When Will the Bryan Brothers Play Again
The Bryan Brothers Were Prepare to Call It Quits. Now They Might Need 1 Last Hug.
2020 was supposed to exist a farewell tour for Bob and Mike Bryan, the unequalled tennis twins, who have long been the darlings of doubles. Then coronavirus canceled it. Volition they try again?
Bob and Mike Bryan had a actually good plan. One terminal whirl around the world for this unmatched identical twin doubles team. Collect some prize money, doff their caps in Melbourne and Paris and at Wimbledon, then stop in one big blanket of lawn tennis love at the U.Due south. Open in New York, where they have won their home-country slam 5 times.
Then that's non going to happen, not this year anyway.
The Bryan brothers must face up the same decision facing any number of professional athletes of a sure historic period. They targeted 2022 every bit their swan vocal, a yr they might, with a little luck, author the sort of storybook catastrophe every athlete yearns for but only very few — Pete Sampras, Peyton Manning, David Ross — actually become. At the very least, they would exist able to say bye.
Now the Bryan brothers need to figure out whether they desire to, or even can, put the band dorsum together for a second effort at a bye tour in 2021. In fact, they don't even know if they want to bother playing the U.South. Open in September if information technology happens. Live in a quasi-bubble at an airport hotel in Queens? Play in an empty stadium without any whooping and hollering for their signature, service-line chest bumps? What's the point?
"I don't call back we want to play a sterile U.S. Open up with no fans," Mike Bryan said during a recent video chat from his home about Los Angeles.
Bob was in a neighboring box on the screen from his home in Florida, lamenting with Mike the thought of playing their final match nether conditions that would probably feel more like a do session, even if another Grand Slam title was on the line. "That'due south not what we signed upwards for," Bob said.
They have signed upward for World Squad Tennis, the coed competition that pits teams of players against each other in a series of short matches. Usually the nine-team league plays its annual summer season in various cities throughout the country. This twelvemonth, information technology's all happening at The Greenbrier, a W Virginia resort that has created a restricted, supposedly clean environment where the players will live and compete and up to 500 fans volition be allowed.
With coronavirus infection rates rising and professional athletes in other sports testing positive, no one knows whether the tennis league volition ultimately be able to pull off its season, though it has the luxury of being a brief, isolated sprint, compared with the three-calendar month traveling circus that baseball game is planning.
For the Bryan brothers, World Team Tennis represents an experiment of sorts. They turned 42 in April, long by the sell-by date for most professional person tennis players, even those who have to cover merely half the court. Bob had a right hip procedure two years agone. Globe Squad Tennis will crave them to play more than a dozen matches in 20 days, which will give them a decent idea of whether their bodies might be able to handle the rigors of the pro tour for another xiv months.
The first part of this year showed some promise. They lost in the third circular of the Australian Open up, and then won a tournament in Delray Beach, Fla. It was the their 119th title together. Then they won their doubles match in a Davis Cup tie against Uzbekistan in Honolulu.
They headed to Indian Wells, Calif., for what is informally known as the fifth Grand Slam, to have a final go-circular at one of their favorite tournaments. That's where tennis came to a screeching halt. The balance of the sports earth followed suit days later on.
"We'd won five matches and were feeling very positive," Bob said.
And then, for a long while, they had no idea how they felt. Their main playing partner became the Slinger Bag, a portable ball machine made by a company the brothers signed on with every bit endorsers terminal year. Mike set his up in his backyard in California and practiced his volleys. Bob dragged his to a court near where he lives in Florida and fabricated do.
From a lawn tennis perspective, they longed for the years when they were living under the same roof, and finding a hitting partner required nothing more than than knocking on the bedchamber door downwards the hall. They are what is known as "mirror twins," which is a subset of identical twins.
Facing each other, they appear every bit reflections. Mike, for example, is right-handed, while Bob is a lefty, making them ideal teammates and exercise partners. But life happens. Bob got married and moved to Florida in 2010. He has 3 children, who were supposed to be coming along on the farewell tour.
Paradigm
Now, as professional sports tries to resuscitate itself, the Bryan brothers volition endeavor to figure out if they tin restart their careers later the layoff, and if stretching into next year would be worth the bother.
"We still love the game," Bob said. But honey is never enough. They need their health.
The hard-core tennis fans who pay attention to doubles — and they are the hardest of the hard-cadre — volition know fairly quickly if the Bryan brothers think they have it.
If they show upward at the U.S. Open, it won't be for a farewell or for the money. They have won sixteen G Slam doubles titles together. Mike won ii more playing with Jack Sock. The Bryan brothers are the rare doubles specialists who became pop enough to garner lucrative endorsement deals.
They have enough money, but what they will demand if they desire to try to say goodbye to packed stadiums adjacent year is a solid autumn of earning rankings points, so they can obtain high seeds and have the best gamble to play deep into tournaments. The way the arrangement is ready now, they can simply maximize their points if they play and practise well at the U.Due south. Open, and then the French Open, and several other tournaments that are on the schedule for the fall.
If, that is, they tin can.
"This all depends on how our bodies agree up," Mike said. "At 42, it's all virtually the recovery."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/sports/tennis/Bryan-brothers.html
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