Tennis

Associated Press Dec 23, 2024, 01:44 AM ET MELBOURNE, Australia — Two-time Grand Slam winning doubles player Max Purcell has entered a voluntary provisional suspension under tennis’ anti-doping rules. The International Tennis Integrity Agency announced the sanction in a statement on Monday after the 26-year-old Australian admitted to violating Article 2.2 of the Tennis Anti-Doping

Associated Press Dec 22, 2024, 03:02 AM ET Open Extended Reactions MELBOURNE, Australia — Olympic gold medalist Zheng Qinwen has announced she will not play at the United Cup mixed-teams tournament starting later this month, opting instead to focus on preparations for the 2025 season’s first Grand Slam. In a breakthrough season for the 22-year-old,

Dec 20, 2024, 09:27 AM ET Open Extended Reactions IT’S AN EARLY Friday morning in late November, and Joseph “Joey” Losgar and seven other men, all dressed in gray sweatpants or shorts and white T-shirts, are setting up pickleball nets in a brightly lit gym. Their sneakers squeak on the wood surface as they roll

Dec 20, 2024, 05:57 AM ET Open Extended Reactions The Australian Open will embrace one of the fastest growing sports in the world when it hosts the inaugural AO Pickleball Slam on the final weekend of next month’s tennis major with $100,000 in prize money. Invented in 1965 by a group of American friends, pickleball

Associated Press Dec 19, 2024, 11:07 AM ET Open Extended Reactions ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — The identities of 15 “highly abusive account authors” were reported to national law enforcement and about 12,000 posts or comments were pointed out to social media platforms this year as part of a new attempt to protect tennis players and

ESPN News Services Dec 19, 2024, 06:38 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Jenson Brooksby tugged at the right shoulder of his red T-shirt and fiddled with some strands of his dirty blond hair as he spoke to The Associated Press about what he would like the world to know about him. Once a member of

Associated Press Dec 18, 2024, 09:17 AM ET Open Extended Reactions LONDON — The ATP men’s tennis tour paid out $1.3 million to a total of 26 players in 2024 under a new financial program called Baseline that guarantees minimum annual incomes for players ranked in the top 250. Players received money in each of

Dec 18, 2024, 02:45 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Former world No. 1 Simona Halep, whose career stalled due to a doping ban that was reduced on appeal this year, will step up her comeback at the Australian Open after receiving a wild card for the qualifying event on Wednesday. Halep, 33, was provisionally suspended

ESPN News Services Dec 17, 2024, 01:16 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios will team up to play doubles at the Brisbane International, Kyrgios posted Monday on social media. “Doubles at Brisbane. See y’all there,” Kyrgios wrote on his Instagram story with a photo of their meeting at Wimbledon in 2022.

Associated Press Dec 13, 2024, 12:46 AM ET Open Extended Reactions MELBOURNE, Australia — Three-time major champion Stan Wawrinka was among nine wild-card entries awarded Friday for the Australian Open in January. Tennis Australia said Wawrinka would be joined at Melbourne Park — where the main draw begins on Jan. 12 — by Australians Tristan

Michael Voepel, ESPN.comDec 12, 2024, 04:15 PM ET Close Michael Voepel is a senior writer who covers the WNBA, women’s college basketball and other college sports. Voepel began covering women’s basketball in 1984, and has been with ESPN since 1996. Open Extended Reactions The Virginia women’s basketball team is getting what the school calls a

Associated Press Dec 11, 2024, 12:28 PM ET Open Extended Reactions LONDON — Transgender women non binary individuals assigned as male at birth will be barred from competing in the female category of many domestic tennis tournaments in Britain from next month, the Lawn Tennis Association announced Wednesday. The governing body of British tennis issued

Dec 11, 2024, 09:17 AM ET Open Extended Reactions The ATP Tour stepped up its plans to enhance earnings for players in the feeder Challenger Tour on Wednesday, increasing the prize pool by $6.2 million to a record total of $28.5 million for the 2025 season. The Challenger Tour’s prize money has seen a 135%

D’Arcy Maine, ESPN.com Dec 11, 2024, 09:01 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Stacey Allaster, the United States Tennis Association’s chief executive of professional tennis and the tournament director for the US Open, will step away from both roles after the 2025 US Open, the organization announced Wednesday. Allaster, the first woman to hold either title

ESPN News Services Dec 10, 2024, 12:05 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has named Matteo Berrettini as its tennis ambassador, a role in which the Italian will aim to help nurture the next generation of players and elevate the sport globally. The sovereign wealth fund has made significant forays into

Associated Press Dec 9, 2024, 03:19 PM ET Open Extended Reactions ORLANDO, Fla. — The NCAA Division I tennis team championships will be held at the USTA National Campus in Orlando under a 10-year agreement that will take effect in 2028, the U.S. Tennis Association announced Monday. The USTA said it plans to improve the

Associated Press Dec 9, 2024, 11:53 AM ET Open Extended Reactions ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Aryna Sabalenka received the WTA Player of the Year award for the first time on Monday after winning two Grand Slam titles and finishing 2024 at No. 1 in the rankings. In other results of voting by tennis media, Emma

Dec 6, 2024, 01:52 AM ET Open Extended Reactions Former Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios and Tokyo Olympics gold medalist Belinda Bencic will play their first Grand Slam after long absences at next month’s Australian Open with protected rankings, tournament organizers said Friday. Kyrgios, who will play with a protected ranking of 21st, has not played