Tennis

4:45 PM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com The expectations were high for Ashleigh Barty entering Roland Garros. The world No. 1 won the French Open title in 2019, and she showed evidence of her returned championship form on clay during lead-in events after opting out of the event in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. She collected

9:24 AM ET ESPN News Services Americans Cori Gauff, Sloane Stephens and Sofia Kenin all won their matches Thursday to reach the third round of the French Open Gauff is living up to her career-best ranking of No. 25, advancing by beating Qiang Wang 6-3, 7-6 (1). Gauff earned her first clay-court final when she

9:50 AM ET As he approaches his 23rd birthday in August, Stefanos Tsitsipas has already achieved more than most tennis players ever will: seven career titles (including the 2019 ATP Finals and the 2021 Monte Carlo Masters, his first 1000-level win), three Grand Slam semifinal appearances. Entering the French Open, he had won 25 matches

6:20 PM ET Simon Cambers PARIS — At last year’s French Open, amid the gloom and cold, one thing shone more brightly than anything else: the drop shot. In French, it’s called l’amorti, (the literal translation of which means “cushioning”), and during the cooler, autumn conditions of the 2020 pandemic-altered Roland Garros, it was the

7:05 PM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com The four women who have beaten Serena Williams in major finals since she returned from childbirth are no longer in Paris for the French Open. Simona Halep pulled out because of injury before the tournament got underway. Angelique Kerber and Bianca Andreescu were upset in the first round. Naomi Osaka

10:52 AM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com Coco Gauff and Venus Williams fell in their first-round doubles match at the French Open on Wednesday. Playing Ellen Perez and Saisai Zheng, the tournament’s No. 13 seeds, in front of a lively crowd on Court 9, the pair won a tiebreak to take the first set but ultimately lost

8:45 PM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com The sun had long set and there were no fans remaining in the stands by the end of Carla Suarez Navarro‘s first-round match against Sloane Stephens on Tuesday night at the French Open. But the smattering of people who remained in the stadium at Court Simonne-Mathieu — mostly the players’

3:13 PM ET ESPN News Services PARIS — American teenager Coco Gauff has won her first match as a seeded player at any Grand Slam tournament. 2 Related Gauff, 17, erased set points before pulling out the opening tiebreaker and went on to beat Aleksandra Krunic 7-6 (11), 6-4 Tuesday at the French Open. Gauff

2:06 PM ET Associated Press The leaders of the four Grand Slam tournaments reacted Tuesday to tennis star Naomi Osaka‘s stunning withdrawal from the French Open by promising to address players’ concerns about mental health. The pledge came in a statement signed by the same four tennis administrators who threatened the possibility of disqualification or

5:12 AM ET Japan joined leading figures in tennis in rallying around Naomi Osaka on Tuesday after the world number two withdrew from the French Open in a row about post-match media duties, saying she had been suffering from “depression” and “anxiety.” One of the biggest names in sport, Osaka stunned the tennis world when

5:59 PM ET Simon Cambers When Roland Garros added night sessions to its schedule for the first time this year, the French Open organizers knew they would need a star for the opening night. Step forward, Serena Williams. Though there were no fans allowed inside the Court Philippe Chatrier stadium Monday night, due to the

2:07 PM ET Naomi Osaka has withdrawn from the French Open, saying Monday that she will “take some time away from the court” one day after she was fined and threatened harsher sanctions for skipping her mandatory media obligations. Osaka, in a statement posted to social media, said she “never wanted to be a distraction”

10:28 AM ET Simon Cambers Something strange happened to Daniil Medvedev on the way to Roland Garros. He started to believe he can play on clay. Few top players in recent memory have been as open about their distaste for a surface as Medvedev. The Russian comes to Paris as the world No. 2, but

10:50 AM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com With the eyes of the tennis world locked on her, Naomi Osaka quietly strode to victory Sunday during one of the first matches of the 2021 French Open. The four-time major champion took the court at Philippe-Chatrier to face Patricia Maria Tig engulfed in controversy following Osaka’s decision not to

6:00 AM ET D’Arcy MaineESPN.com SEBASTIAN KORDA COULDN’T believe what he was seeing. It was the first day of his two-week preseason training block in Las Vegas and across the net was his father, Petr, the 1998 Australian Open champion who reached the world No. 2 ranking. Next to him was Steffi Graf, the 22-time

4:27 PM ET While the French Open returns to its normal May/June time slot after the COVID-19 pandemic pushed last year’s edition of the Grand Slam event to the fall, there is still one constant: Everyone on the men’s side will be trying to figure out how to beat the King of Clay. Four-time defending

1:55 PM ET Associated Press PARMA, Italy — Sebastian Korda won his first ATP trophy with a straight-sets victory over Italian wild-card Marco Cecchinato at the Emilia-Romagna Open on Saturday. Korda became the first American man in 11 years to lift a trophy on European clay, since Sam Querrey won in Belgrade in 2010. The

11:27 AM ET Associated Press BELGRADE, Serbia — Novak Djokovic warmed up for the French Open by beating Alex Molcan 6-4, 6-3 to take his 83rd career title Saturday on home soil at the Belgrade Open. Top-ranked Djokovic struggled on serve in the first set, as he was broken three times by his Slovakian opponent.