australian-open Page 6 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Reporter Knows Nothing About Daria Gavrilova, Asks Her Questions Anyway<em></em>
Before her second-round match against Elise Mertens in the Australian Open, No. 23 Daria Gavrilova fielded questions from reporters and apparently some guy who stumbled into the press room. ...

Shapo Stalled Out Two Points From The Finish Line
The last time Denis Shapovalov met Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, he could have easily been confused for a half-fluke, a lucky amoeba. At 18 and barely breaking the surface of the ATP tour, he’d been competing mostly at the Challenger level. A flip switched suddenly. Fresh off beating Juan Martin del Potro and...

Hey, Look, It's Stan Wawrinka And Novak Djokovic
Tennis missed its lost injured boys. I missed seeing a dude look like he a sipped through a six-pack, dozed off on the couch, toppled out of it, peed golden-brown, shuffled off to his match and immediately began lashing 100 mph backhand winners. There are a lot of professional tennis players, but th...

No. 1 Simona Halep Practically Twisted Her Ankle Off And Still Won
On Day One of the Australian Open, top-seeded Simona Halep stretched for a ball in the second set of her match against 17-year-old Destanee Aiava and rolled her ankle over... and over, and then somehow over even more until her foot was roughly perpendicular with her lower leg. The video is above, bu...

Nick Kyrgios Told A Heckler To "Shut The Fuck Up" And Said He's Never Spoken To Colin Kaepernick
The tennis, as it has been lately for Nick Kyrgios, was encouraging this weekend—a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 rout of Rogerio Dutra Silva in the first round of the Australian Open—but of course it’s never only about the tennis when it comes to Nick....

The Australian Open App Stinks And This Is Probably Why <em></em>
Each of tennis’s grand slam tournaments has its own app, which allows users to track live scores and completed matches, watch highlights, and get the latest news. Anyway, that’s what it’s supposed to do....

Denis Shapovalov And Coco Vandeweghe Both Had Banana Trouble At The Australian Open
Tennis players often snack on bananas during changeovers. The light meal is routine and usually without drama, but Day One of the Australian Open featured two banana incidents....

Maybe This Local Lad Will Spice Up The Australian Open
Oh hell yes the Australian Open is set to begin this weekend. Time for two weeks of physically deleterious nocturnal sports enjoyment and photos of elite athletes cuddling marsupials. Time to brush up on how to watch the fuzzy ball game and survey the field to see what’s new, which is ... honestly n...

Serena Williams Will Not Play In The Australian Open
Serena Williams has announced that she’s withdrawn from this year’s Australian Open. Less than two weeks after making her official return to the court with an exhibition match at the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, and four months after giving birth to her first child, she said today that she wo...

Is Serena Williams Going To Play In The Australian Open Or What?
The Australian Open begins in less than a month and it’s still unclear whether defending champion Serena Williams will be playing in it. Despite eager assurances from the tournament director that the 23-time grand slam champion will indeed make her historic post-baby comeback at the tournament she w...

Ghost Of Lleyton Hewitt Will Play Australian Open
Lleyton Hewitt, two-time Grand Slam singles winner and former No. 1, “retired” from tennis after playing his 20th Australian Open back in 2016. He entered Wimbledon doubles as a wild card later that year, but since then his public appearances on a tennis court have largely been limited to captainin...

Australian Open Tournament Director Says Serena Williams Is "Very Likely" To Play
Three months after giving birth to her daughter, and one year after winning the 2017 Australian Open for her 23rd major title while nine weeks pregnant, Serena Williams appears on track to defend her title and, should she win, tie hateful crone Margaret Court as the winningest tennis player in histo...

Margaret Court Says "Tennis Is Full Of Lesbians" And A Whole Bunch Of Bigoted Shit
Less than a week after Australian tennis champion turned preacher Margaret Court threatened to boycott Qantas airlines because its CEO supports same-sex marriage, she gave an interview to Vision Christian radio station in which she spewed a whole mess of other homophobic and transphobic shit includi...

Old Man Federer Signs New Deal, May Keep Playing Until Humanity Leaves For Mars
The saner Roger Federer fans treated his Australian Open title as a late-night dessert—one they really didn’t expect or deserve!—snuck in before the long sleep. The more delusional might have seen it as the beginning of a late-career resurgence, promising fresh titles to come. I sat somewhere in bet...

Is Uncle Toni, Rafael Nadal's Longtime Coach, Really Cool With Stepping Down?<em></em>
Rafael Nadal will split ways with his longtime coach, Uncle Toni, at the end of the 2017 season, according to an interview Toni Nadal gave to the website Il Tennis Italiano over the weekend. Instead of traveling with his nephew, Toni Nadal said he will spend next season overseeing the Nadals’ tenni...

ESPN Sued By Tennis Broadcaster Fired Over Venus Williams Remark
Tennis broadcaster Doug Adler, who didn’t return to ESPN’s Australian Open broadcast after commenting on Venus Williams’s “gorilla” or “guerrilla” style of play—that’s the big question here—has sued ESPN and two ESPN executives in charge of tennis broadcasts in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging w...

Science! Shows That Roger Federer's Backhand In Fact Defeated Rafael Nadal
Yesterday we argued that Federer’s unusually strong backhand anchored his Australian Open win over Rafael Nadal, and today we found a startling statistical basis for that claim. It comes courtesy of the always helpful Jeff Sackmann at TennisAbstract. Relative to other sports, tennis remains fairly d...

Roger Federer Played Free And Gave His Archrival The Back Of His Hand<em></em>
“I’m a different player due to Rafa’s presence,” Roger Federer said in a 2015 press conference, and if you needed it, yesterday’s 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3 Australian Open win offered the clearest possible evidence. When your defensive-genius nemesis applies crushing pressure on you for more than a de...

Roger Federer Wins Australian Open For First Grand Slam Title In Five Years
Thirty-five-year old Roger Federer took down old rival Rafael Nadal in five sets to win the Australian Open—his 18th Grand Slam title, but his first in five years. ...

Serena Williams Is No. 1 Again
In terms of what it actually was, Serena Williams’s Australian Open victory was fairly straightforward; in terms of what it means, it’s totally overwhelming....