PARIS (AP) — For all of Novak Djokovic's titles (100 in all) and Grand Slam trophies (24) and weeks at No. 1 (428, more than anyone else in tennis history), for all of his talent and determination, the guy still can find himself worrying about what is going on with his game.
Happened a little more than a month ago, even, when he was coming off three consecutive losses — his second skid of that length in 2025 — and was particularly concerned about being 0-2 on red clay this season as the start of the French Open approached.
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Germany's Alexander Zverev serves against Italy's Flavio Cobolli during their third round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Serbia's Novak Djokovic reacts as he plays against Britain's Cameron Norrie during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Germany's Alexander Zverev reaches for the ball as he plays Italy's Flavio Cobolli during their third round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Serbia's Novak Djokovic plays a shot against Britain's Cameron Norrie during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
So Djokovic decided to enter the Geneva Open and what do you know? He hasn't lost since, going 8-0 heading into his quarterfinal matchup against No. 3 Alexander Zverev at Roland-Garros on Wednesday.
After leaving Geneva with the championship, Djokovic not only has won his first four matches in Paris, but has yet to drop a set.
“It happens if you lose a match or two consecutively, and then you don’t feel you have enough match play, you start to maybe doubt your game. You don’t want to be in that state of the mind coming into Grand Slams,” the 38-year-old Serb said. “So I’m just glad it all turned out to be perfect for me, in that sense.”
He and Zverev, a 28-year-old German, know each other quite well, on a court and off.
This will be their 14th head-to-head contest on tour dating to 2017 — Djokovic holds an 8-5 advantage — and first since meeting in the semifinals at the Australian Open in January. That one ended after just one set: Djokovic stopped playing because of an injured hamstring, drawing boos from the ticket-buyers, and Zverev defended him.
Their only previous encounter in Paris came back in 2019, and Djokovic won their quarterfinal in three sets.
When Zverev, who credits Djokovic with serving as something of a mentor, looked ahead to Wednesday, he said: “It's always a privilege to be on court with him."
The other quarterfinal Wednesday will be No. 1 Jannik Sinner against unseeded Alexander Bublik, the first man from Kazakhstan to get this far at any Grand Slam tournament. The first two men’s quarterfinals were scheduled for Tuesday and, surprisingly, each one involved an American: defending champion Carlos Alcaraz of Spain vs. No. 12 Tommy Paul, and No. 8 Lorenzo Musetti of Italy vs. No. 15 Frances Tiafoe.
There was a bit of buzz after first-match losses at tournaments in Monte Carlo and then Madrid about whether Djokovic should not even be thought of as a contender this time around at Roland-Garros, although it is a place where he has claimed the trophy three times. He also is the only player to beat 14-time champion Rafael Nadal more than once at the French Open.
Both of those April setbacks came against unseeded opponents, Alejandro Tabilo and Matteo Arnaldi. Both were over in straight sets.
So Zverev was asked Tuesday whether Djokovic, whose recent woes dropped him to No. 6 in the seedings, might be thought of as a dark horse in Paris.
The premise seemed misguided to Zverev, who is a three-time runner-up at major tournaments — including to Alcaraz at Roland-Garros a year ago and to Sinner at Melbourne Park this year.
“I mean, the guy won 24 Grand Slams. He’s never going to be a (dark) horse. He definitely knows how to play tennis,” Zverev said. “He definitely knows what it means to be on the big stage and to play big matches. There is no doubt about that.”
Germany's Alexander Zverev serves against Italy's Flavio Cobolli during their third round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Serbia's Novak Djokovic reacts as he plays against Britain's Cameron Norrie during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Germany's Alexander Zverev reaches for the ball as he plays Italy's Flavio Cobolli during their third round match of the French Tennis Open, at the Roland-Garros stadium, in Paris, Saturday, May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
Serbia's Novak Djokovic plays a shot against Britain's Cameron Norrie during their fourth round match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
