Tennis Page 66 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Ghost Of Lleyton Hewitt Will Play Australian Open
Lleyton Hewitt, two-time Grand Slam singles winner and former No. 1, “retired” from tennis after playing his 20th Australian Open back in 2016. He entered Wimbledon doubles as a wild card later that year, but since then his public appearances on a tennis court have largely been limited to captainin...

Nick Kyrgios Played Some Actual Tennis This Year, Too
You can lead Nick Kyrgios to a Slam, but you can’t make him win matches. Maybe he takes two sets against an overwhelmed second-round opponent before deciding that tennis was not a particularly fun way a way to pass the time, and gets booed off home court. Maybe it was time to return to basketball, h...

Australian Open Tournament Director Says Serena Williams Is "Very Likely" To Play
Three months after giving birth to her daughter, and one year after winning the 2017 Australian Open for her 23rd major title while nine weeks pregnant, Serena Williams appears on track to defend her title and, should she win, tie hateful crone Margaret Court as the winningest tennis player in histo...

Marat Safin, Go Coach Your Son Nick Kyrgios
Marat Safin, who won two majors and hit world No. 1 despite the challenges of playing tennis with lit sticks of dynamite strapped to his head, spoke out about the state of the men’s tour on Thursday. It was refreshing, and typically Safin in its overt frankness. Safin took the unspoken undertone of ...

Indian Police Investigating Maria Sharapova In Luxury Housing Fraud Case
Maria Sharapova is being investigated by police in India for her role in a “cheating and criminal conspiracy case,” in which a real estate company called Homestead Infrastructure, together with Sharapova, sold millions of rupees worth of units to home buyers and then disappeared, according to the As...

Look At (A Decent Impression Of) God
First look at God....

Shapo Takes Time Out From Tennis Match To Consider The Fine Coffee Of Milan
Denis Shapovalov is in the middle of a tense five-set match against Andrey Rublev at the NextGen tournament in Milan. This tournament is testing out an unusual format of four-game sets, with no ad-scoring, no lets, and automatic line-calling, among other changes, but one big one is televised coachi...

Nice Kilt
At a charity exhibition match in Glasgow, Scotland today, Andy Murray played in what is apparently called a “See You Jimmy” hat, and Roger Federer put on a kilt....

Jack Sock Gets A Big One
The Williams sisters, and more recently, shock U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens rewarded the tennis hopes of any red-blooded American patriots. Frankly Serena’s haul alone should keep a country sated for a few generations. But U.S. men lag well behind. ...

Promising Tennis Youths Subjected To Awkward, Humiliating On-Stage Ritual
This week, the highest-ranked male tennis players 21 and under have been assembled in Milan to play a year-end tournament. These included the 18-year-old Denis “Shapo” Shapovalov, the flashy, long-locked Canadian who bulldozed into the fourth round of the U.S. Open this year; 20-year-old Russian And...

Why Do Athletes Scream?
Listen closely. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of screaming. It’s coming from sports....

Roger Federer's Graveyard
Roger Federer is a really great guy. I know this because I got to meet him a few days ago when he invited me to his house for a dinner party....

Jack Sock Goes Between The Legs Yet Again
Would you believe it? Rushing the net in a tense moment during a first-set tiebreak against David Goffin today, Jack Sock went between the legs—with great results....

Look At God
It’s a testament to Roger Federer’s season that he’s been on the TV so many Friday afternoons, and that so few of the matches have been remotely competitive. Fed just finished up a tense one right now against Adrian Mannarino at Basel, and he had a sloppy few games—lots of shanked balls hurtling in...

Tennis Player Chastised By Umpire After He Won Point Without Even Trying
Down 5-1 in the last set to Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and returning serve, hope was more or less lost for Damir Dzumhur in today’s second-round Vienna Open match. He could be forgiven for letting his effort lapse, especially after he’d limped around for much of the second set, and even more so after he’d t...

Martina Hingis Retires For The Third And Presumably Last Time
Martina Hingis announced her retirement today, after 23 years of professional tennis that began, ridiculously, with her winning major titles and hitting world No. 1 by age 16. She was the sort of prodigy wholly absent from the modern game, obsolete due to the increased physical demands of the sport....

Praise Shapo
With today’s first-round victory at Basel, Canadian wonderteen Denis Shapovalov has officially qualified for Milan, the new, strangely formatted “Next Gen” tournament intended to gin up interest in the rising cohort of men’s tennis stars. Only the top seven players 21 and under get to qualify, plus ...

Nick Kyrgios, Shut Down For The Season, Fields Questions From The Peanut Gallery
Nick Kyrgios chose to shut down his season Thursday, citing a desire to recover fully from the hip injury he suffered during a nasty slip on the grass in July. Here’s the full explanation he offered after an uneven season in which he made two finals but failed to pass the second round of any major:...

Barbora Strýcová<em></em> Is Pissed That World No. 3 Karolina Pliskova Stole Her Coach
The coaching carousel in pro tennis has been picking up speed for years, but the frequent turnover generally involves low-drama transactions—a player fell a few spots in the rankings and wants to change tracks, for example. But this week, world No. 25 Barbora Strýcová accused her countrywoman and w...

The TV Is Stuck On The Federer-Nadal Show And The Remote Has Disappeared Into The Sofa
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...