Two best friends played each other—and then held a disquisition about the match before leaving the court. Teenagers have stolen scenes; but so have players on the cusp of turning 40. A cancer survivor makes a triumphant return. Last year’s finalist, recently split from her father, is proving to herself that she can win alone. All of which is to say that tennis is not a brutalist hellscape.
You might think otherwise reading, hearing and watching the tennis this week. “The whole thing with Naomi Osaka,” as one American TV booker characterized it, overrode (too) much of the actual tennis.