A fatless and notably tall-headed man going by the name “Novak Djokovic” spent a lot of his time on tennis courts over the last 18-odd months, and succeeded even in being granted entry to some important professional tournaments. There he beat some solid tennis players, even though, off the court, his emotional world…
Roger Federer won his first-round match Monday at Wimbledon in straight sets, but as the tennis media would tell it, the most meaningful thing he did was pick out his wardrobe before the match. Try as I’d like to resist the perverse Rovellian fascination here ... I can’t. It’s weird. It feels weird. The extremely…
Tennis itself produces good sounds, but it is not always surrounded by good sounds. That’s because tennis happens all over the world, and not always in some majestic tucked-away corner of it. In Paris and Rome, to take just two recent examples, the on-court action is occasionally soundtracked by the faraway wail of…
After hibernating through the clay season, with good reason, Roger Federer has woken up again. Today at the Stuttgart Open, he played his first match since March. Millions of fans and also his wife were pleased by this development.
Jason Gay wrote a profile of Roger Federer for WSJ Magazine that covers everything from Federer tearing his meniscus while trying to give his kids a bath (the recuperation preceded two Grand Slam titles last year) to what Anna Wintour thinks of Federer’s potential move into the fashion world after he eventually…
This has been a heated topic of debate for many years, most recently in The Atlantic and on the Hello Internet podcast: Are tennis balls green or yellow?
Robin Haase started strong but appeared to vomit into a garbage can during a changeover in the final set of today’s 4-6, 6-1, 6-1 loss to Roger Federer. With the third-round victory at Rotterdam, 36-year-old Roger Federer will become the oldest No. 1. in the history of the ATP, reclaiming the top rank 14 years and 17…
Long-time Roger Federer victim Philipp Kohlschreiber just played an excellent match, earning two set points in the first set before dropping the tiebreak, then committing some untimely double-faults in his final service game to lose 7-6 (8), 7-5 in the second round at Rotterdam. Kohlschreiber spent the whole match…
The 36-year-old even did the ceremonial net-cord hand-wave apology after, as if to say, “I am sorry that I took up this sport, which you play for an honest living, and play it like a glitchy video game.”
Fresh off winning his second-straight Australian Open, Roger Federer has taken a wild card to play Rotterdam next week. In his old age/late empire, Federer has opted for a light tournament schedule, and he hasn’t played this particular 500-level event since 2012. But he lost just two sets at the Australian Open,…
A friend of mine pointed out that Mirka Federer, after attending her 30th Grand Slam final, still bothered to record the trophy ceremony for her husband—whose every offhand utterance, let alone metal-hoisting victory speech, is documented by a flickering panopticon of cameras and instantly cemented into Tennis…
Old man Roger Federer beat sixth-seeded Marin Cilic 6-2, 6-7, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 in the Men’s Singles final at the Australian Open, for his 20th career Grand Slam title. Per ESPN:
The semifinal between Roger Federer and breakout Hyeon Chung had little chance of being a close match, something like dropping a tired, brave guppy into the mouth of a shark and hoping something interesting might happen. Due in part to Chung’s blisters—built up over two weeks of tough matches and plenty of his…
There is perhaps no active player who has been as owned by the Big Four as painfully as Tomas Berdych. Poor, big-hitting Tomas Berdych, one of the fixtures of the men’s game, constantly found loitering in the later rounds of the majors, but never winning them. The Czech quasi-star has surged as high as No. 4 in the…
And hand-eye coordination, and anticipation, and soft touch, foot speed, visual acuity, etc.
This is the week of the World Tour Finals, the year-end event wherein the best eight players on the men’s tennis tour all beat each other up and figure out who is the best one. This year the crew includes both Roger Federer and the highly regarded Roger Federer cover band that performs under the name Grigor Dimitrov.…
At a charity exhibition match in Glasgow, Scotland today, Andy Murray played in what is apparently called a “See You Jimmy” hat, and Roger Federer put on a kilt.
Roger Federer is a really great guy. I know this because I got to meet him a few days ago when he invited me to his house for a dinner party.
It’s a testament to Roger Federer’s season that he’s been on the TV so many Friday afternoons, and that so few of the matches have been remotely competitive. Fed just finished up a tense one right now against Adrian Mannarino at Basel, and he had a sloppy few games—lots of shanked balls hurtling into the rafters,…
Apologies if you expected the channel to change after the two greatest split the year’s four majors evenly between themselves. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s enduring dominance, and the inconsistency of their most dangerous threats, have frozen everything in place. The hypothetical Next Generation of men’s tennis…
