June 7. 21:44

It’s been more than an hour since the last match of Roland Garros ended. Those moments should have a celebratory feel to them. We’ve been treated to a five-setter of a final, a new grand slam champion was crowned, the sky is light blue.

Yet, it’s dim. It’s grim. I am not in a celebratory mood. I can’t do that with Zverev, and I can’t do that with my situation.

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I was just informed Israel is being bombed again, in response to Israel bombing Beirut, in response to Hezbollah bombing us, in response to who the fuck knows what (pardon my French). The Israeli airport is reportedly closed. On the way here, to Paris, I felt like I was running away from something. Now I might not be able to get back.

It’s impossible to live like that. I hate living in Israel, it’s maddening, but I do want to go back home. So much. 17 days is a long time as it is. 17 days and no return date is a massive blow. Suddenly I don’t care about tennis at all.

I wonder if I would feel that way whether this happened after last year’s final. Maybe I wouldn’t let that dampen my mood. This time I let it. Zverev winning is a huge bummer (and the fact that he’s late for press by more than 30 minutes already is stinging as well). I can’t put aside the two allegations against him, from women who were in relationships with him and both testified (Brenda Patea in court, Olya Sharipova in interview with Ben Rothenberg) that Zverev abused them physically and emotionally. He paid 200K euros in a settlement off court, but was generally embraced by the tennis world since.

His story, his triumph could’ve been a feel good one – the long wait, the return from horrible injury that happened on the same court, the diabetes. But it’s not. Some things are more important than grand slam titles. Feeling safe in your relationship. Being able to go back home. I value this more than the redemption narrative that was laid out in front of me today. I won’t accept the offer, thank you very much.

Even though Cobolli’s squad in blue (see in the picture) feeld me with momentarily joy, I can’t be happy today. I hope that I write my next entry to this blog from Israel – a place I loathe, but that is my home. I want to meet my partner, my cat, my friends. I don’t want to be stuck. As Oleksandra Oliynykova told me in an interview more than two weeks ago – you feel safer around the people you love, even if it’s irrational. In Israel, I told her, we call the flights that bring people home during the war “rescue flights”, even though they actually chose to go into a war zone instead of staying away.

I get that now more than ever – the possibility of being forced to be separated from my loved one is horrible. It’s the worst feeling. You can’t value home too much. I miss it.

June 6, 11:15

There’s a good chance I’ll be back here again today, writing about the women’s final. I might also write about the unlikely scenes yesterday, as Matteo Arnaldi and Flavio Cobolli shared the main press conference room as they announced Arnaldi won’t be able to play their semifinal due to a stomach virus. They sat 3 meters apart like it was covid. I’m still worried Cobolli might catch it as well and we’ll get Zverev as the winner without even playing — though Zverev said he saw Arnaldi in the locker rooms too, so we might not have a final whatsoever. Never mind.

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Arnaldi’s walkover let us journalists have another lazy evening. We were able to have dinner and a laugh. It’s important in such big tournaments, when you work so hard and non-stop. I think it’s true especially for someone in my situation, as I work here alone, my desk is far from those of the colleagues I know (I am the only Israeli here and I am seated by the Russian and Chinese media — make of it what you want about Israel’s status), and it’s nice to have people you can turn to and spend time with. As much as I was bummed out about not getting a second match — and I was, because Zverev vs. Menšík was one of the matches I enjoyed the least in my time covering tennis the past couple of years — I was glad to have a social evening. It filled me up. I’m ready for the finals.

Speaking of finals: there’s another text I wrote in Hebrew but wasn’t able to publish, about the improbability of Maja Chwaliński. I let my artificial friend Claude translate the text for me, so here it is. Hope you read it before the final, and that you’ll enjoy it. I’ll be back soon. Cheers. Here it is:

The first match I watched on the second day of Roland Garros this year was on Court 7, in brutal heat, right beneath the main Philippe-Chatrier stadium. I wanted to take advantage of the chance to watch Zheng Qinwen up close — the Olympic champion, recovering from an injury, who threatened to be one of the strongest unseeded players in the tournament. Her opponent I barely knew. I knew she was Polish, a friend of Iga Świątek, and that her name was Maja Chwalińska. That was it. I checked — she was ranked 114th in the world. Okay, fine.

Her unusual game stood out immediately. First, she’s left-handed. Second, she hits her forehand upward with heavy topspin, so that on clay it bounces so high that even a tall player like Zheng struggled to handle her shots. Third, her slice — a shot where the ball receives backspin and sidespin through a wrist motion that comes under the ball — is lethal. It had the flavour of Louis Boission’s game, the French player who reached the Roland Garros semifinal from 361st in the world last year. She beat Zheng 6:4, 6:0 in a resounding and thoroughly enjoyable match.

One thing led to another, and she’s in the Roland Garros final. In a tournament that has been one enormous surprise built from so many smaller ones, this is the biggest — at least on paper. Experientially, Sinner’s physical collapse was a shock that sent ripples through everything and reshaped the entire draw, and Sabalenka’s quarterfinal elimination yesterday by Schneider was a stunning, seismic upset. But by the numbers, what 24-year-old Chwalińska has done enters the history books: she is the lowest-ranked player ever to reach the Roland Garros final, and only the second player in the Open Era to reach a Grand Slam final after qualifying from the qualifiers. The one before her? Emma Raducanu, US Open champion in 2021.

If Chwalińska wins, she’ll be an even more unlikely champion than Raducanu. The British star, who won the US Open after coming through qualifying at 19 without dropping a set across ten matches combined, had already been on centre stage at Wimbledon just a few months earlier. Those who had been following knew the talent was there.

With Chwalińska, that’s not the case. The last time she won a Grand Slam match was in 2022, when she caused a surprise by knocking out Czech player Kateřina Siniaková in the first round at Wimbledon. Beyond that, she had only come through qualifying once before, at the Australian Open this year. She said here that her goal for the season had been to break into the top 100 and qualify for Roland Garros. She is now expected to climb to 21st, and she is in the final.

After beating Maria Sakkari in the third round, Chwalińska told the crowd she didn’t know how she was going to pay her hotel bill, because her money was running out and she wouldn’t receive her prize money until after the tournament. She hadn’t expected to reach the second round at all — let alone find herself in the final. After reaching the quarterfinal, she said that Polish company Oshee, Świątek’s sponsor, had stepped in to help. “I thought maybe I said something silly, but it turned into something fun,” she said at a press conference after the round of sixteen. Unusually, she doesn’t even have an official clothing sponsor — when asked after the semifinal about the story behind the outfits she’d been changing throughout the tournament, she said, “There is no story. I just don’t have a sponsor. Maybe that’s the story.”

Chwalińska is the same age as Świątek, grew up alongside her in the Polish tennis system, is considered her friend, and even partnered with her in junior doubles. They reached the 2017 Australian Open girls’ final together and lost. Świątek’s career soared; Chwalińska’s didn’t quite. She struggled to complete full WTA seasons, played lower-tier tournaments, and eventually hung up her shoes — even if only temporarily.

In a post she published in 2021, Chwalińska revealed that she had been dealing with severe depression since 2019, and that she had decided to take a break from tennis to address it. “The hard part wasn’t the break itself — it was the moments before it, I’d say. I was really struggling,” she explained at a press conference after reaching the semifinal. “At first I pushed through, I thought I just needed to stay strong, be tough, and keep training. But then I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt, like, lifeless, to be honest. I knew I needed a break, because otherwise I couldn’t, like, live, I think. Honestly, I didn’t know if I’d come back or not, and after a few months I decided to return. I needed to figure some things out in my head, I’d say. And I came back. I’m glad I did,” she said, and smiled.

She has good reason to smile. Her tennis carried her to the final, as did the unprecedented — by her own standards — love she received from the crowd. In today’s semifinal, the stadium filled with Polish fans who waved flags, held up signs, and were particularly loud from the very first moment. They’re used to supporting their player as she tries to go all the way at the decisive moments of Roland Garros — only usually that player’s name is Iga Świątek. This time her name was Maja Chwalińska. Her name echoed in tremendous noise under the closed roof every time it was called out in a steady rhythm. The point she took to earn a set point in the first-set tiebreak — she lobbed Schneider’s bombardment from ground level, and the ball floated just over the Russian’s head to land inside the court — made Chatrier explode.

“I was surprised by the crowd — these are wonderful moments for me, I appreciate it so much and I’m grateful for it,” Chwalińska said after the match. “I feel like the crowd helped me enormously and gave me a lot of energy today.”

“We bought tickets to the semifinal two weeks ago, thinking we’d see Świątek,” Hubert told me — an excited young Pole who had come with his parents, with whom he’s been living in Paris in recent years. He was armed with a flag bearing Chwalińska’s signature, which he had obtained that same day, and could barely contain his joy. “We didn’t expect another Polish player to be here. I only started watching her matches after she came through qualifying.”

The truth is that after the win over Zheng, I stopped following quite so closely. The surprises and dramas at this Roland Garros piled up one on top of the other, and her wins over Elise Mertens — again with a bagel in the deciding set — and Maria Sakkari slipped somewhat under the radar, overshadowed by all the other chaos. But then suddenly I spotted her again from the press room, where she was facing France’s Diane Parry, backed by a raucous home crowd, in the round of sixteen. And after that, in the stands during the quarterfinal, I watched her beat Anna Kalinskaya — and just like that, the 24-year-old Pole with the tricky game found herself in the semifinal against Schneider.

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Her tennis can drive opponents to distraction. Almost nobody at the top levels of the tour plays like this anymore — the style is most effective on clay, which slows the ball down and favors players who know how to work with shifting spins. “It’s just my game,” she said after the quarterfinal. “I’m aware that it can be very frustrating for other players. I just try to use it as much as I can.”

Chwalińska played against Schneider exactly the same tennis she had shown throughout the tournament, only in an upgraded version — retrieving every ball, transitioning from defence to attack through her deep, high-bouncing shots and intelligent slices, and pulling the trigger when needed. Some of the points between her and Schneider — who is hardly short on athletic ability, thunderous shots, and explosive power — were simply breathtaking. A few of them led me to call the Pole “Chwalinkaráz,” as a nod to Carlitos, but honestly she reminded me more of Lorenzo Musetti: standing well behind the baseline, and through heavy, heavy topspin groundstrokes, challenging slice from the other side, mischievous net approaches, and the kind of point construction that is a genuine craft, she made her opponent utterly miserable.

She may well do the same in the final to Mirra Andreeva. The 19-year-old, ranked eighth in the world, has been marked for the top of the game since she was fifteen, and she has everything it takes to win more than one Grand Slam over the course of her career. Unlike Chwalińska, her appearance in the final seems likely to be only the first of many.

But last year Andreeva fell victim to that same Boisson — whom Chwalińska so closely resembles, only left-handed and even more virtuosic. Andreeva was one point from taking the first set that day but collapsed mentally in the face of Bouchard’s frustrating game and the momentum of the crowd. This time, too, the crowd is expected to side with her opponent, who has earned so many French fans with her run here — and who already has the backing of all the Poles who came for Świątek and stayed for her. That could turn into a trap. Chwalińska has nothing to lose. At this Roland Garros, the unpredictable has become the most predictable thing of all.

June 4, 15:36

• This truly unexpected, unreal, French Open brought with it some crazy matches no one could have predicted: Jannik Sinner’s collapse against Juan Manuel Cerundolo, Ruud’s comeback from 2-0 down against Tommy Paul, Sabalenka’s flame-out. The Potapova-Kalinkskaya rollercoaster, Moise Kouame’s second-round five-set win on Lenglen, Cerundolo’s marathon against Landaluce, Tiafoe and Arnaldi’s epic, Keys’s win over Mboko, Berrettini beating Comesana in the most tense super-tiebreak imaginable.
  

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  The flip side is that most of the matches I expected the most from delivered the least. It’s true for Kostyuk-Swiatek, for Cobolli-Tien, for Jodar-Zverev, for Mensik-Fonseca (which delivered some, in the last half hour).
  
  I say “most” because Fonseca’s comeback win over Djokovic — a match I expected the most from — delivered the hell out of this entire tournament. Even if it was the only great match of the lot — and it wasn’t — it would have been worth it.
  
  Above all others, the sense of under-delivery is true for Andreeva-Kostyuk, the first of the two women’s semifinals. The former was too good. The latter was almost a no-show.
  
  Both women played the most impressive tennis of the draw, and their meeting in the Madrid final was a nailbiter. They both have amazing rally tolerance — one is a magnificent point-constructor who has the ball on a string and the anticipation of a fortune-teller, the other is the most wonderful athlete in the sport (aside from Coco Gauff) who can enter a flow state and ruin opponents in the most elegant fashion.
  
  Problem is, the latter never arrived to the match. She had some moments of brilliance as the roof was closing above her while she was trailing 1-4 in the second set and got the break back for 3-4, but Andreeva broke back immediately. The way she was serving — even through the heavy wind of the first set and a half, before the roof closed — Kostyuk had no chance of turning it around. Especially when it seemed like Kostyuk had no feel on the ball.

  She just wasn’t there. You could feel it on court — there were sparks, but it was never igniting. I don’t know if it’s the (very) windy conditions, the weight of the opportunity, lack of experience on those stages, emotional drop, or just a bad day at the office. What I do know is that Kostyuk never got going.
  
  As for Andreeva, it’s the second Grand Slam in a row that she seems like she’s playing the best tennis out of the bunch. In Australia she was abruptly stopped by an amazing Svitolina. Here, she rolls on to the final.
  
  Where Sabalenka broke down — Andreeva triumphed. She managed both the wind and her nerves. Imagine how she must have felt as she got broken when the roof was closing, changing the conditions — which were bad, but she managed them better than her opponent.
  
  Maybe a few months back Andreeva would have crumbled, with the feel of the match changing and the crowd pushing for Kostyuk, willing her comeback. Andreeva shut the door in their face. It’s her time, folks. She’s in the final. First of many, I assume. Just a shame there was almost no match to show for it.

• I think Sabalenka going out, in this fashion, at this French Open, is just perfect. Not that I wished that for her — I would be extremely glad for her if she won the thing — but it feels perfect, narratively.

  
  If after all the drama and all the chaos at Roland Garros, the world number 1 had come out on top, we just wouldn’t have had the payoff. All the madness would have felt in vain.

  
  Sabalenka’s meltdown felt like a déjà vu. I sat in almost the same place as I watched her unable to deal with almost the exact same conditions a year ago in the final against Gauff. I really thought she had put that kind of performance behind her. I think she did too. But the demons came back, and they came back strong. That made her loss to Diana Shnaider — who was brilliant, btw — more shocking to me. Even more than Sinner’s.

  What was astonishing is how invisible it all was. You could see the wind, but not Sabalenka’s mind. When Sinner flamed out in the second round against JM Cerundolo, you could tell immediately something was wrong. He was a ghost. With Sabalenka you couldn’t. Physically, she could have turned it around — no problem there (it’s not the grueling five-set men’s format). Mentally she spiraled. It’s as invisible as it is destructive.
  
  By the time I’ve finished writing, Mira Andreeva has won and is through to the final. Whatever happens Sunday - Imagine if it’s Chwalinska! if she beats Shanider - I feel like we’ll get our payoff.

  
  Now make it happen in the men’s draw, too.

• Flavio Cobolli plays tennis like a 16-year-old in an adolescent type of relationship a lot of us know so well: he adores her, he cherishes the ground she steps on, even though she gives him such a hard time — she’s not even his girlfriend, so to speak, she’s emotionally unavailable. He needs this emotional rollercoaster, the thrill, the rush, the “I might lose her any minute.” He’s addicted. It will pass, he’ll grow out of it. She will too.
  
  It felt like that when he was up 4-3, 40-15, serving, against Félix Auger-Aliassime (FAA if you’re nasty). FAA made a wild dive to a drop shot and hit a passing shot down the line, getting his shirt all covered in clay. Cobolli freaked out. He resorted to the drama: forehand miss, double fault, and then a lengthy back-and-forth game saving multiple break points.

  When he finally got the game, the crowd was on its feet. That’s the payoff of the “dramatic mini-battle” — the drama, the rollercoaster, the thrill — if you get through it, everybody’s on your side. The whole world, basically. He won fairly easily from that point. He’s such great fun.

  ---

  Editing note: I wrote the first section after the last, but it felt better putting it first. Deal with it, K?

  Thanks for reading Tennis Thoughts! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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June 2, 18:45

How much I love watching Marta Kostyuk play crept up on me. I didn’t quite realize how drawn I am to her playing style. I am not sure I can explain why, which is a good sign – when you truly love something you first and foremost know it, before you even understand it. And then you understand it before you can explain it. Then you can explain it, but not completely.

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So let’s try: it’s the trajectory of the shots. It’s the movement. It’s the intensity on court without forfeiting elegance. Maybe it’s because she beat my fave, Iga Swiatek. It’s for sure the way she danced between sets after she’d taken the first one against Swiatek. It’s the run of 4 games to close the match against Svitolina, in which she ambushed her (and us in the media seats) and finished it in about 10 minutes of complete, athletic, positive, controlling one point and “defense-into-attacking” the next one sort of tennis. She’s a joy to watch.

I think her whole approach is just wonderful; when she was asked about what made her choose fellow-substacker Sandra Zaniewska as her coach, she said that what made her realize they have something special is that Zaniewska didn’t panic when Kostyuk broke out crying so often, and didn’t try to change her. I thought – you are a one healthy player in a one healthy coaching relationship.

The fact she’s doing all she’s doing (17 match winning streak!) with the war going on back home amazes me and makes complete sense at the same time. She played today against Svitolina, her compatriot, who paved the way for Ukrainian tennis, which is blossoming more than ever before - Starodubtseva and her win over Rybakina, Oliynykova and the brave activist work she’s doing, and of course Kostyuk who suddenly became a grand slam contender. The historic match between the two followed a missile attack on Kyiv late last evening. “It was a very tough night,” said Kostyuk after the match, “so many people died. I want to thank the Ukrainian people, and their resilience.” Kostyuk wanted to thank Svitolina, too, for sharing this stage with her. The fact they managed to play so well under those circumstances is something to deeply appreciate.

I (kind of) know what they’re going through. I woke up yesterday to horrible news – my brother, who’s 20 years old, lost a friend from home who got killed by a drone in Lebanon, in a war almost nobody wants or understands and that is wasting beautiful, young lives. I started the morning with a call to my mother on the phone, still in bed. I pushed through the day, but my back pain came back. I’m sure it’s related. I believe in body/soul symbiosis more than my cynic, Jewish face lets on.

As already mentioned in this diary/blog, I ran away to Roland Garros from a silent war that was never resolved. Our situation is not the same, as Israel had turned into the aggressor these past couple of years (and had all its problems and the sins of a siege in Gaza and occupation in the West Bank even before), but we were victims to one of the most horrible terror attacks imaginable on October 7, and suffered through this war as well.

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The first match of Kostyuk’s run here was overshadowed for her by a missile attack on Kyiv that almost destroyed her parents’ home. She said that if the missile had hit 100 meters closer, she wouldn’t now have a mother and a sister. She described it as the most difficult match of her life. She pushed through.

During Trump’s Iran war, a missile landed in the front yard of the house opposite my parents’. We have a pre-warning of about 5-10 minutes and then an alarm a minute and a half before a missile hits (if it’s not intercepted or falls in open land) to get to a shelter. My parents have one at home. We have one close to our flat in Tel Aviv – we could get there in time during the day if we run even without a pre-warning. The nights are a different story, and if a missile flies from Lebanon that one minute and a half can feel very, very short. You don’t want to hear the sound of an explosion above your head at 4 AM when you’re running in pajamas, tennis shoes and no socks to the shelter, let me tell you. It’s also inconvenient, to say the least, to not be sure if you can get out of your own country, or fix a broken window from a blast. But you manage, you leave, you get out to cover your favorite sport. Some people one hour away from me in Gaza are not that lucky. I consider my situation lucky, even if not ideal.

The Kostyuk family, it seems, is in way more serious danger than mine. The drones and missile attacks don’t allow them as much time to prepare. In winter, the electricity goes out, and Ukrainians have to manage minus-20-degree weather without electric heating. Kostyuk told us in press that people know they have to charge all their electronic devices while they can, and that people find a way to watch her matches even when there’s no power, because at least “there’s internet.”

In press, I asked her how she is dealing with situations like tonight or like the one she faced in her opening match – are the thoughts about home creeping in? Can she isolate them and put them away for 2, 3 hours?

“Well, it depends on the night. It depends how safe my family is. It depends if something triggered me, if I read some news that were very heartbreaking for me, so that’s why I try to avoid them. I mean, after the match, like, I read everything, but before the matches, I try not to do it. Before the first round it was really difficult. I didn’t know if I’ll be able to, like, not think about it at all. Today was fine, because as I said, my friends and my family, everyone who we texted said they were fine. So at that point, it’s all that mattered to me. You know, I went on court and just played tennis.”

She then went on to talk about what it’s like for her to hear Russian players – like her next opponent, the delightful Mira Andreeva, who was brilliant today against Cîrstea – avoid the subject of the war in Ukraine.

“This is their burden to carry, and this is what they have to live with. Not me,” she said.

She acknowledges that with a regime like Russia’s, criticizing the war can have harsh consequences – mainly for public figures. But still, she says, there is a way – you can move out, you can do what Daria Kasatkina has so bravely done, even though her parents suffered threats back home.

“There is nothing that’s stopping you if this is something you don’t believe in,” said Kostyuk. “Clearly, they are not thinking like this, you know? After four years, I think they’ve made it very clear whose side they are on.”

Well, here’s where Israel is very much more like Russia than Ukraine – our regime is not yet formally authoritarian like in Russia, but we’re getting there. People who criticize our government or the IDF are prosecuted publicly. You can be a complete pariah, even if you didn’t even mean to – the far, populist, snowflakeish right will find some way to get offended and get something out of context and you’ll be labelled as an “Israel hater” even if your goal is to fix this broken place, out of love.

Self-censorship is real. Hell, I am afraid of writing what I’m writing now and I have about 7 readers a post, most of them I consider friends. That’s what a fascist-leaning regime does to you. I’m fighting my urge to shut up as hard as I can, and I believe that my work in Hebrew as a magazine writer dealing with left-leaning voices, that tolerates even anti-Zionism (I consider myself post-Zionist but that’s another story), does a lot of my talking for me.

From my point of view, I can’t blame Andreeva for not speaking up. Schneider as well. They are so young. They have families, they have friends, they have lives. Is their silence equal to violence? Compliance? I don’t know.

Still, it amazes me the way Kostyuk lets her tennis do the talking, but also lets her mouth do so. She’s a joy in press, and the way she talks about home, about the suffering, about war, is something to admire. That’s sublimation for you.

(I think. I’m not an expert).

May 31, 13:17

This tournament is overwhelming me.

So much happened in the first week. The second just started with Iga Swiatek’s loss to Marta Kostyuk. The whole thing is an epic mess – and I feel like I can barely keep up with everything.

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In the first week, I think the combination of heat and the stress of “escaping” from home led me to make some questionable mistakes; I won’t go into detail, but I regret some of the matches I skipped, some of the press conferences I didn’t attend. I also came to this year’s tournament with the ambition of making connections, generating more attention through my writing in English or through my presence – but I feel like I’m not quite there yet. My journalistic “killer instinct” is a bit off for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t think it’s imposter syndrome, more like a lack of focus, or intensity. Last time I was in Paris it felt like my strong suit, but now I feel a bit rough around the edges, not sharp enough. What I’m trying to say is that apparently journalists can be out of form at a tournament, too.

It makes me think about how long I can keep juggling like this – taking off for two weeks and working two writing roles (and an editing one) simultaneously. I know I love my job and that I’m doing important work here that I couldn’t do from home, but I’m not embedded enough in the tennis media world to break stories, and I don’t have the platform to break them on just yet. I don’t think I’m ready to become a full-time tennis commentator, and I’m not sure I’d have anywhere to do so even if I were – certainly not in Hebrew.

I keep reminding myself that worse things than being in Paris watching tennis have happened to me, even if I’m not feeling my best. Jannik Sinner had a worse day than I did, on the day I decided to leave the grounds early instead of watching the end of his run. Coco Gauff had a terrible time losing while I was eating delicious food with my family here. And I got to experience Fonseca–Djokovic – a goosebump-raising monument of a match that left me feeling almost the way I did after last year’s men’s final.

Still, with everything going on – all those five-set matches and comebacks, all those upsets, the heat, the sheer volume of tennis – I feel overwhelmed. It’s a lot. Yes, a lot of good, but a lot nonetheless. I’m trying to be better this second week. Unlike the players, I get to stay until the end. I have to cherish that while it lasts.

I ran up to Chatrier for the fifth set. It was supposed to be my easy day, the boring one. Lotem arrived from home and we booked a visit to the Michelangelo-Rodin exhibition in the Louvre, which I was excited about. Sinner messing things up was the last thing I needed. I eventually made it, but was in bits and pieces. The only thing that woke me up from being overwhelmed and down about misplanning the day was thinking how Sinner might feel; there are worse things than being a bit off and leaving early on a chaotic day which I would have loved to cover better – mainly while I was on site, not after I left – especially as I get to come back tomorrow. Sinner won’t.

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I made some bad judgment calls during the day. I think it’s the overwhelming stress of what’s going on at home, but also the heat. It’s so much. It’s relentless – like Sinner. He says it wasn’t that, but I doubt this collapse at 5-2 in the third – 18 points in a row! – would have happened to him in 27 degrees Celsius, in the shade. And I also ask myself if he overplayed during the clay court season, if maybe he played too much because he’s too good and won all the time. And I also ask myself if he starts cramping so badly because he’s stressed about the heat starting to get him – the thought of what’s about to happen if he doesn’t close it, like he almost willed it to be.

And – and this might be a radical thought – I wonder if it happens to him if he’s not such an overwhelming favourite, if Alcaraz is there. Or perhaps if he’s not about to “complete tennis.” Maybe the pressure doesn’t get him, maybe it takes some weight off. Maybe he sleeps better the night before (he told the press he slept poorly), maybe he feels just that 1% better that would have helped him get over the line.

But he wasn’t 1% better, so he didn’t. Once he didn’t cross the line, it kept getting further and further away from him. That’s the beauty of Tennis.

Another beauty is Moïse Kouamé. While Sinner was struggling in Philippe-Chatrier, Kouamé was mounting a fifth-set comeback, from the model of “being 2-0 up and then still feeling like you stole the match because you steal the fifth.” It’s what Arthur Fils did last year at the exact same round on the exact same court on the exact same day of the tournament – minus the injury. The noise coming from the French crowd on the grounds, gathering in thousands to watch Kouamé mount the comeback from a break 5-2 down, on the huge screen on the outer side of Lenglen, filled Chatrier while the crowd sat silent inside.

The contrast was actually unbearable. It was grim. I was sad for Sinner. I couldn’t take it anymore. But I had the privilege of leaving and going to the Louvre. He had to stick with it till the bitter end, which came so quickly, yet so, so slowly, at the same time.

28.5, 13:48

Yesterday I didn’t write here. I know, I know, I promised. But I wrote two different texts yesterday, in Hebrew, and it was just too much to handle at 1:30 AM. Also, Lotem arrived after a long night on the road. So, I gave myself a break. Maybe I’ll write again later today to compensate.

The 4th day of the French Open yesterday was quite an adventure, a classic first week day in a grand slam: one minute you’re in the press room watching Kostyuk lose a set on court 14, then you rush to court number 7 to see Jelena Ostapenko lose to herself, Linnette, and the Polish fans who came to also support Swiatek – her would-be third round opponent. One minute you’re watching Rafael Jodar trying to put away James Duckworth on the small court 7, and then you realize Rybakina is about to get double break down in the third and rush to Suzanne Lenglen. When she loses you go back to the press room just to manage the heat and work, but then you have to go out again because Joao Fonseca is mounting a comeback on court 14 with the entire population of Brazil seemingly courtside. He did it.

There was a lot of bad stuff too, which I missed on court but watched from my desk: Baptiste getting badly injured; Paolini in tears; Mensik beating Navone in a 5th set TB and collapsing with cramps. The heat is unbearable even for a middle eastern citizen like me. It made Mensik collapse, it made Djokovic grumpy, it made Rybakina miss and miss and miss. At one point at the Fonseca-Prizmic match, the man who wets the court between set sprinkled the cheerful crowd.

It was that kind of day – scorching, chaotic, bizarre (have you seen that Khachanov miss???), fun, sad, too much.

There’s nothing like it.

27.5, 1:33

Today I watched the worst game of Tennis I’ve ever seen from a player with my own two eyes, no cameras involved.

It was Daniil Medvedev. He was serving to stay in the match in the 5th set against Adam Walton, a wild card from Australia. Just a minute later he lost a game in which he had 3 break points.

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In the first point, he hit a drop shot so bad it barely made it to the net. He was using his drop shots brilliantly earlier, but when he squandered multiple options to go double break up at 3:1 in the 5th, the touch had gone with the opportunity.

In the second point, he mis-hit a second serve that somehow dropped in – just to miss an easy BH drive volley.

In the third, already 0:30 down, he was trying to serve through the noise. First ball – in the net. Second – another shank, that hits the net and falls in. Another second serve. This time – a complete miss. Straight to the net. Double fault.

To make sure it was over, he missed another drive volley – FH this time – and lost the match. It was almost a “tank”. It was funny. It was weird. It was confusing. It was everything. an empire level collapse.

I love Medvedev so so much.

26.5, 1:01

Yesterday I promised another text would follow. It never happened. I underestimated how tiring and energy consuming covering a grand slam is. By the time the tournament ends, the body forgets how difficult each individual day is; you move between courts, ask questions in press, march across the site, manage the sun – specifically this scorching version of it – and still have to write and work throughout the day. I for example work mainly in the culture section of Haaretz, and my work continue as usual. That’s my deal.

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So, today I’m doing something different: today I’m uploading a text I wrote in Hebrew and ended up unable to publish. It’s about Stan Wawarinka, and a bit about Gael Monfils. I let Claude translate for me – I read it and I stand by it. I think it speaks to what I mentioned a couple of nights ago, about my language and personality as a writer being different in my second language. You’ll be the judge of that.

See you tomorrow.

Then he gave us one more moment. One more backhand down the line, splitting the court and lifting the crowd — already buzzing — to its feet. For a moment it seemed like the 41-year-old tribal elder still had a few tricks up his sleeve, enough to push back his exit from the stage. In practice, that was the last one: after three hours of tight play against Dutchman Jesper de Jong, Stan Wawrinka — 2015 Roland Garros champion — said goodbye for the final time.

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They don’t call him “Stan the Man” for nothing. Wawrinka is a man of the people. A guy who, despite looking and talking and carrying himself like one of us, managed to win three Grand Slams in the Big 4 era. The guy man that the night before delivering the performance of his life in that Paris final against Djokovic — one of the most stunning and complete individual performances in any Grand Slam final — had a few drinks in his hotel room to calm his nerves. Who kept playing deep into his late thirties and early forties, even as his ranking had him down at Challengers and low-level circuit tournaments. Who, at the end of his farewell match at the Australian Open earlier this year, sprinted to the on-court drinks fridge to grab cans of beer and crack them open with Craig Tiley — head of Tennis Australia (since moved to the USTA) and one of the most respected figures in the sport.

Originally, Wawrinka was set to face Arthur Fils — the rising French star tipped to be part of tennis’s future — but moments before the tournament began, Fils announced at a press conference that he was forced to withdraw with an injury. In his place stepped in Jesper de Jong, a 25-year-old Dutchman coming in as a lucky loser from qualifying. No easy hurdle at all.

The match was slotted in as the second on Court Simonne Mathieu, the third-largest and third most prestigious court at Roland Garros. Simonne Mathieu is essentially a court wrapped inside a greenhouse, with room for 5,000 spectators. Yesterday it was packed with every one of them, with many more gathered outside, standing around the entrances to steal glimpses of the beautiful clay. Wawrinka — nicknamed “The Diesel” — scrambled from side to side against the young de Jong as if he hadn’t lost his speed, even though he had. The heavy Paris heat, unusual for this time of year, didn’t slow him down. The crowd, generating a wild atmosphere, kept pushing him forward — and in return he fed off them, waving his hands as if to say: more, give me more.

Wawrinka lost the first set 3-6. In the second, he turned a break deficit into a 6-3 win that made Simonne Mathieu explode with joy. He lost the third by the same score. In the fourth, leading 4-3, he brought himself to 0-30 on de Jong’s serve — but the Dutchman handled the pressure well. Throughout the match the crowd chanted Wawrinka’s name over and over, sometimes refusing to let the next point begin even after a routine winner, but de Jong was there to crash the party. He has his own plans for this tournament. In the ninth game, he broke Wawrinka with a winner that left him helpless.

Then came the moment. Wawrinka reached 0-30 on de Jong’s serve, who leveled it back to 30-30. On the next rally, the ball landed in the strike zone of his backhand — one of the most celebrated shots in the history of tennis. Throughout the entire set Wawrinka hadn’t managed to produce a meaningful winner from that wing — de Jong had returned a fair few, even if he didn’t always save the point. This time, Wawrinka decided to go for broke — because what did he have to lose — and launched a backhand down the line that de Jong could do nothing with, and that left the crowd with no choice but to rise to its feet. Wawrinka asked for more again, and even cracked a smile. It felt like the good old days, as if for one moment the year was 2015.

That was also the end of it. De Jong served and charged the net, and this time the Swiss sent a backhand straight into it. At deuce, de Jong dragged him side to side and then hit a diagonal volley near the net that Wawrinka just barely reached, slicing a backhand passing shot down the line — which landed on the wrong side of the tape. He crumpled to the floor and lay on his back on the clay as the crowd roared. The next point finished it. De Jong hit a lob over him, and Stan the Man said farewell to Roland Garros as a player.

“It’s hard, it’s hard. I don’t want to leave this place,” he said in French, his voice breaking, at the start of the ceremony held for him after the match. “Because of tournaments like this I wanted to and dreamed of becoming a tennis player. Thanks to Roland Garros I grew up with the dream of one day being part of it.” Later, at the press conference, he said it was “more than I expected and more than I could have dreamed of — to finish with so much support and so much love from the people. That’s exactly why I kept playing for so long.”

This isn’t his last match — Wawrinka will officially retire at the end of the year, at the Basel tournament — but Roland Garros is probably the Grand Slam most synonymous with him. He won his first in Australia and his last in the US, but the level of tennis he produced in that match against Djokovic is etched into the memory of everyone who watched it — as are his iconic red-grey-white checkered shorts. A nod to those shorts can be found on the inside collar of the kit Yonex is supplying him this year — including the red one he wore today.

He was also asked whether this tournament feels like his home slam, and he said: “It’s probably top — not just because of 2015, but also because it’s the only junior Grand Slam I played, and I won. I grew up watching Roland Garros; I’m Swiss, from the French-speaking part, and the dream at this time of year was to get home from school, turn on the French TV and watch all day and all night until late. As a kid I loved it so much”.

Fittingly, the ceremony he was given at the end of the match felt like a retirement tribute. After he finished speaking, a video played featuring Roger Federer, Jannik Sinner, Rafael Nadal, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic — and Gaël Monfils, a close friend of Wawrinka’s who is also retiring at the end of the year and for whom this too is a final Roland Garros. When the video ended, and after tournament director and former player Amélie Mauresmo and French Tennis Federation president Gilles Moretton presented him with an honorary shield, Wawrinka took the microphone one more time. “Before I go — don’t forget to light the fire for Gaël at his last Roland Garros.”

Monfils may not have reached the heights Wawrinka did, but he is the ultimate French hero of his generation. Last night, on Court Philippe-Chatrier, he got the send-off he deserved — fighting back from two sets down against compatriot Hugo Gaston, only to get bageled in the fifth. For two sets he looked like the old, beloved Monfils, putting on his show — and then that was over too. Two great friends who lit up Roland Garros so many times, turned out the lights. It was worth being with them while the light was still on.

May 25, 1:15.

Just when I thought I was out, Novak Djokovic pulled me back in.

I mean, I was very much out – in the city, on the canal, with a beer. But there he was, a set down to the serve bot that is Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard. I thought: if Djokovic loses, it might be the last time we see him on this court. I can’t miss that.

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The minute I walked back into the Roland Garros venue, he broke for 7-5 in the second set and levelled the match. From that point onwards, I knew I’d gone in vain. Should’ve used my TV instead of my eyes.

Now, my eyes are literally shutting down on me.

The rest of this text will follow soon.

May 23, 23:36

This will be a short one. I hope. I think. I don’t know.

The thing about keeping a diary and trying to make it spontaneous yet cohesive is that you must give in to where your mind takes you, I think, instinctively. That’s the way to do it. But I’ve taken upon myself an even more difficult task: I’m doing it in my second language. It’s true that most of the content I consume about tennis is in English, and therefore a lot of my tennis terms and analogies and figures of speech are in English, but my mind flows more freely in Hebrew. I’m not only fluent, but eloquent. Some of my readers here would never get to meet the Hebrew side of me.

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It’s not only the way I express myself, but who I am. I think my personality comes through differently in English. I mean, I am a bit of a different person. I think we all are, speaking in another tongue. The cultural references we quickly summon are different, the conversations we’ve been hearing are different, the literature we’re reading. We come across differently because we truly are. I find it cool.

I digress. (It’s easier for me to digress in English, and I like that.) But I have one more important thing to say about this subject: it’s for some reason easier for me to be this version – the digressing, personal writing version. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to being a “reporter,” a “magazine writer” in Hebrew, and not a columnist. I wonder if I can teach my Hebrew self how to do it better.

Enough with the digression. Let’s talk tennis. There wasn’t any today, except for practice sets. One of them featured Arthur Fils. He won’t be playing RG this year – at 4PM in a dramatic press conference he announced he can’t play due to pain in his hip. He doesn’t know exactly what the injury is.

It’s a massive blow for everybody – him, the French fans, the tour in general. Another young, rising, charismatic, exciting, lively player gone. I can’t help but think that something is broken in the system. Tennis goes too hard for too long on the men’s side. That’s the biggest problem they’re facing.

Yet here they are, fighting for prize money. Yes, welfare as well. But it’s clear to me that their focus should be health week in, week out (btw that’s an example of a tennis term I have only in English in a reachable drawer of my mind). Felix Auger-Aliassime told me that the player council is for that, but as we know, players weren’t consulted on whether or not to expand the Masters 1000s.

If you ask Oleksandra Oliynykova, it’s an absurdity that the players talk about prize money and not about stopping this unjust war (I know because I listened to The Tennis Podcast’s brilliant interview with her, in which she was asked about it). I know something about unjust wars, and how hard it is for people from the nations that are seen as the unjust part to actually go and criticize their governments publicly (even though Israel’s situation is much more complicated in ways I would not get into this late at night).

After Catherine from TTP finished her interview, I waited my turn and then interviewed Oliynykova myself. She was brilliant. She echoed a sentiment that many Israelis know all too well – when they are far from home and home is under attack, they want to leave the safe place they’re at and fly back to be with their family. In Israel they call it, un-jokingly, a “rescue flight.” She also echoed the contrast I am feeling right now – between the grim state of home – not as grim as hers, but still – and the glamour of tennis life.

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Oliynykova told me she feels as though the WTA tour is not on her side, and that Russian and Belarusian players get every platform they want without repercussions for not speaking up against it. Ultra-Orthodox Jews call it “Zipor Hanefesh,” meaning soul-bird: a cause you’d do everything for. And she would.

I hope you can read the full interview soon. I’ll try to get it translated into English in Haaretz, my newspaper. I’ll let you know if I do.

Not so short in the end, ha?

May 22, 22:58

I ran away from a war straight into the open arms of Tennis.

It’s not as bad as it sounds.

It’s just that I was supposed to get here tomorrow night (Saturday), and instead I’m typing this from a room in Saint-Cloud, to which I basically escaped, from a war nobody is sure will ever come back or has ever stopped. In a sense, I escaped Trump. For now, at least.

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It does not feel good, fleeing, running away. It’s not that I’ll spend a lifetime here, but when you leave home for two and a half weeks and suddenly have 17 hours to pack, kiss your grandparents goodbye, meet your closest friends and your partner’s sister, and also leave enough time just to hold her — your partner, it is — and your cat, Doctor, just a couple of hours together, your little pack. It’s not enough time. It makes you feel like you have to leave them behind to grapple with the might-be-war you’re running away from, just to be able not to miss out on a dream. Is it worth it? Probably. Everybody around me, including her, encouraged me to. But let me tell you — easy it is not. Pleasant either. It’s not as bad as I made it sound, but still: discommendation.

This escape plan shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place. My original plan was to arrive in Paris on Thursday. I booked an Airbnb in Saint-Cloud like a decade ago. I was hesitant to book a flight before February, because I got married then and didn’t have accreditation yet. When I got it, I was hesitant again: we were at war with Iran, stuck inside our own borders for weeks.

Then Trump announced a ceasefire. I booked Air France. Now it was their turn to hesitate — they delayed the return to Israel again and again. On the first Monday of May they cancelled all flights until May 20. Mine was scheduled for May 21. By the time they cancelled it too, all direct flights from Israel to Paris were sold out. I booked another flight, for Saturday the 23rd, with a connection in Athens. I took the blow of missing out on Media Day.

But the days went by, and the blow got harder and harder to take. I reminded myself — unwillingly; it was better if I could let it go — that Media Day was a goal of mine. I wanted to be able to stick a microphone in front of a player’s face, to feel the vibe of the tournament building, to be there when the arching narratives that accompany each grand slam are being built.

It wasn’t enough to change my mind. The flight remained.

But then the rumors started. Trump, apparently, almost bombed Iran, but was stopped by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. Israel was pushing him to resume the attacks. The meaning for me: getting trapped inside my own borders once again. Missing out not only on Media Day but possibly — all of it. The one grand slam I attend this year. Nobody could tell me if by Saturday the war would come back — at my news desk, the inputs were contradictory. My gut feeling didn’t help. People I know in national security roles really didn’t know. Some soldiers were sent home for holiday, some weren’t. I’m pretty positive even Trump, still, doesn’t really know. I might wake up to learn about a ceasefire, or to messages about staying the night in a neighboring shelter.

I knew that if a war were to break out again, I would feel so stupid: I had a Thursday flight — why not schedule the new one for the same day? Why move to Saturday? And why didn’t I buy a ticket with an Israeli company in the first place? It was a question of money, but now I’m paying far more than I would have anyway. All this headache, anxiety, head-scratching and overthinking would have been prevented.

But as Lotem, my partner, keeps saying to me: beside the atrocities in Gaza, the reality Israel’s leadership forces its citizens to live is unbearable; we can’t plan anything, we can’t build long-term, we can’t make rational decisions. The wars don’t take us anywhere at all, people seemingly die in vain, our well-being is being thrashed and ignored. We shouldn’t blame ourselves for the irrational decisions we make because of it.

So here I am, asking Jannik Sinner how it feels to be back on Court Philippe Chatrier for the first time since THAT match (”special feeling… I still think about what happened, but still very positive feelings”); questioning Stan Wawrinka about the draw that summoned Arthur Fils as his opponent on his final appearance at the French Open (”I never wish for something or expect something. I just wait for the draw. I’m excited”); sitting through Emma Raducanu being charming with the press but not cooperating with the 15-minute boycott by her fellow players; trying to figure out with Félix Auger-Aliassime if the top players coordinating the strike have a group chat (answer pending); greeting some of my colleagues who have become genuine friends.

It’s a dissonance you learn to live with, but as used to it as we Israelis unfortunately are, it gets harder. I know part of it is that I’m maturing, I’m building a home, I’m settling in, and this sudden escape, this running away, is in stark contrast to that. But another part of it is that magical places like this, like Roland Garros, put perspective on the miserable, unstable situation back home. That shouldn’t be how we live our lives. We deserve more. We deserve to be excited about our dreams, to make a run for them willingly — To make a run for them, not to them.

While I write here — hopefully daily — I want not to avoid this dissonance, but to let it be. I’m sure the tennis will eclipse everything, as it always has in the two years I’ve covered tennis, both of them during wartime, but I don’t want to escape the contrast. From that, I shall not run away.

(Gif: ATP X page)

My first thought was: well, now what? If I were to complete a life mission at the age of 24 and ahalf, what would I do? What would I chase?

I know I ask this question prematurely: Jannik Sinner hadn’t done it yet. He has to win Roland Garros before he has done it all at such a young age. He will have the Olympics left, and that’s it – Tennis is complete.

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As he became the only player whose name is not Rafael Nadal to complete the clay Masters series, heading into the French Open with no Carlos Alcaraz in sight, he is the overwhelming favorite. But sports are sports, and on a given day, yada yada yada. He’s not done yet, but he is now two titles away from completing Tennis – something Novak Djokovic, the only man to do it, has only done at 37 years old. He already became the youngest ever to win all 9 Masters, by 7 years (Djokovic was 31). He wins RG – and only the Olympics left.

Would I sabotage my chance to complete a career grand slam and win every important annual title on the Tennis circuit before I’m 25? No way. Would I worry in advance, before I’ve even done it, about what’s next? Hell yeah. But I’m not an elite athlete, thank god. And I also know – you always find something else to chase.

I think that is where Alcaraz comes back into the picture. That’s one source of motivation. Injury permitting, this rivalry should define both Sinner and Alcaraz’s careers more than “completing Tennis”, at least for the several years to come. Up till now, it was Alcaraz who played better when Sinner was around, and found it hard to deal with when his biggest rival wasn’t there to confront him on court. Sinner is not affected by this sort of stuff — not his doping case, not Alcaraz’s injury. Maybe he’ll need him more, as a point of reference, some-one to chase, no some-thing.

When Alcaraz is back - not before the summer hardcourt seasson, unfortunately, as he revealed today (Tuesday) - They will chase each other until one of them is not there anymore – and then we’ll see what happens. When Federer retired, something of Nadal left with him. Same with Djokovic when Nadal retired. Up until then, they pushed and pulled, one record after another, one streak, one match, one game at a time.

And also, as Sinner told us himself after he broke Djokovic’s record for the longest streak at 1000 events: “I don’t play for records, I play just for my own story.” His story is all he has. Stories are all we’ve got – people and stories. That’s life. That’s why we love Tennis, why we love sports. It lets people expose their stories. Yes, sometimes records are a significant part of a story, but never as important as the story itself. It’s always bigger.

Sinner will keep on writing his own story — intertwined forever with his biggest rival, the most likable antagonist from his POV at least — as long as he wants to. That was always the plan, right?

On Monday I tweaked my back.

I was playing tennis with my best friend. First game. I had a 40:15 lead on my serve but I blew it. On deuce I served a double fault. Deep breath. I know what to do. A small patch of rough skin on one of my right-hand fingers was bothering me — I felt it with my thumb. Another deep breath. Then, instead of collecting a stray ball with the leg-and-racquet combo, I bent down to pick it up. Big mistake. Huge.

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I knew it was over the minute it happened. It’s not my first rodeo — I just turned 30, but I have kyphosis. When I was 20, my lower back went out so badly I couldn’t get out of bed for three days. I did loads of physiotherapy. I got my back straighter, my legs stronger — but still, here we are. Retired due to back pain. I could not hit another ball.

On the way home, it made me think of Arthur Fils. He probably suffered more than I did — loads more — when he did a number on his back 12 months ago on Court Suzanne Lenglen during the epic Jaume Munar match. It was my very first day ever at Roland Garros, and I was treated to that match. Yes, he had adrenaline and medication on his side, but still. In Rome this week he didn’t take any chances and retired four games in, making us worry about his back all over again. This time it was his hip. He says the scans are clear.

Tennis has been seeing more and more of these injuries lately. With all due respect to the cause of prize money, I’ll be glad when we see fewer of them. We need a more spacious schedule, fewer and shorter tournaments, a longer off-season, maybe shorter matches — whatever that takes. Otherwise, what is the prize money even for?

Anyway, thank the tennis gods we still have the WTA to wait for this Roland Garros. Should be a blast.

1. Generally speaking, Carlos Alcaraz is the best thing that could’ve happened to tennis. Specifically, to men’s tennis. The magic, the charisma, the power, the talent, the “what’s gonna come off his racket”-ness of his game, his nerve, his smile. Just when you thought we’d never recover from the Big 3\Big 4 golden age – there he was. A light.
   

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   That’s why his absence at Roland Garros might be the worst thing that can happen to tennis. Yes, we still have Jannik Sinner going for the career grand slam in the same season as Alcaraz (The youngest man ever to do it) — but it’s not the same. Sinner said so himself – “Tennis needs Carlos.”
   
   He’s right. As much as I love Sinner – and I do – Alcaraz is the bridge. He’s the one that connects. He’s the one that makes the general sports fan pick up a racket, and an amateur tennis player go for a drop shot-lob combo at the club. He’s the one you go out of your way to watch no matter who’s on the other side of the net and no matter the stage of the draw. He’s the joy. To have this joy taken away from us by the always-scary words “wrist injury” is a massive blow. The fact that Alcaraz did not mention the grass season or the specific injury is another worry.
   
   Don’t get me wrong — losing Sinner before Roland Garros would also be a crushing blow, especially since that’s the only title he’s missing to complete a Career Slam, but Alcaraz is a special creature. Something of a tennis freak, a glitch in the system of the sport. He plays and moves like no other. He lights up a room – from a stadium to a press conference. He will be missed in Paris. So much.

2. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I hope this makes future clay court seasons look different for Alcaraz. The fact that he couldn’t complete a full clay court swing in his last three tries (despite winning both French Opens in 2024 and 2025) is a red flag not only for him, but also for the sport. You want your best asset at the peak events. He could’ve skipped Barcelona or Madrid, but they’re both on home soil. He would’ve skipped Monte Carlo, but he lost early in Miami so he thought – why not? That got us another Sinner-Alcaraz final, but it would be the last for the near future. Instead of dreaming of a rematch of last year’s RG final – arguably the best match of all time – we’ve been deprived of the best match possible in the current tennis landscape for who knows how long.
   
   It’s more than possible that the injury was not a result of work overload but of a movement gone wrong, and it’s hard to ignore the timing: two days after an intensive final, in the first round of a 500. I hope the heads of the fragmented sport that is tennis will realize that the structure of the calendar is wrong.

3. From a journalistic perspective, the void Alcaraz leaves may actually be a positive — the least compelling narrative outcome would be yet another title for him. His absence opens up a bunch of other possible narratives: Sinner joining Alcaraz with a career slam, Djokovic having a clearer path to a 25th grand slam and an opportunity he might never get back, Zverev finally stepping up, one of the youngsters – Fils, Musetti, Fonseca, Jodar – getting in the way.
   
   But if Sinner gets the career grand slam, you’d rather have Alcaraz in the final against him, trying to wrestle away the title they both crave. And from every other angle that is not storylines and narratives, Alcaraz would be missed. Like Sinner said – tennis needs Alcaraz. I, as both a fan and a journalist, need him. Let’s hope he’s back at Wimbledon. The grass is greener when he’s there.

   ---

   (Pic credit: Kuberzog\Wikipedia)

The only positive I can take from this is war I’m caught in the middle of is that I got to watch some wonderful tennis during my shelter visits late-night during the past three weeks (thank god for my grandparents’ Wi-Fi that gets to their safe room).

The alarms might have woken me up at unforgiving hours, but that meant I got to watch some wonderful matches at Indian Wells that otherwise I had to watch only through YouTube highlights: Sinner-Fonseca was a dream (and not because I was sleeping when it started), the second set of Djokovic-Draper, Swiatek losing to Svitolina in the quarters in a compelling match, Tien beating ADF. Forgive me if I’m mistaking the hours in which some of those were played -- it’s a real hard mission to keep track of hours and weekdays when you only get three nights out of 20 without waking up at least once in the middle of the night.

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That’s another reason I take time to reflect on IW when Miami has already started (by the time I write this, my fave Iga Swiatek had already lost to Magda Linette in her first match, the first time she lost in her first match in over 4 years). It might deem my text irrelevant, but nonetheless. The closing stages of this edition was too good not to write about. The women’s final will be remembered as one of the matches of the year to come, the men’s final lacked the third set but was both high level and super-tight. Medvedev’s level this week was a joke (as was evident when he cut Alcaraz’ streak), but y’all know that already.

What I want to talk about is one backhand. It was struck by Aryna Sabalenka, match point down against her (new) biggest rival, Elena Rybakina.

This one wasn’t late night for me. By the time the third set arrived, I had to leave for my best friend’s birthday. He turned 30 but we celebrated low-key, because war. Anyway, we were talking, the match open on my phone in the palm of my hand. I missed the serve, but caught the return. Then Rybakina’s follow-up. Then THAT backhand cross-court from the world No. 1. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Literally, I couldn’t. I was sure that’s another final missed for Sabalenka, as I thought for a second there that she’s approaching the net, because the ball was called out. In reality, it dropped well in, in an almost impossible angle and power based on the position she stood in. The walk towards the net was actually just a mid-tie-break change of ends. The score was 6-6. Two points later, a month and a half old monkey was off her back.

It’s hard to come to terms that this clutch of a player had a big-finals problem. Anytime she went into a big final I was sure she is about to win, she lost it. As I sat through her coach’s press conference before her Roland Garros final which she lost to Coco Gauff, I thought -- this team is SO under control. But then came the final, and Sabalenka crumbled.

She almost did the same against Rybakina, but she didn’t. Three points like that can change the story we, as media, tell about them. The stories players write unwillingly about themselves. Think of those match points Jannik Sinner had the day after that Sabalenka upsetting and nerve-racking loss to Gauff. Where were we today? The script of the entirety of the tennis season would have been different.

Will that IW title change Sabalenka’s trajectory -- specifically because it was that dramatic, that clutch? Or does it highlight she still can’t really close tight matches in that stage of the tournament?

Whether we view THAT backhand a turning point is to be determined only in the next GS final she plays. And she will.

1. I’ve been trying to find some time to write here since the Australian Open final. Turns out getting married the day after the final and flying to a “mini-moon” the day after the wedding (while still hungover) to Vienna is not a good recipe for being productive in your second language. Then life happened, then war.

(In the midst there’s a text I wrote about my experience watching step-grandma winning a silver medal in the first ever Bowling Grand-Senior European Championship in Vienna, which was translated by my publication. Read it here, I love this text).

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So I’m writing this text partly from my grandparents shelter. My partner and I spend the evenings here so we don’t have to run to a local shelter in our neighborhood (and also because it’s lovely being a grandson, any day and especially in times of crisis).

There’s something quite numbing about this period for me. Last time when Iran attacked I was fairly active almost endangered myself by being outside and telling the stories of Tel Aviv in times of crisis.

This time I feel different. I don’t run. I wait. I put my head under-water and wait for this wave to wash over. No self judgement if I can’t get anything done today, no self criticism if what I need to day is to drown myself in Traitors UK. I still record my weekly podcast about Tennis and write about it in Hebrew and work as an editor, but everything is low-key. Low battery mode. I feel like it has to be.

2. So Tennis during war time. This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, This ain’t no fooling around. It was surreal getting notifications about “all culture and sports events are cancelled” here in Israel, and then discovering that the Dubai doubles final is still underway. Don’t they have a protocol?

I guess not. They are not used to being attacked by ballistic missiles every now and then. There are no sirens or pre-siren warnings like we do. I figure it’s the same in Iran, which makes me sad for the people there, that dream of a regime change.

It is so weird to watch “my” war catches up with my “niche” (tennis in Israel is totally a niche, unless it’s a grand slam final). Will Medvedev and company be able to leave Dubai and make it to Indian Wells (they did and will). What about the players stuck in the Challenger in Abu-Dhabi (Safe and can leave the area). What about the Rune camp? His testimony from there, alongside quotes from his mom, Aneke, sounded so familiar to me as an Israeli – and so far as a tennis journalist. How come my life and my escapism got stuck together?

The thing is “my” war is not only my war anymore. It’s a regional war that might be a world one. We are far from there, but the question is how long will the sport remain out of it. Tennis was the one caught inside this net, with the war clashing with the latter stages of the middle eastern swing. But what happens next?

Drop Shots:

• Wouldn’t it be better if a combined event like Brisbane had the same amount of points for both men & women?

• Isn’t it crazy that Wawrinka hasn’t got an AO wild card yet?

• Isn’t the Australian swing just wonderful?