Clay courts and college tennis continue — Quotes from Rome
By Joey Dillon
The IX: Tennis Tuesday with Joey Dillon, May 13, 2025
Howdy, y’all and Happy Tennis Tuesday! We have two Elite Eights this week for both Rome and the NCAA Championships. First, we’ll tackle into Rome, where tennis players got to witness Pope Leo XIV get elected, but found out he’s quite the tennis player and fan. The quarterfinals’ four matchups do feature some tasty matchups, but I will say the draw is quite uneven:
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(1) Aryna Sabalenka vs. (8) Zheng Qinwen
(4) Coco Gauff vs. (7) Mirra Andreeva
(5) Jasmine Paolini vs. (13) Diana Shnaider
Peyton Stearns vs. (16) Elina Svitolina
The top half features all seeds projected to make the quarters, but the bottom half is where I really want to discuss.
There’s quite a few interesting stories here, first with Paolini and Shnaider. Earlier this year, Paolini and coach Renzo Furlan split after a 10-year partnership that saw the Italian reach new heights and back-to-back Grand Slam finals last season. The World No. 4 was entering her home WTA 1000 tournament after a shocking loss to Maria Sakkari where she won only three games. Now, she’s the highest seed remaining in a tournament where she’s never reached past the second round until this year.
Shnaider, her next opponent, is also undergoing a coaching change after hiring former World No. 1 Dinara Safina before Madrid and then announcing this week that the two-time Grand Slam finalist wanted to end their partnership. It’s one thing to have a split, but in the middle of two massive tournaments just before a Grand Slam, you can only imagine there might be a little more to the story. Still, this is a massive opportunity for both players to not only make the semifinals, but championship match.
To me, Peyton Stearns is the story of the tournament. Also going through recent coaching changes, the American is starting to find some of the best tennis of her career and matched her best result at a WTA 1000 events (2024 Toronto). It’s the route to get to the quarterfinals in her Rome debut that’s mighty impressive — taking back-to-back third-set tiebreak wins over reigning Australian Open champion Madison Keys and then a resurgent Naomi Osaka. Stearns is one of my darkhorses for Roland Garros because she’s such an athletic fighter on the court. Sure, she doesn’t have the prettiest shots but she will literally leave it all on court…….literally:
Lastly, another player sneakily building a solid season and even better clay court campaign is Elina Svitolina. The Ukrainian took advantage of Danielle Collins’ upset over Iga Swiatek (who will drop in the rankings) and defeated the American to reach her fifth quarterfinal in Rome. The two-time champion here, Svitolina is 12-1 on the red clay this season following her Rouen title and Madrid semifinal finish. To me, I would pencil her in the final against Aryna Sabalenka but of course, anything can happen.
Now, for the NCAA Division I Team Championships. The eight Super Regionals were hosted and there were a few upsets to determine the teams advancing to the final site this week in Waco, Texas. Your quarterfinal matchups are:
(1) Georgia vs. (8) Duke
(5) North Carolina vs. (13) LSU
(3) Michigan vs. (20) Oklahoma State
(2) Texas A&M vs. (10) Tennessee
While I was proud to pick the Tennessee upset over Virginia, I was devastated to see LSU pull off a 4-2 win over my No. 4 Ohio State Buckeyes in my backyard. Led by freshmen Canadians Kayla Cross and Cadence Brace — who are managing their first semester of college tennis with professional tennis tournaments — give the Tigers are much-needed boost when available to play. They are perhaps the most toughest 1-2 duo remaining in the field behind Georgia, to me.
Oklahoma State finding their footing this year is quite a surprise to me, as well. Last year, they entered last year’s NCAA tournament ranked No. 1 and 27-0 on the year with an ITA Indoor title to their resume. They won the first two rounds of the tournament before hosting Tennessee for their Super Regional, losing 2-4. This season, while decent, was nowhere close. The Cowgirls are currently 22-7 on the year and while 7 losses might seem high for an Elite Eight squad, their “worst” loss on the year is to No. 21 UCF. They earned their spot to Waco in a little bit of surprising fashion — by hosting their Super Regional against Stanford, who upset Texas Tech in Lubbock. It was the first all-unseeded Super Regional matchup since the format was adopted a few years ago and the Cowgirls emerged in a 4-3 epic to avenge some heartbreak a year ago.
I do see the Top 3 seeds and No. 5 North Carolina making it to the Final Four, with No. 2 Texas A&M edging out No. 1 Georgia for the title. I won’t be surprised to see that result flipped, though. That being said North Carolina is always a super-tough and deep, talented team who beat the Bulldogs earlier this year and *ichigan could be inspired by making their first-ever Final Four in program history. We could be in for a surprising Wacky Waco championship, but for now, I’m keeping my cards on the Aggies.
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This Week in Women’s Tennis
Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the moms out there who have inspired the ones playing on tour and changing the narrative about being a working mom in the sport.
The Washington State women were the winners of the third annual Next In Tournament for those who just missed the cutoff for the NCAA tournament.
In sanction news, Alexandra Iordache was banned for two years and fined $15,000 on match corruption charges, while Irina Fetecău was banned for 10 months after a contaminated supplement was found in a pre-workout drink she used.
Ukranian Oleksandra Oliynykova won the biggest ITF title of her career with the ranking points to put her in contention for Grand Slam qualifying. However, a clerical error on her end to not withdraw from a WTA tournament she didn’t anticipate getting into has her result voided.
TNT is taking over coverage for Roland Garros and could their all-star lineup of commentators be the switch that’s needed to get casual fans engaged?
Victoria Azarenka gave input on Jannik Sinner’s doping suspension and what she thinks the sport needs to change in terms of protocol.
Victoria Mboko is continuing to win — a lot — and she’s putting the tennis world on notice.
Tennis Australia announced that Destanee Aivia would receive the reciprocal wildcard into Roland Garros, shocking the Melbourne native. Iva Jovic was awarded the USTA’s wildcard after claiming enough points throughout the clay court season.
Petra Kvitova got her first win since maternity leave last week in Rome, but the two-time Wimbledon champion says it’s not winning that has her back on court.
Congratulations to Serena Williams, who was announced as an inductee into the Team USA Hall of Fame:
Alex Eala opens up about her recent celebrity that’s taken a huge uptick following her record-breaking season.
With their own unique setup, Sunset Tennis Club is making their mark in the Los Angeles tennis scene.
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Tweet of the Week
The GOAT (and sister Venus) shined at the Met Gala last week:
Five at The IX: Rome Pre-Tournament Press
Q. You said earlier that you’ve been struggling with your perfectionism. Obviously that’s a big part of your success. How do you take the best out of it without letting it overwhelm you?
IGA SWIATEK: Yeah, I have love-and-hate relationship with my perfectionism. Yeah, like coming on these clay court tournaments, I just kind of try to reflect on how I see my game and how I also saw previous seasons.
The thing is that I only remember the good stuff from last years because I was winning titles and everything. My head kind of remembers the good stuff. Sometimes I’m on court, I feel like I’m going to play this loopy forehand there, my great backhand there. I’m making decisions that are not really good at the moment because I just remember how it felt previous tournaments or previous years. I kind of assume it’s going to go in, and then I make mistakes. It’s not the same, I’m confused.
Yeah, as I said, that’s why every tournament and every year is different. There’s no reason to compare because we are, like, at different places in our lives, as well.
That’s why I’m happy that I have my team around me to also help me to manage this stuff. Without them, for sure it wouldn’t be so easy.
But still I feel like with the way sometimes I’ve been playing, I feel like I’m doing good results. I’m close to doing a little bit more. I just need to just push a little bit more and not let my thoughts go around like this.
Q. You had so many years of being the youngest by far on tour. How does it feel now that you’ve got Mirra in the top 10, Diana Shnaider. Do you see your generation coming possibly?
COCO GAUFF: I mean, from a competition perspective, it doesn’t matter to me. When I was younger, I never cared about my age or anything like that.
From a personal, yeah, it’s great to have people around my age. I’ve always, like, said it was always hard for me to make friends on tour when I first came because I was just way younger than everyone. I was 15. There is not other 15- or 16-year-olds playing these tournaments week in, week out. The closest was like a 19-, 20-year-olds, maybe outside of Iga.
But now having more friends around, it does make a difference. I feel different on-site just being able to have conversations, relate-ability. Not that the older players weren’t nice to me, they were. It’s just different. They’re getting married, planning their lives out. I’m just still trying to figure it out.
It’s good to figure it out with other people.
Q. Have your expectations for yourself and the pressure you’ve put on yourself to win matches, tournaments, has that shifted at all? I mean, you’re still so young. Happy birthday, by the way. You’re still so young and have a lot of time. Have you started to think, like, you want things sooner?
MIRRA ANDREEVA: Well, of course I want things to come to me sooner. If I want them to come, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to come. I have to work hard and I have to do something for it.
I’m trying to work hard and to do everything I can. Sometimes it doesn’t go my way. Sometimes it does. I’m not going to put pressure on myself if I don’t win the tournament I want to win, for example, this year, because I know I have time.
I know that if I’m going to work hard and do everything I can, it’s going to come – maybe not now, maybe it’s going to take a year, maybe five, maybe 10. I don’t know how life is going to go.
I’m just going to take it slow, and at the same time I’m going to try to enjoy, then we’re going to see how things are going to go.
Q. At Wimbledon last year you said when two players who are the same same age play each other, it’s always extra interesting. How has that happened for you? When you think of the 1994 generation, yourself, Svitolina, Jabeur who are still standing. Would you have predicted that when you were juniors?
JESSICA PEGULA: I’ve never really thought about that before. I just get freaked out when there’s a girl, like, 10 years younger than me and I feel so old (smiling).
I think it’s cool that you come up in the same age as somebody. You kind of see your careers kind of grow at the same time.
I’ve kind of felt that way a little bit with Ons just because we were both not really top. I don’t think she was a top, top junior. We never came out supposed to be top 10 in the world. Kind of struggled with injuries, struggled with physical stuff.
I remember playing her when we were ranked about the same, somewhere in the 70s, 80s or 90s. I remember when she kind of broke out and had a couple good wins. Then I would. Kind of just to see how we both kind of moved up around the same time. I didn’t know exactly she was ’94. I knew we were close in age.
Yeah, seeing stuff like that, I think it is cool. You’re kind of on a similar journey and path. It’s cool to see that we both at one point did figure it out. Obviously there’s a lot of bumps in the road either way with whatever you’re trying to achieve, injuries. Every year is different.
It’s pretty cool to go on that journey together. I think at the end of the day when we started out, we were ranked 80 and struggling, doing all this stuff, you can appreciate the journey that we’ve been on.
That’s kind of the entire point of what we do. It’s not always just the matches that we win, it’s kind of the journey of bouncing back from those injuries, bouncing back from tough losses, still being able to play at the top of the game.
Yeah, I really appreciate those moments. I think it’s really cool.
Q. Do you agree that today there are many players that can win at the beginning of a tournament, maybe 20 or more? How can you explain this which the level is growing up all the time or is this type of game which means that? Maybe more physical, so it’s more the technique?
MADISON KEYS: I think there’s definitely a lot of players… It’s happening on both tours now more and more, where you can think that there’s, like you said, 20 different people that you wouldn’t be surprised if they end up winning the tournament.
I think part of it is because we’ve kind of lost some of our legends obviously. Like there’s no longer Serena Williams in every draw where you just assume she’s going to win. On the men’s side you don’t have Roger, Rafa and Novak every single week.
But I also think the base level has gotten much higher. I think the margin for error has gotten smaller. I think you’re kind of seeing that with some of the wins and the losses just because it’s so much closer, where if they’re both playing well, you’re going to have a great match. It could be two points that’s different.
I think just overall everyone has just gotten so much better. The game has become so much more physical. I think everyone’s doing such a great job at investing in their own careers and having the physios and the fitness and all that. I think more and more people are getting faster and stronger while also staying healthy for longer.
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