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, a new tennis serve entered the canon, the first 2010-born winner emerged on the WTA Tour, and there was a historic meeting in São Paolo.

If you’d like to follow our fantastic tennis coverage, click here.

Serve overarm? Serve underarm? Why not both!

The underarm serve has evolved from trickshot to tactic in the last decade, with big servers Alexander Bublik and Nick Kyrgios using it to exploit the deep return positions of their opponents. Some players who stand especially far back, including Daniil Medvedev, have been targeted even by players who don’t have a particularly big conventional serve.

At the U.S. Open in August, Stefanos Tsitsipas took exception to Daniel Altmaier using the tactic and confronted him about it after losing their second-round match. And at last week’s Davis Cup qualifiers, an even weirder extension of the unconventional serve made a high-profile appearance. Playing for Hungary against Austria, world No. 154 Zsombor Piros produced the kind of serve hit by recreational players picking up a racket for the first time. He barely threw the ball up, and then patted it over to a disbelieving Lukas Neumayer on the other side of the net. Outfoxed, Neumayer couldn’t return the ball before it had bounced twice. He then looked to the umpire, hoping for some kind of intervention.

Unless he had been called for a foot fault, there was nothing illegal about what Piros did. The contact point gave him more safety than a normal underarm serve, taking out the need to get the ball up and over the net. And though it was unconventional, underarm serves and serves such as this one are increasingly being seen for what they are: A legitimate way to disrupt an opponent, rather than an obnoxious piece of trickery.

There is hope for park players everywhere.

— Charlie Eccleshare

Two teenage wins on the WTA Tour

Women’s tennis has a long history of teenage winners at the highest level, but changes in physicality and gamestyle, and new measures to protect players from burnout have slowed that down. At the start of the 2000 season, there were 17 teenagers in the top 100; following this year’s U.S. Open, that number was five.

But in the post-Grand Slam hinterland, with many top players resting, there are always opportunities for players on the rise. And in Guadalajara, Mexico and São Paolo, Iva Jović and Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah lifted titles to break a 17-year drought. They make up the first pair of teenage winners on the WTA Tour in the same week since September 2008.

Jović, 17, defeated an unwell Emiliana Arango to lift her first 500-level title in Guadalajara, while 19-year-old Rakotomanga Rajaonah, who was 5-0 down in the deciding set of her first-round match in Brazil, beat Janice Tjen to win the 250-level SP Open. While Jović has become a consistent presence in the early rounds of Grand Slams in the past year, almost advancing to the U.S. Open third round in 2024, Rakotomanga Rajaonah, born in Madagascar and representing France, had played just one WTA Tour-level event outside of a French Open wild card before this win.

Perhaps it should have been something of a sign: the left-hander beat two top-100 players on clay, her favorite surface, in Rouen, France, this year.

Iva Jović enters the WTA top 40 after lifting the Guadalajara Open title. (Simon Barber / Getty Images)

— James Hansen

A run of away wins in the Davis Cup

It’s supposed to be really hard to win Davis Cup ties on foreign soil.

Someone forgot to mention that to the Czechs who travelled to Delray Beach, Fla., the Belgians who went to Sydney, and the Germans in Tokyo. The same for the Argentines in Gröningen, the Netherlands, the French in Osijek, Croatia, and the Austrians in Debrecen, Hungary. All registered away wins and punched tickets to the Davis Cup Finals in Bologna, Italy, in November.

Some of those wins were more surprising than others, given rankings and logistics. The Czechs had plenty of top-30 quality, with Jakub Menšík and Jiří Lehečka in the singles and Tomáš Macháč playing doubles. But the Americans had Taylor Fritz, a top-five player for much of the summer, not just in ranking, and a proper doubles team in Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram. Frances Tiafoe can be up and down, and he has been a bit down lately, but he and Fritz were really at home. They both live a short drive from the Delray Beach Tennis Center.

Tiafoe lost both his singles matches. Fritz lost to Lehečka on Saturday, and that was that.

Give special props to the Belgians. Jordan Thompson, Alex de Minaur, Aleksandar Vukic and the rest of the Aussies at least had the advantage of heading home after the U.S. Open. Lleyton Hewitt had spent years complaining about the temporary disappearance of home and away ties in the Davis Cup, and how that disadvantaged his team. This was supposed to be a lay-up.

Not so. Raphael Collignon, the world No. 91, overcame cramps to beat De Minaur early on and then prevailed over Vukic in the final match of the tie, coming back from a set down to win in three. Zizou Bergs’ win over Vukic early in the tie gave the Belgians the three matches that they needed to prevail.

Only Spain secured a home win, with Pedro Martinez pulling out a surprise win over a cramping Holger Rune to turn the tie against Denmark before Pablo Carreño Busta beat Elmer Møller to send the Spaniards — minus Carlos Alcaraz — to the final eight.

 

— Matt Futterman

Two very different rises converge in Brazil

Back in São Paolo, another milestone of a different kind arrived when Alex Eala faced Tjen in the quarterfinals. Their match marked the first tour-level meeting between two players from different countries in southeast Asia since the 2004 Athens Olympics.

After Eala raced out to a 3-0 lead, Tjen took complete control and won 12 of the next 14 games in a 6-4, 6-1 victory.

Eala, 20, and Tjen, 23, spent their time at the U.S. Open making tennis history for their countries. Eala became the first Filipino player to win a Grand Slam match in the modern era of tennis, by beating No. 14 seed Clara Tauson in a wild first-round contest that was decided by a 13-11 tiebreak. Tjen became the first Indonesian player to win a main-draw Grand Slam match since 2004 when she beat No. 24 seed Veronika Kudermetova, also in the first round.

Their matchup of styles is intriguing: Eala’s ability to rapidly change direction on her forehand and scudding backhand contrasts against Tjen’s heavy topspin forehand and cutting backhand slice, attributes modeled on the game of her tennis idol, former world No. 1 Ash Barty. In São Paolo, Tjen was able to feast on Eala’s under-powered second serve once she had adjusted to the pace, appropriately ending the match with an inside-in forehand return winner. Eala ultimately won just 27 percent of points on her second serve.

Their journeys also illustrate the different pathways onto the WTA Tour. Eala rose to prominence at the Miami Open, beating three Grand Slam champions in a row, including world No. 2 Iga Świątek, on a breakout run to the semifinals.

Tjen has followed the path of Canadian Open champion Victoria Mboko and French Open semifinalist Loïs Boisson, winning relentlessly in the tennis equivalents of the minor leagues: 100 wins in 113 matches on the ITF World Tennis Tour, including streaks of 20, 16 and 27 matches. Tjen is yet to break the top 100, but it only seems a matter of time before she joins a player who she has known since childhood and developmental tournaments across Southeast Asia as a fixture there.

— James Hansen

A first step on home courts and a WTA Tour milestone

Last week in São Paolo, Nauhany Vitoria Leme da Silva became the first 2010-born player to win a main-draw match on the WTA Tour. Leme da Silva, 15 years old and ranked world No. 1,206 at the time of her 6-7(0), 6-2, 6-0 win over compatriot Carolina Alves, received a wild card into SP Open, which is the first WTA Tour event held in the city for 25 years.

Leme da Silva has been playing ITF World Tennis Tour events since early 2024, with a 9-6 record to date and five wins in her last seven matches on the third rung of the professional tennis ladder. Against Alves, she completely took over the match after a tight first set, by regularly serving in excess of 100 miles per hour, attacking with an already huge forehand and exploiting Alves’ defensive position against that weapon by playing drop shots. Leme da Silva won 11 games in a row on her way to victory against an opponent 969 places above her in the world rankings, boosting her own ranking by 419 places in the process. She lost her next match against Solana Sierra of Argentina.

Even before her WTA Tour main-draw debut, Leme da Silva had acquired the nickname “Nanalenka” among her Brazilian tennis fans, for the resemblance of her game to that of world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka. The nature of her first win on the WTA Tour suggests that Leme da Silva’s milestone will soon become more of a stepping stone in her development.

— James Hansen

Net cord of the week

Then-defending Guadalajara champion Magdalena Fręch got past Italy’s Lucrezia Stefanini in straight sets in the first match of her title defense. But in a match of long rallies, against an opponent with a rare double-handed forehand, the Pole’s first match point saw one of those rallies end agonisingly, with a Stefanini backhand clipping the net cord:

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Jović def. Arango 6-4, 6-1 to win the Guadalajara Open (500) in Guadalajara, Mexico. It is her first WTA Tour title.
🏆 Rakotomanga Rajaonah def. Tjen 6-4, 6-3 to win the SP Open (250) in São Paolo. It is also her first WTA Tour title.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Jović moves up 38 places from No. 73 to No. 35 after her title run in Guadalajara.
📈 Elsa Jacquemot enters the top 70 for the first time, ascending 21 places from No. 83 to No. 62.
📈Emiliana Arango, the beaten finalist in Guadalajara, moves up 36 places from No. 86 to No. 50.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Chengdu, China: Chengdu Open (250) featuring Shang Juncheng, Lorenzo Musetti, Térence Atmane, Gaël Monfils.
📍Hangzhou, China: Hangzhou Open (250) featuring Medvedev, Learner Tien, Andrey Rublev, Bublik.
📍San Francisco: Laver Cup featuring Alcaraz, Fritz, Alexander Zverev, João Fonseca.

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

🎾 WTA

📍Seoul: Korea Open (500) featuring Świątek, Emma Raducanu, Barbora Krejčíková, Tauson.
📍Shenzhen, China: Billie Jean King Cup Finals featuring Jasmine Paolini, Jessica Pegula, Elena Rybakina, Elina Svitolina.

📺 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: David Balogh / Getty Images for ITF; design: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic)