2025 was another year of interminable programming spurring injuries real and injuries invented for self-preservation. Of a deepening rivalry between two saintly young men that’s as bewitching as it is tedious. Of breakout stars like Victoria Mboko and Alex Eala, and unlikely champions like Valentin Vacherot, who turned pro in 2019 and won a title while ranked #104 in the world. Of the most decorated unc to ever do it, clinging to the towel we thought he’d have thrown in by now.
But in the spirit of transgressions, trolls, tirades, and another godforsaken years-end list, I bring you my 5 favorite rage bait moments of 2025.
5. Harriet Dart thinks Lou Boisson smells
I think we can all agree that when you’ve lost an opening set 6-0, the best thing to do ahead of the second is make a disparaging hygiene remark about your competitor. “Can you tell her to wear deodorant? She smells really bad,” Harriet Dart told the umpire. She is Lou Boisson of France, and you guys know France has produced stinky people since the slur was perpetuated by American soldiers during World War II.
A courtside microphone captured the dunk. Boisson retaliated with an Instagram pic of herself “holding” a stick of Dove deodorant with the caption, “Apparently need a collab 😂😂.” Quite a chic clapback when we consider the tit-for-tat alternative: suggesting that Dart needs braces for her British teeth.
4. The Sincaraz rivalry visual discourse
When one player finds their form during a match, tennis commentators LOVE to talk about “asking the [metaphorical] question.” To mark a sort of changing of the tide. Oh he’s really starting to ASK THE QUESTION now! However, the real question in tennis is: who will put a stop to these corny-ass Sincaraz rivalry marketing assets? It seems I myself have slipped into character because the portmanteau does nothing to help my case. But WWE-inspired movie posters? Making them do a trophy tug-of-war to promote the ATP finals? Whatever the fuck this is?
After Sinner won the ATP Finals, his speech serenaded Alcaraz with, “If it’s another player than me I always choose you.” I always choose you is fodder for Valentine’s Day cards the Australian Open could sell in late January. Now tell me where this fits in:
Sport is inherently emotional—but you dorks are trying to make it emotional in all the wrong ways. Can we just let these two gentle, well-mothered boys trade triumphs and sweet nothings while we weep on our couches?
3. The Gauff and Sabalenka olive branch dance
The best Miley Cyrus song, if you must know, is the one in which her best friend Leslie concedes, “Oh, she’s just being Miley.” Quite like the way Sabalenka is just being Sabalenka when she loses with petulance and without grace. I’m equally thrilled and bothered by how bad a loser she is, but never surprised—and this year brought Sabalenka’s standout performance in the category: diluting Coco's French open win with fixations on her own bad performance. Losers with open wounds should probably not be dragged onto stages to give speeches, to be fair, but her narcissism only reached new, embarrassing heights in the press conference that followed.
Coco, a better woman than most of us, sprung into action. She had a reputation to help rebuild! The frenemies took to a verdant Wimbledon court with a clumsy dance—something close to hopscotch with flashes of arms akimbo—wearing what the naked eye might construe as the color of the tournament, but was in fact a symbol of Sabalenka’s new purity. “That works,” laughed Coco, sashaying off-screen after they botched the ending. We, the people, talked mad shit about their rush to engineer better optics—but it does seem that no love was lost.
2. Zverev helpfully reminds us he’s still the world #3
This year, Alexander Zverev had a lot of thoughts that could’ve easily remained thoughts. Instead? He spoke them!
"I think people forget that I'm still the world number 3," he explained before losing to world #54 Arthur Rinderknech in Wimbledon’s first round. Darkness was revealed in the press conference that followed. He expressed feeling “empty” and that finding “joy outside the tennis court” had been hard. A rare vulnerable moment for the German—or it would’ve been, had he not gone on to say, “I[Arthur] played a fantastic match… I'm not sure he's ever played a match like that in his life.”
It’s cute that Zverev thinks we won’t see his oblique petulance; his bitchy little hint that Rinderknech won only because of some astonishingly rare serendipity—when in fact, we see everything, including opportunities to be petty right back:
2.2 An Honourable Zverev mention: He KNOWS you’re rigging the court speed, guys!
Not all conspiracy theorists hold bongs and Reddit top 1% status. Some hold tennis racquets. And you guys at the ATP oughta be ashamed! Zverev deserves a fair shot.
I am of course kidding. It just felt right to fight nonsense with more nonsense. Perhaps Zverev’s very many excuses are perceived as generosity in some cultures.
1. Medvedev’s 6-minute tantrum
A 6-minute egg is soft-boiled with a fully set white and a warm, runny yolk. A 6-minute tantrum is the record for the longest scuffle-induced delay during a grand slam, set by everyone’s favorite villain, Daniil Medvedev, in the first round of the US Open on August 24, 2025.
It was Greg Allensworth who irked him. Some would say Allensworth’s recent work in the chair is reminiscent of someone’s grandmother shouting bingo too late. Others say, well, much worse. Gun to my head, I’ll say the ump’s ruling felt more cut and dry than some of his previous, more convoluted ones—ones that Meddy was using to color the call at hand.
Quick recap, because most will remember it: A photographer ran on the court, mistakenly thinking the match was over after Meddy’s opponent, Benjamin Bonzi faulted his first serve. Allensworth caught the distraction quickly and called for a first serve. Given how quickly the photog left the court, that Bonzi was already en route to his second serve, and that Medvedev was facing match point, he was absolutely not on board with the call. Okay I’ll bite, he said—and the taunts started to spray. At first, they were garden variety argumentative, and then, vintage Medvedevian: ugly like his strokes, and personal.
“The guy wants to leave. He gets paid by the match, not by the hour!”
“Reilly Opelka was right! What did Reilly Opelka say?” he exclaimed, referencing an incident in which Allensworth was more wrong than right.
Palms to the sky, Medvedev was whipping the crowd up. They were decidedly his allies, booing Allensworth, chanting “SE-COND SERVE,” matching his venom. But Medevedev’s tantrums have range, god damn it—so when he got bored, he switched to blowing smarmy kisses to Allensworth.
Bonzi was, naturally, not a beneficiary of this pile-on. He went on to lose his serve, that set, and the set that followed. Thankfully, he won the deciding fifth—a fact that Meddy later agreed was for the best.
Medvedev played an objectively bad year of tennis, but on the bright side, he has the 6-minute tantrum.
Melissa Kenny writes Racquet’s See You In Court, a regular advice column in which Melissa Kenny, a famously mediocre lifelong player, heeds reader questions about tennis. She also writes Hard Hitting, a Substack about the thrills and frustrations of recreational tennis.
