No, New York Times, Climate Change Is Not Making Tennis Players Ill
By
Linnea Lueken
June 8, 2026
A recent article in The New York Times (NYT) suggests that climate change is increasingly endangering tennis players at the French Open, particularly those less inured to the heat, making them ill and unable to compete. This is false. While it’s true that this year’s French Open at Roland Garros was unseasonably hot, there are many factors that contribute to tennis players suffering this year, and no evidence of any trend in either hotter temperatures or increasing incidences of heat prostration or stroke over time.
In “Jannik Sinner might have a heat problem, but tennis has a bigger one,” the NYT claims that despite the Roland Garros officials determining that temperatures were not hot enough to suspend play:
“And regardless of what the scientific meter might say, the conditions for the first five days of the tournament have been seriously hot and seriously hard. They have also exposed a lack of preparedness for unseasonably hot conditions on the part of both players and the tournament, at a time when global temperatures are rising and tennis has become more physical than ever.”
The player highlighted for this article is Jannik Sinner, who dropped out due to illness, possibly in part related to heat. The NYT says Sinner has “one major weakness,” which is “[t]he hotter it is, the more vulnerable he becomes.”
https://climaterealism.com/2026/06/no-new-york-times-climate-change-is-not-making-tennis-players-ill/
