australian-open Page 7 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Will Face Off In A Throwback Australian Open Final
This photo’s from 2005—they were about to meet in a Grand Slam for the first time, the 2005 French Open, a semifinal match Rafael Nadal won before claiming the title, his first of many. They’d then spend about a decade at the top of the game, sucking up all the available oxygen, dominating all major...
Old Man Federer Survives To Reach Australian Open Final
Thirty-five-year-old Roger Federer sputtered his way to the championship round of the Australian Open. Though his all-Swiss semifinal against Stan Wawrinka looked like a gutsy struggle on paper—five sets! 7-5, 6-3, 1-6, 4-6, 6-3!—it actually lasted just over three hours, and the two major inflection...
![Venus Williams Is Very, Very Happy To Be In The Final Of The Australian Open [Updated]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/dkyx6k7jbtyj4hirtqdn.jpg)
Venus Williams Is Very, Very Happy To Be In The Final Of The Australian Open [Updated]
All evidence suggests that 36-year-old Venus Williams is feeling good about reaching the final of the Australian Open. She defeated CoCo Vandeweghe 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-2 to become the oldest women in a Grand Slam final since Martina Navratilova in 1994....
Now It's Just Rafael Nadal And A Bunch Of Gorgeous One-Handers
Rafael Nadal dug around and exploited two glitches in the Milos Raonic serving machine—two successfully converted break points, that is—to win his Australian Open quarterfinal 6-4, 7-6 (7), 6-4. And now he’s surveying a field full of the prettiest one-handed backhands in all the land. Roger Federer’...
Venus Williams Becomes Oldest Woman To Ever Reach Australian Open Semifinals
Venus Williams, aged 36, ranked No. 17, hasn’t dropped a single set en route to the semifinals at the Australian Open. Her 6-4, 7-6 (3) win over No. 27 Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova made her the oldest woman in the Open era to run this deep into this tournament. ...
Stan Wawrinka Drained Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's Will To Live
The notion of athletes “wanting it more” than one another must be one of the most insufferably inane tropes of sports analysis, but halfway through an Australian Open match between Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Stan Wawrinka the commentators began flinging it, and at some point it actually began to stick. ...
Rafael Nadal Turned Off The Gael Monfils Show
Rafael Nadal put up a sweat-saturated 6-3, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 performance to end Gael Monfils’s run at the fourth round of the Australian Open. Through the first two sets it looked like old-school Nadal dominance. Both sixth seed Monfils and ninth seed Nadal are rangy scramblers who cover every inch of t...
No. 1 Andy Murray Upset By Unseeded Mischa Zverev
Top-seeded Andy Murray is no longer the favorite to win the Australian Open; instead, he’ll be going home earlier than expected. Murray fell to unseeded Mischa Zverev in today’s fourth round, 7-5, 5-7, 6-2, 6-4....
Roger Federer Was Better Than Vintage
“It’s not so much fun,” said Tomas Berdych, the 10th seed at the Australian Open, after getting picked apart in a neat 92 minutes. “I would rather be in the stands watching than on the court.”...
Gael Monfils, At The Peak Of His Career, Is Still A Good Clown
Gael Monfils cannot turn down an opportunity for a good show, not even with set point in the Australian Open. With the second set at stake, in the middle of a rally, the Frenchman chose to go behind the back. His second-round opponent Alexandr Dolgopolov, whether thrown off by the mild sidespin or ...
When Serena Williams Asks For An Apology, She Gets It
Serena Williams, fresh off her 6-3, 6-4 win over Lucie Safarova in the second round of the Australian Open, was in no mood to dwell on the negatives. So when a reporter asked about her 23 unforced errors, she was sure to extract an apology:...
Denis Istomin, The Bespectacled Wildcard, Dismantled Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic is often likened to a machine, and his wins share that metallic flavor: suddenly the teeth of the cogs are all lined up, they’ve been set in motion, and what once felt like a tennis match becomes a grind towards an inexorable conclusion. ...
Nick Kyrgios Stopped Giving A Shit And Crashed Out Of The Australian Open
Lots of choice words spill out of Nick Kyrgios’s mouth—many of them amusing, wounded, self-righteous—but you don’t need to hear a single one to understand how he feels about the game at a particular moment in time. You can see that spelled out on the court, in the way he chooses to swing his racket ...
Stan Wawrinka And Kei Nishikori Had To Work At The Australian Open's First Round
The first round’s over in the Australian Open and no giants have been toppled yet, but two are already exposing their vulnerabilities: No. 4 seed Stan Wawrinka and No. 5 seed Kei Nishikori were both stretched to five sets in their opening matches....
Serena Williams Loses To World No. 72, Commits 88 Unforced Errors
Serena Williams, the second-ranked woman’s tennis player in the world, lost to No. 72 Madison Brengle in a 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-4 upset at the ASB Classic in Auckland, New Zealand last night. ...
Just Rafael Nadal Holding A Koala
One of the under-looked perks of tennis stardom is that you’re often being handed marsupials. Rafael Nadal got to hold this koala at the start of the Brisbane International. His grin and the bear’s claws appear to be saying very different things....
Juan Martin Del Potro May Not Play The Australian Open
The resurrection of Juan Martin del Potro was one of the quiet joys of 2016. He’d been out of the game for two years, he’d sunk lower than the No. 1000 ranking, and his wrists seemed like they’d never again be capable of bashing those flat, unforgiving groundstrokes. Yet somehow he snagged a silver ...
Novak Djokovic Didn't Even Have To Play His Best To Win The Australian Open
Remember when the Roger Federer v. Rafael Nadal rivalry—featuring a contrast of styles, eight Grand Slam final matchups, and, according to some, maybe the greatest tennis match of all time—was going to eat tennis and shut out any other would be champions for a decade plus? That era feels like a dist...
Even Angelique Kerber Thought She Wouldn't Beat Serena Williams [UPDATE]
All that stood between the #7 tennis player in the world exiting in the opening round of the Australian Open to an unranked opponent was a single point. Angelique Kerber was down to match point against Misaki Doi in the second set, until she found her form, roared back, and took the second and third...
Line Umpire Suffers Blast To The Nuts
Here’s an Australian Open line umpire taking a blow “down under” during today’s Federer-Berdych match. Ow ow ow ow ow....