World
French Open players often make schedule requests. No one wanted to miss the Champions League final
PARIS (AP) — The French Open isn’t the only sports event in Europe drawing attention from tennis players: The Champions League final will decide the continent’s best soccer club, and one of the two teams involved Saturday night is Paris Saint-Germain, whose stadium is a couple of blocks from Roland-Garros.
Count Novak Djokovic among those rooting for PSG against Italy’s Inter Milan, and he hoped to be able to tune in on TV to watch the big clash that’ll be held in Munich, Germany. So Djokovic made that preference known to the people in charge of arranging the program at the clay-court Grand Slam tournament he’s won three times — a common practice, especially among the sport’s elite.
They often ask to be scheduled at a certain time. Or to avoid a certain time.
“I will definitely watch it if I’m not playing (in the) night session. Yeah, that will be nice,” Djokovic said with a big smile. “FYI, Roland-Garros schedule.”
Hint, hint. Except his plea went unheeded: When Saturday’s order of play was released Friday, 24-time major champion Djokovic’s third-round match against Filip Misolic was the one picked for under the lights at Court Philippe-Chatrier due to begin at 8:15 p.m. local time, 45 minutes before Inter Milan vs. PSG starts.
Others who begged off from competing at that hour got their wish. Although one, Arthur Fils, the 14th-seeded Frenchman who grew up near Paris and is a big PSG fan, wound up pulling out of the tournament because of a back injury after being placed in an afternoon match against No. 17 Andrey Rublev.
“We have many requests from players” every day, tournament director Amélie Mauresmo said. “There’s no fixed rule. We try to accommodate everyone as much as possible. That includes requests from players, broadcasters and spectators. … It’s a real puzzle, I won’t lie.”
Coco Gauff said she doesn’t often ask for a certain time slot, but when she does, it’s usually related to competing in singles and doubles on the same day (the American won the French Open doubles title last year but isn’t playing doubles this time).
The 2023 U.S. Open champion, who is currently No. 2 in singles, has noticed that events tend to listen more to elite players than others.
“If you’re ranked a little bit higher, they’ll hear more of your input, for sure,” Gauff said. “To be honest, I think it’s rightfully deserved. I feel like if you do well on tour, win so many tournaments, you should have a little bit more priority when it comes to that.”
Except even the very best of the best don’t always have success with these sorts of things.
Madison Keys, who was the U.S. Open runner-up in 2017 and won the Australian Open in January, knows what it’s like to be ignored.
“Sometimes the request goes (in), they write it down, and they say, ‘OK,’” but then don’t do anything about it, Keys said.
“I really think that it’s just kind of up to what the tournament wants, what TV wants, things like that,” she added. “Sometimes you kind of get what you ask for. And other times, you get the complete opposite.”
Just ask Djokovic.
“Whatever they schedule me, I have to accept,” he said earlier this season. “I think I earned my right to … (communicate) with the tournament management, where I can express what I would like, depending on a given day, depending on the opponent.”
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Associated Press writer Tom Nouvian contributed to this report.
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Howard Fendrich has been the AP’s tennis writer since 2002. Find his stories here: https://apnews.com/author/howard-fendrich. More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
World
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By Meg Felling
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World
Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’
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Greenland’s leadership is pushing back on President Donald Trump as he and his administration call for the U.S. to take control of the island. Several Trump administration officials have backed the president’s calls for a takeover of Greenland, with many citing national security reasons.
“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night, according to The Associated Press. Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and a longtime U.S. ally, has repeatedly rejected Trump’s statements about U.S. acquiring the island.
Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that the island’s “future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”
“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.
TRUMP SAYS US IS MAKING MOVES TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND ‘WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT’
Greenland has rejected the Trump administration’s push to take over the Danish territory. (Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump was asked about the push to acquire Greenland on Friday during a roundtable with oil executives. The president, who has maintained that Greenland is vital to U.S. security, said it was important for the country to make the move so it could beat its adversaries to the punch.
“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”
Trump hosted nearly two dozen oil executives at the White House on Friday to discuss investments in Venezuela after the historic capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.
“We don’t want to have Russia there,” Trump said of Venezuela on Friday when asked if the nation appears to be an ally to the U.S. “We don’t want to have China there. And, by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which, if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That’s not going to happen.”
Trump said the U.S. is in control of Venezuela after the capture and extradition of Maduro.
Nielsen has previously rejected comparisons between Greenland and Venezuela, saying that his island was looking to improve its relations with the U.S., according to Reuters.
A “Make America Go Away” baseball cap, distributed for free by Danish artist Jens Martin Skibsted, is arranged in Sisimiut, Greenland, on March 30, 2025. (Juliette Pavy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
FROM CARACAS TO NUUK: MADURO RAID SPARKS FRESH TRUMP PUSH ON GREENLAND
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Trump’s threats to annex Greenland could mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
“I also want to make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. Including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.
That same day, Nielsen said in a statement posted on Facebook that Greenland was “not an object of superpower rhetoric.”
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stands next to Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen on April 28, 2025. (Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
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White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller doubled down on Trump’s remarks, telling CNN in an interview on Monday that Greenland “should be part of the United States.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Miller about whether the Trump administration could rule out military action against the Arctic island.
“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
What Canada, accustomed to extreme winters, can teach Europe
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