How tennis players’ dogs live at Grand Slams and on tour, from courtside seats to massages

PARIS – Melanie Gauthier Knopp’s job at the French Open has nothing to do with playing tennis. She spends her days helping the hundreds of players who have come through their gates over the past couple of weeks feel cared for.

In that pursuit, she does everything from coordinating social activities to leading excursions off grounds. She gives massages to those who need it after a long day of running around and, when it was unseasonably hot in Paris last week, she even opened a private pool so they had a place to cool down.

If she’s really particularly generous, Gauthier Knopp will even hand-feed certain clients their dinner.

No, not players. Their dogs.

Gauthier Knopp is the first dog concierge employed by Roland Garros, hired to look after the beloved pets that tennis’ top players tote around from tournament to tournament throughout the year, across borders and over seas, so the competitors can focus on performing at their peak.

The dogs are usually small — better for transporting — and some have achieved such a level of renown that the sight of them heralds the arrival of their human.

 

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If a mini dachshund, Bella, bounds down the hall, trust that French Open quarterfinalist Anna Kalinskaya isn’t far behind. Same goes for Hailey Baptiste of the U.S. dachshund, Oscar, and world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka’s recently adopted Cavalier King Charles Spaniel puppy, Ash – so named for Arthur Ashe, because Sabalenka had a deal with her coach that if she won the U.S. Open, she’d get a dog.

“We felt like it had to be related to New York,” Sabalenka told the Tennis Channel this year. “Apple doesn’t sound right.”

Little dogs have had the run of tennis events for many years. Serena Williams’ pup, Chip, was a longtime member of her entourage, and other Grand Slams have adopted policies to make them comfortable.

But the sport has seen a noticeable puppy proliferation in recent years. At least half of the women’s quarterfinalists at this year’s French Open travel with their dogs on tour. World No. 3 Alexander Zverev, who won his quarterfinal against rising Spanish teenager Rafael Jódar on Tuesday, has traveled with a dog since the early years of his career. Zizou Bergs, a Belgian player who lost in the first round, is the rare midsize-dog owner who brings around his pet, Copain.

 

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There were so many dogs at this edition of Roland Garros that the tournament installed doggie bag dispensers around the players’ lounge on site, and posted clear signage around areas where dogs are not allowed to enter. Ten canines were given their own credential badges to wear around the grounds, and while there are some areas that they are not supposed to be, such as dining areas, they get around.

Dogs have been seen on practice courts, listening attentively during news conferences, and even in players’ boxes on Court Philippe-Chatrier, somehow enduring the exquisite torture of seeing their owner hit a tennis ball that is not for them over and over again.

As Madison Keys, one of the dogless players on tour, said in a news conference last week after closing her eyes and taking a deep breath: “There’s just… a lot of dogs.

“Dogs are great. I think dogs are a large responsibility, though. So as long as we’re doing that, then I think dogs are wonderful,” she said, laughing.

“I totally see how it feels, like a little bit of normalcy and a piece of home. What are they called? Emotional support animals. I can see where that’s valid when we travel so much to have a little bit of just, like, something that we love.”

Professional tennis demands a lonely, nomadic lifestyle. Players live out of suitcases traveling without friends and family for much of the year; their team members, the people physically around them most, are employees. It can be difficult to feel rooted. It’s hard to escape one’s mind after a bad match, sitting alone in a hotel room.

Until the dog needs to go out.

“It’s nice having her responsibilities. She’s good company, she relaxes my mind. It’s good not to think all the time about tennis,” Kalinskaya said in an interview. “Traveling with her, it relaxes me.”

Dogs also dole out kisses and cuddles whether or not their player has had a good day on court.

Sabalenka, who was upset Wednesday in her semifinal after another match in the French Open wind spiraled out of her control, called Ash her mental health support. Anastasia Potapova, whose mini-poodle mix Bula accompanied her in Paris as she made a run to the fourth round, said her dog makes her hotel feel like a happier place.

“It’s just a bit of a different atmosphere in the room, you know?”

João Fonseca, the Brazilian sensation who defeated three-time champion Novak Djokovic and two-time finalist Casper Ruud before losing his quarterfinal match to another developing talent, Jakub Menšík of the Czech Republic, on Tuesday night, is a dog lover whose family pet stays at home when he’s on the road.

At 19, Fonseca is still focused on learning how to navigate the ATP Tour. Besides, if he took his dog from the rest of his family he said, his parents would be mad.

“It’s just my second year, but I can see that on tour you stay very much of the time alone, or you and your team, and it’s very individual,” Fonseca said, his arms hugging an imaginary dog in front of him as he spoke. … “It’s kind of nice, you know, just to have someone just around. [A dog] is a friend, as well.”

These friends require particularly involved travel planning. Different countries have different regulations regarding traveling with animals that mean players – or more often, their agents – must be read up on pet policies.

Flying with one’s dog from the United States to Paris? No problem. But flying a dog from the United States to England is going to require a workaround. Most players don’t bring their dogs to Australia or to tournaments in China, Japan or Korea, with rules requiring that pets who arrive by plane quarantine for a period of time that can last months.

Some tournaments don’t allow dogs on site. And then there’s the hotel of choice’s dog policy.

It’s a lot to keep in mind when players are locale-hopping every other week. Sabalenka, who added Ash to her family earlier this year, thought her team had checked all those boxes in Paris.

But she prefers to stay at the same accommodations year after year when she returns to tournaments, and she’s finding the digs she stayed in pre-Ash might not be suitable now that she’s a dog parent.

“We stay in the city and then there is no place to walk around,” Sabalenka said in a news conference. “But so far it’s been pretty good. He’s a very smart dog, very easy, very chill, and super easy to adjust to new places.”

For 19-year-old Mirra Andreeva, a semifinalist here, the hardest part of being a parent to her bernedoodle Rassy isn’t logistics, which her agent mostly handles. It’s when she has to leave him at home, as she decided to during the French Open.

Rassy doesn’t respond to her voice over FaceTime yet.

“I just look at her and say, ‘Hi, look at me!’” Andreeva said, waving her hands. “But she’s never reacting.”

Andreeva’s opponent in the semifinals, Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk, had one dog on tour — Mander — and now she has two, with the addition of Chich.

Gauthier Knopp, a dog owner herself, she believes the tournament offers the best of both worlds – players can focus on their day jobs while knowing their canine children are being pampered, not just left in a hotel room, then reunite at the end of the day.

She started her concierge business in Paris, where she mostly works with other athletes and actors, before coming on board with Roland Garros. She’s only had four or five dogs at a time this year, meaning she was able to personalize care.

“One of them loves to run around and smell, so we go longer in the park for him. We say they’re reading their emails when they go outside and smell the plants and smell the fountain,” Gauthier Knopp said. “We are surprised that they were not too much looking for their owner, actually. Sports dogs are good travelers.”

Gauthier Knopp expects other tennis tournaments to follow Roland Garros’s lead and offer more on-site services for dogs now that so many players travel with them. The tournament has given her access to indoor play areas as well as resources – like helping her fill up an inflatable pool in the middle of a scorching afternoon last week.

She’s never received an outlandish request from a player, though Gauthier Knopp said her definition of “outlandish” when it comes to dogs may be different from other people’s.

“I’ve never been surprised,” she said. “But we are all crazy dog moms here.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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