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, the 2026 season started with tournaments across Australia and New Zealand, from international team tennis in Perth and Sydney at the United Cup, to ATP and WTA events in Brisbane and Auckland.

Coco Gauff asked U.S. fans to show up some more, Taylor Fritz did an unfortunate celebration, and after an off-season meant for rest and physical development, numerous players reported issues with their bodies.

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Why did Coco Gauff ask for more from U.S. tennis fans?

With ranking points on the line, the United Cup is a serious competition for some of the biggest stars in the sport, but it’s also a showcase of tennis’ international appeal. Flags from all the nations involved pack the stands, but the biggest U.S. star of them all would like to see “a little bit more red, white and blue.”

“I feel like we’re definitely, in the tennis department, the worst,” world No. 4 Coco Gauff said of American tennis fans at events outside the country, during a news conference at the United Cup.

“I’ve always said I wish our country in other places would show up throughout the world, as we see maybe smaller countries support,” Gauff said.

“But I also think it’s just because our country is good at so many sports, so it’s just hard. I definitely think there are Americans that come out more in Melbourne than necessarily here (Perth), but I would like to see some more Americans in Sydney — if we make it to Sydney — than there were last year.”

The U.S. is playing its round-robin matches in Perth, but will move on to Sydney if it reaches the final stages. Gauff’s comments drew criticism online, some of it unreasonable, from fans in the U.S. who pointed to high travel costs, especially for Australia. But the two-time Grand Slam champion did not appear to be addressing traveling fans, rather Americans already living in tournament cities, which often see diaspora populations from smaller tennis nations pack stands.

General admission for the United Cup quarterfinal stages costs between $ 15 and $ 30 U.S. dollars in Perth, with a base price of just over $ 30 U.S. dollars in Sydney.

Gauff then found herself having to respond to the criticism ahead of her round-robin match against Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro of Spain. “I’m going to clarify because people are dragging this out of context,” Gauff wrote on X.

“I’m not expecting people to travel to tournaments to watch us play. But there are many tournaments that we have in America and abroad where Americans are already attending, regardless of who is playing (excluding U.S. Open) where people come and don’t really cheer for their countrymen player. Whereas those from smaller countries come with their colors and flags and it is clear on who they are supporting.

“I was just speaking from my perspective. Trust me, I understand the financial aspect of things and know tennis is not accessible for everyone. It was more of a comment for those who are already attending and how I wish they were as passionate as those from other countries more specifically team events. People don’t owe me anything I was just honestly answering a question I was asked and it was simply an observation I noticed about other countries vs. mine that is all. Nevertheless, I am grateful for any support no matter how big or small it is.”

Gauff lost her match against the Spaniard, which went as many of her matches did in 2025: a display full of shaky serves and forehands, athleticism, fight and winning a set ugly. From 6-1, 4-1 down, Gauff rallied to win the second set in a tiebreak, but Bouzas Maneiro won the third set 6-0 — to silence the chants of “USA” that had been reverberating around the arena.

What was Taylor Fritz thinking with his celebration?

Gauff’s compatriot Fritz has not had a great start to the season. After a shock defeat to Argentina’s Sebastián Báez, who had never beaten Fritz in five attempts before a 4-6, 7-5, 6-4 win Saturday, he said that he is managing knee tendinopathy, which is limiting his ability to play to his best level.

But it was Fritz’s celebration during the match against Báez, when he broke serve to lead 6-4, 2-0, that drew more attention:

Fritz’s gesture, with his right hand low to the ground, is a common feature of NBA games and has broken out into NFL and baseball, regardless of the relative stature of the players involved in a dunk or otherwise humiliating action. The 6-5 Fritz sending a lob over the 5-7 Báez is one of the more straightforward examples.

Fritz received criticism online for the perceived disrespect in the celebration, which again brought up a tennis tension that it cannot seem to shake. The sport wants players to be gladiatorial combatants, doing whatever they can to win and embracing whatever advantage they can to do so. Fritz sending a lob over a much shorter player is an obvious route to that advantage.

But the sport also seemingly wants players to be nice and polite in the middle of all that combat. Why not accept some spicy celebrations — Fritz lost the match, after all — and let the karma fall where it may.

Why is the off-season ending with so many injured players?

The return to the match court is a chance to shake off rust, play back into form after the off-season and get match reps in before the Australian Open, which begins Jan. 18.

Or, according to this off-season, it’s an opportunity to withdraw from tournaments or confirm lingering injuries. To go with Fritz’s chronic right-knee issue, WTA Tour Finals champion Elena Rybakina confirmed that she is “struggling a bit with my foot” during a news conference at the Brisbane International in Australia. João Fonseca withdrew from the Brisbane International with a back injury. Emma Raducanu missed her first United Cup match with an ongoing foot injury.

In part, this is just a curse of timing for the tournaments being played. With the Australian Open on the horizon, players have a much lower tolerance for risk. They might enter the first major of the season undercooked without a warm-up tournament, but better to enter it at all than to aggravate a problem just prior and have to miss it entirely.

But the number of players coming off a period of rest and then training with underlying problems is striking, especially at the start of a grueling season that has 11 months to run. And even more striking is how Raducanu (through quotes from the UK’s Tim Henman) and Fritz — and to an extent Rybakina — essentially admitted their off-seasons have been spent not getting better at tennis, but trying not to get hurt.

“She struggled with her foot for the end of last year. The improvement that she’s made has been fantastic. She’s been practicing in London, really only doing static drills, to be out on the practice court and moving and playing games. She is very close,” Henman said of Raducanu after a 2-1 win over Japan in the round-robin.

A tale of two Swiss tennis talismans – and one self-hindrance?

With one player seeking to build on an impressive comeback and the other entering their farewell year, Switzerland’s United Cup team has taken the competition by storm in the early stages of the round-robin.

Belinda Bencic, who last year returned to the WTA Tour after giving birth to her first child, played her first matches back on the second tier of women’s tennis. She then stormed toward the top 10. For 2026, she opened her year by beating Italy’s world No. 8 Jasmine Paolini 6-4, 6-3, before partnering with Jakub Paul to defeat the U.S. Open mixed doubles champions, Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, 7-5, 4-6, (10-7) in a thrilling doubles match.

Paolini beat Bencic 6-1, 6-1 at this stage 12 months ago, and the Swiss said during her news conference that she had “a little bit in my head the last few matches what I did wrong” in the key moments of their latest meeting.

Before Bencic and Paul’s triumph, 40-year-old Stan Wawrinka opened his last season on the ATP Tour with a close-run defeat to Flavio Cobolli. Wawrinka may have succumbed 4-6, 7-6(2), 7-6(4), but he put on a clinic of how to temper over-exuberance, joysticking Cobolli around the court with side-to-side groundstrokes and short, chipped slices to make life as hard as possible for the Italian.

Cobolli also managed to make it hard for himself. At 5-4, 0-15 up, serving for the first set, a ball fell out of his pocket and he stopped the point, claiming a hindrance — but a player cannot call a hindrance on themselves.

Drama down under 👀#UnitedCuppic.twitter.com/KDDiyjwruN

— Tennis TV (@TennisTV) January 4, 2026

If a ball falls out of a player’s pocket mid-point and they both continue to play, the chair umpire will call a let on the first occasion. If it happens to the same player twice, then they will lose the point the second time.

But Cobolli chose to stop the point, and so lost it — before ultimately winning the match. But Wawrinka, who won his singles rubber against France’s Arthur Rinderknech 5-7, 7-6(5), 7-6(5) in the previous round-robin to put Switzerland in with a chance of qualifying for the quarterfinals, remained a talisman for the team even in a close defeat.

📅 Coming up

🎾 ATP 

📍Sydney, Perth: United Cup (500) featuring Coco Gauff, Stan Wawrinka, Iga Świątek, Casper Ruud.

📍Brisbane, Australia: Brisbane International (250) featuring Daniil Medvedev, Valentin Vacherot, Sebastian Korda, Nick Kyrgios.

📍Hong Kong: Hong Kong Tennis Open (250) featuring Lorenzo Musetti, Alexander Bublik, Andrey Rublev, Shang Juncheng. 

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

🎾 WTA

📍Sydney, Perth: United Cup (500) featuring Coco Gauff, Stan Wawrinka, Iga Świątek, Casper Ruud.

📍Brisbane, Australia: Brisbane International (500) featuring Aryna Sabalenka, Amanda Anisimova, Elena Rybakina, Tereza Valentová.

📍Auckland: Auckland Open (250) featuring Venus Williams, Elina Svitolina, Alexandra Eala, Janice Tjen.

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

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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