A quick programming note for all the new readers: I’ll be back shortly with how Ben Shelton’s win over Carlos Alcaraz—and a potential run to the US Open final—could affect his apparel negotiations, plus some reader-requested intel on Elena Rybakina’s partnership with Yonex. But first, I wanted to put a period on the take-iest tournament yet.

After an especially long three weeks, the US Open is almost, finally, over. “Thank god” seems to be a fairly common refrain after the onslaught of truly insufferable takes that this year’s tournament brought with it. How lucky are we to have so many brilliant minds outlining how to fix tennis? Or, in many cases, simply explaining who’s responsible for breaking it?

The amount of fighting about tennis over the last few weeks is worthy of a page in the history books. May we never forget the moment the sport broke so far into the mainstream that seemingly every minor controversy became a referendum on what was wrong with it. The current grievances go a little something like this: Influencers are solely to blame for the noise level in Arthur Ashe and—details shmetails—the USTA is somehow responsible for every single one of them being there; journalists should apparently request interviews with every single player, but god forbid they get one and fail to ask what fans want; getting rid of best-of-five tennis would fix everything, but if you insist on keeping it, you should at least put a quarterfinal match on Court 17. And the beat goes on…

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The annoying part is that there are legitimate complaints buried underneath all of this hysteria. The crowds on Ashe have been disruptive, media access is flawed, and there are fair questions to ask about scheduling and whether the current format is actually working for fans and players. But instead of arguing about any of those things on their merits, everyone is busy trying to figure out who to blame.

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A few months ago, I broke the news that Ben Shelton’s apparel and footwear deal with On was up for renewal at the end of this year. Disappointed with both the Swiss brand’s marketing and product thus far, and eager to better capitalize on Shelton’s star power, his team had quietly gone out to the market to see what other opportunities beckoned.

Considered by many in the industry to be the most marketable player on the ATP Tour besides Jack Draper, who secured a massive contract with Vuori before injury struggles sidelined him for more than a year, my reporting at the time found that Shelton had a roster of options, all with mouth-watering price tags. But while a new apparel contract couldn’t technically be signed until later this year, Shelton’s team apparently wasn’t satisfied with the lack of movement in other categories in the meantime.

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Keep reading for where Shelton is likely headed next, how much the deal is worth, and details regarding the major shakeup to his team that happened along the way.

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Every year at the US Open, the top American men are asked some version of the same question: Is this finally the year?

It has now been 23 years since Andy Roddick won the 2003 US Open, the last time an American man won a Grand Slam singles title. In the years since, the drought has become its own storyline, one that gets dusted off every August and handed to whichever group of American men happens to arrive in New York with the best chance of ending it.

This year, there are plenty of reasons to ask the question again. Taylor Fritz made the final here two years ago and believes he is as good, if not better, than he was then. Ben Shelton has spent the summer playing some of his best tennis on his favorite surface. Frances Tiafoe says he barely recognizes the person who arrived—sullen and out of form—in New York a year ago. Tommy Paul, meanwhile, points to the number of Americans who went deep in Montreal and Cincinnati as evidence that the group is arriving at the US Open in particularly good form.

Jannik Sinner’s absence from the tournament has only made the temptation to look ahead stronger. What was already an intriguing opportunity suddenly appears a little more open, and after more than two decades of waiting for another American man to win a major, it is very easy to start dreaming.

However, the Americans themselves would prefer not to.

“I’m focused on my first round, my first match,” Shelton said when asked before the tournament whether Sinner’s absence made him think differently about his own chances, or those of the American men more broadly. “I don’t think too far beyond that.”

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Tiafoe was even more succinct when the drought inevitably came up in his pre-tournament press conference. “Still gotta beat seven guys however way you slice it,” he said. “Just trying to beat the guy in front of me.”

And when Fritz was asked after his first-round win whether injuries and early upsets had made this year’s field feel particularly open, he barely entertained the premise.

“None of that matters until I’m in the semis or the finals, honestly,” he said. “So I don’t even worry about it until then.”

Keep reading for how Fritz, Shelton, Tiafoe and Paul are approaching the pressure and possibility of this US Open.

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Things have been moving quickly for Iva Jovic. Just two years ago, the 18-year-old American made her tour-level debut as a wild card at the US Open. Since then, she’s won her first WTA title in Guadalajara, reached the Australian Open quarterfinals and climbed to a career-high No. 14 in the world, establishing herself as one of the most exciting young players in the sport.

The higher Jovic climbs, though, the more there is to manage beyond what happens on court. There’s the near-constant travel, of course, but also more people who know her name, more media requests and more brands interested in being associated with her. It’s a strange amount of life to accelerate through at 18, particularly for someone who is still experiencing many of the milestones of a professional tennis career for the first time.

Her latest partnership was announced just before the US Open, when Jovic was named the newest member of the Gorjana Sports Club, joining fellow American Jessica Pegula in the jewelry brand’s growing roster of female athletes. Jovic grew up in Los Angeles and told Hard Court her interest in fashion started early, shopping and dressing up with her mom and older sister. The partnership comes at a point in her career when she’s beginning to think about how she wants to represent herself to a world just getting to know her.

Ahead of her first-round match against Magdalena Fręch today, Jovic and I spoke about learning to live on the road, realizing she could hang with the best players in the world, the strange experience of becoming increasingly recognizable and how she’s deciding which brands she wants to bring along for the ride.

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You’re 18 and already playing a full professional schedule. What has been the biggest adjustment from junior tennis to life on the pro tour—whether that’s the travel, the level of competition, managing your schedule, or simply being away from home so much?

I would say that the biggest adjustment from going from the juniors to the pros is the constant travel. You don’t have to deal with as much of that in the juniors. As a pro, you really have to learn how to manage your schedule: your training, your matches, your personal life and really just find a balance between it all while you’re constantly moving from one place to another.

Was there a specific tournament or match when you first felt like, “Okay, I belong at this level”?

I don’t think there was one specific match where I felt like something clicked. But I think at the beginning of this year, when I was winning a lot of matches and climbing into the top 20 for the first time, after that run it really started to sink in. I felt like, “Okay, I can play here. My level is good enough that I don’t even need to play at the very best of my ability every single day to be competitive with these girls.”

Keep reading for Jovic on navigating newfound attention, what she’s looking for in the brands she puts her name behind, and why mentorship gets complicated when your mentors are also your competition.

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The US Open officially kicks off today and when players on the schedule for day one pull up to site, they’re likely to be a little exhausted. The past week has included a calendar of events so bloated that even mere mortals—journalists and creators—have found themselves foggy headed, burned out, and longing for mid-September. But it’s affecting the athletes too, who have been shepherded around New York City and the tournament site by their various handlers to meet a growing list of sponsor obligations that include everything from events to TV spots. All while practicing for the last Grand Slam of the year.

“I was telling my coach in practice today that my body just felt slow, I could feel it in my reaction times, so we cut it short because I need rest,” Leylah Fernandez told me at a Lululemon dinner on Friday when I asked how she was juggling all the extracurricular activity with training. She wasn’t complaining—Fernandez is perpetually cheery, it seems—but most athletes have learned it’s best not to do so publicly.

Case in point, when I asked an agent friend if their athletes were feeling the effects of the non-stop socializing, they said yes but noted, “I don’t know that I necessarily want that message out there because, as crazy busy as it is, I need my athletes to not complain and understand it’s part of their job and do it all with a smile.”

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Keep reading for what players and agents are saying about the increasingly chaotic week before the US Open—and why the brand frenzy may be reaching a breaking point.

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When I decided to throw the inaugural Hard Court cocktail party a month ago, I envisioned a room filled with my favorite people in tennis—the people moving the sport forward every day with their creativity, intellect and business savvy. More than anything, I wanted it to feel like the kind of space I wish existed more often in tennis: one where nobody felt judged when they walked through the door, where a famous influencer and a reporter who couldn’t care less about fashion not only felt equally welcome, but might actually end up talking to each other. Where top agents mingled with young creators, all the WAGs (who are far more interesting than that catchall title suggests) came together rather than competed, and brand execs left with a long list of people they were suddenly dying to work with.

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There is something uniquely humbling about professional tennis. One year you’re one of the biggest stars in the sport, winning Olympic gold and reaching the upper echelons of the rankings; not long after, you’re preparing to play qualifying at the US Open.

That is where Qinwen Zheng finds herself this week. After an injury-plagued stretch sent the former world No. 4’s ranking tumbling to No. 127, Zheng did not receive a main-draw wildcard into the US Open and is set to make her first appearance in qualifying. It’s a strange position for a player who, at 23, has already experienced almost every trapping of tennis stardom: a Grand Slam final, Olympic gold, enormous fame in China and partnerships with brands including Nike and Dior.

But when I spoke to Zheng in Washington, D.C. last month, she seemed remarkably clear-eyed about the situation. There was no attempt to pretend that her ranking didn’t matter, or that the commercial opportunities that accompany being one of the best tennis players in the world exist independently of actually being one of the best tennis players in the world. If anything, Zheng was more willing to acknowledge the transactional realities of professional sports than most athletes I’ve spoken to.

She was also, crucially, finally feeling good.

“The body right now is finally all good,” she told me. “I play without pain. That’s what I’ve been searching for for the last two years, and thank God that finally I’m able to do that.”

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A few months earlier, Zheng had described the process of returning from injury as feeling like she was starting over. By Washington, that feeling had begun to subside. “I would say right now everything is on a good path,” she said. “The last two weeks, because I can feel right now my body is getting better, my mind is finally starting to get a bit better, and I’m starting to find my level little by little.”

For now, she’s trying not to look much further ahead than that. “I think I just need to keep going at this stage and working on myself, and then trying to reach the best [version] of myself on court,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, we are playing tennis matches, and the best level you have is [the one you have] when you are in the match.”

Injury is, of course, difficult enough when your job is predicated on your body cooperating. But for Zheng, the losses that followed also came with the feeling that she was disappointing an enormous number of people. She is one of China’s most famous athletes, with the kind of fandom that makes it difficult for a loss to ever feel like hers alone.

“After coming back from injury, I lost some matches I shouldn’t have lost, which felt really painful,” she said. “I felt like, oh, the people who love me, my fans, that I let them down. That was a bad feeling for me because I don’t want to let them down. I want to win as much as I can, and I want to give them courage, but the last few months [I haven’t been] able to do that. So I’ve also been feeling very sad about myself.”

Still, Zheng had realized that there’s no way to play good tennis if she’s carrying all of that around with her. “I’ve learned one thing: I only can control what I’m doing,” she said. “I cannot control how my tennis on court affects others, because I cannot carry so many expectations on my shoulders. That’s too heavy for me to play tennis with.”

Her solution has been to strip things back. “Right now, what I’ve learned is just to be simple, as simple as I can as a person, as simple as I can as a tennis player,” she said. “And the tennis will become better as a result.”

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Keep reading for Zheng on what happens to sponsorships when your ranking drops, the real reason she avoids close friendships on tour, and the freedom she finds in fashion.

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Carlos Alcaraz announced his return yesterday via Fabrizio Romano, an aura-depleting move in the words of my friend James Hansen, and simultaneously dashed the hopes of many top players who fantasized that, with him out and loose chatter about Sinner being on the fence, they might finally have a chance. Of course, Alcaraz’s form is likely to be rusty and playing best-of-5 after a long break isn’t easy for anyone, so, fret not, there is still hope for the underdogs.

Nevertheless, I think we’re all thrilled that the tour’s resident golden-retriever-with-a-killer-instinct is …

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Alex de Minaur has long gravitated toward a classic uniform off court, so when Ralph Lauren came calling, he was already dressing the part.

“It’s very much in style with the clothes I normally wear,” de Minaur told Hard Court in Washington, D.C. last month. “I like to always be more on the smart side of clothing whenever I go to dinner. Classic, elegant, never-go-out-of-fashion style.”

Now, de Minaur has signed a partnership with Ralph Lauren, bringing the American brand’s longstanding relationship with tennis somewhere it has rarely gone: to the players themselves. It’s a logical next step, albeit one it’s somewhat surprising Ralph Lauren didn’t take sooner.

For more than two decades, Ralph Lauren has been one of tennis’s most visible fashion partners while largely staying out of the player endorsement business. The brand has served as the official outfitter of the US Open since 2005 and Wimbledon since 2006, designing uniforms for officials and ball crews alongside tournament-specific collections that have made the Polo pony a familiar sight at two of tennis’s biggest events. Ralph Lauren added the Australian Open to that portfolio in 2021, a partnership that will end after this year as BOSS takes over as the tournament’s official lifestyle outfitter in 2027.

There is one little-known exception. When Ralph Lauren first signed its US Open deal in 2005, it also signed then-19-year-old American prospect Scott Oudsema to represent its tennis brand on court and in an advertising campaign. Oudsema, who peaked at No. 145 in the world, never became a fixture at the top of the sport, and Ralph Lauren has largely avoided individual player endorsements in the two decades since.

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De Minaur therefore represents a considerably bigger bet on tying the brand to an individual tennis star. That the player Ralph Lauren chose to make that bet on is Australian is a small irony for a brand synonymous with American style.

Keep reading for more details on de Minaur’s Ralph Lauren deal—including whether we could eventually see it on court—plus his thoughts on working with Wilson and managing the pressure he puts on himself.

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Jessica Pegula has a lot of sponsors, even by the increasingly lucrative standards of a top tennis player.

There are the familiar tennis names: Adidas, which has dressed her since 2021, and Yonex, which makes her rackets. Beyond those, her portfolio stretches across industries: KPMG, Hyatt and IBM, California jewelry brand Gorjana, Vital Proteins, Swiss watchmaker De Bethune, air purifier company Blueair, odor-eliminating brand Azuna and global investment firm Irongrey. Nintendo paid her six figures for a campaign around the Miami Open this year, and another partnership, in a category particularly close to Pegula’s heart, is set to be announced during the US Open.

What’s more notable than the sheer number of logos is how many of those companies had never previously signed a tennis player. Pegula was the first tennis ambassador for KPMG, Hyatt, Gorjana, Vital Proteins, Blueair, Azuna and Irongrey; when the forthcoming US Open deal is announced, the number will rise to eight. At a moment when seemingly every company wants a piece of tennis, Pegula has quietly become something of an entry point into the sport.

It’s a role she’s particularly proud of, and one she hopes can ultimately bring more money into tennis beyond her own sponsorship deals, she tells me. Pegula has already spoken with the WTA about introducing some of her partners to the WTA Finals this year, and several of the brands she helped bring into the sport are reported to be exploring deals with other players.

Her agent, Chris McCormack of GSE Worldwide, sees the broader opportunity, too. “There are all these founding-block sponsors of our tours, but it’s great to have new blood in the sport,” he says.

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Pegula has learned that the more she puts into those relationships, the more interested brands become in doing something bigger. “What has been fun the last couple years is building relationships with my sponsors,” she says. “I like to give my time, and you see how thankful they are for that. Then they want to do more with you and invest more in the sport.”

Her current roster isn’t simply the result of an agent identifying brands and presenting her with contracts. Pegula frequently sends ideas the other way, and says McCormack now has a good sense of what will interest her. The criteria have evolved considerably from earlier in her career, when, as she puts it, “you’re just like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m getting paid and I’ll do this.’” These days, she is much more interested in partnerships that bear some relationship to who she actually is.

“I get compliments, honestly, from a lot of players that have said, ‘No, I really love the stuff that you do because it seems like you,’” Pegula says. “‘It’s dogs, it’s video games.’”

Nintendo is perhaps the most obvious example—Pegula is known for her love of video games—but Gorjana has become a particularly good illustration of what she wants a sponsorship to become. The jewelry company has hosted in-store events with her, brought players she’s friends with into those activations and raised money for A Lending Paw, the charity Pegula runs with her husband, Taylor Gahagen, which helps fund the training of service dogs for people with disabilities.

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“I love when you can make those connections,” she says. “With Gorjana, they’ve connected tennis, the jewelry and my work with animals, and put real time and effort into doing something different.”

Pegula’s personality also makes a certain degree of authenticity practically necessary. “I’m pretty direct and dry, so you can tell when I’m not exactly vibing with something,” she laughs.

That makes the biggest sponsorship decision on her immediate horizon particularly interesting.

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Keep reading for the inside story on Pegula’s upcoming apparel decision, how her sponsorship portfolio is shaping the negotiation, and the reality of running a skincare brand while playing professional tennis.

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Each topic gets a Court Index rating (Low, Medium, or High) based on how effectively it moves the needle. This is the core of what I do with Hard Court, so the full breakdown and ratings are for paid subscribers. If you already are one, thank you—it really makes this possible.

Become a paid subscriber to read my reporting and analysis on Naomi Osaka's latest fan initiative, the inside story and cinematic rollout behind Wilson's Defyer campaign, and why Nike's US Open collection is equal parts brilliance and baffling.

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The 21-year-old American holds victories on the surface over Taylor Fritz, Alex de Minaur and Lorenzo Musetti—all players who have spent time inside the ATP’s top 10—and arrived in Washington this week fresh off a Challenger title after returning from an oblique injury that disrupted his grass-court season.

Ahead of the Mubadala DC Open, I caught up with Michelsen to talk about his recovery, his friendship with Learner Tien and what he’s learned from playing some of the best players in the world. I found one answer particularly interesting.

When I mentioned his win over Taylor Fritz at Indian Wells, Michelsen challenged what feels like a pretty intuitive assumption: that practicing together benefits the higher-ranked player.

“Fritz, it’s trickier, I think, for him because he’s better than me, and we practice together,” Michelsen said. “Usually, when you practice with someone and you play them in a match, it favors the one that is a little worse because you kind of know what’s coming a bit.”

Rather than seeing familiarity as an advantage for the top player, Michelsen believes it can actually help close the gap. You know their favorite patterns, you recognize their tendencies and, perhaps most importantly, they lose some of the unpredictability that makes elite players so difficult to face.

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But Michelsen was careful not to overstate the point.

“I got a little lucky there,” Michelsen added. “I saved a crazy set point. I remember I got lucky to win that set.”

His explanation for his other marquee wins was similarly matter-of-fact.

Keep reading for Michelsen's candid thoughts on beating top players, playing his way back into form on the Challenger Tour and sharing life on tour with his buddy Learner Tien.

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For much of the past two years, Naomi Osaka’s story has been viewed through the lens of a single word: comeback.

It’s an easy narrative. She stepped away from tennis, became a mother, returned to the tour and is once again climbing toward the top of the game. But it’s one she increasingly rejects.

Ahead of the Mubadala DC Open, Osaka explained that she has never quite connected with the language surrounding her return. Saying she dislikes it would be too harsh, she said, because she’s “grateful for people even thinking about” her, but the suggestion that she’s trying to become the player she once was doesn’t square with reality.

“When I think of coming back, it kind of washes away the whole process,” she said. “Also, what am I coming back to, you know?”

The Naomi Osaka who arrived in Washington this week doesn’t feel like she’s chasing a previous version of herself.

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Keep reading for Osaka's candid reflections on her Wimbledon run, why she doesn’t feel like she’s making a "comeback," and how fashion has helped her break out of her shell.

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It’s “Media Weekend,” but I don’t find press conferences to be the best vessel for longform journalism, especially in an age where quotes and clips are immediately posted online after. If tournaments were a five-course meal, the opening press conferences would be the amuse bouche. Nevertheless, those bite-sized teasers can still be a treat—just make sure you don’t eat a mini towel like Andy Roddick (if you get that reference, you’re in way too deep).

With that in mind, I wanted to share some quick hits I got from Frances Tiafoe (on his recent evolution), Taylor Fritz (on being called a sociopath by Andre Agassi), and Venus Williams (on her US Open outfit plans), as well as some exclusive tennis fashion news on Williams, Naomi Osaka, and a new luxury partnership in the works that you should know.

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Frustrated by years of middling efforts to market them beyond the court, a handful of tennis players entered 2026 with a new strategy: if the tours weren’t going to tell their stories, they’d tell them themselves.

Ben Shelton was among the first to embrace the idea, launching a YouTube channel at the start of the season. He wasn’t alone. Casper Ruud hired a videographer to travel with him, Alex de Minaur started documenting life on tour, and it felt as though tennis players had arrived at the same conclusion as athletes in Formula 1, golf and basketball: fans increasingly wanted access to the people behind the performances, not just the performances themselves.

Seven months later, that first wave has slowed considerably.

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Keep reading for new reporting on the status of the latest player vlogs, the economics of player-led media, and how one top player is approaching things differently.

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This past weekend, I had the immense pleasure of interviewing Andre Agassi, a career highlight if ever there was one. A few months ago, Boss reached out to me about hosting a panel over Wimbledon finals weekend at Soho Farmhouse, an idyllic outpost of the members club in the Cotswolds. At the time, it wasn’t clear who I’d be interviewing and when they threw out Andre’s name my honest reaction was, fat chance! Surely he’d be too busy with commentating duties and building out Agassi Intelligence to chat with little old me.

Then, last Monday, the Boss team told me that it would indeed be Andre joining me on stage—or, really, a grassy field dubbed the Lazy Lawn. As you may have read in my last piece, I’d been having a rough go in London and was feeling trapped. Boss was paying me to host this event and I follow through on my commitments, so I couldn’t simply catch an early flight home and cut the “fortnight” short. But just as my enthusiasm for the tennis ecosystem was hitting an all-time low, this news hit me like a shot of espresso, waking me up from my jaded slumber and sending me into a mix of panic and excitement.

I’ve worked with Agassi’s team before and they’ve been early supporters of Hard Court, even giving me the exclusive on a deep dive into the racquet sports platform they’re building that involves AI models trained using the insights of both Agassi and Darren Cahill. But I’d never spoken to the man himself and, despite ample footage showing him to be a great interview, I was nervous about our chemistry and how he’d field some fashion-heavy questions (it was a Boss event, after all, and the stated goal was discussing tennis fashion and culture).

As with many things in life, all the fretting was for nothing. Andre immediately put me at ease, answering each question with a heavy dose of wisdom and humor, and happily trailing off into much more profound territory than some of the questions warranted. It was such a joyful ride that I wanted to share it in full with you, rather than editing it down to choice quotes. I’ve only edited it a bit for clarity, so it’s supersized but, I promise, worthwhile.

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The first half focuses on Andre’s impact on tennis culture and style, as well as his rebellious streak, before we move into his role coaching Team World at Laver Cup, his long relationship with Taylor Fritz, how he feels about some of today’s athletes’ potentially distracting extracurriculars, and the tennis traditions he’d love to see change. Throughout the conversation, Andre looks back on his own experiences on tour in remarkable detail, reflecting on them with his trademark candor. If you’ve been considering signing up for a paid subscription, you won’t regret doing so today.

PS. For those who’d prefer to listen, I’ve included a rough recording of the talk—the audio fluctuates a bit, especially with audience questions at the end, but Andre is very clear and does a great job of reiterating any hard-to-hear questions. Please remember this was a live talk and not staged in any way, shape, or form as a podcast—when and if I cross into that medium, it will be significantly more polished. Enjoy!

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I just capped off three weeks at Wimbledon that involved nearly every stage of grief (at least twice), with a sprinkling of pinch-me moments that kept me holding on.

When I booked this trip, I apparently blacked out and forgot who I am: a creature of routine, a homebody, someone who needs at least 24 hours to recover from any social activity. I’d had so much fun during my one-week sprint at Roland-Garros that I conveniently forgot I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it, the amnesia convincing me that three weeks in London would pack an even greater punch.

It did. Just often to the gut.

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Every major tournament is preceded by a week of parties, often ripe for networking which, I’m afraid to say, really does pay off. I flew out early so I could make it to Miu Miu and New Balance’s event celebrating the launch of their second collection with Coco Gauff. I’ve…

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It wasn’t long ago that Naomi Osaka’s elaborate walk-on looks felt like an outlier. This Wimbledon, they feel like the blueprint.

Across the grounds, more brands than ever are treating the walk from the locker room to the court as its own marketing moment—complete with bespoke tailoring, custom jackets, and carefully choreographed reveals. While no one is going quite as far as Osaka and her team—they’re bringing couture to the court, after all—the message has clearly landed. Brands, agencies, and players have watched the attention those entrances command and thought: we want in, too.

There is precedent, of course. Roger Federer famously wore a white suit onto Centre Court in 2007, among other outfits. Suzanne Lenglen challenged the restrictive dress codes of her era in custom Jean Patou designs that tran…

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Matteo Berrettini had just beaten Arthur Fils to reach the third round of Wimbledon when he offered two observations that summed up the past four years of his career.

“It’s been a while since I’ve played here,” he said of Centre Court.

Then, referring to both his run to the quarterfinals at Roland-Garros and moving on at Wimbledon, he added:

“It’s been a while since I played so many matches in a Slam.”

Since reaching the Wimbledon final in 2021, Berrettini’s career has been repeatedly interrupted by injuries, retirements, withdrawals and the exhausting process of rebuilding. This season alone has encapsulated that cycle. A recurring abdominal injury forced him to withdraw from the Australian Open after what he described as one of his strongest preseasons in years. A few months later, he produced his deepest Grand Slam run in nearly four years at Roland-Garros before another injury forced him to retire in the quarterfinals.

When we spoke earlier this week, I wanted to understand what years of that cycle had done to him psychologically. I was struck by the way he spoke about his body—not with resignation or frustration, but rather acceptance.

“The first thing that really helped me was realizing that I am just like this,” he told me. “I started getting injured when I was 12, so it’s always been part of my career.”

Become a paid subscriber to read Berrettini's candid thoughts on chronic injuries, working with a psychologist, and building a team that meets him where he is.

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Since Naomi Osaka walked onto court at the Australian Open wearing couture (read about her latest look here), there’s been an ongoing debate about whether fashion-forward entrances are good for tennis. Fans and insiders have largely fallen into two camps: they either love it or hate it, with remarkably little middle ground.

This week at Wimbledon, a few men have found themselves part of that conversation, albeit in a more understated way. Both Novak Djokovic and Taylor Fritz leaned into a bit of Roger Federer cosplay, walking onto court in tailored looks. Fritz, in particular, arrived wearing trousers with zip-away legs, a suit jacket, and a scarf before changing into his match kit.

Having heard plenty of men say they either “don’t get” Osaka’s grand entrances or, for some inexplicable reason, find them irritating, I was curious where Fritz landed on the debate.

“I don’t know where I stand on it,” he told me, explaining that the idea came from Boss—his apparel sponsor since 2024—and he was willing to give it a try. “I wasn’t 100% sure how I felt, but after seeing the pictures after the match, I feel like it looked alright.”

As far as attention-grabbing figures on tour go, Fritz—a prototypical California boy if there ever was one—generally prefers to keep things low-key. Beyond the occasional shirt-biting or self-directed eye-roll when a match is slipping away, he’s rarely one to court attention.

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At the same time, he’s proven more willing than many of his peers to experiment with fashion. He walked in Boss’s runway show in Milan two years ago and has regularly taken part in the ATP’s tunnel walks initiative, at one point arriving in a ‘70s-inspired lavender suit that stood out from the sea of beige looks.

Still, he admitted the extra attention can add pressure.

“Oh, absolutely,” he said when asked by Ben Rothenberg whether the outfit made him more nervous. “You show up in a full outfit and get snipped in the first round, you look really stupid.”

He joked that he’d been having exactly that conversation with Frances Tiafoe, who has also been wading into the fashion waters this week in a custom white Lululemon tracksuit.

“We were making the joke, like, you can’t walk out with an outfit and go out in the first round. It just looks so bad.”

Fritz avoided that fate, at least for now, and said we’ll probably be seeing the suit again over the next two weeks.

The fashion conversation eventually gave way to something more personal.

Asked about the challenges of being a father on tour in light of Serena Williams’ return to professional tennis, Fritz offered a candid response about balancing life on the road with raising his son.

Become a paid subscriber to read Fritz's thoughts on fatherhood, bringing his son on tour, and the role his tennis-expert parents play during tournaments.

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