Fans missing Aryna Sabalenka at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix have been met with a steady stream of new material from the world No. 1. Sabalenka unveiled her new racquet and posed for a fashion-forward Esquire cover shoot while speaking with editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian.

The Wilson advertisement for the Blade v10 carries a simple declaration: “Pressure is power,” a line that echoed Sabalenka’s 2026 run. A four-time Grand Slam champion, the 27-year-old rebounded from an Australian Open final loss to Elena Rybakina by completing the Sunshine Double, taking back-to-back titles at the BNP Paribas Open and the Miami Open. In Miami she avenged the Australian Open defeat to Rybakina in straight sets.

Asked how she might have lived her life outside tennis, she said she would be a “boxer or a model,” and in the Esquire conversation she addressed mistakes and hard lessons.

“I have a lot of regrets. I think we all do,” she told editor-in-chief Michael Sebastian. “Mistakes make us better people. It’s tough to be the person without regrets and mistakes. You better stay away from those people.”

Sabalenka also revisited a difficult moment after the Roland Garros final, when she was hesitant to immediately praise Coco Gauff following a three-set defeat. “I have to take my time after the match before I go to the press conference when I lose the match, because when you do it straightaway, you’re still that emotional person,” said Sabalenka. The two players later smoothed things over and recorded conciliatory TikToks.

Beyond on-court swings, Sabalenka spoke about personal loss. She has carried the grief of losing her father in 2019 and urged emotional honesty. “It’s important to grieve, to cry, to go through the emotions,” she said. “Never hold it inside, because it’ll destroy you from the inside.”

Monica Puig has approached performance from many angles: an Olympic gold medalist who built her game on relentless athleticism and “Pica Power,” a player who retired in 2022 and then turned to marathons, triathlons and IRONMAN events. Now an analyst and self-described tech enthusiast, she has tested WHOOP, Garmin and COROS while training and recovering.

“I’ve tried it all!”

Her experience with continuous tracking shaped how she used the information. “I did wear the WHOOP for a while, but that was back before you could wear it on a match court. I know there’s been some back and forth about whether you can at certain tournaments.

I would wear the WHOOP, but I wouldn’t take the information for myself. My fitness trainer was the one who had the app on his phone and had my WHOOP paired to his phone…” Puig said she handed data to the people charged with her body care to avoid letting numbers skew her mindset.

“It’s a fine line. If you’re really responsible with the information that you receive you can kind of just treat it as it is, which is a number…

If you’re the type of player who gets a little bit too obsessed with the numbers, hand it off to your team, like I did, and have them kind of make the adjustments. Let someone else take care of it, then you just kind of go along for the ride.

Because the numbers are very good for certain things, but there are also metrics that don’t really help you.”

On the measures she found most valuable, Puig emphasized recovery and early illness detection. “Knowing your fatigue levels… I thought WHOOP was really great with this knowing when you’re getting sick. And showing you how the body reacts differently, whether you drink or not, whether you hydrated enough, whether you had a heavy meal or not—all those things can play a part into your recovery.”

She supports allowing devices in matches so teams can analyze how an athlete responds under pressure. “Absolutely. I think it’s really essential, because you can also see the way that your body handles itself in a pressure situation. Your body reacts differently from a match that you win in an hours, versus a match that could go for three hours. And obviously it reacts differently in a match than in practice.

There are so many different factors, and I think nowadays having the information helps you prepare. There’s no reason why it should be concealed from players.

It’s not like the player is looking at that information when they’re playing. It’s not like your coach is going to be saying, ‘Oh my gosh your heart rate is X! You need to get it down to Y!’”

She added that showing biometric data in competition has precedent. “I would love that, and I think the WTA did do that when WHOOP was first a partner (back in 2021).

I’ve seen it in golf a couple of times, where it would show a golfer’s heart rate before they teed off. Then you would be like, OK the heart rate is maybe at 130. They’re feeling the stress. Or if the heart rate was in the 90s, OK they’re feeling alright.”

Coco Gauff addressed negative reaction to her appearance in a recent Miu Miu campaign in an emotional social media post. The two-time Grand Slam winner released an eight-minute video after images from the photoshoot drew both praise and a wave of critical comments focused on her styling and natural hair.

“I deleted TikTok and Twitter for a month, to come back on Twitter and see thousands of people talking about the way that I look like—and not in a positive way,” she said. “There’s nothing really to address, but I just wanted to come on here and talk about it.”

The 22-year-old, who is the highest-earning female athlete with a growing roster of partnerships, was chosen by Miu Miu to promote its Vivant leather bag. In the shoot Gauff posed on her backyard tennis court in a preppy red polo and dark navy technical skirt, wearing light makeup with her hair pulled back into a neat bun. She noted the practical reasons behind that choice and the care she gives her hair.

“I personally don’t like to slick back my hair super sleek, because it does damage my hair ,” Gauff explained. “I do play tennis, so most of the time I’m wearing it in a bun. I have (curl type) 4C hair… That’s just not good for my hair.”

Posted a week ago, the photos initially drew praise but also attracted negative comments criticizing her natural look, calling her hair “unpolished,” and comparing her outfit to styles from the Civil Rights era. Those reactions prompted a wider online conversation that reached Gauff directly.

“I’m not going to apologize for the way that my hair looked,” she said. “There are other girls who have the exact same hair as me, and I just want them to see and feel represented…

“My hair was good enough for a high-fashion brand like Miu Miu to promote one of their newest launches. So if my 4C hair was good enough for that, yours is good enough to do whatever you need it to do.”

She also described the short-term emotional toll. “I’m not going to lie, for two days I was feeling rough. I’m someone who has struggled with looks throughout my life, just being a young Black girl in this world,” she said. “Y’all did knock a diva down… but diva got up, and I feel better than ever.”

Gauff closed with a message to young Black girls with kinky hair: “Do what you want with your hair, because at the end of the day people who hate on your appearance have something deeply insecure about themselves… They feel the need to put someone else down to make themselves feel better.”

With the conversation behind her, she plans to shift attention to the clay-court swing later in the season.