tennis Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

A Serena Williams Practice Is Where Discipline Meets Greatness
It’s a gray afternoon on Feb. 7 and the windows of the U.S. Cellular Center in Asheville, North Carolina are decorated with large, human-sized tennis balls. Crows pick through the trash near a sign announcing the symphony, and someone has vomited coleslaw in the mulch near a satellite truck. It is o...

Shapo Begged On His Knees
Kei Nishikori, you were missed. The Japanese star popped a tendon in his right wrist in mid-August, closed up shop for the year, and then sat out the Aussie Open last month. Since then he’s warmed up with some low-key Challengers, and this week entered just his second tour-level event since his inju...

Frances Tiafoe Beat The Rest Of His Class And Got Himself A Title
Twenty-year-old Frances Tiafoe came to Delray Beach as a wild card entry with a wild forehand. He left as the youngest American to win an ATP title since Andy Roddick got his back in 2002, and with an impressive pile of bodies in his wake. Taking down Juan Martin del Potro was the first omen of big ...

Frances Tiafoe Is An American To Root For
Remember this kid? If you do at all, maybe it’s because you saw him last August, thriving in New York’s late summer humidity: dressed in all-black, whaling away with an unruly forehand, and placing his foot on the throat of every Federer acolyte—making them believe God might actually die in the firs...

Jury Finds USTA Liable For Eugenie Bouchard's Slip And Fall In U.S. Open Locker Room
Eugenie Bouchard, currently ranked No. 116 in the world, was a top-five tennis player once upon a time. Rewind back to her 2014 season, when she reached the Australian Open and French Open semifinals, then the Wimbledon final, and surged to a career-high No. 5. Her success slowed in 2015, but in Sep...

Shapo Beats The Bot
A rite of passage, for any young tennis player, is figuring out how to defeat the servebot. A servebot is a large person with two simple desires: to crush serves as fast as possible and to move around the court as little as possible. The servebot will not play long rallies. He will give you no chanc...

Fabio Fognini Pulls Off A Zany, Totally Accidental Trick Shot<em></em>
Set point, nerves jangling, sweaty palms—it’s not all that uncommon for a player’s racquet to slip out of their hands on the followthrough of a serve under circumstances like these. It is, however, completely nuts for that racquet to then strike the court at such a precise angle so that it bounces n...

Roger Federer Is The Oldest No. 1 In Men's Tennis History And Also Is Everyone's Dad Now
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 r...

Report: Ballboy Did Not Hear Ryan Harrison Make Racist Remarks To Donald Young In Tennis Match
Two American tennis players with a history of conflict had a lengthy argument during their New York Open match on Friday, which they followed with another exchange of words during the post-match handshake. That much we know for sure. Everything that came after has been disputed by both parties. ...

This No-Look Drop Shot Is Hot Shit
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 ...

Roger Federer Has Fully Dropped The Illusion Of Being Human
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.”...

If Fé<em></em>lix Auger-Aliassime Is The Future Then The Future Will Be Fun
Before anything else, just watch someone ball out for a bit:...

Donald Young Accuses Ryan Harrison Of Racist Remarks During Tennis Match
Ryan Harrison defeated fellow American tennis player Donald Young 6-3, 7-6(4) yesterday at the New York Open. During a changeover in the first set, the two players had a dispute that got heated enough for the umpire to descend from his perch and defuse the situation. Unfortunately the broadcast bare...

College Tennis Player Ducks Handshake After Opponent Seems To Spit In Hand
Texas A&M freshman Patrick Kypson is a talented men’s tennis player—he’s among the top 100 performers in the sport on the sixth-ranked team in the nation. He’s also the goober you see hocking a juicy loogie into his own hand in the above photo. ...

Serena Williams Will Be Ready When It Counts
What was set to be Serena Williams’s low-key but triumphant return to competitive tennis on Sunday, after more than a year away from the game, was instead a signal that the 36-year-old, 23-time Grand Slam winner is far from peak form. At least in matches that don’t matter. ...

Roger Federer Is Three Wins From Becoming The Oldest No. 1 Player Ever
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 Aus...

A Tearful Dustin Brown Retires From Match After Back Injury
Germany’s Dustin Brown, the wackiest motherfucker in tennis, was only three points away from winning his first-round match at Montpellier against Nicolas Mahut when a crafty one-handed, backhand passing shot appeared to cause his back to seize up. He took a few steps and then collapsed. Mahut didn’t...

Shapo Is Everywhere At Once
It’s Friday afternoon, as good a time as any for your sporadic and entertaining Denis Shapovalov update. Today he was scrambling to all four corners of the court and getting awfully delicate with his forehand to break serve against Croatia’s Viktor Galovic....

Appalachian State Tennis Player Suspended After Being Accused Of Directing Derogatory Comment At Black Opponent
This past weekend was supposed to be little more than a warm-up for Appalachian State’s men’s tennis team. Facing Lees-McRae and North Carolina A&T, one of North Carolina’s storied HBCUs, the home match was one of those early-season contests the Mountaineers scheduled against low-tier local program...

Roger Federer Could Never Get Bored Of This
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 ...