Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

This week, Mirra Andreeva won the biggest title of her career to date, Aryna Sabalenka’s serve numbers came under scrutiny, and Alexander Zverev’s plans for a winning ‘Golden Swing’ were lost in the dirt.

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What next for Andreeva?

It was typical of Andreeva’s career to date that after the biggest title of her career, she could admit that she found winning it fairly excruciating.

“I was hella nervous,” Andreeva said after beating Clara Tauson 7-6(1), 6-1 to win the WTA 1,000 Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates. The Russian, 17, overcame that nervousness after she and Tauson, 22, exchanged early breaks, running away with the tiebreak and the second set as the 22-year-old Dane was hampered by a leg injury.

Andreeva, who announced herself to the tennis world at the 2024 Australian Open aged 16, has spoken about learning to stay cool on court in the last few months. Last year in Melbourne, she went 5-1 down to Diane Parry in the final set before coming back to win. This year, on the same court, she found herself in a similarly tense situation against Moyuka Uchijima and prevailed again. After labeling the court “cursed” in her disarming manner, Andreeva spoke about the benefits of being an experienced young player with serious talent.

“Against lower-ranked opponents, I feel like I have probably more experience than them playing under pressure moments or playing on the bigger courts. I think that helps me,” she said in her news conference then.

In Dubai, Andreeva beat world No. 2 Iga Swiatek and world No. 7 Elena Rybakina to reach the final. Her varied, intelligent game, in which she injects height and spin to disrupt opponents and can maneuver them from side to side and back to front, now has an even more efficient, potent serve behind it. The win takes her into the WTA top 10 for the first time. Already the only teenager in the top 100, she becomes the first teen to reach that high since 2009. A title may be an exclamation point, but everything in her tennis suggests there is much more to come.

James Hansen

Why did Zverev’s clay-court plans go awry?

Planning a schedule is a delicate balance for a tennis player. Play too much and they risk overburdening their body; play too little and they can be undercooked for the big events.

At certain points in the year, those decisions get more complicated — including deciding which surface to play on. In the last few weeks, there have been both hard- and clay-court ATP Tour events for players to pick from.

The majority of the big names were in Doha last week for the Qatar Open. Hard is generally the preferred option for the leading players and it made sense to be in Doha ahead of the nearby Dubai Tennis Championships, which take place this week, and the upcoming “Sunshine Double” of Indian Wells and the Miami Open.

World No. 2 Zverev took a different approach, however — opting to play in the clay-court Rio de Janeiro Open last week and the Argentina Open in Buenos Aires on the same surface the week before that. He was the headline player for the “Golden Swing” in South America and these scheduling decisions can also include economic factors, with players receiving appearance fees.

Zverev may have anticipated most of his peers in the rankings being in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, giving him the chance to get match practice on the surface he considers his best chance at a Grand Slam title. Whatever the motivation, at both the 500-level event in Rio and the 250-level event in Buenos Aires, the decision backfired and his chances of overhauling Jannik Sinner as world No. 1 took a significant hit.

In Buenos Aires, Zverev lost to home favorite Francisco Cerundolo, who beat him from a set down. Cerundolo was the next-highest-ranked player in the tournament — at world No. 26. Zverev lost at the same stage in Brazil, again from a set up and again to an Argentinian, this time Francisco Comesana, ranked world No. 86 at the time. He now has just one hard-court tournament to prepare for the Sunshine Double — the Mexican Open in Acapulco, where he is again the top seed — while his main rivals have spent the last few weeks on the surface.

Zverev may suffer long-term pain in the so-far-failed hope of picking up some short-term gain.

GO DEEPER

‘Borderline too much’: Why the French Open final is a turning point for men’s tennis

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The tennis calendar’s balance between appetite and money skews again

The split between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates and Argentina and Brazil wasn’t just surface-level. While the majority of matches in South America saw packed-out stadiums, from 18-year-old Brazilian Joao Fonseca’s first-round match to Cerundolo and Comesana’s upsets of Zverev, anyone tuning in to the men’s and women’s events in Doha and Dubai was more often greeted by rows of empty seats.

Daytime matches can be a hard sell, even at Grand Slams and other markets where tennis has been a mainstay for decades, but some of these were evening matches featuring big names at key stages of their respective tournaments.

Emma Navarro’s three-set thriller against Sorana Cirstea and Jack Draper’s quarterfinal match against Matteo Berrettini that also went the distance were under-attended. These were good tickets that fans clearly had little interest in, regardless of what the announced sales might have been.

Even in the run-up to the two-week global showcase, the tournaments in South America were advertising their difficulties with the increased competition from their more lucrative hard-court counterparts. Stuck in a hard-court sandwich, the clay-court events are less appealing to top players preparing for Indian Wells and Miami, and discussions have taken place about converting some of the famed “Golden Swing” to hard courts for financial reasons. The long-held expectation that a 1,000-level tournament will be held in Saudi Arabia in some form around that time in the calendar would only put more pressure on one of the bulwarks of global tennis culture.

Elsewhere on the tennis calendar, there was the capriciousness of tournament licensing. One year a player is pulling off one of the great wins of her career. The next year she doesn’t get a chance to defend that title because the tournament doesn’t exist anymore.

Such is life for Katie Boulter, who rolled into Indian Wells last year on the heels of defeating Marta Kostyuk in the final of the San Diego Open. The win, worth 500 points, sent her shooting up the rankings into seeded territory.

Financial issues prevented organizers from continuing to host the tournament. The WTA has two tournaments this week — a 250 in Austin, Texas, and the 500 that used to be in San Diego. It’s now in Merida, Mexico.

There is a San Diego Open this week. It’s a men’s Challenger Tour event.

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Is Sabalenka’s form in her right shoulder?

It’s been a disappointing couple of tournaments for the world No. 1, Sabalenka, since she lost her Australian Open title to Madison Keys at the end of January.

Sabalenka lost her first match at the Qatar Open two weeks ago to Ekaterina Alexandrova and was then hammered by Tauson 6-3, 6-2 in her second in Dubai last week.

Just as she had done when up against Tauson at the Australian Open in January, Sabalenka struggled badly with her serve. On that occasion, Sabalenka lost four of her first six service games, facing 10 break points in the process. Last week, Tauson once again feasted on the shot. Sabalenka won less than half her first serve points (47.5 percent) and 41.4 percent of her second serve ones.

It’s a shot that’s been an area of concern since late 2024, which makes some sense given the shoulder injury Sabalenka suffered last summer that kept her out of Wimbledon.

Aryna Sabalenka’s attacking game is still built around her serve, even with the variety she has added in the last year. (Robert Prange / Getty Images)

When analyzing service numbers, small changes mean more than they might suggest at first glance, especially over time.

At the 2024 Australian Open, 7.9 percent of Sabalenka’s serves were aces; at the 2025 tournament, 3.4 percent. She made a higher proportion of first serves in 2025, but she won a significantly lower proportion of points behind them, down 11.5 percentage points from 78.6 to 67.1. She also faced 27 more break points in 2025 than she did in 2024.

Looking more broadly, when it comes to fewest points played per service game, which can help to measure a player’s serving efficiency, Sabalenka was the best in the WTA top 50 last year. For 2025 so far, she ranks 18th, with 6.6 points per service game, up from 6.3. It’s a small sample size of only 13 matches, but it also matches the eye test from her recent tournaments. Sabalenka has struggled for easy service games and has been broken with alarming regularity.

Keys broke Sabalenka’s serve four times in the Australian Open final; Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova broke it five times in the quarterfinals and Jessica Bouzas Maneiro broke Sabalenka three times in the second round to go with the four breaks from Tauson in the third round. She was visibly frustrated with her serving vulnerability at various points in Melbourne.

It may prove to be a small blip, but it’s a shot that will always attract extra attention given how much of a weakness it was before Sabalenka brought in mechanics expert Gavin MacMillan to make some crucial technical tweaks that turned her career around.

All eyes will be on the serve when Sabalenka is next in action at Indian Wells.

GO DEEPER

How tears and a telephone in Toronto changed Aryna Sabalenka’s tennis life

Charlie Eccleshare

Shot of the week

From Rio de Janeiro, Comesana just does not give up.

And in Dubai, Karolina Muchova does Karolina Muchova things.

Recommended reading:

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Andrey Rublev (5) def. Jack Draper (8) 5-7, 7-5, 6-1 to win the Qatar Open (500) in Doha, Qatar. It is Rublev’s maiden second title at the same ATP Tour event.
🏆 Sebastian Baez (5) def. Alexandre Muller 6-2, 6-3 to win the Rio Open (500) in Rio de Janeiro. It is Baez’s second consecutive title in Rio de Janeiro.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Mirra Andreeva (12) def. Clara Tauson 7-6(1), 6-1 to win the Dubai Tennis Championships (1000) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for her first WTA 1000 title.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Mirra Andreeva makes her top-10 debut, moving up five places from No. 14 to a career-high world ranking of No. 9
📈 Jack Draper ascends four spots from No. 16 to No. 12 after reaching the Qatar Open final. It’s a new career high for Draper.
📈 Clara Tauson also earns a new career high, moving up 10 places from No. 33 to No. 23.

📉 Jordan Thompson falls out of the top 30, dropping seven places from No. 29 to No. 36.
📉 Anna Kalinskaya drops 15 places from No. 19 to No. 34, losing a seeding spot for the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells, Calif.
📉 Alexander Bublik falls from No. 48 to No. 51, leaving the top 50 for the first time since June 2023.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Dubai Tennis Championships (500) featuring Daniil Medvedev, Alex de Minaur, Arthur Fils, Jiri Lehecka.
📍Acapulco, Mexico: Mexican Open (500) featuring Casper Ruud, Alexander Zverev, Ben Shelton, Denis Shapovalov.
📍Santiago, Chile: Chile Open (250) featuring Francisco Cerundolo, Nicolas Jarry, Jaime Faria, Cristian Garin.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel 💻 Tennis TV

🎾 WTA

📍Merida, Mexico: Merida Open (500) featuring Emma Navarro, Paula Badosa, Marta Kostyuk, Maria Sakkari.
📍Austin, Texas: ATX Open (250) featuring Jessica Pegula, Diana Shnaider, Peyton Stearns, Petra Kvitova.

📺 UK: Sky Sports; U.S.: Tennis Channel

Tell us what you noticed this week in the comments below as the men’s and women’s tours continue.

(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)