A college tennis player’s leaping shot across the net went viral. There was just one problem

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Welcome back to the Monday Tennis Briefing, where The Athletic will explain the stories behind the stories from the past week on court.

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This week, a superhero shot had just one flaw, a straight-sets final meant very different things to its participant, and some strange bounces of the ball.

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A college tennis shot seen around the world — but should it have counted?

“Challengers,” the 2024 film starring Zendaya, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist that sent tenniscore into overdrive, ends with a superhero shot in both senses of the word. One of the players leaps over the net to thump a smash, falling into the arms of the other in the process.

Last week, during a match between Kentucky and Georgia, Eli Stephenson made one of his own, winning a point — after some involved discussion between match officials — with this:

Luca Guadagnino may appreciate the camera work for its focus on one player’s experience of a two-sided encounter, an approach he uses throughout “Challengers.” Stephenson’s opponent, Arda Azkara, maybe not so much. But as Stephenson soars over the net, makes the smash and plants his feet in enemy territory, eagle-eyed tennis fans will be looking not at the athlete vaulting the net, but the small yellow ball.

Players are normally not allowed to cross the net. The exception is when they are responding to a shot that has bounced on their side of the court, before spinning back over to their opponent’s side. In such a case, leaning over the net to make a shot is allowed, provided that they do not touch the net until the ball has bounced twice after whatever shot they make.

Stephenson, though, took the net out of the equation entirely, so the scenario changes. For this shot to be legal, he has to make it and his ball must bounce twice before his feet hit the paint on Arkara’s side. It did not, so the point should have gone to Azkara, but officials ruled that the ball had gone dead by going out of the court before Stephenson landed, despite the video showing otherwise.

Stephenson’s feat quickly went viral for its athleticism and execution, prompting much discussion of its apparent brilliance — and much frantic checking of whether it should have counted. Sadly for Stephenson, it should not.

— James Hansen

The two sides of a straight-sets final?

For Jessica Pegula, the simplest match in her Charleston Open title defense was also the most important one. Pegula completed a 6-2, 6-2 win over Yuliia Starodubtseva to lift the trophy for a second time, having been taken to three sets in her four other matches during the tournament.

For Starodubtseva, 26, who is Ukrainian and has not been back to her home country for four years during Russia’s invasion, the match was significant even in defeat. “It’s been a lot around me, for the first time,” Starodubtseva said in her post-match news conference, admitting that she had barely slept in three days.

“I haven’t checked any of the prize money on purpose, I never do. But it definitely will help me in a way to feel free,” she said. The runner-up spot earns her $218,225, and  Starodubtseva, who played college tennis at Old Dominion in Norfolk, Va., before graduating in 2022 and coaching in the Westchester area, is as familiar as any player of how hard it is to both rise and earn at the same time.

People raised money on a GoFundMe to fund her entry into small tournaments in the early stages of her career, when she did not have the required ranking to enter even ITF tournaments, the third tier of professional tennis.

For Pegula, the title extends her 2026 record to 24-4, with three of those losses coming to world No. 2 and Australian Open champion Elena Rybakina. She is also 10-1 in three-set matches, a record that is both remarkable and maybe not entirely sustainable. Last year, Pegula played (31) and won (18) more three-set matches than anyone else on the WTA Tour, but her win percentage (58%) was 14th among players who played 10 or more of them.

— James Hansen

Is that just the way the ball bounces?

Over the past 10 days, Tommy Paul has experienced just about everything a player can experience on a tennis court.

He held four consecutive match points at the end of a slugfest with Arthur Fils in the Miami Open quarterfinals, but he couldn’t close. Fils somehow came up with a wild running backhand from way off the court on one of them; on the others, Paul’s own strokes erred. Fils rose again to break Paul’s heart, 6-7(3), 7-6(4), 7-6(6) over nearly three hours.

Paul said he didn’t sleep much that night, but tennis doesn’t allow for too much sulking. It was time for the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships in Houston, and this time, the tennis gods had Paul’s back.

How else to explain two of the craziest bounces possible, one leaping and one skittering, that got him two key points against Frances Tiafoe in the third-set tiebreak of their semifinal Saturday?

“I saw Francis again today,” Paul said Sunday evening during a phone interview from Houston. “I had to apologize like four more times. I could not believe this, but we know here in Houston, they dump a lot of clay on the court when it rains and the conditions completely change.”

By then, Paul had won the title, saving three championship points against Román Andrés Burruchaga, the 24-year-old world No. 60 from Argentina, who comes with quite the sports pedigree. His father scored the winning goal for Argentina in the 1986 men’s World Cup final against West Germany.

On one of the championship points, with Paul serving at 3-5, Burruchaga sent a regulation return long off a soft, short serve. Burruchaga missed again on his second chance, and on the third, Paul got to the net for a volley. Three games later, Burruchaga sent another ball long and Paul had completed his boomerang.

How?

He and his team regrouped after the Miami loss. They vented. They got it out, and then it was on to the next tournament to play each match, each game, on its own terms. Come the end stage of the final, Paul knew that Burruchaga would, at some point, remember where he was.

“Two times this week, I’ve been down a break in the third, so, I mean, why can’t I do it again?” he said.

“He’s playing well, but he’s also never been in that situation. And you know nerves are going to creep in. I’m playing 3-5 in my service game — that was his best chance to win the match. Obviously, looking at it from the outside, of course it was because he had match points.

“But once I had saved those match points, I loosened up about playing that return game and I’m sure he felt much tighter. It’s little things that the normal tennis fan probably wouldn’t pick up. They’d be like, ‘Oh he’s serving for the match.’”

Paul saw an opening. He’d been on the other side not long ago.

“He’s nervous and he’s probably going to give me a point or two if I win the first,” Paul said.

That’s exactly what happened, and before long Paul was even, and then ahead, and then the champion.

— Matt Futterman

🏆 The winners of the week

🎾 ATP: 

🏆 Tommy Paul (4) def. Román Andrés Burrachaga 6-1, 3-6, 7-5 to win the U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championships (250) in Houston. It is his first clay title.

🏆 Rafael Jódar def. Marco Trungelliti (Q) 6-3, 6-2 to win the Hassan Grand Prix II (250) in Marrakech, Morocco. It is the 19-year-old’s first ATP Tour title.

🏆 Mariano Navone (7) def. Daniel Mérida (Q) 6-2, 4-6, 7-5 to win the Bucharest Open (250) in Bucharest, Romania. It is his first ATP Tour title.

🎾 WTA:

🏆 Jessica Pegula (1) def. Yuliia Starodubtseva 6-2, 6-2 to win the Charleston Open (500) in Charleston, South Carolina. It is her second consecutive title there.

🏆 Marie Bouzková (1) def. Panna Udvardy (8) 6-7(7), 6-2, 6-2 to win the Copa Colsanitas (250) in Bogotá, Colombia. It is her third WTA Tour title.

📈📉 On the rise / Down the line

📈 Marco Trungelliti moves up 41 places from No. 117 to No. 76, a career high.

📈 Yuliia Starodubtseva ascends 36 spots from No. 89 to No. 53, also a career high.

📈 Rafael Jódar rises 32 spots from No. 89 to No. 57, also a career high.

📈 Panna Udvardy rises 21 spots from No. 92 to No. 71 to complete the quartet of career-high rankings.

📉 Jenson Brooksby falls 23 places from No. 41 to No. 64.

📉 Sofia Kenin drops 19 places from No. 47 to No. 66.

📉 Filip Misolic tumbles 24 spots from No. 86 to No. 110.

📉 Camila Osorio moves down 27 spots from No. 54 to No. 81.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Monte Carlo, Monaco: Monte Carlo Masters (1,000) featuring Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Alexander Zverev, Gaël Monfils.

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

🎾 WTA

📍Linz, Austria: Upper Austria Ladies Linz Open (500) featuring Mirra Andreeva, Jeļena Ostapenko, Sára Bejlek, Lilli Tagger.

📺 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.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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