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, yet another player could not put away a cramping opponent, a top star made positive moves on a crucial shot, and a college tennis program was axed as the name, image and likeness (NIL) era continues to impact the sport.

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Ugo Humbert is not the first player to lose to someone who can barely move around the court, and he will not be the last.

On Saturday at the Madrid Open, Humbert’s opponent, Térence Atmane, was sprawled on his back in agony, covered in brick dust, and two points from losing the second set in a tiebreak. That would have meant playing a third set, which looked entirely beyond Atmane. Humbert had sportingly provided a chair for his opponent before the tiebreak, perhaps in a moment of French camaraderie, and perhaps feeling that there was no chance he could lose the set.

Serving up 7-6(3), 6-6(2-5), Atmane was so stricken that he could not even complete his service motion, swatting forehands into the service box instead of even trying to hit a regulation over- or underarm serve. It worked the first time …

… So he did it again, and it worked again. In reply, Humbert did what most tennis players do against an injured opponent. He played just as he might have done if Atmane could move properly, using the same shots and making the same errors. This dynamic plays out across tournaments, big and small, as the physically compromised player is forced to do as much as they can on every ball with minimum exertion, while the opponent can get lost in overthinking.

Keeping the ball in the court feels overwhelmingly important, so changing strategy — using more angles or drop shots — feels too risky. So after Atmane won both of his service points despite not hitting a proper serve at all, Humbert gathered himself to hit two of his own.

On the first point, he missed a first serve, made the second, but played too conservatively. In the second point, he made a first serve, but he played the rally too cautiously again and missed at the net.

That left Atmane serving at 7-6(3), 6-6(6-5), and by moving about during the previous two points, he had unlocked his muscles just enough to hit a real serve just when he needed one: On match point. He made it, ripped another backhand and Humbert missed again to lose the match. Then came an unsurprisingly cool handshake, before Atmane sheepishly held his hands palms to the ground, as if to apologize for the win.

Humbert had a case for complaint: Atmane was allowed to go well past the allotted 25 seconds between points on several occasions without a warning, committing enough time violations that he could have received a point penalty, or perhaps two. But when those points started, Humbert found his brain scrambled by what was going on across the net. While Atmane’s limited movement focused his mind on what he had to do, Humbert found himself with a buffet of tantalizing options, but was far more paralyzed than the opponent who had been writhing in the clay minutes before sealing a 7-6(3), 7-6(5) victory.

At January’s Australian Open, Iga Świątek spoke about the difficulty of making fundamental changes mid-season. “I see Carlos Alcaraz, for example, changing his serve every year,” she joked in a news conference. For her, Świątek said, these things take “much longer.”

The seven-time Grand Slam champion was speaking after losing in the quarterfinals to Elena Rybakina, a match that showcased the difference between the two players’ serves. Rybakina’s serve gave her a platform to attack, or it simply won points outright; Świątek’s meant pretty much every point began at neutral. The disadvantage eventually took its toll in an unraveling straight-sets defeat, a recurring theme during Świątek’s uneven start to 2026.

She parted ways with coach Wim Fissette in March, only eight months after they had won Wimbledon together, and with new coach Francisco Roig in tow, Świątek has set about making a change she knew she needed, but that is so hard to implement during the relentless tennis season.

At the end of March, footage emerged of Świątek working on her serve before the Stuttgart Open, bending her right arm at the elbow earlier in her swing to abbreviate it, get more power, and reduce the number of places in the motion her kinetic chain can be interrupted.

After beating Daria Snigur to reach the third round of the Madrid Open, Świątek admitted that in Stuttgart, she had been caught between her old habits and serving the way she and Roig were working on, during a run that ended in a semifinal. But in her first match in Madrid, Świątek said she was properly implementing the changes for the first time. A 6-1, 6-2 win saw the world No. 4 make 70 percent of her first serves and win 78 percent of those points.

TC's Alison Riske-Amritraj breaking down Iga's slight service adjustment.

Biggest change is Iga's starting position which gives her an earlier elbow bend in that serving arm. pic.twitter.com/nLqGNmOgO9

— Christian's Court (@christianscourt) April 23, 2026

“I was supposed to serve like that in Stuttgart, but it was on and off!” Świątek told Sky Sports.