open Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
What Grade-School Report Topic Were You Obsessed With, And Maybe Still Are?
Children are obsessive types. I knew more about dinosaurs as a 7-year-old than I will ever know about anything ever. But sometimes, an assignment latches onto our sponge-like little brains and never lets go....
Rafael Nadal And The Rain Kept The Future Of Tennis In Check
What if the rain hadn’t come? Maybe Alexander Zverev would have gotten his third straight title, and the most significant win of his life: Rafael Nadal on clay in a final. That’s not an especially big “maybe,” either, just a medium-sized one....
Dominic Thiem Did All The Dirty Work And Claimed None Of The Glory
Assume by default that Rafael Nadal wins any big event on clay. Take it as a given that his teeth are pressing into the trophy well before the first match gets underway. This has been true for many long swaths of the last decade, but it has maybe never been truer than right now, with Rafa still bull...
Dominic Thiem Resists Clay Colossus Rafael Nadal, Ends 50-Set Streak
Rafael Nadal’s incomprehensible streak of consecutive sets won on clay has ended at 50. And it was ended by the last person to have scraped a set off him on the surface, a full 51 weeks ago: Dominic Thiem. The upset demanded huge hitting from the world No. 7, who has had a somewhat uninspired week...
Gael Monfils Loses Rackets To Airline Mishap, Loses Match To Inferior Opponent<em></em>
This week at the Munich Open, the Frenchman Gael Monfils was due to play his first match since that “back injury” at Indian Wells. Getting to Germany was the first step. That should be the easy part, since the dude lives in Switzerland. But on an April 28 flight from Geneva to Munich, Monfils learn...
Stupid Tennis Beef Inspires Threat: "I'll Remember This"
Sample some cheap, greasy tennis beef from today’s Barcelona Open quarterfinal. Down 2-4 in a second-set tiebreak, Grigor Dimitrov delivered a first serve to Pablo Carreño Busta. There was no word from the linespeople or umpire. Nor was there any peep from Carreño Busta; he hit the ball back and wal...
Rafael Nadal Might Have To Stop Picking His Butt Before Every Serve At The U.S. Open
The U.S. Open is getting strict about the time allowed between points, saying that there will be a “serve clock” of 25 seconds during the matches at this year’s event, according to the New York Times....
Sloane Stephens's Slump Is Over, Now Can She Win Miami?
Sloane Stephens is in her first final, at the Miami Open, since winning the U.S. Open last summer. That’s especially significant, considering this tournament is the first time she’s strung together more than two wins in a row since that grand slam victory. (She won two and only two rounds at Acapul...
Juan Martin Del Potro Is No Longer A Hypothetical<em></em><em></em>
Many years could have been the year of Juan Martin del Potro. So many of them weren’t....
Tim Kurkjian Endearingly Reveals How Little He Knows About Music
It only took a few innings for today’s season opener between the Cubs and Marlins game to reach the “semi-bored announcers just shooting the shit” phase. Thankfully, ESPN analyst and generally delightful guy Tim Kurkjian was there to participate....
Which MLB Teams Will Be The Most Fun, And Which Will Watch The Least Porn?
Opening Day is today, which means a bunch of middle-aged sportswriters get to put on their propeller beanies and clap their hands like trained seals and cry out YAY BASEBALL! to a relatively indifferent public. But I promise not to meh my way through this somewhat half-assed preview to the season. A...
The Kyrgios-Zverev Rivalry May Not Be So Much Fun After All
Almost one year ago to the day, Nick Kyrgios and Alexander Zverev had themselves a beautiful baby: a match-long highlight reel starring two ornery geniuses. That was a different time: Kyrgios had embarked on a focused tear through Indian Wells and Miami, playing as well as he ever has; Zverev was ab...
Tennis Players Squabble Over The Identity Of One Guy's Father: "That's My Fucking Dad"
The Miami Open’s feisty this year. A few days after Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas were entangled in some midmatch tennis toilet beef, Fernando Verdasco and Thanasi Kokkinakis generated some juicy dad beef....
Caroline Wozniacki Says Unruly Fans Threatened Her And Her Family During Miami Open
Monica Puig came roaring back after a dispiriting first set to beat Caroline Wozniacki, 0-6 6-4 6-4, in a Friday Round of 64 match at the Miami Open. Highlights make it seem like the crowd was broadly pro-Puig, which makes sense—Puig is American, by way of Puerto Rico, and lives in Miami, whereas Wo...
The Sports Confession Hour With Me, Your Friend Katie
Life is a strange thing, isn’t it? I had no idea, for example, that after many years spent not playing or following sports, I would one day become the deputy editor of Deadspin following the untimely death of Barry Petchesky. And yet, here I am. The deputy editor of Deadspin....
Tennis Toilet Beef Leads To One Player Telling Another To "Shut Your Fuck Up"<em></em>
Daniil Medvedev, best known for melting down and tossing money at an umpire at Wimbledon last year, got into a tense battle of toilet breaks and unwritten rules today as he defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas 2-6, 6-4, 6-2 at the Miami Open....
A Shot So Strange And Good You Have To Laugh
Fabio Fognini, tennis’s sleepy pirate and occasional misogynist, is typically the one doing all the comical, soft-handed trick shots in his matches. I’m the irritable eccentric here in my dumbass camouflage-and-skulls getup, says Fabio Fognini, to no one in particular. But while serving out the matc...
Now Here Is One Cool-Ass Tennis Move With Potential Dick-Punishing Consequences
Second-seeded Fabio Fognini defeated third-seeded and three-time defending champion Pablo Cuevas in the Brasil Open semifinals today in Sao Paolo, 6-4 6-2. But hell with the results: the real winner here is Cuevas, for pulling off this slick-ass move in the second set:...
Would You Rather Be On A Barf Plane Or Have Your Flight Delayed?
Today, crazy winds wreaked havoc on the Northeast, blowing over trees, knocking out power, and causing a bunch of people on an airplane to barf their brains out....
Dammit, Rafael Nadal Will Be Out For A While
Subtract Rafael Nadal from any given tennis tournament, and boom—the participants collectively give 10,000 percent less of a shit about winning. He treasures every point of every match in every tournament. The man who won 16 Slams, including two last year, reportedly cried for two hours straight aft...