Tennis

U.S. Open to use 25-second serve clock — The U.S. Open will have 25-second serve clocks on all of its courts during main draw matches this year to enforce time limits between points. The Grand Slam tournament, which begins in New York on Aug. 27, will also have a strict seven-minute period from when players enter a court until action starts after the warm-up. Both the serve clocks and strict timing for the warm-up were tested during qualifying matches at Flushing Meadows in 2017. One other element that the USTA tried out during qualifying matches at last year’s tournament that will not make it into the main draw this time around is allowing coaches to communicate with their players during matches.

Doping

Fallout from scandal continues with raid of biathlon union — Authorities in Austria raided the headquarters of biathlon’s global governing body following a tip from the World Anti-Doping Agency that its leaders may have been involved with the vast Russian doping scandal that continues to roil international sports. The Vienna-based International Biathlon Union, which has long had close links to Russian sports, confirmed the investigation in a news release on Wednesday, in which it also announced that its longtime secretary-general, Nicole Resch, had requested a leave of absence. The IBU said the investigation focused on Resch — who had publicly questioned sports regulators’ conclusions about Russia’s systematic cheating — and the group’s president, Anders Besseberg, a former biathlete and cross-country skier who is also a board member of the anti-doping agency. Biathlon had been at the center of a number of allegations related to Russian doping years before the 2016 revelations of a state-sponsored scheme that corrupted dozens of sporting events including to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. The raid on the biathlon organization came after the anti-doping agency gave details gleaned by its own investigations team to law enforcement officials in Norway — where a raid also took place — and Austria. The government investigation was initiated in 2017 and resulted in surveillance of potential targets late last year, according to three people familiar with the case.

— From wire reports