open Page 27 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
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...
Old, Fucked-Up Tiger Woods Plays Real Golf For The First Time In 10 Months<em></em>
After 301 days, Tiger Woods is once again playing golf. The 41-year-old was -1 after the first four holes of today’s Hero World Challenge, and his tee shots looked good. Surely, Tiger is back, for real this time, no, seriously, his body will hold up, for sure....
Tennis Player Chastised By Umpire After He Won Point Without Even Trying
Down 5-1 in the last set to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and returning serve, hope was more or less lost for Damir Dzumhur in today’s second-round Vienna Open match. He could be forgiven for letting his effort lapse, especially after he’d limped around for much of the second set, and even more so after he’d t...
Nick Kyrgios's Tantrum Was Rafael Nadal's Cue To Dominate
How was your weekend? I got myself a nice bowl of pasta but some new mosquito bites. Nick Kyrgios, too, had both good and bad times....
The Tennis Will Be Good As Hell This Weekend, If You're Awake For It
Frankly this chunk of the tennis calendar, known as the “Asian swing” because it passes through China and Japan, is the easiest to tune out, especially for a viewer in a U.S. time zone. The year’s last major just wrapped up, the year-end finals are still months away, and the time difference makes it...
American Tennis Player Resembles Luigi During Biggest Win Of His Career
Steve Johnson is the fourth-best American in men’s tennis. Here is what he usually looks like. ...
How Can Anyone Say Rafael Nadal Is Playing The Best Tennis Of His Life?
This much is true: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open, and he’s playing exemplary tennis. In the present, soft field, the tennis is so good that it brought Nadal back to world No. 1 for the first time in four years, with two slams, two masters, and a 56-9 record. But all the hyperbole does make one wond...
MLB Opening Day Will Be Good Again
It’s been a long, long time since opening day was actually opening day for everyone. In the past, there’s been a national game the night before the big slate, and usually some teams that don’t get going until the day after most everyone else’s opening day, for some reason, and sometimes even an inte...
Rafa Is Supreme, And Everyone Else Is Allowed To Wake Up Now
Perfect symmetry has been achieved: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open. Before that, Roger Federer won Wimbledon. Before that, Nadal won the French Open. Before that, Federer beat Nadal to win the Australian Open. The two greatest players in men’s tennis returned from long injury hiatus to split 2017’s ...
Sloane Stephens Dominates Madison Keys To Win U.S. Open Women's Final
After doing the damn thing against Venus Williams in the semifinal, Sloane Stephens crushed Madison Keys 6-3, 6-0 this afternoon to win the U.S. Open Women’s Final, her first Grand Slam victory....
And Then There's Pablo Carreño Busta
Rafael Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro are known entities; Kevin Anderson now has dedicated blog space, too. The only remaining question mark among the four U.S. Open men’s semifinalists is Pablo Carreño Busta. The answer is that he is a 26-year-old tennis player from Gijon, Spain, and the No. 12 se...
Sloane Stephens Knows What She Has To Do
QUEENS, N.Y.—It was after 10 p.m. in interview room one, in the basement of Arthur Ashe stadium, and Sloane Stephens was dutifully answering questions about her three-set U.S. Open semifinal win over Venus Williams. The press conference would go longer than usual, a PR guy said, because there would ...
Sloane Stephens Did The Damn Thing
After the first set, Sloane Stephens’s U.S. Open semifinal against Venus Williams looked like it was going to be easy. She won smoothly, 6-1, in just 24 minutes. With 17 unforced errors, Williams was all over the place. This looked like it would be over soon. ...
"That Stuff Sucked": How Roger Federer Was Defeated<em></em>
By now you may know that Juan Martin del Potro beat Roger Federer last night, 7-5, 3-6, 7-6(8), 6-4....
Please Do Not Ignore Kevin Anderson, Who Is More Than Just A Large Man
Well, plenty of time has passed now, and people are still chattering about that crazy U.S. Open men’s quarterfinal, that four-set emotional roller coaster. That’s right, folks: Sam Querrey vs. Kevin Anderson....
Roger Federer Is Out
Following several close calls—needing five sets to beat the unseeded pair of Frances Tiafoe and Mikhail Youzhny in the tournament’s first and second rounds, respectively—Roger Federer is out of the U.S. Open, falling to Juan Martin del Potro tonight. ...
The U.S. Open Women's Semifinals Will Be All-American
For the first time since 1985, a major event will feature an all-American women’s semifinal. ...
Petra Kvitova's Drop Shot Was Ruthless
Tuesday’s quarterfinal collision between two great storylines—Venus Williams still rolling through Slams at age 37, and Petra Kvitova returning to the tour from a knife attack that severely injured her playing hand—grew tense in the third set, and perhaps peaked with this one shot, a highlight of th...
Where Did El Shapo Come From?
A friend of mine from Vancouver likes to joke that it’s possible to spot a product of Tennis Canada—Canada’s national governing body for tennis—from a mile away, like some kind of giant inflatable Tennis Person. These Tennis People are, in Tennis Canada’s own words, “full-time athletes” committed to...
Root For Sloane Stephens
CoCo Vandeweghe, Madison Keys, Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens: Half of the remaining players in the U.S. Open are Americans, and as the draw is set up, it could be an all-American semifinal on Thursday. You should root for Sloane Stephens. ...