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…
The worst-case scenario for the Laver Cup—a first attempt to construct an all-star game for men’s tennis, pitting the best players from Europe against the best players from everywhere else—was that it’d end up an elaborate, expensive excuse to smush nemeses Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal onto the same team for the…
Roger Federer is a generous man. He’s spent the last two decades of his life pouring every bit of his heart, mind, and soul into giving us the best tennis experience possible. All he’s ever asked of us in return is that we come to the net more.
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 major haul down the…
By now you may know that Juan Martin del Potro beat Roger Federer last night, 7-5, 3-6, 7-6(8), 6-4.
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.
Let’s revisit the one part of yesterday’s Roger Federer match that made me happy. Lob falling back to earth, a few feet from the baseline—let it bounce, right? No rush.
It takes a lot to win a share of crowd loyalty in Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York City in the year of the resurrection of Roger Federer. It takes so much that it did not appear remotely possible for anyone not named Rafael Nadal. But last night at the U.S. Open, over five improbable sets, someone earned it, and it was…
In a markedly soft U.S. Open field—no Novak Djokovic, no Stan Wawrinka, no Andy Murray—third-ranked Roger Federer was brought to the brink in the very first round by unseeded 19-year-old Frances Tiafoe, who took him five sets deep tonight.
If you’re a man who can stand upright without anything hurting, you’ve got as good a shot as anyone to win the 2017 U.S. Open. Gone are the elites usually clotting the late rounds of majors. Of the top 11 players in men’s tennis, five of them are too hurt to play: No. 11 Milos Raonic, No. 10 Kei Nishikori, No. 5 Novak…
First it was Novak Djokovic, sitting out the rest of the season to just, uh, generally debug.
Roger Federer showed up to the Montreal final Sunday in the stuff he’d been winning in all week: stubble of a sleepless new dad (he is an old dad), toasted tan, shirt the color of a very clean piglet. He also showed up with a 35-2 record. Federer has alternated between two modes this season: rest or kill. In 2017 he…
Today is Roger Federer’s birthday. He turned 36, won both majors he entered this year, and shows no signs of slowing. Here is an extremely charming compilation of birthday wishes from people he has regularly and/or recently owned.
Who knew that Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, had an uneven stride? One guess: This is the solution his body naturally arrived at to compensate for scoliosis. [New York Times]
There is nothing else to say about Roger Federer’s Wimbledon that hasn’t already been blogged in gross excess. But fortunately there is a lot to rewatch.
Among the many aspects of Roger Federer that defy comprehension, most of them having to do with the possibilities of the human body, one puzzle has been stuck in my head lately. That is: his plain likability in spite of what looks, on paper, like so much countervailing evidence.
Roger Federer finished off a clean Wimbledon with a straight-sets victory over Marin Cilic in today’s men’s Final, winning 6-3, 6-1, 6-4.
It is the year 2017 of Roger Federer, and He is about to play in the Wimbledon final for the 11th time, and He has yet to drop a set. The seven-time champ cut down Tomas Berdych, 7-6(4), 7-6(4), 6-4 to earn that spot, and, along the way, distilled his genius into two tidy vials. If you want to know why grown adults…
Just watch the ball. Ignore everything else crumbling around you.
Roger Federer is not going to leave a stack of soulless husks in his wake at Wimbledon the way Rafael Nadal did at the French Open. Nadal left Paris with a body count; Federer was sure to be a little different in London. He has always revealed more flashes of mushy mortality—netting backhands, double-faulting at fatal…
