tennis Page 21 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Report: Police Officer Who Tackled James Blake Didn't Even Receive The Full Recommended Punishment
In September 2015 an NYPD officer tackled and handcuffed James Blake outside a Manhattan hotel, mistaking the former American tennis player for a suspect in a credit card scam; a month later, an independent panel ruled that police used excessive force in the arrest. That panel, the Civilian Complain...

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 ...

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...

Tennis Player Nicolas Kicker Found Guilty Of Match-Fixing
The Tennis Integrity Unit, an anti-corruption watchdog, ruled today that Argentinian player Nicolas Kicker fixed two professional matches three years ago. Kicker, currently ranked No. 84 on the men’s tour, was “found guilty of contriving the outcome” of two matches in 2015—one at the ATP Challenger...

The Time Dave McKenna Drunkenly Heckled Jimmy Connors And Got Rewarded With VIP Passes
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....

Roger Federer Says Serena Williams Is The Greatest Tennis Player Of All Time, Period
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 h...

Tennis Player's Meltdown Ends With Smashed Racket And "Broken" Banana
One tennis player’s violent racket-smashing meltdown at Sunday’s ATP Challenger final in Busan, Korea had devastating consequences for a banana....

The Drop Shot Can Be The Smart Play Even When It Fails
Simple distinctions are easy to latch onto. The typical groundstroke looks different from a drop shot: fast and long vs. slow and shallow. A groundstroke is hit hard with topspin, and the intent is (generally) to hit the ball with pace and placement so it is difficult to retrieve. A drop shot is hit...

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....

Cat Interrupts Tennis Match, Narrowly Escapes Overhead Smash<em></em>
A doubles tennis match in Rome today was interrupted by a feline interloper. While Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo played against Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah at the Foro Italico, a cute little cat ran across the court. Cat on the clay!...

Georgia High School Tennis Players Punished After Posing With White Bags Over Their Heads
White tennis players from Telfair County High School in Georgia have been punished for posing for a photo in which they wore white bags over their heads with the eyes cut out. The photo, which was taken on Snapchat and then distributed on Facebook in the days after the tennis tournament, was taken a...

Karolina Pliskova Unleashes Rage Upon Umpire's Chair
Forget the weak beeves you’ve been served in the past, all the gristly cheap stuff, and ready your palate for Grade-A Tennis Beef. Well-bred cows were fed only foraged wild grasses and massaged six to eight times daily to produce beef of this lusciously marbled quality. Appreciate it....

Every Promising Tennis Player Must Own Tomas Berdych At Some Point<em></em>
At this point in time, Tomas Berdych is more useful as a benchmark for the progress of young people than as a tennis player unto himself. This is a little cruel, maybe, but it is not wrong....