Challengers forces us to ask: Is tennis sexy?

An investigation into a sport of short shorts and thrown rackets.

In addition to solidifying Zendaya as a movie star, the new Luca Guadagnino film Challengers presents a couple of ideas about the seemingly polite and preppy game of tennis: One, it’s a sport that belongs on the silver screen as regularly as football, baseball, or boxing. Two, it’s quite possibly the most erotic activity outside of sex.

Early on in Challengers, tennis prodigy Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) explains to her fellow players and future romantic conquests, Art Donaldson (Mike Faist) and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), that “tennis is a relationship.” As the film goes on, the sport becomes a vehicle for psychosexual warfare. The movie time-jumps across a tense love triangle between the three athletes, who take diverging career paths but remain trapped in a perpetual three-way match throughout their adulthood.

While there’s no actual intercourse, there are lots of passionate make-outs, male nudity, and simmering glances. Most of the film’s sexual tension is released on the court, where Art and Patrick meet a decade-plus later to have a climactic showdown at the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) Challenger Tour, the second tier of professional male tournaments. There’s much more than just ranking points at stake.

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It’s safe to say that the gameplay in Challengers is mostly sexy because of Guadagnino’s directorial sensibilities, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s cinematography, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s pulsing score. The Italian filmmaker is known for sensually (and queerly) capturing the beauty and horror of the human body, to the point where they sometimes overlap. However, there’s an argument that the formalities, aesthetics, and personalities of professional tennis make it an innately hot sport designed for hot people. In an interview with Variety, Challengers’ screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes argued that tennis is naturally an “erotic sport.” He compares the game — which has origins in Victorian-era Britain — to a “Victorian romance,” adding that there’s a “deep intimacy and a lot of repression.”

Culture writer Kyndall Cunningham and senior culture correspondent Alex Abads-Santos, former players and fans of the sport, unpack what makes tennis so right (and occasionally wrong) for such a naughty film, ranking these qualities from least to most sexy.

The lingo

Stroke. Balls. Depth. Grip. Grunt. Love. These are all tennis terms and, depending on your maturity level (or lack thereof), they could easily be manipulated into a double entendre. The men’s professional tour has actually done this!

Famously, in 2001, the organization was promoting the next generation of exciting new players, which included future GOAT Roger Federer and grand slam winners like Marat Safin. To drum up excitement at the time, the ATP tour released a campaign with the tagline “New balls please.” The line is a reference to an actual part of a tennis match; two new cans of balls are opened after the first seven games because of wear and tear. But the slogan also functions as a smirky way of signaling a changing of the guard in the men’s game because of the testicle innuendo. New balls good, old balls bad.

But see how unsexy that is right there? Not just because of that uncouth combination of words and scientific terminology of body parts, but it’s all just a bit too obvious.

When it comes to self-evident jokes, though, much has already been made of tennis’s grunting. From parody to gossip, the observation that tennis playing can sound like sex is, at this point, bordering on banal. It might even raise questions about what kind of sex one is having if their sex sounds like some modern tennis players.

Tennis innuendo is just too obvious to be thrilling or even naughty. Maybe tennis doesn’t need words to be sexy! —AAS

The tantrums

It’s not a surprise that Guadagnino makes a meal out of the traditionally frowned-upon racket smash in Challengers. In addition to yelling at the umpire, this is perhaps the most classic act of bad sportsmanship practiced at some time or another by most pros, including more disciplined players like Rafael Nadal and the notably ill-mannered John McEnroe. This code violation can come with a big fine. Plus, there isn’t a more obvious way to let your opponent know you’re losing confidence.

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Yet, there’s something admittedly hot about this sort of emotional expulsion; a casual display of superhero strength and feeling exposed in such a formal environment.

For whatever reason, it feels less obnoxious when women partake in this tradition, like when Belarusian player Aryna Sabalenka lost to Coco Gauff at last year’s US Open final and was recorded in the facility locker room slamming her racket against the floor. (She did the same on the court during last month’s Miami Open after she lost to Ukrainian player Anhelina Kalinina.) The US Open moment went viral and drew some criticism. I’d argue this primal display of fury only made her a more alluring and terrifying player. —KC

The kits

Tennis is a sport of tiny outfits that, for most of the season, is played outside and under ample amounts of sunshine. We have sweaty, sunned athletes in shorts and skirts, and the juxtaposition between effort and semi-formal style is inherently alluring (as long as you don’t think about the absolutely shocking sock tans some players possess).

Tennis also allows for a lot of personal style. Aside from Wimbledon’s all-white rule, there’s some wiggle room in the uniform (unless you’re Serena Williams).

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Over the years, more fashionable players like Roger Federer, Serena and her sister Venus, Rafael Nadal, and Maria Sharapova have stepped onto the court with custom fits, like Serena’s diamond sneakers at her final US Open or Federer’s man-in-black ensemble. Bjorn Borg, a tennis player in the 1970s and early ’80s, gets referenced as a fashion icon again and again.

While this kind of self-expression can be thrilling, most players get generic tennis outfits from brands like Nike and Adidas, sometimes in cuts and colors that aren’t flattering or pleasing. Even some of the aforementioned stars have had some flops. —AAS

The rules

Tennis is a sport built on confusing rules. Even the scoring seems impenetrable. A tennis match is when two players face off against each other, and a match consists of points, games, and ultimately sets. Each game is a sequence of at least four points with a margin of two. That game gets players on the scoreboard (e.g. 1-0). The first player to six games with at least a margin of two (e.g. 6-4) wins the set, and the first person to win two out of three sets (6-4, 6-4) or three out of five sets wins the match. If both players get to six games apiece, then a tiebreak may go into effect — players race to seven points and have to win by at least two. Tennis is all about the margin of two because it signifies a player both winning points on their serve and winning points when their opponent serves. There are all kinds of circumstantial hijinks too!

Whew!

And all that is just scoring and not even taking into account how every point is a matter of where a ball lands and that a millimeter can be the difference between winning and losing.

The sport isn’t exactly easy to follow. All these little tidbits can sometimes raise more questions than answers, but they do one thing very well: maximize drama — and drama is sexy. The scoring structure creates high-pressure situations and taxing mind games.

Will the server take a little off a serve to get it in? Will the returner gamble? Will the entire momentum of the match flip?

In a competitive match, so many of these questions go into every point and each swing at the ball. While this kind of pressure might not feel great for the players, especially those on the losing end, these morsels of tension and excitement are a treat for the audience. —AAS

The incredibly crushable players

In her book Love Game: A History of Tennis, from Victorian Pastime to Global Phenomenon, author Elizabeth Wilson suggests that the “intense” and “intimate” way matches are filmed “places the tennis player alongside the film star as an icon of glamour and beauty.” It’s true that the way matches are shot — particularly with the modern use of close-ups and slow-motion replays — places you right on the court, allowing you to nearly feel what the players are feeling and clearly read their facial expressions, just like a big screen idol. In the cases of players like Shakira video vixen Rafael Nadal, fashion and beauty icon Serena Williams, or Italian heartthrob Matteo Berrenetti, I have to agree.

Plenty of spectators have appreciated the beauty of tennis stars as well. During her peak in the late ’90s and early aughts, Russian player and model Anna Kournikova was placed on many “sexiest female athlete” lists and in men’s magazines before joining a famously hot power couple with her husband, singer Enrique Iglesias. In a rare public display of thirst, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour declared herself a “groupie” for Swiss superstar player Roger Federer.

However, it’s more than just physical appearance. There are also personalities, sportsmanship, and politics to consider. That said, someone like No. 1 male player in the world and widely renowned villain Novak Djokovic, who opposed Covid-19 vaccination mandates in 2020, works against this argument. There’s also Nick Kyrigios, whose overly try-hard bad-boy schtick and domestic abuse allegations undermine his otherwise attractive looks. —KC

The dominance of female players

The basketball world is currently seeing how much more exciting their sport is when they acknowledge the contributions of female players. But when it comes to tennis, women have long garnered as much — if not more — attention than their male counterparts, from gender-equality activists like Billie Jean King in the ’70s to ’80s icons such as Steffi Graf and Martina Navratilova. Since the mid-’90s, this has been particularly true of Black women. Grand Slam champions like Serena and Venus Williams, Naomi Osaka, Sloane Stephens, and Coco Gauff have become renowned celebrities and multihyphenates, as well as notable entry points for generations of fans who may not have otherwise tuned into the sport.

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This level of visibility didn’t happen overnight and is arguably still in progress. This year only marks the 17th season that the Women’s Tennis Association has offered women the same cash prize for all four Grand Slam tournaments as the men’s ATP. (In regular-season events, like the Italian Open, women are still starkly underpaid.) —KC

The rivalries

Every sport has rivalries: Magic and Bird, the Red Sox and the Yankees, Duke and Carolina, Frazier and Ali, Harding and Kerrigan, and the list goes on and on. But there’s nothing like a singles tennis rivalry.

In team sports like basketball, you could have a matchup between superstars that never have to guard each other (e.g. Lebron James and Steph Curry), and in individual Olympic sports like figure skating or gymnastics, a star athlete — e.g. gymnast Simone Biles, skater Nathan Chen, or swimmer Michael Phelps — has to beat a certain time or score, which puts destiny into their own hands.

Tennis is set up in a way that one player has to outright beat another player to advance. There are no ties, no judges scores, no timed laps or splits, and no other teammates in singles tennis. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do when the human on the other side of the net is playing amazingly well, and vice versa. That winner-take-all element is what made every match between Federer and Nadal, Serena and Venus, Navratilova and Evert, McEnroe and Borg, and other famed tennis rivalries so compelling.

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The player-versus-player dynamic also becomes very personal.

Rivals become intimately familiar with each other’s games. They know their weaknesses, strengths, and tendencies. Every tournament, every match, every point, and every stroke becomes a chapter in a saga between two people. Like any pair of humans who have a long history with each other, tennis rivalries can symbolize and encapsulate anything from revenge to respect to animosity to friendship in a way that other sporting rivalries just can’t. —AAS