Tennis wants its spectators to provide atmosphere, but abuse of players persists at tournaments

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Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, fan behavior was a key topic at the Italian Open, French Open preparations escalated — in esports — and American college tennis changed things up regarding the U.S. Open.

If you’d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.

When does tennis decide to intervene on crowd behavior — and should it?

While Carlos Alcaraz danced through the second set of the Italian Open final against Jannik Sinner, he did so in near total quiet. As it had done throughout the tournament, the crowd at the Foro Italico in Rome made its feelings known — this time with silence, rather than rancor.

During her quarterfinal defeat against Zheng Qinwen, world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka told a fan to “shut the f— up” after they yelled out at her. In the previous round, world No. 22 Clara Tauson confronted a crowd member who heckled her after she served a double fault against Mirra Andreeva, asking “who are you?” before imploring the chair umpire to intervene.

Jakub Mensík, the world No. 19, engaged in a similar confrontation during his match against Fabian Marozsan, while in her last-eight meeting with home favorite Jasmine Paolini, world No. 10 Diana Shnaider riled the baying Italian faithful after they cheered her getting broken.

Not all tennis atmospheres are created equal, and partisan support can quickly devolve into unwarranted abuse, especially when the spectators delivering it are not in support of a particular player but of whatever outcome makes them money on sports betting. For Shnaider and Alcaraz, one met with roars and one with not even a smattering of applause, they can put things down to playing a home hope. While it’s possible that Andreeva and Marozsan both have a secret coterie of Roman ultras, it’s the kind of needling that Mensík and Tauson experienced that presents the sport with a problem.

Numerous elite players have documented how abuse during matches bleeds onto social media. Nearly every player will have a story of logging onto Instagram or X to floods of abusive messages after a defeat, not from their fans nor their opponent’s followers but from people who simply decided that they might win them a bet and ended up not getting a pay-off.

Fans not being ejected — or at least disciplined — when they engage in abuse on a match court only encourages them to continue, but umpires and security staff are rarely able to distinguish between partisan support, which the sport should embrace over silence, and the kind of directed heckling that needs discouraging.

Tauson at least got a measure of revenge. Straight after that double fault, she smashed an ace down the T and gestured mockingly to the same fan behind her for some noise.

James Hansen

Can tennis and esports finally produce a video game worthy of the sport?

The French Open’s main draw begins Sunday, May 25, but for esports devotees, the action begins in earnest a day before, when the annual Roland Garros eSeries takes place at the same venue, in the Musee du Tennis’ auditorium.

Eight players, whittled down from more than 500,000 original applicants, will battle it out on a bespoke French Open version of the mobile game Tennis Clash for a €5,000 (£4,210; $5,636) prize pot, which is shared between the winner and the runner-up.

The mere mention of esports is enough to make many tennis purists recoil in disgust, but it’s something that all four of the sport’s Grand Slams have adopted. This is the eighth edition of the Roland Garros event, while Wimbledon held its first esports competition in 2024. The Australian Open has a whole gaming division, while the U.S. Open last year introduced an interactive gaming zone at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center.

This year’s French Open event will see the eight players competing as individuals, but split into two teams. One will be captained by former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli, the other by former world No. 6 and home favorite Gilles Simon.

A keen gamer, Simon actually competed in the event himself last year, and picked up a couple of victories. He always travelled with his PlayStation during his career, including for France’s Davis Cup ties, and it was a mutual interest he shared with former U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev, who he coached until February and with whom he still games online.

Simon, 40, is well aware of the scepticism towards esports from many tennis fans, but believes that if an event such as the Roland Garros eSeries can help the sport engage young people, then it has served a valuable purpose.

“If some of the guys that are playing Tennis Clash play good and are then coming to the stadium, or they want to finally pick up a racket and start to play, then it’s a win. It’s as simple as that,” he said in a recent video interview. He added that the Grand Slams should be looking to attract as diverse a crowd as possible, and that esports gives the tournaments an even more compelling package of events.

The lack of a good tennis video game has long been lamented as a missed opportunity for the sport in providing a gateway for young people.

In 2024, there were 200 spectators on site for the esports event, but there were over 200,000 more who watched via live-streaming platform Twitch. Tennis has also lagged behind other sports in using such outlets to broaden its fandom: elite soccer players and Formula One drivers are some of the most-viewed celebrities on Twitch, some of them becoming megastars in online gaming before breaking through in their respective sports.

For tennis, having access to these communities is key to its growth.

Charlie Eccleshare

Why does American college tennis want a champion of champions?

A good while before college sports in the United States officially changed its rules to allow student-athletes to earn gobs of cash, university-level tennis there had its own version of prize money.

Traditionally, American winners of the NCAA title received a wild-card entry into the main draw of the U.S. Open. If those champions had turned professional after winning the collegiate championship, which many of them do, they got to keep the first-round payment, which last year reached $100,000.

This year, everything has changed.

The NCAA decided that it was too much for players to participate in both its team and individual championships consecutively. It moved the individual championships to November. But that put nine months of separation between the NCAA tournament and the following year’s U.S. Open. The United States Tennis Association (USTA), which organizes the latter, decided that was too long. Also, who doesn’t like a little more competition?

Instead of going directly to the U.S. Open, Michael Zheng of Columbia University in New York City and Alexa Noel of the University of Miami won automatic qualification into a four-person playoff. This will be held between June 16 and 18, with a committee selecting the three other participants on both the men’s and women’s side.

The winners get into the U.S. Open main draw. The runners-up get a wild card into qualifying. There will be men’s and women’s doubles playoffs as well.

“Michael Zheng and I knew at the beginning of the NCAA Individual Championships in November that — given that the event was in the fall — the wild card would be determined by a playoff,” said Howard Endelman, head coach at Columbia.

Congratulations, you’re the NCAA champ! Now just win two more matches and you get into the U.S. Open.

Matt Futterman

Recommended reading:

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Carlos Alcaraz (3) def. Jannik Sinner (1) 7-6(5), 6-1 to win the Italian Open (1,000) in Rome. It is the Spaniard’s 19th ATP Tour title.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Jasmine Paolini (6) def. Coco Gauff (4) 6-4, 6-2 to win the Italian Open (1,000) in Rome. She became the first Italian winner at the tournament in 40 years.
🏆 Katie Boulter (2) def. Chloe Paquet 3-6, 6-2, 6-3 to win the Trophée Clarins (WTA 125) in Paris. It is Boulter’s first WTA clay-court title.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Coco Gauff ascends one spot from No. 3 to No. 2 after her run at the Italian Open.
📈 Carlos Alcaraz moves up one place from No. 3 to No. 2 after his run at the Italian Open, ensuring he and Sinner can only meet in the final of the French Open.
📈 Peyton Stearns enters the top 30 for the first time, after rising 15 spots from No. 42 to No. 27.

📉 Iga Swiatek falls three places from No. 2 to No. 5, meaning she could face one of the top four players in the world in the French Open quarterfinals.
📉 Alex Michelsen drops one place from No. 32 to No. 33, relinquishing a seeding at the French Open.
📉 Nicolas Jarry tumbles 96 spots from No. 53 to No. 149 after losing his ranking points for reaching the 2024 Italian Open final.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Hamburg, Germany: Hamburg Open (500) featuring Alexander Zverev, Frances Tiafoe, Andrey Rublev, Francisco Cerundolo.
📍Geneva: Geneva Open (250) featuring Novak Djokovic, Taylor Fritz, Tomas Machac, Learner Tien.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Strasbourg, France: Internationaux de Strasbourg (500) featuring Elena Rybakina, Jessica Pegula, Emma Raducanu, Barbora Krejcikova.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

(Top photo: Dan Isitene / Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

This news was originally published on this post .

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