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, an unexpected phone alarm after midnight revealed what players have to do for anti-doping, the WTA Tour and ATP Tour Finals races went in opposite directions and a doubles legend showed off her multi-format brilliance.
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Why was a player’s phone going off during a 1 a.m. match?
At 1 a.m. Saturday morning in Lyon, France, a tennis player bidding for his first title in four years had to make a strange request.
During the third set of a grueling quarterfinal against France’s Luca van Assche, Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti had to ask the chair umpire and tournament supervisor to do something players are not allowed to do: Use his phone on the court.
An alarm was going off on the 24-year-old’s device, because he had set his 60-minute slot for anti-doping testing to start at 1 a.m., expecting that he would be at his hotel recovering after the match with van Assche. Instead, he was on the court, during a contest that stretched for three-and-a-half hours on the slow hard courts of the Grand Prix Auverge-Rhône-Alpes in Lyon.
Musetti had to update his whereabouts, and the later-than-expected night had the potential to put more than his tournament in jeopardy. If a tester had shown up at his hotel and he wasn’t there, Musetti could have received a penalty for missing an anti-doping test. Doing that three times carries a ban. Players do not want to risk it.
Musetti ultimately updated his status in time, and won the match for good measure, 7-6(5), 6-7(7), 6-4. He went on to win the tournament, securing that first tour-level title since 2022.
The drama came the same week that the International Tennis Integrity Agency, which oversees testing in tennis, announced that whereabouts rules will change from 2027. A group of players, mostly high-ranked ones on the ATP and WTA Tours, will now have to specify their whereabouts more often, because an exemption about in-competition testing that tennis previously received from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) no longer applies.
— Matt Futterman
Why is there a rare absence at the WTA Tour’s flagship event?
A new setting in sunny Indian Wells, Calif. won’t be the only major difference to the WTA Tour Finals this year. For the first time since 2019, the women’s tennis year-end championships will be missing six-time Grand Slam champion Iga Świątek.
Świątek pulled out of China’s Ningbo Open with a left thigh injury, then called it a wrap on her season last week, in what seemed like a straightforward decision. Świątek, who had a shot to qualify if she had won the Wuhan Open in China a fortnight ago, lost her semifinal there to Polish compatriot Maja Chwalińska. After leading 5-3 in the first set, Świątek aggravated a quad injury and was in tears during medical timeout, barely moving for the remainder of a 7-5, 6-1 loss.
Świątek’s withdrawal had some ripple effects. Because Marta Kostyuk retired from her opening match in Ningbo, Wimbledon finalist Karolína Muchová snagged the last singles spot in the eight-player Tour Finals field without lifting a finger this week.
Not playing last week proved a smart bet on Muchová’s part. She chose not to enter a tournament after the Wuhan Open and looks mighty savvy right now for betting on the strength of her results this year.
She’ll join Elena Rybakina, Aryna Sabalenka, Jessica Pegula, Coco Gauff, Linda Nosková, Mirra Andreeva and Elina Svitolina in California in November.
As for Świątek — the 25-year-old has had a long year. She had a coaching change in March and notched her first season since 2021 without a Grand Slam title, but also felt that she made great progress in rebuilding the style of tennis that made her so successful in the early 2020s.
“The past few months, or actually the past couple of years, have been incredibly intense and I feel I need to rest and recover my body fully. So that’s exactly what I will do, a bit longer this time,” Świątek wrote on Instagram.
Świątek was staring down an unappealing road to qualifying for the WTA Tour Finals when she made her decision to end her season. To pass both Kostyuk and Muchová, she would have had to win the title in Ningbo and then play the Tokyo Open as well — perhaps not the most sensible track for someone dealing with an injury.
Instead, Świątek gets more time to recuperate and the tournament will roll on without her, a rarity in this era of the women’s game. Sabalenka has now qualified for six straight WTA Tour Finals, Gauff and Pegula will play their fifth straight and Rybakina, the world No. 1 is playing her fourth.
— Ava Wallace
Who will win the race to the ATP Tour Finals?
The men’s players ranked between No. 5 and No. 12 are certainly making the final sprint to the ATP Tour Finals in Turin, Italy interesting.
When Sunday started, it looked like Taylor Fritz might move himself within striking distance of the top nine, which would get him to Turin because Jannik Sinner is not playing. He was Musetti’s opponent in the Lyon final, in an indoor hard-court duel: ideal terrain for Fritz and not Musetti’s favorite.
Instead, Musetti profited handsomely from the slow, slow speed of the court in France, which helped defang Fritz’s serve and gave the Italian time to make his American opponent uncomfortable. Musetti was able to handle Fritz in a pretty straightforward fashion, 6-3, 6-4. That left Fritz wallowing in the No. 13 spot, nearly 400 points behind Frances Tiafoe at No. 9.
Meanwhile, Daniil Medvedev, who did the rare thing of defending a title in Almaty, Kazakhstan held steady at No. 5. He looks good to qualify, along with France’s Arthur Fils and Italy’s Flavio Cobolli.
Heading into the final weeks of the season, there are about 500 points separating No. 7 from No. 13. If any of Fritz, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Jódar or Alex De Minaur manage to get hot for the Paris Masters, which starts next week, they could vault themselves into the top nine and join the already-qualified Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz and Ben Shelton in Italy.
And thanks to new ATP Tour rules, the final ATP Masters 1000 event of the year truly is the finish line. Any points earned after the Paris Masters, which ends Nov. 8, will count toward the 2027 race to Turin. Last year, there was the possibility for a scramble after Paris at 250-level events the following week, which led to players entering and then withdrawing from tournaments once they realized their hopes were over.
This year, all roads lead to France — and then, for the chosen eight, to Italy.
— Matt Futterman
🏆 The winners of the week
🎾 ATP:
🏆 Daniil Medvedev (1) def. Nikoloz Basilashvili (Q) 6-7(6), 6-1, 6-3 to win the Almaty Open (250) in Almaty, Kazakhstan. It is second consecutive title there.
🏆 Tallon Griekspoor def. Jan-Lennard Struff 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 to win the European Open (250) in Brussels. It is the Dutchman’s fourth ATP Tour title.
🏆 Lorenzo Musetti (6) def. Taylor Fritz (2) 6-3, 6-4 to win the Grand Prix Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes (250) in Lyon, France. It is his first ATP Tour title since 2022.
🎾 WTA:
🏆 Elena Rybakina (1) def. Leylah Fernandez 6-2, 6-2 to win the Ningbo Open (500) in Ningbo, China. It is her second consecutive title there.
🏆 Kateřina Siniaková def. Ashlyn Krueger 6-1, 6-0 to win the Japan Open (250) in Osaka, Japan. It is the doubles legend’s sixth WTA Tour singles title.
📈📉 On the rise / Down the line
📈 Kateřina Siniaková ascends 37 spots from No. 86 to No. 49.
📈 Jan-Lennard Struff returns to the top 50, moving up 11 places from No. 58 to No. 47.
📈 Leylah Fernandez rises seven spots from No. 30 to No. 23.
📈 Henrique Rocha reaches the top 100 for the first time after rising five spots from No. 105 to No. 100.
📉 João Fonseca falls 12 places from No. 28 to No. 40.
📉 Claire Liu drops 14 places from No. 95 to No. 109.
📉 Jaume Munar tumbles 14 spots from No. 51 to No. 65.
📉 Jaqueline Cristian moves down 12 spots from No. 71 to No. 83.
📅 Coming up
🎾 ATP
📍Vienna: Vienna Open (500) featuring Alexander Zverev, Carlos Alcaraz, Frances Tiafoe, Daniil Medvedev.
📍Basel, Switzerland: Swiss Indoors Basel (500) featuring Ben Shelton, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Jódar, Taylor Fritz.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV
🎾 WTA
📍Tokyo: Pan Pacific Open (500) featuring Elena Rybakina, Naomi Osaka, Ann Li, Alex Eala.
📍Guangzhou, China: Guangzhou Open (250) featuring Paul Badosa, Sun Xinran, Sofia Kenin, Venus Williams.
📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel
Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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