Top story
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Nadal’s outfits were planned a year and a half ahead: Maxime does the maths
In GQ, Rafael Nadal, retired since November 2024, says his team prepared all his outfits a year and a half ahead. For his first eight to ten years, choices were made from photos on a computer, and the real result was sometimes very different.
Latest dispatches
It’s true, we checked
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“She’s in love with New York”: Jean-Pol says he called it back in January
Aryna Sabalenka’s three coaches, Anton Dubrov, Jason Stacy and Max Mirnyi, held a joint press conference before the US Open final, where they stressed how at home their player feels at Flushing…
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7-6 (7) and 7-6 (6): our intern asks what the numbers in brackets are doing
Alexander Zverev beat Karen Khachanov 6-3, 7-6 (7), 7-6 (6) to reach the US Open final. Two of the three sets were settled in a tie-break.
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A US Open match ended at 3.33am, and our club player sees nothing odd in it
Ben Shelton and Carlos Alcaraz finished their US Open match at 3.33 in the morning. Several of the tournament’s night sessions ran extremely late, reviving the row over how night matches are…
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Tiafoe wants crowds to talk and move, Maxime hunts for who invented the silence
Ahead of his US Open semi-final against Ben Shelton on Friday, Frances Tiafoe asked that tennis let spectators talk, move and take part, pointing to basketball and football as examples.
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Shelton finished at 3.34am, plays again Friday: the club player on recovery
Ben Shelton, the eighth seed, beat Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter-finals at 3.34am on Wednesday, the latest finish in US Open history. He faces Frances Tiafoe on Friday in the night session,…
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Rybakina beats Gauff and will be world No. 1, Jean-Pol swears he called it in January
Elena Rybakina reached her first US Open final on Thursday, beating Coco Gauff 3-6, 6-4, 6-4. The Kazakh player will become world number one.
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Blockx sees no limits, Maxime goes looking for who measures them
Alexander Blockx, speaking from New York the day after retiring in the US Open quarter-final, has gone from the top 100 to 27th in the world and says he sees no limits…
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Shelton beats Alcaraz at 3.33am, Maxime wonders who was allowed to leave
Ben Shelton (ATP 9) knocked Carlos Alcaraz (ATP 3) out of the US Open quarter-finals 6-7 (5/7), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6, 7-6 (10/7). The match lasted 4hr 28min and finished at 3.33am, the…
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Zverev calls Khachanov ‘The Professor’, and our club player finally feels understood
Alexander Zverev will face Karen Khachanov in the US Open semi-finals. He explained that players call the Russian ‘The Professor’ because he knows everything about tennis, including everyone’s string tensions.
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Shelton beats a top-3 player after 17 failures, and Jean-Pol called it in January
At 23, Ben Shelton has won his first career match against a top-3 player, after losing his first seventeen attempts against that group. He beat Carlos Alcaraz 6-7 (5/7), 6-1, 6-3, 1-6,…
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Alcaraz on court until 3.33am, and the C30.4 notes that his club shuts at midnight
Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton played until 3.33am at the US Open, in a match that started at 11.05pm and lasted a little over four hours. It is the latest finish in…
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Shelton ends Alcaraz’s 13-0 record against Americans, Jean-Pol saw it coming
Carlos Alcaraz walked into the US Open quarter-final with 13 wins and no defeats against American players at Grand Slam level. Ben Shelton won it on a super tie-break in the fifth…
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The Newsroom
Four columnists, zero press cards
Jean-Pol Vandenbroeck
A former “Belgian top 50”, by his own account. Never wrong: when the facts contradict him, it’s the facts that changed.
Maxime
22, journalism intern, discovering tennis in real time. His naive questions point, unintentionally, at the sport’s real absurdities.
Céline, dite « la C30.4 »
Ranked C30.4, a club-level ranking, “since a transitional period”. Analyses Sabalenka and Sinner as peers, give or take two practice sessions a week.
Monique
68, from Couvin, subscriber to a print magazine “since before you were born”. Never criticises anyone: she compares, which is worse.
They are characters. They have a profile, tics, obsessions and no legal existence whatsoever. Meet them.