Raphael Collignon was one of tennis’ best-kept secrets until this week. On Sunday the 24-year-old Belgian became the name the sport is searching for, having stormed into the first ATP Tour final of his career at the EFG Swiss Open in Gstaad. Seeded seventh at the clay-court ATP 250, Collignon assembled the best week of his life to get there, beating Timofey Skatov, Lorenzo Sonego and third seed Valentin Vacherot before a semi-final for the ages against sixth seed Juan Manuel Cerundolo.

A set down and staring at defeat, he saved a match point and reeled off the closing games to win 1-6, 7-6(5), 7-5 — the kind of escape that turns an unknown into a talking point overnight. His reward was a title match against Stefanos Tsitsipas, the former world No. 3 chasing a revival of his own.

So who is he? Collignon’s story begins, improbably, in Rochester, Minnesota, where he was born in January 2002 while his father worked at the Mayo Clinic. The family returned to Belgium before his first birthday, and he grew up in Liège, first picking up a racket at the age of four by hitting against a wall while his father played at the local club. He is now guided by Steve Darcis, Belgium’s Davis Cup captain and a former world No. 38 who knows intimately the tour grind Collignon is climbing through.

That climb has been steep but steady. He broke into the top 100 for the first time in February 2025 and has since risen to a career high around No. 42 — progress built on the Challenger circuit and punctuated by eye-catching wins at the highest level. He beat two-time champion Grigor Dimitrov to reach the Brisbane quarter-finals, upset then-No. 12 Casper Ruud en route to the US Open third round in 2025, and produced arguably his biggest result by defeating Alex de Minaur to help Belgium past Australia in the Davis Cup. This year he reached the third round at Roland Garros — with a win over American Ben Shelton along the way — and the quarter-finals on grass in Halle.

At 6-foot-3, Collignon pairs a heavy serve with an aggressive, two-handed-backhand baseline game that has translated increasingly well from Challenger courts to the main tour. But he is not a standard baseline grinder off it. He is an unabashed fashion obsessive who has dabbled in modelling and likes to wear, in his own words, things “not many others are wearing.” He counts Barcelona and Standard Liège among his football loyalties and lists cycling among his hobbies — a personality with edges, and part of why casual fans are warming to him so fast.

The Gstaad run guarantees a fresh career-high ranking when the new list is published on Monday, whatever Sunday delivers, and pushes him firmly into view as the North American hard-court swing approaches. A first ATP title would be a storybook finish; even a runner-up showing represents the breakthrough fortnight of his career.

For Belgian tennis, long carried by David Goffin, Collignon’s emergence offers a timely lift. For everyone else, he is the weekend’s discovery: a big-hitting shotmaker with a flair for the dramatic and, as of this week, a name worth remembering.

Novak Djokovic will give tennis fans an unusually close look at his life, career and late-stage pursuit of history when Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter premieres worldwide on Prime Video on August 20, 2026. The feature-length documentary follows Djokovic from his childhood in Serbia to the top of men’s tennis, while also examining the sacrifices, rivalries and controversies that have shaped one of the sport’s most complicated champions.

Directed by Jason Hehir, the filmmaker behind the acclaimed Michael Jordan documentary series The Last Dance, the film includes behind-the-scenes access to Djokovic at major tournaments, during training sessions and at home with his family. It will be available exclusively through Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories.

What The Wolf in Winter Will Cover

The documentary traces Djokovic’s journey from growing up during conflict and economic hardship in Serbia to becoming a 24-time Grand Slam singles champion, Olympic gold medalist and the holder of the men’s record for most weeks ranked world No. 1. It also explores the resistance Djokovic encountered when he emerged as a threat to Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, two players who had already established one of the most popular rivalries in sports.

Rather than focusing only on trophies and records, The Wolf in Winter is expected to examine the mentality behind Djokovic’s longevity and the physical demands of competing against a younger generation late in his career. The film’s title presents Djokovic as an aging but still dangerous champion, fighting to remain near the top of the sport while confronting the limits imposed by time.

Djokovic said the production will show doubts, sacrifices and private moments that audiences have not previously seen, adding that his journey is “far from over.”

Rafael Nadal and Other Tennis Greats Featured

The documentary includes interviews with Djokovic’s wife, Jelena Djokovic, as well as several of the most prominent figures in tennis history. Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, Boris Becker and Jim Courier are among the former champions appearing in the film. Tennis broadcasters Mary Carillo and Patrick McEnroe also provide perspective on Djokovic’s career and public image.

Nadal’s participation is especially notable. The Spaniard and Djokovic produced one of the most demanding rivalries in tennis history, meeting across every surface and in some of the sport’s biggest matches. Becker also brings a different perspective after coaching Djokovic during a successful period in which the Serbian added six Grand Slam titles between 2014 and 2016.

Documentary Arrives Just Before the US Open

The Wolf in Winter will debut 10 days before the singles main draw begins at the 2026 US Open on August 30. The timing places Djokovic’s career and future at the center of attention shortly before he returns to New York, where he has won four men’s singles titles. Djokovic remains focused on competing at the highest level at age 39, although he has acknowledged that recovering between long matches has become more difficult after more than two decades on tour.

Following his semifinal defeat to Jannik Sinner at Wimbledon, Djokovic said his attention had turned toward the US Open and the challenge of preparing his body to face players considerably younger than him. That late-career struggle appears to be central to the documentary. Hehir described the film as an examination of an all-time great reaching a crossroads while continuing to challenge the leading players of a new generation.

For Djokovic, the documentary offers an opportunity to present a fuller version of his story: not only the records and victories, but also the pressure, criticism and personal sacrifices behind them. Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter premieres exclusively on Prime Video on Thursday, August 20.

After years of players blaming modern tennis balls for a wave of arm injuries, the ATP appears ready to do something about it. The men’s tour is set to trial more frequent ball changes at a hard-court Challenger event next month — the first tangible sign that a complaint voiced by some of the sport’s biggest names, Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Emma Raducanu among them, is finally being heard.

The experiment is due to take place at the Lexington Challenger in Kentucky, which begins on August 3. According to reporting from tennis insider Parsa Nemati that has since been picked up widely across tennis media, main-draw singles matches will see the first ball change after five games rather than the usual seven, with subsequent changes every seven games instead of every nine. The measure is said to carry the backing of the ATP’s Player Advisory Council and to follow sustained feedback about how quickly balls wear down on hard courts.

The logic is straightforward. A fresh ball is lively and predictable, but as the felt fluffs up and the ball grows heavier, players have to swing harder to generate the same pace — precisely the kind of repeated strain many believe is driving an epidemic of wrist, elbow and shoulder problems. Changing balls sooner, and more often, would keep them closer to their original condition for longer, and in theory reduce the load running through a player’s arm over the course of a long match.

One of the most vocal current backers is Taylor Fritz. The American, a fixture in the world’s top ten, has complained publicly that balls fluff up almost immediately and slow down far too early, arguing bluntly that “seven and nine is just too much.” Fritz has also tied his own wrist trouble to the merry-go-round of different balls used from week to week, saying he dealt with three different balls across three tournaments during a single US hard-court stretch.

He is far from alone. The grievance has been building for years. Djokovic, reflecting on how the sport has changed, has said the single biggest difference he notices compared with a decade or more ago is simply “the balls.” Alcaraz — currently sidelined by the wrist injury he sustained at April’s Barcelona Open — called for reform in an interview early last year, insisting: “It needs to change. I know they will change it.” The Spaniard described how a new ball moves quickly before ballooning in size after only a few exchanges, making aggressive play difficult.

The women’s tour has echoed the concern. Raducanu, who underwent surgery on both wrists in 2023, told The Guardian last October that the balls represent a genuine challenge for the whole locker room, noting that “it gets very fluffy” as they deteriorate and connecting that wear to the rise in wrist, elbow and shoulder injuries across the game. Medvedev has likewise flagged the balls as a factor behind the injury trend.

Whether a Challenger-level trial can move the needle at the top of the sport is another question. The results in Lexington are expected to determine whether the idea is worth expanding to the main ATP Tour, and there are practical hurdles. More frequent changes mean significantly more balls per match, which would likely force a renegotiation of the tours’ supply contracts with manufacturers such as Dunlop and Penn, who would have to provide far more product to get through a tournament.

Crucially, the trial addresses only half of the complaint. Players have long argued that the deeper problem is not simply how fast balls degrade, but the sheer variety of balls in use — a different brand and specification, it can feel, almost every week — leaving them constantly re-adapting. Faster changes do nothing to standardise which ball is being hit in the first place.

Still, the move has been welcomed as a start. Tennis Channel analyst Gill Gross endorsed the plan, predicting the change “should happen and will happen.” For a tour often accused of moving slowly on player welfare, even a modest, low-profile experiment on the Challenger circuit represents a rare instance of the game testing a fix rather than merely debating one. With the North American hard-court swing looming, it has put the ball question firmly back in the conversation.

Alexander Bublik has delivered one of the most candid assessments of men’s tennis in the Sinner–Alcaraz era, admitting that he and much of the ATP field have effectively stopped believing they can win a Grand Slam while the world’s top two are fit.

Speaking to the German magazine Tennis Magazin, the world No. 11 said the gap at the majors had grown so wide that beating Jannik Sinner or Carlos Alcaraz over five sets was now closer to fantasy than a realistic target. “The other players have given up — me too,” Bublik said, explaining that the realisation had reshaped how he defines a successful tournament.

Rather than chasing a title, the Kazakh said his ambition at the biggest events had narrowed to reaching the quarter-finals or semi-finals — a result he can now go home content with. He framed the shift as realism rather than a collapse of self-belief: in his words, a player has to accept that he is “not Novak Djokovic” and will not win majors the way Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer did.

The remarks carry unusual weight because they come from a player who has actually beaten Sinner. At Halle in 2025, Bublik recovered from a set down to defeat the then-reigning No. 1 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 on grass — one of the very few losses Sinner suffered across that stretch. Asked how he managed it, Bublik was disarming: he put it down to “a lot of luck,” and insisted he meant it seriously. He has previously described Sinner as a tennis “robot” built by artificial intelligence.

Bublik is no journeyman reaching for excuses. The 29-year-old climbed to a career-high world No. 10 in January, has won nine ATP Tour titles from 16 finals, and has enjoyed the most productive spell of his career over the past year. His best Grand Slam run remains a quarter-final at Roland Garros in 2025; this season he reached the fourth round at both the Australian Open and Wimbledon. When a player of that standing publicly concedes the majors are beyond him, it says as much about the summit of the game as it does about the man saying it.

The numbers behind his fatalism are stark. Sinner and Alcaraz shared all four Grand Slams between them in both 2024 and 2025 before Alexander Zverev finally broke the run, claiming his maiden major at Roland Garros this year. Alcaraz then underlined the duopoly’s grip in Melbourne, beating Djokovic in the Australian Open final to complete the career Grand Slam and become, at 22, the youngest man in the Open era to win seven majors. Sinner responded at Wimbledon, defending his title with a four-set victory over Zverev on 12 July for a fifth career Slam.

That leaves the rest of the tour competing, in effect, for what is left — and Bublik’s honesty exposes a psychological problem the ATP would rather not talk about. If a top-15 player believes the trophy is unattainable when the top two are healthy, the question at the majors is no longer simply who can challenge Sinner and Alcaraz, but how many of their rivals still genuinely think they can win.

Not everyone shares the surrender. Bublik acknowledged the dominance may not last forever, and pointed to an emerging generation — teenagers who have yet to accumulate years of defeats to the top two — arriving without that scar tissue. Prospects such as Joao Fonseca have already pushed Sinner at the Masters level without conceding an inch mentally. But for now, Bublik’s verdict stands as the bluntest summary yet of a two-man age.

The next examination comes on the North American hard courts. Sinner heads into the US Open swing as world No. 1, with Zverev second and Alcaraz third in the live rankings, and Alcaraz is targeting a comeback at the Cincinnati Open after a wrist injury. Whether anyone outside the top two arrives in New York believing they can lift the trophy — Bublik included — may prove the more revealing storyline of the summer.

Nick Kyrgios is back in front of a big crowd, back opposite one of the game’s hottest young names, and — for the first time in months — talking openly about where his comeback goes next.

The 2022 Wimbledon finalist headlines UTS Rio, Patrick Mouratoglou’s fast-format exhibition series, at the Maracanãzinho this weekend, and on Friday night he meets Brazilian teenager João Fonseca for the first time — a marquee collision between one of tennis’s biggest draws and the sport’s most exciting emerging star, staged in Fonseca’s home city.

“I’m feeling great,” Kyrgios told Tennis Majors. “I’ve been playing the last couple of weeks — Majorca, Halle, Stuttgart — and Wimbledon was great too. Just happy to be back at these events, and every week I’m able to play now is a bonus.”

The appearance is the latest checkpoint in a stop-start 2026 return from the wrist and knee injuries that have wrecked the Australian’s past three seasons. Once ranked as high as No. 13 in the world, Kyrgios has undergone multiple surgeries and slid down the rankings after playing barely a handful of matches across 2024 and 2025.

He reopened his 2026 account at the Brisbane International in January, losing his opening singles match, then skipped the Australian Open singles draw, saying his body was not ready for best-of-five-set tennis. A grass-court campaign followed in June: he beat Corentin Moutet in Stuttgart before losing in the second round, withdrew from Halle with a knee complaint, fell in the first round in Mallorca, and played the Wimbledon doubles alongside Alexander Bublik.

Rio is an exhibition — UTS matches carry no ATP ranking points — but for Kyrgios it is competitive court time and, just as importantly, a stage. “It’s gonna be a circus, a lot of fun,” he said of a schedule that pits him against two home players, Fonseca and 17-year-old junior Grand Slam champion Guto Miguel. “I know it’s going to be a zoo on Friday night, something crazy. I’m really looking forward to that.”

The Fonseca meeting is the headline. The 19-year-old — who turns 20 next month — has broken through this season, stunning Novak Djokovic from two sets down at Roland Garros before reaching his first Grand Slam quarter-final, a run that lifted him to a career high inside the world’s top 25. He is now Brazil’s top-ranked player and, in Kyrgios’s view, a future major champion.

“Fonseca has the potential to win multiple Grand Slams,” Kyrgios said. “I look at his level, what he’s been able to produce, how quick his transition has been — he’s definitely got that X-factor. I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re seeing him be a multiple Grand Slam champion.”

Playing the young Brazilian on his own turf, Kyrgios added, “is one of the greatest things you can do in tennis and in sport.” For all the exhibition trappings, the most significant line for the tour may be about what comes after Rio. Asked to map out the rest of his season, Kyrgios pointed to the United States.

“Honestly, not too sure. I take it a week at a time,” he said. “After this I’m going to Washington, that’s all I know right now. Not too sure about much more than that, but we’ll see how we go.” Washington is a happy hunting ground. Kyrgios lifted the DC Open title there in 2019, beating a then-emerging Daniil Medvedev in the final for one of the biggest trophies of his career.

The ATP 500 also opens the North American hard-court swing that builds toward the US Open — historically among his most productive stretches. He offered no timeline beyond that stated intention, and stopped short of confirming any further tournaments. Kyrgios, who said he has enlisted friend and Grand Slam doubles champion Bruno Soares to work the UTS coaching card in Rio — “I haven’t had a coach in years,” he noted — also reflected on his changing relationship with the sport and its crowds.

“Earlier in my career I loved being the villain,” he said. “But now I just enjoy every part of it. People know that I’m here to compete, but also to create an atmosphere that’s enjoyable and electric.” Whatever the Rio result, the takeaway is simpler: one of tennis’s most magnetic figures is back on court, healthy enough to talk about a schedule again — and pointing toward Washington.

A gamble on the appeals process cost Samuel Bensoussan more than a year of his career. The former French pro challenged his match-fixing suspension at sport’s highest court — and walked away with a ban more than 50% longer than the one he was trying to shrink.

When a player is handed a suspension for corruption, the appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) is supposed to be the safety net. For Samuel Bensoussan, it became a trapdoor.

The 34-year-old Frenchman, who reached a career-high ranking of World No. 405 in June 2018, had been suspended for one year and 11 months after being found to have fixed singles and doubles matches on the lower rungs of the professional tour. Rather than serve it, he took his case to CAS in Lausanne. The panel not only rejected his challenge — it extended the ban to a full three years, siding with the International Tennis Integrity Agency’s (ITIA) argument that the original punishment was too lenient.

It is the kind of outcome that will be studied by anyone considering a fight with tennis’s integrity authorities: appeal the ruling, and you risk handing the sport’s watchdog a second chance to ask for a heavier sentence.

The appeal that backfired

Bensoussan’s original sanction stemmed from his involvement in manipulating matches at low-level events, the tier of the sport where prize money is thin and the temptation to take a payment for losing a set — or a match — has proven hardest to police. Investigators alleged he received just €1,000 for helping fix one of the matches at the center of the case.

Unhappy with the near-two-year ban, Bensoussan appealed. But the ITIA cross-appealed, arguing the suspension should be far longer — pushing for a ban of six-and-a-half years. The CAS panel landed in the middle: it dismissed Bensoussan’s bid to reduce the sanction, agreed the original penalty was insufficient, and set the ban at three years. The judges did throw him one small concession, declining the ITIA’s request that he repay the €1,000 he allegedly pocketed.

The net result is stark. A player who went to court hoping to cut his suspension left with 13 additional months added to it.

Part of a much bigger picture

Bensoussan’s case matters less for who he is than for what he was connected to. His name surfaced as part of one of the most sprawling corruption investigations tennis has ever faced — a scheme run out of Belgium by an organized crime syndicate.

According to the findings referenced by CAS, that operation corrupted at least 181 players around the world and manipulated a minimum of 375 tennis matches. The syndicate’s ringleader was sentenced to five years in prison by a Belgian criminal court. Bensoussan is one thread in that web, a reminder that the players who get banned are frequently the visible surface of a far larger, professionally run enterprise targeting the sport’s most financially vulnerable competitors.

That is where the real story sits. Grand Slam champions and top-20 stars are not the target of these networks; the fixers go where the money is smallest and the desperation is greatest — the ITF and Challenger-level events where a four-figure payment can outweigh a week’s realistic earnings. Every case like Bensoussan’s underscores how exposed the base of the professional pyramid remains, even as the ITIA racks up sanctions.

Why the ruling sends a message

For the ITIA, the outcome is a public-relations win as much as a legal one. By successfully arguing for a longer ban on appeal, the agency has demonstrated that challenging its decisions is not a low-risk move. A player weighing an appeal now has to price in the possibility that CAS agrees with the integrity body rather than the defendant — and that the number goes up, not down.

For the broader sport, the case keeps the uncomfortable spotlight on low-level match-fixing at a moment when tennis is otherwise dominated by the Alcaraz–Sinner era at the top. The glamour is at the majors; the vulnerability is three or four tiers below, and cases like this one are the clearest evidence that the problem has not gone away.

Bensoussan’s three-year ban runs its course regardless. But the precedent — appeal and you may pay more — is likely to outlast the suspension itself.

The question our readers have been asking all year — will Novak Djokovic retire? — finally has the man himself on the record. And the short answer, at least for the summer of 2026, is no. Days after his Wimbledon semifinal loss to Jannik Sinner, Djokovic pushed back on the growing wave of retirement speculation, confirming he intends to play the US Open and signalling he wants at least one more run at the All England Club.

Asked directly whether he could see himself back at Wimbledon in 2027, the 39-year-old did not hedge into vagueness: “I’d like to. At least one more time. Let’s see.” It is the clearest window yet into a decision the tennis world has been trying to read for months — and it moves the story on from the open-ended “if” that dominated the conversation earlier this season to a more concrete “how much longer, and where.”

The season that reframed the debate

Djokovic’s 2026 has been the kind of year that fuels exactly this sort of speculation. A deep run to the Wimbledon semifinals — where he was ultimately outclassed by the sport’s new standard-bearer in Sinner — sat awkwardly alongside a startling early exit at Roland Garros, where teenage sensation João Fonseca knocked him out in the third round. The 24-time Grand Slam champion remains stuck on that number, with the elusive 25th major looking harder to reach each passing tournament as Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz trade the game’s biggest prizes between them.

That is the tension Djokovic himself now openly admits to living with. By his own account, the struggle is less physical than psychological: the gap between the standards that built the most decorated career in men’s tennis and the reality of chasing 20-somethings at 39. He acknowledged that reaching the latter stages of majors would satisfy almost any other player — but that “almost any other player” has never been the bar he sets for himself.

What he’s actually committing to

Stripping away the philosophy, here is what Djokovic has committed to on the record:

He will play the US Open, the final Grand Slam of the year and a tournament where his blend of experience and returning brilliance can still trouble anyone over best-of-five sets. What remains genuinely uncertain is the hard-court lead-up — the Masters 1000 stops in Montreal and Cincinnati — where he has left the door open to a lighter schedule to protect his body for New York. That selective approach, load-managing the smaller events to peak for the majors, has quietly become the blueprint of his late career.

And then there is the tantalising line about 2027: a wish, not a promise, to walk out at Wimbledon “at least one more time.” For a player who has spoken for years about the Championships as the tournament he treasures most, it reads less like a farewell being scheduled and more like a man refusing to let someone else pick the date.

The verdict

So, will Djokovic retire? Not this summer, and — if his own words carry weight — not before he has taken at least one more swing at Wimbledon. The retirement question hasn’t been closed so much as it has been reframed: this is no longer about whether the end is coming, but about a champion negotiating the terms of his own exit, one Grand Slam at a time.

What is clear is that the sport should not write the final chapter for him just yet. Djokovic has spent two decades making a habit of answering doubts on his own schedule. On the evidence of this week, he intends to keep doing exactly that.