Novak Djokovic Withdraws From the Cincinnati Open and Will Head to the US Open Without Preparation
The 24-time Grand Slam champion hasn't competed since losing in the Wimbledon semifinals to eventual champion Jannik Sinner on July 11.
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Forbes
3 hours ago
- Forbes
Novak Djokovic Withdraws From Cincinnati Open
Novak Djokovic will enter the U.S. Open later this month without having played a hardcourt warm-up tournament. The 38-year-old legend withdrew from the Cincinnati Open on Monday and has not played since reaching the semifinals of Wimbledon last month. He pulled out for a non-medical reason. The 24-time-Grand Slam champion has won the Cincinnati Open three times, most recently when he saved a championship point to beat Carlos Alcaraz 5-7, 7-6(7), 7-6(4) in an instant-classic 2023 final. Djokovic, ranked No. 6 in the world, is bidding to win a record 25th major at the U.S. Open, which begins Aug. 24. He lost to world No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the semifinals at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The Cincinnati Open is still headlined by Sinner and Alcaraz, with many other top stars playing.
New York Times
5 hours ago
- New York Times
Victoria Mboko: The Canadian tennis talent who can't stop winning arrives at her home event
Ripping a backhand past a former Wimbledon quarterfinalist to clinch a first Grand Slam win on the opening day of the French Open is a pretty good way to make tennis fans stand up and take notice. Or maybe Victoria Mboko, the 18-year-old, American-born, Canadian-raised daughter of Congolese parents, has been announcing herself for months now. Maybe folks just weren't listening closely enough. Advertisement Everyone is now, as she backs up her run to the French Open third round with a last-four place at the WTA 1,000 Canadian Open in Montreal, one rung below a Grand Slam. As her Roland-Garros debut approached, Mboko played the same brain game she has been playing through a startling climb up the tennis biosphere. She tells herself that what is happening isn't actually happening. 'Kind of just play it down,' she said during an interview after her 6-1, 7-6(4) win over Lulu Sun of New Zealand on a Sunday May. Three days later, she knocked out rising German Eva Lys 6-4, 6-4, to move into the third round at her first major. Her run ended there in a defeat to Zheng Qinwen, the 2024 Olympic gold medalist, but Mboko had shown everyone who had missed her rise that they should have been paying more attention. 'Pretend like you're playing somewhere else, that you're not at a Grand Slam,' she said of her strategy there. It's another clay-court tournament. That way, I don't put as much pressure on myself and the points. I let loose and I kind of go for my shots a little bit more,' she said. If playing make-believe before walking onto the biggest stages in tennis could lead to Mboko taking a spot next to Bianca Andreescu, Leylah Fernandez, Denis Shapovalov, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Milos Raonic and others in the Canadian tennis firmament, then Mboko probably ought to keep doing it. Her performance in Paris, and then in Montreal, where she has knocked out two-time major champion Coco Gauff and surged into the top 50 of the WTA rankings, showed every bit of what has generated all the buzz about Mboko becoming the latest in a string of Canadians from immigrant families who have made it to the top of the sport. 'We know Canada is a very multicultural country and we are very accepting of everyone,' Andreescu, who has become a mentor to Mboko, said during an interview in Rome. Advertisement 'I think it's a beautiful thing that we're all from different different cultures, different backgrounds, but at the end of the day Tennis Canada really has built this program in the acceptance of everybody, no matter who you are.' The youngest by seven years of four tennis-playing siblings, Mboko has been winning more than just about anyone in professional women's tennis since the start of the year. She finished last year ranked 350th, with her coaches believing fully in her potential but also wanting her to take it slow, given her struggles with knee injuries in recent years. Now they have another problem on their hands. Mboko has won so many matches that she has already played more than she has ever played before. She started the year winning 22 in a row on the ITF World Tennis Tour, two rungs below the WTA Tour. She lost one, then won another five, this time at a WTA 125 event, the next rung up, in Porto. She has won matches in Rome, Ga. and Rome, Italy at the Italian Open. Her record on the year is 49-9, as she prepares to face 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina in Montreal. 'I have been doing exactly the same thing I've been doing every other day. I like to keep the same routine when I'm in a tournament,' she said after her win over Gauff, who had beaten her in three sets at the Italian Open. 'I think I'm a little bit superstitious in that way, in that sense, but I just like to keep everything super simple. I like to do the exact same thing every day in a tournament.' 'That's a lot,' Marko Strillic, one of three coaches she works with at the Canadian Tennis Federation, said during an interview at the Italian Open. 'If she keeps winning, you have to figure out a way to manage the schedule so that she doesn't get hurt. This is for the long term.' That was before Mboko cruised through French Open qualifying to earn her main draw debut, and then knocked through Sun as though she knew she would all along. Mboko was all business again against Lys, but for a couple of service breaks she quickly recovered from. Advertisement Her brother Kevin, 27 and a tennis coach in suburban Toronto, said that from the moment she woke up, she set her mind on only one thing: winning. 'She looked at us and said, 'I got to win today,'' he said in an interview after she did just that. 'We were trying to bring her down a little bit, telling her that it's all right, to just go out there and have fun, enjoy the experience. 'She was like 'No, I got to win.' That's how she was during her hit before walking onto the court, and it's how she was through the 79-minute match. Rain, wind, muddy balls, nothing really budged her off her game. 'It's been really calm between the days,' she said. 'That's how my coach wanted it to be.' She woke at a quarter to seven ahead of her match against Lys, ready to roll. There was quick breakfast, a ride to Roland Garros, a physical warm-up and then a 30-minute hit at 9:30 a.m. 'Then I just chilled in the locker room until my match,' she said. All week, all month, really, there has been a 'no big deal' sensibility to Mboko. She credited the presence of her sister and brother for that. 'There is so much happening even behind the scenes,' she said. 'I feel like my family has been doing a good job of keeping me, I guess, isolated from it all. I have just been enjoying the moment. I have been enjoying time with my sister and my brother. I don't have so many people around me, and it's kept me very calm and very comfortable.' At some point, this is going to get complicated, but for Kevin and everyone else closest to Mboko, this rocket ride both is and is not surprising. Her oldest sister Gracia, 28, who has been courtside all event, played tennis for the University of Denver. She said that she and her brothers always knew that their baby sister had something they did not. Gracia recalled a local women's tournament at their home club in Burlington, a city in the Greater Toronto area of Ontario, that she played in when she was 17. Advertisement At the last minute, another slot opened up, and a pro at the club asked Victoria, who was just 9 and had come to watch, if she wanted to play. Victoria jumped at the opportunity and eventually faced her sister. Gracia won, 6-0, 6-0, but the way Victoria behaved, it was as though she had expected the results to go the other way. 'It's that belief in yourself that the very top of the one percent have,' Gracia, a consultant in private equity, said Sunday after watching her sister win. 'It's: 'not only should I win this match, I'm going to go do it.' And then she does it.' At least she does now. For the past couple of years, a knee injury caused by both rapid growth and a bad fall on a tennis court has made that difficult. She spent much of last year based in Belgium at the academy of Justine Henin, the former world No. 1 and four-time French Open champion. She played little for the first six months of the year. Getting healthy was the priority. Even then, she ended the year losing more than she won, dropping three of her last four matches. 'Last year ended very poorly,' said Kevin. 'I didn't see any of this coming. No one did.' Their father, Cyprien, a retired mechanical engineer who worked nights in part so that he could drive his children to their tennis obligations, was there too. Victoria's mother, Godée, an accountant, was back home, dealing with a heavy end-of-the-month workload, as was her other brother, David, a 25-year-old data scientist. The Mbokos moved from the Democratic Republic of Congo nearly three decades ago, to escape the First and Second Congo Wars of the mid-1990s. Visa issues kept the family separated, with Godée in Montreal and Cyprien in North Carolina. Godée then moved to N.C., where the family lived for several years and where Victoria was born, before all moving to Toronto when she was still a baby. Advertisement Victoria didn't let the losses in the final months of 2024 get to her. 'I just thought new year, new me,' she said during an interview in Rome. She decided to play like the version of herself that she has long believed in: an aggressive, athletic player who likes to take control of points and dictate the action. In Miami, she beat Camila Osorio, a 23-year-old tour mainstay, and pushed Paula Badosa, the No. 10 seed at Roland-Garros, to a third-set tiebreak. Mboko has also showed off a precocious variety, mixing in drop shots and slices, including a hard, slicing forehand. Her coach is Nathalie Tauziat, who got to No. 3 in the world with a game moulded around variety. But Mboko can also crack her serve at 120 mph. Not surprisingly, she grew up worshipping Serena Williams. In Rome, she cruised through the first set in her second-round match against Gauff, lacing backhands and forehands through the court on the Campo Centrale like a seasoned veteran. Gauff turned the match into one of her long-distance track races, getting so many balls back that Mboko was huffing and puffing between every point. But the world No. 2 came away seriously impressed. She 'felt like playing myself,' Gauff said in a huddle after the match, especially with how well Mboko covered the court. 'On the movement, I would say she's up there with me on that,' Gauff, probably the best mover in the sport, said. Gracia Mboko said her sister came away from that loss both devastated and determined. 'She told me she was so out of steam, that she couldn't believe how Coco was getting every ball back,' she said Sunday. 'She kept saying, 'I got to get in shape.' It motivated her.' It certainly did. When she faced a double-fault-stricken version of Gauff in Montreal, she kept her foot on the accelerator after winning the first set 6-1. She knew that Gauff would raise her level, try to make her nervous, try to impose her experience on the match. Mboko didn't let her. She stayed even until 5-4, then broke Gauff to win the second set and the match. Advertisement Mboko learned plenty from that first loss to Gauff. She knew she had let the world No. 2's grit frustrate her, thinking about the last point when she was supposed to be thinking about the next one. Her coaches are onto this. 'They'll start to snap me right back into it,' she said. 'They'll actually say: 'stay present, stay focused, or close it right here.'' With 49 wins in a year, Mboko isn't exactly unfamiliar with closing it. Now she is doing it on the biggest stage in the sport.
New York Times
11 hours ago
- New York Times
Kyle Schwarber hears MVP chants, hits slam to reach 40 homers: ‘The guy is unbelievable'
PHILADEPHIA — The 'MVP' chants started when Kyle Schwarber stepped to the plate. The roar continued as he sat on the first pitch of his second at-bat, in the sixth, a fastball outside, and escalated when his bat connected with the next pitch, a 95.9 mph fastball. It was a crack so sharp, so clear, all of Citizens Bank Park knew. Advertisement Fans leaped from their seats. Edmundo Sosa, Weston Wilson and Trea Turner watched the ball sail 390 feet, then ran the bases. Pitcher Jesús Luzardo saw the ball fly and knew, with how long the sixth had gone and was going, he would not return to the game. The ball was gone. Schwarber's second grand slam of the season rocked into the right-center stands. 'Those are the moments you take in as a player,' Schwarber said. 'Those are special things that happen. Those are things that just go in the back of the memory and you hold onto for a while.' The grand slam, Schwarber's 40th homer of the season, sealed a 13-3 win over the Baltimore Orioles on Monday. It was his second home run of the game, and 10th since his dominance in the All-Star Game swing-off on July 15. Now, Schwarber leads the National League in home runs, sitting second in the majors (Cal Raleigh has 42). With more home runs comes more difficulty for everyone trying to describe what Schwarber is doing. Manager Rob Thomson listed what Schwarber has accomplished this season: the big hits, the home runs, the RBIs. Harrison Bader, a Phillies player for all of five days, said he's watched Schwarber's routine, poise and work ethic and said it 'really does make sense why he's so successful.' 'It was incredible,' Thomson said. 'He had MVP chants, and I think they're warranted,' Luzardo said. 'The guy is unbelievable,' Bader said. The designated hitter had somewhat of a down June. And down, for Schwarber, meant a slash line of .214/.347/.408 with six home runs and a .756 OPS as he dealt with tougher pitching. From the All-Star break through Sunday, he posted a 1.164 OPS with a .776 slugging percentage. Throwing him a fastball in the zone, as the Orioles did on both home runs, was a grave error. The 'MVP' chants, which continued when Schwarber singled in the eighth, are fun. Schwarber said they feed into his efforts at the plate. They make his at-bats even more of an event. But could there be something real to his MVP chances? Advertisement It would require a lot. Hitting 60 home runs would break the franchise record set by Ryan Howard (58 in 2006) and make him just the second Phillies player in history to reach 50 homers in a season. Shohei Ohtani, the three-time MVP, sits third in MLB with 38 home runs. A first-place MVP finish for Schwarber seems unlikely. A top-three or top-five finish, however, seems within the realm of possibility. Schwarber, for all his strong seasons, has placed no better than 15th in MVP voting. Cracking the top-five, especially in a contract year, matters — even if Schwarber, for now, is caught up in the day-to-day. 'I'm not trying to go out there and think about records or anything like that,' Schwarber said. 'I'm just trying to go out on a daily basis and try to help these guys. If (breaking Howard's record) happens, it's great. If it doesn't, it's great.' Helping the other guys has been key since the All-Star break ended July 18. Schwarber has 10 homers since then. Bryce Harper has seven. Their power hitting, slowly, has caught on. The Phillies, from Opening Day through the end of June, ranked 16th with 89 home runs. Since the All-Star Break, the club leads the league in homers (33). And Monday marked the Phillies' first game with six home runs since Sept. 6, 2021. Harper homered in the first inning, and Schwarber in the third. Then, with two outs in the sixth, the rest of the lineup came together. Bader had his first hit in a Phillies uniform, a three-run homer, to provide a 6-3 lead. Five batters — and three hits — later, Schwarber hit the grand slam. The power, long a question mark for this team, seems to have arrived. There is also something to be said about the Phillies — and not just Schwarber and Harper — delivering timely hits late in close games as they did Friday and Monday. The combination, should the Phillies continue to embrace it, could be crucial. Advertisement '(Home runs) excite the crowd,' Schwarber said. 'It excites the dugout. You can kind of feel that energy, and it can kind of carry over to the next at-bat for someone. You get the fans (energetic), they're still going, and the next thing you know, it's more runs, more runs, more runs. ' (Top photo of Kyle Schwarber: Heather Barry / Getty Images)
