Emptying out the notebook and notes file from Wimbledon 2025.
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Onward …
1. Come at the king, and you better not miss. And Jannik Sinner seldom did. In the men’s Wimbledon final, he dethroned twice-defending champ Carlos Alcaraz, mixing strategy with execution. This is Sinner’s first Wimbledon title, and it’s worth noting that if he had converted a match point in Paris five weeks ago, he would have won the non-calendar year major (four straight). Let’s run it back in New York, fellas.
2. Iga Świątek won the last 20 games she played this tournament—including the first 6–0, 6–0 final in over 37 years—to win the women’s singles event, her first Wimbledon title. Hot take: Coming here, not as the No.1, not as the Roland Garros champion, not as a player with much heat, but as the No. 8 seed? It worked to her benefit.
3. Alcaraz has won 20 matches at Wimbledon over the past three years. But in Sunday’s final, he lacked clarity, his usual balance, his usual joy and couldn’t summon the comeback magic of Paris. We have ourselves a rivalry, folks. Either Sinner or Alcaraz has won each of the last seven majors. And there’s little sense that’s changing anytime soon.
4. Amanda Anisimova failed to qualify for Wimbledon in 2024. In 2025, she won six matches, stared down the top seed and pierced the top 10. Saturday’s final was, by any measure, a debacle. She should not let it define her tournament; she should try not to let it derail her upward mobility.
5. Aryna Sabalenka has won 17 matches at majors this year and has zero titles to show for it. After losing to Americans (Madison Keys and Coco Gauff) in the finals of the Australian Open and Roland Garros, she, of course, lost a quarterfinal battle at Wimbledon to another U.S. player, Anisimova. Now, before she tries to defend her U.S. Open title someone needs to pass on to her this message from the Republic of Tennis: You committed an unforced error in Paris. You apologized profusely. Apology accepted. We’re all good. Your reputation is intact. Carry on. Keep doing you.
6. Seeking his eighth Wimbledon and 25th major, Novak Djokovic lost comprehensively in the semis. And then we watched him ponder his mortality in real time. He acknowledged age doing its dance and also stated flatly that he hoped this would not mark his final Wimbledon. Clearly, he is wrestling with the brutal when-to-say-when decision, an athlete’s call that is akin to timing the market— i.e., something that looks easy but is hard to get precisely right. Give him grace as he wrestles with the decision.
7. Taylor Fritz is such an admirable tennis player. It might be a near-impossible task, trying to beat Sinner and Alcaraz. But he is up for trying. He lost in the semis, gamely, to Alcaraz, but not for lack of ambition or preparation. Plenty of players with more talent and athleticism have settled for the good life that comes with being a top 20 player, making a few million, driving a fancy car, advancing to the occasional quarterfinal or semis. He wants more.
8. Well done, Belinda Bencic, who, physically compromised, got steamrolled by Świątek in the semis, but was wonderful before that, winning five matches with poised, take-time-away tennis.
9. Let’s acknowledge what a sensational sporting event this is, and how many touches—small and large—the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club nails. Wimbledon is steeped in tradition, yet also innovates each year. Its ticket system remains shrouded in mystery, but thousands of ground passes—more than 10,000 some days—are sold (practically given) for $35 or so. There’s gentility, but also a shorts-and-sandals ambiance on the hill. Way beyond tennis, there are so many lessons here about how to run a business, keeping tradition while evolving and passing up short-term gain for long-term brand equity.
10. In women’s doubles—in a thoroughly entertaining match—Elise Mertens and Veronika Kudermetova beat Jelena Ostapenko and ageless Hsieh Su-wei. It was Kudermetova’s first major. Ironically, she and Elena Vesnina had a match point in the 2021 Wimbledon final, only to be thwarted by … Mertens and Hsieh.
11. In the men’s doubles event, Lloyd Glasspool and Julian Cash became the first British team in nearly a century to take the title, as they beat the shotgun marriage of Rinky Hijikata and David Pel in the final.
12. In the juniors, Slovak Mia Pohánková won the girls' singles title beating 16-year-old American Julieta Pareja in the final, 6–3, 6–1. The boys went to Bulgarian Ivan Ivanov, a Nadal Academy product, who beat surprise American finalist (and Stanford commit) Ronit Karki. Colette Lewis has you covered. Of course she does.
13. All your wheelchair results here. We, as a tennis community, really should do a kickstarter to fund a documentary on this subculture and these remarkable athletes.
14. In the mixed doubles event—the last conventional, mixed event held during the singles week until Australia—Kateřina Siniaková and Sem Verbeek beat Joe Salisbury and Luisa Stefani.
15. Coming into this event, Laura Siegemund had won a total of five sets and two matches at Wimbledon. Here, she won her first nine, including an upset of Keys and a battle against Sabalenka. How great is it that this sport has space for a 37-year-old whose biggest weapon—and this is intended as a compliment—is a talent for annoyance and disruption?
16. We need some sort of karmic GoFundMe for Grigor Dimitrov. One of the real low notes for his tournament—tennis season?—was the pectoral injury he incurred during his match against Sinner, up 2–0 sets. This, of course, was his fifth straight retirement from a major. The last player to beat him outright at a major? Sinner at the 2024 French Open.
17. The players deserve a bigger slice of the pie and more say-so in how the sport is run. Agree. But the shabbily-drafted, shabbily-reasoned, empty-the-chamber PTPA lawsuit* is not the answer. However, for the second consecutive major, a group of top 10 players has met with each of the four majors, separately, to discuss a greater revenue split (bumping the current 13–15% to the low-to-mid 20s, with pension and “welfare scheme” contributions and more input on decisions like scheduling and format change).
Especially given how few players of relevance and leverage support the PTPA or even take it seriously—not least a certain co-founder who has backtracked as if chasing down a topspin lob—these civil negotiations are worth following. Watch for the 2025 U.S. Open prize announcement coming in the next few weeks. Expect double-digit increases. But note when the event spans three weeks and grounds passes cost upwards of $300, the players’ revenue share may in fact go down.
* This has already, I’m told, cost the ATP north of $10 million in legal fees. Remember, this is a 50% player organization. So $5 million has come out of the pockets of players, the vast majority of whom won’t put their names on this suit.
18. The robots are coming for us all. But if we’re going to do AI and put good people out of work, we need to get it right. Bit of a mixed bag for the ELC, Electronic Line Calling. No doubt the machines did better than humans. But—not unlike self-driving cars and trucks—we need to bake in the reality that machine error will be scrutinized heavily. (“We put 300 linesmen and women out of work for this?”) Give it another year, but we can’t have a snafu like the one that mottled the Pavlyuchenkova-Kartal match.
19. The usual nod to the impact of college tennis. There were 26 former collegians in the singles draws, the highest ratio since the early 1990s. They included Ben Shelton, Emma Navarro and Cam Norrie. On the men’s side, there were more former college players than players from any single country. Look for this proportion to grow in the age of NIL. (Though note—and this is hardly limited to college tennis—the effect of the current visa uncertainties on overseas recruiting.)
20. Mirra Andreeva is such a likable player and personality. The handmade sign and attire she brandished as she watched her coach, Conchita Martínez, were endearing. Her stock still soars, but it’s been a strange season. In the past two majors, she’s lost quarterfinal matches to unseeded players, Lois Boisson in Paris and, less shockingly, Bencic at Wimbledon. Andreeva is doing great. She’s still only 18. But these two defeats must sting a bit.
21. Sinner’s abrupt pre-tournament firing of his trainer and physio doubles as a reminder that tennis players are more complicated than their front-facing images or one-line cut-and-pastes. This is meant neither to condemn nor condone, but Sinner fired his first coach (Riccardo Piatti), parted ways with his longtime agent and now, albeit under two sets of circumstances, fired key employees on the eve of a major. Again, this is not criticism. (If anything, plenty of players are too loyal to employees who are not helping the enterprise.) But, it takes a certain pragmatism (ruthlessness?) to make so many changes, and it’s at odds with Sinner’s oversimplified reputation.
22. The conventional wisdom is that the taller the player, the better they are on grass results. Richard Krajicek, Goran Ivanišević, Elena Rybakina, Lindsay Davenport and Venus Williams are all champions. Mario Ančić, Gio Mpetshi Perricard, Jerzy Janowicz, etc., have all made big impacts. Taller players have a greater trajectory on serve and more wingspan at net, which is helpful on grass. But note how many successful players are the opposite: fleet afoot with low centers of gravity.
23. Five players who failed to make Week 2 but impressed nonetheless: Caty McNally (now healthy and ascending, took a set off of Świątek), Kamilla Rakhimova (who beat Jasmine Paolini), Danish former college player (and thespian) August Holmgren, Italian shotmaker Mattia Bellucci and Japanese qualifier Shintaro Mochizuki.
24. Still another sign of tennis’s unrelenting parity in 2025 A.D.: Three lucky losers—Victoria Mboko, Solana Sierra and Márton Fucsovics—made the main draw. They won six matches among them.
25. Fans (and media) talk about the stars, the fresh faces, and—though increasingly less and less—the players whose careers are swan diving. I submit that we all create more space for the pro’s pro, the reliable stalwarts who may not win majors but go about their business with dignity and consistency, adding so much to the cast. Mertens, Alex de Minaur, Russian quarterfinalists Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Karen Khachanov all fall into this category. There’s a lot to be said for understated, always-show-up professionalism.
26. This isn’t a new sentiment, but a reminder that the current players are, collectively, cool and accessible. One of my jobs at Wimbledon, happily, was interviewing players in the Tennis Channel studio, alongside Martina Navratilova and Steve Weissman. Men, women, teenagers, (late) thirty-somethings, stars and qualifiers alike. Some players would rather talk about anything but tennis (Frances Tiafoe). Some are all about hard-core X’s and O’s (Taylor Fritz). Liudmila Samsonova gently asked not to know the identity of her next opponent. Jakub Menšík explained his passion for the drums. Clara Tauson offered a tip on a burger joint in Copenhagen. We implore the tours to work harder to promote the players, do better than this kind of lame, typo-laden “biography.” These are amiable, interesting people with stories to tell. Tell them and sell them!
27. The biggest showdown of the event may have come early in Week 2 when representatives of the All England Club appeared before a High Court judge in London to square off against the opponents to the club’s expansion. The oppositionist anti-expansion group (mostly neighbors of the club) is opposing the procedure, not the facts of the case. A decision is expected by the end of July. Assuming approval to expand is granted, Wimbledon will be wholly changed. Dozens of additional courts. An additional stadium, hospitality, on-site qualifying and 27 acres donated to the public. The hitch: The completion date wouldn’t be until the early 2030s.
28. A few of you commented on Nick Kyrgios throwing a fit when he didn’t have his I.D. and was denied entry to Wimbledon. I’m not sure what there is left to say. Kyrgios has his fans. He has his detractors. But there is now unmistakable overlap between the two factions: This unraveling, this slinking into irrelevance, is no fun for anyone. Even the loudest Kyrgios critics would, I suspect, tell you that this decline is worthy of their pity, not their schadenfreude.
His lack of health prevents him from playing. His lack of impulse control and self-awareness has derailed his broadcasting career—a potentially promising one. Maybe Kyrgios—“only” 30, and a Wimbledon finalist just three years ago!—gets healthy and contends in 2026. Maybe he gets back in the good graces of those hiring broadcast analysts. Wish him well. For years, he flirted with disaster; now, it seems, disaster has taken him up on the proposition.
29. You know who had a rough tournament? The choir singing about the homogenization of the surfaces. The Roland Garros champion went out in Round 1. Seeds dropped left and right. Some players were clearly unsure of themselves. (And others were very sure.) This is all part of the appeal of this event and the tennis calendar in general. But the notion that there is no surface difference and grass may as well be a hard court painted green is folly.
30. Same hymn, different verse. Here’s who else had a terrible event: the tune-ups. So many players—Alexander Bublik, Jessica Pegula, Maya Joint, McCartney Kessler, Markéta Vondroušová—triumphed on the grass events in late June, only to falter at Wimbledon. And maybe, more tellingly, there were a lot of players who struggled in the tune-ups and triumphed at the All England Club. (Shelton, for instance, lost his previous two matches to Arthur Rinderknech and Learner Tien before reaching the Wimbledon quarters.)
31. More than once, I heard that—though uttered weeks ago—Patrick Mouratoglou’s regrettable line that the WTA “at the moment lacks superstars” continues to rankle players and administrators behind the scenes. As the WTA tries to negotiate favorable terms of a merger with the ATP, this remark was, I’m told, deeply unhelpful. Speaking of …
32. The merger talks between tours moved a bit when the ATP Media, I’m told, signed off on terms. The deal begins somewhere between a 20-80 and 25-75 split, depending on whose math you use. But various escalator clauses include the WTA renewing its Hologic deal (which runs through the year) or finding a new title sponsor.
33. It was a strong event for the Royal Box: Nick Jonas, Tom Daley, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann and Olivia Rodrigo showed out … and that was just one Tuesday. One highlight is the write-ups. John Cena, for instance, was listed as an “American actor, former professional wrestler, 17-time World Champion, New York Times bestselling author and record-setting Make-A-Wish granter.”
34. Tennis struggles to find consensus. (In other news items, Tuesday precedes Wednesday.) But here’s one issue that has near-uniform support, or lack thereof. The 12-day Masters Series event, which is tennis’s equivalent of New Coke. That is: a misstep that should be corrected immediately. The players, rightly, despise this “innovation,” one that traps them in strange cities. They are keenly aware that the gains in prize money were not commensurate with the tournament’s gains in revenues. The fans are, at best, meh, keenly aware that after the first few days, the sessions grow thin. The majors hate that these other events span nearly as many days. Smaller tournaments hate that the sprawl of the 1000s crowds out the 500s and 250s. How this proposal ever passed a vote remains a mystery. But—like so many of the elongated tournaments themselves—this is not going to end gracefully.
35. Navratilova had the best idea I heard all tournament: Start the shot clock when the player makes contact, racket-to-ball. What does this mean? Players can catch their errant toss, but must then hurry up and hit a serve before the shot clock expires. This will encourage fast play—you want to bake in enough time for a wayward toss—and also bake in a small penalty for the caught tosses. Brilliant.
36. Wimbledon 2025 was barely 1 day old when we got our shot of the tournament (year?), thanks to the legerdemain of Corentin Moutet.
CORENTIN MOUTET SHOT OF THE TOURNAMENT AGAIN.
— Bastien Fachan (@BastienFachan) July 2, 2025
10/10 vision. 10/10 execution.
French flair at its finest. 🇫🇷🪄 pic.twitter.com/XBwEqohVsA
37. This is a deep cut, but if you get a chance, watch the Russian player Anastasia Zakharova. Between points, she practices her strokes, batting air molecules (recalling Marion Bartoli)—and her serve entails a mid-motion leap. At Wimbledon, she won a round and then lost a third-set super tiebreak to Dayana Yastremska. Due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there was no postmatch acknowledgement.
38. I enjoyed talking to Carson Branstine, who qualified—beating Boisson and then her friend Bianca Andreescu in the process—and held her own against Sabalenka. She told me that with $26 left to her name, she began driving for Uber Eats. That was in February. Now, she is in the top 200 and plump with confidence.
39. A lot of purple at the All England Club, and it wasn’t just the Wimbledon color scheme. TCU tennis was out in full force, continuing its British pipeline—an England Channel if you will—directing talent from Old Blighty to Fort Worth. Norrie, Jacob Fearnley and Jack Pinnington Jones were all in the main draw. (Note to self: there’s a Tennis Channel/Served piece to be done about college tennis recruiting overseas.) More college tennis …
40. At a time when college football players can sign a $5.1 million contract prior to playing a game, it is preposterous that college tennis players must either forfeit earned prize money or forfeit their eligibility, lest they taint the purity of amateurism. Name-check UNC player Reese Brantmeier for challenging this in court. But there is an easy solution, one I have cleared with a sports lawyer: The four majors could form a collective and agree, in the form of NIL, to pay the college player their deprived prize money.
41. Indulge this perennial pet peeve (or skip ahead). We all love the planet. We all love green. We all know that you can no longer tie your shoes without referencing “sustainability.” Wimbledon has removed paper towels from public bathrooms, has all manner of color-coded trash receptacles, offers no lids for hot coffee and purveys the devil’s accessory that is a paper drinking straw? Fine. But then there is a line of Range Rovers that will take players and guests 100 yards? And a fleet of private (diesel) cars that take select fans directly from Centre Court to the airfields for private planes? And the 73-acre proposed expansion into the golf course will mean chopping 300 trees and, per Save Wimbledon Park, “releasing 500,000kg of carbon into the atmosphere?”
On matters of the environment, there will always be trade-offs and offsets. But enough with the Wimbledon eco-hypocrisy. Don’t parallel park your SUV and then wag a finger at the great unwashed for requesting a plastic lid to cover scalding coffee. Two sets of environmental rules, one for thee, another for we? It’s almost like there’s catastrophic economic inequality and different rules for billionaires. Next thing you know, they’ll be buying their ways into tournaments. Sermon over.
42. A fun-yet-meaningless statistic: Player X has an XX–XX record against players from country Y. If you never had to play Roger Federer or Stan Wawrinka (or Martina Hingis or Bencic), you might do very well against Swiss players. If you had to play Rafael Nadal and Alcaraz, you likely have a lousy record against Spaniards. Without knowing the specific identity of the opponent, simply knowing a composite record against a random country tells us … what exactly?
43. A random piece of trivia we stumbled across: Who knew that Sir David Attenborough gets credit for Wimbledon switching from white balls to yellow balls? Working as a controller for the BBC in the 1960s, Attenborough—who, of course, is a public treasure who would go on to be knighted as a biologist, broadcaster and writer—suggested to his superiors that the white balls colliding with the white chalk lines made for bad visuals (and inaccurate line calls). A few years later, his suggestion that Wimbledon switch to yellow balls was adopted.
44. For a thriving sport, there are still a striking number of big jobs in need of filling: WTA Chairman (Chairperson?), ATP CEO and, maybe above all, the head of the USTA, a highly fraught, highly-compensated position. A search firm has been retained (and several candidates showed up in London to angle for the job), but there will be no announcement until after the U.S. Open.
45. A lot of change and uncertainty wafting in the air at ESPN, from management to talent. And, yes if this were the game of Clue, one might identify the murder suspect as follows: It was Sally Jenkins, in the parlor, using the keyboard. But I would submit that A) to casual fans of a certain age, John McEnroe is still appealing, even if he botches names, a blast of warm nostalgia. B) There is a lot of solid work, as always, being undertaken by the network. One winner, in particular, this tournament: the interviews with coaches as they made their way to Centre Court for their players’ matches. This nifty addition will work even better at the U.S. Open.
46. I realize the optics here, that the middle-aged man might want to sit this out. But in the spirit of trying to cover factors that have a material impact on competition, a word about the under-discussed topic of menstruation. A top female player was telling me that, again and again, it plays a role in outcomes, though players (understandably) don’t bring it up. She added that she went on birth control to pause her monthly cycles, as they undermined her tennis. Do I think players should be asked about this in interviews and press conferences? I do not. But it’s something to consider before railing against a player for a result that didn’t meet expectations.
47. Spearheaded by the indomitable Matt Van Tuinen, note the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s “Be Legendary” campaign. Maria Sharapova and Bob and Mike Bryan, this year’s inductees, figure prominently. As long as we’re in Newport, R.I., the decision to let 59-year-old billionaire (and HoF “Founder’s Circle” donor, i.e., north of $1 million) Bill Ackman play a main draw doubles match has been, fittingly, raked. So much so, the HoF has apologized to enshrined players for this lapse, and issued a mea culpa, calling this “a learning experience that will help us make better decisions in the future.”
48. So long, farewell. Two-time champion Petra Kvitová played Wimbledon for the final time. Same for Yanina Wickmayer. In his last Wimbledon match, Fabio Fognini pushed Alcaraz to five sets, and then called it a career. (Nice mic drop sign off, but still a backseat to his wife’s.) Then, others played for the last time and simply don’t know it yet. A reminder that math is math. For every hello, there is a goodbye.
49. Neil Harman, longtime tennis writer, is a good man who’s been through a lot in the past decade or so. He’s written a book—part first-person, part first reportage—Brushes with a Stroke, now available.
50. Major Wimbledon upset! More women (eight) were fined than men (seven), though men accrued more in dollar amount. I can’t remember that ever happening.
Thanks to all of you who wrote and DMed re: Served, the Tennis Channel shows and the goings on at 60 Minutes. Thanks for the tips and fashion tips. I can’t always respond, but know all communiques are read and considered.
HAVE A GOOD WEEK AND WE’LL REV IT UP AGAIN AT THE U.S. OPEN!
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as 50 Parting Thoughts From 2025 Wimbledon.