Tennis Page 82 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Dustin Brown Can Make A Lob Look Sexy
As far as outright winners go, lobs might be the least exhilarating way to terminate a point of tennis. You plop the tennis ball high into the air, way out of your opponent’s reach, and then it falls way back down into the court, hooray. You can respect the lob on a technical level—an especially def...
Nick Kyrgios Picks NBA Celebrity Game Over Tennis Tournament, Which Is Actually Good As Hell
Nick Kyrgios has done dumb things lately and has taken plenty of heat for it—from disappointed fans, from hand-wringing commentators, and from the ATP itself via heavy fines and suspension. They’ll all be tempted to wag their fingers again after Kyrgios’s latest move: pulling out of February’s Rot...
What Did The Ball Ever Do To You, Sir?
While I have no way of knowing exactly what was on world No. 44 Nicolas Almagro’s mind, he poured a lot of it onto this unsuspecting tennis ball during yesterday’s match against No. 86 Yuichi Sugita at the Stockholm Open. ...
Nick Kyrgios Fined And Suspended For Tanking
Apparently unamused by Nick Kyrgios’s tanking antics in a second-round match at the Shanghai Masters, the ATP struck the No. 14 ranked player with a $25,000 fine for “Conduct Contrary to the Integrity of the Game” and an eight-week ban from the tour. ...
Alexander Zverev, The Large Tennis Kid, Can Move
At 6-foot-6, Alexander Zverev cuts a tall, almost skeletal figure on a tennis court. Curiously, the German 19-year-old’s path through the Shanghai Masters pitted him against the other extremely large tennis men, John Isner (6-foot-10) and Marin Cilic (6-foot-6)....
Nick Kyrgios Tanks Masterfully, Trash-Talks Fans
Mayflies can live up to one day; the notion that Nick Kyrgios was going to take a serious approach to tennis lived for just three. Sunday, he won his first ATP 500 event, the Rakuten Japan Open, and by Wednesday he was gloriously tanking his second-round match of the Shanghai Masters against Mischa ...
Roger Federer And Rafael Nadal Are Not In The Top Four For The First Time Since 2003<em></em><em></em>
Scroll through the ranking histories of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, skim over the mind-numbing string of No. 1's during Federer’s untouchable 2004-2008 run, and you might notice that you need to dig back to June 2003 to find a moment when neither Fed nor Rafa was among the top four players in th...
Nick Kyrgios Likes To Look Cool As He Makes His Opponents Look Silly<em></em>
Nick Kyrgios is the bold bad boy in a sport where it’s frowned upon for fans to make noises during play. Tremble as you realize that this youngster, well ... he truly might not give a damn....
Andy Murray Dryly Recounts The Time He Was Stalked Across Europe
Andy Murray just did a dull interview, revealing nothing of note, other than more of the usual banal athlete platitudes. After being asked “Do you have the ‘dry English humour?’” and confirming that he did have the dry English humour, he delivered a yawn-worthy anecdote about unsatisfactory room ser...
Novak Djokovic Visits The Bomb-Ravaged Tennis Club From His Childhood
Novak Djokovic livestreamed a visit Monday to some childhood tennis courts that were struck by the 1999 NATO bombing campaign in what was then Yugoslavia. Hiking through Kopaonik, Serbia, the No. 1 player pointed out three former clay courts, now overrun by vegetation, only a fence and net post rem...
Stan Wawrinka Says He Had An Anxiety Attack Before The U.S. Open Final
To watch Stan Wawrinka dispatch Novak Djokovic in the U.S. Open final last month was to see the physical toll the sport can take. Both men looked dazed and drenched in the heat of late-summer New York City, and Djokovic cramped severely and took an injury timeout for a blistered, bloodied toe. But t...
Rafael Nadal Halts Play While Mother Seeks Her Lost, Weeping Child
When will parents learn the consequences of minding their children? First, the death of the handsome silverback Harambe. Now, the brief interruption of an obscure exhibition doubles match pitting Rafael Nadal and teen Simon Solbas against old guys Carlos Moyá and John McEnroe, out in Nadal’s home is...
Serena Williams On Racial Inequality: "I Won't Be Silent"
Serena Williams spoke out Tuesday on the issue of racial inequality and police violence with a personal post on Facebook about her nephew. ...
Frances Tiafoe Is A Good American And This Is A Great Point
If for some sad reason you’re a U.S. tennis stan and find yourself sick of big-serving lunk John Isner, you’d be wise to shift your loyalties to Frances Tiafoe, who serves as Isner’s perfect foil: Eighteen years old, closer to six feet tall than seven, spry, exceedingly mobile. My favorite part of T...
Lucas Pouille Is The Next Big Tennis Guy
Decked out in Agassi-era neons and backwards cap, Lucas Pouille looks like a guy who stumbled onto the court after an EDM festival, or after getting chased off a fictional Seth Rogen’s property. But the 22-year-old also just won his first ATP title—the Moselle Open, in his home country of France—and...
Stan Wawrinka Wore Out Novak Djokovic In The Best Point Of The U.S. Open
The men’s final contained the single most entertaining point of the U.S. Open—the only point Stan Wawrinka won in the first set tiebreak against Novak Djokovic, before taking the next three sets and the trophy....
Gael Monfils And Novak Djokovic Combine For A Strange 21-Shot Rally
Gael Monfils and Novak Djokovic began their U.S. Open semifinal today on strange terms, with Monfils showing few signs of life until the third set, which he won. Even at his most disengaged, though, the Frenchman is still good for a few entertaining points....
Novak Djokovic Has Had The Easiest Road To The U.S. Open Semifinals
Like a carefree penguin belly-sliding across a glacier, the best men’s tennis player in the world has cruised into the semifinals of the U.S. Open by playing only nine full sets. Let’s examine how cushy Novak Djokovic has had it:...
Stan Wawrinka And Juan Martin Del Potro Both Beat The Sad Tennis Ball
Well after 1 a.m. in Queens this morning, Stan Wawrinka defeated Juan Martin del Potro in four sets, but the real loser was every tennis ball in play. The quarterfinal match pitted two of the sport’s most violent groundstrokes against one another and admittedly, all that violence is pretty to look a...
Butterfly Ghost Gets Revenge; Andy Murray Loses To Kei Nishikori
Life is not easy for Andy Murray, who has spent most of his career laboring away under the long shadows of three all-time greats—Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic—without ever tasting the No. 1 ranking. But nor is life particularly precious to Andy Murray, who slew a butterfly on court during the fifth s...