Culture
Jessica Pegula reclaims American No. 1 women’s tennis ranking with a clay-court free hit to come
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, the most mercurial player on the men’s tour did what he does best, there was an American shuffle at the top of the women’s rankings and a Wimbledon champion’s quandary revealed the delicate balance of tennis scheduling.
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An important milestone for Jessica Pegula?
The American trio just below the summit of the women’s tennis rankings reshuffled this week, as Jessica Pegula moved ahead of Coco Gauff by winning the WTA 500 title in Charleston. Pegula, who beat Sofia Kenin 6-3, 7-5 after coming from 1-5 down in the second set, is now world No. 3, matching her career-high ranking.
With a big gap between the American and world No. 2 Iga Świątek, and another big gap between Gauff and world No. 5 Madison Keys, it may look as if Pegula’s first clay-court title is more significant than the tight tussle between world No. 3 and world No. 4, with just 38 points separating them.
But Pegula, who missed last year’s clay-court swing with injury, is now entering the two WTA 1,000s in Rome and Madrid and then the French Open in Paris with no points to defend, effectively giving her a free hit for the next few months. She’ll be going into the surface transition with the most wins on the WTA Tour this season (25) ahead of world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, who has 23.
With Gauff defending over 1,200 points, and Świątek on the hook for 4,195, Pegula could yet climb higher without having to win big on the red dirt.
James Hansen
Who can explain the enigma of Botic van de Zandschulp?
Is there a more intriguing player on the ATP Tour than this Dutchman?
The mercurial Van de Zandschulp has become the tennis master of the unexpected, winning when he is in line to lose and falling apart when there’s seemingly no reason to do so.
Van de Zandschulp has beaten Carlos Alcaraz at the U.S. Open in straight sets, ended Rafael Nadal’s career with a Davis Cup humbling in Spain and defeated Novak Djokovic at Indian Wells (including a 6-1 hammering of a final set) in the last eight months. All those wins were achieved with barely a flicker of nerves — remarkable for a player with a history of buckling under pressure. He served for the match three times against Holger Rune in the 2023 Munich Open final and held four championship points in all, but he ended up losing.
Just over a year later, in May 2024, Van de Zandschulp said that he had become so disillusioned with tennis that he was considering retiring. Instead, he beat three of the best players in recent history on some of the sport’s biggest stages, staying calm under pressure as if he were having a knock at a local club.
So, how would Van de Zandschulp fare in the first round of the Bucharest Open ATP 250 — the lowest rung on the tour — against Richard Gasquet, the 38-year-old Frenchman who will retire after this year’s French Open?
He led by a set and two breaks, and had a match point on his serve for a 6-4, 6-4 win. But he missed it, and ended up losing 6-1 in the decider, looking as neutral as he had done in beating some of the best to ever do it.
Charlie Eccleshare
How did American men’s players reach a milestone in Houston?
With an easy put-away, Alex Michelsen secured a three-set victory over the French veteran Adrian Mannarino to reach the Houston Open quarterfinals. A fairly unremarkable moment in and of itself, but with his win on April 3, Michelsen ensured that all eight of the quarterfinalists would be American. It was the first time that had happened at an ATP Tour event since the Prudential-Bache Securities Classic in Orlando, Fla., in 1991.
Andre Agassi ended up winning the tournament, while Pete Sampras lost in the semifinals. Those two, plus Jim Courier, started dominating the sport soon afterward. Will the Houston 2025 alumni do something similar?
That feels like a big stretch, but in Michelsen, a 20-year-old Californian, they have one of the breakout stars of this year. Having reached the fourth round of the Australian Open, Michelsen is a couple of hundred ranking points outside the world’s top 30 and has a bright future.
Of the other quarterfinalists, Frances Tiafoe and Tommy Paul are established top-20 regulars, while Colton Smith, 22, Brandon Nakashima, 23 and Aleksandar Kovacevic, 26, are a bit further down the tennis food chain. Christopher Eubanks, 28, has failed to kick on after his breakthrough in 2023.
Jenson Brooksby, 24, started the week as the furthest down of them all at No. 507, has he rebuilds his ranking after a doping ban. He saved five match points across qualifying and his main draw matches on the way to the final, where he eased past Tiafoe for his first-ever tour title, rising 335 places in the rankings in the process.
American tennis fans will be hoping the event provides a springboard for the clay-court season for at least one of those eight quarterfinalists.
Brooksby followed a close run of matches with a relatively routine victory in the final. (Leslie Plaza Johnson / Icon Sportswire via Associated Press)
Charlie Eccleshare
What is the price of national pride?
The Billie Jean King Cup takes center stage in women’s tennis from April 10 to April 13, with the final round of qualifiers for the international team event. Two of the headliners scheduled to play — Świątek of Poland and Britain’s Emma Raducanu — declared they would not be representing their countries last week, both citing the need to capitalize on an off-week in their schedule.
Elena Rybakina, the 2022 Wimbledon champion who switched from representing Russia to representing Kazakhstan, will be traveling to Melbourne to represent the country against Australia and Colombia. She became a citizen of Kazakhstan in 2017 in exchange for financial support from the country’s tennis federation, which has since 2007 been bankrolled by billionaire businessman and philanthropist Bulat Utemuratov in a decades-long surge designed to transform a country with little preexisting tennis infrastructure into a genuine sporting power.
For Rybakina, that means a trip to Australia — and missing the WTA 500 in Stuttgart, Germany, which begins April 14. Rybakina is the defending champion there and will lose 500 points by not playing, which will see her drop out of the top 10 at best. She may drop further if other players perform well. If Kazakhstan go through, that may matter less — but it’s a fine demonstration of the push and pull of tennis competition.
James Hansen
Shot of the week
Or perhaps month, or maybe even year, from Ryan Seggerman in Houston.
UNBELIEVABLE 🤯
RYAN SEGGERMAN WITH THE SHOT OF THE YEAR!#USClay | @TennisTV pic.twitter.com/VaxFKnaYYe
— Fayez Sarofim & Co. US Clay (@mensclaycourt) April 5, 2025
Recommended reading:
🏆 The winners of the week
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Flavio Cobolli (3) def. Sebastian Baez (1) 6-4, 6-4 to win the Tiriac Open (250) in Bucharest, Romania. It is the Italian’s first ATP Tour title.
🏆 Luciano Darderi (7) def. Tallon Griekspoor (1) 7-6(3), 7-6(4) to win the Hassan Grand Prix II (250) in Marrakech, Morroco. It is the Italian’s second ATP Tour title.
🏆 Jenson Brooksby (Q) def. Frances Tiafoe (2) 6-4, 6-2 to win the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship (250) in Houston. It is the American’s first ATP Tour title.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Jessica Pegula (1) def. Sofia Kenin 6-3, 7-5 to win the Charleston Open (500) in Charleston, S.C. It is the American’s first clay-court WTA Tour title.
🏆 Camila Osorio (2) def. Katarzyna Kawa (Q) 6-3, 6-3 to win the Copa Colsanitas (250) in Bogotá, Colombia. Osorio has now won the event three times.
📈📉 On the rise / Down the line
📈 Jessica Pegula moves up one place from No. 4 to No. 3 after her win in South Carolina.
📈 Jenson Brooksby ascends 335 spots from No. 507 to No. 172 after his win in Texas.
📈 Sofia Kenin reenters the top 40 after rising 10 spots from No. 44 to No. 34.
📉 Matteo Berrettini falls seven places from No. 27 to No. 34, relinquishing the top-32 spot that would see him seeded at big events.
📉 Maria Sakkari drops 18 places from No. 64 to No. 82.
📉 Fabio Fognini tumbles 14 spots from No. 99 to No. 113.
📅 Coming up
🎾 ATP
📍Monte Carlo, Monaco: Monte Carlo Masters (1,000) featuring Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Novak Djokovic, Jack Draper.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻
🎾 ITF
📍Various locations: Billie Jean King Cup qualifiers featuring Elena Rybakina, Victoria Mboko, Elina Svitolina, Danielle Collins.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.:
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.
(Top photo: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton for The Athletic)
new video loaded: 250 Years of Jane Austen, in Objects
By Jennifer Harlan, Sadie Stein, Claire Hogan, Laura Salaberry and Edward Vega
December 18, 2025
“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
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