Working within traditional framework, tennis players made their point in 2025

This has not been a very good year for traditions in tennis.

It began with the first of a number of handshake controversies at the United Cup in early January. A player from the U.S. squad was accused of giving a “frosty” handshake—and other subtle infractions—before a match against Poland. Then there were the sore loser’s graceless comments during the Roland Garros singles trophy presentation, some garden-variety trash-talking, and altercations over failures to issue the standard apologetic gesture after a point won by a stroke of let-cord luck.

The year is almost over, so you’d think that players traipsing along the edge of burnout would be too gassed to bicker. But we witnessed another handshake snub early in the recent ATP Rolex Paris Masters, along with the bizarre spectacle of a pro celebrating a first-round win by moonwalking while his beaten rival was trying—repeatedly and unsuccessfully—to smash his racquet to pieces on the court.

The names of the accused in these cases have been withheld—for now—to protect the guilty, but stick around.

Set aside the often-marvelous tennis we’ve been gifted this year by the likes of Carlos Alcaraz, Amanda Anisimova, Jannik Sinner, Coco Gauff and others. The sound track to the game these days ought to be a diss track that even Kendrick Lamar would be hard pressed to top.

A healthy segment of fans revel in the decline in behavioral standards, claiming it makes tennis more “honest,’ more like “other [read mainstream] sports.” They like to see a game freed from dreaded traditions that linger like shards of ancient pottery unearthed at an archaeological site: the let-cord apology. . . the post-match handshake. . .the point freely surrendered—did the ball bounce twice?—for reasons of conscience. The keyboard warriors predictably light up the Internet in defense of players accused of violating tradition.

But there’s a glaring blind spot in the anti-tradition viewpoint. Traditions did not just develop in a vacuum, as silly conventions. They grew out of a universal interest in fairness and sportsmanship, two pretty valuable guardrails in an intensely competitive, one-on-one sport. In any sport, in fact.

If you think collegial handshakes after knock-down, drag-out matches for big money are somehow phony, watch what happens at the end of every NFL game: the handshakes, the consoling pats, the words whispered by opponents to each other, tete-a-tete. Sure, many of the players have a history with each other, but so do tennis players whose acquaintances and rivalries can begin as early as the pre-teen years. It’s an interesting contrast to ponder.

”One of the things I love about sport is that it brings a lot of different people together,” Emma Navarro said at Wimbledon last year, noting that tennis in its “original” form was a game built on sportsmanship and camaraderie—though she herself has bumped up against that original form in years past. She continued, “When I have a good relationship with my opponent, I think it just creates a really cool atmosphere. Obviously, we want to beat each other, but we're out there fighting for the same thing and doing what we love, and it's positive. We're putting positive energy out into the world instead of negative energy.”

A lot of people absolutely hate to lose. It sucks to lose. It's very frustrating. But at the end of the day it’s just a respect thing. Once the match is over, just look your opponent in the eyes and say, ‘Great match. I respect you.’ You might be really upset and emotional about the match. That's normal. We're competitors, we hate to lose. But how you handle a loss shows a lot. It's very important. Taylor Fritz

Most players would endorse Navarro’s view. That’s one reason they don’t buy into the argument that traditions are useless, like the human appendix, and clear proof that tennis is still a “soft” sport.

At the United Cup in Australia, the icy relationship between Poland’s Iga Swiatek and Danielle Collins was manifest in the drive-by handshake Collin offered during the pre-final meeting of the two squads. It continued a lingering, one-way (all Collins) beef from the previous Olympic Games. In defense of her passive-aggressive actions Collins told reporters Down Under: “Look, I'm a human. I have, like, situations I like, situations I don't like. Things that happen, right?”

Whatever that means, it’s different from the things that happen before thousands of fans at the end of a live match. There, snubs are of a different order of magnitude because, in the heat of the moment, it’s difficult to swallow defeat and tempting to vent. Limp or otherwise faux handshakes and stony expressions or critical words at the net (more common than outright refusals to shake these days) are insults to those who still subscribe to tennis traditions.

“A lot of people absolutely hate to lose,” Taylor Fritz said in Australia. “It sucks to lose. It's very frustrating. But at the end of the day it’s just a respect thing. Once the match is over, just look your opponent in the eyes and say, ‘Great match. I respect you.’

“You might be really upset and emotional about the match,” added Fritz, who once told a vanquished opponent to “have a nice flight.” “That's normal. We're competitors, we hate to lose. But how you handle a loss shows a lot. It's very important.”

Alexander Bublik had a somewhat different take on the issue recently the Paris Masters, where he defeated Alexi Popyrin in the first round. He snubbed Popyrin at the net because Popyrin had reacted to a let-cord point that fell in his favor with a robust fist pump instead of the familiar wave of apology.

“There is a code, there is some kind of etiquette,” Bublik said. “If a person does not comply with it, why should I comply with another [element of the code]?”

A kerfuffle over how a player reacts to a let-cord may seem like a tempest in a teapot, but it continues to be a sore spot for many players. It almost seems like the perfect simile for the constant tension in tennis between the desire to cling to an identity that still has elitist overtones and the urge to be part of a culture that prizes entertainment and free expression over all.

The peak moment for this dialectic occurred at the last US Open, in that now notorious match between Taylor Townsend and Jelena Ostapenko. That fire was lit by Ostapenko, who resented Townsend’s refusal to acknowledge her luck earlier in the match with a let cord. Ostapenko told her a much in a testy exchange at the net. It did not help that Townsend has a unique approach to the warm up (she begins up at the net), which is within the rules but unusual—and easily interpreted as gamesmanship.

As on a number of other occasions, the prelude to their communication was a perfunctory handshake. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s a delicious irony at work when the post-match handshake now has secondary value as the perfect platform for airing grievances in a relatively safe way.

Excessive, even in-your-face celebration is another area where players are pushing against traditional boundaries. Did Zizou Bergs really need to moonwalk as if he’d just won Wimbledon after defeating Alex Michelsen in the first round in Paris, while Michelsen was busy trying to destroy his racquet?

Probably not. But take heart if you value tradition. The men did in fact shake hands after the match.