D2 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, MAY 26 , 2022
PRO BASKETBALL
Amid slow start, Fever
fires Stanley as coach
The Indiana Fever fired coach
Marianne Stanley on Wednesday
with the team off to a 2-7 start in
her third season and promoted
assistant Carlos Knox to interim
coach.
The 68-year-old Hall of Famer’s
teams won just 14 games in a little
more than two seasons with the
WNBA club.
“With this new group of
players, it is time for our
organization to go in a different
direction,” interim general
manager Lin Dunn said in a
statement.
I ndiana won just six games
each of the two previous seasons.
This season only the 1-5 New York
Liberty has fewer wins.
Stanley was in the final year of
her contract. Knox was a star
college player at IUPUI and
played for the Indiana Pacers
from 1998 to 1999.
Stanley has spent 45 years in
coaching, including 22 years at
the college level with Old
Dominion, Pennsylvania,
Southern California, Stanford
and California. She also coached
the Washington Mystics in 2002
and 2003.
S tanley is set to be enshrined
into the Naismith Memorial
Basketball Hall of Fame on
Sept. 10.
SOCCER
B arcelona’s first match in
Australia ended in a 3-2 victory in
Sydney over an A-League all-star
team, with substitute Ansu Fati
scoring the winning goal.
Before 70,174 spectators at the
Olympic Stadium, Barcelona led
1-0 at halftime after Ousmane
Dembele scored in the bottom
right corner in the 34th minute.
Rene Piscopo leveled for the
all-stars in the 47th minute, and
the home side took the lead when
Adama Traore scored in the 53rd.
But his opposing namesake —
Adama Traore — leveled for
Barcelona in the 72nd minute
before Fati’s winner five minutes
later.
“Tactically, [ the all-stars] were
very good,” Barcelona Coach Xavi
said. “They created chances in
transition, and we suffered a lot. It
was a big surprise for us because I
don’t follow the A-League a lot.”
B arcelona w as without injured
Gerard Pique , Pedri , Sergio
Roberto , Eric Garcia and
Sergiño Dest....
L iverpool midfielder Thiago
Alcantara could be fit for
Saturday’s Champions League
final against Real Madrid despite
missing training with an injury.
The Spain international came
off with an Achilles’ tendon injury
in the 3-1 win vs. Wolverhampton
on Sunday, but Liverpool
Manager Jürgen Klopp said the
problem “was not that bad.”
Another Liverpool midfielder,
Fabinho , trained after missing
the team’s past three matches
because of a hamstring injury....
A C Milan forward Zlatan
Ibrahimovic had surgery on his
left knee a nd faces up to eight
months on the sidelines — if he
decides to continue his playing
career.
Ibrahimovic missed large
portions of Milan’s title-winning
campaign with injury. The
4 0-year-old Swede made
23 appearances in Italy’s Serie A,
though most of them were off the
bench.
Milan said the knee operation,
which was performed in France,
had been scheduled for a while
“to definitively resolve the joint’s
instability.”
Ibrahimovic’s contract ends
this year....
In Tirana, Albania, Italian club
Roma c laimed its first European
title in more than six decades.
Nicolò Zaniolo scored in the
first half, goalkeeper Rui Patrício
made some big saves in the
second and Roma beat
Feyenoord, 1-0, to win the
inaugural edition of the third-tier
Europa Conference League.
It’s Roma’s first European
trophy since it won the 1961 Inter-
Cities Fairs Cup — a tournament
considered to be the precursor to
the UEFA Cup and Europa League.COLLEGES
In Charlotte, Jaime Ferrer and
James Tibbs each had a two-run
double, Alex Toral capped the six-
run second inning with a two-run
homer and ninth-seeded Florida
State routed fifth-seeded Virginia,
13-3, i n the first round of the ACC
baseball tournament.
The Seminoles (34-22) face
fourth-seeded Notre Dame on
Thursday before the Irish cap
pool play against Virginia on
Friday.
Colton Vincent led Florida
State with three hits, with five
other players having two hits.
Toral drove in four runs, and
Reese Albert had a two-run
homer in the seventh inning.
Brian Gursky , who entered
with a 7-1 record and a 3.32 ERA
for the Cavaliers (38-16), did not
make it out of the third inning
and faced only 14 batters....
Rose Zhang wrapped up her
match with a two-putt par on the
17th hole after Sofie Kibsgaard
Nielson received a bizarre
penalty, and Stanford beat
Oregon, 3-2, in Scottsdale, Ariz.,
for its second national
championship.
The Ducks lost the first two
matches but rallied to win the
next two, leaving it up to Zhang
and Kibsgaard Nielson at
Grayhawk Golf Club.
Leading 2 up, Zhang hit her tee
shot into the rough short of the
par-4 17th. Kibsgaard Nielson did
not see the ball and rolled over it
with her push cart.
Kibsgaard incurred a one-shot
penalty — it wouldn’t have been
in stroke play — and Zhang made
a 15-foot par putt for the Pac-12’s
unprecedented 200th women’s
NCAA title across all sports.CYCLING
Richard Carapaz maintained
his slim overall lead in the Giro
d’Italia after a tough 17th stage
that was won by Santiago
Buitrago for his first grand tour
victory.
Carapaz remained three
seconds ahead of 2020 runner-up
Jai Hindley — with just four days
of racing remaining — after both
crossed the line together at the
end of the 168-kilometer
( 104-mile) route from Ponte di
Legno to Lavarone, which packed
in almost 4,000 meters
(13,000 feet) of climbing.
— From news servicesDIGESTTELEVISION AND RADIO
MLB
12:30 p.m. Chicago Cubs at Cincinnati » MLB Network
6:30 p.m. New York Yankees at Tampa Bay » MLB Network
7 p.m. Colorado at Washington » MASN, WJFK (106.7 FM)
9:30 p.m. Toronto at Los Angeles Angels » MLB Network
STANLEY CUP PLAYOFFS
7 p.m. Eastern Conference semifinals, Game 5: New York Rangers at Carolina »
ESPN
9:30 p.m. Western Conference semifinals, Game 5: Edmonton at Calgary » ESPN
NBA PLAYOFFS
9 p.m. Western Conference finals, Game 5: Dallas at Golden State » TNT
GOLF
7:30 a.m. DP World Tour: Dutch Open, first round » Golf Channel
1 p.m. PGA Tour Champions: Senior PGA Championship, first round » Golf Channel
4 p.m. PGA Tour: Charles Schwab Challenge, first round » Golf Channel
7 p.m. LPGA Tour: Match Play, day two » Golf Channel
SOCCER
1 p.m. French Ligue 2: Saint-Etienne at Auxerre » beIN Sports
6 p.m. Copa Libertadores, group B: Strongest at Libertad » beIN Sports
8 p.m. Copa Libertadores, group E: Deportivo Cali at Boca Juniors » beIN Sports
TENNIS
5 a.m. French Open, second round » Tennis Channel
7 a.m. French Open, second round » MASN2
COLLEGE BASEBALL — CONFERENCE TOURNAMENTS
10 a.m. Big Ten, loser bracket: Iowa vs. Penn State » Big Ten Network
10:30 a.m. SEC, winner bracket: Florida vs. Texas A&M » SEC Network
11 a.m. ACC, pool B: Georgia Tech vs. Louisville » MASN2
Noon Pac-12, loser bracket: Arizona State vs. Oregon » Pac-12 Network
12:45 p.m. Pac-12, loser bracket: Teams TBD » Pac-12 Network
2 p.m. SEC, loser brackets: Vanderbilt vs. Tennessee » SEC Network
2 p.m. Big Ten, winner bracket: Illinois vs. Michigan » Big Ten Network
3 p.m. ACC, pool D: Notre Dame vs. Florida State » MASN2
5 p.m. Big 12, winner bracket: TCU vs. Texas » ESPNU
5:30 p.m. SEC, winner bracket: Kentucky vs. LSU » SEC Network
6 p.m. Big Ten, loser bracket: Maryland vs. Indiana » Big Ten Network
7 p.m. ACC, pool A: Virginia Tech vs. Clemson » MASN2
7:45 p.m. Pac-12, winner bracket: Stanford vs. Arizona » Pac-12 Network
8:30 p.m. Big 12, Texas Tech vs. Oklahoma » ESPNU
9 p.m. SEC, winner bracket: TBD vs. TBD » SEC Network
10 p.m. Big Ten, winner bracket: Teams TBD » Big Ten Network
11:30 p.m. Pac-12, winner bracket: Teams TBD » Big Ten Network
COLLEGE SOFTBALL — SUPER REGIONALS
7 p.m. Texas at Arkansas » ESPN2
9:30 p.m. Clemson at Oklahoma State » ESPN2
completeness of her game, the
Grand Slam titles on clay, grass
and hard court. And she spent
weeks in the offseason practicing
how to counter Barty’s devilish
slice, having lost to Barty in their
two previous meetings.
“I was crying for a long time,”
Swiatek told reporters the next
morning as the Miami Open got
underway. “There was lot of con-
fusion in me, for sure. But also
sadness....
“When I think of the player that
is really complete in terms of
physicality, mentality, tennis-
wise, I always thought of Ash. And
I always looked up to her. I mean,
I still do.
“On the other hand, there are
many players who I have great
competition against. We’re not
going to be bored.”that year’s French Open girls’
doubles title, Swiatek hasn’t lost
her tennis fandom.
She vividly remembers the awe
she felt attending her first pro
tournament in her native Poland
as a young fan, as well as the
nerves she battled as a ball kid a
few years later, worried she
wouldn’t be able to throw the
tennis ball all the way to Caroline
Wozniacki.
She keeps the player auto-
graphs she collected in her fam-
ily’s attic. She blushes when hear-
ing compliments from other play-
ers, and she spoke openly about
weeping nearly all night in her
Miami hotel room when she
learned that Barty was retiring.
She considered Barty a bench-
mark for so much she aspires to —
the variety of her strokes, theer. She competes with palpable
joy in the game — a love of compe-
tition and hunger to improve
that’s reminiscent of Nadal, who
has long been her idol.
She has studied his game, just
as she has studied his humility,
and is making a conscious effort
to emulate both, as she explained
in a column she wrote this year for
BBC, describing how “down to
earth” Nadal was when she first
met him.
“He was really humble and it
doesn’t seem like the success has
changed him,” Swiatek wrote. “If
I’m going to win more Grand
Slam titles and have more success
in my career then I hope I will be
like Rafa.”
Just a few years removed from
the top junior ranks, winning
Wimbledon’s 2018 girls’ title andachieved on court of late that has
made her the prohibitive favorite
to win this year’s French Open,
opening her Paris campaign on a
28-match winning streak.
Even before the slew of first-
and second-round upsets
wreaked havoc on the field, she
was the player no woman wanted
to face. She was also the unani-
mous pick to win the French Open
of ESPN’s 13-member panel of
tennis analysts.
“I think she goes in as the
biggest favorite since [2014],
when Serena Williams was the
dominant player,” said Pam Shriv-
er, who won four French Open
doubles titles during her Hall of
Fame career and is covering the
tournament for Tennis Channel.
“Her game is built around the
forehand, just being able to pun-
ish you to both corners.... To win
this many tournaments in a row,
beating virtually all of your fellow
top-10ers and beating a few of
them a couple of times, it’s really
Serena-like.”
Though Swiatek skipped Ma-
drid’s clay-court tournament this
month with an ailing right shoul-
der, she showed no lingering ef-
fects in her first-round match,
breezing past Ukraine’s Lesia
Tsurenko, 6-2, 6-0, in just 54 min-
utes.
“She’s playing just incredible
now,” Tsurenko said. “Almost all
of the shots are like very close to
the lines, which makes [it] very
tough. To create something
[against her] is very tough.”
Asked afterward whether she
had seen a fan’s sign that read,
“Swiatek may never lose again!”
she smiled.
“I’m pretty sure that I am going
to lose at some point,” Swiatek
said. “I also want to be ready for
that and be aware that there are
many players out there who can
play great tennis and who are
really dangerous.”
Like Rafael Nadal, who won the
first four of his men’s-record
21 Grand Slam titles on the
French Open’s clay before adapt-
ing his game to triumph on Wim-
bledon’s grass and the U.S. Open
and Australian hard courts, Swi-
atek has worked intently to shore
up weaknesses in her repertoire.
While her strength is her fore-
hand, she has improved her back-
hand and bolstered her serve.
And on clay, a surface that trips up
players unaccustomed to sliding,
her movement is a terrific asset.
But what has elevated her
game, she believes, is the aggres-
sive mind-set that she has adopt-
ed under the tutelage of her new
coach, Tomasz Wiktorowski.
“For sure he helped me to
change my attitude toward my
game,” Swiatek said in March. “He
convinced me to just play more
aggressively. Before I didn’t really
think it was my kind of game.
Right now I feel like most of the
success that I had this season was
because of that.”
It’s not just the caliber of her
strokes, tactics and footwork that
make Swiatek a must-watch play-FRENCH OPEN FROM D1Swiatek is looking unstoppable in ParisADAM PRETTY/GETTY IMAGES
World No. 1 Iga Swiatek stretched her winning streak to 29 matches after beating L esia Tsurenko.BY HOWARD FENDRICHparis — This was the sort of point
in the sort of contest that, if
19-year-old Carlos Alcaraz even-
tually reaches the heights so
many believe he will, the lucky
folks on hand at Court Simonne
Mathieu on Wednesday night just
might regale dinner guests for
years with tales that begin, “We
were there when.. .”
Not, mind you, the match point
Alcaraz saved in his second-round
French Open marathon against
Albert Ramos-Vinolas, a fellow
Spaniard who is 15 years his elder.
That one, necessary as it was, of
course, to the eventual 6-1, 6-7
(9-7), 5-7, 7-6 (7-2), 6-4 outcome in
the sixth-seeded Alcaraz’s favor,
was rather mundane: a three-
stroke exchange that ended with
Ramos-Vinolas pushing a ner-
vous-looking forehand into the
net while serving for the win at
5-4 in the fourth set.
No, instead, let’s examine what
happened on a break point at 4-4
in the fifth, with Alcaraz leading,
Ramos-Vinolas serving, the
crowd holding its breath and the
stadium clock already reading 4
hours 31 minutes. On the sixth of
what would become 15 strokes,
Alcaraz tried one of his feathery
drop shots. Ramos-Vinolas got to
it and responded by sending the
ball off the baseline, forcing Al-
caraz to race to his left to flick a
no-look backhand lob.
Ramos-Vinolas replied with an
overhead to that corner, sending
Alcaraz well wide of the doubles
alley for another defensive back-
hand lob. Vinolas-Ramos guided
this one to the opposite corner,pushing Alcaraz to his forehand
side, so he sprinted, then slid
almost into the splits, to retrieve
that one. Yet another lob pro-
duced yet another overhead,
again back to Alcaraz’s left, and
this time he came up with a down-
the-line backhand passing shot
that Ramos-Vinolas volleyed into
the net.
Some in the crowd were on
their feet during that series of
exchanges; all were by the end.
Ramos-Vinolas chucked his rack-
et into the net. Alcaraz raised his
arms and index fingers to the sky
— a gesture for “No. 1,” a spot
expected of him one day, perhaps
soon — while in the stands, his
coach, 2003 French Open cham-
pion Juan Carlos Ferrero, pointed
to his temples. Alcaraz wouldn’t
cede another point.
“It’s great that the people talkabout you, think that I’m going to
be No. 1 in the world, but of course
it’s a little bit of pressure on me,”
Alcaraz said. “But I try not to
think about it.”
He had trailed by two sets to
one. He had been a point from
defeat. He had been down 3-0 in
the fifth set. He made 74 unforced
errors. He accumulated 31 break
points but frittered away 23 of
them. None of that mattered. On a
day he was not at his best — never
quite able to show off all of the
shot-making that carried him to a
tour-high four titles and a 30-3
record in 2022 and that this
month made him the first player
to beat Rafael Nadal and Novak
Djokovic at the same clay-court
tournament — he thought and
hustled his way through the finish
line.
“At the end of the third set, Ithought I was going to lose,” Al-
caraz said. “I knew I had to change
something or I would lose.”
The day also included straight-
set victories for defending cham-
pion Djokovic and 13-time cham-
pion Nadal, along with a come-
back from a two-set hole for No. 3
seed Alexander Zverev, who like
Alcaraz needed to save a match
point.
There were losses for reigning
U.S. Open champion Emma Rad-
ucanu — the 19-year-old’s French
Open debut ended against Aliak-
sandra Sasnovich with a 3-6, 6-1,
6-1 defeat — and No. 4 seed Maria
Sakkari, while Olympic gold med-
alist Belinda Bencic beat 2019 U.S.
Open champion Bianca Andrees-
cu, 6-2, 6-4. Seeded Americans
Coco Gauff, Amanda Anisimova
— who defeated Naomi Osaka in
the first round — Sebastian Korda
and John Isner advanced. So did
past Grand Slam champs Angel-
ique Kerber, Victoria Azarenka
and Sloane Stephens.
Most attention, however, was
on Alcaraz. He is skilled. He is
tenacious. He is young — in April
he became the youngest man to
break into the top 10 of the ATP
rankings since Nadal in 2005.
This is just the sixth Grand
Slam tournament for Alcaraz,
whose best showing was the U.S.
Open quarterfinals in September.
Alcaraz is 18-1 on clay this sea-
son, another reason his name is in
the discussion about who could
leave Roland Garros with the title.
That lone loss came at the Monte
Carlo Masters last month against
Korda — who happens to be Al-
caraz’s next opponent.
— Associated PressFRENCH OPENAlcaraz rallies to keep his promising season goingJEAN-FRANCOIS BADIAS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“At the end of the third set, I thought I was going to lose,” said
Carlos Alcaraz, 19, who defeated Albert Ramos-Vinolas in five sets.