Welcome back to Monday's tennis briefing sports The story behind the story in court over the past week will be explained.
This week, the Cincinnati Open will boast about becoming the best in the world, with the match seeing a series of retirements while the 12-day tournament still failing to stand out.
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Cincinnati Open Finals Open Open Open Open Open Open Open in Two Tours
The climax of the Cincinnati Open will be shaped (if not defined), if not defined, in the men’s and women’s journey.
Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz's fourth game in the finals of the season was the first game at 3 p.m. ET in Mason, Ohio. If Alcaraz wins, he will open the U.S. Open with Live World World as he defends only 50 points after Alcaraz shocked second round exit last year. Even if the Sinner wins, his defense of the U.S. Open Championship will mean the ranking is coming soon, but Alcaraz will need to make the semifinal bother him at the top. Sina then defended 2,830 further points for the rest of the season, while Alkaraz defended 1,000 points.
Their end result was Igaświątekvs. Jasmine Paolini, not before 6 p.m. Świątek will be ranked second in the world with the title, and although the result puts the world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka gap by about 3,300 points, the two players entered the last game of the year and protected with very different records. As the dominant champion, Sabalenka guarded 2,000 points at the U.S. Open with 430 points. Sabalenka defended 1,615 times for Świątek's 400 times for the rest of the season. Świątek's title will leave her only 500 points behind Sabalenka in the world's No. 'The Competition', the points won in 2025.
If Paulini wins the championship, Sabalenka's position will be safer.
These two matches have not only trophys, but also the trajectory of the rest of the year. Monday afternoon wasn't bad in some ways – but there was little timeline for the visibility of the sport.
James Hanson
Why Cincinnati's public retirement is not only about conditions
With the huge Grand Slam, Cincinnati Open and other games always have some players paying attention to the next event. This is an important event because it is the last chance that most players have to sharpen before the U.S. Open, but the same players will not have any chance of adaptation.
This involves factors in the 11 retirement and walking volumes of men and women draws, with 7 in the ATP draw and 4 in the WTA. The temperature and high humidity at 86 degrees worked: France's Arthur Rinderknech seemed to collapse against Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime before retiring last Monday, retiring from their third round, which worsened any fatigue in previous tournaments.
Of the seven male players who withdraw the midfield, five of them are seeds, they should all have the opportunity to play in reasonable depths in New York. Frances Tiafoe, who is open to the United States, had to stand out with Holger Rune in the fourth round, and there was no chance. Canadian Open finalist Karen Khachanov issued a statement referring to not taking risks after retirement with Alexander Zverev, while Washington, D.C. runner-up Alejandro Davidovich Fokina said: “No time or skip weeks to catch up with me.”
The WTA draw did not retire in the midfield, but had four walking speeds, and the player quit the game before starting the game. Two are seeds: Marta Kostyuk withdraws from the match against Igaświątek due to a wrist injury, and Dayana Yastreska withdraws from her match against Coco Gauff due to illness.
Despite not being able to compete correctly, one player who has not retired is Zverev. Zverev, who suffered from type 1 diabetes, reported dizziness in the quarterfinals against Ben Sheldon before gradually fading away in the second set of semifinals against Alcalazz. Despite this, he continued to play despite not having a chance to get into the ball, despite Alcaraz's victory 6-4, 6-3, despite four double breakdowns to give in early second set.
Charlie Eccleshare
How to play a breakthrough game?
Retirement and player withdrawals at the Cincinnati Open create fertile ground for a surprise player running. Move forward.
The 23-year-old in France entered the No. 136 match but has been in the semi-finals since the qualifying round. To this end, he took out last year's U.S. Open finalist Taylor Fritz, the rising phenomenon João Fonseca and Flavio Cobolli ranked ninth in the world, who arrived at the Wimbledon quarterfinals last month. Atmane is a semi-final in the ATP Class 1,000 event, running below the Grand Slam, and the lowest ranked man, achieving ten consecutive victories anywhere in three years.
Continuous, surprisingly top-level defines Atmane's run as he punishes opponents with a fierce inside-out forehand, precise service and general policy of full-scale offense. In the year, Victoria Mboko won the Canadian Open, another wildcard Loïs Boisson reached the French Open semifinal, while qualifier Tien entered the fourth round of the Australian Open, which is different.
All of these players have amazing basic records on the second and third runs of the Tennis Tour, and Atmane makes the old-fashioned heater. His family crowd booed him at the French Open because they felt that they lacked effort against 38-year-old Richard Gasquet, who was playing in his final match, losing to then No. 733 Ollie Tarvet in the first round of Wimbledon. He participated in the ATP Tour of this game aged 5-14.
Now he is ranked 69th in the rankings, which is harder than most top 20 and even the top 10 opponents this year. He still has to qualify if he wants to keep this sudden and totally surprising momentum at the U.S. Open, but if he does that, he could be a nightmare for almost anyone’s first round draw.
Charlie Eccleshare
Even if there are more days of games, there are issues with schedule
One of the advantages of the extended 12-day 1000 event is that there are more days for rain delays and other unexpected disturbances. The competition should be arranged in a complete disaster and should not cause controversy.
Not so in Mason, the world's No. 31 Anna Kalinskaya posted on social media, lamenting the quarterfinals against Świątek. The delay in rainfall and a tense three-set match meant she beat Ekaterina Alexandrova early Thursday morning and didn’t go to bed until 4 a.m. before she scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m.
“How do WTA and tournaments expect athletes to perform best when arrangements are not fair?” Kalinskaya wrote.
“How does the game and the WTA expect me to recover and constantly adjust my sleeping style, is this one of the most important aspects of recovery?”
Championship and WTA in with sports. Kalinskaya still has a day off between matches, although that isn't enough to completely correct the physical problems she described. Furthermore, the schedule did not come from the quarterfinals, but started from the previous round, when the match placed two games in the same part of the draw – Kalinskaya vs. Alessandrova and Świątek vs. Sorana Cirstea (at the other end of the game that day).
Świątek has played Cîrstea was in the first game on Thursday, while Kalinskaya and Alexandrova played. When the two met on Friday, they had to have one of two earlier slots as the two later had to go to the quarter-finalist who played on Thursday.
When Kalinskaya and Świątek did meet in the position the former wanted to avoid, she was defeated and lost 6-3, 6-4.
Charlie Eccleshare
📈📉 Rise/Offline
📈 Veronika Kudermetova After her Cincinnati Open, she rose 10 positions from No. 36 to No. 26.
📈 Térenceatmane After his own exploitation in Ohio, he raised the 67th from No. 136 to No. 69.
📈 Anna Kalinskaya After rising from 34 to 31, the top 32 reentered, bringing itself to the U.S. Open.
📉 Holger runes Fall out of the top 10 and drop two positions from No. 9.
📉 Leylah Fernandez Reduced from No. 26 to No. 33.
📉 Alexei Popyrin 17 attractions from the 19th to the 36th also lost the sowing of the U.S. Open.
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📅 Here comes
🎾 ATP
📍New York: United States opens mixed doubles Featured by Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu, Venus Williams, Jannik Sinner.
📍Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Winston Salem Open (250) Features Stefanos Tsitsipas, Gabriel Diallo, Sebastian Korda and Stefan Dostanic.
📺UK: Sky Sports; United States: Tennis Channel💻Tennis TV
🎾 WTA
📍New York: United States opens mixed doubles Featured by Carlos Alcaraz, Emma Raducanu, Venus Williams, Jannik Sinner.
Monterrey, Mexico: Monterrey opens (500) by Linda Nosková, Diana Shnaider, Sofia Kenin, Leylah Fernandez.
📍Cleveland: Land tennis (250) Features Clara Tauson, Loïs Boisson, Maya United, Hailey Baptiste.
📺UK: Sky Sports; Us: Tennis Channel
Tell us what you noticed in the comments below this week as the men and women travel continues.
(Top photo: Getty image; design: Eamonn Dalton)