A dominant win in the last warm-up tournament before a Grand Slam doesn’t sound like an occasion for an Olympic gold medalist to express disbelief. But in Adelaide, after a 6-2, 1-0 (ret.) victory over world No. 14 Anna Kalinskaya, Belinda Bencic is at a loss.

“I didn’t even think I’d be here,” Bencic, 27 and the world No. 421, said in her on-court interview.

Bencic isn’t returning from a long injury. She’s done that already, recovering from wrist surgery and a five-month layoff in 2017 to rise from the 300s to a high of world No. 4 and then that Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, where she beat Marketa Vondrousova in the final. She’s doing what so many women do outside of tennis, but has until recently been a rarity in the upper echelons of the sport: coming back from a career break during which she gave birth to her first child, Bella in April 2024.

She may not have believed the speed of her return to form, but she has no doubts about where she can go now.

“I’m really confident about getting back to where I was and even better,” she said in a recent interview via Zoom from Slovakia, where both her parents are from.

“I felt really inspired and brave enough to have a baby mid-career because a lot of other athletes and tennis players have done it before. It’s not like this is not possible. Everyone showed that it’s possible, and they got back to the same level.”

There was a time not that long ago when having a baby was considered the end of a tennis player’s career. Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Kim Clijsters won Grand Slams after giving birth, but generally players would only start families in retirement.

Then, in 2016, Serena Williams won the Australian Open while eight weeks pregnant. She went on to reach four more Grand Slam finals after giving birth to her first child, Olympia, in September 2017 and coming close to death from complications. Williams’ announcement of her pregnancy was a watershed moment for tennis, with an increasing number of players feeling comfortable having a mid-career break to start a family as a result.

Victoria Azarenka reached the U.S Open final in 2020, almost four years after her son Leo was born, and the woman she lost to that night, Naomi Osaka, returned to the tour for the 2024 season after the birth of daughter Shai in July 2023. Osaka, 27, is looking to get back to her best in 2025 after an up-and-down comeback last year. In the 2024 Indian Wells main draw, Azarenka and Osaka were among seven mothers competing, including former world No. 1s and Grand Slam champions Angelique Kerber and Caroline Wozniacki, who faced off in the fourth round.

Elina Svitolina enchanted the Wimbledon crowd in 2023 by reaching the semifinals only three months after returning to the tour and nine months after giving birth, equalling her best-ever showing at a Grand Slam in the process. The Ukrainian ended the year as world No. 25, winning the WTA’s ‘comeback player of the year’ award. America’s Taylor Townsend, 28, had her best-ever season last year. She won the Wimbledon women’s doubles with Katerina Siniakova (her first Grand Slam title), reached the U.S. Open mixed doubles final with Donald Young and achieved a singles career-high ranking of No. 46 following a run to the quarters of the Canadian Open WTA 1000 (one rung below the Grand Slams). Her son, Adyn, was born in March 2021.

Bencic, who enters the first Grand Slam of the season with her special ranking of No. 15, credits the significant shift in attitudes for helping her believe that she could follow in their footsteps.

Belinda Bencic and Martin Hromkovic celebrate her Olympic gold in singles at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

She cites the legendary American athlete Allyson Felix, who continued to win Olympic medals and break world records after giving birth, while also namechecking Williams, Azarenka and less-heralded tennis players such as Stefanie Voegele and Yanina Wickmayer as inspirations. She’s had conversations about the realities of coming back with Kerber, who retired at the Paris Olympics in July 2024 and has discussed balancing tennis and childcare with Swiss compatriot Roger Federer.

Bencic is also aware that, as with returning to the tennis court, preparation can sometimes be overtaken by factors beyond a player’s control. America’s world No. 11 Danielle Collins planned to retire in November aged 30 to start a family, but put that on hold when she was told that her endometriosis was presenting complications with her getting pregnant. Ons Jabeur, a three-time Grand Slam finalist, has spoken poignantly of her desire to have a baby — but only once she’s landed that elusive first major title.

“It felt like it was right for us at this moment of our lives,” Bencic said of her and her Martin Hromkovic’s figuring out when to start a family.

GO DEEPER

My game in my words. By Ons Jabeur

The WTA Tour has become a more hospitable place for players returning after having children in the last few years. Since 2019, players have been able to use the ranking they had before going on hiatus to enter 12 tournaments over a three-year period from the birth of their child. If ranked high enough to be seeded in any of their first eight tournaments back, players are also protected from facing a seeded player in the opening round. When Williams began her comeback in 2018 having previously been world No. 1, she was having to enter tournaments unseeded.

There is also a performance health team, which offers tailored services throughout the process from support with breastfeeding or postpartum health to diaphragm and core physiotherapy to prevent delays in recovery. It offers personalized nutrition plans for lactation and athletic performance, and bespoke recommendations for postpartum sleep disturbances. At the Grand Slams and events ranging from WTA 1000s like Madrid and Rome to 500-level tournaments like the United Cup and Stuttgart, there is on-site childcare, but this is not a standard across the circuit. Wozniacki last year told PA that she had been treated well but also that “there should be more done for women coming back from maternity leave.”

A WTA spokesperson told The Athletic that regulatory differences in childcare provision across host countries make a universal childcare policy unworkable. They added that the WTA “encourages” tournaments to offer childcare on a case-by-case basis.

“We remain committed to providing resources to help balance parenthood and the demands of competing at the highest level,” the spokesperson said.

So far, those resources do not include maternity pay. Osaka last year said “having a kid shouldn’t feel like a punishment” from a financial perspective in an interview with the BBC, but there has been no movement on the subject since November 2023, when Steve Simon, then chief executive of the WTA, described it as “scheduled for review” in a letter to players.

Sources briefed on the initiative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect relationships within the sport, have told The Athletic that the WTA is keen to institute such a policy and discussions with the players are ongoing. Osaka and Azarenka both emphasized that it would be lower-ranked players who need such an initiative more than former champions with significant sponsorship like themselves.

“I think we have a lot of work to do but they’re definitely moving on the right track because the questions are being asked,” Townsend told The Athletic in a recent interview.

Taylor Townsend waves to her family after winning the women’s doubles at Wimbledon in 2024. (Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)

Like Bencic, Townsend believes that the normalization of having children while on tour will help to effect change. “Things can definitely move quicker now because there are a lot more moms on tour,” Townsend said.

“I think we’re going to see more as the years go on.”

GO DEEPER

‘I think we deserve better’: How and why tennis lets women down

Bencic, who won the 2015 Canadian Open by beating four of the top six players in the world — including Williams — and reached the top 10 the following year at 18, played the San Diego Open in September 2023 while around eight weeks pregnant. Her first tournament back with a ranking was an ITF W75 in Petange, Luxembourg, in November 2024, when she was world No. 1213. By early December she was No. 913, leaping to world No. 421 after reaching the final of the WTA 125 in Angers, France and beating world No. 123 Chloe Paquet in the United Cup at the end of the month.

But the beginning of her return to the court was far from the start of her journey back. Around eight weeks after giving birth to Bella, Bencic starting doing pelvic floor and core stability exercises. Gradually she started trying to rebuild some of her muscle and playing a bit of tennis just in the forecourt. After about four months, she felt like she could start hitting again, but she says that it’s “your reactions” that take the longest to come back into focus. “On the return, your eyes are basically trained by playing every day and seeing the ball,” she explains. “This is not talent. You don’t have that, you have to train it.”

She described the transformation of pregnancy as at first “really strange,” a view shared by other players in a similar position to her. Speaking in a news conference at the Australian Open, Osaka said that it was “really tough to even run” post-partum.

“I do understand why it’s very difficult to, I guess, get to a professional level,” she added.

For Bencic, she quickly acclimatized to the changes to her body — until, as she puts it, “you’re not pregnant anymore, then it’s weird.”

“The only difficult thing was not being able to move or do a lot of sports. And in the end, it felt very limiting and I couldn’t wait until I could have a run again or go to the gym. So it really went from 100 to zero,” Bencic said.

“I have to say kudos to every woman out there because it’s really crazy how fast it changes in such a little time. You go from being 100 percent fit to pregnancy and then afterwards it takes like a lot of time. I think they say you’ve been pregnant for nine months or so and you need the same amount of time afterwards to feel like you were before.

“I’m so amazed by how the body works,” she said.

Bencic used the events in Luxembourg and France as a testing ground — not just to see where her game was at, but also how things would work logistically with a baby daughter in tow. The practice court and match court initially felt like “two different universes,” but that final in Angers and her win over Paquet helped build confidence. Even a sobering 6-1, 6-1 thrashing at the hands of world No. 4 Jasmine Paolini at the United Cup was both a reminder of how steep the top of the tennis mountain is and a positive reality check for where she wants to be.

Belinda Bencic in Hamburg, where competed without a ranking in one of her first events back. (Gregor Fischer / Press Alliance via Getty Images)

Logistically, she’s found a way of making it work, helped by Bella being a very good sleeper and Hromkovic, who is also Bencic’s physical trainer, looking after Bella while Bencic trains and competes. Hromkovic can often be seen with Bella in a sling on his chest, watching on while Bencic practices; both of Bella’s grandmothers pitch in and Bencic’s mother, Dana, will join mother, father and daughter at the Australian Open. Bencic is adapting to playing on less sleep, such a crucial thing for any athlete, but is grateful that Bella generally has pretty uninterrupted nights.

Logistical decisions like these also carry an emotional weight, with the feelings of guilt so many parents feel when having to prioritize their careers over childcare. Dealing with these challenges forms part of the mental health support players get from the WTA, and while Bencic is only just figuring these things out, for Townsend it’s been an ongoing concern.

“There’s a guilt sometimes that I feel being gone for so many weeks, then a guilt about coming home for two days after being gone for three weeks, that is so tough for me,” she said.

“So ultimately I focus on the quality over quantity and just try to be sure that the time I do spend with him is something that he’ll remember.”

Becoming a mother has lent Bencic this kind of perspective, both on her family life and her tennis. “Tennis used to be my one and only life, everything I ever worked for,” she says.

“I would put so much pressure on myself to deliver a good match and a good performance, and if I would have a bad practice, I would think all day about it. That’s completely different now.

“It’s more like a job, it’s more separate. It’s still important to me, I still have the passion and everything, but it’s not everything. I can lose a match and I don’t feel like ‘My god, this is it.’”

(Top photo: Steve Christo / Corbis via Getty Images)

The NBA announced that Saturday’s home games for both the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers have been postponed amid the wildfires sweeping through Southern California.

The Lakers were scheduled to host the San Antonio Spurs while the Clippers were set to host the Charlotte Hornets.

The league has not yet announced makeup dates for the two games, and the league did not disclose if more games will be affected by the fires, as both teams have home games scheduled for Monday and Wednesday and the Lakers have another home game on Friday. The two teams are also supposed to play each other in Inglewood, California, on Jan. 19, when the Clippers will host.

CLIPPERS’ KAWHI LEONARD LEAVES TEAM TO HELP FAMILY DEAL WITH RAGING WILDFIRES: REPORT

“The NBA and the Clippers and Lakers organizations have been in communication with local officials in Los Angeles and Inglewood about the ongoing situation in the Los Angeles area and the game postponements ensure no resources will be diverted from the wildfire response efforts,” the league said in a statement.

Some members of both teams are directly dealing with the impacts of the wildfires, including Lakers coach JJ Redick, whose family’s rental home in Pacific Palisades burned on Tuesday night, destroying many of their belongings.

“I was not prepared for what I saw,” Redick told reporters. “It’s complete devastation and destruction. I had to go a different way to the house, but I went through most of the village, and it’s all gone. I don’t think you can ever prepare yourself for something like that. Our home is gone.”

‘I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR WHAT I SAW’: LAKERS COACH JJ REDDICK DETAILS DEVASTATION FROM PALISADES FIRE

Los Angeles Lakers NBA basketball head coach JJ Redick, right, is hugged by guard Austin Reaves, left before talking to the media about the Pacific Palisades wildfire at a news conference in El Segundo, Calif., Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP)

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association, which is the players’ union, announced on Friday a $1 million donation for immediate relief to the American Red Cross, World Central Kitchen and other organizations working to provide assistance to the victims and recovery efforts.

The donation was meant “to support those affected by this disaster,” the league said, adding that it is “working with the Lakers and Clippers on ways to support longer term assistance and rebuilding efforts.”

The Lakers also had a game previously scheduled for Thursday against the Hornets postponed as well, but it has not yet been rescheduled.

Los Angeles Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard looks on during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Atlanta Hawks, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jayne-Kamin-Oncea)

The Lakers are scheduled to host the Spurs again on Monday, when the Clippers are set to host the Miami Heat. On Wednesday, the Lakers are scheduled to host the Heat and the Clippers are scheduled to host the Brooklyn Nets. The Lakers are also slated to host the Nets on Friday.

The Clippers said they anticipate that the games starting Monday will be played as scheduled.

“The health and safety of our community and our fans remains our highest priority,” the team said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The trolls finally got one, but not for long.

NBA social media has become a cesspool of negativity, where fans come together to commiserate about why this player is overrated and that team is garbage. Today’s athletes are so inundated with criticism from the anonymous morass that most of them have learned to push it away.

Even when it affects them, they rarely admit it publicly. Bullies only get their power from the acknowledgment. But everybody has their moments.

For the first month of this season, as his Indiana Pacers were losing and he was playing his worst basketball in years, that was Tyrese Haliburton. To the outside world, it looked like his dominant form from 2023 may have been a mirage. Internally, Haliburton started to wonder if they were right.

“I got too caught up in outside noise and allowing myself to think such negative thoughts about myself internally,” Haliburton shared with The Athletic recently. “It was the first time in my life that I had real self-doubt behind everything I was doing. … I feel like my personal struggles were leading to the team’s struggles.

“A lot of our games early, that we were right there to win, I just wasn’t playing my best basketball and I think that was taking away from us winning games.”

Last season, the Pacers marched on to the Eastern Conference finals, even if Haliburton’s form fell off after a midseason hamstring injury. They entered this campaign with hopes of taking the next step, but things went south early on as their star player still looked like a shell of himself.

When Haliburton was in a funk in the past, he would pull out his phone and seek the trolls trashing him. He often would do it during halftime, looking for fuel to power the Pacers’ redlining offense. Proving haters wrong was the cathartic release he needed to get in touch with himself and his game.

The problem was — from the moment this season started — he knew better than anyone that he couldn’t clap back. He went scoreless in the second game of the season, a blowout loss to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, and knew something wasn’t right.

Haliburton was telling confidants that he was playing poorly, reading his mentions and actually agreeing for a change. That’s when his skills trainer Drew Hanlen could see the pressure was getting to the 24-year-old.

“This year, for whatever reason, it was just hurting him,” Hanlen said.

The more he struggled, the more he receded into old habits. Haliburton lost his aggression to attack the paint, unable to beat defenders with a first step off of that recovering hamstring.

He looked tentative, trying to sit back as a distributor and losing some of the edge that made him a two-time All-Star. The problem was twofold, starting with his health.

“He rushed back early last year to make the All-NBA 65-game rule and he was never fully healthy,” Hanlen said. “Then at the Olympics, he re-aggravated it. So after the Olympics, he couldn’t work out and had to let it heal. So he worked out zero times the entire summer.”

The breaking point came in Charlotte on Nov. 8, a 20-point loss that sent the team spiraling below .500. He once again missed every 3, couldn’t get to the line and fully accepted he was the problem.

“It was so bad,” Haliburton said. “That was the first time I was so frustrated with myself, so frustrated with the group. But it was more about myself. How can I be better?”

It started with cutting out the distractions and sources of anxiety. He deleted X from his phone in an attempt to go cold turkey on immersive doomscrolling. He started going back to church, recognizing he was getting caught up within himself and wanting to look at the positives in life.

“That’s been good for me to read my Bible more. It’s been good for me,” he said. “My relationship with the Lord has been really big for me internally, to be the best version of myself and just trying to pour energy into our group and that’s been helping us.

“After that, things have clicked and changed for me. I feel light years better.”

Haliburton was not the same player entering the season, but the Pacers changed as well. Andrew Nembhard showed in the postseason he could be the two-way guard the team needed, while Bennedict Mathurin’s return from a torn labrum added another scorer to the mix.

This roster did not call for Haliburton to dominate the ball like he did in the past, especially with his quickness in the half court diminished. To figure out his future with the Pacers, he had to tap into his past.

When he was drafted by the Sacramento Kings in 2020, he had to squeeze his distinct skill set into a crowded backcourt. De’Aaron Fox was the star point guard and Buddy Hield was the shooting guard, two traditional representations of the positions. Where did a fluid playmaker fit into the dynamic?

Hield taught him how to move in space to make himself open, even when the opposing coach wrote on the locker room whiteboard with a cascade of underlines to not let that happen. Though Haliburton said he initially couldn’t stand the way Hield played, they eventually found a synergy playing off each other. When the two friends were traded to the Pacers together, coach Rick Carlisle put the ball in Haliburton’s hands full time and they started running the two-man actions they were developing in Sacramento.

While the focus on Haliburton’s struggles in early 2024 focused on his hamstring injury, it coincided with Hield being traded to Philadelphia. But Nembhard’s emergence allowed Haliburton to operate as more of a two-guard, putting into practice the lessons he learned from Hield.

“Since Buddy’s been gone, I’ve learned to play off the ball a little bit more,” Haliburton said. “It’s been part of the growth figuring out how I can stay involved while off the ball, how I can use my gravity as a shooter. I just try to use my gravity to impact the game in other ways. I think that’s what I learned from Buddy, playing aside him for so long.”

Haliburton is not the typical point guard who can beat anyone off the bounce. He has a high dribble, is not overtly physical and doesn’t have a bag of go-to shots like most All-Star playmakers. He is someone who thrives in chaos, getting where he wants when he is up in transition or attacking against the grain of the defense.

Nembhard running point allows Haliburton to leak out in transition earlier, so he can then run around screens to catch the ball on the move. It also allows Haliburton to set up a cross-match early in a possession, like when he got Miami’s Haywood Highsmith off him before the play began so he could attack Tyler Herro in space.

Now Haliburton is finally starting to get downhill more consistently from give-and-go actions with Myles Turner by refining that combo guard role he first learned in Sacramento. In recent weeks, Turner and Haliburton have looked more in sync, as evidenced by Turner knowing where Haliburton was cutting even when getting the ball at an awkward spot on the floor.

“I think that Ty is finally starting to realize that he can get guys so much more open than just passing the ball,” Turner told The Athletic. “He talks to me, like, ‘Yo, go right here and do this and do this, and do that.’ And then lo and behold, I get the ball. So I think he’s starting to analyze the game a lot more, and then he picks and chooses his spots to start scoring.”

The true turning point came at the end of 2024. Haliburton had his worst performance since the first week of the season when they blew a fourth-quarter lead in Oklahoma City on Dec. 26 and then looked passive the next night in a blowout loss to the Boston Celtics.

But they stuck around Boston and he looked more aggressive than ever in a rematch two nights later, scoring 10 of his 11 baskets inside the arc to take the Celtics out in crunchtime. Sprinting over Turner screens while Nembhard handled the ball, getting to the rim suddenly seemed easy.

Haliburton recorded 33 points and 15 assists with six 3s and no turnovers at Miami last week. The only other time that has happened in NBA history was on Nov. 14, 2023 — by Tyrese Haliburton.

With Nembhard back in the lineup, Haliburton finally looks free.

“Their importance to each other is evident,” Carlisle said. “They complement each other well. Andrew allows Ty to play off the ball and when Ty has the ball, Drew knows the game and knows how to play without the ball too.”

Indiana fell into a hole when Nembhard missed 12 straight games in November due to left knee tendinitis, but the Pacers have flipped their season around since his return in early December. He is the spirit of their defense and the glue to their offense. Multiple players on the team called him their X-factor to winning.

They enter Friday’s game versus Golden State at 10-3 since Dec. 13, ranking fourth in the league in net rating at plus-8.7 over that stretch, per Cleaning the Glass. Indiana (20-18) has gone from 11th to sixth place in the Eastern Conference entering Friday, and Haliburton is finally starting to look like the All-Star he was a season ago.

He’s averaging 20.4 points and 9.6 assists per game while shooting 40.2 percent from 3 during this time. Of the 25 lineups with at least 300 possessions played this season, the Pacers’ starting group with Nembhard has the league’s best defensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass.

They are finally coming together now that Haliburton has the backcourt partner he needs to free up his game, looking like an evolution of the team that nearly beat the Celtics four times in the conference finals but never sneaked away with a win.

As Carlisle made clear recently during a West Coast trip in late December, the Pacers welcome all those expectations that were earned from last season’s run.

“We’re trying to win a championship,” he reminded a room full of reporters.

His presence alone is proof positive of their mission, as the coach who won it all with Dallas in 2011 came to Indiana a decade later with the expressed intent of turning this team into a legitimate title contender.

Their group moved closer toward that goal with the Pascal Siakam trade last season, landing the two-time All-Star forward who signed a four-year, $189.5 million extension in the summer. And when the Pacers stumbled early — due to a rash of injuries to nearly half of Indiana’s rotation — Carlisle wasn’t about to let any of the outside skepticism seep into his program. So he kept pushing.

“There’s nothing wrong with high expectations,” said the 65-year-old Carlisle, who is 11th all-time in wins among coaches. “What you don’t want is a situation of apathy, where expectations are low and all you’re ever doing is selling hope. That’s not why I came here, that’s not why (Pacers president of basketball operations) Kevin Pritchard is doing his job and that’s not what our ownership is about.”

Health remains an issue. Small forward Aaron Nesmith (left ankle) has been out since Nov. 1. There was the Nembhard injury. Second-year guard Ben Sheppard missed a month with an oblique and rib injury. Big men Isaiah Jackson and James Wiseman, who were slated to support Turner down low as key reserves, both suffered torn Achilles’ tendons within days of one another at the start of the season. The Pacers had to hit the transaction market earlier than expected to bring in Thomas Bryant as the new backup big.

The Pacers are over .500 now, but their identity is solidifying as the team gets closer to full health. The championship aspirations that seemed farfetched a few weeks ago are at least reasonable once again.

“It’s just not being satisfied. That was the message in training camp,” Turner said. “Obviously, we had a hell of a run last year, but let’s stop talking about last year. That’s over and done with. And yeah, we’re pushing toward a (NBA) Finals run. That’s really where all of our eyes should be in this locker room.”

The fans still flooding Haliburton’s mentions will probably laugh at that notion. He is still searching for consistency and will have to push through his latest mild ankle sprain to ensure he doesn’t fall back into old habits again. But he won’t have to face that music now unless he wants to.

“(Fans) can’t wait for a team to be doing bad so people can dunk on you on Twitter, you know what I mean? The s— is so stupid,” Haliburton said. “It’s just part of it. People want to see us not do well so they can talk s—.”

Now that Haliburton is in a better place, maybe he can crack his phone open, see a bunch of trash emojis and crack a smile. They can talk all they want, but he’s ready to clap back on his terms, one drive at a time.

(Top photo of Haliburton: Catalina Fragoso / NBAE via Getty Images)