0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/24/2016
The French Open didn’t occupy a prominent psychological place in Andy Murray’s tennis season — not in the distant past. Murray’s favorite major tournament is and has been the U.S. Open. His most consistent major tournament is the Australian Open, where he’s reached five finals dating back to 2010. The major tournament freighted with the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/21/2016
To a certain extent, it will always and inevitably be true that draws don’t matter that much in tennis. What looks good on paper often becomes nothing other than a dream. For blockbuster semifinals to emerge at the 2016 French Open, four players — Serena Williams, Angelique Kerber, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal — must […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/17/2016
The past week at the Rome Masters did not reveal much about the ATP Tour — certainly not in terms of tennis. The story of men’s tennis at the Foro Italico proved to be illuminating not for its on-court aspects, but for its off-court dimensions. Italy’s Masters 1000 tournament represented a convincing argument for anyone […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/9/2016
The official record will state — for anyone and everyone who looks up the result in subsequent years — that Novak Djokovic defeated Andy Murray on Sunday for his latest Masters 1000 championship in Madrid. Unofficially, the man Djokovic most centrally defeated at La Caja Magica was Djokovic himself. The World No. 1 has won […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 4/4/2016
The 2016 Miami Open might become something very different in the course of time… and that’s part of what made it such a fascinating tournament to observe. We could look back on the past week and a half in Key Biscayne, Florida, and realize that the journey led to predictable endpoints in 2016: Novak Djokovic […]
Britain’s Andy Murray speaks before being presented with the runner’s up trophy after he was defeated by Serbia’s Novak Djokovic in their men’s singles final match on day fourteen of the 2016 Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 31, 2016.
0 comments by Chris Abshire on 1/31/2016
Tennis, like sports as a whole, mirrors and reveals real things about the humans who play inside the lined rectangle. However, tennis is not life itself, at least not a representative version of it. ** There was Andy Murray, accepting the silver platter again. The two-time Grand Slam winner has seemed tortured at the Australian Open, and […]
Roger Federer of Switzerland wipes the sweat from his face during his semifinal match against Novak Djokovic of Serbia at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016.(AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/28/2016
Roger Federer, being 34 years old, could be viewed as a tennis player who is stepping into the twilight of his career. Whether or not that view is supremely fair or substantive is another question, but the idea that a 34-year-old tennis player stands in or near the twilight realm of his (her) journey is […]
0 comments by Yesh Ginsburg on 1/17/2016
The draw for the 2016 Australian Open is here, and everyone has been poring over it since it was first announced. So, without further ado, here are the five things that most jumped out to me when I first looked at the draw: 1. Lleyton Hewitt Has the Perfect Opportunity However much this tournament will […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 12/10/2015
(NOTE: A story on Novak Djokovic’s 2015 season was originally posted here after Mr. Djokovic won the 2015 ATP World Tour Finals in late November, days before the Davis Cup. It was accidentally deleted and unable to be retrieved. It was not scrubbed or purposefully removed. Life just happened. What follows is therefore not a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/29/2015
If you traveled 80 years into the past, you would have traveled into a world which — in tennis terms — featured Great Britain as a foremost tennis nation, not a peripheral player on the scene. In 1935, the part of the world which birthed the sport of tennis was also the best at playing […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/14/2015
One set all. 4-4 in the third set. The U.S. Open final. The two best ATP stars in the world, playing their hearts out before 23,000-plus spectators (many of them poorly behaved, but that’s another story). This is the moment every professional tennis player dreams of. It’s the moment every tennis pro tries to reach. […]
NY 29Aug2015 Roof scaffolding Ashe Stadium wide angle view from top on Art Ashe Day with shadows.
0 comments by Matt Zemek
BLOGUIN NOTE Before we begin, a reminder for readers: Attacking The Net is a major-tournament tennis blog, not (yet) a full-service year-round tennis blog. You’ll get coverage of the Davis Cup semifinals and finals; the WTA Finals; and the ATP World Tour Finals, with perhaps a wrap-up of the Masters 1000 events in Shanghai and […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/10/2015
Weren’t we here a year ago at the U.S. Open? Short answer: No – a year ago, the men’s semifinals would have been played on Saturday, and there would have been a lot less shade and wind protection available for Novak Djokovic, who will play his 2015 semifinal in much more comfortable conditions. Long answer: […]
NEW YORK, NY – SEPTEMBER 07: Kevin Anderson of South Africa celebrates after defeating Andy Murray of Great Britain during their Men’s Singles Fourth Round match on Day Eight of the 2015 US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on September 7, 2015 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/8/2015
Kevin Anderson — whose wife is, like me, a tennis blogger (and that’s pretty much where the similarities between our lives end) — surely heard the voices in his head. “Oh no — not again. Not this time. No, it can’t be. Please, God, no. I’ve worked too hard for this. I’ve come too close. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/5/2015
Our story begins not with a review of the first week of the U.S. Open, but with a story about the evolution of American college football. Europeans and other international readers, you’re not going to get an explanation about the innards of Yankee-style football, merely a note about the culture of this sport and how […]
