The Laver Cup is about to get underway at The O2 Arena in London, with Team Europe facing Team World in a weekend that brings together some of the game’s leading names.

Team Europe again arrives with considerable strength, led by Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev. Alcaraz won the Australian Open earlier this year, while Zverev captured his first and second Grand Slam titles at Roland Garros and the US Open.

Both players were on court at The O2 Arena for a practice session before the tournament starts on Friday, 25th September. During that session, a video shared on social media captured the pair discussing Zverev’s US Open final win over Ben Shelton.

Alcaraz seemed especially interested in the detail that Zverev did not immediately realise he had closed out the match point to win the Grand Slam. That led to a short exchange in which Alcaraz pressed him on what was going through his mind at the time.

“Tell me what you were thinking,” asked Alcaraz to Zverev about winning the 2026 US Open. “I was watching at home and was amazed.”

Zverev responded: “There was nothing in my head; that’s the benefit of being dumb. When you’re dumb, it helps.”

“No, no, don’t say that,” added Alcaraz, before suggesting it ended up bolstering Zverev. “I’ve been thinking about it; it’s actually really useful not to know it’s the final set.”

Zverev concluded: Yeah, I thought the score was 1-4, so I never got nervous at all. If I’d known it was 2-5, I’d have been totally stressed out.”

The German was told by his team that he had won the US Open after he sent balls back to Shelton to serve, in one of the more unusual moments of the tournament.

Alcaraz and Zverev will now move on from New York and turn their attention to a rare opportunity to play alongside one another rather than against each other. They will be joined on Team Europe by Rafael Jodar, Flavio Cobolli, Jakub Mensik, and Casper Ruud, with Yannick Noah and Tim Henman serving as captains.

Team World will include Alex de Minaur, Taylor Fritz, Francisco Cerundolo, Learner Tien, Brandon Nakashima, and Alexander Bublik. Andre Agassi and Pat Rafter will captain the side for the second straight year after guiding Team World to the title in 2025. That triumph came in San Francisco.

The Laver Cup runs from September 25th to 27th, with singles and doubles matches scheduled across the weekend.

Former British No 1 doubles player Tara Moore has reportedly lost her £15million lawsuit against the WTA Tour after a federal judge dismissed the case.

Moore, whose doubles ranking peaked at No 77, is serving a four-year doping ban after testing positive for anabolic steroids Nandrolone metabolites and Boldenone. The Athletic reported that the 34-year-old argued the WTA failed to warn players about the risk of eating steroid-contaminated meat in Colombia, where her sample tested positive after a 250 event in Bogota in June 2022.

The case followed a lengthy dispute over the sanction. After the Court of Arbitration for Sport imposed the four-year ban, Moore challenged the decision through the WTA. The arbitrator ruled in favour of the tennis body, and Moore then turned to federal court in an effort to overturn that outcome.

According to the report, United States District Judge Andrew Carter found no legal basis for Moore’s claims that the arbitrator denied her a fair hearing or acted beyond their powers.

Moore has not publicly commented on the latest development. She is now a facility director at a Patrick Mouratoglou tennis centre, and 11 days ago she posted on social media about the broader issue. Moore shared an Instagram post from Spiked.Film, a project crowdfunding for a movie about the ‘cost of anti-doping’.

The post asked, “What happens when professional athletes get contaminated by something they believe is safe and test positive for banned substances?”

In July 2025, Moore described the anti-doping system as “broken”. She said then, “The last three-and-a-half years have broken me into so many pieces. As my family and friends have scrambled to pick up the broken shards of me, they’ve glued me back together in the form of a different person.”

Moore was provisionally suspended more than four years ago, then cleared 19 months later to return to competition after tennis’ anti-doping authority decided she bore “no fault or negligence”. That ruling was later appealed by the International Tennis Integrity Agency to CAS, where a panel concluded she had not sufficiently proved that meat contamination caused the nandrolone level in her sample.

Her ban now runs until December 2027, when she will be 35.

Amanda Anisimova has pulled out of the Singapore Open just before she was due to play her opening match. The American was scheduled to face Talia Gibson in the round of 16 at the WTA 500 event, but a left wrist injury has forced her to withdraw.

Her place in the draw has gone to lucky loser Viktoria Morvayova, who moves directly into the second round of the WTA Tour Asian tournament.

The immediate concern is the injury, but the withdrawal also leaves Anisimova facing possible consequences tied to her 2026 schedule. She has played a relatively light season so far, appearing in only 12 tournaments. Within that total, she has featured in just two WTA 500 events, one short of the mandatory three every female player is required to complete across the season.

She has played only the Brisbane International and Queen’s before Singapore this year, meaning the Singapore Open would have been her third tournament of that level. Now, with the event out of reach, she risks a fine if she does not add another WTA 500 appearance before the year ends.

There are only two tournaments left after Singapore, the Ningbo Open and the Pan Pacific Open, both set for October during the WTA Tour’s Asian swing. Anisimova has never played either event, so neither has been an obvious priority in her career. In 2026, though, one of them may become necessary.

If she skips both, she could face a point deduction or a monetary fine. That possibility sits alongside her hopes of reaching the WTA Finals, where she still has an outside chance of qualifying. She is currently 21st in the live Race for the WTA Finals standings, well outside the top eight spots that secure entry.

That leaves her with a decision that may shape the rest of her season. She could choose to play both WTA 500 tournaments in search of ranking points, while also trying to avoid any sanction. She will also be aiming to keep her WTA Finals hopes alive, especially with the event taking place on home soil at Indian Wells for the first time.