16th June 2025
This past week in tennis has been dominated by grass-court play, as that part of the season is now fully underway. Wimbledon is fast approaching, and players are using the little time they have to get ready for it.
There have been multiple events in both men’s and women’s tennis, so we’re going to take a look at what happened during this past week of predominantly grass-court action.
Champions Corner
There were a couple of interesting grass events that happened this week. For example, there was a women’s event played at the legendary Queen’s Club, which for the past few decades has been exclusively a men’s event. The return saw some history being made as well, because the champion ended up being Tatjana Maria.
Maria is a known name in the world of tennis, making an amazing run to the Wimbledon semifinals in 2022 as a 34-year-old who returned from maternity leave. She’s now 37 and won the event this year by beating Amanda Anisimova, making history in the process.
In Den Bosch, we saw Elise Mertens get the win by beating Elena Ruse in the final. Mertens played fantastic tennis all week long and capped it off with another strong showing in the final. On the men’s side, we had two events as well.
In Stuttgart, it was a very interesting final between Alexander Zverev, who is not known as a special player on grass, and Taylor Fritz, who does tend to play well on grass and has won trophies on it before. He won another one today, which is the ninth career trophy he’s won.
For the men in Den Bosch, we had Gabriel Diallo win his maiden career trophy by beating Zizou Bergs. Overall, it was an eventful tennis week – even though the dust of the French Open had barely settled – and the next week won’t be any different.
Andy Murray admits to losing against son in chess
Andy Murray spoke with BBC Sport recently, admitting that he’s gotten very interested in playing chess with his five-year-old son, who is very fond of the game. The funny part of the admission came when Murray said that he gets regularly humbled by his son when they play.
It’s particularly embarrassing when Murray then has to go wash him after his son concludes his toilet activities. It was even funnier because Murray delivered the story in his typical deadpan fashion, never really breaking the serious tone he has.
Sinner reflects on losing Roland Garros
At one point during the 2025 French Open final against Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner had match points. He had three of them, and they were consecutive, so essentially his chance of winning that match when he was up 40–0 on the serve of Alcaraz was 99.9%. Yet he lost. It was very painful, but for Sinner it was also a learning experience.
He explained that he can either look at it as a failure, where he failed to convert match points, but also as a match where he played incredible tennis for almost six hours, which is a very good lesson to take away from it.
Full quote below:
“I think it was an incredible match, a really high-level match, and it didn’t end the way we wanted, but it happens. It happened to the very best players in the world, too, to live similar moments. And it always depends on how one is able to react to them and get out of them – and also on what one sees: I can either see the missed match points, or I can see, on the other hand, a match where I played like never before on that surface, and where I stayed mentally focused for five and a half hours and I didn’t complain about anything. And so… [this kind of loss] it happens.”
Djokovic names Nadal as the player he got along better
In a recent and quite revealing interview, Novak Djokovic shared that he’s always gotten along better with Rafael Nadal than with Roger Federer. He emphasized his deep respect and admiration for both players and noted that he has never spoken ill of either.
But when it comes to who he’s connected with more personally, Nadal was his clear choice. He also named Nadal as his greatest rival which makes sense, given how closely their careers have aligned over the years.
Coming up this week
This coming week brings more grass-court tennis action. Several tournaments are on the schedule.
On the men’s side, we’ll see the renowned Halle tournament and the prestigious Queen’s Club Championship. For the women, there are events in both Nottingham and Berlin.
All in all, more grass-court tennis is on the horizon as we steadily inch closer to Wimbledon, which kicks off in a fortnight.
