Tennis Page 86 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
The Best (Of Who's Left) At Indian Wells
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—When you touch down in the desert in the middle of March, they pretty much know why you’re there. They plant a big-ass screen right at the arrivals gate and the tennis players loom nearly life-sized. That’s how it was possible to know, within 15 minutes of landing, that Andy Mur...
Nick Kyrgios In Sun And Shade
INDIAN WELLS, Calif.—The camera strips so much from tennis. We know this, clearly, since we pay good money and haul our bodies into discomfort just to see it up close. Part of what it removes is all the little interstitial, untelevised moments that might give flesh to the personalities on court. Mom...
Andy Murray Will Just Relax And Giggle While His Rivals Tear Each Other Apart
Andy Murray is a lucky dude at Indian Wells, and he knows it. While all his foes try to slit each others’ throats in the bottom quarter of the draw—home to Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Juan Martin del Potro, and Nick Kyrgios—the top seed plans to enjoy the gladiator games from his re...
The Tennis Dogs Are Snatching Balls And Dropping Dung
The Brazil Open brought rescue dogs on court to retrieve tennis balls, in an effort to promote local animal shelters in Sao Paulo. Just like last year, the practice—like the dogs—was very good. This year’s crop of pups: Cindy, Nanda, Pretinha, Mia, Arlete and Ovelha. I couldn’t tell you which one of...
The Indian Wells Men's Draw Is One Big Clusterfuck
Today, out in the Coachella Valley, the Indian Wells Masters will begin. It’s the highest-profile tennis tournament in the world after the four Grand Slams, dropping a fat bounty of 1000 ranking points on its winners. Everyone in the tennis universe should be excited, except for Serena Williams and ...
Will Serena Williams Be Ready For The French Open?<em></em>
It’s only March and the French Open isn’t until the end of May, but there’s reason to wonder (or in my case, as a devoted Serena disciple, worry) if Serena Williams will be ready to win the next grand slam of the year. She hasn’t played a competitive match since her Australian Open win and she annou...
Tennis Player Serves Underhand, Wins Tournament
Pablo Cuevas, a clay court specialist ranked No. 30 in the world, claimed his third-straight Brazil Open title yesterday by resorting to some underhanded tactics. With his fourth match point lined up, he hit this dinky second serve, which forced No. 24 Albert Ramos Viñolas to scurry up from the base...
When Nick Kyrgios Gives A Shit, He's The Future Of Tennis
Bless Nick Kyrgios for doing so much without ever really seeming to care. I’m not referring to those especially dumb, fringe cases—the forehands sliced for no reason, or the shameless tweeners during high-tension rallies—although he does plenty of that. I just mean just the way he hits the average ...
Andy Murray Saved His Ass With The Best, Dumbest Drop Shot
Today in poor decisions: Andy Murray, down match point at the Dubai Championships, went for this comically risky drop shot against Philipp Kohlschreiber....
Novak Djokovic Gets The Best Of Juan Martin Del Potro, Who's Still Missing Something
The last time these two matched up, last August at the Rio Olympics, they delivered the best tennis storyline of 2016: Juan Martin del Potro, rising from the dead after two years of surgeries to both wrists, upsets a Novak Djokovic who’d then had a vice grip on the No. 1 spot for two whole years. Th...
Roger Federer Suffered "Stunning Loss To Donkey" In Dubai Championship
Roger Federer had a bad day. In his three-set loss to Russian qualifier Evgeny Donskoy in the second round of the Dubai Tennis Championships, he blew three match points in the second set, was up 5-2 in the third, somehow let Donskoy tie the set at six games apiece, was up 5-1 in the tiebreak, and th...
Frances Tiafoe, America's Best Young Prospect, Is Getting Closer To Stardom
Frances Tiafoe, the best American teen in the men’s game, hasn’t taken down any giants yet, but every few months he gets quite close. Back at the U.S. Open, he took literal giant John Isner to a fifth-set tiebreak, and last night in Acapulco, the 19-year-old took Juan Martin del Potro to a third-set...
Roger Federer Is Just Making Stuff Up Now
Roger Federer is 35 and, increasingly, plays like he has no time to waste. That manifests in a very literal way: He barely waits for the ball to hit the ground. ...
This Is How Hard It Is To Rip A Winner Past Gael Monfils
Gael Monfils is content to camp out eight feet behind the baseline and beat back whatever you send his way; it’s how the world No. 12 has made his living. He’s springy and long-limbed and you’re probably going to get tired before he does. But Mohamed Safwat, ranked No. 199, played Monfils’s game tod...
Thiem's Tweener Was A Winner
Dominic Thiem breezily dismissed Diego Schwartzman in today’s 6-2, 6-3 quarterfinal at the Rio Open, and the highlight was this tweener that he slapped down the line for a winner:...
Kei Nishikori Is Shook
Kei Nishikori is the fifth-best tennis player in the world and even his practice sessions get mobbed in his native Japan. His trademark shot is the down-the-line backhand, a smoothly flicked frozen rope. You might have last seen him in January taking Roger Federer to five sets in the quarters of the...
Even You, Wasting Time At Your Job Right Now, Are Not Phoning It In As Badly As This Tennis Player
Bernard Tomic is the second-best prospect from Australia and now, miraculously, the first-best at not giving a shit. That’s quite an accomplishment given the oeuvre of his close friend and compatriot Nick Kyrgios, who tanked his way to a $25,000 fine and hit a tweener at the climax of a fifth-set co...
Alexandr Dolgopolov's Best Weapon Is The Screwiest Game In Tennis
One complaint lobbed at today’s game is that everyone is content to play the same style of tennis: Just stand at the back of the court and hit hard topspin groundstrokes over and over until your opponent, who’s attempting the same, can’t keep up. We live in a “power baseline” era, and it didn’t use ...
Old Man Federer Signs New Deal, May Keep Playing Until Humanity Leaves For Mars
The saner Roger Federer fans treated his Australian Open title as a late-night dessert—one they really didn’t expect or deserve!—snuck in before the long sleep. The more delusional might have seen it as the beginning of a late-career resurgence, promising fresh titles to come. I sat somewhere in bet...
Grigor Dimitrov Just Blessed Us With The Best Tennis Point Of The Week
Watching a lot of Grigor Dimitrov lately, I’ve noticed a pattern: There’s a concrete moment, usually early in the second set, when he’s adequately warmed up from the first set and he decides to flip on God Mode. From there on out, you’re watching a qualitatively different player. Above is that momen...