Jannik Sinner’s sublime tennis season awaits CAS verdict on WADA appeal

Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, Jannik Sinner ended 2024 on the ATP Tour with an unreturned serve and arms aloft, just as he has spent much of the tennis season. The world No. 1 and a renewed Matteo Berrettini secured a 2-0 win for Italy against the Netherlands at the Davis Cup final in Malaga, Spain, defeating Tallon Griekspoor and Botic Van de Zandschulp respectively.

Elsewhere, American college tennis discovered its singles champions for 2024 and a doubles leader retired.

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How to reckon with an astounding season with one very large asterisk?

On Sunday, Sinner completed one of the finest seasons in history. Two Grand Slam titles, the ATP Finals and now the Davis Cup with Italy. He ends the year 3,915 points clear of world No. 2 Alexander Zverev, despite playing four fewer tournaments, and his 73-6 win-loss record makes him the first player since Andy Murray in 2016 to record more than 70 wins in a season. He did not lose a match in straight sets all year.

Phenomenal by any conceivable metric, but what comes next is out of his hands.

The 23-year-old could be banned from tennis for up to two years if the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upholds the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) appeal into Sinner’s doping case. He tested positive for clostebol, a banned anabolic steroid on March 10 at the BNP Paribas Open held in Indian Wells, Calif, and on March 18, out of competition.

An independent tribunal convened by the ITIA and conducted by Sports Resolutions ruled that Sinner bore “no fault or negligence” for those positive tests in a hearing on August 15, but still found Sinner to have committed two anti-doping violations, for which he was stripped of his ranking points, prize money, and results from Indian Wells. It accepted the Italian world No. 1’s explanation that Sinner’s physiotherapist, Umberto Ferrara, had brought an over-the-counter healing spray containing clostebol to Indian Wells. His trainer, physiotherapist, Giacomo Naldi, cut his hand, and then used the spray on that cut. Naldi then conducted massages on Sinner, which led to transdermal contamination with the clostebol from the healing spray.

A month later, WADA announced that was challenging this verdict, believing “that the finding of ‘no fault or negligence’ was not correct under the applicable rules”.

Sinner and the tennis world are in limbo, knowing that he is either at the start of a potential era of dominance or an extended period away from the sport.

“It’s in the head a little bit,” Sinner said in a news conference on Sunday, when asked whether he could fully enjoy Italy’s Davis Cup win.

“The most important part is that all the people who know me trust me. That’s the reason I kept playing at the level I had. I had some ups and downs, and I was emotionally a bit heartbroken, but sometimes life gives you difficulties and you just have to stand for it.”

Charlie Eccleshare

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Elena Vesnina retires from tennis

Amid the clamor surrounding Rafael Nadal’s retirement, a four-time Grand Slam champion also made her exit from the sport. Vesnina, who won three women’s doubles majors and one mixed doubles major, announced the end of her career this week having played a final match at the 2024 Paris Olympics with Ekaterina Alexandrova, competing as Individual Neutral Athletes (AINs).

Vesnina, 38, also won Olympic gold for Russia at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics with Ekaterina Makarova, with whom she won her three women’s doubles majors. Vesnina won 19 doubles titles overall and reached world No. 1 alongside Makarova in 2018. An accomplished singles player, she won the Indian Wells title in 2017 — beating Venus Williams and Angelique Kerber along the way — to help her reach a career-high of world No. 13.

Vesnina and Makarova won their last title together at the 2018 Madrid Open, with Vesnina taking time away from tennis to give birth to her first child that year. She returned to tennis in 2021, reaching the Wimbledon final with Veronika Kudermetova and winning a silver medal in mixed doubles with Aslan Karatsev at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. She did not play in 2022 and 2023, in which time she gave birth to her second child, before briefly returning to the court in 2024.

“Thanks to this beautiful sport.⁣⁣ I have learned so much about myself and about the world,” Vesnina wrote on Instagram.

 

James Hansen

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Where will this year’s NCAA tennis champions go next?

You may not think anything important happened in tennis on American soil this weekend. You would be wrong. The NCAA crowned two collegiate singles champions, Michael Zheng of Columbia University in New York City and Dasha Vidmanova of Georgia. The NCAA moved the individual tournaments to the fall this season in an attempt to avoid overloading the players who participate in the team competitions in the spring.

Zheng, a New Jersey native who attended high school at Delbarton, the well-regarded private school, beat Ozan Baris of Michigan State, 6-2, 4-6, 6-2. He is the first men’s singles champion from the Ivy League since 1922, and the first champion from Columbia since 1906. That’s a long time ago.

Vidmanova, a 21-year-old from the Czech Republic, beat DJ Bennet of Auburn, Al, 6-3, 6-3, highlighting the increasingly international makeup of college tennis in the past decade.

Why is all this important? Both players will be entered into USTA men’s and women’s play-offs for a U.S. Open main draw wildcard.

Matt Futterman

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What led to dissatisfaction with Nadal’s farewell?

Nadal’s farewell to tennis led to an outpouring of emotion, but not everyone was so enamoured with the way his goodbye was handled. The final flourish saw Nadal speaking on court and a video playing with testimonies from tennis legends Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, as well as Spanish sporting luminaries such as football stars Raul and Andres Iniesta, and the golfer Sergio Garcia.

In interviews with Spanish media, Nadal’s uncle and long-time former coach, Toni, claimed the farewell ceremony “did not meet expectations”, while the Spain Davis Cup captain David Ferrer called it “a bit sad” and “watered down”. Nadal’s coach Carlos Moya told Radioestadio Noche that he thought it was “a bit scruffy and shabby”.

When all this was put to Feliciano Lopez, the Davis Cup tournament director and a friend and former doubles partner of Nadal, at a news conference on Sunday, he said: “We should focus on how Rafa chose Davis Cup to be the final tournament of his career instead of keep talking about his farewell ceremony. We did our best.”

The ceremony is the tip of the iceberg in the sea of awkwardness and uncertainty that surrounded Nadal and Spain’s Davis Cup finals campaign. The only thing that most fans really cared about was Nadal and his farewell, but it led to speculation over whether Ferrer’s priority was getting Spain as far as possible or just about getting Nadal on the court. A couple of underwhelming defeats for Spain led to more discussion of tennis retirements and what could have been the best time to say goodbye to Nadal.

The fortunes of the team and player don’t always align. Federer, Andy Murray and Nadal have made their final bows in team events, each in different circumstances.

Novak Djokovic, entering the final years of his career at 37, may be taking note.

Charlie Eccleshare

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Shot of the week

Griekspoor did not win the match against Sinner, but he did win the pick-up volley competition.

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Recommended reading:

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🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Italy def. the Netherlands 2-0 to win the Davis Cup in Malaga, Spain. It is Italy’s second Davis Cup title in a row.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Italy def. Slovakia 2-0 to win the Billie Jean King Cup in Malaga, Spain. It is the first time Italy has won women’s tennis’ premier team tournament since 2013, when it was known as the Federation Cup.

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📈 On the rise in 2024

📈 Naomi Osaka started the year at world No. 833. She ends the season at No. 60, a rise of 733 places.
📈 Jacob Fearnley was world No. 646 at the start of 2024. He ends the season at No. 98, rising 548 places.
📈 Amanda Anismova reentered the top 40 to finish the season ranked No. 36. At the start of it, she was world No. 359, a rise of 323 places.

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Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments section below.

(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)