D6 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, JULY 31 , 2019
ATP tour, Grand Slams, broad-
cast rights holders and tourna-
ments — to promote the game
more year round.
One roadblock to replicating
the kind of doubles on display at
the Citi Open this week is that
top singles players such as Tsitsi-
pas — No. 6 in the world in
singles and the top-seeded man
in the singles event in Washing-
ton — can’t often play singles and
doubles because of the strain it
puts on their schedule. It’s even
harder to play both events at
Grand Slams, where men must
play best-of-five sets.
But as Farah’s and Cabal’s
cracking serves, lightning-quick
returns and impeccable synchro-
nization reminded Monday and
Farah said in his news confer-
ence after, quality doubles play
exists whether singles players
participate or not.
“It’s out there, the product —
it’s a good product,” Farah said
with an edge in his voice. “There
just needs to be more attention.
That’s the only thing. Obviously
Murray helps, Kyrgios, Tsitsipas
helps, but even when they’re not
playing, there’s a good level being
played out there.
“We just need [the media], the
ATP, the social media, the Insta-
gram to promote those things. If
they do that, they’re going to
have a good product to sell.”
[email protected]Tsitsipas said. “People love it,
seeing something that they’re not
used to, and I think we can just
provide a lot of things for the
event and also have a bit more of
an interest going on around the
tournament.”
Even with Tsitsipas and Kyr-
gios gone, the men’s doubles
draw remains loaded.
Murray and his brother, Jamie,
who won the Citi Open men’s
doubles title last year with Brazil-
ian Bruno Soares, will face Wim-
bledon runners-up Nicolas Ma-
hut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin
on Wednesday. The 16-time
Grand Slam champion Bryan
brothers are also unseeded, be-
cause Bob is on the comeback
trail after a hip injury.
Jack Sock, known on the sin-
gles court but a winner of 14
doubles titles including three
Grand Slams, is teaming with
doubles great Leander Paes.
“The draw here is brilliant,”
Murray said. “People just enjoy
seeing people that are usually on
the opposite side of the net
competing together as well.
That’s fun... it’s just rare. We
don’t see it probably enough in
what we do. People like it. They
seem to enjoy it.”
Murray’s recent play has
caused an uptick in attention
paid to doubles this summer, but
he agreed that it is the responsi-
bility of the powers that be — the“Well, it was actually much
better than I thought it would
be,” Tsitsipas said afterward with
a smile, rocking on his heels like
a tickled schoolboy while Kyrgios
slouched next to him with a wry
grin.
The match featured high-qual-
ity tennis, a chance to watch stars
interact and a crowd-pleasing
Kyrgios trick shot. (“I was like,
‘Well, that’s typical!’” Tsitsipas
said.) But Tsitsipas’s and Kyr-
gios’s personalities shone bright-
est in a news conference after the
match. Asked what they learned
about each other’s games, the
answer played out like a bit:
Tsitsipas: “Oh, jeez, I mean,
the talent is here, just —”
Kyrgios: “Mental. I’m crazy, it’s
fine.”
Tsitsipas: “No, no, no, no! As I
said, very, very fun. I got to know
you a little more. I mean my thing
about you is — good.”
Kyrgios: “He smells good as
well. Every time he’d tell me
where to serve.. .”
Tsitsipas: “No, no, I really
enjoyed the company, the mo-
ments we shared together, lovely
to play again together one day.”
Kyrgios and Tsitsipas ended
their news conference with
smiles and a promise to play
together again.
“It's good promotion for the
tournament to have players like
us, I guess, playing doubles,”we took over,” Ein said. “When
you get these — not just great
players, but fabulous personal-
ities that fans love — we wanted
to bring the best of that to D.C.”
Ein began by suggesting that
Kyrgios and Tsitsipas, both in
town for the singles tournament,
team up in a mishmash of two
starkly contrasting personalities.
Then Ein scheduled their match
for prime time on the Rock Creek
Park Tennis Center stadium
court, 7 p.m. on Monday.
The two made an odd pair that
was even more compelling be-
cause Kyrgios has been known to
rib the Greek player on social
media.
Tsitsipas, an introspective
thinker who earnestly video
blogs about his travels in his
spare time, had never paired
with Kyrgios, the mercurial, sar-
castic Aussie. They lost to the
top-ranked doubles team — Co-
lombians Juan Sebastian Cabal
and Robert Farah, this year’s
Wimbledon champions — in
their first-round match, 6-3, 3-6,
10-5. But judging by how rowdy
the crowd was — screams of
“Colombiaaa!” for Cabal and
Farah mixed with loud applause
for points won by Tsitsipas and
Kyrgios — and how full the
stadium was, the outing was a
success.CITI OPEN FROM D1sport would move on.
Murray’s ravaged hip was bad
enough that he couldn’t fly
home immediately after the
match because merely sitting on
a plane would have been too
painful. But he also wanted to
ask his body one more question:
How might it respond to
another, different surgery? Bob
Bryan, the accomplished
American doubles player, had
become a text buddy of Murray
over the previous year, extolling
the virtues of a surgery in which
metal is inserted into the hip,
over the femur and into the
joint. It could be transformative
— not just for tennis, but for
life. Murray didn’t let January
end before he underwent the
procedure.
And now, a year after crying
into that towel, six months after
his muscles were cut open and
foreign objects were placed into
his body, Andy Murray is in
Washington again.
“I’m obviously back feeling
brilliant,” he said, “and I’m
happy.”
If you’re out watching Murray
this week, consider what it took
to achieve that happiness. He
and his body have reached a
truce. If the question is, “Can a
32-year-old former champion
with a surgically repaired hip
return to the form that once
defined him?” Murray has a
quick answer.
“There’s no good reason for
why I shouldn’t be able to,” he
said.
Welcome back, then, Andy.
Cheers.
[email protected]For more by Barry Svrluga, visit
washingtonpost.com/svrluga.bench, to that towel, to those
sobs. His first surgery on the
hip came in January 2018. He
withdrew from Wimbledon. He
hobbled through Washington.
His body was broken. His mind
realized it. Retirement seemed
imminent. There would have
been no shame. He arrived at
the Australian Open, laying out
his plans.
“I think I can kind of get
through this until Wimbledon,”
he said in January. “That’s
where I would like to,” and he
paused. This is emotional,
having your body tell you things
you don’t want to hear. “That’s
where I would like to stop, stop
playing. But I’m also not certain
I’m able to do that.”
What followed was an epic,
signature Murray performance
in the first round. He fell
behind Spain’s Roberto Bautista
Agut by two sets. He had no
business competing. He forced a
fifth. He could hardly move. He
did not want to lose.
But he did.
“If this was my last match,
what an amazing way to end,”
he told the crowd afterward. “I
gave, literally, everything I had.”
And then the sport tried to
give back to him. On the video
board came a montage of the
world’s best players, men and
women.
“Congratulations, buddy,”
Roger Federer said.
“Sometimes, life is not
perfect,” Rafael Nadal said. “I
just want to say thanks for all
the things you give to our
sport.”
“We had quite a journey,”
Novak Djokovic said.
A career would end,
acknowledged as legendary. Thephysical limitations, namely a
right hip that, by this year’s
Australian Open, “was
completely gone. It was
finished.”
Yet he is standing here in
Washington saying, quite
clearly, he is not finished.
“The question I sort of asked
more recently is: Why not?”
Murray said. “Why should I not
be able to get back to playing?
What’s the reason for why I
shouldn’t be able to get back to
where I was?”
Being a champion — which is
what Murray is, what with two
Wimbledon titles, a U.S. Open
victory and two Olympic gold
medals — requires a certain
level of defiance. It might not
even be hurt by a touch of
insanity. Lindsey Vonn has
skied to World Cup victories on
knees that shouldn’t have
supported her body. Tiger
Woods won a U.S. Open on a
broken leg. Michael Jordan
scored 38 points in an NBA
Finals game with debilitating
flulike symptoms. Overcoming
obstacles that would fell the
rest of us yields admiration. It
enhances legacies.
What we ask of athletes,
though, doesn’t compare to
what they ask of their own
bodies. Murray is here this week
with an understanding of his
limits, and that’s important. He
won’t play singles because his
body is not yet ready. For the
here and now, it’s doubles with
his brother, Jamie, beginning
Wednesday.
He will play, it seems, with
what amounts to a bounce in
his step, which is such a
contrast to the labored gait that,
a year ago, carried him to thatThe relationship
between an
athlete and his or
her body can be
tumultuous, filled
with dishonesty
on both sides.
The athlete can
ask too much,
ignoring the body, whether its
needs are more strength or
more rest, less pounding or
fewer workouts. The body then
responds with protest,
sometimes viciously, cruelly.
So it was that Andy Murray
found himself last summer on
the hard courts of Washington,
hobbling to the sanctuary of a
bench at 3 a.m. in a stadium
dotted with only the most
ardent fans. “I couldn’t walk,”
he recalled this week. The
bench was calling. He grabbed a
towel. His face fell into it. He
had won his match. Yet for
more than a minute, he sobbed.
“I was going through a tough
time,” Murray said.
Murray brought his body
back to Washington this week,
back to the Citi Open, where he
will slowly ask it to do what it
once did, which is play tennis at
the highest level. The 32-year-
old Scotsman was No. 1 in the
world as recently as 2017, was
the Wimbledon champ as
recently as 2016,
accomplishments that can
never be taken from him.
If those signatures feel long
ago, it’s because in the interim,
Murray’s body betrayed him.
When that happens, the battle
becomes twofold. Murray had to
fight the physical talents of
whichever opponent he faced.
For a time, that was nothing
compared to fighting his ownOften overlooked, doubles put on display at Citi Open
At truce with his body, ‘happy’ Murray battling back
Barry
SvrlugaKATHERINE FREY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Andy Murray exited last year’s Citi Open in tears. Six months after hip surgery, he begins play in doubles Wednesday at Rock Creek Park.BY AVA WALLACEThe Citi Open’s women’s event
lost its three top draws in first-
round action Tuesday when
teenage phenom Coco Gauff lost
to Zarina Diyas, 6-4, 6-2, top-
seeded Sloane Stephens fell to
Rebecca Peterson, 6-2, 7-5, and
second-seeded Madison Keys
lost to Washington native Hailey
Baptiste, 7-6 (7-4), 6-2.
Peterson, from Sweden, ad-
vances to face Camila Giorgi on
Thursday. Stephens has logged
three first-round exits and one
second-round exit in Washing-
ton since winning the title in
2015.
Gauff, playing under a brutal-
ly hot sun in the late afternoon,
lost her first main-draw match
since her dazzling run to the
fourth round at Wimbledon. Di-
yas, 25, who advances to play
fifth-seeded Lesia Tsurenko, was
the better server of the two and
Gauff sent far too many returns
into the net in part because of
sluggish footwork.
“One more step!” Gauff ex-
claimed often in the second set.
The 15-year-old wasn’t the
only one yelling. Gauff received
encouragement throughout the
match from an impassioned
crowd that crammed into the
second-biggest venue at Rock
Creek Park Tennis Center de-
spite the heat. The entire top row
of seats at Stadium Court, which
overlooks John Harris Court,
where Gauff played, was also full
of spectators with their backs to
the match happening on Sta-
dium Court and their eyes glued
on Gauff.
“I knew I would get some
more support, but I didn’t think
it would be that much.... I like
playing in front of crowds. It was
packed today,” Gauff said. “I’m
really happy for the support that
I’ve gotten here. It was a sad way
to finish the singles run, but I’m
excited to play doubles. Hopeful-
ly people still come out.”
Gauff and Catherine McNally
play Yu-Chieh Hsieh and Xiaodi
You in the fourth match on
Grandstand Court on Wednes-
day. As for her singles play, Gauff
has no plans yet to compete until
the U.S. Open at the end of
August, which isn’t abnormal for
a young player because WTA age
rules limit the number of tour-
naments those under 18 are al-
lowed to play.
Baptiste, just two years older
than Gauff at 17, notched the first
WTA match win of her career
over Keys thanks in large part to
her powerful serve. Keys, a 2017
U.S. Open finalist, called the
trainer twice in the second set to
deal with a muscle spasm in her
back.
Baptiste was raised in North-
west Washington but moved to
Orlando a few years ago for more
serious tennis training. She grew
up attending the Citi Open and
participated in the Washington
Tennis and Education Founda-
tion, the tournament’s benefici-
ary, before training at College
Park’s Junior Tennis Champions
Center. The crowd supporting
her Tuesday rivaled Gauff ’s.
“It felt really good. Like, half
of the match I couldn’t even feel
my legs,” Baptiste said. “It was
amazing, having everybody in
the crowd cheering for me. I
knew every other person in the
crowd, so it felt really good.”
Baptiste’s next match is in
prime time on the tournament’s
biggest stage. She will play Kris-
tina Mladenovic on Stadium
Court on Wednesday in the last
match of the day.Tiafoe wins opening match
Frances Tiafoe won his first-
round match against Alexander
Bublik, 6-1, 7-6 (7-5). The Mary-
land native advances to play
Daniil Medvedev on Thursday.
Reilly Opelka continued his
solid summer showing with a
first-round win over Christo-
pher Eubanks, 6-4, 7-6 (7-3).
Opelka made a run to the semifi-
nals of the Atlanta Open last
week, and before that he upset
Stan Wawrinka in the second
round at Wimbledon. Opelka
will play Canadian sensation Fe-
lix Auger-Aliassime in the sec-
ond match on John Harris Court
on Wednesday.
Former U.S. Open champ
Marin Cilic beat Marius Copil,
7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (7-4), in a second-
round match and will play either
Opelka or Auger-Aliassime.
Nick Kyrgios defeated Vir-
ginia graduate Thai-Son Kwiat-
kowski, 7-5, 6-4, in a battle of big
serves to advance to play Gilles
Simon on Wednesday.
[email protected]CITI OPEN NOTESTop seed
Stephens,
Gau≠, Keys
all bounced
ning for the coaching position.
Another assistant, Steve Swanson,
is the longtime head coach of the
University of Virginia women’s
program and has guided youth
national teams for many years.
Ellis would like to see the feder-
ation hire a woman. “I think there
are a lot of qualified females. You
also hope by doing it people have
trust a female can do this. People
have seen it and people potentially
want to aspire to coach, not just
soccer but whatever sport. You
really hope that is part of the
legacy you leave behind.”
She said she spoke with Cord-
eiro about the succession. “Ulti-
mately,” Ellis said, “you need
someone who is prepared, ready
and experienced at this level.”
Ellis told the players of her deci-
sion this week, one person with
knowledge of the situation said.
However, she said as early as last
winter she began thinking about
stepping down after the World
Cup. She cited the demands on her
family (a wife and teenage daugh-
ter) and the need to hand over the
reins before a new cycle begins.
Ellis has worked for the USSF in
one capacity or another since 1999
and served as a senior national
team assistant and interim head
coach before accepting the pri-
mary job in May 2014.
This month, she became the
first national team coach (men’s or
women’s) in 81 years to win con-
secutive World Cup champion-
ships. The top-ranked Americans
completed a seven-game sweep in
France with a 2-0 victory over the
Netherlands and extended their
unbeaten streak to 16.
Ellis is the all-time U.S. leader in
matches coached and is second in
victories, three behind the late
Tony DiCicco. She was FIFA’s
coach of the year in 2015 and the
presumed front-runner for the
award this year.
The only significant blemish
came at the 2016 Olympics with
elimination in the quarterfinals
(in a penalty-kick tiebreaker
against Sweden), the program’s
earliest exit from a major tourna-
ment.
The decision was not complete-
ly unexpected. While many as-
sumed she would stay through the
Olympics, others in and around
the USSF figured she would step
aside and explore options with
another national team or a Euro-
pean club that has committed to
investing in its women’s program.
There has also been speculation
she would pursue a men’s coach-
ing job at some point.
Ellis was born in England and
as a teenager moved to Northern
Virginia, where she starred at
Robinson Secondary School and
Braddock Road Youth Club. She
also played at William & Mary.
“I enjoy new challenges,” she
said. “As to what those challenges
are going to be... I don’t have
something set in my head, in my
mind, right now. When you go
through something that intensive
[this summer] and after doing it so
long, I just need to take a step back
and take it all in.”
Meticulous in her preparation
and dry in her humor, Ellis pro-
moted harmony among the play-
ers and instilled a rabid hunger
after the Olympic disappoint-
ment. Her team was relentless in
pursuit of a second consecutive
world title, barreling through the
group stage and never wavering
under the pressure of close games
against improving programs in
the knockout round.
Critics often dismissed her
coaching ability, saying almost
anyone could have won with the
U.S. program’s talent and depth.
However, her tactical acumen po-
sitioned a conservative U.S. squad
to win the 2015 World Cup, ending
a 16-year drought.
Early in this recently completed
cycle, when formation experi-
ments failed, Ellis switched to a
more aggressive setup, spear-
headed by three forwards. Be-
tween World Cups, she also imple-
mented rising talent, such as Crys-
tal Dunn, Mallory Pugh and Rose
Lavelle.
She mixed the newcomers with
battle-tested players — the U.S.
team was the oldest and most ex-
perienced at the World Cup — and
kept her faith in goalkeeper Alyssa
Naeher, who filled the starting
role after star Hope Solo was dis-
missed from the program for a
series of off-the-field issues.
“The opportunity to coach this
team and work with these amaz-
ing women has been the honor of a
lifetime,” Ellis said. “I want to
thank and praise them for their
commitment and passion to not
only win championships but also
raise the profile of this sport glob-
ally while being an inspiration to
those who will follow them.”
[email protected]
ELLIS FROM D1
‘Timing is
right’: Ellis set
to step down
as U.S. coach