open Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Undersized Diego Schwartzman Took A Set Off Rafael Nadal, And Then It Rained
Tennis, particularly the men’s side, has fallen into a certain rhythm, and if you’re a certain kind of old-school clay-court fogey, this rhythm might be boring. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The serve is the most powerful offensive tool in the game. It is the only shot in the game completely within a play...
Novak Djokovic Went Out Swinging Against A Relentless No-Name
Marco Cecchinato is 25 years old. Until this week, he had never won a match at a major—first-round losses in all four tries. Until last month, his biggest splash on tour might have been a 2016 suspension for match-fixing, later overturned on appeal. At No. 72 in the world, he has become the lowest-r...
The Serena Williams/Maria Sharapova Beef Will Have More Time To Marinate
Serena Williams withdrew from her fourth-round French Open match today against Maria Sharapova with a right pectoral injury that she said prevents her from serving. The decision was announced just before the match between the two rivals was slated to begin. ...
Serena Williams Forgets How Many Grand Slam Doubles Titles She And Venus Have
After winning their second-round French Open doubles match in straight sets today, Venus and Serena Williams, who laugh and joke during most of their matches together, were asked what it’s like to play on the same side of the net. For someone talking about her and her sister’s sheer domination in ...
Tennis Player Accidentally Lights Up Ball Kid At French Open
During his third-round French Open match today against Alexander Zverev, Bosnian tennis player Damir Džumhur inadvertently wrecked a ball kid as he tried to catch an errant shot out of the air. The boy was shaken up, and Džumhur tried to comfort him with hugs, which was somehow even more awkward tha...
This Is What It Looks Like When Serena Williams Takes Over
Momentum shifts in tennis are common, often slight, and always tenuous. Good tennis players capitalize on these tiny shifts—an unlucky bounce, an untimely double fault, a net cord. Great players, though, force the change themselves. That’s what Serena Williams did in her second-round French Open m...
Jared Donaldson's Legs Cramped Up, So He Had To Serve Underhand
American Jared Donaldson had an incredible performance in today’s second-round French Open match against the fourth-seeded Grigor Dimitrov, pushing the Bulgarian to the brink in the fifth set, before fatigue was the ultimate decider. Donaldson resorted to trickery to get around his cramping, but it...
Tennis Channel Has Taken The French Open Hostage
The fan experience of tennis has become exponentially richer with the advent of streaming. When a draw has 128 entrants, like the singles events at all four Grand Slams, its early days are stuffed with matches, and no single live broadcast can depict all the action worth watching. It’s an obsolete m...
Jack Sock Gets Messy
Jack Sock, who just a few months ago was hoisting the coolest-looking trophy in tennis and leaping to a career-high No. 8 ranking, has doddered through the 2018 season. It’s late May and the American has yet to log two consecutive wins. Sock lost at the French Open today in five sets to world No. 13...
A Tennis Player Seized His Last-Minute Chance To Play In The French Open, Drove 10 Hours To Paris, And Won<em></em><em></em>
In a series of events that sounds more like a TV comedy than real life, Argentine tennis player Marco Trungelliti—who had returned home to Barcelona after losing in the French Open qualifiers last week—learned that he had an opportunity to play in the main draw after a spate of players withdrew at t...
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....