Tennis Page 64 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Andy Murray Might Be Done In Australia After Grinding Five-Set Loss
Andy Murray will not quit the majors without another characteristically nasty fight. His last French Open: five brutal sets before Stan Wawrinka put him to rest. His last Wimbledon: five more sets of agony with his hip all out of sorts. Today at the Australian Open—which, given his retirement announ...

Q&A: Author Rowan Ricardo Phillips On The Future Of Men's Tennis And Why Race Is Still The Game's Third Rail
In the bleak winter days of mid-January 2017, Rowan Ricardo Phillips rose before dawn. The Australian Open was underway, and he was hellbent on watching every televised ATP men’s match over the course of the year. Phillips’s obsession with the game turned into total spectator immersion, starting Dow...

Andy Murray Was A Real Person Walking Among Gods
When the words “tactician” or “technician” crop up, the way they do around Andy Murray, who just announced his forthcoming retirement due to chronic hip pain, there’s a whiff of euphemism in the air. Sure, this player is missing that certain oomph, but nevertheless! Even so! Alas! He persisted, and ...

Andy Murray Will Retire After Wimbledon Due To Chronic Hip Pain
An emotional Andy Murray used a press conference Thursday ahead of the Australian Open to announce that the remainder of his tennis career will come down to hoping his bum hip holds out long enough for him to retire from tennis on his own terms, six months from now, after Wimbledon....

Dan Evans Might Already Have The Shot Of The Year<em></em>
British tennis player Dan Evans, previously seen making logistically complex excuses for trace amounts of cocaine, is now trying to qualify for the Australian Open main draw. The world No. 190 faced world No. 208 Jurij Rodionov in the second round of qualifying today. All you need to know about that...

Spain Arrests 15 Connected To Armenian Tennis Match-Fixing Gang
Spanish police arrested 15 people, and said another 68 have been investigated, as part of probe into tennis match-fixing by an Armenian criminal gang. ...

Novak Djokovic Is Yammering About Telepathy
In July, after ending a mysterious slump and winning his first grand slam title in two years, Novak Djokovic split up with his hug-loving spiritual guru, Pepe Imaz. However, Djokovic seems to have retained a lot of Imaz’s teachings, like those about the power of telepathy and telekinesis and the lim...

WTA Clarifies Rules, Clears The Way For Serena Williams's Catsuit And Leggings Of All Kinds
After being, uh, unsettled by Serena Williams’s “catsuit” at the 2018 French Open, French Tennis Federation President Bernard Giudicelli promised stricter apparel rules the following year, though not as austere as Wimbledon’s all-white mandate. But whatever he’s looking to do to eliminate his catsui...

Tennis Channel Broadcaster, ATP Board Member Justin Gimelstob Denies Multiple Accusations Of Violence
Justin Gimelstob, a broadcaster for Tennis Channel, one of six board members of the men’s ATP Tour, and a well-connected figure in the tennis world, has been implicated in several allegations of violence. Most recently, Gimelstob was arrested on suspicion of felony battery on October 31, after an i...

Could You Beat Roger Federer If He Had To Hit A Winner Off Every Ball?
A reader named Lance writes in with a good question:...

Novak Djokovic Was Finally Imperfect And The Kid Won
I was ready for this all to be about Novak Djokovic. Novak Djokovic, having reclaimed the No. 1 ranking, was ready for this to be all about Novak Djokovic. His level of play over the last half of the season, and specifically over the last week, is a psychoactive substance. Sunday marked the end of t...

When Roger Federer Says "Jump," The Tennis World Says "How High? And Can We Pay You?"
French journeyman Julian Benneteau, who peaked at world No. 25 in 2014, retired from tennis this year, freeing him up get candid about how favors actually work on the professional tour. Tennis is hush-hush about its rampant conflicts of interest and less than transparent about the benefits afforded ...

This Tennis Ball Passing Through A Racket Is A Blessed Sports Moment
The Oddly Satisfying video might be the great viral genre of our time, and it has the potential to make serious inroads into sports. There’s free fodder everywhere, what with all the synchronized movement, strangely curving projectiles, scalp-tingling bat sounds, and so on. So here’s a good one, fro...

"Serena" "Williams" Is GQ's "'Woman' Of The Year"<em></em>
Serena Williams appeared on the cover of GQ this week as the magazine’s 2018 Woman of the Year. The issue had four covers. On hers, the word “Men” had been crossed out, with “Woman” scribbled above in quotation marks. Some observers, including New York Times tennis writer Ben Rothenberg, were puzzle...

Bjorn Borg's Teen Son Loves Tennis And Roasting His Father<em></em>
The New York Times’ Andrew Keh has a nice profile of Leo Borg, son of legend Bjorn and one of Sweden’s most promising tennis prospects. As the article makes abundantly clear, Bjorn and his wife Patricia are concerned that their 15-year-old son has opted to follow his 11-time-major-winning father i...

Roger Federer Put This Serve Directly Into The Garbage Can
Roger Federer has cut an unusual path into the fourth round at Paris: he played just two sets of tennis to get there. He had a first-round bye, then second-round opponent Milos Raonic withdrew from the tournament, and then he defeated the sleepy pirate Fabio Fognini, 6-4, 6-3. So all of a sudden, a ...

Borna Coric Leaves Skid Marks Everywhere
In terms of tennis, Borna Coric takes after his stylistic predecessor, Novak Djokovic. One of the aspects he can imitate pretty well is his quick movement, as well as his willingness to slide his sneakers across ridiculous stretches of hardcourt:...

What More Details Do Rafael Nadal And Novak Djokovic Need To Cancel Their Saudi Arabia Exhibition?
As of now, world No. 1 Rafael Nadal and No. 2 Novak Djokovic are still slated to play in a December exhibition in Saudi Arabia, and have yet to decline the invitation even as details about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi continue to emerge. Nadal and Djokovic cited the duration of their com...

This Tweener Lob Is Devious And Perfect<em></em>
It’s hard to pinpoint why Robin Haase, a journeyman ranked No. 47, stars in so many unusual highlights for a player of merely solid status. But the bendy Dutchman has a taste for loose, weirdo shot-making, and today, without warning, he briefly turned a first-round Basel Open match against Sascha Z...

Wimbledon Weenies Finally Make A Little Progress With New Fifth-Set Tiebreak Rule
In order to solve the problem of damagingly long and pointless marathon men’s matches at Grand Slams—like this year’s men’s semifinal between Kevin Anderson and John Isner, which lasted a painful six and a half hours, including a three-hour fifth set which Anderson eventually took 26-24—Wimbledon br...