As War Erupts, Tennis Is Grounded in a New Reality

As war breaks out in the Middle East within range of the tennis tour, a new normal for this global sport is undeniable.

One of the most prescient things a colleague ever said to me about the changing nature of our profession came a few years ago.

“We’re all just political reporters now,” Jannik Schneider, a freelance German tennis reporter, told me one night in Melbourne. “It’s just that we get assigned to cover tennis tournaments.”

This had not been the case during the outset of my career in tennis in the early 2010s. But in the 2020s, a decade that started with a global pandemic and has since devolved into various conflicts around the globe, it’s never been more true.

With two months of 2026 now complete, the tennis tours are increasingly ensnared—and even directly endangered—by the world exploding around them.