Category: Tennis

• Special Ks lose topsy-turvy match 6-0 1-6 (10-6)

• Performance bodes well for Kyrgios’s wild card hopes

Nick Kyrgios was a motivational speaker, a part-time masseur and a dancer on the way to an entertaining doubles loss in Brisbane, with the defeat unlikely to harm his Australian Open wildcard hopes.

Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis looked set for an embarrassing Brisbane International loss after copping a first-set “bagel” in their round-of-16 doubles match against No 6 seeds Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul.

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Duo begin 2026 again troubled by physical problems and hoping this will finally be the year things change

From the moment news of Great Britain’s planned team for the United Cup was announced in October, jokes began to fly. On paper, it was a dream. Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu, the top tennis players in the country and figureheads of a new generation, finally united on the same side of the court.

However, recent history has shown that things are never straightforward with Britain’s two greatest hopes. Both players have had to navigate injuries and physical problems in their young careers, so to some fans and onlookers the real question was which player would withdraw first. Draper won that race, but on the first day of the 2026 season neither player was physically prepared to take to the court.

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• Djokovic says values no longer align with PTPA

• Players’ group sued tours and grand slams in March

• Serb was not named as plaintiff in lawsuit

Novak Djokovic is cutting ties with the Professional Tennis Players Association, a group he co-founded that sued the sport’s governing bodies last year, writing on social media on Sunday that “my values and approach are no longer aligned with the current direction of the organization”.

The 24-time grand slam champion announced at the 2020 US Open that he and the now-retired Canadian player Vasek Pospisil were launching the PTPA. They said they were aiming to offer representation for players who are independent contractors in a largely individual sport.

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• ‘Special Ks’ reunite for 5-7 6-4 10-8 defeat of Matt Ebden and Rajeev Ram

• Kokkinakis had donor achilles tendon attached to shoulder in radical surgery

Thanasi Kokkinakis’s tears after a doubles match told the story as the injury-plagued Australian won in his latest and most dramatic return to the sport alongside old friend Nick Kyrgios.

The 29-year-old hadn’t played in almost a year, after groundbreaking pectoral surgery that involved attaching a donor’s achilles tendon to his shoulder.

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• Williams to return to Melbourne Park at age 45

• Seven-time major champion earns wild-card entry

• Set to become oldest woman in Open main draw

Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams has received a wild-card entry for the Australian Open beginning 18 January in Melbourne.

The tournament said Friday that the 45-year-old Williams would make a return to Melbourne Park 28 years after her first appearance. In 1998, she defeated her younger sister Serena in the second round before losing in the quarter-finals to fellow American Lindsay Davenport.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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.

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