Sports
Morning after the night before: In the cold light of day, a tennis match at 3am is ridiculous
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You know those nights when you tell yourself that you’re going to be sensible and not stay out too late — but you kind of know deep down that you will?
That’s pretty much how tennis’ Grand Slams feel about ludicrously late finishes.
After the Australian Open’s 4:05am finish last year (and its 3:40am one this time), and the U.S. Open’s 2:50am in September 2022, Roland Garros said, ‘Hold my biere’ in the early hours of Sunday as it recorded its latest ever finish to a day’s play — 3:06am. The French Open, which didn’t even have a night session until 2021 (and no floodlights until a year earlier), shattered its latest-ever-finish record by almost two hours when Novak Djokovic beat Lorenzo Musetti, 7-5, 6-7(6), 2-6, 6-3, 6-0, as though it felt left out from this ludicrous club.
Wimbledon, with its 11pm curfew, is the only outlier among the four Grand Slams. Tennis officials say that they are learning, that they are aware that these are farcical finish times. And yet they continue.
Despite the silliness of the situation, it’s not something that the French Open deliberately engineered. These finishes are a consequence of dysfunction in tennis, but nobody actually thinks they are a good idea, even if the Australian and U.S. Opens have for a long while appeared to treat late finishes as a badge of honour, rather than a serious risk to players’ welfare.
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The events of Saturday night and Sunday morning came about because of the rain that blighted the first week at Roland Garros. Grigor Dimitrov and Zizou Bergs had already seen their third-round match postponed by a day, and needed to get it done ahead of the winner playing again on Sunday.
With rain still falling, the schedulers tried to squeeze it in ahead of Djokovic-Musetti. Dimitrov was two sets up, but Bergs stole the third, and it ran longer than hoped for before Dimitrov triumphed.
Djokovic and Musetti didn’t take to the court until around 10:30pm, having been scheduled for 8:15pm. There was no move possible, because it would have deprived night-session spectators of the match they’d come, and specifically paid, to see. So Djokovic and Musetti waited and waited, the match when it came was an epic, and there we all were at 3am, wondering how tennis found itself in this position, which is so damaging to players.
Musetti and Djokovic’s incredible match came at a cost. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)
That kind of finish can mean anything up to a 7am bedtime once a player has completed their post-match commitments.
And it wasn’t just Djokovic and Musetti who finished late on Saturday/Sunday — Casper Ruud and Tomas Martin Etcheverry didn’t get off court until close to 1am, while Taylor Fritz and Thanasi Kokkinakis were done about an hour earlier.
Playing until that late affects players’ circadian rhythms, and can leave them feeling disorientated for days after. There is a reason why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. Lack of sleep compromises the ability to think, the immune system, and attention span and reaction time, which are vital for athletes.
Dr Robby Sikka is the medical director for the Professional Tennis Player Association (PTPA) — the organization Djokovic co-founded in 2020 to address, among other issues, working conditions for arguably the most important people in the sport — and takes the view that muscle recovery is only part of the problem.
“There will be neurological consequences too. Neurological recovery takes longer the more you put a player through, and another five-set match would be very tough,” Dr Sikka said.
Those post-match commitments that can go on until sunrise don’t just entail media duty.
“You lose a complete night of sleep and sleeping is part of the recovery, one of the biggest parts. The food, everything we do, treatments, ice baths. All this stuff, and you don’t sleep,” said current men’s world No 18 Karen Khachanov after Russian compatriot Medvedev’s 3.40am finish at the Australian Open back in January.
Emil Ruusuvori leaves the court after his loss to Medvedev at the Australian Open. (Anthony Wallace / AFP)
Medvedev had a series of long matches and late finishes in Melbourne before, perhaps inevitably, running out of steam in the final against Jannik Sinner from two sets up.
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“I definitely think it’s not healthy,” said women’s world No 3 Coco Gauff on Sunday. “It may be not fair for those who have to play late, because it does ruin your schedule. “For the health and safety of the players, it would be in the sport’s best interest to try to avoid those matches starting after a certain time. Obviously, you can’t control when they finish.”
The current Wimbledon men’s champion Carlos Alcaraz, who was the winner of that U.S. Open match that finished just shy of 3am two years ago, also against Sinner, expressed his dislike too; women’s world No 9 Ons Jabeur called it “unhealthy”.
But this is about more than just the players. There is a whole ecosystem involved in running a tennis match: the unpaid ball kids, security personnel, umpires, and myriad other staff involved all have to stay that late, too.
As do the fans.
Women’s world No 1 Iga Swiatek expressed sympathy for everyone who has to go to work after a match, and said matter-of-factly that the reason she asks not to play night matches is because, “I just like to sleep normally.”
Gauff playing an eerie night session in Paris in 2020. (Martin Bureau / AFP via Getty Images)
Djokovic resisted giving his views on the situation, but 17-year-old Russian Mirra Andreeva was not so diplomatic.
Her second-round match against Victoria Azarenka started at around 10:30pm on Thursday, and didn’t finish until after 1am on Friday. “It’s so depressing,” said Andreeva, who was playing on tiny Court 12, in front of barely any fans. “No one is watching, and it’s cold. You are playing, fighting, and no one is there.”
Dr Sikka emphasised his belief that not only is tennis an outlier, but other sports are outliers because they view this kind of situation as ridiculous. “We are watching one of the best athletes at recovering (Djokovic) for 20 years — in any sport, but you would never do that to Tom Brady (in American football) or LeBron James (basketball).”
The implication, and it’s hard to argue, is that it makes tennis feel like a novelty act rather than a serious sport.
Recognising the absurdity of these situations, the ATP and WTA have taken steps to try to redress the balance.
At the start of the year, they announced that matches would not start later than 11pm.
That first reform came after Sinner had to pull out of the Paris Masters in November, after he won a match that started after midnight and finished at nearly 3am. In Acapulco, Mexico, two years ago, Alexander Zverev beat the American Jenson Brooksby at 4:55am — the latest ever finish to a professional tennis match.
Women’s world No 4 Elena Rybakina, who revealed on Saturday that she has struggled to sleep of late, finished a match at the Rogers Cup in August just before 3am. Rybakina said she was “destroyed” by the experience, and drew a pretty straight line from that finish to an injury she suffered the following week in Cincinnati, retiring hurt from her second-round match against Italy’s Jasmine Paolini despite having won the first set.
Rybakina serving during that late match against Daria Kastakina. (Minas Panagiotakis / Getty Images)
“It was horrible,” Rybakina said shortly afterwards. “It’s not easy because they (the injuries) are not even because of tennis. It’s really tough to recover when you go to sleep at 5am.”
Rybakina also called out the WTA: “I think it’s a bit unprofessional. The leadership is a little bit weak for now. But hopefully something is going to change.”
The Grand Slams make their own rules, and despite attempts to reform, the Australian Open endured the same old problems this year. Tennis Australia hoped that a Sunday start to the tournament would ease the scheduling burden, and hoped that reducing the number of matches in the day sessions from three to two would mean less chance of the evening matches starting late.
It didn’t work, because tennis matches have gotten so long that these kinds of schedules are no longer fit for purpose.
Research by The Athletic last year showed that men’s matches at Grand Slam level increased by around 25 per cent over a 24-year period. At the 2022 U.S. Open, three hours was almost the average length of a match, rather than the novelty it used to be. Within that context, a four-and-a-half-hour match like the one on Saturday/Sunday is well within the normal range.
A similar length match, for Djokovic’s first-round win over Dino Prizmic at the Australian Open, meant the women’s defending champion Aryna Sabalenka didn’t even get on court for the first match of her title defence until after 11.30pm — comfortably beyond the ATP and WTA cutoff.
Curfews and start time cut-offs feel like the most obvious solutions. And if tennis actually wants to address the root of the problem, it should give serious consideration to making the first weeks of Grand Slams best-of-three rather than best-of-five sets for men’s matches.
Baseball and cricket are evidence that sports can evolve and modernise, even if the Slams can always point to how well-attended their events are as evidence that there’s no real need for them to reform.
Tennis players know that they risk looking entitled by complaining about these sorts of issues. But they are also aware of the risks to themselves and to the sport of allowing the situation to continue.
Speaking in August, seven months on from his initial fury at being made to play tennis at 4am against Thanasi Kokkinakis in Melbourne, Andy Murray said: “Often when the players complain about that stuff, you hear, ‘Oh, shut up and get on with it. Try working in a warehouse from nine to five’.
Murray on his way to finishing after 4am. (William West / AFP)
“I get that. I know I’m fortunate to be playing tennis. It’s just… tennis is also entertainment. I don’t think it helps the sport that much when everyone’s leaving because they have to go and get public transport home and you finish a match in front of 10 per cent of the crowd. You don’t see it in other sports, so it’s clearly wrong.”
In football/soccer, global players’ union FIFpro warned the sport’s world governing body, FIFA, that players would take “matters into their own hands” if nothing was done to address their growing workload. It even suggested that strike action is possible.
But football, as well as other sports such as baseball, has reformed. In the English Premier League, for example, teams can no longer play in the 12:30pm Saturday slot if they’ve played away in continental Europe on the Wednesday night.
The Djokovic-led PTPA will keep making its case to the sport’s governing bodies, which consist of seven different organisations empowered to enact their own rules with little input from active players.
The morning after the night — and morning — before, the vibe at Roland Garros on Sunday was bleary-eyed.
The spectacle of the match had faded, into both tiredness and a kind of disbelief that this is still allowed to happen.
In the cold light of day, it seemed unnecessary for an event that is supposed to be about fun and entertainment to feel compromised like this.
Never again. Until the next time.
(Top photo of Novak Djokovic: Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images)
Sports
Packers’ head-coaching situation thrust into spotlight after playoff loss
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The Green Bay Packers’ playoff exit on Saturday immediately put added focus on what the organization will do with head coach Matt LaFleur.
The NFL coaching cycle has been the wildest in recent memory, with veteran coaches like John Harbaugh and Pete Carroll being shown the door. Packers fans seemingly put LaFleur on the hot seat following their crushing defeat to the Chicago Bears.
Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur reacts during the wild-card playoff game against the Bears Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
ESPN’s Adam Schefter said Sunday that the Packers will have a major decision to make.
“The Green Bay Packers and their new president, Ed Policy, have a significant decision to make here in the coming days – and that is whether to extend Matt LaFleur’s contract. He’s currently got one year remaining, or to move on from him,” Schefter said. “If they moved on from him, he would automatically go near the top of coaches available and shakeup this current head-coaching cycle yet again.”
Schefter added that Harbaugh could be one of the names that would interest the Packers’ organization.
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Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur talks after the playoff game, Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
“Notice how we said this belongs to the Packers’ president, Ed Policy. Well, the Packers’ former president from the back in the day was a man by the name of Bob Harlan,” Schefter explained. “Bob Harlan’s son, Brian Harlan, represents John Harbaugh. John Harbaugh is a Midwestern guy, who has a home in the Upper Peninsula, and a lot of people around the league have been wondering if the Packers decide to go in a different direction, if all of a sudden the Green Bay Packers might fall to the top of John Harbaugh’s list as the top available choice for him.
“This has been a wild, crazy coaching cycle, and we may be just scratching the surface.”
Green Bay Packers’ Matthew Golden celebrates his touchdown against the Bears Saturday, Jan. 10, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
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Green Bay finished 9-7-1 this season. LaFleur is 76-40-1 as the Packers’ head coach with a 3-6 record in the playoffs.
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Sports
Crossroads students begin push to make pickleball a varsity sport
For brothers Boone and Ford Casady, pickleball is more than just a game, it is a passion. The 16-year-old twins are among the top junior players on the planet, but more important to them than trophies and medals is a desire to spread the fastest-growing sport in America to high schools and colleges.
Their vision, combined with the persistence of fellow Crossroads sophomores Samantha Leeds and Hannah Carey, has birthed the L.A. High School Pickleball League, the first of its kind in California. The first match will be Jan. 24 at the Santa Monica Pickleball Center.
Teams from Crossroads, Brentwood, Windward, Palisades, Notre Dame and Santa Monica Pacifica Christian will participate, and possibly several more.
Matches will be biweekly with all schools competing at the same shared location. The match format is loosely based on high school tennis with three doubles lines, one singles line and “friendlies” — ensuring that beginners, alternates and developing players all get playing time. The season culminates with semifinals and a league championship.
“My brother and I grew up playing competitive tennis and baseball,” Boone said. “We’d been playing tennis since we were about 3 and in eighth grade we moved to Barcelona to train at the Emilio Sánchez Academy for tennis. We were first introduced to pickleball earlier while we were in Mexico playing with friends and we immediately fell in love with it. We entered our first tournament in Palm Springs and realized we’d found something special.
“We noticed that so many juniors were training and competing individually but there wasn’t a school-based structure like you have in other varsity sports. We decided to change that. We wanted girls to be involved from the start — it was important to us that the league be coed and inclusive to reflect how competitive girls pickleball already is. We’re also co-founders of the Crossroads Pickleball Club along with Samantha and Hannah and we’re working to grow participation on campus and across L.A.”
The four founders of the L.A. High School Pickleball League play mixed doubles.
(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)
Unlike most youth sports initiatives, the league was not created by adults or administrators, it was built entirely by students. Over the last two years they have coordinated with the Southern Section for recognition and guidance, worked with Crossroads administrators to establish pickleball as a school-sanctioned varsity sport, organized early intramural and inter-school tournaments, built communication networks among local high schools and helped other schools begin turning their club teams into varsity programs.
“In high school sports, students usually join a system that already exists,” Leeds said. “With pickleball, we had to build the system ourselves.”
Boone defeated Ford to earn the No. 1 seed at the 2024 Junior PPA National Championships, but they met again for the gold medal and this time Ford won. They also took the gold in doubles and finished No. 1 and No. 2 in the country in the 14s division.
At the 2025 Junior PPA National Championships, the brothers took silver and bronze in the Boys U16 singles and partnered for silver in doubles. They were also presented the Community Assist Award to acknowledge their initiative in starting the Los Angeles High School Pickleball League. They are straight-A students and play shortstop and third base on the varsity baseball team.
So far, their toughest competition in pickleball has been each other.
“Boone and I practice together all the time and we play against each other constantly,” Ford said. “Boone knows the part of my game to attack and I know what to do against him so we always have great matches. No matter who wins, we hug it out at the end.”
The siblings played in their first pro event of the year Saturday — the Masters Tournament in Palm Springs.
Leeds and Carey were introduced to pickleball in eighth grade.
“I remember leaving PE after playing pickleball, heading to soccer practice and honestly feeling kind of bored,” Leeds recalled. “All I wanted to do was keep playing pickleball.”
“Samantha and I got randomly paired to do pickleball in PE,” said Carey, who lost her home in the Palisades fire. “Most kids would sit out, look bored, or try to skip but as the pickleball nets went up our peers were engaged, exhilarated and connecting over their love of pickleball. So Samantha and I started making petitions to create a league.”
The girls, then 13, had a meeting with Anthony Locke, head of school at Crossroads, and made a pitch deck. Using her skills as a filmmaker Leeds created a short sizzle video to help show what pickleball could look like as a real school sport.
“We were told that forming school-based teams and leagues is a necessary first step towards eventual CIF recognition,” she said. “I created a Varsity Team Starter Kit, outlining the steps we used to establish pickleball as a school-sanctioned varsity sport. Leaders at other schools are actively using it to establish their own teams.”
Added Carey: “We connected with Boone and Ford, which was such an honor considering their talent and passion for the sport. We decided to join forces and use our resources together to further our process of creating a league.”
The inaugural season runs from January to March but beginning in the 2026-27 school year the plan is to move to the traditional winter sports window, November through January.
“Pickleball has the potential to become a true varsity sport at both the high school and college levels,” Boone said. “We’re so excited to help push it forward.”
Sports
US figure skating power couple makes history with record breaking seventh national championship
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U.S. figure skating stars Madison Chock and Evan Bates made history on Saturday with their record-setting seventh U.S. Figure Skating title in their final competition before the Milan Cortina Olympics.
The three-time reigning world champions, performing a flamenco-style dance to a version of the Rolling Stones hit “Paint It Black” from the dystopian sci-fi Western show “Westworld,” produced a season-best free skate and finished with 228.87 points.
“The feeling that we got from the audience today was unlike anything I’ve ever felt before,” Chock said.
Madison Chock and Evan Bates of United States perform during ISU World Figure Skating Championships – Boston, at TD Garden, on March 28, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Jurij Kodrun – International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)
They’ll be the heavy favorites to win gold next month in Italy.
“I felt so much love and joy,” Chock continued, “and I’m so grateful for this moment.”
U.S. Figure Skating will announce its selections on Sunday.
Emilea Zingas and Vadym Kolesnik were second with 213.65 points and Christina Carreira and Anthony Ponomarenko were third with 206.95, making those two pairs the likely choices to join Chock and Bates on the American squad for the upcoming Winter Games.
The men’s medals also were to be decided on Saturday, though two-time world champion Ilia Malinin had built such a lead after his short program that the self-styled “Quad God” would have to stumble mightily to miss out on a fourth consecutive title.
The U.S. also has qualified the maximum of three men’s spots for the Winter Games, and competition is tight between second-place Tomoko Hiwatashi, fan favorite Jason Brown, Andrew Torgashev and Maxim Naumov to round out the nationals podium.
The last time Chock and Bates competed in the Olympics in 2022 in Beijing, they watched their gold initially go to an opponent who was later disqualified for doping violations.
Chock and Bates initially had to settle for team silver with their American teammates on the podium at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Team Russia and Kamila Valieva, who was 15 at the time, stood above them with their gold medals.
It wasn’t until the end of January 2024, when the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) found Valieva guilty of an anti-doping rule violation, when Chock, Bates and the U.S. were declared the rightful 2022 gold medalists.
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Madison Chock and Evan Bates compete in championship ice dance at the U.S. figure skating championships Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024, in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Valieva tested positive for trimetazidine, a banned substance, during an anti-doping test at the Russian Figure Skating Championships in December 2021. She was suspended for four years and stripped of all competitive results since that date.
Chock and Bates spoke about what their message to Valieva would be today during an interview at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee media summit in October.
“It’s hard to, I think, imagine what a 15-year-old has gone through and under that kind of situation,” Bates said. “And I know how stressful it is, being an elite athlete as an adult, as a 36-year-old. And I think that grace should be given to humans across the board. And we can never really know the full situation, at least from our point of view. … I genuinely don’t know what I would say to her.”
Chock added, “I would just wish her well like as I would. I think life is short. And, at the end of the day, we’re all human just going through our own human experience together. And regardless of what someone has or hasn’t done and how it has affected you, I think it’s important to remember we’re humans as a collective, and we’re all here for this, our one moment on earth, at the same time. And I just wish people to have healthy, happy lives, full of people that love them.”
Chock and Bates had to wait more than two years after the initial Olympics to get their rightful gold medals, and they were finally presented with them during a ceremony at the Paris Olympics last summer.
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Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the USA perform in the Gala Exhibition during the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final Nagoya at IG Arena on December 07, 2025 in Nagoya, Japan. (Atsushi Tomura – International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images)
Chock, Bates and teammates Karen Chen, Nathan Chen, Zachary Donohue, Brandon Frazier, Madison Hubbell, Alexa Knierim and Vincent Zhou were given a specialized gold medal ceremony to receive the medals in front of more than 13,000 fans.
Chock and Bates became the first ice dancers to win three consecutive world championships in nearly three decades in March when they defeated Canadian rivals Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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