Coco Gauff faces Naomi Osaka in a marquee matchup on Monday.
Photo: Getty Images
The second act of Andrea Petkovic’s career arrived when the wear and tear of professional tennis collided with the global pandemic, in early 2020. Petkovic, a former world no. 9, was already sidelined with a left knee injury that required surgical intervention. Her doctor didn’t mince words. “He told me, you will have two to three more years in your knee for competition after this, and if you don’t wanna destroy your knee completely, then you should probably think about [the end],” she said. Petkovic was already in her early 30s, and wrestling with the existential question every player grinding it out on tour eventually contends with: “How long am I going to be able to do this?” The finitude of her joints had spoken.
After a stint hosting a weekly sports television show in Germany and playing on tour at the same time, Petkovic hung up her racquet for good in 2022. When she did, the Tennis Channel asked her to do a trial week at their studios in Santa Monica. “I went there and after five minutes, I was like, I was born for this,” she said, laughing. “I realized it was something where I really, truly have deep knowledge that you can only gather if you’ve done this for your entire life.”
The telegenic Petkovic is now a commentator for the likes of ESPN, Sky Sports, and BBC Radio. She dons tailored cuts in a sea of salt-and-pepper blazers, and is known for her in-the-trenches specificity and analysis. Her commentating style derives from what she claims she lacked during her years as a player. “ I was not the most talented player in the history of tennis, so I had to make up for it with other things,” she said. “One of these things was strategy and tactics.”
On Sunday, Petkovic and I spoke about the highs and lows of the first week of the U.S. Open, including an unfortunate spate of injuries, that incident with Jelena Ostapenko, and why this tournament is harder to win than any other major.
We’re midway through the tournament. Who you got?
Emma Radacanu and João Fonseca were my dark horses, and they lost. But Iga Świątek and Carlos Alcaraz are still my picks to win, and they are still alive.
Emma did really well, and Fonseca — honestly, I’m kind of glad that his rise is going slowly. I have seen teenage prodigies shoot up to the top before, win a big tournament, and then everything sort of collapses on them. That happened to Emma, after she won the 2021 US Open as a teenage qualifier. She is okay now, building her way back up. But I think it’s healthier for João to have this kind of movement rather than winning Wimbledon at 18. He has such star power, and also, the Brazilian fan base. It’s so fun.
This may be recency bias, but it feels like the volume of injuries and number of mid-tournament withdrawals at this year’s U.S. Open is higher than usual, including Ben Shelton, Jack Draper, and Sebastian Korda. Do you think players are reaching a breaking point with the sport’s new extended summer schedule?
I haven’t looked at the numbers statistically, but I think there is truth to it. I will use Alexander Zverev as an example. He’s one of the guys who, lucky for him, rarely gets injured. He’s one of the hardest working dudes out there. He has diabetes, so he has to be very accurate about how he prepares his body, and this is the first time I’ve heard him talk about being injured. He wasn’t terribly injured, but he had lower back pain throughout this entire tournament. That made me pause because I’ve followed his career for years, and I cannot remember, outside of that awful foot injury that happened during the 2022 French Open, him going into a tournament and not feeling a hundred percent.
The schedule has been rough — the longer Masters and WTA 1000 tournaments — and we’ve heard the players complain about it. You can just tell, everyone showed up here with one eye missing and half a leg. The U.S. Open always felt like the hardest major to win, because everyone is tired and you have to sort of manage your energy. And then there’s the chaos of New York itself — not everyone is built out for it.
Another thing that has changed is the weather has gotten a lot worse. When I started out on tour, the worst weather you got was at the Australian Open. But this year’s Washington D.C., Cincinnati, and Toronto and Montreal —players were already coming into that series quite exhausted, and then the heat and humidity just sucks on the energy levels. Even Carlos Alcaraz had to skip the Canadian Open to recover because it followed so closely to Wimbledon, and he’s still like 12 years old. That’s when you have to ask yourself, is this the right way to move forward?
Jannik Sinner having to stop his match and withdraw during the final in Cincinnati was pretty shocking.
I don’t know if you saw his semifinal in Cincinnati, but he was so pale during it, and just had these huge red dots next to his eyes. I said to Boris Becker –– my podcast cohost and fellow redhead –– we should not let this ginger man play in this heat.
Speaking of Boris, in an older episode of your podcast with him, you talked about how after you played a match against a then–15-year-old Coco Gauff and lost, you knew it was time to retire.
What I realized was that the next generation was different; I was getting older; and, at that point, I already understood that Coco was a generational talent.
That tournament we played became the first title she won, the 2019 Linz Open in Austria. She had lost in the qualifiers and gotten in as a lucky loser and then ended up winning the title against Jelena Ostapenko in the final. I was playing well in our match, and she beat me fair and square because she was better. She was just a bit quicker, just a bit stronger, and she was younger. So, yeah, I retired quickly after that.
Coco and Naomi Osaka are set to meet in the round of 16. Naomi has been outspoken about her mental health for a while, and Coco recently talked about having what she felt was a panic attack on-court. Does it still feel like a novelty when players speak up about anxiety, and panic, on tour?
Naomi was really the trailblazer in speaking openly about mental health, and it started when she refused to do a press conference at the French Open in 2021. She got a lot of blowback. There is still an old guard in tennis, and that guard sometimes doesn’t understand the new generation. And I will say that was my experience, when Naomi first did that. I was like, “Oh, we’ve all been there. Just suck it up. That’s what you do when you’re a tennis player.” And then about six months later, I was recording a podcast for a German radio station, reviewing all the details of that incident and I realized, “Why did I think like that?” She shifted my mindset. The next generation was making things better, not worse. And now, Casper Ruud has come forward to talk about his mental health. And Andrey Rublev. And I think Coco saying nonchalantly in an interview that she was just feeling anxiety and pressure, and that’s why she was upset on court during her match with Donna Vekic — it all goes back to what Naomi started.
In German we have a nice saying: Und so schließt sich der Kreis. It’s an expression [that] translates into, “And now the circle has closed.” This upcoming fourth-round match between Naomi and Coco feels like that. When they both started out, Naomi was on top, and went through struggles as Coco was rising through the ranks. They went through a similar thing, where Naomi was this superstar at such a young age — not just as a symbol for talented tennis players, but all of a sudden a kind of a political figure, who was expected to say all the right things at 18, 19 years old. Now Naomi’s at a point in her life where she’s reached the second week of a major tournament for the first time since those struggles at the French Open. And Coco is on top of her game, but in recent months went through some pressure moments. And they’re about to meet at this juncture, so the circle has closed in a way.
There have been a few instances during this U.S. Open where the issue of tennis’s “unwritten rules,” or etiquette, has taken center stage. Ostapenko lost to Taylor Townsend and accused her of having “no education and no class” for not apologizing to her for a net cord. Stefanos Tsitsipas hit a ball directly at Daniel Altmaier after Altmaier served underhanded. Do certain norms feel like part of that old-guard mentality?
I think there are certain unwritten rules that you have to follow — well, actually, no, you don’t have to do anything. There are rules that people do follow. But in both situations, it felt like these were two sour losers grasping at straws. Neither incident happened at the very end of the match, or during an important point. They were not a decider of the outcome in any capacity. The audience is smart. The audience knows when they’re hearing an excuse for why someone’s angry about losing. It would have been better for Tsitsipas and Ostapenko to just say, “Listen. I was freaking upset that I lost, and I took it out on the wrong person.”
Prior to her loss in the fourth round, Taylor Townsend had an incredible singles run at the tournament, which seemed to surprise a lot of people.
She can always do damage at any big tournament, and I think people underestimate how difficult it is in [to manage] your energy when you’re such a good doubles player and want to play singles. When you’re inside tennis, you understand all the complexities of how that works, but outside of it, people assume, “Oh, she’s not consistent enough in her singles play.” And then the U.S. Open comes around and she plays so spectacularly, and everyone is like, “Where has she been all my life?”
Okay, hard pivot. You are known for your fashion taste. What do you think about the new Adidas Y-3 collab with Yohji Yamamoto , which a number of the players, like Jessica Pegula and Felix Auger-Aliassime, are wearing? In my tennis circles, there is fierce debate as to whether it’s a triumph or a tragedy.
Ha, I’m not sure, but what I do like is that every player has their own design on the kits they wear. It underlines their personality a bit. Oftentimes you see in a major tournament twelve different players, sometimes playing each other, all wearing the exact same thing. So for this reason, I give the collab a positive.
Is there anything you miss about being on tour?
The competition. When I get to call a great match on Arthur Ashe, and the whole crowd goes silent before a big moment, and you get goosebumps — that’s when I think, “Ugh. I really miss this.” But then the next day, I’ll see the players prepping for those types of matches on the practice courts or in the gym and the feeling of nostalgia immediately goes away. It’s like when you think back on a relationship that used to be good, and you can only think of the good things and you’re like, oh, should I call my ex? Remembering how hard it all was heals me from those kinds of thoughts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
