Sports

There are certain things Andriy Shevchenko cannot talk about. The feeling generated by the wailing of an air-raid siren. The dread instilled by learning just how many missiles had been aimed the previous night at you, your loved ones, your home. The sensation of knowing another swarm of drones is on its way, the only hope that each one can be shot from the sky.

Shevchenko does not want to repeat all he has heard from the Ukrainian soldiers posted to the battlefield, that rift that runs through places that were once nearby and familiar but are now alien, part of a terrifying front line. He starts and stops, swallowing hard, unable to go on. “I don’t want to speak about what is going on,” he said.

One of the stories he cannot quite bring himself to tell comes from Irpin, a city on the northwestern edge of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, that was the scene of some of the bloodiest, most intense fighting in the early days of the war. Its streets were pounded by airstrikes. A mass grave was found in neighboring Bucha.

When Ukrainian forces, after a monthlong counteroffensive, reclaimed control of the city, they found it scarred beyond recognition. Some estimates had it that 70 percent of its structures had been destroyed or damaged. Among them was the city’s soccer stadium.

A few months later, Shevchenko went to visit. As he walked around the fractured shell of the place — the artificial-turf field pockmarked with the scars of war, the ramshackle stands charred black — he saw a group of children playing soccer, doing their best to stage a game despite the ruin all around them, and at least mildly oblivious to the fact that Shevchenko, the greatest player their country has ever produced, was watching.

One of the strengths Ukrainians in general have discovered during the war, Shevchenko has found, is an ability “to adapt to circumstances, to react to the situation as it is now.” Here it was, being played out in front of him.

When he asked the children what it was like having to play here, in a place where a stadium used to be, they replied in that matter-of-fact manner that is the natural tone of the preteen: They might not have a stadium, they said, but that did not mean they did not want to play soccer.

As the fighting was escalating in Irpin, Heorhiy Sudakov — a sparkling young midfielder with Shakhtar Donetsk — was, like so many in Ukraine, seeking shelter wherever he could find it. He sent one of his former coaches a photo from an air-raid bunker. In the image, his pregnant wife, Lisa, rested her head on his shoulder.

A little more than a year later, Sudakov has spent two weeks announcing himself as one of the brightest talents in European soccer. He helped drive Ukraine’s teams to the semifinals of the European Under-21 Championship in Georgia, scoring three times in five games, including two in the quarterfinal victory against France.

That Ukraine was unceremoniously eliminated in the final four by Spain — which will face England in the final this weekend — would, in normal circumstances, act as a sort of bathetic coda to its tournament. Ukraine’s circumstances, though, are anything but normal. In that light, its performance has been a resounding, uplifting triumph.

“What the under-21s have done is an incredible achievement,” Shevchenko said in an interview this week. “Ukraine has always provided great talent — maybe not every year, but every few years, we have a young player who can go up to the senior squad. You need to build that platform. Watching what they have done in this tournament gives hope to us, and to the next generation, for the future.”

Nobody in Ukraine knows, of course, what that future looks like. Since the country’s soccer league resumed last August, Ukraine’s clubs have grown used to playing against the eerie backdrop of empty stadiums. Games have been interrupted by those same air-raid sirens that still send a shiver down Shevchenko’s spine. Dozens of foreign players left the country after being given dispensation by FIFA to break their contracts.

Several teams, including Shakhtar, temporarily relocated their academy systems abroad — spiriting players and members of their families out of the country — to protect them from the Russian invasion. Some clubs, Shakhtar most prominent among them, still find themselves exiled from their homes, their traditional territories now on the other side of the front line.

It is impossible to say when, or if, any of that will change. Like everything else in the country, every person in every aspect of life, Ukrainian soccer has no idea what tomorrow will bring.

“We live in the moment,” Shevchenko said. “Everything depends on the war. The situation could change every day. We try to make plans, sometimes short-term, sometimes a little longer. But we have to react every day.

“We do the best we can to let the athletes train, to help them be ready to play — that is what all of us, every club, are trying to do. We have the resources to do that at the moment. But we cannot plan anything for the future, because the moment we do, everything could change. That is what we have to do. There is not a different way. We just have to keep living and try to do the best we can.”

In light of all that is happening in Ukraine, soccer is not a priority, nor should it be. It is difficult, in many ways, to think that it matters at all. But talking to Shevchenko is to be reminded of Jürgen Klopp’s old aphorism: Perhaps it is the most important of the least important things.

Sports, after all, remain a potent way of reminding people of what Ukraine has been through — is going through. They are a way of keeping the country uppermost in the fickle thoughts of the outside world, a gleaming example of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm described as the “imagined community of millions seeming more real as a team of eleven named people.”

Soccer has, by and large, embraced that role. “It has a power to unite people,” Shevchenko said. “To send a message of solidarity.” Stadiums across Europe have been festooned with Ukrainian flags. Messages demanding peace have appeared on television screens and advertising boards — a gesture that is, without question, too small, a coward’s way out from Europe’s ever-compromised soccer authorities, but is a gesture nonetheless.

When Shevchenko, with his successor as Ukraine’s national team captain, Oleksandr Zinchenko — both ambassadors for United24, the country’s official fund-raising platform — decided to arrange an exhibition game to help rebuild a school in the village of Chernihiv, support was immediate and enthusiastic. Chelsea, one of Shevchenko’s former clubs, volunteered the use of Stamford Bridge for the match, called the Game4Ukraine, on Aug. 5. DAZN and Sky agreed to broadcast it. A parade of stars quickly agreed to play.

“It is a good chance for us to remind people that the war is still going on,” Shevchenko said. “Oleksandr and I have done a lot of interviews, to try to keep it in the news, so that the rest of the world does not forget, so that people keep helping, because we need them to know that we cannot do this without them.”

But soccer matters for another reason. It is telling that the success of Ukraine’s under-21 team — as well as an encouraging start as national team manager for Serhiy Rebrov, Shevchenko’s old strike partner — has not gone unnoticed within Ukraine, that the achievements of Sudakov and his teammates have been celebrated, even as the sirens have sounded.

“There is still room for life, still room for sport,” Shevchenko said. “That is why we are fighting: for the right to have a normal life. Even during the war, we try to live as best we can. It has to be day to day.”

The conversation he had with the children in Irpin inspired Shevchenko. When he left, he set about raising the money — roughly 600,000 euros, or $650,000 — it would take to ensure that they could both play soccer and have a stadium. He arranged a gala in Milan, the city he long called home. The club where he became a superstar, and possibly the best striker of his generation, A.C. Milan, kicked in €150,000 toward the project.

The plan is to begin work on the stadium this summer. It is impossible, of course, to plan for anything with absolute certainty. Ukrainians have, in the course of 18 fearful, defiant, harrowing months, grown used to the idea that things might change at a moment’s notice. They do not know what tomorrow will bring. But they know there will be a tomorrow.

Correspondence

This week brought a regrettable, but undeniable, turn in the timbre of correspondence. This is, as we all know, a conspiratorial age — the false flags, the deep state, the thing about orcas ganging up and attacking boats — and that paranoia now seems to have filtered through to the last bastion of enlightenment thinking: my inbox.

“Writing that Botafogo, RWD Molenbeek and Lyon are linked together without mentioning Crystal Palace,” an exasperated Nicholas Armstrong wrote after receiving last week’s newsletter, “is like saying whales, dolphins and porpoises are linked without mentioning any other more familiar mammal.”

I am not entirely certain which mammal is missing from that list — sharks, maybe? — but I stand by my entirely deliberate omission: not because I have not yet forgiven Palace for the whole Alan Pardew thing in 1990, but because, unlike that particular set of clubs, Palace is not owned exclusively by John Textor. It is, instead, a partial member of two networks: one belonging to Textor, and one operated by Bolt Football. And that would have been confusing.

Paul Gerald, meanwhile, has been pondering an unexplainable, at least to him, coincidence. “Whenever there is a neutral venue final, each team always attacks the end containing their fans in the second half,” he wrote.

He added, “There are three ways this could happen: crazy coincidence; teams just always picking that way, regardless of who wins the coin toss; or prearrangement.” In this scenario, he suggested, “no real coin toss ever happens.”

There is, I suspect, a slightly simpler explanation: Both teams go into the coin toss intending to kick toward their own fans in the second half. There is a possibility, though, that there is a degree of confirmation bias at play here, too. My guess would be it happens less often than you believe — you just notice when it does.

Victor Gallo, thankfully, wants to return to the world of facts. Last week’s newsletter taught him that the Colombian league is divided into Apertura and Clausura stages. “I thought only Mexico employed that division,” he wrote. “I imagine it is not just Mexico and Colombia. But what’s the reason behind splitting the season up?”

That is a great question, and not one I have previously considered. It means you can hand out more trophies? It delivers satisfaction more quickly? It means you can stage a grand final at the end? If anyone can shed any light, it would be enormously helpful.

And finally, with a nod to William Ireland, a confession. Last week’s newsletter asserted that nobody — other than Red Bull — had really made the multiclub model work in soccer as yet. “Best practices being shared, discount transfer fees, places to park players all sound good,” he wrote. “None seem to be actually happening in any of the multiclubs, and I’m not sure how they would.”

Nor am I, but there was one element that I neglected to mention (and was pointed out to me, anonymously, by an executive at one of the teams involved in a network). Off the field, the advantages are legion. Adding more clubs enables a group to increase the asset value of each — by building infrastructure, improving performance, pooling resources — which helps the value of the whole business grow. It may well be that is the real purpose of the whole exercise.

The singer Britney Spears and the N.B.A. rookie Victor Wembanyama gave accounts on Thursday of their encounter the previous night, after reports emerged that a member of the basketball player’s security detail hit her outside a Las Vegas restaurant.

In a tweet, Spears said that on her way to dinner Wednesday night she “recognized an athlete” in her hotel lobby and then saw him again at another hotel’s restaurant. Spears said that after she approached the athlete to praise him for his achievements, tapping him on the shoulder, a member of his security team “back handed me in the face,” knocking her glasses off and causing her to nearly fall down.

Spears did not mention Wembanyama or his team, the San Antonio Spurs, by name but said that she awaited an apology from the player, his security and his team. Spears filed a police report late Wednesday, according to TMZ.

The Spurs did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The New York Times. The police in Las Vegas declined Thursday to provide details about the incident to The New York Times, and said it could take three to five days to release records about what happened. Officials in the department acknowledged the incident in a statement to multiple outlets, saying that “at approximately 11 p.m., LVMPD officers responded to a property in the 3700 block of Las Vegas Boulevard regarding a battery investigation,” but that no arrests or citations had been made.

Earlier on Thursday, Wembanyama offered a different version of events while meeting with reporters. He said that “there was one person calling me,” but Spurs security had told him not to stop for anyone, as he walked to the restaurant, since doing so could have invited a crowd. He then said that a person had “grabbed me from behind, not on my shoulder” and that he knew his security had moved her away.

“I don’t know with how much force, but security pushed her away,” said Wembanyama, adding that he did not know the woman was Spears until hours later. “I didn’t stop to look, so I kept walking and enjoyed a nice dinner.”

Wembanyama, the 19-year-old Frenchman who was the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft, is scheduled to make his debut in the N.B.A.’s summer league Friday night in Las Vegas. At over 7 feet tall, Wembanyama, who averaged more than 20 points and 10 rebounds per game last season with a French professional team, is one of the most heralded N.B.A. prospects in recent decades.

Claire Fahy contributed reporting.

It has been three and a half years since Sofia Kenin put both hands to her face and teared up in Melbourne. That night, she had just won the Australian Open at 21, highlighting to the world her ferocious will to fight for every point, every shot.

When her hands came down, she was not even smiling, her concentration apparently on maintaining composure as she soaked in the moment of a lifetime.

To this day, Kenin says, reflecting back on that triumph requires a bit of a mental blockade.

“I try not to think about it too much, because I might get a bit emotional,” she said on Thursday after her biggest win in over two years. “I mean, it happened, and I definitely believe that I can get there again.”

Over the last couple of years, that possibility had seemed extremely remote for Kenin, the Moscow-born American player. But in the first week of Wimbledon, she has shown some of the skill and tenacity that once took her to the summit of women’s tennis.

On Monday, she beat Coco Gauff in the first round. On Thursday, she defeated Xinyu Wang, 6-4, 6-3, to plow into the third round of a major tournament for the first time since she reached the fourth round of the 2021 French Open.

She is still at the earliest stages of a campaign to claw her way back to relevance. She knows there are skeptics wondering if she can, and she said on Thursday she was motivated to prove those people wrong.

“I just had to find my way,” she said. “I have been fighting. I just hope that I can keep it going.”

To do so would mean upending Elina Svitolina, the 76th-ranked player on tour, in the third round on Friday.

Kenin arrived at Wimbledon ranked 128th in the world and had to win three matches in the qualifying rounds just to get into the main draw. That might be beneath some former Grand Slam tournament champions, but Kenin approached the task with determination, humility and a bit of humor, saying that if she had known that entering the so-called quallies would ensure her advancing into the third round of the main draw, she would do it regularly.

But there was a time when she expected to receive a high seeding at every tournament she entered. After Kenin won the Australian Open in 2020 by beating Garbiñe Muguruza, her ranking rose to No. 4 in the world, and her future appeared so promising.

The ensuing three years, however, turned into a desperate struggle. Among the obstacles littering her way, Kenin suffered a grade-three ankle tear; underwent an emergency appendectomy; publicly split with her father and coach, Alexander Kenin; and contracted the coronavirus. A year ago, her ranking had plummeted to No. 426 in the world, and as recently as January it was No. 280.

Kenin reunited with her father in the autumn of 2021, eight months after she had announced on social media that she had fired him. He was in the audience on Thursday, watching closely as Kenin dismantled Wang on little Court No. 4, an outer court with a capacity of only a few hundred, in the shadow of Centre Court. Kenin has worked with several coaches in recent years, but her father is back as part of the team, a constant presence again, and Kenin said he had been part of her recent success.

“I definitely think things are clicking,” she said, “Obviously, with all the practices and just doing everything right. I’m working really hard, and he’s just been there for me, and I’m really grateful for that.”

On the court, she dominated Wang, deploying a deft slice that is so effective on grass, and especially so with the taller Wang, who often had difficulty getting low enough to hit through the ball and fire back effectively. Kenin also relied on her improved serve and repeatedly tucked balls inside lines on all sides of the court, just as she had done against Gauff.

In both matches, and in the qualifying stages, she demonstrated her indisputable competitive zeal.

“Obviously, she won a Grand Slam, but she’s in a tough spot in her career,” Gauff said after their match. “I knew coming in she would play with a lot of motivation.”

Her victory Thursday was only the fourth time all year that she had won two matches in a row. But she credited a loss for helping her change her fortunes this year. At Indian Wells in March, she lost in straight sets to Elena Rybakina, who was then ranked No. 10 but is now No. 3 after winning the French Open last month. Both sets, however, went to tiebreakers, and Kenin soaked up the experience, converting it into a driving confidence.

Rybakina had reached the Australian Open final the previous month, and Kenin used the match to measure her progress and her ability to hang with the best.

“I felt like that was a little bit of a turning point for me,” she said.

The next week, she won two matches at the Miami Open before falling to Bianca Andreescu and has gone 9-6 since then, including the Wimbledon qualifying rounds.

She has a long way to go, in terms of both ranking and consistency. But for the first time in two years, she is back in the fight.

“I knew if I put in the work and do the right things, eventually it’s going to click,” she said, “and I’m super happy it’s clicking here.”

As the FTX cryptocurrency exchange imploded last fall, Tom Brady, the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, made an urgent phone call.

He dialed Sina Nader, FTX’s head of partnerships. The exchange’s staff was in the middle of a crisis meeting with its beleaguered founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Mr. Nader couldn’t answer. “I never would’ve expected to decline a call from Tom Brady,” he said.

Mr. Brady had reasons to be concerned. As an “ambassador” for FTX, he had appeared at the company’s conference in the Bahamas and in TV commercials that promoted the exchange as “the most trusted” institution in the loosely regulated world of crypto.

His money was also at stake. As part of an endorsement agreement Mr. Brady signed in 2021, FTX had paid him $30 million, a deal that consisted almost entirely of FTX stock, three people with knowledge of the contract said. Mr. Brady’s wife at the time, the supermodel Gisele Bündchen, was paid $18 million in FTX stock, one of the people said.

Now FTX is bankrupt, and Mr. Bankman-Fried is facing criminal fraud charges. Mr. Brady, 45, and Ms. Bündchen, 42, have been sued by a group of FTX customers seeking compensation from the celebrities who endorsed the exchange. On top of it all, the terms of the deal would have required the former couple, who divorced last year, to pay taxes on at least some of their now worthless FTX stock, two people familiar with the endorsement deal said.

Their situation is the highest-profile example of a humiliating reckoning facing the actors, athletes and other celebrities who rushed to embrace the easy money and online hype of cryptocurrencies. During the boom times, Paris Hilton, Snoop Dogg, Reese Witherspoon and Matt Damon all gushed about or invested in crypto projects, bringing a mainstream audience to the wonky world of digital currencies. It was fun — and lucrative — while prices soared.

But last year’s crash ended the celebrity crypto bonanza.

In October, the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Kim Kardashian to pay $1.26 million for failing to make adequate disclosures when she endorsed the EthereumMax crypto token. In December, a lawyer in California sued two crypto companies, MoonPay and Yuga Labs, accusing them of using a “vast network of A-list musicians, athletes and celebrity clients” to mislead investors about digital assets.

In March, the S.E.C. charged the actress Lindsay Lohan, the online influencer Jake Paul and musicians including Soulja Boy and Lil Yachty with illegally promoting crypto assets. And in late May, after months of failed attempts, a process server delivered court papers to Shaquille O’Neal, the retired basketball star, who was sued for promoting FTX, according to legal filings. Mr. O’Neal was served while broadcasting from a National Basketball Association playoff game.

Representatives for Mr. Brady, Mr. Bankman-Fried and MoonPay declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Yuga Labs said the company had “never paid a celebrity to join the club.” Representatives for Ms. Bündchen and Mr. O’Neal did not respond to requests for comment.

Tech start-ups and celebrities have long had a symbiotic relationship. The start-ups offer stars a way to make money while staying on the cutting edge of internet culture; the celebrities help young companies gain credibility and reach a larger audience.

Of all the start-ups that recruited celebrities to endorse crypto, FTX was perhaps the most eager. As Mr. Bankman-Fried tried to turn FTX into a household name, he made a list of celebrities he could envision promoting the company, recalled Mr. Nader, the former FTX executive. Mr. Brady’s name was at the top.

A former college football player, Mr. Nader was in charge of recruiting Mr. Brady and other stars. In June 2021, Mr. Brady and Ms. Bündchen agreed to a deal with Mr. Bankman-Fried, praising the “revolutionary FTX team.” Mr. Brady seemed genuinely interested in crypto, Mr. Nader said, and occasionally had conversations with Mr. Bankman-Fried.

“Imagine a tiger and a lion talking,” Mr. Nader said. “They’re slightly different, they do different things, but they’re really formidable in their own arenas.”

In 2021, Mr. Brady also co-founded Autograph, which helps famous people sell the crypto collectibles known as nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. Autograph raised more than $200 million from investors, and Mr. Bankman-Fried joined the board.

That same year, Mr. Brady and Ms. Bündchen starred in a $20 million advertising campaign for FTX, with commercials that ran during N.F.L. games. Mr. Brady also posted TikTok videos with Mr. Bankman-Fried from FTX’s headquarters in the Bahamas, where he spoke at a conference in front of hundreds. Backstage, Mr. Bankman-Fried remarked that he could imagine buying a football team someday with Mr. Brady. Ms. Bündchen also appeared at the conference as FTX’s head of environmental and social initiatives.

When FTX collapsed last November, the company’s $32 billion valuation — including Mr. Brady and Ms. Bündchen’s $48 million of shares — plummeted to zero. The couple had also received a small amount of Ethereum, Bitcoin and Solana tokens to trade on the platform, one of the people said, which disappeared in FTX’s bankruptcy.

Mr. Brady has not commented publicly on FTX or his relationship with Mr. Bankman-Fried. After FTX’s crisis meeting in November, Mr. Nader called him back.

“He was concerned,” Mr. Nader said. “The very first thing he asked me was: ‘Sina, how are you doing? I know you put your heart and soul into this.’”

Ms. Bündchen said in a March interview with Vanity Fair that she had “trusted the hype” and felt “blindsided.”

Mr. Brady’s other crypto venture has also struggled. Autograph’s revenue sank last year amid the crypto meltdown, a person familiar with its finances said. The start-up has shifted its strategy to focus more on helping celebrities find ways to foster loyalty with their fans, and less on marketing crypto tokens to consumers, the person said. The firm has also removed some crypto language from its marketing, downplaying terms like NFT, another person with knowledge of the company said.

Autograph has also cut more than 50 employees in layoff rounds, a third person said. The reductions were reported earlier by Insider. An Autograph spokeswoman declined to comment.

Mr. Brady has also faced legal trouble. In December, Adam Moskowitz and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner filed a lawsuit in federal court in Florida accusing him and Ms. Bündchen of misleading investors. Among the other defendants are the comedian Larry David, the N.B.A. star Steph Curry and the tennis player Naomi Osaka, all of whom endorsed FTX.

“None of these defendants performed any due diligence prior to marketing these FTX products to the public,” the lawsuit said.

Some celebrities narrowly escaped the crypto mess. Katy Perry, the pop star, held talks about a partnership with FTX that never came to fruition, three people familiar with the situation have said.

In spring last year, Taylor Swift discussed a deal with FTX that could have paid as much as $100 million, two people familiar with the matter said. A tour sponsorship was on the table after Ms. Swift declined other promotional options, a person with knowledge of the talks said. The deal’s size was reported earlier by The Financial Times.

Mr. Moskowitz, the lawyer suing the celebrities, said on a podcast in April that Ms. Swift had conducted due diligence on FTX, asking the exchange to prove that its cryptocurrencies were not unregistered securities. His comments led to a flurry of headlines about Ms. Swift’s business acumen. But in an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Moskowitz said he had no inside information about the talks.

In reality, Ms. Swift’s side signed the sponsorship agreement with FTX after more than six months of discussions, three people with knowledge of the deal said, and it was Mr. Bankman-Fried who pulled out. The last-minute reversal left Ms. Swift’s team frustrated and disappointed, two of the people said.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Swift declined to comment.

It may be a little hard to remember, with all the injuries, career detours and mystifying losses, but there was a time when everything seemed possible for Canadian tennis.

Every time a tennis fan looked up, it seemed, another wildly talented or gritty Canadian had made a Grand Slam final. Bianca Andreescu even won one, beating Serena Williams in the 2019 U.S. Open when she was still a teenager, playing with a style so creative she left tennis aesthetes drooling.

Lately, with all the bum knees (Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime), stress fractures (Leylah Fernandez) and the mental anguish (Milos Raonic and Andreescu) that so many players struggle with these days, even Fernandez’s improbable run to the 2021 U.S. Open final can feel like it was a long time ago.

And then there was a day like Wednesday at Wimbledon, with the rain finally going away long enough for outdoor tennis to happen, for Shapovalov and Raonic to show why there had been so much fuss in the first place. Both came back from a set down to win in four sets, giving Shapovalov a chance to reminisce about what it had meant to him to be a junior player from a country known mostly for its prowess in sports with ice (hockey and curling) and watching Raonic and Eugenie Bouchard nearly go all the way on the Wimbledon grass.

“It kind of put a real belief in mine and Felix’s eyes that it’s possible as a Canadian,” Shapovalov said, after beating Radu Albot of Moldova 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 in a match that began on Monday. “And I’m sure with the generations, you know, following me, Felix, Bianca. Leylah, I’m sure there’s much more belief in the country, that it is possible even if the country is cold or is mostly wintertime.”

Apparently, Canadians missed the string of champions that Sweden, hardly a temperate locale, produced during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, such as Bjorn Borg, Mats Wilander and Stefan Edberg.

Shapovalov and Raonic, who played and won his first match at a Grand Slam tournament in two and a half years Monday, beating Denis Novak of Austria, 6-7 (5), 6-4, 7-6(5), 6-1, will be back at it on Thursday. Both men will play second-round matches, as will Fernandez. Andreescu will be out there, too, finally playing her first-round match against Anna Bondar of Hungary.

Auger-Aliassime, who has been dealing with a sore knee all year, lost in the first round at the All England Club for a second consecutive year. The nagging injury and the latest loss count as major disappointments for Auger-Aliassime, who broke out in his late teens and whose powerful serve and movement should allow him to excel on grass.

But a Wimbledon schedule filled with Canadians is what the nation’s higher-ups in the sport were shooting for when they set out to make Canada a top-level tennis country nearly 20 years ago. Other than long, cold winters, Canada seemed to have everything a country needed to achieve big things in tennis — wealth, diversity and a commitment to spend money on building facilities and importing top coaches.

It built a tennis center in Montreal and satellite facilities in other major cities and began to focus on developing young children and teenagers. It hired Louis Borfiga, a leading tennis mind from France who was Borg’s hitting partner, to oversee player development.

Blessed with the good fortune of players with natural talent and parents willing to support it, Canada had Bouchard and Raonic rolling by the mid-2010s and Shapovalov, Andreescu and Auger-Aliassime tearing up the junior rankings, with Fernandez not far behind.

The success — last year Shapovalov and Auger-Aliassime led Canada to its first Davis Cup title — and the struggles have bred a camaraderie among the players. They know when the others are playing even when they are not in the same tournament.

“I’m guilty of following the results of all my fellow Canadians,” said Fernandez, who remembers just a few years ago seeing Auger-Aliassime training a few courts down from her in Montreal and thinking, “Oh, this is inspiring.”

When Fernandez was injured last year, one of the first texts she received was from Andreescu, who has been battling all sorts of ailments seemingly since she won the 2019 U.S. Open. Andreescu told Fernandez that she was there for her whatever she needed and that Fernandez was headed for a tough time, but would get through it.

Earlier this year, when Andreescu rolled her ankle and suffered what looked to be a devastating injury at the Miami Open, Fernandez sent the support right back. “I was like, ‘Bianca, you’re strong, you’ll get back, you’re a great tennis player, and a great person.’”

On Wednesday, Shapovalov and Raonic found each other in the locker room, trying to manage the rain delays that have disrupted the tournament all week.

Raonic said he had forgotten his old routine because it had been so long since he had dealt with something like that. At first he tried to keep moving to stay loose, but then thought he might have been burning too much energy.

He sat down for a bit with Shapovalov, who was passing the time with his coach by answering animal trivia questions. Raonic jumped into the game and said everyone was entertained to learn which sea animal can breathe through its rear end. (Turtle). There was also a spirited argument about the killing power of a mosquito versus that of sharks. Shapovalov was firmly on the side that sharks are scarier than a malaria-carrying insect.

Eventually, the rain subsided along with the zoology debate. Then it was time for Raonic to head back to the court and deliver the sort of victory that once happened all the time, wearing down Novak with his blasting serve and big forehand. Later in the afternoon, when Shapovalov found his rhythm on those smooth, graceful strokes, Albot never had a chance.

In a symbol of how tenuous Canada’s tennis efforts have become, both Shapovalov and Raonic easily might not have been at the All England Club this year.

Shapovalov has been limping on and off in recent months and had to cut his practices short on grass when the pain grew too intense.

Raonic said through his injury struggles during the past few years he had come to terms with the idea that his life after tennis had begun. But he drove by a tennis court each day near his home in the Bahamas, or would see tennis on television while he worked out at a local gym, and he figured he might as well give it another shot.

On Wednesday, he said he was annoyed with himself for not enjoying the moment more, being back at the All England Club, playing in the Grand Slam where he had his greatest success and helped make Canada believe. In his words, it was easy to detect a larger message about the often fleeting nature of success, on a single day, or during an era.

“You just get caught up with the whole process of competing and trying to find a way to win and that passes by really quickly,” he said. “Then you don’t really get to enjoy the match.”

Jimmy Cordero, a relief pitcher for the Yankees, has been suspended for the rest of the season for violating Major League Baseball’s domestic violence policy, the league and the team announced on Wednesday.

Rob Manfred, the M.L.B. commissioner, said on Wednesday that after an investigation, Cordero had accepted a suspension for the rest of the 2023 regular season and the playoffs. Manfred said that Cordero had violated the league’s joint domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy, without providing details about what prompted the investigation and what part of the policy Cordero had violated.

Cordero, a 31-year-old journeyman right-hander who is earning a league minimum salary, was placed on the restricted list on Wednesday.

The Yankees said in a statement on Wednesday that the team was “fully supportive of Major League Baseball’s investigative process and the disciplinary action applied to Jimmy Cordero.”

“There is no justification for domestic violence,” the Yankees said.

Cordero could not be reached for comment Wednesday night. His Instagram page appeared to be inactive on Wednesday.

As part of the league’s domestic violence policy, Cordero will undergo a “confidential and comprehensive evaluation” and participate in a treatment program, the league said.

Before Wednesday night’s game between the Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles in New York, Manager Aaron Boone addressed Cordero’s suspension with reporters.

“It’s sad. Your heart goes out to everyone involved,” Boone said, adding that he did not have details about the investigation. “I don’t know what went down.”

Boone said the team had been recently informed that M.L.B. was investigating Cordero, but that the Yankees were not provided any additional details. Boone noted that the policy is designed to keep specific details of an investigation out of the public eye.

Cordero had not pitched for the Yankees since Sunday against the St. Louis Cardinals. Boone said the investigation had not played a role in Cordero’s playing time.

Cordero made his major league debut in August 2018 with the Washington Nationals after several years in the minor leagues. Since then, he has bounced around the league and the minors, pitching for the Toronto Blue Jays and the Chicago White Sox.

The Yankees signed Cordero to a minor league contract in March 2022 and invited him to spring training. Cordero spent 2022 pitching for the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders, the Yankees’ top minor league affiliate.

Cordero began pitching for the Yankees this year after the team picked up his contract from the RailRiders, and he had been a reliable presence in the Yankees bullpen this season, with an E.R.A. of 3.86 and 34 strikeouts in fewer than 32 ⅔ innings pitched.

With Cordero suspended for the rest of the year, the Yankees called up the right-handed pitcher Randy Vásquez from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

Yankees pitcher Domingo Germán, who threw a perfect game last week, was suspended for 81 games in 2020 following a domestic abuse investigation.