Iga Swiatek, the world No 1 and now four-time French Open champion, is unequivocal: “I don’t watch anything.”
You don’t watch any tennis? “Yeah, sorry.”
What about when you’re not at a tournament? “Honestly, I don’t get much time outside of tournaments if I play well, and if I don’t play well, I don’t want to watch because I’m kind of jealous that other players are in the tournament.
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“So, yeah, I don’t watch much tennis, but if I wouldn’t play tennis, I would watch it, so it’s not like I’m giving bad advertisement to our sport. It’s a great game.
“But, honestly, I’ve had enough when I play anyway, so I don’t feel like I need to add more.”
What about to scout your opponents? “I’m not good at that anyway. When I watch tennis, I don’t see a lot. I can’t really analyse properly, so my coach is doing that, and he is for sure better at it.”
This exchange between Swiatek and The Athletic took place a couple of weeks ago during the French Open, as we sought to answer the question of how much tennis players actually watch. It’s a topic that has caused consternation in other sports, with Arsenal defender Ben White admitting he has no interest in watching football. Does it matter? Surely not if a player is delivering on the pitch or court.
Swiatek is most certainly doing that, winning her fourth Roland Garros title shortly after that exchange, and her answers give a fascinating insight into the mind of one of the leading athletes in any sport right now. That she should be jealous of other players competing if she’s not there makes sense, but the idea that she is a terrible tennis analyst seems extremely far-fetched.
Other players The Athletic spoke to acknowledge that as a player it’s pretty much impossible to watch tennis as a fan and without instinctively switching into analysis mode. “I can’t escape watching as a tennis professional because obviously I read and I think of the court differently to a regular fan,” says Stefanos Tsitsipas, the world No 11 and two-time Grand Slam finalist. “I watch absolutely as a tennis player; I can’t enjoy it as a regular person.”
Over on the other end of the spectrum from Swiatek are players like Mirra Andreeva, the 17-year-old Russian sensation who reached the French Open semi-final last week and can’t get enough of the sport.
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In the first week of the French Open for instance, having beaten Viktoria Azarenka in a late-night second-round match, she got back to her hotel room at 3am. So, what did she do? “I watched some reels on Instagram about tennis. I was like, ‘Who is winning, who won, who lost?’” Andreeva says. “So I’m always trying to see the results and see some highlights of some matches.
“I don’t think there was a day without tennis for me since I started playing, so I can say that I always watch some tennis.”
Other vices of Andreeva’s include watching old matches of Martina Hingis, a fellow tennis prodigy, on YouTube. And after her semifinal defeat to Jasmine Paolini at Roland Garros last week, she still watched the women’s final a couple of days later.
Andreeva’s idol Andy Murray is another player who can’t help but watch tennis, whether he’s competing or not (including watching Andreeva in the early hours of the morning in January when she was playing at the Australian Open and he was back in the UK). Before having kids, he said he watched around three sets of tennis a day, and added last year that he wishes he had the time nowadays to watch full matches from the stands.
Murray watched a lot of tennis when he was a youngster and, after suffering a knee injury in his mid-teens, watched compulsively while sidelined for six months. He believes this, and the rest of the watching he did growing up, gave him an edge when he first joined the tour because he knew precisely how his opponents would play. “I’d been watching them for four or five years and taking notes on them,” he told the Control the Controllables podcast last year.
On the same podcast he revealed how, as a 16-year-old, his level of insight on players meant he was comfortably able to beat the recently retired four-time Grand Slam champion Jim Courier, one of his favourite players growing up. “He (Courier) came to the academy in Barcelona where I was at to train. I was reading exactly what he was going to do when we were practising with each other and I was able to win against him when I was only 16 or so.”
Swiatek and Murray, two multiple Grand-Slam champions with totally different approaches to this. How much of a difference does watching tennis make to a player?
There are those who will tell you quite a lot.
Ivan Ljubicic, the former world No 3 and one-time coach of Roger Federer, now working with the French Tennis Federation (FFT), said on X last year: “Today, I think young players don’t watch enough tennis. They only watch the highlights, which obviously say nothing about the match. There’s so much to learn from other players’ matches.”
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Patrick Mouratoglou, the former coach of Serena Williams who now works with a number of leading players like Denmark’s Holger Rune and runs his own academy, has said: “I know a lot of people who improved just by watching. That’s the best way to learn because you don’t think, you just copy, without trying. Federer watches other players constantly.”
There is a neurological element to this, which even amateur players can relate to — that sense of watching tennis helping us as we go out and try and emulate our heroes. According to the “mirror neuron” capacity, the same region of mammalian brains is in use whether one performs an activity, watches it being performed, or imagines it.
Emulation, which is what mirror neurons are thought to enable, is part of how players learn. Imitating other players’ strokes, their mannerisms, and even their celebrations is common in tennis. When Carlos Alcaraz won the French Open last week for instance he fell backwards onto the clay in a manner reminiscent of his compatriot, and 14-time Roland Garros champion, Rafael Nadal.
Some players are conscious of this imitation instinct, and take steps to make sure they are not copying other players too much. Clara Tauson, Denmark’s world No 65 who just reached the French Open fourth round, is like Andreeva in how compulsively she watches tennis. Tauson explains that she loves watching and learning from her rivals, but has learned the importance of retaining her own identity.
“When I’m at a big tournament all day, when I get back I always watch the night matches,” she says. “I enjoy watching tennis, especially female tennis — I really just love watching everybody doing their thing. For me female tennis is a bit more exciting because I can put myself into that. I still love watching the ATP, but for me learning stuff it’s more important to watch the WTA because that’s what I’m playing in.
“I love watching and realising what people are doing better than me, and then I work on it. I love watching (Elena) Rybakina and (Aryna) Sabalenka especially, partly because they’re kind of the same size as me height-wise, and maybe doing some of the same stuff. I can maybe relate more to Sabalenka because she has a bit more emotion. I love watching Elena because I aspire to be as calm as her. It’s insane. I don’t know how she’s doing it. But I love watching her because it’s so calming, whereas I get stressed watching some players.
“But I think for me it’s just been really important to work on my personality and play, and not try to mimic other players. That’s been really important to me because I love watching tennis, and I love improving. It’s sometimes hard to see people who are doing better than me and I don’t understand why. But you have to focus on yourself and not think too much about what others are doing.”
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Last week’s French Open runner-up Paolini and former U.S. Open champion Daniil Medvedev are among the players who like to watch a lot while competing. Medvedev stayed up late watching his rivals during his run to the U.S. Open final last year and admitted that he had to resort to finding illegal streams because he couldn’t watch on TV in his hotel room.
Though when Medvedev is not competing, it’s a different story. “If I’m still in the tournament, I absolutely love watching tennis matches,” he said at Wimbledon last year. “Watching opponents. Maybe you can see where he serves on the break point…
“When I’m not in the tournament, I don’t watch. I like to switch off and do other things. I very rarely watch any.”
As a counterpoint to those who think players should watch more tennis, it’s totally understandable from a mental health perspective why many want not to be consumed during non-competition weeks. Especially when they’ll still most likely be training and thinking about the sport anyway.
On some occasions players can’t help themselves from watching the biggest matches. Tsitsipas recalls the unusual way he watched last year’s Wimbledon final between Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic.
“Last year I was on a boat in the Aegean Sea for the Wimbledon final, and obviously it was the type of match I could not miss,” he says. “I really wanted to watch it so I put it on the boat, on a TV. So I watched it while we were sailing. That was a really cool experience. It’s really cool to be watching it from a vacation spot but at the same time I really envy them because I want to be playing in those finals. That said, I was thinking: ‘I’m lucky too because I get to have some time to myself relaxing before I continue with my season’. So there are mixed feelings there.
“Usually I prefer not to watch tennis because there are other things I like to do when I’m not playing. But there are certain instances when I follow it more — mainly in the semis or a final.”
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That final was a learning experience for a number of players. Murray was on Centre Court watching and admitted to taking videos on his phone to capture some of the tactical adjustments Alcaraz was making. “I learned a lot watching those two,” he said a few weeks later.
“I ended up taking some videos of the guys, just focusing a bit more on one side of the net, looking at their return position and movement between shots. Also looking at times when, particularly Alcaraz, was looking to play aggressive and offensive tennis and how he was going about doing that.”
For big finals, even if players would like to switch off and not think about what might have been, often they can’t resist. Jannik Sinner, the men’s world No 1, admitted after his French Open semifinal defeat to Alcaraz last week that he’d struggle to resist watching the final — as painful as it would be.
“I always like to watch tennis,” he said. “Let’s see (with the final) — if I have time for sure I’m going to watch a little bit.
“But in the other way, it’s always tough to watch, especially when you lose in the semis — it hurts because you know that you could be there and it’s a different feeling. If you lose the first rounds, it’s different. Then you watch.”
Big matches like that are one thing, but players generally find it easier to turn off from tennis in a week like the current one where there aren’t any big tournaments being played. Former Wimbledon champion Rybakina and Tomas Machac, the world No 33, said they’d be unwinding this week and switching off from tennis, while after his French Open semifinal defeat to Alexander Zverev, Ruud said: “I will probably watch the (French Open) final, honestly.
“But, no offence to Stuttgart or ‘s-Hertogenbosch, I won’t be glued to the TV for those events. Maybe for Queen’s and Halle (I’ll watch). Then obviously the rest of the grass weeks I will try to look because I’m obviously going to play grass myself at Wimbledon.
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“But next week (this week) I don’t think I will watch much tennis.”
For some players, it’s important not to be consumed by tennis the whole time. Ons Jabeur, the two-time Wimbledon runner-up, will watch a lot during the big tournaments but says: “I just try to not be obsessed with tennis at the same time. Because sometimes I don’t want to talk about tennis, I just want to relax and disconnect a little bit.”
Others just don’t find it that interesting. “I’m not the kind of guy who watches tennis, but in general, I don’t really watch any sport,” says Andrey Rublev, the world No 6.
“Tennis I can watch sometimes when it’s a really interesting match, or if I’m playing against someone and I need to study some things, then I can watch it. It’s more only if I have a reason to watch. If there’s no reason, normally I don’t watch tennis.”
How much players watch, or more specifically what tennis they watch, has been a thorny issue at times this year.
In April, the world No 3 Sabalenka caused consternation when she said: “I don’t watch their (her rivals’) matches. I feel like I’ve played against them enough and that, if I face one of them again, my coach is going to show me images of their matches to analyse and prepare me.
“I’m not someone who watches too much tennis — I prefer to watch men’s tennis rather than women’s tennis, I feel like there is more strategy and it’s more interesting to watch.”
Sabalenka then clarified her comments a couple of days later by saying: “I watch lots of women’s tennis before I go to the match, I watch my opponents, I watch lots of women’s tennis. It’s not like I don’t like it or like I try to offend what I do.
“I just find it more fun to watch the men play because I spend a lot of time studying my opponents, so then in my free time I don’t want to see the girls I play against again.”
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At the French Open, she said that she loves watching her close friend Paula Badosa.
Sabalenka’s comments in Madrid were undoubtedly clumsy and unhelpful to the women’s game, but there is a wider point about players not constantly wanting to be in student mode. Whatever your profession, most can empathise with the idea of wanting to switch off from your industry and not think about your peers. Especially when, for analysis purposes, players have to watch a lot of clips of their rivals anyway.
For Coco Gauff, her enjoyment of watching the sport has come more recently, since she has found a way to look at things more as a fan, and less as an analyst.
“I would say on match days I don’t necessarily watch as much, but definitely on off days, if I’m not watching, I’m definitely keeping up with the scores,” Gauff says. “When I first came on tour I used to not do it as much.
“Sometimes people don’t like watching because they don’t want to get too absorbed with it. But I’ve learned to not always be in student mode because you’re always analysing everything. So I just went into it… I think now I’m able to also watch as just a fan too.”
Some find being in student mode helpful. “I like to watch during tournaments to see how players solve different situations, and do certain things,” Machac says. “I watched Djokovic against (Francisco) Cerundolo, and (Naomi) Osaka with Swiatek. It doesn’t feel like work. I don’t watch it because I have to. I watch it because I’m interested.”
On the day before his French Open final, Alcaraz said that he wasn’t sure if he would be able to watch the women’s final. His priority, he said, was to find somewhere to go for a walk to clear his head (a ritual that he repeated during the closing stages of his U.S. Open win two years ago). Though a tweet congratulating Swiatek soon after she had beaten Paolini implied that he had incorporated watching the match into his pre-final routine.
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Swiatek returned the favour the following day, suggesting she may have broken her non-watching habit for the men’s final. As for this week, don’t expect her to be huddled around a TV or laptop screen keeping track of the various events. Even if some of her colleagues will be doing just that.
(Top photo: Murray watching the 2023 Wimbledon final. Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)