0 comments by Matt Zemek on 4/18/2016
Anyone who has ever loved tennis knows the sport possesses a singular quality, a uniquely combative nature which resonates across much of the globe. This is a violent sport. It’s anything but the longstanding and laughably empty stereotypical image of a “sissy” or “genteel” activity. Yet, the competitors don’t suffer black eyes, fractured jaws, or […]
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 […]
Canada’s Milos Raonic celebrates victory during his men’s singles match against France’s Gael Monfils on day ten of the 2016 Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne on January 27, 2016.
0 comments by Chris Abshire on 1/27/2016
Tennis fans have waited years for another men’s tennis player to take the proverbial leap, becoming a player not necessarily on the level of Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer or Andy Murray, but clearly a step above the rest of the top 20. We might be watching Milos Raonic make that move. The Canadian dispatched Gael […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/22/2015
The men’s draw for the 2015 French Open has been announced. A one-word summary of the draw: KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! The doomsday scenario arrived for legions of Spaniards and Serbs on Friday in Paris. Rafael Nadal, seeded sixth at this tournament due to his struggles over the past few months, was slotted to play Novak Djokovic, the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/23/2014
On a certain undeniable level, the big banner headline for the 2014 Davis Cup Final is simply this: ROGER FEDERER WINS ELUSIVE DAVIS CUP TITLE, ADDING TO HIS LEGACY. When any athlete with Federer’s level of stature and centrality wins a prestigious championship for the first time at a latter point in his or her […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/14/2014
Rafael Nadal has already compiled a legendary Davis Cup profile. See for yourself — if you click on the results tab at this link, you’ll see that he’s lost only one singles match in his Davis Cup career, and that came in 2004 at the age of 17. Novak Djokovic, though not as accomplished a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/9/2014
The last major tennis tournament of the year is over. The Davis Cup semifinals begin this Friday, and there are a lot of points to be won (or defended, depending on the player) in the Asian swing and the fall indoor portions of the tennis calendar. Both the WTA and ATP will unfurl their year-ending […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/5/2014
Every single human person brings his or her perspective to an event he or she covers. It is true that when a person’s job is to provide a straightforward match recap (which is not what this or any Bloguin site is meant to do — not centrally, anyway), there’s less room for commentary, so in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/3/2014
Tuesday — not counting the 2:26 a.m. finish from Monday’s order of play between Kei Nishikori and Milos Raonic, written about here by Juan Jose Vallejo for Rolling Stone magazine — was not an exciting day at the U.S. Open. Three men’s fourth-round matches were decided in straight sets. The fourth match was a drawn-out […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/26/2014
To the uneducated observer, tennis is a simple sport — just whack the ball and keep it within the painted white lines. Thock! Thock! Thock! Thock! The sport is easily pigeonholed as a genteel pursuit in which fans seated on the sides of a stadium turn their heads — left, right, left, right — as […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/30/2014
It’s a long-running belief among many (maybe not most, but certainly many) in the tennis community that the sport — in order to break through various layers of disinterest on the part of more casual fans — needs more “personality” among its players. Well, this weekend at Roland Garros, plenty of personality will be on […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/26/2014
In an attempt to describe the experience of playing left field at Yankee Stadium during the World Series and its October afternoons, Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.” For Stanislas Wawrinka, this was no October afternoon, but a late May evening in Paris during the longest days of the year. It was […]
