tune into Wimbledon to watch Sinner play Alcaraz, Wimbledon reaps the benefit of the ratings and sponsorships. Yes, Sinner and Alcaraz get paid well, too, and maybe prize money goes up next year. But at what point does Wimbledon have less status than the stars themselves? When Alcaraz has his own Netflix doc and Sinner is the most popular man in Italy, who cares about the strawberries and cream?

Put another way: Imagine that the Saudis were looking to elbow their way into sport in 2008. After the epic Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final, they offered both men a ten-year, billion-dollar contract to tour the globe (with frequent stops in the Gulf), playing head to head in one sold-out arena after another. Is the offer so implausible? Are we sure that Roger and Rafa wouldn’t have taken it?

Sinner and Alcaraz are hardly Federer and Nadal–at least not yet. But their agents, and the tour’s marketing team, and a film studio or three, are trying very hard to raise them to that status. If it isn’t Sinner and Alcaraz, it’s the next generation of superstars after that. Eventually, someone, or some small group of players, will be big enough that they can sell a two-man product. Team sports don’t have to worry about that; even golf would have a hard time selling much match play. But tennis has sold two-player rivalries for a century.

That, to me, is the logical extension of exhibition tennis, the worst-case scenario that guts the sport as we know it.

Events like the Six Kings Slam, Laver Cup, and UTS are fine when there is a deep, thriving tennis ecosystem for 45 weeks a year. (I’d even settle for 35!) We are quite far, I think, from the point where the number of exhibitions threatens the tour itself. But we are closer to the more dangerous point where a small group of superstars don’t need the tour at all. Any athletes who ultimately cash in their celebrity to go it alone will do very well in the deal. But the rest of us will be left with a much less compelling sport.

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Felix Auger-Aliassime’s Achilles Heel

Also today: February 8-10, 1974

*Felix Auger-Aliassime in 2023. Credit: aarublevnews*

There may not be a more beautiful serve in tennis. When Felix Auger-Aliassime is hitting his targets, returners don’t have a chance. Auger-Aliassime has been particularly deadly on indoor hard courts, winning four such championships in 2022, then defending his Basel title last October.

Before returning to the winner’s circle at the Swiss Indoors, the Canadian’s 2023 season was one to forget. He struggled with a knee injury that knocked him out of Lyon and most of the grass-court season, where he would otherwise have figured to thrive. Between Miami–where he last reached his career-best ATP ranking of 6th–and Tokyo, he won just two matches in a dozen starts. We can’t hold much of that against him; when it wasn’t the injury, it was the recovery or the rust.

But he hasn’t played like a top-tenner in 2024, either. He lost to Daniel Altmaier to open his campaign, got dragged into a five-hour slog by Dominic Thiem in Melbourne, and then fell yesterday in Marseille to Zhang Zhizhen. The Chinese man, who lost to 1,107th-ranked Sebastian Dominko in Davis Cup last weekend, isn’t the sort of player who should threaten the likes of Auger-Aliassime, especially on an indoor hard court. Marseille has a reputation as a relatively slow surface for an indoor event, but according to my numbers, it played almost exactly as fast as Basel did last year.

With such a serve, the rest of Felix’s game should fall into place. But it hasn’t, and even the Canadian’s service games can get messy. Zhang broke him three times in ten tries yesterday, and he came close to a fourth. Last week in Montpellier, Auger-Aliassime saved just one of six break points before squeaking past Arthur Cazaux. Apart from an occasional glut of double faults, the serve itself rarely fails him. He reliably sends in aces on at least one of ten service points. Nearly one-third of his serves don’t come back. So what’s the problem?

The Canadian charge

There’s a certain style of play that has become recognizably Canadian, by some combination of the influence of Milos Raonic and the natural development of players who grow up practicing indoors. While Auger-Aliassime, Denis Shapovalov, and Leylah Fernandez–like Raonic before them–rarely serve-and-volley, they often venture far inside the baseline after serving. The move puts them in excellent position to swat away weak replies, at the cost of getting exposed by a deep return.

(The move also calls to mind Evonne Goolagong, perhaps the most casual serve-and-volleyer in the game’s history. Martina Navratilova said of her, “She didn’t serve-and-volley; she would sort of saunter-and-volley.”)

If Felix’s aggressive court position pays off, it should show up in his second shot stats. This may sound familiar, because I talked about the same thing in my piece about Sebastian Korda earlier this week. Though Korda’s serve isn’t quite the weapon that Auger-Aliassime’s is, the two men are similar in that their overall results don’t seem to reflect the strength of their opening deliveries. Korda, for all of his power, hits a second-shot (plus-one) winner or forced error 17% of the time that a return comes back, almost exactly in line with tour average.

Auger-Aliassime is similarly punchless. I ran the numbers again, this time back to 2019 instead of 2020, to capture most of the Canadian’s career. The plus-one winner rates are a bit different, but not enough to alter the story. I’ve also included more players for comparison:

Player                 Plus-one winner%  
Milos Raonic                      24.4%  
Denis Shapovalov                  21.5%  
Matteo Berrettini                 19.5%  
Carlos Alcaraz                    19.1%  
Holger Rune                       18.6%
Lorenzo Sonego                    18.4%  
Stefanos Tsitsipas                18.2%  
Felix Auger-Aliassime             17.6%  
Sebastian Korda                   17.3%  
-- Average --                     17.2%  
Jannik Sinner                     16.8%  
Daniil Medvedev                   16.3%

Given the potency of his serve and the positioning risks he takes, Auger-Aliassime finds himself in the wrong section of this list. He’s not as one-dimensional as Raonic, and he’s less explosive (and erratic) than Shapovalov, but couldn’t he play more like Berrettini? You might argue that Felix’s ground game is better than the Italian’s, and he can thrive without forcing the issue so quickly. That may be true–I believe the Canadian and his team think this way–but the numbers don’t bear it out.

Over their careers, Auger-Aliassime and Berrettini have hit unreturned serves at exactly the same rate. Yet the Italian wins two percentage points more often on his second shot. The overall picture is even more dramatic: Berrettini’s career tour-level rates of 69% serve points won and 88% service games held are each better than Felix has posted in any single season. Berrettini’s forehand is better, sure, but I can’t believe that accounts for the entire difference. The Canadian’s wait-and-see approach too often turns into a ten stroke rally that ends in favor of the other guy.

The Achilles heel

I promised you a weak spot of mythological proportions, and you’re going to get it.

The story of yesterday’s loss to Zhang was captured, oddly enough, in one of the service games that Felix won. At 1-3 in the second set, he raced to 30-love with two points straight from the textbook: big serve to the backhand, shallow reply, swat away a winner. He scored another classic plus-one at 30-15.

The two points he lost, though, show what happens when someone reads the serve, or when he misses the first serve and doesn’t do much with the second. At both 30-0 and 40-15, Zhang took advantage of a second serve to put the return at Felix’s feet. The first time, the Canadian could only keep the ball in play, and he lost a six-stroke rally. Two points later, Auger-Aliassime unforced-errored the backhand plus-one. He secured the hold with a better second serve at 40-30, but he isn’t always so lucky.

When returns land in the service box, Felix’s results are strong, even if he isn’t as aggressive as Berrettini or his fellow Canadians. Here are several stats profiling what happens to those weak replies: plus-one winner rates (P1 W%), plus-one error rates (P1 UFE%), and overall point winning percentage:

Player                 P1 W%  P1 UFE%  Pt W%  
Milos Raonic             43%      12%    64%  
Denis Shapovalov         36%      16%    60%  
Matteo Berrettini        34%      14%    60%  
Holger Rune              32%      13%    61%  
Carlos Alcaraz           32%      12%    66%  
Felix Auger-Aliassime    31%      13%    62%  
Sebastian Korda          31%      14%    61%  
Daniil Medvedev          30%       9%    63%  
Stefanos Tsitsipas       29%      11%    62%  
Lorenzo Sonego           29%      13%    57%  
-- Average --            28%      12%    60%  
Jannik Sinner            28%      11%    63%

These numbers are from 2019 to present, so Raonic’s stats are probably a caricature of the tactics he used at his peak. Still, it seems like Auger-Aliassime ought to be ending a few more of these points immediately. Either way, there’s no reason to complain about his ultimate outcomes–he wins more of these points than Berrettini does, and almost as many as Daniil Medvedev or Jannik Sinner. (Side note: Holy Alcaraz!)

Here is the same set of stats for returns that are not so shallow, but are still closer to the service line than the baseline. (The Match Charting Project calls these “deep”–as opposed to “very deep” returns.)

Player                 P1 W%  P1 UFE%  Pt W%  
Milos Raonic             31%      12%    56%  
Denis Shapovalov         24%      16%    54%  
Holger Rune              23%      13%    60%  
Matteo Berrettini        20%      14%    54%  
Lorenzo Sonego           20%      14%    54%  
Stefanos Tsitsipas       20%      11%    58%  
Carlos Alcaraz           18%      13%    57%  
Sebastian Korda          17%      16%    55%  
Felix Auger-Aliassime    17%      13%    53%  
-- Average --            16%      12%    55%  
Daniil Medvedev          15%       9%    56%  
Jannik Sinner            14%      10%    56%

Take away a couple of feet of court position, and Auger-Aliassime’s results look awfully pedestrian. He still hits more plus-one winners than average, but barely, and at the cost of more errors. He wins fewer of these points than average, and fewer than anyone in this selected group of players. If we make the reasonable assumption that the returns coming back from Felix’s serves are weaker than average–even if they land in the same sector of the court–those middle-of-the-pack numbers look even worse.

I hope you’ve stuck with me, because you’re about to find out how to beat Felix. It’s not easy, but it worked for Zhang. Here’s how players manage against very deep returns–the ones that land closer to the baseline than the service line:

Player                 P1 W%  P1 UFE%  Pt W%  
Milos Raonic             15%      14%    47%  
Denis Shapovalov         12%      14%    50%  
Matteo Berrettini        12%      11%    52%  
Stefanos Tsitsipas       11%      10%    52%  
Holger Rune              11%      11%    51%  
Sebastian Korda          10%      10%    50%  
Lorenzo Sonego            9%      14%    53%  
-- Average --             8%       8%    51%  
Carlos Alcaraz            8%       7%    54%  
Felix Auger-Aliassime     7%       9%    47%  
Daniil Medvedev           6%       6%    54%  
Jannik Sinner             6%       7%    52%

Auger-Aliassime plays these points like he’s Medvedev, but his baseline game can’t support those tactics. He wins these points at the same rate as late-career, physically compromised Raonic.

This is, in large part, the cost of that aggressive court position. Some players, like Alcaraz, can get away with it. Raonic couldn’t, but he put away so many cheap points that he could live with the drawbacks. It’s exaggerating only a bit to say that Auger-Aliassime gets the worst of both worlds: He doesn’t pick up an unusually high number of freebies, but then he finds himself on the back foot whenever someone manages to land a deep return.

That was the story of Zhang’s upset win yesterday. When the Chinese player hit a shallow reply, Felix won 11 of 15. When the return landed behind the service line, the success rate fell to just 8 of 25. It isn’t always that bad, and even when it is, a uptick in unreturned serves (or a strong return performance) can salvage the day. But opponents will only get better at reading the Canadian’s serve, and perhaps they will recognize that they needn’t attempt any heroics as long as they place the return deep in the court.

Auger-Aliassime isn’t going to wake up one day able to play like Medvedev, however much he might like to. He can, however, choose to play more like Raonic or Berrettini. His current approach is probably good enough for a long stay in the top 20: Elo ranks him 17th, at least until it updates with yesterday’s loss. But if he hopes to crack the top five, he’ll need to do more with the profits from that gorgeous serve.

* * *

February 8-10, 1974: Sideshows take center stage

For a week in February 1974, the women’s tennis circuit had to make do without Billie Jean King. Fortunately, George Liddy was ready to pick up the promotional slack, and then some.

The Slims tour headed to Fort Lauderdale for an event on Chris Evert’s home turf–or, more accurately, her home Har-Tru. Billie Jean didn’t like her odds on clay in enemy territory, so it was a good time for a week off. In her absence, Evert provided the drubbings, Rosie Casals delivered the controversy, and–fulfilling what one newspaperman called Liddy’s “kinky dreams”–none other than Bobby Riggs showed up to sell more tickets.

The biggest story of the week took place off the court. Liddy was promoting more than just the S&H Green Stamps Tennis Classic; he also organized a track exhibition for the Friday night of the tournament. The big attraction was Riggs, who came to town for a much-ballyhooed race against famous miler Jim Ryun. (Earning a living as a professional track star could be complicated: Ryun had taken part in a tennis exhibition the previous June.) Ryun was a world-record holder and Olympic silver medalist, so in true Riggs fashion, some handicapping was in order. The 55-year-old hustler would get a half-mile head start.

Bobby was old, but he wasn’t that old. On February 8th, after a track clinic, a marching band, a pole-vault exhibition, and a 100-meter dash featuring some football players, the real business of the evening got underway. Riggs emerged, accompanied by a phalanx of young women and sporting a portable microphone to spice up the eventual television broadcast. He made a side bet with Rosie Casals and jokingly pleaded with organizers for an even bigger head start.

Ryun ran a respectable 4:03, but he never caught up with America’s most famous male chauvinist. Riggs ran his 890 yards in 3:22 for an easy victory.

“I’d say he needed another 200 yards,” Ryun said.

As for Riggs, he hadn’t been working out much since the Battle of the Sexes the previous September. His assessment: “I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired.”

* * *

Casals was tired, too. She had spent most of the week griping: The tour came back to Florida too often, she didn’t like to play on clay, it was cold and windy, and the crowd was partisan to the point of rudeness when she faced Jeanne Evert in the second round. Another of her complaints–about thoughtless scheduling–had merit. After a late-night doubles match on Thursday, she was first up on Friday’s order of play.

As if that weren’t enough, her routine defeat of Francoise Durr earned her a place in the semi-finals against Chrissie herself. “Nobody’s unbeatable,” Rosie said. But on Saturday, she salvaged just one game. Casals had to settle for a lesser prize–a local columnist declared her the champion of the press room.

The final had unexpected potential. Evert had been expected to run away with the title, and she hadn’t done anything to call that forecast into question. But second-seeded Kerry Melville looked like she might just make it close, allowing just two games to Nancy Gunter in her semi-final. Melville herself had said that the chance of anyone beating the home favorite in Fort Lauderdale were “very, very slim.” But after a near-flawless match, she felt differently: “If I play like I played today, I think I have a good chance of beating Chris.”

Alas, it wasn’t to be. At the hotel on Saturday night, Melville walked to the bathroom in the dark and fractured her toe. She withdrew, and the title went to Evert.

Liddy, though, had another ace up his sleeve. Riggs was already scheduled to play an exhibition match on finals day, against Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese and wide receiver Ron Sellers. Bobby would play one-on-two, and the crowd would get the full raincoat-and-umbrella handicapping show. Everyone would go home with a smile on their face.

The biggest draw of the day, though, was Liddy’s last-minute replacement. Refunds were available, but only two ticketholders asked for their money back.

To play Evert, the promoter brought in none other than Althea Gibson, the two-time Wimbledon champion who had been the world’s best player in the late 1950s. Gibson had since earned her living as a golfer and made occasional attempts at a tennis comeback now that the sport had gone pro. At age 46, no one expected her to upset Chrissie, and she didn’t, winning just three games. But she impressed nonetheless.

“I don’t think there is anyone in women’s tennis today that serves it with that much pure power,” Evert said. “I was really surprised.” Althea wanted a rematch. After all, as one fan shouted during play, Gibson won more games off of Chris than Casals did.

Rosie, though, could take one consolation from the finals-day slate. The crowd immediately took to Althea, the obvious underdog and a legend to boot. Finally, a stadium full of Florida tennis fans was cheering against an Evert.

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Aryna Sabalenka Under Pressure

Also today: January 26, 1924

*Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon in 2023. Credit: Adrian Scottow*

It felt like a pivotal moment. Aryna Sabalenka had taken a 5-2 first-set lead in yesterday’s Australian Open semi-final against Coco Gauff. Gauff kept the set going with a strong service game for 5-3. Sabalenka lost the first point on her serve, but bounced back with a plus-one backhand winner.

At 30-15, the American struck again. She took advantage of a Sabalenka second serve to drag the Belarusian into a backhand rally, ultimately drawing an unforced error on the ninth shot and putting the game back in play.

Then, still just two points from the set, Sabalenka double-faulted.

The narrative practically writes itself. Aryna hits hard, aims for the lines, and keeps points short. Let her do that, and she will destroy you. Her first five opponents in Melbourne managed a grand total of 16 games against her. On the other hand, if you keep the ball in play, she’ll start pressing, trying too hard to dictate with her serve, going for too much when a smackable groundstroke presents itself.

Gauff, by this reading, is Sabalenka’s nightmare opponent. She won the US Open final by denying the Belarusian one would-be winner after another. Not only can she take Sabalenka’s game away from her, but Coco–at least on a good day–won’t give it back on her own serve. When she lets loose, Gauff wields just as much power as her more tactically aggressive opponent.

As it turned out, Sabalenka did lose that service game. Several twists and turns later, Gauff led the set, 6-5. Only then did Aryna regroup, winning four straight points from 30-love to force a tiebreak, then dropping just two more points to clinch the set. Gauff kept the second set close, but Sabalenka never allowed her to reach break point. The contest closed with a narrative-busting move: Facing match point, Gauff pulled out a 12-stroke rally, the kind of point that has been known to steer her opponent off course. But instead of compounding the damage, Sabalenka came back with two unreturned serves. Game over.

What to believe, then? Was the apparent first-set turning point a reflection of the true Sabalenka? Or is this the new Aryna, who slams the door when challengers sniff opportunity? Or is it something else, the all-too-common story in which someone looks like a clutch hero or a constant choker, only for us to discover, after crunching all the numbers, that she’s impervious to momentum and plays pretty much the same all the time?

Recovering at a disadvantage

Sabalenka’s serve games do follow a pattern after she loses a longish rally. But the results are not entirely straightforward.

On the next point (assuming the lost rally didn’t end the service game), Aryna is more likely to miss her first serve:

Year   1stIn%  post-rallyL-1stIn%  Change  
2019    61.2%               55.9%   -8.6%  
2020    61.5%               57.0%   -7.3%  
2021    58.6%               52.6%  -10.3%  
2022    60.0%               59.9%    0.0%  
2023    61.1%               61.3%    0.4%  
2024    63.3%               62.5%   -1.2%
----  
TOTAL   60.5%               57.6%   -4.8%

Most of the effect is concentrated in the earlier years of her career on tour. Yesterday, the trend ran in the opposite direction: She made nearly 76% of her first serves overall, but after Gauff won a rally, she landed 88% of them.

The trend is clearer–and persisting to the present–when we look at double faults after losing a rally:

Year     DF%  post-rallyL-DF%  Change  
2019    8.6%            10.4%   20.8%  
2020    6.2%             8.4%   36.9%  
2021    7.9%            11.8%   50.3%  
2022   10.7%            10.1%   -5.5%  
2023    6.2%             7.2%   16.5%  
2024    3.4%             8.3%  144.7%  
----
TOTAL   7.9%             9.6%   22.5%

2022 was Aryna’s year of the yips; she was more likely to bunch double faults together than hit them in particularly nervy spots. (Put another way: Every spot was a nervy one.) The 2024 number will surely come back to earth, but it is still revealing: Sabalenka has made so much progress in this aspect of her game, but her second-serve struggles continue when she faces the threat of getting dragged into another rally.

Some of these effects persist even longer. From those service games that last long enough, here are Sabalenka’s first-in and double-fault percentages two points after losing a long rally:

Year   1stIn%  +2 1stIn%  Change    DF%  +2 DF%  Change  
2019    61.2%      55.8%   -8.8%   8.6%    8.7%    1.2%  
2020    61.5%      50.5%  -17.9%   6.2%    7.2%   17.1%  
2021    58.6%      56.0%   -4.5%   7.9%    8.7%   10.5%  
2022    60.0%      63.1%    5.3%  10.7%    7.8%  -27.1%  
2023    61.1%      59.2%   -3.2%   6.2%    8.4%   35.6%  
2024    63.3%      57.1%   -9.7%   3.4%    2.4%  -30.1%  
----
TOTAL   60.5%      57.1%   -5.6%   7.9%    8.0%    2.0%

She continues to miss more first serves even two points after the rally setback. To some degree, the memory should have dissipated–after all, something else happened on the intervening point. On the other hand, she’s back in the same court. If a reliable serve didn’t work in the deuce court at 30-love, there’s reason to doubt it at 30-all.

The double fault trends are less clear, in part because our sample size is shrinking and double faults are blessedly rare. If nothing else, it’s safe to conclude that the explosion of double faults on the point after the lost rally doesn’t continue to nearly the same degree.

Tallying the cost

Now, this all seems bad. Sabalenka possesses one of the best first serves in the game; her whole attack is built around it. Her emergence as a superstar came after she got control of the service yips and cut her double faults down to manageable levels. After losing a long rally, she needs her serve more than ever, and–at least by comparison with other situations–it isn’t there for her.

Except… it doesn’t matter! At least not on the first point. Here is the bottom-line figure of service points won:

Year    SPW%  post-rallyL-SPW%  Change  
2019   59.6%             63.8%    7.2%  
2020   60.3%             56.6%   -6.0%  
2021   61.5%             61.3%   -0.3%  
2022   57.2%             59.9%    4.7%  
2023   63.7%             63.9%    0.4%  
2024   66.7%             70.8%    6.3%  
----
TOTAL  60.7%             61.7%    1.6%

Fewer first serves, but more serve points won. It isn’t supposed to work like that, but Sabalenka bounces back strong from lost rallies. A shift of +1.6% in her favor is solid enough, and it’s even better if you look solely at the last three years.

Part of the explanation is that she tightens up the rest of her game–exactly the opposite of what my off-the-cuff narrative suggests. Under pressure, I hypothesized, she would try too hard to end points. Instead, after losing a long rally, she’s more willing than usual to play another one: She commits 14% fewer plus-one errors than her usual rate, implying a lower rate of aggression when she has an early chance to put the point away.

On the second point after losing a long rally, the bottom-line outcomes are more mixed:

Year    SPW%  +2 SPW%  Change  
2019   59.6%    53.9%   -9.5%  
2020   60.3%    55.3%   -8.3%  
2021   61.5%    58.5%   -4.9%  
2022   57.2%    61.5%    7.4%  
2023   63.7%    60.7%   -4.7%  
2024   66.7%    71.4%    7.1% 
---- 
TOTAL  60.7%    58.2%   -4.0%

While these aren’t as rosy as the next-point results, focus on the last few years. Since the beginning of 2022, Aryna has won more service points than usual when she returns to the serving direction where she recently lost a long rally–despite landing fewer first serves. She is even stingier with plus-one errors on these points, coughing up 29% fewer than usual.

These trends did not hold in yesterday’s semi-final. While Sabalenka made more first serves on the two points after Gauff outlasted her in a rally, fewer of them ended in her favor: 4% less on the first point, 12% less on the second. We can’t read too much into single-match totals with stats like these: 4% is a difference of one point. And Gauff is a far superior returner and baseline player than the typical WTAer, one who is unlikely to lose focus after going toe to toe with Sabalenka for a point or two. The average player pushes Aryna to a seventh shot barely one-tenth of the time; Gauff did so on one of every six points yesterday.

All of this leads us to an unexpected conclusion: Does Aryna Sabalenka have nerves of steel? First serves and double faults are just components in a larger picture; when we measure her results by points won, Sabalenka serves more successfully right after an opponent makes her uncomfortable. The yips are gone, and the on-court histrionics are a diversion that deceived us all. Aryna under pressure may be even more fearsome than her typical, terrifying self.

* * *

January 26, 1924: Suzanne’s longest day

Suzanne Lenglen wasn’t accustomed to spending much time on court. In eight tournaments since the 1923 Championships at Wimbledon, she had lost just ten games. Her doubles matches, especially with net maven Elizabeth Ryan at her side, were often just as lopsided. She never missed, she could put the ball anywhere on the court, and most opponents were lucky just to win a single point.

*Lenglen and Ryan in 1925 at Wimbledon.* *Colorization credit: Women’s Tennis Colorizations*

In January 1924, Lenglen eased her way back onto the circuit. Battling some combination of illness, anxiety, and hypochondria, she didn’t return to singles action until February. (She’d win her first three matches before dropping a game.) But she was a celebrity on the French Riviera, and she was prevailed upon to compete in doubles. She won the mixed at the Hotel Beau-Site tournament in Cannes to ring in the new year, and she entered both the women’s doubles–with Ryan–and the mixed at the Hotel Gallia tournament a few weeks later.

On the 26th, Lenglen and Ryan completed their waltz through the draw, defeating a British pair, Phyllis Covell and Dorothy Shepherd-Barron, 6-3, 6-4. Suzanne’s most aggravating foe was another Brit, a line judge with the temerity to call a foot-fault on the five-time Wimbledon champion. She tried to get the man removed and ultimately had to settle for his “voluntary” departure. “It is unfair,” she said. “The English are pigs.”

Her nerves would be tested even more severely in the mixed doubles final. Lenglen partnered Charles Aeschlimann of Switzerland, while Ryan teamed with the 43-year-old Canadian Henry Mayes. Both men were better known on the Riviera than in the tennis world at large, more clubbable than talented. Lenglen and Ryan–herself one of the top few woman players in the world–would be the stars of the show.

Lenglen and Aeschlimann took the first set, 6-4; Ryan and Mayes came back with a 6-1 frame of their own. The underdogs–that is, the team without Suzanne–built up an early lead in the third, thanks to Aeschlimann’s inconsistency and Ryan’s glittering play. Mayes served for a 4-2 advantage, but a lucky netcord halted their momentum, and the deciding set settled into a rhythm it wouldn’t break for 20 more games.

Only at 13-14 did Ryan finally give in. She gifted a double fault to her opponents, and Mayes’s fatigue–he had played a four-set men’s doubles final beforehand–began to tell. Lenglen and Aeschlimann broke serve, securing the 6-4, 1-6, 15-13 victory. It would stand as the longest set of Suzanne’s unparalleled career.

* * *

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Anna Kalinskaya At Her Peak

Also today: Upsets, (partly) explained; January 23, 1924

*Anna Kalinskaya in the 2020 Fed Cup qualifying round. Credit:* Nuță Lucian

Should we have seen this coming? Of all the surprises in the top half of the 2024 Australian Open women’s draw, Anna Kalinskaya’s run to the quarter-finals stands as one of the biggest. The 25-year-old was ranked 75th entering the tournament, and she had never reached the third round of a major in 13 previous main-draw attempts.

Had we looked closely before the tournament, we wouldn’t have found a title contender, exactly, but we would have identified Kalinskaya as about as dangerous as a 75th-ranked player could possibly be. She finished 2023 on a 9-1 run, reaching the final at the WTA 125 in Tampico, then winning the title at the Midland 125, where she knocked out the up-and-coming Alycia Parks in the semi-finals. 2024 started well, too: The Russian upset top-tenner Barbora Krejcikova in Adelaide, then almost knocked out Daria Kasatkina in a two hour, 51-minute match two days later.

The only reason her official ranking is so low is that she missed nearly four months last summer to a leg injury that she picked up in the third round in Rome. Her two match wins at the Foro Italico pushed her up to 53rd in the world, just short of her career-best 51st, set in 2022. The Elo algorithm, which measures the quality of her wins rather than the number of tournaments she was healthy enough to play, reflects both her pre-injury successes and the more recent hot streak. Kalinskaya came to Melbourne as the 31st-ranked woman on the Elo list.

These alternative rankings put a different spin on her path through the Australian Open draw so far. Here are the results from her first four rounds, in which she appeared to be the underdog three times:

Elo has some adjustments to make:

Round  Opponent  Elo Rk  Elo vRk  
R16    Paolini       31       37  
R32    Stephens      31       50  
R64    Rus           31      107  
R128   Volynets      31      139

Kalinskaya was hardly an early favorite–Stephens did her the favor of taking out Kasatkina, and Anna Blinkova (who lost to Paolini) eliminated the third-seeded Elena Rybakina. But given how the draw worked out, seeing the Russian’s name in the quarter-finals wasn’t so unlikely after all.

More luck

Kalinskaya has a dangerous forehand and a solid backhand, but she isn’t an aggressive player by the standards of today’s circuit. Her 14 matches logged by the Match Charting Project average 4.2 strokes per point, and that skews low because it includes three meetings with Aryna Sabalenka. Yesterday’s fourth-round match against Paolini took 5.3 strokes per point, and the third-rounder with Stephens was similar.

By Aggression Score, the 25-year-old rates modestly below average, at -17 in rallies and -15 on returns. While she doesn’t have any weaknesses that prevent her from ending points earlier, she’s more comfortable letting the rally develop. When Paolini played along, the results were remarkable: 32 points reached seven shots or more yesterday, and Kalinskaya didn’t end any of them with an unforced error.

The downside of such a game style is that a lot of opponents won’t be so cooperative. Last fall, the Russian lost back-to-back-to-back matches against Ekaterina Alexandrova, Viktoria Hruncakova, and Ashlyn Krueger, three women who opt for big swings and short points. By contrast, consider the Rally Aggression Scores of the quartet Kalinskaya has faced in Melbourne:

Round  Opponent  AggScore  
R16    Paolini         -5  
R32    Stephens       -16  
R64    Rus            -59  
R128   Volynets       -38

Paolini and Stephens have roughly similar profiles to Kalinskaya’s own; Rus and Volynets are even more conservative.

This isn’t just a convenient narrative: Kalinskaya really is better against more passive players. She has played 118 career tour-level matches against women with at least 20 matches in the charting database. Sort them by Rally Aggression Score and separate them into four equal bins, and the Russian’s preferences become clear:

AggScore Range  Match Win%  
57 to 175            35.7%  
0 to 56              46.4%  
-27 to -1            50.0%  
-137 to -27          59.4%

If the whole tour were as patient as she is, the Russian would already be a household name.

Alas, it’s rare to draw four straight players as conservative as the bunch Kalinskaya has faced in Melbourne. And having reached the quarter-finals, her luck has run out. Her next opponent is Qinwen Zheng, who has a career Aggression Score of 27 and upped that number in 2023. It could be worse–fellow quarter-finalists Sabalenka and Dayana Yastremska are triple-digit aggressors–but it is a different sort of challenge than she has faced at the tournament so far.

To win tomorrow, Kalinskaya will need to play as well as she has for the last few months, only a couple of shots earlier in the rally. Otherwise, Zheng will end points on her own terms, and thousands of potential new fans will be convinced that Kalinskaya really is just the 75th best player in the world.

* * *

Why are upsets on the rise?

Only four seeds, and two of the top eight, survived to the Australian Open women’s quarter-finals. Many of the top seeds lost early. This feels like a trend, and it isn’t new.

One plausible explanation is that the field keeps getting stronger. Top-level players now develop all over the world, and coaching and training techniques continue to improve. There are few easy, guaranteed matches, even if Iga Swiatek and Aryna Sabalenka usually(!) make it look that way. I believe this is part of the story.

Another component, I suspect, is the shift in playing styles. I noted a couple of weeks ago when writing about Angelique Kerber is that WTA rally lengths have steadily declined in the last decade. In 2013, the typical point lasted 4.7 strokes; it’s now around 4.3. Shorter points are caused by more risk-taking. Risks don’t always work out, full-power shots go astray, and the better-on-paper player doesn’t always win.

In 2019, I tested a similar theory about men’s results. I split players in four quartiles based on Aggression Score and tallied the upset rate for every pair of player types. When two very aggressive players met, nearly 39% of matches resulted in upsets, compared to 25% when two very passive players met. The true gap isn’t quite that big: given the specific players involved, there should have been a few more upsets among the very aggressive group. But even after adjusting for that, it remained a substantial gap.

It stands to reason that the story would be the same for women. Instead of Aggression Score, I used average rally length. I doubt there’s much difference. I didn’t intend to change gears, I just got halfway through the project before checking what I did the first time.

The most aggressive quartile (1, in the table below) are players who average 3.6 shots per rally or less. The next group (2) ranges from 3.7 to 4.0, then (3) from 4.1 to 4.5, and finally (4) 4.6 strokes and up. The following table shows the frequency of upsets (Upset%) and how the upset rate compares to expectations (U/Exp) for each pair of groups:

Q1  Q2  Upset%  U/Exp  
1   1    40.7%   1.07  
2   1    36.2%   0.99  
2   2    35.7%   0.99  
3   1    35.1%   0.93  
3   2    35.5%   0.97  
3   3    40.9%   1.07  
4   1    37.6%   1.03  
4   2    36.6%   1.02  
4   3    34.6%   0.95  
4   4    34.7%   0.97

(If you look back to the 2019 study, you’ll notice that I did almost everything “backwards” this time — swapping 1 for 4 as the label for the most aggressive group, and calculating results as favorite winning percentages instead of upsets. Sorry about that.)

Matches between very aggressive players do, in fact, result in more upsets than expected. It’s not an overwhelming result, partly because it’s only 7% more than expected, and partly because matches between third-quartile players–those with average rally lengths between 4.1 and 4.5–are just as unexpectedly unpredictable.

I don’t know what to make of the latter finding. I can’t think of any reasonable cause for that other than chance, which casts some doubt on the top-line result as well.

If the upset rate for matches between very aggressive players is a persistent effect, it would give us more upsets on tour today than we saw a decade ago. An increasing number of players fit the hyper-aggressive mold, so there are more matchups between them. The logic seems sound to me, though it may be the case that other sources of player inconsistency outweigh a woman’s particular risk profile.

* * *

January 23, 1924: Debuts and dropshots

Men’s tennis ruled at the early Australian Championships. The tournament had been held since 1905 (as the “Australasian” Championships), but there was no women’s singles until 1922. On January 23rd, midway through the 1924 edition, the press corps was preoccupied with the severity of Gerald Patterson’s sprained ankle and the question of whether Ian McInnes had been practicing.

James O. Anderson, the 1922 singles champion who would win the 1924 edition as well, introduced what was then–at least to the Melbourne Argus–an on-court novelty:

He has developed a new stroke since he last played in Melbourne, and it has proved successful. On the back of the court he makes a pretence of sending in a hard drive, but with a delicate flick of the wrist he drops the ball just over the net, leaving his opponent helpless 30 feet away.

A veritable proto-Alcaraz, was James O.

For the few fans who weren’t solely focused on Australia’s Davis Cuppers, a superstar was emerging before their eyes. Also on the 23rd, 20-year-old Daphne Akhurst made quick work of Violet Mather, advancing to the semi-finals in her first appearance at the Championships.

Akhurst wouldn’t go any further, unable to withstand the heavy forehand of Esna Boyd in the next round. But it was nonetheless a remarkable debut: She won both the women’s and the mixed doubles titles. The correspondent for the Melbourne Age, recapping the mixed final, could hardly contain his admiration:

Miss Akhurst–an artist to her finger tips–belied her delicate mid-Victorian appearance that suggested that she had slipped out of one of Jane Austen’s books by sifting out cayenne pepper strokes from a never-failing supply.

Daphne and Jack Willard–“who ran for every ball, and continued running after he played the ball”–defeated Boyd and Gar Hone in straight sets.

The pair of championships was a harbinger of things to come. Between 1925 and 1931, Akhurst would win five singles titles (losing only in 1927 when she withdrew), four more in the women’s doubles, and another three mixed. The only thing that could stop her were the customs of the day: She married in 1930 and retired a year later. Tragically, she died from pregnancy complications in 1933, at the age of 29.

Daphne is best known these days as the name on the Australian Open women’s singles trophy. For the next several years, there will be many more Akhurst centennials to celebrate.

* * *

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Hubi’s Three-Set Magic

Also today: Torben Ulrich (1928-2023); What is this?

Hubert Hurkacz started the 2024 season right where he left off. In the round-robin stage of the United Cup, he played two singles matches, beating Thiago Seyboth Wild and losing to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Both matches went to a third set.

No one played more deciding third sets in 2023 than Hurkacz. Out of 55 best-of-three starts, he went the distance 32 times. That’s more three-setters–and a higher rate of them (58%)–than any player-season this century. On average, about 35% of ATP matches go three. Since 2000, only 16 players have posted a full season where they went to a third set more than half the time.

This is new territory for the 26-year-old from Poland. He reached a decider in only 35% of his three-setters in 2021, then increased that clip to 45% in 2022. The main difference between his 2022 and 2023 seasons was that his already small margins shrunk even further. He won matches at almost the same rate both years, even though he broke a bit less often and was less effective with his second serve in 2023. He converted his three-setters at exactly the same rate (62.5%) in both seasons. Hurkacz’s edge was still enough to keep him in the top ten, but only because he was willing to play so much tennis.

It’s a bit fluky to pile up so many three-setters, but we can get a hint at some trends by looking at the list of similar warriors:

Year  Player                  Bo3  Deciders   Dec%  
2023  Hubert Hurkacz           55        32  58.2%  
2018  John Isner               40        23  57.5%  
2022  Taylor Fritz             55        31  56.4%  
2010  John Isner               48        27  56.3%  
2019  Nikoloz Basilashvili     43        24  55.8%  
2014  Guillermo Garcia Lopez   42        23  54.8%  
2019  Fernando Verdasco        42        23  54.8%  
2018  Robin Haase              46        25  54.3%  
2009  Julien Benneteau         48        26  54.2%  
2005  Jurgen Melzer            39        21  53.8%  
2007  Dmitry Tursunov          41        22  53.7%  
2017  Jack Sock                51        27  52.9%  
2011  Stan Wawrinka            40        21  52.5%  
2013  John Isner               52        27  51.9%  
2017  Albert Ramos             54        28  51.9%  
2018  Joao Sousa               45        23  51.1%  
2000  Fernando Vicente         47        24  51.1%  
2013  Robin Haase              49        25  51.0%  
2003  Gaston Gaudio            55        28  50.9%  
2006  Dmitry Tursunov          61        31  50.8%

There are plenty of clay-court grinders on the list; that doesn’t really apply to Hubi. What pops out to me are the three appearances of John Isner. While Hurkacz isn’t as one-dimensional as Big John, he has the same sort of profile. Only four other players in the current top 50–none of them in the top 15–break serve as rarely as he does. When breaks are scarce, sets go to tiebreaks and matches go three. An incredible 14 of Hubi’s 32 three-setters went to a sudden-death tiebreak. He won ten of them.

None of this is sustainable. In one sense, that’s bad news: If Hurkacz somehow lands in 14 more deciding-set tiebreaks this year, he’ll end up closer to 7-7 than 10-4. On the other hand, three-set stats are just trivia–exhausting trivia, at that. There wasn’t much to separate his top-line 2022 and 2023 results, and he’s surely be happy with another top-ten finish regardless of whether he needs to play 30-plus deciding sets to get there.

If Hubi does force so many third sets, is he likely to keep winning so many? That’s a more complicated question.

What is a good three-set record?

This is a great example of what’s missing from the tennis discourse. People talk about three-set records all the time, especially on broadcasts whenever two players head for a deciding set. We expect that top players win more one-set shootouts than journeymen do, but how many more? For a fringe top-tenner like Hurkacz, is 62.5% good? Great? Boringly in line with expectations?

What makes this tricky is that, anecdotally, there are so many different types of three-setters. Last year, Hurkacz went three with four different players ranked outside the top 100. We’d expect him to win those; it’s a bit disappointing he didn’t win them even more quickly. Hubi also went to three deciders against a number one: two with Carlos Alcaraz, one with Novak Djokovic. We wouldn’t expect him to win those (and he didn’t), but simply taking a set is a moral victory. Any list of 32 three-setters is going to include a bunch of matches that should never have gotten that far. There might be 32 different levels of expectations, if we want to break it down that far.

We don’t need to make it that complicated. What I want is a shorthand way of looking at a player’s three-set record and knowing whether he’s likely to keep it up.

It turns out that you get pretty close with a simple formula. Tour regulars–defined here as players with at least 50 ATP main-draw matches in a season–tend to win between 50% and 60% of their third-set deciders. (On average, they clean up against lower-ranked players with less time on tour, as you’d probably expect.) We can estimate what a player’s three-set record “should” be as follows:

Three-set win% = 45% + (20% * Two-set win%)

That’s it. A player’s winning percentage in straight-set matches is a decent approximation of their current level: While it’s possible to luck into a two-set victory, it’s unusual. Here’s what the model implies as likely three-set records at various skill levels:

Two-set W%  Three-set W%  
40%                52.9%  
50%                54.9%  
60%                56.9%  
70%                58.8%
80%                60.8%

Three-set records are rarely so extreme as two-set records. Djokovic, for instance, went 20-2 (!) in two-setters last year. The model predicts that he would win 63% of his three-setters. In reality he went 11-4 (73%), outperforming the estimate but still coming in much closer to 50%, as logic would suggest. Three-setters tend to occur between more closely-matched players, and once the outcome comes down to a single set, luck plays a larger part. Deciding sets aren’t as coin-flippy as tiebreaks, but as Hurkacz’s 14 third-set shootouts remind us, the margins can be equally slim.

So, back to Hubi. Last year, he won 70% of his two-setters. A typical performance for a player like that would be a three-set winning percentage of 58.8%–a 19-13 record in deciders instead of his actual 20-12. Odd as his 2023 season was, he won the close ones about as often as he should have. Even if luck turns against him, he could finagle another top-ten finish with a stronger performance at the majors–but that’s a subject for another day.

* * *

Torben Ulrich (1928-2023)

In 1955, Torben Ulrich invited a couple of visiting South African tennis players, Gordon Forbes and Abe Segal, to come see his band at a jazz club in Copenhagen. Ulrich, manning the clarinet chair, sat out the first several numbers. Forbes wanted to see his friend in action and encouraged him to join in.

“I must wait,” Ulrich said, “until something happens inside me. So far nothing very much has happened.”

The red-headed, bearded Dane died last month at the age of 95. In his near-century on earth, a whole lot happened. Yet he always operated on his own timetable. He once walked off the court when an opponent wouldn’t stop lobbing. (“I had asked him nicely several times to stop it, but he told me to mind my own business.”) Gene Scott told another story:

There was this recent time in Richmond. There was this girl who was wearing a very short miniskirt. The whole house, including the players, could not keep their eyes off of her. Now, Torben is getting ready to serve when he suddenly freezes in midair, then walks over to the stands. Everybody is wondering where he’s going. He stops behind the girl and quickly drops a ball down her back. I know of no other player who has ever coped with a distraction in such a gentle, colorful way.

Forbes recalled a club member who was impatient for Ulrich to vacate a practice court:

‘Have you been playing long?’ [the member] said.

‘As long as I can remember,’ said Torben.

‘How much longer will you play?’ asked the member.

‘We may go on for many years,’ said Torben.

Ulrich did, indeed, go on for many years. He won his first tournament, the Danish Nationals, in 1948, when he was 19 years old. Three years later he picked up his first international singles title in Antwerp. He remained capable of top-level tennis for another two decades after that.

“Over the years, it seems he has never lost the key,” a fellow player told Sports Illustrated in 1969, when Torben was 40 years old. “When it looks like he is ready to come apart, he comes up with that one big match. He remains respectable.”

Ulrich was never a top-tenner; he failed to reach the quarter-finals of a major in 43 tries. Yet he piled up dozens of smaller tournament victories in singles, doubles, and mixed. He contested over 100 Davis Cup rubbers for Denmark, many of them alongside his younger brother, Jørgen.

The Dane was perhaps more at home in the world of art. At various times, he wrote poetry and music criticism, painted, and made films. This side of him had a greater influence on his legacy. His son, Lars, was a promising junior tennis player, but he was probably made the right decision when he shifted his focus to music and co-founded the band Metallica.

Torben, it seemed, was as happy with one pursuit as any other. He was a seeker–it didn’t much matter what. Tennis, with its whirlwind schedule and ever-changing mix of fellow-travelers, fit the bill.

He didn’t care about results. Once, he told Forbes that he didn’t win. “I simply played in the usual way,” he said. “It was my opponent who lost.”

Perhaps Ulrich’s career-best result came at the 1968 US Open, where he upset 15th seed Marty Riessen before falling to John Newcombe in a fourth-round nailbiter, 5-7, 4-6, 6-4, 10-8, 6-4. Newk’s serve could overpower a much younger man, but it was no match for Torben’s mind. “What is speed?” he mused. “If I am concentrating properly, really seeing, a big serve will be coming at me in slow motion.”

The match could have gone either way. At a crucial moment, Ulrich flubbed an easy volley when a butterfly darted in front of his face. Was he distracted? He silenced the press with a question of his own: “Was I then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming I am a man?”

* * *

What is this?

After the Tennis 128 in 2022 and 1973 Redux last year, my plan is to return to contemporary tennis, with the usual hefty dose of analytics.

My goal is to write as much as possible about the game between the white lines, as opposed to forecasts, ratings, previews, business, and–heaven forbid–tennis personalities and politics.

I will also continue to look back to events from 50 years ago–and 100, and perhaps the occasional non-round number. 1974 was every bit as fascinating a season as 1973. I won’t do 100-plus installments, as I did last year, but I’ll revisit various pivotal moments as their anniversaries roll around, especially to commemorate the birth of World Team Tennis this summer.

You can expect to find a new post a couple of times a week, probably more often during the majors. Your suggestions for topics are always welcome. Comments are open (provisionally! I cannot emphasize enough how provisionally!), and I’ll add a “suggestion box” to the sidebar one of these days.

If you want to keep up with everything I’m doing here, please subscribe. Links to new article will also appear on the Tennis Abstract home page. I can’t promise I’ll always post links on Twitter.

Happy new year!

* * *

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Epilogue: December 1873

*Jimmy Connors and Chris Evert with their 1974 Wimbledon trophies*

There was no single moment when the 1973 season officially ended and 1974 began. The tennis calendar was more of a perpetual cycle than a series of set campaigns. By the time Australia defeated the United States to reclaim the Davis Cup, preliminary ties in the 1974 competition were already in the books. When Ilie Năstase put the icing on his Grand Prix season with a victory at the elite Masters tournament, Australian Open warmups were in progress Down Under.

After the Australian Open, most of the world’s top players would head to North America, where the competing circuits had, for the most part, set aside their differences. Men would play World Championship Tennis and women would compete on the Virginia Slims tour. Unlike in 1973, Chris Evert would test her mettle against Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, and the rest of the gang, and not just at the majors.

In the ongoing battle between tradition and made-for-television modernity, both sides tended to focus on money. Everyone’s bank balance looked better when the circuit headed for the biggest markets in the richest countries, especially if a TV network was interested in the rights. As the amateur ethic drifted further into the past, tournaments were less likely to be hosted at venerable clubs, more likely to be wedged into the calendar at arenas with artificial surfaces laid down a few days before the talent arrived. The traditionalists had fought for decades to preserve the old ways; now, their defeat was total.

One of the casualties was mixed doubles. What used to be a weekly feature was increasingly a novelty in a world where the tours rarely intersected. For 1963, my records include mixed doubles events at 215 tournaments around the world. A decade later, the number was down to 23, many of which were amateur events far off the beaten track of the major circuits.

The Riggs-King Battle of the Sexes symbolized a lot of things, perhaps none more than this: The genders now played against each other, not side by side.

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That was not what Major Walter Clopton Wingfield had in mind.

In December 1973, the sport marked one hundred years since Major Wingfield first tried out “Sphairistiké,” the game he invented that would become known as lawn tennis. In 1873, Britain’s upper classes were mad for sports and games. Wingfield aimed to create a game that men and women could play together, more active than croquet and less vulnerable to a windy day than the newly faddish badminton.

As lawn tennis spread across the globe, many of Wingfield’s innovations, like his hourglass-shaped court, were set aside. But the notion of a mildly strenuous activity that mixed the genders was one of the keys to its success. Matches could be arranged in any conceivable permutation–Wingfield even imagined teams of three or four players on each side of the court–and competitors soon worked out ways to even the odds. Eighty-plus years before Riggs-King, early champions such as Blanche Bingley Hillyard and Lottie Dod competed against men, starting each game with a two- or three-point advantage.

Tournaments, back then, were social events, for players as much as for spectators. While mixed doubles was treated as a light-hearted pursuit compared to the more serious singles and men’s doubles, the most accomplished men and women usually took part. Fans loved it. It sometimes figured in courtships, as well: Even in the 1970s, the number of couples in the tennis world was a reminder of the amateur-era joint tournaments of the decade before. John Newcombe, Roy Emerson, and Cliff Drysdale all married veterans of the circuit. (It was also a small world: Emerson’s sister married Davis Cupper Mal Anderson, and Drysdale’s brother-in-law was doubles specialist and memoirist Gordon Forbes.) Even as opportunities dried up, the genders continued to mix: Stan Smith would soon wed Princeton standout Marjorie Gengler, and tabloid favorites Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors planned nuptials as well.

The new economics of tennis didn’t support old-school garden parties, and players of both genders eagerly made the sacrifice to chase after record prize money. Still, the public wanted mixed doubles, and promoters tried to give it to them.

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A few days after Connors and Evonne Goolagong clinched titles at the 1974 Australian Open, a brand-new tennis concept appeared on North American televisions. Spalding sponsored the International Mixed Doubles Championship, an eight-team event with a prize pool of $60,000. The winning team would take home $20,000: ten grand apiece.

“Heterosexual tennis has come out of the closet,” cracked Bud Collins.

The event was a success, pleasing both players and fans at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas. King and her usual mixed partner, Owen Davidson, took first place with a best-of-five-set victory over Casals and Marty Riessen. Simply reaching the final was an achievement: Other names in the field included Rod Laver, Nancy Richey, and doubles whiz Françoise Dürr.

(Laver wasn’t known as a mixed expert, but between 1959 and 1962, he won three majors and another six titles with Darlene Hard. Her first words to the untested youngster: “I’ll serve first and take the overheads.”)

“I loved to play mixed,” King said. “The millions of ordinary players, the hackers, can relate with mixed–or any kind of doubles–because that’s mainly what they play. Often mixed is a lot more interesting and exciting for spectators than singles. The ball’s in action more. The attendance at this tournament, and the TV prove there’s a market for mixed.”

It wasn’t just Spalding that was willing to make that bet. World Team Tennis, slated to begin play in May 1974, was built on the same premise. Each squad would feature both men and women, and doubles matches–included mixed–would have as much weight as one-on-one competition. When the Minnesota Buckskins faced the Philadelphia Freedoms, Davidson, player-coach for Minnesota, would find himself in an unfamiliar and unenviable position: across the net from Freedoms star Billie Jean.

Major Wingfield would barely have known his own invention in the tennis world of 1974. The courts had straightened out, the nets had come down, and rackets had evolved beyond recognition. The sport featured millionaire players, tournaments on six continents, and a 55-year-old man who walked like a duck but had somehow captivated a nation. Still, Wingfield would have picked out glimmers of what made lawn tennis a 19th-century sensation: Men and women playing alongside one another, joking, bickering, and–every once in a while–falling in love.

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This post concludes my 128-part series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Read the whole thing by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows the full Table of Contents.

In 2024, I’ll be writing regularly about analytics and contemporary tennis, with some history thrown in. Subscribe to receive each new post by email:

December 15, 1973: Court Adjourned

Clearly something wasn’t quite right. Margaret Court was the most overwhelming force in women’s tennis since Maureen Connolly. She had won over 100 matches in 1973, and all four of her losses went three sets. At the 1973 Western Australian Championships in Perth, she was going for her 12th career title at the event.

On December 15th, she met countrywoman Kerry Harris in the semi-final. Harris, like everyone else, hadn’t had much luck against Court, taking only one set in nine previous meetings. She had little reason to hope for more this time: She had arrived in Perth on a four-match losing streak. Court, for her part, had won her first three matches at the tournament with the loss of only five total games.

The first sign that this would end differently came in the third game, when Harris broke for a 2-1 advantage. Court responded in kind but didn’t make any further progress. Only when the first set reached 5-5 did someone crack, and to the astonishment of the Perth crowd, it was the 11-time champion. Harris took the last two games for the set. The second set followed a similar script: Eight holds of serve, then another Harris breakthrough to seal the unlikely result, 7-5, 6-4.

The full story emerged the following week. Margaret Court, already the mother of a 21-month-old son, was pregnant. Her second child was due in July, and she would step away from the tour immediately. It was a blow to the Bonne Bell Cup–a fledgling international women’s competition between Australia and the United States, to be held later in December–as well as to the Australian Open itself.

Court’s absence, of course, was an opportunity for the players she had shut out for so long. Evonne Goolagong not only grabbed the Western Australian title; she also saw her chances of victory skyrocket at the big event in Melbourne. Another beneficiary, in the slightly longer term, was Billie Jean King. King skipped the Australian swing, having made enormous financial demands of the Bonne Bell Cup that organizers ultimately weren’t able to meet. But while Madame Superstar had recently talked about focusing on other parts of her life, she would return, revitalized and ferociously motivated, to the Virginia Slims tour in January. With Court out of the way, King would be the dominant player on the 1974 indoor circuit.

While Billie Jean would keep the youngsters in check for another year, Court’s exit marked the beginning of the end of an era. Margaret would return in November 1974 only to lose an Australian Open quarter-final to Martina Navratilova. (She did, however, pick up that 12th career title in Perth.) She never made another major final, and further pregnancies soon led her into a more permanent retirement. King would last longer–she won tournaments and made the Wimbledon semis as late as 1983–but after 1974, she, too, was essentially a part-timer, putting World Team Tennis and myriad other pursuits ahead of the traditional tour. The field was open for Navratilova and Chris Evert to forge new dynasties.

Court’s pregnancy closed another door, as well: Bobby Riggs’s lingering hope of a rematch. The first Battle of the Sexes, back in May, had been the one blotch on the Australian’s remarkable season, and Riggs saw dollar signs in an encore. Billie Jean had refused him, and negotiations with the Goolagong and Evert camps went nowhere. With Court unavailable, Riggs, too, faded into the history books.

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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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December 11, 1973: Triangulation

Ken Rosewall was the odd man out when Australia triumphed in the 1973 Davis Cup final, but less than two weeks later, he was in the news as a sought-after star. On December 11th, the 39-year-old signed on as the player-coach of the Pittsburgh Triangles. He would team with Evonne Goolagong, Vitas Gerulaitis, and others when the World Team Tennis campaign began in May.

Rosewall’s signing was a much-needed shot in the arm for the upstart league. It had held a player draft in August, making a splash with the early signings of Billie Jean King and John Newcombe. Since then, contract announcements had been sparse, especially among men. The Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s union, was skeptical of the concept; leading figures Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe were particularly firm against it. Until the ATP made an official decision, men who joined a Team Tennis squad risked suspension from the main tour.

That was just the start. The International Lawn Tennis Federation continued to deny their sanction to the league, seeing the May-to-August schedule of stateside dates as an existential threat to the traditional European summer calendar of the French Open, Italian Open, and so much more. WTT bigwigs had made it clear that it wouldn’t stand in the way of Wimbledon, but given the proposed league schedule, other conflicts were inevitable.

Enough player signings, though, and the governing bodies would be irrelevant. Limited as it was, the men’s roster already included Rosewall, Newcombe, and Jimmy Connors. By the end of the month, Ilie Năstase would also be flirting with the league. Drafted by San Diego, he made news when he demanded a trade to New York, saying it was the only place he would play–if he decided to play at all. WTT had no problem lining up top women: In addition to King and Goolagong, Margaret Court had reached an agreement with the San Francisco Golden Gaters, even if she had yet to put pen to paper.

If organized tennis had learned one thing since the beginning of the Open era in 1968, it was that money would win in the end. The details of Rosewall’s contract weren’t immediately announced, except that the modest Australian would receive most of his compensation in the form of “annuities, life insurance, and a pension.” Rumors swirled that top players could get six-figure deals–enormous sums for a few months of exhibition tennis. Only eight men earned $100,000 for the entire 1973 campaign, and Năstase played 32 weeks–not counting Davis Cup!–for his table-topping $228,750.

Much of the sport’s old guard hoped that Team Tennis would simply go away. Five months away from the first serve of the proposed 1974 season, Rosewall’s signing was a reminder that yet another battle for talent, status, and fan attention laid in wait.

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December 8, 1973: Reason For Complaint

“Bickering,” wrote Bud Collins, “is the rule of the road in tennis these days.” Players griped at officials, unions battled federations, crowds heckled players, players gestured back, and referees fined the players. Somebody was usually threatening to sue.

This, however, was a new one: Officials fighting amongst themselves. Just before the championship match of the season-ending 1973 Grand Prix Masters between Ilie Năstase and Tom Okker on December 8th, the New England Umpires and Linesmen Association went on strike. They were peeved because the tournament director chose Mike Blanchard–a non-member, though a widely respected one–as the chair umpire instead of Association head Jim Sullivan.

At the eleventh hour, without linesmen, desperate measures were required. “I showed up to watch the tennis, and somebody grabs me,” said former college football star Charlie Ratto. “I wind up in the match, on a sideline.”

True story.

Surrounded by last-minute subs, Năstase and Okker played like replacements themselves. The Dutchman, in particular, was abysmal. He was broken in five of his first six service games, giving his opponent a 6-3, 3-0 head start. The day before, he had advanced when John Newcombe hurt his knee and retired one point away from victory. Okker said he might have saved that match point–but not like this, he wouldn’t have. Nastase wasn’t much better, but he took full advantage. He kept his head throughout the afternoon, save for one ball he fired at the service-line judge when he disagreed with a decision–an automatic $100 fine.

Okker almost found his way back into the match. Serving at 5-6 in the second set, he lost a point on a Năstase volley that the Dutchman was certain he had double-hit. Blanchard was unmoved as Okker pleaded his case. The Romanian secured the break and took a two-sets-to-love advantage.

While the match ultimately took four sets, the result was never again in doubt. Back in October, Năstase had squandered a 5-2, 40-0 lead in Madrid. But on that day, Okker played his best tennis and the Romanian succumbed to distraction. Neither was the case in Boston, and Năstase completed a 6-3, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 victory.

For all its twists and turns, the Grand Prix Masters was a fitting end to a remarkable season from the erratic 27-year-old. Năstase won more than half of the tournaments he entered and led the Grand Prix points standings by a healthy margin. He piled up prize winnings of $228,750 and won two of his last three meetings with Okker, the one man who had consistently beaten him. Earlier in the week, he had complained that “nobody” considered him to be number one, that they wanted to pick an American or an Australian. Still, the majority of journalists who printed their own subjective rankings put Năstase on top, as well.

After the match, it was back to bickering. Okker admitted he was “PO’d … at the whole situation.” Năstase, $15,000 richer than he was a few hours before, was incapable of leaving good enough alone. “No,” he told the press, “I will not pay any fine.”

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December 7, 1973: Match Point Down

Superstar players competing in December might have wondered if the tennis season was too long. Or maybe the year-end Masters tournament was simply cursed. Whatever the reason, one of the Masters semi-finals ended when a player retired, one point away from victory–two years in a row.

In 1972, the unlucky one was Tom Gorman, who smacked a backhand winner past Stan Smith then, holding match point, told the umpire he couldn’t continue because of a back problem. Neither Gorman nor Smith got through the round-robin stage of the 1973 event, but reporters could dust off their old drafts nonetheless. This time, John Newcombe fell prey to the injury bug, and Tom Okker was the unlikely beneficiary.

Okker was the only undefeated man left in the field, having dispatched Smith, Jimmy Connors, and Manuel Orantes in straight sets. In the semi-final on December 7th, Okker finally dropped a frame to Newcombe, 6-3, but he rebounded to take the second, 7-5. Newk managed to ignore the tightness in his right knee to take a one-break lead in the third, and at deuce in the ninth game, he put away an overhead to earn match point.

And then he felt something pop. Like Gorman a year earlier, Newcombe made his decision quickly. “I might have tried to give it one last shot, to serve an ace on match point,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have been able to play the final, so what was the use?”

Ironically, the situation had once been reversed. At the 1969 Hollywood Pro, Okker hurt his ankle two points away from victory against the Aussie. He softballed two serves, Newcombe netted them both, and Okker advanced. The Dutchman earned a bit more prize money, but he couldn’t recover in time for the next round and defaulted.

Okker held the opinion that he might have beaten Newk this time, too. After all, there was still one point left to play, and Okker had saved the first match point with a strong backhand return. He had already won 91 matches in 1973, and he wasn’t about to concede the possibility of a 92nd.

Whatever would have happened had Newcombe’s knee held out, the Flying Dutchman was into the final, where Ilie Năstase was waiting. Năstase had overcome an early stumble against Gorman to defeat Newcombe and Jan Kodeš in the round robin, then kept his concentration long enough to straight-set Connors in the semi-final.

Năstase had clinched the top spot of the Grand Prix points leaderboard, but as Bud Collins wrote, much was still at stake: a “$15,000 first prize and serious consideration for status as No. 1 in the universe.” The two men had faced off six times since May, with Okker winning four, including their two meetings on indoor carpet. Neither man had taken a direct route to the final, but–cursed or not–the Grand Prix Masters ended up with a championship match worthy of its position as the season-ending showdown on the tennis calendar.

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