But learning how to handle losses, any veteran will tell you, is one of the sport’s most essential lessons for surviving on tour. Most pros lose around 20 times each year, and processing a loss in the right way is something that can determine a player’s short-term or long-term future.

What “the right way” is, of course, is subjective, and can vary from player to player, and moment to moment.

I’ve talked to players shortly after their losses more than a thousand times, probably, and I’ve seen many reactions and mechanisms at work. But in all those years, I don’t think I’d ever before heard a player publicly handling losses like Alex de Minaur did after his defeats at the two Grand Slam events this summer.

In his post-loss press conferences, the 27-year-old Australian spiraled into self-flagellation that felt nearly existential, leaning into dark despair in a way I’d rarely ever heard an athlete do on the record.

When he came to Washington this week, I was eager to ask sixth-ranked De Minaur, the defending champion, about why he’d allowed himself to go so bleak so publicly.

For more on Alex de Minaur’s past comments, and his present reflections on them, subscribe to Bounces! —Ben

Read more

But the most intriguing wedding to me, by some distance, was that of one of the most unique couples in recent tour memory: Daria Kasatkina and her longtime girlfriend Natalia Zabiiako, a former figure skater. Their Greek seaside wedding earlier this month continued their remarkable and beautiful story of a love against the odds, flourishing in exile.

WTA players including Mirra Andreeva, Nadiia Kichenok, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Kamilla Rakhimova, Arina Rodionova, and Yuliia Starodubtseva all attended the intimate affair, a celebration of love and freedom that the tennis player-figure skater couple designed themselves.

The de Minaur-Boulter and Paul-Lorenze nuptials both already got the full Vogue treatments, but I was craving more details about Kasatkina’s moment and her vision, so we discussed them at length in our first Bounces interview this year (our previous one last year was on her defection from Russia to Australia).

Subscribe now

After 61st-ranked Kasatkina won her final-round qualifying match at ATP-WTA 500 Washington on Sunday afternoon, she sat down for a lengthy chat with Bounces to share all the details of her wedding and what made it so special.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: You haven’t played that much qualies the last few years. What’s the mindset like, and does it feel like a different sort of pressure or tension when you’re in a qualies match?

Daria Kasatkina: Well, I already played qualies in Strasbourg this year; now here in Washington. Honestly, it’s actually feeling like a little bit less pressure, to be honest, because it’s less stakes, let’s say.

Plus, you can play more matches, which is good because the US swing is for me a little bit difficult: fast courts, balls are very fast. So for me, it’s a bit difficult to adjust to these conditions. So I think to play additional matches is actually pretty good.

Yeah, I mean, for me it’s easy: once you step on court, you have to give your best, and this is what I’m trying to do. Obviously sometimes, you’re waking up and you’re like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ you know? [Laughs.] But now, after a little bit of vacation, coming here, it’s tough, but at the same time a little hunger is there.

Subscribe now

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Where do you find your hunger? What keeps you going?

Daria Kasatkina: Um… good question. [Laughs.] Sometimes I cannot answer this question.

I think the most important for me is to step on court, start my wheels. And if I’m losing during the match, I feel how I’m getting anxious and angry, and I think that is one of the fuels for me. Then I just want to win—because I don’t wanna lose, obviously. There’s naturally some mechanism starting in my body, in my brain, and it just keeps going like that. I think this is how I was operating, more or less, during all of my career.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: The main topic today, of course: congratulations on your wedding.

Daria Kasatkina: Thank you.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I want to know everything, basically.

Let’s just start with, actually, before it even started: how long had you known that you wanted to get married?

Subscribe now

Daria Kasatkina: You mean before I proposed? Well, from the beginning. From the beginning when we started you know being together, I knew.

I mean in my speech during the wedding, I started with the sentence ‘I knew that this day is going to happen from Day One.’

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Awwww.

Daria Kasatkina: [Laughs.] Yeah.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: A love at first sight sort of thing?

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, definitely. Honestly, I didn’t believe in that, but it happened to me.

The whole wedding, I mean, I can talk about it for ages, honestly. Mentally, I’m still there.

We spent four days in Greece with the friends and family—it was the best four days, it was the best week, and then the best day, particularly: the wedding day.

It was the best moment of my life so far. I hope there’s going to be more ‘best days in my life,’ but so far, this is the best day of my life.

Mentally, I’m still there. And whenever I will feel sad or angry or whatever, I will mentally just go back to that day. Me and our friends, we’re still scrolling through the pictures, photos, videos. It was amazing, honestly.

Also the way everything was organized. The way the puzzle just [got put together] in terms of everything there. Energy-wise, the people, like how it all went: it was magical, honestly. It was so good. It’s tough to get back to reality after this, because it was just too good. It couldn’t be true.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: You’re still in the honeymoon fairytale period, hopefully.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, yeah—and in Washington. [Laughs.]

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Exactly, nice honeymoon city.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah—and then Cincinnati! [Laughs.] We’re having a strong honeymoon. [Fist pump.]

Subscribe now

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: How did you decide to do it in Greece? How did that come to be the location?

Daria Kasatkina: Everyone is asking us this, because we’d never been to Greece before—it was the first time for both of us.

I guess we just saw the Pinterest pictures before, the photos, how beautiful it is. We really wanted to do it on the water—on the beach, basically. And you don’t have many places where you can do it. Plus, Greece was logistically the best spot for everyone to come. For my parents and friends from Russia, it was more or less convenient: they could get a visa, the travel time was acceptable. It’s just 45 minutes from Istanbul. For other friends around the world, it was fine as well. The weather was very good. Food—we’ve never been there. My mom loves Greece.

So we were like, OK, that’s probably the perfect spot: let’s do it there. And it was. It’s a beautiful spot. So we’re like, why not visit the country for the first time, and while we’re there, have a wedding?

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I’m glad to hear your parents were able to come, because I remember talking to you—or you said a few years ago—that you hadn’t been able to see your dad, especially, for many years.

Daria Kasatkina: [Chuckles.] The funny thing: so my dad, he couldn’t come.

Because, funny thing—explaining the character of my dad: when he was applying for a visa, his passport was expiring in less than six months. [Laughs.]

This says a lot about my dad. But anyway, my mom could come. She had a very good time. She really loved it. I’m happy that everyone had a great time. The hotel was nice. I think the main ‘spice’ of the magic which happened there was that everyone was on vacation. Everyone was so chill. Whatever happened, everyone was having fun. Nothing could disturb us. It was great.

Subscribe now

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I’ve been to a few various LGBT weddings, and it’s cool with them because I think there’s less sort of clear rules or tradition in some ways, right? You can kind of be more creative, and make it more personal in your own ways.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, we didn’t have any traditions, to be honest.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Yeah, so I’m curious for you: you get this kind of blank slate, this canvas to create whatever you want in this moment. So what did you see in that opportunity to do something that was really personal to the two of you and your relationship? And it’s for your family and friends and everyone, too, but you kind of get to make your own rules, which I think is cool.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah. First of all, we wanted to make it a party, so it was.

We didn’t have rules. So our emcee, she was asking like, ‘OK, what do you want me to do? What don’t you want me to do? Tell me the boundaries.’ We said: ‘No boundaries.’ The woman who was doing that, she was exceptional, we loved her.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: How did you find her?

Daria Kasatkina: Our wedding planners, they found her. We really trusted the people there. And on one of the calls she was like, ‘I’m so happy, girls, because this is going to be my first same-sex wedding, and I’m really looking forward to it.’ Like, she was so happy.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: She’s Russian?

Daria Kasatkina: Yes, but let’s… I don’t want to put her in trouble. Because she is a famous emcee, so I don’t want to make her any trouble.

Everyone in the team who was organizing and the team that was DJs and stuff, they were so into it. You could see that for them it’s not just another job—it’s something else.

So we told her: it’s going to be a party. You say whatever the fuck you want. Just don’t make fun of the parents! That’s the only rule. [Laughs.]

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Good rule, good rule.

Daria Kasatkina: Don’t make fun of parents—that’s it. You can say whatever. Any interactions, make fun of our friends, do whatever. And she stayed with us to party with us, after her shift was done.

Also, you know this tradition where you have to throw the [bouquet of] flowers? Where the one who girl catches it has to get married soon? So what we did: we were about to throw the flowers, and then we said ‘No, we’re not going to do it, because you are not going to compete for happiness. Each of you deserve it equally.’ So we just gave everyone a small flower from the [bouquet]. Because we really didn’t like the idea of this tradition, because honestly, I think that it’s stupid.

And I mean, all the wedding was about love, friendship, and just like, being free—wild and free. We were just having fun as much as we could, and I think that was magical. We didn’t want to make it a very classic, traditional wedding. We wanted to do the complete opposite to that.

Also, we had just our closest people there, only like just 40 people.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Only 40, wow.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, we made it very custom, let’s say. And yeah, that was the best thing ever.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: When you talk about being ‘free’ as a sort of a vibe for a wedding—and maybe it’s a big question—but what does that mean to you at this stage?

With everything you’ve gone through, having this sort of wedding that can be this expression of that value for you, what does that mean?

Subscribe now

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, well, I would say we knew that we’re still going to get some hate, but our skin got so thick that we didn’t give a shit anymore. We could do whatever we want and we didn’t care about the outcome of some people being [unaccepting of] what we were doing. So we really didn’t think about it.

I think this is the best thing. I mean, I think this is what freedom is about: you can do whatever you want without thinking about what others will think. And that’s beautiful, honestly.

Also, what we didn’t want to do was to make the wedding secret. And I think, honestly, the outcome was so good. We really liked it.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: And it was really cool seeing people there. You can talk about people who don’t like it or whatever, but there were so many people who do love it who were there.

Daria Kasatkina: We got so much support, yes.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Obviously people who were actually there, all the people who came, but also everyone else. I saw a lot of people very excited, excited to see the photos, to see what you were wearing—both of you.

Daria Kasatkina: Another thing: we were wearing black; the guests were wearing white or beige. We swapped the other way around, actually. We weren’t wearing dresses.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: How did both of you decide your outfits? And did you not see them before, because you were wearing those blindfolds?

Daria Kasatkina: No—this was another thing. We could see through them a little bit. It was an idea from our planners.

So the initial idea of that was we’d [enter] from different sides, with a voice saying that they didn’t know [they’d find each other]. OK—the idea was that you’re going in your life without knowing where you’re going. So you are kind of blind: you go without instructions. And so the idea was that we would come up from the two different angles, and we would meet each other in one point, being blind.

Yeah, but unfortunately, technically, we couldn’t do it because there wasn’t enough space. [Laughs.] Yeah, so we went together, which meant: we are going without instructions through our lives, but we go together.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: That’s beautiful, that’s great.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, so we did it that way. And our whole wedding, also, the name of the wedding was ‘What’s the Love?’ Like the vlog, ‘What the Vlog.’

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: That was very cool.

How did you decide what to wear?

Subscribe now

Daria Kasatkina: Well, for me, it was obvious. Because I wanted to wear black, and I wanted to wear a suit—but I didn’t want to wear it like a traditional way, with a tie, being fixed. [Buttoning gesture]

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: All the way buttoned up, yeah.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, I didn’t want to do that. So I really like the idea being like more loosened-up. It was pretty easy, honestly.

And Natasha’s idea: she wanted this bodysuit, and her mom actually made it for her. I think she also did all the outfits for the family. Yeah, she loves doing that. I think she used to [do that for] work.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Did she make her figure skating outfits, too, maybe?

Daria Kasatkina: As well! Yeah, when she was a kid, yes. As an adult, no, but when she was a kid she was making the outfits for her.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Yeah, that’s a big part of figure skating, for sure.

What comes next for you two? Obviously now there’s, like you said, Cincinnati.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, Cincinnati. Woo!

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: And the rest of the tour; you now are both back together on this carousel. But again, what are your next hopes? Obviously, I’m sure the wedding was a big date you’d circled for a long time, and all the preparation for that and everything. But now that you have the rest of your lives in front of you, what do you want to do together next in your journey?

Daria Kasatkina: Phooof.

You know, what I like about us is that we are obviously together, but we are two individuals as well. We’ve got our things, you know? I’ve got my career. Natasha, I’m so happy for her that she found her thing. She’s now doing her shows. She just wrote a book.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Oh, what kind of book?

Daria Kasatkina: Novel. The name of the book is ‘The Taste of Her Lips.’ Guess what it is about. [Laughs.]

Yes, so you can now buy it. You can buy it digital, and soon you can also buy it physical—but not yet.

And yeah, I’m really proud of her. She’s so talented. I mean, she’s got so much potential which she’s finally able to show.

And yeah, she’s doing the figure skating show, which she is participating in and also being a big part of the organization stuff. She’s now starting to write another book as well. Yeah, she is doing a lot of things.

So I think for the moment we are together, doing our own things, you know, which is super cool. She’s supporting me on tour, still traveling a lot.

I’m going to do as much as I can supporting her. I also want to be there when she is in action, which, with my calendar, is fucking tough. But I will try to do my best to make it possible.

So, yeah, I’m seeing her finally finding her thing outside of the [figure skating] career. Because it’s for every athlete, I think it’s very tough to find yourself after you retire. And I see, finally, her fire getting back in her eyes. So it’s very important for me, and I really want to help her find her potential as much as she could.

And me, I will continue playing tennis. [Laughs.] Let’s see for how many years more. But yeah, so far, we’re a hard-working couple.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: The last time I wrote about you was when you switched to Australia. I guess I was talking to you in Charleston last year.

I’m curious how that’s gone for you, that transition, now catching up on it a little more than a year later.

Subscribe now

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, I think I’m finally mentally settling down. Because I was trying to play cool, but [laughs] I wasn’t very cool. To be honest, it was difficult. The transition was tough. I was trying not to show it, but I was struggling. Not ‘struggling,’ but I had to change a lot of things.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: What was difficult about it?

Daria Kasatkina: New people. It’s difficult to get into a new environment, to know everyone. Now I’m good with the whole TA team [Tennis Australia], and I feel way better thanks to them as well—they’re amazing people.

Still, you cannot just feel comfortable like this [snaps], you know, changing a huge part of yourself. You need time to adjust. And even if nothing is changed, there’s something which changed in you. I was processing this for about a year, and I’m finally feeling that I’m finding peace, you know.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: It feels like you’re at home, now, in this.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, at home, and I’m more calm mentally. I feel like I am.

Not talking about even on court, but outside of the court—I can relax my brain, you know? I just feel that I’ve settled down, you know? Even if not everything is settled down, mentally I feel that if I need to relax, I can relax.

The whole year before, I didn’t have this feeling at all. I felt like a hamster in the wheel, all the time. And now, finally, I know better how to manage my time off court. Maybe I actually don’t have to invest as much in tennis, but [instead] maybe the life of the outside of the tennis court, which is, at the end, more important.

I know that tennis is a huge part of our lives—and mine as well. And I sacrificed—fuck, I sacrificed so much for tennis. Sometimes, I have to actually also sacrifice tennis for another very important thing in my life.

As I said to everyone at the wedding: this whole thing, the whole trip, is my huge apologies to my family and friends for not being enough in their lives. Yeah, that is my payoff. [Laughs.] Because I understand that I gave everything [to tennis], and it was very egoistic. Because everything I was doing was for myself, you know?

I feel like, fuck, I missed so many things. I missed everything. You know how players go home for Christmas? For us in Russia, New Year’s is actually the big celebration. Which is always when we are already starting in Australia. I didn’t have the opportunity to be there for the New Year’s. I’m not even talking about birthdays, weddings, kids—whatever. I was never there. So I appreciate my friends, but… [laughs].

I’m trying to fix it. They never told me that, but I know what they think sometimes.

Subscribe now

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: But it must feel good to have that moment, this wedding, to have everyone in one place at one time.

Daria Kasatkina: I’m trying to show them that—

[Kamilla Rakhimova enters stage right and hugs Kasatkina from behind.]

Daria Kasatkina: She was one of the friends there.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Oh, you were at the wedding!

Kamilla Rakhimova: Yes, I was at the wedding.

Daria Kasatkina: How was the wedding? Did you like it?

Kamilla Rakhimova: It was lit.

Daria Kasatkina: [Cackles.]

Kamilla Rakhimova: It was super fun. We were so happy for the girls, you know?

Daria Kasatkina: And we were so sad leaving.

Kamilla Rakhimova: I was crying. Three times.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know we had like a roller coaster: crying, laughing so much. Crying, laughing our asses off. It was so good.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: That’s what weddings should be, though.

Daria Kasatkina: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was very emotional.

Thanks for reading Bounces! Share this with someone you love who loves tennis! -Ben

And to be clear, Nishikori did a whole, whole lot, mostly during what was perhaps the toughest era men’s tennis has ever had.

Subscribe now

Nishikori, who broke nearly every record for men’s tennis players from Japan and all of Asia, spent 212 weeks in the ATP Top 10, including an uninterrupted three-year residency from September 2014 to September 2017. He spent 75 of those weeks inside the Top 5, reaching a peak of No. 4.

He qualified for the year-end championships four times. He reached the quarterfinals or better at the majors twelve times, with his best run taking him to the final at the 2014 U.S. Open. He also reached four Masters 1000 finals, and won an Olympic bronze medal in 2016.

Nishikori has been a less visible presence in recent years—his last major quarterfinal was in 2019—but his legacy remains strong, and his career still has a few tournaments left in it. His intended remaining schedule includes Washington this week—where he’ll play Jerry Shang in an opening round match on Monday evening—as well as the U.S. Open, where he hopes to receive wild cards to play both in the singles qualifying draw and in mixed doubles with Naomi Osaka. His farewell ATP event is slated to be in Tokyo this fall.

At ATP-WTA 500 Washington, the first tournament Nishikori will play since his retirement announcement nearly three months ago, the Japanese superstar sat down for an interview with Bounces about his game, his rivals, his generation, his proudest moments, and his regrets.

To read our whole one-on-one interview, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Read more

Jannik Sinner will not be saying a Montréalais “Bonjour Hi” to further ATP history this year—at least, anyhow, not to the most remarkable achievement which he was closing in upon.

Sinner, who swept the first five ATP Masters 1000 events of the year—Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Madrid, Rome—withdrew Friday from the sixth Masters 1000 event on the calendar: next month’s ATP 1000 Montreal tournament.

For much more on Sinner’s withdrawal, the unprecedented history which he’s passing up on, and why this moment should be so alarming to the ATP, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Read more

A few days ahead of the start of the tournament, which has rebranded as Mubadala DC Open this year, I caught up with tournament owner Mark Ein for a wide-ranging interview on a host of tournament and tour topics.

I’ve known Mark since his days as an owner of World TeamTennis’ Washington Kastles—one of the first tennis events at which I was ever credentialed media, many moons ago. Since he took over this ATP-WTA tournament in 2019, I’ve seen how many radical improvements he’s made to the Washington tournament—the only combined 500-level event on tour. He’s done all this while also expanding his footprint on the sports landscape, taking ownership stakes in the NFL, MLB, and Premier League.

We discuss subjects including ongoing changes to the tournament site, the appeal of lifestyle/influencer categories for ticket sales, cutting the men’s singles draw size from 48 to 32 this year, his efforts to make men’s doubles more entertaining, lessons he’s learned from ownership stakes in other sports, and having a lucrative buy-back offer on the table from the Saudis.

There’s a lot of meaty stuff here, and I hope tennis fans—and industry folks—will all feast.

To read the whole ~4,000-word interview, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Read more

Big news to break here on Bounces today, at the messy intersection of women’s sports and gender issues.

Bounces can report that the Women’s Tennis Association has enacted a policy requiring that all WTA players must undergo genetic sex testing in order to maintain their eligibility to compete on the WTA Tour.

Subscribe now

While there are zero known transgender women currently active at any level of professional women’s tennis—and there haven’t been any for nearly half a century—the phantom threat of trans women in women’s sports has gained traction in recent years, primarily as a moral panic fomented by Republican lawmakers and pundits seeking a culture-war wedge issue for political benefit.

Now, in a decision that may reflect a political shift in the organization, the WTA Board has decided to heed the movement’s growing traction within sports.

Starting this month, the WTA is taking the unprecedented step of requiring all of its players to undergo genetic testing to weed out any women who may have a specific genetic marker that suggests traces of male biology. This, as far as my research has shown, will make the WTA the first independent professional women’s sports league or tour to mandate such genetic screening for all of its athletes.1

I’ve decided to make this entire in-depth story, including the new WTA eligibility policy document obtained by Bounces, free to read for all. But if you can, please subscribe to Bounces. Your support makes this sort of reporting possible. -Ben

The new WTA policy that I am reporting on here has not yet been publicly added to the WTA rulebook or website. Instead, the most recent update to the 2026 WTA Rulebook refers only to a shifting “WTA Women’s Eligibility Policy” that can be provided upon request.

The policy linked on the WTA website’s rules page (at the time of publication of this story) was a document most recently updated in October 2024.

To understand the dramatic changes the WTA is making with its new rules and regulations, I think it’s best to first understand the previous policy.

Subscribe now

The WTA’s Former “Women’s Eligibility Policy”

The 2024 version, the most recent prior revision of a policy that has evolved many times2, used inclusive language at its outset:

The 2024 policy provided a pathway, with certain testosterone thresholds, for “a biological male with a female or non-binary gender identity” to gain eligibility to play on the WTA Tour if she reached and maintained the required low testosterone levels.

2024 Wta Women S Eligibility Policy

244KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The 2024 policy did not affect the vast majority of women playing on tour. Instead, the only players who would have been subject to evaluation were those who self-declared or could be otherwise identified: “the WTA Medical Manager may investigate, at any time, whether a player who has not filed a declaration under this policy needs to establish their eligibility to compete in WTA Tournaments in accordance with this policy.” The WTA Medical Manager, the rule continues, could only investigate cases “in good faith and on reasonable grounds based on information derived from reliable sources.”

Also of note: the legal language near the end of the eight-page document includes a clause that “This policy is governed by the laws of the state of New York.”

Subscribe now

The WTA’s New “Women’s Eligibility Policy”

While the 2024 policy used inclusive language, the 2026 policy—which ostensibly already went into effect on July 1st, according to the document—focuses on narrowing definitions to exclude athletes who might’ve previously been welcome, and also makes clear that this wide-ranging policy affects every player.

Instead of a pathway toward eligibility based on testosterone levels, the new WTA rules mandate a genetic test, normally administered via a cheek swab, to determine the presence of the SRY gene. This would only be a one-time test for each athlete: genetic makeup does not change within a person’s lifetime. The SRY gene is a small section of DNA, typically found on the Y chromosome, which triggers the development of testes instead of ovaries in a fetus.

The WTA’s new sex testing program is being administered by Colorado-based Phuel Sports Science.

From the document:

There can, however, be variations which complicate that binary pattern.

If a player tests positive for the SRY gene, they will only be able to continue competing in WTA events if they can prove that “they have Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or another disorder of sex development that means they have never experienced the physiological effects of either Male Mini-puberty or Male Adolescent Puberty.”

(“Male Mini-puberty,” for those unfamiliar with this strange endocrinology phrase, is a process which the document describes as “the hormonal surge of gonadotropins and testosterone which occurs in early infancy, spiking at two to three months postnatal age and ending at around six months.” In other words, if anything male-coded ever had biological effects within the person’s lifetime, even if only in the cradle, the person would be deemed ineligible to compete.)

Subscribe now

To public knowledge, the current WTA player pool consists exclusively of cis women who were assigned female at birth. But because biological sex is not as purely binary as many assume, genetic tests can yield surprising results in rare cases, even for people who have lived their entire lives as one gender. Although such shocking results are rare, they can be traumatic, and can feel particularly existential when they become career-threatening for an athlete.

Though most of the outcry about trans women in women’s sports is a recent culture war phenomenon, the harm caused by such tests is not a brand-new issue. An article in the 2002 journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise discussed “the stigmatization and emotional trauma experienced by individuals screened positive” in female “verification” tests given to Olympic athletes:

“Genuine sex-impostors have not been uncovered by laboratory-based genetic testing; however, gender verification procedures have resulted in substantial harm to a number of women athletes born with relatively rare genetic abnormalities.”

The WTA’s new policy document seems to acknowledge the potential for its tests to inflict such trauma, proactively promising support for affected players:

The document also acknowledges, in the final line of the form which players must sign to accept the policy, that the private pain could also be accompanied by a public spectacle if the process becomes contentious:

Here is the full policy document, attached and downloadable for those who might like to peruse it in its entirety:

Wta Womens Eligibility Policy From Bounces July 2026

2.42MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

One line that caught my eye in this revision: perhaps illustrating the striking political shift which this new policy represents for the WTA, the 2026 document no longer orients itself legally under progressive New York law as the 2024 policy did, but instead roots itself in deep-red Florida, where courts would figure to be considerably more conservative on this issue.

Subscribe now

The Landscape of Transgender Topics in Women’s Tennis and Beyond

This is the first time I’ve written at Bounces about transgender issues in professional tennis, precisely because I don’t think there really are any.

As I alluded to above, only one transgender woman is known to have ever attempted to compete in women’s professional tennis: Renée Richards, who became a national sensation in the 1970s after she successfully won a court decision that granted her admission to compete in women’s tournaments.

Richards, who played stateside events in her mid-40s, had some notable success—even making the final of women’s doubles at her debut U.S. Open in 1977—but did not disrupt the competitive balance of the sport and failed to inspire any successors.

As Richards wrote in her 1983 memoir Second Serve:

“Most of the officials whom I queried subscribed to what I came to think of as the “floodgate theory.” If I was allowed to play, then the floodgates would be opened and through them would come tumbling an endless stream of made-over Neanderthals who would brutalize Chris Evert and Evonne Goolagong. Of course, this was sheer nonsense.”

Richards, a fascinating character who remains active and engaged on these issues at her current age of 91, shifted her position on inclusivity after her own playing career ended. Richards now argues that trans women should not be permitted to compete in women’s sports like she was able to do herself.

(For more on Richards, you can pre-order Julie Kliegman’s forthcoming book Finding Renée Richards, which I’ll have more about soon on Bounces.)

The first documented sex testing policy in tennis history was created to block Richards in 1976. Though no active WTA player is being specifically targeted by this new policy to my knowledge, the WTA board still wished to “secure” and “preserve the integrity” of the sport in case any hypothetical transgender athlete might come along in the near or distant future, wanting to compete in professional women’s tennis.

Subscribe now

This framing of a gender policy as guarding against a threat echoes the International Olympic Committee in March, which called its barring transgender women—using the same SRY gene screening test as a mechanism—“protection of the female category.” The IOC decision followed decisions by the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), both of which could be traced to pressure from the Trump administration and its “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” executive order.

This WTA policy aligns the tour with the new Olympic guidelines, and my understanding is that this is not a coincidence in the WTA Board’s timing. The decision to do that, however, was a wholly elective one by the WTA Board: the WTA is not a constituent governing body affiliated with the IOC and has no obligation to follow its lead or to have congruent rules. The relevant tennis body that works in conjunction with the Olympics, rather, is World Tennis (formerly known as the International Tennis Federation).

But for both the WTA—and even the entire Olympic movement—the “protection” issue has been against a phantom threat, almost completely hypothetical despite the hullabaloo. In the entire history of the Olympics, only one openly transgender woman has ever competed in any women’s event at the Olympics: Laurel Hubbard, a weightlifter from New Zealand who failed on all three of her lift attempts at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

There are all sorts of more urgent, tangible issues facing women’s tennis, and women’s sports more broadly. But because of its cultural resonance, the topic of transgender women in women’s sports has caused wildly outsized cultural clutter. There’s no good reason why I—probably like several of you reading this—can name two swimmers who finished off the podium at an NCAA event four years ago. That’s how obscure you have to get to find actual examples of trans women making any waves in sports. There’s no degree of statistical significance.

Subscribe now

Still, this issue has become an obsession for some—most notably one vaunted 18-time major champion. After developing a years-long obsessive fixation on the topic that has expanded into wider bigotry toward trans women in broader society, Martina Navratilova tweets and retweets anti-trans comments and content—often ranging far beyond the issue of sports eligibility—on an average of many times each day.

I went to check how many times Navratilova had tweeted or shared anti-trans content on the day I wrote this article—Saturday, July 18th—and found a staggering 15 separate instances as I scrolled through just one single day of her prolific timeline.

Navratilova did not cause this change in WTA policy—she is not on the board and her influence on the organization is likely not outsized—but she will certainly applaud it.

Thankfully, few active WTA players have ever felt any need to expound similarly on this non-issue, and mercifully they rarely get asked about it in interviews or press conferences.

When WTA No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka went on Piers Morgan Uncensored last December to promote her “Battle of the Sexes” against Nick Kyrgios, Morgan asked her about possibly playing trans women.

Sabalenka said it was a “tricky question,” then said that “I have nothing [against] them, but I feel like they still got a huge advantage over the women and I think it’s not fair on women to face, basically, biological men.”

As I wrote after that deeply unnecessary match:

Another unwelcome element of the discourse around this match: obsessives over the boogeyman non-issue of trans women in women’s sports have also latched onto this result as a reason to trumpet anti-trans rhetoric anew, saying that Kyrgios’ win over Sabalenka proves that male athletes are a threat to women’s sports. Presciently, earlier this month on The Body Serve podcast, host James Rogers said that “This reprise of the so-called ‘Battle of the Sexes’ is a Trojan horse for the anti-trans movement to infiltrate tennis.”

I don’t know if that mission was a conscious core motivation of the event’s organizers, but it was another definite downside on this sad day in which a whole lot was lost and nothing was gained.

Late last year, Ukrainian player Marta Kostyuk made comments that brushed against issues of gender and biology—in an interview that appeared garbled by its publisher—about top players having an advantage because of naturally higher testosterone levels.

“When I look at these players, I have my own skills, but at the end of the day, they are all much bigger than me, much taller than me, much stronger than me,” Kostyuk was quoted as saying. “We all have different biological structures. Some have a higher level of testosterone, some have lower. I know players who are good players who have higher levels of it. It’s just natural, they don’t take anything. I’m sure of that. It’s just the biology of their body.”

How Kostyuk would purport to know anything about other women’s testosterone levels was unclear.

Subscribe now

While my focus as a reporter has always been on professional sports, there was also a quiet decision by the United States Tennis Association to ban trans women from competing in sex-specific categories late last year, as reported by Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket. That move, as Kabas clearly traced in her reporting, can also be attributed to pressure from Republican lawmakers.

One last additional item which I don’t believe has been reported or widely noticed previously. Before this new policy, the WTA had already dabbled in some anti-trans policy language. In the 2025 WTA Safeguarding Code, first published in December 2024, one phrase singled out trans women for exclusion: “No persons who were born or identify as male will be permitted in WTA locker rooms.”

Update (Sunday July 19, 4:30 pm ET):

About eight hours after the initial publication of this story, the WTA sent this statement to Bounces:

“The WTA’s Women’s Eligibility policy is designed to promote equal athletic opportunities in women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition for all players participating in WTA tournaments.

Since first being introduced in ​​1975, the eligibility policy has undergone periodic review in light of developments across international sport. Following the most recent review, which included consultation with WTA members and evolving standards across women’s sport, the Board approved a new policy beginning in 2026 based on biological sex. 

The updated policy is intended to provide a clear eligibility standard for participation in WTA tournaments. Eligibility to participate in WTA tournaments will be confirmed through a required, one-time screening process for the SRY gene. Player screening will begin in 2026, following all appropriate confidentiality and data privacy safeguards and concurrent with a comprehensive player engagement program.

The WTA recognizes that this is a sensitive and complex issue and is committed to treating all players with dignity and implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful way. Additional detail can be found in the full policy.”

The WTA has also updated its website to officially publish the new policy today.

More on this topic to come here, and I will continue to follow this story at Bounces as it develops. -Ben

Give a gift subscription

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

One way you can tell it’s a vacation window for top tennis players: several of them planned their weddings for this week. Tommy Paul (to Paige Lorenze), Daria Kasatkina (to Natalia Zabiiako) and the player pairing of Katie Boulter and Alex de Minaur all tied the knot within recent days.

So with vacations and romance in the tennis air, I thought this would be the right time to share my recent conversation with Edward Schmit, author of the new tennis romance The Open Era.

The Open Era was my own recent vacation read while I was in Lyon for a few days after the French Open last month, and once I cracked it open I devoured it quickly. I can be a tough audience for tennis works, but this fictional story gets an impressive amount of the details of professional tennis and the U.S. Open right. The story also weaves together two themes that have gotten a lot of attention within the sport in recent years: player mental health and anxiety, and the possibility of an openly gay player (or players) in top-level men’s tennis.

The Open Era takes place over the course of just one tournament but covers a lot of ground for its two main characters, Californian qualifier Austin Hardy and Mexican star Diego Cruz.

Author Edward Schmit and I spoke last month via Zoom; I’ve included our whole conversation here as a video below. We discuss topics including how he worked to get so many of the tennis details right, what it’s been like watching the openly gay Brazilian João Lucas Reis da Silva compete in Grand Slam qualifying draws, and the inevitable comparisons to Heated Rivalry.

You can buy The Open Era here, or wherever you buy your books.

It’s going to be a busy month for tennis book releases—which are often concentrated around this time of year for American audiences—so there will be more recommendations for your shelves soon.

Thanks for reading Bounces! -Ben

Subscribe now

When I asked him about being atop the ladder, the 23-year-old Shelton said he had “more of a team view when I think of U.S. tennis.”

“Obviously I live in Orlando: the National Center is there,” Shelton said. “So I’m seeing these young kids all the time who are very good players coming up: 16, 17. I’m practicing with them sometimes. For me, that’s the coolest part: to be around them and give them some exposure to playing with a top-10 guy.

“To see some of their trajectories and get to know some of those kids has been really fun. I think I’ve enjoyed that piece of it more, because I know when I was a kid and I got to hit every once in a while with one of the pros at the USTA, it was, like, crazy for me. I was starstruck—and it honestly helped a lot.”

When I asked Shelton if any of the youngsters stood out to him, he didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Jordan Lee,” Shelton said quickly. “Yeah.”

So when I saw 16-year-old Jordan Lee begin to march through the boys’ singles draw at Wimbledon, I wasn’t shocked, even though he’d had to come through qualifying. Lee thrashed fifth-seeded Yannick Theodor Alexandrescou 6-0, 6-2 in the first round to kick off what became a draw full of upsets, with none of the top eight seeds even reaching the quarterfinals.

Lee rolled on, making it to the final, where he faced an opponent who was also unseeded but had one of the most recognized names ever in a junior final: Cruz Hewitt, the 17-year-old son of 2002 Wimbledon men’s champion Lleyton Hewitt.

I had the delight of sitting next to junior tennis beat legend Colette Lewis during the final; as she saw the media section on No. 1 Court filling up more than it had for any junior match she could remember, she turned to me and said: “It’s been a great final, but who are all these people?”

Though both players had mature serves that reached over 120 miles per hour, it was a roller coaster match—as junior matches often are. Hewitt led 5-1 in the first set before staving off a Lee comeback to take it 6-4. After Lee took a 5-2 lead in the second set, it was his turn to fend off a Hewitt surge before taking it 6-4. And then when Hewitt took a 4-2 lead in the third set, it was Lee who fought back, leveled, and ultimately broke Hewitt at love in the final game, snapping a backhand winner down the line to take the 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory.

Lee, who is the first American boy to win a junior title at Wimbledon since Samir Banerjee in 2021, is one of the youngest winners of a major boys’ singles title: he only turned 16 two months ago.

I could only find a handful of younger Open Era Wimbledon boys’ champs in my research, including a kid named Bjorn Borg in 1972.

Though not quite as steady as Hewitt, who is nearly a year-and-a-half older, Lee was quicker and more explosive on Saturday, with a combination of speed, power and drop shots that has drawn some excited—if premature—comparisons to Carlos Alcaraz.

“Obviously I’m really happy that I won this title,” Lee said in his post-win press conference. “It’s a big title and I’m really happy to be here. For me, I think the mentality going forward is: I know I can do it. Hopefully, my career is just getting started. I know it’s a long journey, so I don’t think winning this title means that I’m going to be destined for greatness or that I’m going to win pros next year. I know there’s a long journey ahead of me, and I’m ready for it.”

Lee has a parent with a tennis pedigree of her own, albeit not at the level of Lleyton Hewitt’s laurels.

Tina Lee, Jordan’s mother, was a tennis player herself, starting in her native Bratislava at the same club where Marian Vajda coached before he went on to success as the longtime coach of Novak Djokovic. Tina came to Florida to play collegiate tennis for Bethune-Cookman University, and stayed in the area to coach; she’s now a coach at the USTA center in Orlando.

But while Lleyton Hewitt was courtside, Tina Lee gets too nervous to watch her son live. She only came down courtside to greet him a few minutes after he’d won the match.

“Yeah, she does get a bit tight while I’m playing,” Lee said in an interview with Bounces. “But yeah, I really, really appreciate everything that she does for me. She’s my biggest supporter. So yeah, seeing her coming down after I won was pretty emotional, but very nice.”

In his earlier press conference, Lee had described how he started to play tennis while his mother was coaching in a local park.

“They had racquets you could rent for free: I just grabbed the racquet and started hitting on a fence or a wall,” Lee said. “From there on, I fell in love with it.”

Lee said in his interview with Bounces that his mother’s primary goals for him, as he saw them, were not tennis-based.

“Her goal was always for me to be the best human being that I can, whether that’s on the court or off the court. I think that was her main goal, and, (laughs) hopefully she did a good job of that. When it comes to tennis, we started off when I was pretty young, but it wasn’t like we were taking it too seriously. Also letting me enjoy my kid days.”

“Do you feel like your ‘kid days’ are over?” I asked. “You’re still young, so I hope not.”

“No, no,” Lee replied, reassuringly. “Hopefully, they’re not.”

Lee’s entry as a qualifier may have made him look like an outsider at Wimbledon—and he had never before competed at any junior Grand Slam event—but he’s been highly touted for years. Four years ago, when he was just 12, Lee won the IMG Future Stars event in Greece. Two years ago, he made it to the final of the 14-and-under event at Wimbledon. Last year, he won the Eddie Herr tournament in Florida.1

And then, of course, there was Shelton’s emphatic endorsement.

“Ben’s a great person,” Lee said when I asked him about Shelton’s praise. “I really enjoy being with him. On the court hitting with him, it’s pretty scary when he’s across the net. But yeah, in the locker room, outside the locker room, I think he’s like one of my idols, someone that I look up to. Not just because of, like, American tennis, but also his professionalism, and all the stuff he does on the court and off the court. That’s really something I’m trying to get to.”

Lee missed seven months last year, he said, with a right wrist injury, though he couldn’t explain more specifically what the exact issue had been. “I have no clue,” Lee said.

Next up for Lee will be the 18-and-under boys’ national championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where the winner gets a main draw wild card into the U.S. Open men’s singles draw.

“For me, I’m not thinking really about the U.S. Open wild card,” Lee told Bounces. “I just want to take it one match at a time. I haven’t been to Kalamazoo ever, so it’s going to be pretty, pretty new and fun for me.”

Cruz Hewitt’s journey has been considerably more spotlit.

Read more

WIMBLEDON, England — Even the best high-definition televisions in Britain are not getting the whole picture this year at Wimbledon.

Second-seeded Alexander Zverev, who plays his first-ever Wimbledon final on Sunday afternoon against Jannik Sinner, is one of the main characters of the tournament, enjoying many hours of coverage on BBC broadcasts as he made his way through the draw as a newly-minted major champion in men’s tennis.

But no matter how many hours of tennis coverage they binge, BBC television audiences at home—many of whom watch tennis only during this fortnight—aren’t likely to hear the whole story about Zverev. That is, unless something dramatically changes in the network’s policy and practices toward a crucial aspect of Zverev’s biography, one that has stained his image among many tennis fans who follow the sport year-round.

First in 2020, and then again in 2023, Zverev was accused of physical and emotional abuse by two of his long-term former partners, Olya Sharypova and Brenda Patea. Zverev has offered repeated blanket denials to the detailed claims made by each woman.

Sharypova’s case was the subject of a “major independent investigation” commissioned by the ATP, which neither confirmed nor disproved the accusations against Zverev, but instead concluded in January 2023 that there was “insufficient evidence to substantiate published allegations of abuse.” Patea took her case to German authorities; in 2024, a court proceeding between Patea and Zverev ended in a settlement that had Zverev paying 200,000 euros (£170,000) in penalties, with 150,000 euros paid to the German treasury and 50,000 going to non-profit organisations.

The resolution did not determine Zverev’s possible culpability, however: “The decision is not a verdict and it is not a decision about guilt or innocence,” the court told media.

These are not niche concerns in Zverev’s profile: the two cases currently take up 11 paragraphs of his English-language Wikipedia page.

But BBC TV, like nearly all1 French Open broadcasters last month, has completely ignored this topic in all its coverage and discussion of Zverev at Wimbledon this year to my knowledge, even as he takes a more prominent role in the tournament than ever before, including his role as the opponent who ended Arthur Fery’s “fery-tale” run to the semifinals.

Yes, the BBC is proving it is possible to sportswash an athlete.

Any moment of Zverev coverage during this fortnight so far would be found similarly lacking, but let’s start with the introduction to his first-round match last Tuesday. The panel of Clare Balding, Tim Henman, Jamie Murray and Anne Keothavong was tasked with cueing up Zverev’s opening-round match on Centre Court. The group spoke of his winning the French Open after having previously lost three Grand Slam finals. They mentioned his ankle injury that happened four years ago. There was a long section, replete with graphics, on how Zverev’s second serve return position might have been a liability on grass last year. Then, the match began, and that became the sole focus of the commentators.

But the full picture is far more complicated, and I daresay more interesting. Uniquely among recent winners, the cloud from Zverev’s cases has still hovered over him in this new chapter he’s begun as a major champion, dimming the dazzling sparkle which newly-crowned champions customarily enjoy.

At least, anyhow, in print and online media.

The morning after his win in Paris, Zverev abruptly cut off an interview with French sports daily L’Equipe after reporter Quentin Moynet repeatedly asked him questions that alluded to the allegations. “I think we should stop,” Zverev said, abruptly halting the interview.

The two had been traveling in a car together for a ride-along interview on the way to Zverev’s trophy shoot near the Eiffel Tower. “The journey ended in an icy silence,” Moynet wrote of the final five minutes of the ride.

The aborted L’Equipe interview made headlines internationally, including in Zverev’s native Germany, where he remains a far less beloved figure than previous German champions like Boris Becker or Steffi Graf.

Raphael Brinkert, a German PR expert, was interviewed last month by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about the continuing challenges Zverev faces abroad and at home.

“People respect him as a tennis player, but they do not love him,” Brinkert told SZ of Zverev. “There are too many issues hanging in the air for that…A public reckoning from him never really took place. As long as he does not clear up or clarify these issues, that will not change.”

This week in Britain, articles about the accusations against Zverev have run in outlets such as The Times of London, The Independent, The Press Association, The Sun, and even music magazine Far Out.

There’s no compelling reason that print audiences should be the only ones confronted with the full story about this complex character.

Given all of the erudite and thoughtful programming they do on their airwaves, the BBC, surely, thinks highly enough of its television audience so as not to withhold complicating information about one of the biggest stars of its signature sports event?

And in its recent programming on its other platforms, the BBC has proven more capable. On BBC Radio 5 Live, the allegations were discussed both before and after last month’s French Open final by BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller. The BBC website, too, has covered the stories around the allegations for years.

When reached for comment about this story, a BBC spokesperson referred to Fuller’s radio reporting and sent those links to four articles about Zverev’s case on the BBC website, without offering any explanation to my core inquiry: why BBC television audiences have been kept in the dark on this topic.

It’s also possible that something could happen on Sunday inside Centre Court that would foreground Zverev’s past, for which a television audience would have no context. After all, the last time Zverev and Sinner faced one another in a major final, the trophy ceremony was disrupted by a protester shouting the names of the women involved.

BBC Sport television audiences, occasionally, are exposed to microdoses of journalism. At the close of the halftime show during England’s World Cup group stage game against Ghana weeks ago, BBC presenter Gabby Logan ended the football discussion with a warning to the audience that she had “one news line” to report, before mentioning England’s Djed Spence not shaking hands with Ghana’s Thomas Partey pre-match, and then summarizing the seven rape charges and one sexual assault charge which Partey faces. “He’s denied the charges and is scheduled to go on trial next year,” Logan concluded.

Partey was one of 22 players on the pitch during that match, and there was still time in the broadcast to discuss his legal troubles; Zverev is one of just two players on court during his Wimbledon appearances, playing best-of-five singles matches that often last twice as long as a football contest.

I hold the BBC, as a public service broadcaster, to a higher standard than I do networks like ESPN or TNT—it would likely say the same of itself.

In its most recent Royal Charter, the BBC defines its mission as “to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”

Wimbledon would still “entertain,” probably, without a single word spoken by commentators. But in order to uphold the “inform” and “educate” promises of its commitment to the British public, the network must break its silence and make sure the audiences watching at home understand the shadows that darken the picture around this man dressed in all-white.

Thanks for reading Bounces. If you’d like to support the work I do here, please consider a free or paid subscription. -Ben

Leave a comment

Linda Noskova, who had rolled since the beginning of the match with little resistance from Karolina Muchova, was up 6-2, 5-2, and had earned her first championship point just 68 minutes into the match.

You know what came next—and I’ll go into those excruciating moments in the detail they deserve—but I want to focus on what really decided this match after what could have been an all-time collapse.

To read the rest, please subscribe to Bounces!

Read more

Both favorites won easily. In the more intriguing second semifinal, top-ranked Jannik Sinner rolled 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 past seven-time champion Novak Djokovic without much tension or suspense.

That tension came later. In his post-match press conference, Djokovic—nearly three years removed from his 24th and most recent major title—was in an intriguingly combative mood, while also willing to be reflective about how reasonable his own dissatisfaction can be at age 39.

Subscribe now

I will include a few highlights of the English bits here, but the real meat of this—as Bounces readers will know has become tradition here—is the full, professionally-translated transcript of the Serbian portion of Djokovic’s press conference, which I think might be the most interesting one yet in the six times I’ve done this here.

To read it all—on expectations, aging, and more—subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Read more

I was immediately impressed. The 21-year-old Noskova spoke bluntly and freely, with a searing honesty that had the WTA moderator looking ready to clutch her pearls. (Many of those answers will come in Bounces features that I’m looking forward to publishing in the next few months.)

While being at a Noskova press conference was a new experience for me, one of the questions she got from another reporter in the room rang very, very familiar. And with Noskova set to play in the Wimbledon final against Karolina Muchova—the first1 all-Czech final in Grand Slam history—it’s a question and topic we’ll all be hearing a lot more on Saturday and beyond.

“How is Czech tennis so good? Is there something in the water?”

It’s a very fair question, to be sure, given how unlikely their success is. The Czech Republic has a population of about 10.9 million, about the same as North Carolina, but it’s about to win its third Wimbledon women’s title in the last four years. How do they do it?

The answers have varied, but the questions have mostly stayed the same.

Having heard variations of this query for years, particularly at Wimbledon where Czech women will have now won three of the last four titles, I went digging through the archives here, looking for both the question and its answers. It took some time, but after compiling all the Czech women’s Wimbledon press conference transcripts since 2010, I can share how often this question has been asked, and how these various women have responded.

And for Muchova and Noskova, how they feel about getting this question over and over.

Read more

But I know from experience—and still see from the colleagues sitting nearby me courtside—that in order to file instantly off a nailbiter match that could go either way, on-deadline writing often requires working on two documents simultaneously, one for each possible result.

But even though I wouldn’t have needed to publish it in the end, I already saw my version of a Coco Gauff victory story coming together on Thursday afternoon in the Wimbledon semifinals.

And what a victory it would have been.

Read more

In his run to the Wimbledon men’s semifinals, Alexander Zverev wore the logos of his sponsors Bitpanda and MiniMed above the three Adidas stripes on his sleeves.

But in her run to the Wimbledon women’s semifinals, Karolina Muchova has had no logos above the tri-striped sleeves on her own very similar Adidas “Climacool” shirt.

This is not a coincidence: it has become Adidas corporate policy in recent years, Bounces has learned from conversations with agents and players, to block women’s tennis players from the sponsorship earning opportunities that the men on their roster are allowed to benefit from.

This Adidas policy, which I first began looking into last year, would serve to further increase the stubborn overall earnings gap between male and female tennis players.

To read the full story, please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Read more

“What can I say? These are the kind of moments that I still play tennis for, for sure,” Djokovic said in his on-court interview. “I wish it was finals, so I don’t need to worry about how the body will feel tomorrow. But I’m happy. I’m happy that I won.”

Tumaini Carayol and I discussed the 39-year-old’s marathon win—and other fourth-round and top-half quarterfinal action—in the latest episode of No Challenges Remaining.

Later in his on court interview, Djokovic called the win “one of the best matches I was part of on this court in my career,” which is quite a statement given his long history on Centre Court.

This was Djokovic’s first time finishing a match in a fifth-set tiebreak, anywhere, since the indelible 2019 Wimbledon final he won over Roger Federer, saving two match points in the process.

As I flashed back to that moment during today’s match, I decided for tonight’s Bounces dispatch to reshare one of my favorite stories from a year ago here: my finding and profiling the woman who unwittingly became one of the most iconic images of that 2019 final—and of recent tennis history.

Bounces’ subscriber count has more than doubled in the last year, happily, so I’m excited for a lot of new folks to get to enjoy—and share—this one for the first time. And if you remember it from a year ago, I hope you might enjoy revisiting it as much as I have.

This one won’t be paywalled this time, but if you’re enjoying the work I’m doing at Bounces, I’d love it if you get yourself a subscription, free or paid, to keep following along with all the stuff I’ve got coming for the rest of this week at Wimbledon and beyond.

Without further ado, let’s meet Melanie once more! -Ben

From Bounces on July 11, 2025:

During my brief time back at home between France and England this year, I started thinking about what stories I most wanted to write here on Bounces during my 10th trip to cover Wimbledon.

So much of Wimbledon history already feels so well-worn, told and retold and retold over decades; what mysteries might still remain about the mythos of this place?

And then, I thought of her.

She was only on screen during the 2019 Wimbledon men’s singles final for 3.16 seconds, but I had seen her face—and her finger—countless times since then. From one pivotally-timed crowd shot, she had gained tennis internet eternality.

This random woman in the Centre Court crowd—gleefully holding up one finger to show that Roger Federer needed just “one more” point to defeat Novak Djokovic and win his ninth Wimbledon title and 21st major title overall—had become the lasting, indelible image of the twist ending of the golden generation known as the Big 3.

The moment gained immortality because, as you likely know, that “one more” point didn’t ever come for Federer: Djokovic stormed back from two match points down to not only win that year’s Wimbledon, but to overtake Federer (and Nadal) in the all-time major count, ultimately becoming the nearly-undisputed greatest men’s tennis player of all time.

At the press conference following his 2025 Wimbledon quarterfinal win on Wednesday evening, Djokovic grinned when I showed a printed screenshot of the woman to him and asked him if he recognized her.

“Of course, of course,” he said, smiling. “Seen it many times.”

I wanted to learn the story of the woman behind the finger that had birthed a thousand tennis memes, who had been seen so much but never heard.

And after some pretty high-grade internet sleuthing—if I do say so myself—I found her.

This is her story.

Subscribe now

Meet Melanie

Melanie, unsurprisingly, first asked how I had found her. But once I explained my intentions why I was interested in her story, she agreed to do a phone interview, eager to share more about her long journey with tennis and Wimbledon in particular. (I’m not using her surname to protect her privacy because she’s not meaningfully a public figure.)

Melanie told me she had played tennis since age 7, playing various competitions in the south of England, in both Kent and Sussex. While playing for her university team, Melanie was invited to be part of a development program for line umpires in Edinburgh in the early 2000s.

“I found that I could call a good ball,” she said.

Since the Lawn Tennis Association—Britain’s governing body for the sport—was looking to develop more young female British chair umpires at that time, Melanie was “fast-forwarded” to a chair umpiring course.

“Suddenly I found myself on the lines at Wimbledon, and—very quickly after that—on the chairs at Wimbledon,” Melanie said.

Aside from Wimbledon, she also officiated at Davis Cup, Fed Cup, the 2012 London Olympics, and Roland Garros.

“It was great, and I had some fantastic experiences,” she said. “I’ve been on court with basically all of the great players during that time.”

Melanie stopped umpiring around 2016, instead focusing on her own recreational tennis play at the Rye Lawn Tennis Club in East Sussex.

In 2019, Melanie returned to Wimbledon—this time not as a line judge or chair umpire, but as a ticketholder with a “very, very good seat on Centre Court.”

Subscribe now

Melanie at the 2019 Wimbledon Men’s Final

Melanie attended the 2019 Wimbledon Men’s Final with her brother, and got swept away by the atmosphere—which was raucously in Federer’s favor, as all his matches against Djokovic at Wimbledon were.

“Along with all the other thousands of fans of Federer, on that day I got very much caught up in it,” Melanie told me. “And not being in an official capacity, but just as a fan, I was able to really enjoy it, essentially. Because obviously when you're in an officiating capacity, you have to be completely impartial, you know? I'd given that up a few years previously, so I was able to absolutely attend as a fan and enjoy it. And as a life-long Federer fan, I was absolutely caught up in the moment.”

Melanie was one of thousands who were impassionedly cheering for Federer.

“We were in the crowd going absolutely crazy,” she recalled. “The crowd started giving almost like standing ovations to every error flying off the Djokovic racquet as the match headed towards this crazy climax.”

As the battle between 37-year-old Federer and 32-year-old Djokovic reached that climax—with Federer hitting his 22nd and 23rd aces of the day to give himself double championship point at 8-7 in the fifth set—a cameraman and a producer honed in on Melanie holding up one finger to show Federer he needed just one more point. A woman wearing blue to Melanie’s left can be seen echoing her cheer of “one more!”, but Melanie is the clear star of the frame.

“Unbeknown to me—completely unbeknown to me—they got this shot,” Melanie told me.

Subscribe now

Once the camera had gotten its shot, Federer started missing his. After the camera had shown Melanie—and then Federer, and then Federer’s wife Mirka, and then Federer again—Federer missed a first serve and then sent a forehand wide on his first championship point. On the second championship point, Federer came forward on a cautious approach shot and Djokovic whipped a forehand passing shot by him. That would be as close as Federer came to victory: two points later, Djokovic broke serve to level the fifth set at 8-8.

In all, Federer lost seven consecutive points after Melanie had put up one finger, completely swinging the momentum of the match.

The match would go on for another 45 minutes, and Djokovic would prevail 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(4), 4-6, 13-12(3).

“There were all these partisan cheers and roars in the crowd,” Melanie said of the boisterous support for Federer. “We had the top seed and defending champion Djokovic crawling over the finishing line. I mean, it was extraordinary, him picking up his fifth Wimbledon title. But we were just gutted. We were, absolutely, yeah.”

Share

Push Notifications of Fame

When Melanie switched her phone back on as she left Centre Court at the end of the 4 hour, 57 minute match, messages to her came pouring in.

“When I came off court at the end of the match, I turned my phone on and my phone just pinged continually,” she told me.

Melanie teaches at a private school in Berkshire, and she was receiving messages from both colleagues and pupils.

Subscribe now

“They were saying, ‘Miss! We've just seen you on TV! Oh my God, that was you!’” Melanie recalled. “I had thought nothing of it. I had no idea that they'd captured that image. And I had thought nothing of that moment, because I was just one of the members of the crowd.”

It wasn’t until she later saw herself in the match footage that she even remembered making the gesture.

“There was my finger: ‘One more point,’” she said. “A confident Federer fan, I was, raising my finger and suggesting that Federer only needed one more point to win and clinch the title. And, obviously as things turned out, Novak Djokovic mounted the most epic comeback. Because I think at the time no one gave him that chance to clinch his fifth championship title. Obviously a win to remember for him for ages, but I think fans were so desperate to see Federer win that 21st major.”

Before I’d even asked her, Melanie asked herself: did she and her one finger jinx Federer out of that desperately desired win?

“Do I feel partly responsible for Federer losing that match? I hope not, because, gosh, it was one of the worst chokes ever, I think, for Federer,” Melanie said. “He had two match points on his own serve! I don't know. I just felt he should have got it on that first serve. And it was just extraordinary. I mean, it the best match to be at. It was one the most epic matches. Just even to have been courtside was good enough for me, let alone to have this whole picture thing going on. I mean, it's ridiculous.

“It was unbeknown to me that this thing had gone viral on the internet; I don’t know about Twitter or any of these things,” Melanie continued. “I don't do any of the social media websites, so I don't know about any of this. It was my friends at my tennis club who told me, and people from abroad texting images saying ‘Mel, Oh my god, we’ve just seen you!’”

At the boarding school where she teaches in Berkshire, Melanie has the “old fashioned title: the Master-in-Charge of Senior Boys’ Tennis.”

The boys on her team, she said, “think this is the coolest thing, having their teacher on Twitter.”

Melanie still isn’t sure why she was zoomed in on in that fateful moment. Maybe, she’s wondered, someone at BBC thought she looked familiar from her years as a line judge?

“I don’t know, I have no idea,” she said, still perplexed. “Yeah, I’ve hardly looked at it. Genuinely, I’m just sort of embarrassed about it, really—in a nice way. Just as sort of…‘Gosh.’”

Subscribe now

“An Unknowing Avatar”

There’s, of course, one fanbase that’s far more eager to keep Melanie’s image and other memories of the 2019 Wimbledon final alive, six years on from the final.

Her name hadn’t been known to the broader public before this article, but Melanie’s face—and finger—have become a core and enduring part of the iconography at various online shrines to Djokovic on social media and tennis message boards

Not knowing her name, many Djokovic fans have just called her “Finger Lady.”

I asked one of my Djokovic fan friends, Katrina, to articulate what the image of “Finger Lady” meant to Djokovic fans, and why it became so resonant and lasting.

Katrina went big, saying the image struck a chord and represented “15+ years of resentment and antagonism between Federer and Novak fans.”

Federer, Katrina believes, represented the “mold” of what fans who saw “tennis as a sport for ladies and gentlemen” wanted in a player.

“Then Novak comes along and nobody seemed to know what to do with him,” Katrina said. “So he wound up getting cast as this trashy, brutish villain from this poor, war-torn country who gatecrashed the party…as a Novak fan, I obviously reject that view of him entirely. He’s a wonderful, thoughtful and very loving person, and obviously a superior athlete.”

With her white button-up shirt and confident certainty that Federer would win what was rightfully his, Melanie represented the pro-Federer establishment crowd which overwhelmingly dominated Centre Court that day, Katrina said.

“It’s not overstating it to say that probably only Novak’s box was cheering for him that day,” Katrina said. “That was the way it was for most matches against Fed, but this one was particularly partisan. I think Federer and his fans have always seemed to think Wimbledon was ‘theirs’…Then at like peak insanity, you have this image of this one woman who, without knowing it, encapsulated both the total hubris and ultimate downfall of Federer fans re: Novak. Like, honestly, it’s too good. And then for the match to end the way it did? Frankly, I couldn’t think of a more perfect ending—it tickled every pleasure center in my brain. And I still laugh thinking about Novak’s grin at the end. Delicious!”

Katrina is an admitted Djokovic diehard who will happily go nuts for her guy, but she also is aware enough to come up for air once in a while.

“She’s probably a very nice lady who just loves tennis and accidentally became an unknowing avatar in this strange, mostly online posting war between two deranged fandoms,” Katrina said of Melanie. “I hope she sees the funny side of it.”

Subscribe now

Novak Djokovic: The Man Who Defied the Finger

I was pretty sure Novak Djokovic, who reliably keeps tabs on what his fans are posting online, would know what I was talking about if I described the iconic image of Melanie.

But to leave no doubt, the kind folks at the Wimbledon media workroom desk printed out a screenshot of Melanie and her finger for me to use as a visual aid, and I had it ready to show him from my seat at his press conference on Wednesday evening.

As you can see, Djokovic smiled as soon as he saw her.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I'm working on a story about one of the most famous images of your Wimbledon history, which is this one, when you were down championship points in 2019. You recognize this.

NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Of course, of course. Seen it many times (smiling).

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: What are your thoughts when you look at this picture? Where do you see it around, and how does it make you feel?

NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Look, I mean, I haven't seen it when I was playing on the court. But I know exactly when it happened because lots of my fans have been sharing, reposting that picture—and they still do after, whatever, six years.

Djokovic then paused, understandably, hesitating on what to say further: he knows the gleeful, gloating way in which the photo is often wielded, and didn’t want to add to any pile-on from the podium

“Yeah, I mean, look: obviously, remembering 2019 finals is very positive for me because I won it, coming back from two match points down, but I can't really—how can I say—use that photo as the main reference of the match, because that means that I'll be poking a finger in someone's eyes,” Djokovic continued. “But I do understand why my fans are sharing that. It's OK. In the heat of the battle, those things happen. He was one [holding up one finger] point away, so... It didn't happen. I mean, it's sport.”

Subscribe now

Before the press conference moved on, I wanted to be sure to tell Djokovic about the surprising denouement to my interview with Melanie, which I thought he would like to know.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: I talked to her today. She's rooting for you now.

NOVAK DJOKOVIC: You talked with her today? She's rooting for me now? Wow, OK, that's a nice turnaround. Very thankful for that.

Subscribe now

From One Finger to the Glove on the Other Hand

Melanie was telling me more about how the tennis-loving kids at her school “get very excited” about her cameo role in tennis history when she suddenly mused about this year’s tournament: “What can I say: I’m hoping this year that Djokovic wins his last Wimbledon, frankly.”

Given all she has symbolized about opposing forces to Djokovic fandom and lore, this seemed like a major turn of events.

“I am rooting for him, so my allegiance has now changed,” Melanie confirmed, laughing. “I feel that's the least I can do. I mean, I love tennis, I love Federer, Djokovic—all of them. I just think they're amazing. And what an incredible legacy: Wimbledon, everything. I love it all.”

Melanie, like most people who touch grass, isn’t nearly as tribal as the online tennis fandoms keeping her likeness alive.

“Federer and Djokovic, both of them, I think they're amazing,” she said. “I just would love to see it for Djokovic—what is he, 38 now? He’s got a very good chance. And I think most people—or at least I certainly do—would like to see Djokovic become the GOAT, the Greatest Of All Time.”

Subscribe now

Many, including myself, think Djokovic is already the greatest by any possible statistical measure. But to leave no doubt in the GOAT debate, Melanie wants Djokovic to surpass Margaret Court’s oft-asterisked record of 24 singles majors, which Djokovic currently equals.

“I'm a very fair person: I would love to see him finish at the top and win that one more title,” Melanie said. “That would be extraordinary. You've got Sinner, you've got Alcaraz, you got Shelton—you've some great people there. It's an exciting time for tennis, and for Djokovic to be playing at the level he is with those young guys coming through is just phenomenal. So yeah, I've always been a fan.

Melanie then acknowledged, of course, that one day on which her priorities visibly were different.

“But on that match, Federer-Djokovic, for that one time, I wanted Federer,” she said. “For that one point. It was just a special moment, it really was. It was really great to be part of it.”

Thanks for (re-)reading Bounces! -Ben

Leave a comment

“It’s actually my first time on this court—ever,” Keys said in her opening answer.

Keys said it again in her opening answer at her press conference, too, to make sure everyone had heard this surprising factoid about her first time getting to the court considered the cathedral of the sport “all these years later.”

After all, Keys, 31, has been playing professional tennis since early 2009. She made her first major semifinal at the 2015 Australian Open, her first major final at the 2017 U.S. Open, and won her first major at the 2025 Australian Open. Though she hasn’t made it to a Wimbledon semifinal—the round at which she’d be guaranteed a spot on the court—she’d played a whopping 42 matches at Wimbledon (and 86 total matches on grass) before stepping onto the blades of Centre Court for the first time.

When I asked for her reaction to the honor, Keys said she excitedly texted her group of podcast cohosts when she saw the schedule. When she mentioned that group, I started racking my brain wondering if her cohost Jessica Pegula had ever made it on Centre Court in her own long and successful career. I asked Keys a few seconds after I started pondering.

Ben Rothenberg, Bounces: Has Jess been on there? I can’t remember Jess being on there.

Madison Keys: I think she has? I feel like I’ve watched her on Centre before? Maybe I’m fake news? But I feel like she has been.

As it turned out, Pegula had not played on Centre Court, which she confirmed in her own press conference a day later (as you’ll read in our exchange below).

As it happens, fourth-seeded Pegula will make her own long-awaited Centre Court debut at age 32 in the quarterfinals on Tuesday at Wimbledon, facing seventh-seeded Coco Gauff—who made her Centre Court debut seven years ago as a 15-year-old. It’s a fitting stage for the match between the two highest-ranked players remaining in the women’s draw.

These surprise thirtysomething debutantes got me wondering: who has played on Centre Court the most? And the least? With some help from the All England Club, I have that hard-to-find data here for Bounces subscribers, with more surprises in store.

Read more

WIMBLEDON, England — Finally, Naomi Osaka did it.

To read about Naomi Osaka’s huge win over No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka at Wimbledon—and her unlikely new status as tournament favorite—please subscribe to Bounces! You’ll get more on Sabalenka, Coco Gauff, and matches to watch on Monday, too! -Ben

Read more

For more on Alexandra Eala’s big win over Iga Swiatek, Serena Williams’ withdrawal, and the losses by Elena Rybakina and Amanda Anisimova—plus looks ahead at the stacked lineup for Sunday at Wimbledon—please subscribe to Bounces! -Ben

Leave a comment

Read more

Serena Williams’ return to Wimbledon for her first-round women’s doubles match alongside her sister Venus.

It seems to have been largely forgotten, but the last time Serena tried to play at Wimbledon in a similar situation, it was an infamous and unmitigated disaster. It’s not worth risking that again.

To read the full 3,000-word article for a trip down one of the bumpiest sections of Serena’s memory lanes, please subscribe to Bounces! Today only there’s a Fourth of July Flash Sale going on! -Ben

Fourth of July Flash Sale!

Fourth of July Flash Sale!

Read more

Share

Subscribe now

I’m also happy to see how this new category of media is meaningfully gaining traction. One cool marker of the progress: for the first time this year on the U.S. Open media application, “Substack” was listed on the dropdown menu of media categories, alongside considerably more established types like “Radio” and “Newspaper.”

There are a few other Substackers here in the Wimbledon press room, including Carole Bouchard, Chris Clarey, Jessica Schiffer of Hard Court (where Bounces readers can still get a discount for a few more days), and Simon Cambers, the newest on the block.

But more than the numbers in the press room, this Wimbledon has brought a different sort of milestone for Substack’s tennis footprint: for the first time, there’s an active tennis Substacker playing in the third round of a major: Claire Liu, whose Finding Claire-ity launched in 2023, predating Bounces by more than a year.

Because I knew I wanted to write about Liu as a player-writer at Bounces some time this year, I went to her court during the first round of Wimbledon qualifying last week to snap a few photos of her.

As inevitably happens at qualifying—where there were only some single-digit number of people watching her match—Liu quickly spotted me on the side of the court. After she dropped her opening service game, I decided to leave, conscious of potentially distracting her.

When we caught up later in the media tent she joked that when she saw me she was worried I was going to want to interview her after she lost, which she would’ve been in no mood for.

Subscribe now

As most media requests at qualifying are, my ask for Liu was win-only. And happily, she won swiftly after I left: 6-2, 6-1 over Despina Papamichail.

To me, it wasn’t hugely surprising to see Liu rolling on the grass: she’d been a junior champion at Wimbledon, after all, winning the title here nine years ago. When Liu won in 2017—beating Ann Li in a historic all-Asian-American final on No. 1 Court—she was the first American to win the Wimbledon girls’ singles title since Chanda Rubin in 1992.1

Surely the grass must still give her confidence, I suggested?

”I feel like a lot of people have said that to me, and I just don’t feel it at all,” Liu said after that opening qualifying win. “Yeah, it’s been three years since I played here; I haven’t really felt that comfortable, honestly. So I was a little worried going into this, just because I haven’t gotten many matches in general.”

But the 146th-ranked Liu has kept winning on the lawns since we spoke, reeling off two more wins to qualify and then another two wins in the main draw of Wimbledon to reach the third round of women’s singles at a major for the first time.

For Liu, who turned 26 in May, that milestone coming so relatively late in her pro career hasn’t been easy. Junior success, as I’ve written about before at Bounces, is hardly any guarantee of a world-beating professional career.

For Liu, whose career-best WTA ranking so far was 52nd in early 2023, having her name on the wall at Wimbledon—where it is currently somewhat hidden behind an Evian counter—has sometimes led to mixed feelings that she’s trying to distill into something more positive.

“I’m learning to have more gratitude for it,” Liu said of her junior triumph. “It’s not that like I’ve looked on it like with a sour taste, but I’ve wished that my professional career could match, you know, what I did in the juniors.

“But it’s been helpful having people around me being like, ‘No, you can look back on it with something to be proud of. And even though maybe you aren’t content with the way things are going, it’s not something that’s to compare to.’ Because I think I do that a lot. I also look back on, ‘Oh, when I was top-100…’—and it’s not helpful.”

Subscribe now

Self-doubt is part of being a tennis player, and it’s also part of being a writer. Liu’s current joint pursuits have her doing double duty on doubts. When I told her I enjoyed her writing, she expressed immediate disbelief.

“Oh gosh, really?” Liu said.

For Liu, writing was the outlet she landed on when seeking intellectual stimulation during the often monotonous life of a tennis player.

“When I first started, I remember I just felt like I needed to do something,” she said. “I know a lot of people get their degree and stuff, but I just really don’t want to do any more school. I journal a lot, and I liked the idea of writing and putting something out, so I decided to bite the bullet and do it. I didn’t know how it was going to be, but it’s been good. It’s been hard to consistently put out stuff like I’ve seen you and Andrea [Petkovic] do.”

Petkovic is indeed a machine on Substack, with a deeply Germanic strict regimen of putting out a new post on Finite Jest every Friday.

“It’s so impressive, and she writes so well,” Liu said of Petkovic. “And I’m putting out one like every six months.”

Liu usually isn’t quite that sporadic; she averages slightly more than a post every two months. But as I told her—and meant: “But when I see one from you come in, I know it’s because you have something to say: quality over quantity.”

“I definitely don’t have a lack of ideas,” Liu replied. “I think it’s just a good challenge for me. I mean, even this week I’ve had three or four ideas, but it’s a lot harder making it into something.”

Liu’s most recent post, which came out the week before Wimbledon qualifying, was one she’d been working on since February, inspired by watching Ilia Malinin during the Milan-Cortina Olympics.

“I wrote, like, 10 full pages worth of things,” Liu said, annoyed with herself. “It’s word vomiting, and so when I write I’m trying to whittle things down into something more coherent. Hopefully the more I do it, the more fine-tuned I can get in a process.”

But when she finished the piece, she stuck the landings better than Malinin did on that fateful day.

“As I learn more about myself I’ve recognized that not only am I looking for a sense of accomplishment, I’m searching for a sense of belonging,” Liu wrote. “That maybe the more I win, the more I’ll feel accepted. But it’s actually in the losses that we see connection and humanity. When you see yourself in others’ heartbreak and devastation, and can relate to the emotion and turmoil someone else may be feeling…So when I say I like seeing other people’s failures, I guess I just mean I like feeling a little less alone.”

Like her tennis when it’s at its best, Liu’s writing is often brave and bracing. Most searingly, she wrote a post in June 2025 called “Asian Invasion” about her history of experiencing discrimination in tennis.

There were times I didn’t want to be Asian.

That sounds harsh, I know. But what I mean is—there have been times when being Asian has made things noticeably harder. And in those moments, I’ve caught myself wishing I wasn’t. Not because I’m ashamed, but because I knew that what I was going through was unfair.

Like every time I’ve been mistaken for Ann Li or Carol Zhao or Danielle Lao or any other Asian tennis player. Or when I went to the ITF World Junior Tennis Finals to represent the U.S. and someone called us the “Oriental team” because two out of three of us were Asian. Or when a tennis player started calling me “Sai Sai,” because there was another Chinese tennis player with that name and I guess we’re all the same. Or more recently, when the tournament staff couldn’t find my check-in folder, kept pointing to a different Asian name and joking, “Pretty close though, huh?”—only to find out it was mine, just mislabeled.

Earlier last year, Liu wrote a post called “I hate grand slams,” where she wrote about how there’s an “ongoing battle in my head” about whether believing in her chances of making her dreams come true is delusional or not:

My track record at grand slams hasn’t been something to write home about. I’ve been fortunate to play main draw and win a round in every one. But after years of that being all I have to show for, it’s safe to say that my grand slam performances have been subpar. Which is why I find it mind boggling that every time I play a slam I still manage to think, “this is my chance to win one”. It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 in the world or the last person in qualifying, in my head there’s always a path to the end of the rainbow.

This time, the path has taken her to the third round, further along the rainbow than she’s ever been. And for the first time since winning that girls’ final in 2017, it’s taken Liu back to Wimbledon’s No. 1 Court, where she will face another junior champion—whose creative online outlet, we recently learned, is making anime supercuts: Coco Gauff.

You can subscribe to Claire Liu’s Substack here:

Finding Claire-ity

Pro athlete is just my job description

By Claire Liu

For more on Liu, this was a nice piece on her in The Los Angeles Times by Doug Robson, whom it’s been fun seeing back on the tennis beat a bit this year.

Wimbledon Day 5 Matches to Watch

In addition to Claire Liu vs. Coco Gauff, which is third after 1 p.m. on No. 1 Court, here are my picks for the best matches to watch on Friday at Wimbledon as the third round gets underway.

To read the rest, please become a paid subscriber to Bounces! -Ben

Read more