Tennis Page 55 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Nick Kyrgios Got Under Rafael Nadal's Skin In Front Of A Jeering Crowd<em></em>
First it was the upset stomach, then it was the wrapped knee, then it was the taped-up back. Ordinarily just one of these is a sufficient reason for Nick Kyrgios to pack it in and retire from a match, especially if it’s some rando across the net who doesn’t fully capture his fickle attention. But ag...
Tennis Prodigy Félix Auger-Aliassime Is Past The Internet Hype And Looks Like The Truth
As of today there are only two teenagers in the top 100 of men’s tennis. The game skews older than ever, and a player breaking into its top tier before even fully growing into his body has never seemed more difficult. There are no more Rafa-like wunderkinds ripping off major titles, and as baseline ...
Huge American Servebot Reilly Opelka Will Render John Isner Obsolete<em></em>
John Isner, the leading American man in tennis, has a simple calling card: being 6-foot-10 and serving bombs. He’s the most prominent purveyor of the American Man Style of tennis: giant delivery, giant forehand, full stop. That’s been enough to make him a top-20 fixture, a historically successful h...
Naomi Osaka Ditched Her Coach After One Wildly Successful Year And No One Knows Why
Even accounting for the constantly whirling coaching carousel in professional tennis, the abrupt split of 21-year-old Naomi Osaka, fresh off two consecutive grand slam wins, and her coach of one year, Sascha Bajin, is puzzling—partly because it came weeks after her Australian Open win, and partly be...
Tennis Player Tells Himself To "Focus," Is Dinged For Audible Obscenity
Two years ago, tennis player Bryden Klein earned an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for calling tennis player Bryden Klein a “stupid person.” Even though the remark was self-directed, he was tagged with a game penalty and immediately lost the match. A worthy sequel arrived today at the ATP Challenge...
Petra Kvitova Describes Knife Attack To Court: "I Fell On The Floor And There Was Blood Everywhere"
When she was the No. 11 tennis player in the world, Petra Kvitova was the victim of a December 2016 knife attack at her home in Prostejov, Czech Republic. It slashed all five fingers of her playing hand. After nearly four hours of surgery and five months of recovery, she won her first match back in ...
Yelling And Grunting Tennis Player Who Wouldn't Shut Up Wins Tournament, Yells Some More
There are plenty of neat facts about 21-year-old Maxime Cressy’s title at the ATP Challenger Cleveland. He’s still a UCLA senior; this was just his second time ever playing a Challenger event; and he had to win seven straight matches, including qualifying. Cressy earned 90 big-league ATP rankings po...
Tennis Player Takes Grunting And Yelling To Extreme; Colleagues Plead With Him To "Shut Up"<em></em>
Typically, tennis players grunt in order to hit a little harder and mess with the opponent’s perception of the ball. Maxime Cressy, meanwhile, seems to grunt in tribute to tennis great Waluigi. The world No. 335 can be heard moaning almost every time he strikes the ball—sometimes both before and dur...
Andy Murray Regrets That You Saw Through His Dick
The Andy-Murray-shared-a-post-surgery-x-ray-of-his-hip-in-which-the-outline-of-his-dong-is-clearly-visible story is somehow entering its third day, and Murray, for one, is over it....
Andy Murray Shares Status Updates On His Hip, Dong<em></em>
Andy Murray announced today that he is recovering from a hip resurfacing, which will hopefully relieve the chronic hip pain that is forcing him into a sad, untimely retirement. The surgery involves shaving down the end of the femur and coating it in cobalt chromium metal so that it can move smoothl...
Right Now There Is No Answer To Novak Djokovic
Novak Djokovic heaped pre-match praise on his final Australian Open opponent, because it was a deeply familiar one. “Nadal has historically throughout my life and career been the greatest rival that I ever played against on all the surfaces,” he said of their 52-match tug-of-war, which had split 27-...
Naomi Osaka Found Herself In Danger, Turned Into A Robot, And Held It Down
It could have unraveled so quickly for Naomi Osaka. Up a set and 5-3, having whittled Petra Kvitova’s service game down to 0-40, Osaka had three straight opportunities to claim her first Australian Open. None of them got her there. First Kvitova tore the court open with her fiercest groundstrokes, l...
Today In Awkward Photos
Love a good congratulatory fondle....
It's Happening Again
Rafael Nadal had booked his room in the final, with two whole days to ready himself for it. He drained the blood out of Stefanos Tsitsipas, just as he did to the last two kids trying to prematurely usher in the future. All Novak Djokovic had to do was wrap up one last errand today, and he didn’t daw...
All Hail The Rafael Nadal Banana Shot
Rafael Nadal gored YouTuber Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-2, 6-4, 6-0 today. Their Australian Open semifinal match took just 1:46, but in that span the winner erected a monument to one of tennis’s historic shots: the Rafa banana forehand. Above is as pristine a specimen as has ever appeared in nature....
Naomi Osaka Floats On To Another Slam Final
My exact moment of religious conversion on Naomi Osaka came while watching her play Karolina Pliskova from a few feet away in Indian Wells. Pliskova was and still is a spindly winner machine, and she sent balls bounding into the corners with no desire to see or deal with them ever again. Osaka was d...
The Lost Generation Has Left The Australian Open And Still Looks Quite Lost
The dominance of the Big Four has stunted the winning potential of a promising crop of men’s tennis players who are good, but not that good. This group of twenty-something not-so-hopefuls has earned the shopworn label “Lost Generation.” ...
Serena Williams's Left Foot Cost Her A Spot In The Semifinal
Serena Williams appeared to have booked her spot in the Australian Open semifinal. After a listless first set, she’d locked in to take the second, then run up a 5-1 lead on Karolina Pliskova in the third. Up two breaks, with the match on her racket, she had plenty of breathing room. And then her lef...
Danielle Collins, The Underdoggiest Of Underdogs, Has Never Been Here Before
This time last year, Danielle Collins was playing in Newport Beach, California. She was ranked No. 162 in the world and at a Challenger event, one tier of tennis competition below the WTA tour. Before arriving in Melbourne this year, Collins had not won a single match in the main draw of a major, wi...
Here Are Some Things Stefanos Tsitsipas Said Right After The Biggest Moment Of His Career
Stefanos Tsitsipas is one of the world’s brightest tennis prospects. He has a whomping beauty of a one-hander to his credit, as well as a knack for stylish net finishes, a recent win over Roger Federer and, now, one of the loftiest accomplishments in his profession—a major semifinal. It is also wort...