Tennis Page 68 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Nick Kyrgios Goes Through The Legs, Up And Over
Overuse the tweener and it loses its luster. Theoretically, anyway: this is not a problem any normal professional player has ever struggled with to date. But no professional tennis player has opted for the shot as often as Nick Kyrgios, who persistently and gratuitously shoehorns it into points and ...
Birdsong Is The Best Color Commentary
Tennis itself produces good sounds, but it is not always surrounded by good sounds. That’s because tennis happens all over the world, and not always in some majestic tucked-away corner of it. In Paris and Rome, to take just two recent examples, the on-court action is occasionally soundtracked by the...
Make Tennis Trick Shots Worth Two Points
Discipline and rhythm and mental gruel are just a few of the things that make tennis such a compelling sport. Two players blasting crosscourt forehands at each other until one of them finally blinks and throws in a down the line shot or a drop shot that could set one of them up with a winner—it make...
Roger Federer Has Returned To Grass, And His Backhand Winners Are Vintage
After hibernating through the clay season, with good reason, Roger Federer has woken up again. Today at the Stuttgart Open, he played his first match since March. Millions of fans and also his wife were pleased by this development....
These Two Points Adequately Represent Rafael Nadal's Ridiculous Clay Season
Rafael Nadal won the French Open on Sunday, and there’s little new to say that wasn’t already said after last year’s title. After the preposterousness of 10, 11 doesn’t feel so different. But even into the double-digits, it’s worth remembering that the points are fucking absurd....
Simona Halep Won The French Open By Remembering How She Lost It
Simona Halep, by age 26—something like the physical prime in modern tennis—had it all, almost. There was still a void at the center of everything. It wasn’t money: She’s made over $26 million in her career and played this French Open in full swoosh gear, hinting at a recent off-court windfall. It wa...
Dominic Thiem Owned By Rafael Nadal In French Open Final, Owned Again During Trophy Presentation
If you missed the men’s French Open final yesterday, you missed three quick sets of Rafael Nadal being Rafael Nadal and winning his 11th French Open trophy. But you also missed the trophy presenter, former Grand Slam winner Ken Rosewall, providing some unusually honest, slightly unfair analysis of N...
Rafael Nadal's French Open Is A Confrontation With His Only Real Threat
Dominic Thiem and Rafael Nadal will play each other in the French Open final on Sunday. Only one outcome has ever resulted from a French Open final involving Rafa. For a reality check, pinch yourself and say aloud, “Rafael Nadal has won 10 French Opens.” There is only the slimmest chance that Thiem ...
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...
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...