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Thanks to NIL, local car dealers are out of the shadows and landing star college athletes

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1 week ago

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Thanks to NIL, local car dealers are out of the shadows and landing star college athletes

On Jan. 19, two days after he became the most coveted football player in the NCAA’s transfer portal, and mere hours after he welcomed Ohio State coaches for a recruiting visit, Caleb Downs announced his change-of-address plans. The freshman safety who’d earned second-team All-America honors at Alabama committed to the Buckeyes. Not long after, Downs and his father began relocating to Columbus.

Getting there was simple enough. Getting around was another matter.

Some wheels needed to be put in motion.

“I get a call from someone on the coaching staff and they said, ‘Hey, I’m here with Caleb and his dad now. Are you looking to add somebody else to your team?’” says Rick Ricart, the CEO and owner of Ricart Automotive Group in Columbus. “Would you be willing to do a car deal for him?’”

For decades, these were shifty conversations. Local car dealerships had long been conduits for the whispered inducements coaches or boosters promised talented players. When discovered, scandal erupted. Repercussions were often stark. Then came the seismic summer of 2021, when changes to Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) rules allowed college athletes to earn money without fear of NCAA sanctions.

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Car dealers nationwide quickly exchanged leases and keys for players boasting about their new ride on social media or even starring in commercials. The scheming, overzealous outsider morphed into the connective tissue for landing a star. A practice parked in the shadows was almost literally driven into the light. “All of a sudden, it was like, ‘What are the rules here?’” Ricart says now. “There are no rules anymore.”

Even before Ohio State coaches reached out to Ricart last winter, fans flocked to his direct messages, begging him to help woo Downs. The player ultimately received a Land Rover from a different dealership, orchestrated via The Foundation, Ohio State’s NIL collective, with Downs agreeing to be an ambassador for multiple charity partners. Ricart at least tangentially fulfilled everyone’s wishes, though: He’s on the collective’s 24-person board.

Besides, business was still good. After Ohio State landed prized five-star receiver Jeremiah Smith in late December, Ricart zeroed in on a prospect who could be the program’s next great wideout. Two days before Downs was pictured in front of his new Land Rover, Ricart and Smith stood in front of the Ohio State football complex. Behind them was Smith’s new ride: a black 2024 Dodge Durango 392 SUV.

In 1895, William E. Metzger attended the world’s first automobile show in London. He was a bicycle enthusiast with a shop in Detroit that dealt with suppliers in England, but the revelation of motor vehicles left Metzger convinced about the shape of the future. He returned to the United States and within two years opened the first retail car dealership in the country. Metzger, who by all accounts didn’t attend college, had a great idea.

He also didn’t have the foggiest idea.

Less than 40 years later, the movie “College Coach” hit the big screen. The central character, James Gore, is beset by expectations and obsessed with winning. At one point, an offensive lineman visits Gore’s office and discusses the possibility of quitting and joining “Atlantic Eastern College.” The player – in what seems to be a tortured Eastern European accent – says he’s been offered, among other things, the use of a 1928 Chrysler with six cylinders.

“Well, I’ll top that offer right now,” Gore replies. “I’ll get you one with seven cylinders.”

This was 1933. It wasn’t a half-century into the existence of car dealerships. And a football coach already knew a guy.

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So – for as long as anyone living can remember – the car dealer has been an explicit or implicit part of the college athletics process. Until recently, it’s an element that existed outside of the guardrails, at least relative to the NCAA guidebook. But when we put history on auto-focus, it’s easy to argue that those programs that swerved around the rules weren’t renegades. They’re mostly the unlucky few to hit a pothole.

In early 1976, Michigan State football received three years probation and bowl ban after an NCAA investigation resulted in 70 charges, including one player purchasing a car under a special payment deal arranged by boosters and another player’s car loan promissory note being signed by “an MSU representative” – which a booster was, by the NCAA’s definition.

In 1989, an Oklahoma State football scandal included a recruit being offered a Nissan 300ZX upon enrollment; a player receiving a car “provided at no cost by representatives of the university’s athletics interests;” a coach arranging for a prospect to be employed at a booster’s car dealership before graduation; and a booster guaranteeing a $7,000-plus loan for a player to “in order for the young man to purchase an automobile from the representative’s car dealership.”

Eric Dickerson’s gold Trans Am, which became an emblem of the excess that earned SMU football the so-called “death penalty” from the NCAA in 1987, was arranged with a dealership by a Texas A&M booster – a livestock feed store owner trying to woo Dickerson to College Station, according to the autobiography “Watch My Smoke: The Eric Dickerson Story.”

“I had my pick of a Corvette and three Trans Ams: black, silver, and gold,” Dickerson wrote. “I liked the gold one.”

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In 2006, Oklahoma dismissed football players Rhett Bomar and J.D. Quinn after it was revealed they accepted payment for more work than they completed as employees at Big Red Sports and Imports, a local dealership. Jack Maxton Chevrolet and Auto Direct in Columbus, Ohio, was at the center of an investigation into Ohio State players and families purchasing cars at below-market rates, sparked in part by then-quarterback Terrelle Pryor driving a car from the dealership during three traffic stops in three years. (The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles cleared the dealership of any illicit deals in 2011.)

Lest anyone assume the shenanigans are all football-related, the NCAA banned Kansas from its men’s basketball tournament in 1961 and 1962 because it discovered boosters had financed a car for a Jayhawks player. The star driving the 1956 Oldsmobile convertible in question? Wilt Chamberlain.

Unsurprisingly, the archetype became pop culture fodder decades on from Depression-era cinema.

A booster for fictional Western University gifts basketball prospect Neon Boudeaux – played by Shaquille O’Neal – a car in the 1994 film “Blue Chips.” The most ubiquitous and sympathetic specimen may be Buddy Garrity, the former star quarterback-turned-car dealership owner and rabid president of the Dillon High booster club in the “Friday Night Lights” television series. Over the arc of 73 episode appearances, actor Brad Leland plays Garrity less as a one-dimensional schemer and more like a local who’s a little too devoted, often to his (and others’) detriment.

“This was a guy that really cared about the community and really cared about his family and just has weaknesses just like all of us do,” Leland told D Magazine in a 2011 interview.

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What viewers thought of Buddy Garrity varied. But there was one constant: So many people had their own Buddy Garrity experience. “One thing that we’ve learned about our show is that Canadians will come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I knew a Buddy Garrity in Canada,’ except it was hockey,’” Leland said. “And in the Midwest it was basketball, and in England it was soccer, and we’ve had people from Australia who watch our show and talk about rugby.”

Now those relationships, and the people who make them, have shifted into the very public domain. The freedoms of NIL have unshackled theoretical restraints from the men and women who roam car lots but also often double as highly invested college football fans. The math is simple: a car lease for 12 months in exchange for marketing to the hundreds of thousands — and sometimes millions — of followers athletes have on their various social media platforms. About all the player is responsible for is the car insurance.

Three weeks after NIL first took flight in July 2021, Parker Jones, the general manager at the Jones Auto Centers in the Phoenix area, received a text from his wife. It was a photo of former LSU quarterback Myles Brennan standing in front of a white Ford F-250 truck in the first known NIL car deal of its kind.


LSU quarterback Myles Brennan inked the first known NIL deal of its kind with a dealership in 2021, as the floodgates opened for college athletes. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)

An Arizona State alum, Jones floored it in his attempt to replicate the deal on a local level. He found an email in the Instagram bio of then-Sun Devils quarterback Jayden Daniels and fired off an inquiry. Less than a month after Brennan’s landmark deal was announced, Jones and Daniels stood in the parking lot outside of Sun Devil Stadium, next to a black 2020 Ford Mustang GT Premium. That partnership didn’t last long – Daniels transferred to LSU in March 2022, eventually becoming a Heisman Trophy winner and No. 2 pick in the NFL Draft – but Jones has continued to strike NIL deals with Sun Devil football players.

Most importantly, he estimates his dealerships have sold at least 20 cars tied to this venture. He knows this because his staff takes notes when prospective buyers mention the Arizona State connection they’ve seen on social media or on online message boards. “It’s now generating a (return on investment),” Jones says. “Is it the absolute No. 1 most successful ROI of any advertising campaign that we’ve ever had? No. But it’s in the black and it’s not a losing-money venture for us.”

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The ripple effect has been more like a rogue wave everyone is comfortably riding.

Martin McKinley, a Clemson alum and general manager at Fred Caldwell Chevrolet in Clover, S.C., saw Ohio State players posing in front of cars on the lot. Soon after, he struck a deal with former Clemson defensive end Bryan Bresee. After Bresee graduated in the spring of 2023, McKinley had an opening – he says he has more modest aims for one partnership per year as an “image thing” – and partnered with starting quarterback Cade Klubnik.

“I just went with the most recognizable person on Clemson campus because it’s always going to be quarterback,” McKinley says. “My demographic historically is not 18-to-22. We’re selling $90,000 cars. But the branding works. These guys all have 100,000 followers on social media. I’m also careful not to alienate fan bases. I didn’t really do it to sell cars. Now I know we’ve sold some because of it.”

Ricart and his team study the social media histories of potential collaborators to gauge whether their reach is worth a key to a car. Players deeper down the Ohio State depth chart have reached out directly to Ricart to introduce themselves in hopes of landing a deal.

If the player’s social media presence is lacking in audience and transparency in their own lives, Ricart advises players to utilize their platform to be more marketable. He’ll also check in with sources in the Ohio State football complex to gauge if a player may be a starter in a year or two. “You’ve got to be able to quantify it and make sure it’s the players that people know,” Ricart says.

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It is, naturally, no coincidence that the players who earn deals tool around in something a little more noticeable than a sensible family sedan.

When assigning Klubnik a vehicle, McKinley says he handed over the keys to “about the nicest truck we had in stock.”

It’s a black Chevrolet Silverado ZR2. Price tag starts at about $71,000.

Angel Reese’s birthday present to herself was a stunner: A black Mercedes-Benz with a red bow on the hood.

@angelreese10

BIG BODY BENZ BARBIE! 👀💖Why not get a new car when it’s your 21st birthday week??? 🥳Thank you @mercedesbenzofbatonrouge for helping me purchase my NEW CAR!! This is a gift to myself for everything that I’ve accomplished in 1 YEAR but I wouldn’t be the Bayou Barbie without @bayoutraditions & @matchpoint_connection ! Appreciate you guys so much!! BIG EQS580😘 #BAYOUBARBIETURNS21 #GODDID

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♬ Originalton – tonic

Along with four pictures in a May 2023 post on X, she thanked both the Baton Rouge dealership and LSU’s NIL collective, Bayou Traditions. That Reese would get into a luxury ride while still in college was no surprise; she was an All-American and national champion with millions of social media followers (not to mention a year away from attending the Met Gala).

Nor was it shocking that, the previous spring, Oklahoma softball star Jocelyn Alo – the NCAA’s all-time leader in career home runs – posed inside a car she’d be driving as part of a deal with Fowler Toyota in Norman. Of course, the stars among stars of women’s sports would be first in line in the NIL era, too.

But a Boise State volleyball player and golfer?

After initially balking at the concept of NIL deals entirely – more on that in a bit – Jim Sterk tiptoed into the waters by agreeing to partner with Riley Smith, then a tight end with the Broncos football team. The general manager at Lithia Ford in Boise simultaneously decided he should add a female athlete to the mix, too. He asked the school to suggest candidates. His first interview was with Paige Bartsch, a volleyball star. “I just looked at our ad agency and I was like, ‘I don’t know about you, but I don’t need to talk to anybody else,’” Sterk says.

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Brooke Patterson, meanwhile, took different inroads: Sterk knew the Patterson family, and Brooke asked to visit with him to discuss NIL opportunities before she left to play golf at Cincinnati. What Sterk thought would be an advice session turned into a direct business pitch he couldn’t turn down. “I said, ‘Your deal has to sell cars instantly for me,’” Sterk recalls. “And she says, ‘Well, this is who follows me.’ She showed me her phone and it’s all 35- to 65-year-old males that drive Ford F-150s. She’s like, ‘We don’t want to reach out to these people?’”

Bartsch took home Mountain West player of the year honors in 2023, and the sport’s visibility is spiking. Both are undeniable pluses. Patterson won’t take a swing for the Broncos until next season after a transfer brought her back to Boise last December, but it’s an unmistakable sign of these times that non-household names in non-revenue sports benefit, too, and that dealerships see them as worthy partners.

“Social media-wise, females are way better at presenting the product than males are,” said Sterk, who can attribute at least five car sales directly to the partnership with Patterson.

Sterk’s dealership partnered with Boise State athletics for about a decade before the new NIL rules took effect, but the only cars that left his lot bound for campus were standard courtesy automobiles for coaches. When the landscape shifted, Sterk did not initially want to embark down that road. “I was pretty negative about (NIL),” he said. Then a receptionist who was also a member of the school’s spirit squad suggested he meet with Riley Smith. Sterk agreed in part because he had confused Smith, a Florida native, with another Boise State player who was local.

The conversation nevertheless went so well that it spawned a deal for Smith. That sparked the idea to complement it with one for Bartsch. Eventually, the dealer who wanted nothing to do with giving cars to players had a half-dozen of them on the Lithia Ford roster. He’s already contemplating who will replace them after they graduate.

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“It’s been super positive in the community for the dealership and with PR,” Sterk says. “It does generate business and it does generate awareness. And so now a guy that was completely against it has six athletes … It’s wild.”

(Top image: Daniel Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Greg Nelson / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images; Martyn Lucy / Getty Images; iStock)

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MLB world reacts to Willie Mays' death

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4 hours ago

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June 20, 2024

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MLB world reacts to Willie Mays' death

Major League Baseball and San Francisco Giants legend Willie Mays died Tuesday at age 93.

The “Say Hey Kid” performed with a showman’s flair, making basket catches in center field, taking daring chances on the base paths, winning four home run crowns, 12 Gold Glove Awards and laughing with a gleeful high-pitched voice.

Mays spent 21 of his 23 major-league seasons with the Giants organization in New York and San Francisco. He batted .301 with 660 home runs, 339 stolen bases and 3,293 hits and won two National League MVP awards.

Mays left an indelible mark on baseball, sparking many members of the MLB community to pay tribute to him at Tuesday night’s games and on social media.

Quotes and anecdotes around MLB:

Ken Griffey Jr.: “My heart is on the floor,” the Hall of Famer told MLB Network. “I’m just grateful and thankful that I was able to spend the time I had with (Mays) because he is a true giant, on and off the field.”

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Aaron Judge: The New York Yankees star outfielder and a California native reflected on meeting Mays.

“I have a family friend that is pretty close with his family,” Judge said. “I got a chance to meet him. He showed me a couple of things about throwing the baseball from the outfield, which I still remember. I have a couple of cool things that are signed in my childhood room still.”

Judge added: “Terrible, terrible news (of his death). I was a big Willie Mays fan. What he meant to the game, California, all of the Giants fans out there, especially me growing up, you wanted to play like Willie and make those catches that he did.

“The numbers he put up on the field and what he did are impressive, but him as a person and human being was even bigger. It was bigger than baseball. He was something special. The baseball world is definitely gonna be missing a great one.”

Mike Yastrzemski: “The things that he did, we’ll never see again,” the Giants outfielder said of Mays’ career. “He was such a talented player and he played the game as purely as anybody could. To be able to watch that on film — I’m glad there was film for it — because it’s something that’s going to be watched and studied for the rest of time.”

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Giants react to the death of Willie Mays: ‘The things he did we’ll never see again’

Sergio Romo: “Every day he was very willing to give his time, to give his expertise, to give his advice,” Romo, a three-time World Series champion with the Giants, told NBC Sports Bay Area about Mays visiting the club. “He made you feel visible.”

Bruce Bochy: This game allows you to meet some tremendous players and people, and I got to spend a lot of time with Willie during my tenure (in San Francisco) and it’s a sad day,” the former Giants manager and current Texas Rangers manager said. “What a legend he is.”

Billy Owens: The Oakland A’s assistant general manager and a Bay Area native paid tribute to Mays in a text message to The Athletic’s Melissa Lockard.

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“Say Hey was EVERYTHING…….Right there with Muhammad Ali as the Greatest,” Owens said. “The Excellence was Documented. The Style can never be duplicated. His power, speed and grace forever unique. The catch still captured the imagination almost a century later. Willie was New York(Polo Grounds) and San Francisco(Candlestick Park). I’ll watch Rickwood Field(Birmingham) this week and imagine Willie doing basket catches in Center Field and hitting homers into the Stratosphere. RIP Say Hey Willie Mays.”

Steven Kwan: The Cleveland Guardians outfielder and a Bay Area native said, “(Mays) was the face of the Giants. It was him and Barry Bonds and they would always be together. You’d see them talking. You wished you could be a fly on the wall for those conversations.”

Stephen Vogt: Cleveland Guardians manager Stephen Vogt’s grandfather lived in Oklahoma, and there were no MLB teams nearby. He chose the New York Giants as his team, mostly because he hated the Yankees and Dodgers. He loved watching Mays, and he’d prattle on and on about the center fielder to his son, Randy.

The Giants relocated to San Francisco in 1958 when Randy was three years old. The Giants became his team, and Mays was Randy’s hero. The family visited Candlestick Park every year.

Stephen grew up a Giants fan, too. The Vogts had season tickets in the upper deck down the left-field line. Stephen signed with San Francisco for the 2019 season. That spring, he met Mays. The two chatted in the clubhouse and took a picture together. Randy framed that photo, which sits on a shelf in his office.

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“One of the people who was a god to you,” Vogt said of Mays. “It was just this unfathomable figure. You never really saw him on TV, (just) highlights. It was really cool to meet him and then get a chance to chat with him.”

Harold Reynolds: “Willie was like a father to all of us,” the former Seattle Mariners second baseman told MLB Network. “He was from that generation that was passing it on. … He had advice for you on every aspect of your life.”

Craig Counsell: “I’m saddened by the news about Willie Mays,” the Chicago Cubs manager said. “This is one of the Mt. Rushmore of baseball players in my opinion. A legend in our game. I got to meet him a couple times. He was the kind of person, along with Hank Aaron, that made you nervous because of how great they were. It was sad news to hear during the game today.”

Cody Bellinger: “I saw the news (of Mays’ death) in the seventh inning and was pretty saddened by it. Wearing the number 24 is special. He’s one of the best players in our game. Just seeing him around a few times on the field was a true blessing. An unbelievable guy and best wishes to his family right now.”

Bellinger wears No. 24 with the Cubs, the same jersey number Mays wore with the Giants and the New York Mets.

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The Athletic’s Chris Kirschner, Melissa Lockard, Zack Meisel and Sahadev Sharma contributed to this story.

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(Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

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Lydia Jacoby, after surprise Tokyo Olympic gold, misses out on Paris

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11 hours ago

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June 20, 2024

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Lydia Jacoby, after surprise Tokyo Olympic gold, misses out on Paris

INDIANAPOLIS — Lydia Jacoby looked up, stunned. Only 27 hundredths of a second separated her from Emma Weber’s second-place finish in the women’s 100-meter breaststroke final, but the two might as well have been two continents apart.

Veteran swimmers often describe U.S. Olympic trials as the hardest swim meet in the world — tougher than the Olympics themselves. In some events, the third-fastest American might be the third-best swimmer in the world. But only the top two make Team USA.

That razor-thin margin sets up the greatest of stakes; it’s make-or-break, all-or-nothing.

And Jacoby ended up with nothing, just three years removed from shocking herself and the world by winning gold in Tokyo in the same event. On Tuesday morning, she announced that she’d scratched the 200-meter breaststroke, which meant her meet was over. The 20-year-old won’t be going to Paris.

“I feel weirdly fine,” Jacoby said Tuesday. “I think it hasn’t quite hit me yet. I definitely had a little cry last night, but I’ve been doing pretty well today. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of time to process emotions in the next couple of weeks and I’ll … try to line up some fun things to look forward to this summer.”

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Two-time gold medalist Lilly King, who took gold in the event in Rio de Janeiro, touched first Monday night in 1:05.43. Weber’s second-place finish was a shocker, one of the true upsets of the meet thus far. After King congratulated Weber, she swam over to hug Jacoby.

“My heart absolutely breaks for her,” King said. “But on the flip side, what a performance from Emma Weber — and that’s just kind of how this meet rolls. It will make your career and break your career in a minute. It’s the hardest meet in the world. It’s a lot harder than the Olympics, in my opinion.

“I hope she can move forward from this, and I’m rooting for her always.”

In recent months, Jacoby has opened up about the severe depression she experienced after winning that gold medal in Tokyo. She felt like everyone wanted a piece of her, and she couldn’t say no. She couldn’t tell which people around her genuinely cared about her well-being and which just wanted to be associated with a gold medalist. There were days and weeks she didn’t want to get out of bed back home in Alaska.

“I was feeling like my identity was locked up in sports,” Jacoby said Tuesday. “The biggest thing for me lately is (remembering) that being a swimmer is something I do. It’s not something I am. I have so many interests and passions. I have amazing friends and family outside of the sport. Remembering those things is a big thing for me.

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“A lot of people outside of sports see this and think this is everything. It’s important that people realize, yes, this is something I do, and I’m very invested in it. Obviously, I put a lot of emotion into this, and it is pretty devastating. But at the end of the road, it’s not going to change my life.”


Lydia Jacoby and Lilly King embrace after the 100-meter breaststroke final at the U.S. Olympic trials. Jacoby, the Tokyo gold medalist, did not qualify for Paris. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

Jacoby said she seriously considered quitting swimming after Tokyo and even debated whether she wanted to swim at trials at times during the past year. She’s glad she stuck with the sport and swam here, despite the disappointing result.

Jacoby said she was frustrated with her performance here at Lucas Oil Stadium. Her time of 1:06.37 was more than a full second slower than her Olympic qualifying time at trials in 2021. She’d been training well, and she’s disappointed that her output Monday didn’t match what she’d been putting into the event. Jacoby said she had focused all of her training on the 100-meter breaststroke and was planning to scratch the 200 regardless.

“I don’t feel like I put up a swim that was a good representation of what I can do, which is the most frustrating part to me,” Jacoby said.

She said she plans to take a break from swimming to “get in a better place with where I am in my life outside of swimming and then reapproach the sport in a healthy way for myself.” She doesn’t think she’s done with the sport entirely, nor does she think the sport is done with her.

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But that’s in the long term. Right now, Jacoby isn’t sure if she’ll watch the event on television next month. She’s not sure she can bear it, sitting at home on the wrong continent while her friends and former teammates wear red, white and blue.

“I feel like I haven’t really processed the fact that I won’t be swimming there,” Jacoby said. “I’m honestly not really sure if I want to watch my event. It’s something I haven’t really put a lot of thought into. But the people that are making the team — like, I’ve been crying like the past week, tears of joy for all my friends making the team … so, I am absolutely looking forward to seeing everybody do amazing things in Paris.

“My not being there is definitely going to be tough, but I wish them all the absolute best.”

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Regan Smith reclaims WR in women’s 100m backstroke at Olympic trials

(Top photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)

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Tears, pre-announcements, vanishing into thin air: The new rules of tennis retirement

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18 hours ago

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June 20, 2024

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Tears, pre-announcements, vanishing into thin air: The new rules of tennis retirement

“There’s no wrong, only right,” Roger Federer says.

He is speaking with The Athletic about one of tennis’s defining issues this year, and possibly the defining issue right now: how best to retire.

As Wimbledon approaches, two fellow ‘Big Four’ members, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, are entering the endgame. Both are involved in valedictory tours — which, in Nadal’s case, could yet extend to next year — and in April and May, a flurry of retirement announcements and pre-warnings included former Grand Slam champions Garbine Muguruza and Dominic Thiem, both 30. They did it in very different ways and for very different reasons, just as Nadal and Murray are doing it their way, for their reasons.

In the new rules of tennis retirement, there are different methods of saying goodbye.

This is totally fine, according to Federer, who was 41 when he retired. “With Andy, Rafa and Novak (Djokovic), I could not tell you what I would now suggest and advise them,” he says. “I don’t know. It’s super deeply personal.”

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Federer was speaking at the premiere of his new film Federer: Twelve Final Days, which will be released on Prime Video tomorrow (Thursday). It documents the period between him announcing his retirement because of a knee injury in September 2022 and his final appearance on a tennis court, at the Laver Cup, playing doubles with his old rival and friend Nadal.

One of the themes that runs through the film is also central to tennis in 2024: the agonising difficulty of picking the right moment to step away from the thing that has defined you for almost your entire life. Serena Williams even avoided using the word “retirement” when she said farewell two years ago. “Evolving away from tennis,” was her preferred expression.

Federer’s view? Don’t stress about the how of it.

“Everyone does it differently,” he says. “There’s no script. And very often we don’t remember how people retired. You just have to take the best decision in the moment. And sometimes you run out of options too, depending on what your body does.”


Serena Williams said goodbye at her home Grand Slam (Tim Clayton / Corbis via Getty Images)

Save for a few exceptions, that’s probably true. Pete Sampras went out in a slightly misremembered blaze of glory; Williams brought late-night thrillers to Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, but the story of her retirement was her redefinition of tennis in America and around the world.

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It’s not how players go, but what came before, that defines them.

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Serena Williams’ incomparable legacy is only growing in her U.S. Open farewell

In late April, the former French Open and Wimbledon champion Muguruza announced that she was formally retiring — calling a press conference and explaining that she wanted a new challenge. The news was unsurprising, given she hadn’t played in 15 months. The following week, Alize Cornet, 34 and a former world No 11, announced in a social media video that she would retire after the French Open.

A couple of weeks after that and within a few days of each other, former U.S. Open winner Thiem and one-time top-10 player Diego Schwartzman, 31, announced on social media that they would be retiring soon. The former at the Vienna Open in his native Austria in October, the latter in his home country at the Argentina Open next February. This is a pretty standard retirement route these days — setting a hard deadline and giving yourself a few months to say goodbye.

“The decision came some weeks before I made it public, and at first I told my family and closest friends,” Thiem told The Athletic in a video call a couple of weeks ago about a decision that was largely brought about because of a debilitating wrist injury.

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“So the decision to make it public was a small step but it was a relief and it meant that all the fans and everyone were clear about it.”

He explained that it wasn’t a particularly difficult decision because, although he is only 30, he has no interest in carrying on in such a diminished form. “I played some great matches (after the injury) but that was more because of my fighting spirit than my game,” he said. “It wasn’t because of my actual playing level — and that was always unsatisfying. That helped with the decision in the end.”


Dominic Thiem’s injury took away what were expected to be his prime years (Marcelo Endelli / Getty Images)

Thiem was so decisive that some players, such as his good friend Alexander Zverev, even thought he was being too hasty. Zverev explained to reporters at the Italian Open in May that he wondered if Thiem could have opted for wrist surgery — like Zverev’s brother, Mischa — in a last-ditch attempt to save his career. Thiem says that, in consultation with medical experts, they concluded this wouldn’t provide the answer.

This is in stark contrast to Nadal and Murray, who have battled through this year with no confirmed end dates, just indications that this will be their final season, which speaks to how hard it is to let go. Especially when they both still love competing.

“In lots of careers, retirement is something you celebrate and people really look forward to that day — that’s not something I feel,” Murray said on Sunday, as he strongly hinted that he was unlikely to go on beyond the Olympics. “I love playing tennis.”

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Nadal said something similar in January 2023, after suffering an injury in defeat to Mackenzie McDonald at the Australian Open — his last match for almost a year.“It’s a very simple thing: I like what I do. I like playing tennis.”

This is a recurring theme among players who are close to the end. Vera Zvonareva, the former world No 2 and Wimbledon finalist, turns 40 in September and is still competing, primarily in doubles. She is fresh from partnering the 17-year-old sensation Mirra Andreeva to the French Open quarterfinals and puts it simply: “I enjoy playing tennis. It’s my job but also my passion. I enjoy it or I would not be here. Mirra has great energy on the court, which also helps, and I try to support her.

“I like to play.”

How Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic reconfigured tennis

Retirement doesn’t just happen to players. For a player of Nadal and Murray’s stature, and for players who choose to retire on home turf, it brings a huge amount of ceremony, occasion, and logistics. Few players find all that comfortable — even ones as venerated as them or Federer.

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“You know inevitably that we’re all going to stop working at some point — and for us, it’s the same,” Federer said.

“The only problem for us is that maybe we can’t just send a quick text and say, ‘OK, goodbye everyone’. I have had too many incredible fans and incredible people who have helped me along the way — you need to get out there and do it the hard way. Face your demons, even though it’s a nice thing to do.”

That last line is very revealing. It’s little wonder that Nadal and Murray are desperate to pick the right moment after two decades on the tour, conscious that they’ll never be able to find something quite like professional sport. Tennis is also unlike many other sports, where a manager or someone from a club tells the player their time is up. It’s all down to the individual.


Camila Giorgi at the 2024 Miami Open, which proved to be her final tournament (Brennan Asplen / Getty Images)

Some players do take Federer’s “quick text” route, or even go to another extreme.

Camila Giorgi, a former world No 26 with a colourful past, won the award for the most low-key farewell when her departure was revealed by her status being changed to retired one morning on the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA) website. It was another few days before she announced her retirement, following reports of investigations by Italian tax authorities into her affairs. A few weeks after that flurry of retirements, Dutch player Botic van de Zandschulp, 28, said at the French Open that he was “thinking about” quitting because he no longer enjoyed playing. A couple of days later, he told The Athletic that he had been mistranslated and that he was carrying on.

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Swedish 23-year-old Mikael Ymer, who is serving a drugs ban for missing three anti-doping tests in a year, announced in April that he would not be retiring but would attempt a comeback once his suspension was over in 2025. “Retirement was boring,” Ymer wrote on X. “See u in 8 months.”

When more ceremony is required, tournaments have to make several contingency plans depending on what players decide. At this year’s Wimbledon, the All England Club has numerous options in place depending on what Murray announces over the next few weeks. They feel they have prepared for every eventuality, which is a logistical challenge. How you pitch these sorts of farewells is not easy.

In 2019, the Australian Open put on a big farewell celebration for Murray after he revealed on the eve of the tournament that he needed hip surgery and that the end could be nigh. After watching various luminaries of the sport wish him well on a video montage, Murray had to say that, er, he wasn’t definitely retiring.

This year, Nadal’s victory lap at various clay-court events meant that tournaments in Barcelona, Madrid and Rome had to have ceremonies ready for every match in case he lost. This occasioned the awkward sight of Nadal walking off as the Italian Open prepared its celebration; the Spaniard was in no mood for adulation after a heavy loss to Hubert Hurkacz. At Roland Garros a couple of weeks later, the French Tennis Federation planned a farewell ceremony for Nadal, only to shelve it once he said it might not be his last French Open after all.


Rafael Nadal’s ceremony at the Madrid Open commemorated his five titles there (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

One of the problems Nadal and Murray have found is the media’s obsession with when they are going to retire (sorry, guys). They are at the extreme end of that interest because of their huge fame, but even for less high-profile players, there is an awareness that once you start talking about retirement it adds to the media interest.

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Cornet took a different approach. She decided she would retire last year but didn’t announce her plans until April, a month before her final tournament at the French Open because she “didn’t want the media to talk to me about it too often”.

Cornet found she was liberated by making the announcement, and went on her best run since realising it was time to go some months earlier. She reached the semis and quarters of a couple of Challenger events and then bowed out at Roland Garros. “It was a lot of ups and downs,” she says. “Emotionally, it was not easy. Some days, I was excited about retirement and other days, I was scared and uncertain.”

Danielle Collins, who is also in some of the best form of her career in her last season on tour, has been unequivocal about how endometriosis and arthritis have contributed to her decision to retire, and the fact that tennis is something she does, not who she is. In March, at Indian Wells, she told The Athletic, “I’ve loved what I’ve done and the opportunity and the doors it’s opened, but it’s not easy.”

More often for players who retire, tennis is all they have known, and they are acutely conscious that they will never get the same high again. “It’s super difficult because that’s the only way you know to live since you were a kid,” Thiem says. “And every tennis player who is probably even in the world rankings will never be able to do something as good as playing tennis.”

Cornet adds: “It means turning a page of 20 years of my life, 20 years of full commitment. When you have to turn that page and realise it’s over, yeah, it’s a void, in a way. And you have to fill it in another way and find stuff that makes you happy.

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“Psychologically, it’s one of the most difficult things to handle, and I’m very happy that I have a very good entourage to help me with that.”


Alize Cornet waved goodbye at this year’s French Open (Dan Istitene / Getty Images)

Then there is the search for the perfect ending. It’s a tantalising proposition that can convince players they should go on that little bit longer. Whether that’s the perfect venue, or achieving one last goal — Murray has been desperate for another second-week run at a Grand Slam tournament — it’s an elusive promise that is nearly impossible to grasp. When Serena Williams retired at the U.S. Open 2022, she had her ceremony after her first-round win, instead of bookending her career with a final defeat enmeshed with reflective celebration.

Federer feels that the way he went out, surrounded by his closest friends and rivals on the tour — including Nadal, Murray and Djokovic, who were all his Team Europe team-mates at the Laver Cup — was ideal for him. “It ended up being so beautiful,” he says. “Because in an individual sport, being surrounded by your contemporaries is rare. There were a lot of special moments.”

During the film, Murray comments on how appropriate it is that Federer’s last match should be playing doubles with Nadal, the rival who most defined his career. But before that Laver Cup farewell, Federer’s final singles match was a hugely dispiriting defeat to Hurkacz in the Wimbledon quarterfinal more than a year earlier — which included the only 6-0 set he ever lost in the tournament. Federer desperately wanted one last Wimbledon title, but his knee had other ideas.

Did the loss in any way damage his Wimbledon legacy of eight titles? Absolutely not.

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Federer’s celebration defined the end of his career. (Li Ying / Xinhua via Getty Images)

Sampras remains the gold standard for bowing out at the top. His last match was the 2002 U.S. Open final where he beat his biggest rival Andre Agassi to win his 14th Grand Slam, aged 31. But even that was preceded by two years without a tournament win and months of calls for his retirement (especially after an embarrassing second-round loss at Wimbledon to George Bastl a few months before that U.S. Open swansong). Sampras also then deliberated for almost a year over whether to retire, before eventually deciding it was the right thing to do.

And might he now wonder whether he went too soon? This is another fiendishly difficult element to all this and is something mentioned by John McEnroe, who returned to the sport to play doubles on a couple of occasions after his retirement in 1992. “Even Pete probably looks back and thinks, ‘I had 14 majors, had the all-time record, maybe I should have played past 31’,” McEnroe says. “So no matter what, you have regrets in a way and things you wish you’d done differently.”

As for the rest of the locker room, has the rash of retirements made them think about how they would like to go?

“I don’t have pressure,” says Zvonareva. “I’m not saying I’m going to play this and this and then I’m retiring. No, if I want to play more tournaments, I will play. If I don’t feel like playing, I won’t. It’s really open.”

Angelique Kerber, a three-time Grand Slam champion who is 36 and returned from maternity leave this year, says: “I really don’t think about this yet. I’ve always said I will play as long as my body allows me, and while the fire is still there.”

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Victoria Azarenka, 34 and another multiple major winner, wants to have a low-key exit when she leaves. “I’m not going to have a farewell tour,” she says. “It’s going to be simple. I’ll just say bye. To me, it will be at the point when I’m not learning something anymore.”


Azarenka’s last Grand Slam title came in Australia in 2013. (Manan Vatsyayana / AFP via Getty Images)

She also explains why playing is so addictive and why a lot of players eschew their earlier retirement plans. “When I was 20, I thought I’d never play past 27. Then I thought, ‘OK, 30 will probably be enough’. Now I’m nearly 35 and I think, ‘Why not keep playing?’. I’m still playing well, competing at the biggest events, and feel like I can beat anybody. I’m very competitive.”

Adrian Mannarino, the 35-year-old Frenchman, says that “when it’s time to stop, you feel it”.

Madison Keys, the American world No 12 who, at 29, is a way off from thinking about this, jokes that she’ll go down the Giorgi route. “I saw on Twitter a link to the ITIA site that said Giorgi had gone and I was like May 7, that’s yesterday. So I was like, ‘That’s how I’m going to do it’.

“I’m just going to disappear. You just won’t see me again. You’ll be like, ‘Where is she? We haven’t seen her forever’. I’ll just slowly fade away.”

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Keys laughs at the absurdity of what she’s saying, but as Federer alluded to, this probably is a route a lot of players feel they would like to go down if they could.

Perhaps it helps to have an outsider’s perspective. Asif Kapadia is one of Britain’s most respected filmmakers, and his credits include Senna, Amy, and Diego Maradona. He is the co-director of the new Federer film and is more of a football than a tennis fan. He says that one of the themes that most attracted him to the film was the idea that “athletes die twice” — a saying referred to in the movie.

“I was interested in this idea that even if you’ve won it all, and you’re really successful, with a loving family and everything’s great, for him it’s still like a death,” Kapadia says. “’Athletes die twice’. I had never heard that said so succinctly, and it’s right. That’s what they have to deal with.

“He’s crying and the people around him who haven’t retired are crying because they know it’s not that far off for them. And that’s what is really interesting.

“It doesn’t matter how successful you are when your body won’t let you do it anymore. If you’re a sportsperson who’s ever played or had an injury, you know what that’s like.

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“That feeling of: what do I do next?”

(Top photos: Jean Catuffe; Tom Jenkins / Getty Images; Design: Dan Goldfarb for The Athletic)

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