nope Page 8 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Grigor Dimitrov Thoroughly Ruins His Racket
Grigor Dimitrov lost to Juan Martin del Potro, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 at the Italian Open today. He hit some nice shots in a disappointing first-round exit, but saved his finest technique for this two-part racket devastation: First the spike, then the bare hands....
Real Madrid Finally Overcame The World's Best Player By Building The World's Best Team
For close to a decade now, Real Madrid have been tasked with solving the most difficult problem facing any club in the whole sport: What do we do about Lionel Messi?...
When Nick Kyrgios Gives A Shit, He's The Future Of Tennis
Bless Nick Kyrgios for doing so much without ever really seeming to care. I’m not referring to those especially dumb, fringe cases—the forehands sliced for no reason, or the shameless tweeners during high-tension rallies—although he does plenty of that. I just mean just the way he hits the average ...
Novak Djokovic Gets The Best Of Juan Martin Del Potro, Who's Still Missing Something
The last time these two matched up, last August at the Rio Olympics, they delivered the best tennis storyline of 2016: Juan Martin del Potro, rising from the dead after two years of surgeries to both wrists, upsets a Novak Djokovic who’d then had a vice grip on the No. 1 spot for two whole years. Th...
Frances Tiafoe, America's Best Young Prospect, Is Getting Closer To Stardom
Frances Tiafoe, the best American teen in the men’s game, hasn’t taken down any giants yet, but every few months he gets quite close. Back at the U.S. Open, he took literal giant John Isner to a fifth-set tiebreak, and last night in Acapulco, the 19-year-old took Juan Martin del Potro to a third-set...
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....
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....