Welcome to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the story behind the stories from the last week on court. This week, the coveted Masters 1000 in Rome ran its first week and the stories on court were matched by the drama off it. Novak Djokovic exited, struck by a water bottle, Rafael Nadal took the next step in his comeback, and the on-court spectacle was overtaken by some strange umpiring.

And is everybody injured now?

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Are all these injuries signal or noise?

Friday lunchtime in Rome and the Foro Italico briefly felt like an infirmary, as one medical bulletin followed another.

First, defending champion Elena Rybakina withdrew because of illness, before the first matches of the day on the Campo Centrale and Pietrangeli courts ended in retirements: Lorenzo Musetti (virus) on the former, Anna Blinkova (ankle) on the latter.

Later in the day, world No 7 Casper Ruud battled a back problem in his defeat to Miomir Kecmanovic, who had a similar injury and said afterwards that he took three kinds of pills to numb the pain.

The Italian Open had already seen two of the men’s favourites, Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, pull out with fitness issues before it had begun. Defending champion Daniil Medvedev arrived carrying an issue in his upper leg. Elsewhere on Friday, Dominic Thiem announced he would retire later in the year because of his long-standing wrist problem.

So, does tennis have an issue with injuries?

It was a talking point throughout the first week in Rome and Danielle Collins, who benefited from Blinkova’s retirement, told The Athletic after the match that this kind of situation is an occupational hazard given tennis’s relentless schedule.

“It’s to be expected when we have this many tournaments back to back to back,” she said. “It’s a physical sport and when people are going far and playing lots of matches, injuries and illnesses will pop up.

“I’m not surprised. It’s a long season — everyone deals with injuries or illness during the season.”

A couple of days earlier, Medvedev played down the withdrawals: “Injuries, in general, are coincidence unless it’s the same injury for everyone.”

Grigor Dimitrov, the world No 10 and a relative veteran at 32, offered a different perspective: “We’ve seen a lot more retirements in the last two and a half years because the sport is a lot more demanding.”

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Can Kerber and Osaka crack the comeback (on clay?)

Naomi Osaka and Angelique Kerber are really good tennis players, and giving birth wasn’t going to change that.

That doesn’t mean coming back is easy. Tennis doesn’t protect player rankings during maternity leave, so women can get thrown to the wolves in the early rounds of tournaments and struggle to find wins when they need them most. Osaka and Kerber have been dealing with that these past months, showing flashes of their past Grand Slam-winning selves, but also periods of inconsistency that can spell doom in two-of-three-set tennis.

Osaka has embraced clay this week (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

But in Rome, Kerber is back in another Masters 1000 round of 16, where she will have her work cut out against Iga Swiatek, the world No 1. Reaching the second week already counts as a victory for Kerber, who is only in month five of her comeback. With her best career results on grass and hard courts, she’s not a player any seed wants to face this summer.

Osaka’s coach, Wim Fissette set her the goal of returning to form for this year’s hard swing in North America, but Osaka is famously impatient and newly redoubtable on the red stuff. Rome has arguably been her best week, with wins over Marta Kostyuk, one of the best players this year, and Daria Kasatkina, maybe the world’s smartest player. Next up was Australian Open finalist Zheng Qinwen, who is 21 years old and relished the match-up, taking out an errant Osaka in straight sets.

That defeat doesn’t discredit Osaka’s commitment to improving on a surface she normally doesn’t relish at all. Osaka lost early in Madrid and went to Mallorca to train before Rome. “I watched some videos,” she said. “I watched Rafa. I watched Alcaraz. I watched Rublev, which is very inspiring. He’s smacking the ball and I thought, ‘I don’t want to have regrets when I leave the court’. In Madrid, I did have regrets of not swinging fully.”

No regrets? Sounds good.

Out in the tramlines: Should umpires be part of the show?

The rise of electronic line calling (ELC) means that umpires are increasingly peripheral figures in tennis.

Clay is slightly different, with tournaments, including the Italian Open, still relying on them popping off their chairs to inspect ball marks.

During a tight final set between British world No 67 Dan Evans and home favourite Fabio Fognini on Thursday night, Fognini scooped a forehand drive volley short and wide — too wide. The line judge responsible for the singles sideline initially put out an arm to stipulate it was out; the Hawk-Eye evidence indicated it was out; umpire Mohamed Lahyani insisted it was not.

“You couldn’t show me the mark, the ball didn’t hit the f*****g line,” as Evans put it.

Lahyani’s appetite for spectacle has irked players (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

Lahyani insisted during the argument that the line judge had called the ball in, which appeared not to be the case. The incident came a year after Evans’ compatriot Andy Murray got in a similar argument with Lahyani — against the same opponent and at the same tournament.

The back-and-forth continued, and Evans was given a code violation warning for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Some would argue this wasn’t entirely coincidental. Lahyani is happy to get involved in matches — sometimes too much, like six years ago when he gave Nick Kyrgios a mid-match pep talk, subsequently earning a suspension from the ATP. In Rome, there was the surreal sight of Lahyani getting mobbed by spectators on the grounds of the Foro Italico. Officials are generally not revered in this way, and at last year’s tournament, Djokovic took the umpire to task for it, asking him “what is the drama” and “are you acting here” during a row over calling the score.

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Why did so many people think someone threw a bottle at Djokovic?

The widespread assumption on Friday night that Djokovic had been deliberately rather than accidentally struck by a water bottle broadly came about for a couple of reasons.

The first was that the original footage made it look that way.

The second, and more revealing, reason is that someone hating Djokovic enough to lob a bottle at him didn’t seem especially far-fetched. And maybe those preconceptions informed why so many assumed it was deliberate from the jump — not just his most dedicated fans, but tennis social media aggregators, figureheads, and Boris Becker.

Djokovic’s divisiveness is well-documented, with an army of supporters and his litany of staggering achievements not belying a huge number of detractors. Without re-litigating all that here, the hostility originally stemmed from the rivalry he enjoyed with the largely beloved Nadal and Roger Federer.

It has intensified over the last few years.

Djokovic often finds a sense of humour in conducting partisan crowds (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

He has arguably surpassed both in terms of achievement with comparatively little fanfare; his decision not to get the Covid-19 vaccine, which he always stressed was a personal choice, has invited opprobrium and unwittingly made him a poster boy for groups who believe that choice is a victory against the establishment.

There have been other controversies — at the Australian Open last year, his father was pictured with Vladimir Putin supporters; in the first week of last year’s French Open, he wrote “Kosovo is the (heart symbol) of Serbia” on a television camera in response to violent clashes in Kosovo, putting himself once more in the middle of a battle that has plagued the Balkans for nearly 1,000 years and drawing accusations of aligning himself with fascism and philosophies that led to ethnic cleansing.

Djokovic said both were misinterpreted.

Thankfully Djokovic wasn’t attacked on Friday and, by the following day, he was making light of the incident, arriving at the Foro Italico wearing a bike helmet before his defeat to Alejandro Tabilo.

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No-shot of the week

Club players of the world: does this look familiar?

Left on purpose, @dThiagoMonteiro 😉#IBI24 pic.twitter.com/dEzRP3Mk8N

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) May 8, 2024

Shot of the week

Club players of the world: does this look familiar?

Oh no he didn’t… 😱@dThiagoMonteiro with one of the shots of the week in Rome!#IBI24 pic.twitter.com/4WB864fuZS

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) May 10, 2024

Recommended reading:

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP: 

📍Rome, Italian Open (1000) second week, ft. Stefanos Tstitsipas, Alejandro Tabilo, Thiago Monteiro, Grigor Dimitrov
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA:

📍Rome, Italian Open (1000) second week, ft. Iga Swiatek, Aryna Sabalenka, Elena Rybakina, Coco Gauff.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments as the tours continue.

(Top photos: Mike Hewitt; Alex Pantling; Dan Isitene/Getty Images)

Detroit Lions draft pick Terrion Arnold spoke about his mother on Saturday during the second day of rookie minicamp and underscored how she lit the competitive fire in him.

He said Tamala Arnold and him would continually go back-and-forth against each other when he was younger and that the nature of the competitiveness would get intense at times.

“When I was a kid, when I used to beat my mom at racing, I had to continually beat her,” he said, via AL.com. “We used to fight when I was younger, just wrestling with her or playing around. Like, man, I’ll never forget one time my mom kicked my tooth out because we were just going at it so hard.”

“If my mom was out here right now, and she lined up across from me as a receiver, I would jam her into the dirt. That’s my mindset. And my mom knows that. I just mean in the simple aspect of football-wise, that’s just the way that I think and the way that I was brought up.”

Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold performs during a drill during an NFL rookie football practice on Friday, May 10, 2024, in Allen Park, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

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Arnold later explained that he meant to convey that he was not “one not to be played with” even as he started his rookie season.

Before the Lions selected him with the No. 24 pick of the NFL Draft in April, he paid tribute to Tamala at the NFL Scouting Combine.

He praised her for all the adversity she overcame to raise him.

Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold talks to the media after an NFL rookie football practice, Friday, May 10, 2024, in Allen Park, Michigan. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

Arnold was a First-Team All-American and First-Team All-SEC in his final year at Alabama in 2023. He had five interceptions and 63 total tackles.

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Bronny James has been cleared by NBA doctors to participate in the league’s draft combine, sources not authorized to speak publicly about the matter confirmed to The Times.

James, who played at USC last season, suffered sudden cardiac arrest prior to his freshman year.

A former McDonald’s All-American who starred at Sierra Canyon, James returned to play on Dec. 10 after suffering the heart issue during a workout on USC’s campus on July 24. He was eventually diagnosed with a congenital heart defect

In 25 games with USC, he averaged 4.8 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists.

The Athletic reported James intends to stay in the draft.

Despite the modest statistics, James could get selected in the second round of the draft because some scouts like his defense and IQ.

His father, the Lakers’ LeBron James, can become an unrestricted free agent. And while he spoke in the past about a desire to play with his son in the NBA, LeBron James has walked that back publicly, saying he wants his son to land in the best possible situation.

“That’s a young man who will decide what he wants to do and I ain’t going to say … where to go,” LeBron James said after the Lakers’ final game. “I just think the fact that we are even having the conversation is pretty cool in the sense of that. But we’ll see what happens.”