0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/17/2016
Serena wins. Yes, she does… a lot. Yet, Sunday’s championship in Rome — won against Madison Keys in a classic veteran-steals-the-cookies-from-the-young-challenger kind of match — was Serena’s first title since the summer of 2015. It had been a long time since Serena hoisted a trophy… which is an utterly odd thing to say in light […]
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 […]
0 comments by Chris Abshire on 1/28/2016
It’s an oft-seen phenomena in sports, specifically in tennis. A team or player delivers a thrilling upset, only to fall short of a title or fail to use that momentum for a substantial run. Typically, one day’s huge breakthrough is the next day’s or the next game’s deflating loss. As soon as a resurgence begins, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/27/2016
What does it look like when a talented player finally puts the pieces together in the moment when she most desperately needs to do so? Samantha Jane Stosur did this at the 2011 U.S. Open against Elena Dementieva on one Sunday, and then against Serena Williams one Sunday later. Francesca Schiavone, after many years of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/17/2015
When tennis fans and pundits sat down to preview the tennis season’s big week in Canada — with the WTA in Toronto and the ATP in Montreal — they couldn’t possibly have known what was about to unfold in the great North. Try to go back to the morning of Sunday, August 9, when the […]
Photo courtesy of the Associated Press
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/23/2015
The month of July honors America’s independence from Great Britain, and this July, American dreams of calendar Grand Slam glory will either reach a crescendo or die a fiery death across the pond. Later in July, Jordan Spieth will head to the British Open trying to do the unthinkable. He’ll attempt to capture the third […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/21/2015
If a single theme can be gleaned from the first three days of the 2015 Australian Open, it is this: For anyone who has played professional tennis for an appreciable length of time, the cauldron of major-tournament pressure reveals the essence of that player — not always in a career-long context, but often enough to […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/11/2014
A weekend in Canada, a change of sceneWas the most I bargained forAnd then I discovered you, and in your eyesI found the love that I couldn’t ignore. — Canadian Sunset, 1956 * Norman Gimbel, the lyricist for a song that’s almost 60 years old, knew what a weekend in Canada could do for the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/2/2014
There were two kinds of upsets to marvel at on Tuesday, as Wimbledon became “Wimbledonnybrook.” One of those upsets offered a portrayal of an underdog surpassing a favorite on the favorite’s own terms, as Angelique Kerber outfought one of the best fighters in women’s tennis, Maria Sharapova. The write-up for that match is here. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It was a memorable Tuesday afternoon at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Two significant upsets visited SW19. On the men’s side of Wimbledon, Nick Kyrgios had no mercy in his takedown of Rafael Nadal. A write-up of “Kyrgios Eleison’s” victory can be found here. A few hours earlier, on the same hallowed patch […]
