Category: Tennis

Nick Kyrgios won 6-3, 6-3 against Aryna Sabalenka in an intriguing Dubai contest with celebrity interruptions

Nick Kyrgios won tennis’s latest Battle of the Sexes against Aryna Sabalenka in a dispiriting contest in Dubai that veered uneasily between exhibition, gimmick and outright circus.

The Australian, who has won only one competitive singles match since the end of 2022 and has slipped to 671 in the world rankings, was sweating heavily and breathing hard as early as the fifth game of the match. Yet to no one’s great surprise, the extreme power of his serve, combined with the spin and velocity of his groundstrokes, proved too much for the women’s No 1 player.

World No 1’s clash with Nick Kyrgios is on track to being one of the most inane tennis events ever conceived

2025 was the year of Aryna Sabalenka for so many reasons. She reached three of the four grand slam finals, winning her fourth major title at the US Open and further positioning herself as a generational great. From her humble origins as a volatile, one-note ball-basher, the 27-year-old has admirably evolved into an increasingly complete player. Sabalenka is the best player in the world for a second year in succession.

The fleeting tennis off-season is usually an opportunity for players and spectators alike to reflect on such great feats before the new season is upon them. This year, however, the December discourse has been derailed by the fast-approaching train wreck Sabalenka stands at the heart of.

• Draper forced to withdraw from US Open with arm injury

• British No 1: ‘It’s a really, really tough decision’

Jack Draper has announced he will miss next month’s Australian Open after admitting he is not quite ready for a return to top-level competition. The British No 1 has played just one match since Wimbledon, with bone bruising in his left arm curtailing his 2025 season, and he is set to be on the sidelines for a little while longer.

Draper, ranked 10th in the world, said in a video on X on Boxing Day: “Unfortunately, me and my team have decided not to head out to Australia this year. It’s a really, really tough decision, obviously [with] Australia being a grand slam, it’s one of the biggest tournaments in our sport.

Jannik Sinner dominated for three hours and 43 minutes, but the Spaniard somehow prevailed in an adrenaline-filled fifth set and all-time classic

It was not until what appeared to be the dying moments of the French Open final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz that I realised it could be worth taking a photo of such a monumental occasion. This was, after all, the first grand slam final between the two players who seemed set to lead men’s tennis for many years to come.

For three hours and 43 minutes Sinner had dominated Alcaraz and he earned three championship points while leading 5-3 in set four. Just before the Italian’s second championship point, I thrust up my phone and took a quick photo before my hand returned to my laptop, ready to file immediately an article that hailed his third consecutive major title and first triumph in Paris.

• Wedding follows five-day celebration in Florida

• Preti is a Danish-born Italian actor and model

• Williams plans to return for 33rd WTA season

Venus Williams married actor and model Andrea Preti over the weekend, the tennis great announced Tuesday on social media.

Williams, 45, and Preti were married in Palm Beach, Florida, following a five-day celebration that included family and close friends. The couple also held a non-official ceremony in Italy earlier this year.

• World No 1 says ‘biological men’ have a ‘huge advantage’

• ‘She hit the nail on the head,’ says battle of sexes rival Kyrgios

Aryna Sabalenka has weighed into the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sport, the world No 1 saying it would be unfair for women to face “biological men” in professional tennis.

The Women’s Tennis Association’s (WTA) gender participation policy of its tour permits transgender women to participate if they have declared their gender as female for a minimum of four years, have lowered testosterone levels and agree to testing procedures. These conditions may be further varied by the WTA medical manager on a case-by-case basis.

The match between Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios opens up a direct channel between the BBC of old and a world of toxic internet hatred

It’s always best to take a sceptical view of the constant flow of BBC-bashing newspaper stories, which are often simply bogus outrage expressed for commercial gain. Even the war-on-woke, cod-ideological stuff – Clive Myrie INSISTS hamsters can breastfeed human robots – the bits that make you want to smear your face with greengage jam and weep for England, our England, with its meadows, its shadows, its curates made entirely from beef. Even these come from a hard, transactional place.

Basically, it’s the licence fee. The BBC is free at the point of delivery, but paid for by a national levy. The BBC is also a direct commercial competitor to every other form of legacy media, all of which are trying to find ways to survive and recoup revenue.

• Williams back in ITIA pool for first time since 2022

• Move required before any potential competitive return

• Could be eligible to play again as early as mid-2026

Serena Williams has taken the procedural move required of any player contemplating a competitive comeback, after the 23-time grand slam singles champion re-entered the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s (ITIA) registered testing pool for the first time since 2022.

Williams, 44, has not played an official match since her run to the third round of the US Open more than three years ago. Although she described her departure at the time as “evolving away” from the sport rather than a hard retirement, she filed the paperwork with the ITIA that September that exempted her from the sport’s stringent whereabouts requirements. To return to competition, however, players must make themselves available for out-of-competition testing for six months before they are allowed to enter an event.

British No 1 on home comforts of Bromley, joys of commuting and being ‘creeped out’ by paparazzi

Emma Raducanu has garnered many endorsement deals in her nascent career, but there is perhaps one elusive sponsorship that would be most pleasing to the British No 1 women’s tennis player: ambassador of the London Borough of Bromley.

During a roundtable discussion with tennis journalists at the end of a gruelling yet satisfying season, Raducanu is merely attempting to describe a quiet off-season spent in her family home when she finds herself delivering a sales pitch about the benefits of living in Bromley. “I’m just so settled,” she says. “I’ve barely been in the UK this year because I’ve been competing so much, but I think just spending really good quality time with my parents has been so nice. I have loved just being in Bromley. It just reminds me of when I was a younger kid and it’s the same bedroom, same everything.

Players are being worn down by a cluttered calendar and lack of unity over their welfare from governing bodies

Elina Svitolina simply could not go on. Her hopeful start to the 2025 season had given way to despair as the mental and emotional strain of constant competition, travelling and stress left its mark. The 31-year-old understood that competing would only make things worse and, in September, Svitolina decided to prematurely end her season, citing burnout.

The world No 14 is not alone in feeling suffocated by her sport. This has been another year filled with incredible performances and gripping matches, but the past 11 months have also been defined by the physical and mental ailments endured by many of the sport’s stars.

• Italians win singles matches against Busta and Munar

• Alcaraz and Sinner both absent for Davis Cup final

Italy have been crowned Davis Cup champions for a third successive year, after victory over Spain. The two teams reached the final despite the absence of their respective star players Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz in Bologna this week.

And it was Italy who retained their title after Matteo Berrettini and Flavio Cobolli won their singles matches on Sunday. Berrettini beat Pablo Carreño Busta 6-3, 6-4 in the opening contest and an entertaining tussle between Cobolli and Jaume Munar followed in which the Italian charged back to win 1-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5.

Former Wimbledon champion on how taking accountability for his crimes allowed for rehabilitation, watching Novak Djokovic from his cell and the new era of brotherhood in the sport

“I heard the screaming and I didn’t know what it was,” Boris Becker says as he remembers staring into the dark in Wandsworth prison, just over two miles from Wimbledon’s Centre Court where he won the first of his three men’s singles titles at the age of 17 in 1985. “Were people trying to kill themselves or harm themselves? Or couldn’t they deal with their loneliness? Or are they just making crazy noises because they have lost their minds already?”

Becker had been sentenced to a two-and-a-half-year jail term. Amid his insolvency, he was found guilty of not declaring all his assets so that additional funds could be distributed to his creditors. The judge confirmed that his money was used, instead, to meet his “commitments to his children and other dependents, medical and professional fees, and other expenses”.

• Plans for 39 grass courts were given approval in 2024

• Pressure has led to judicial review of that decision

Wimbledon’s battle to build 39 new grass courts on a nearby golf course has taken a fresh twist after local residents were granted permission to take a judicial review case to the court of appeal.

Last year the All England Club (AELTC) was given approval by Jules Pipe, the London deputy mayor for planning and regeneration, to build the courts on what used to be Wimbledon Park Golf Club – a decision that was then endorsed in the high court on 21 July. However, the Save Wimbledon Park pressure group challenged that verdict and on Monday it was announced that Lord Justice Holgate had granted a judicial review of the court’s decision.