0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/2/2014
The first week of a tennis major is cluttered with stories, due to the sheer volume of matches. As the field of 128 is narrowed to the round of 16 or the quarterfinals, the first-week headlines generally emerge in two forms: the upsets of the higher seeds and the unexpected successes of comparatively unheralded or […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/1/2014
After winning the 2007 U.S. Open in a tense straight-set match against a young Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer remarked of Djokovic’s failure to win seven set points in a 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4 contest. “You could sing a song about it,” Federer poetically reflected. It was indeed the script that inspires a sad love […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/31/2014
It’s inside baseball for the tennis diehard, but for the casual American sports fan, the reference needs explaining: There are two “Vic-es” (or “vitches,” take your pick) in women’s tennis. Who (or what) are they? They’re the two best WTA players from Serbia: Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic. One of them is still alive at […]
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 5/28/2014
On Monday, it was Stan Wawrinka. On Tuesday, it was Li Na. On Wednesday afternoon in Paris, the biggest shocker of an already-wild Roland Garros reverberated across the tennis world. Garbine Muguruza, hitting with depth and consistency while finding an above-average T-serve, dismissed defending champion Serena Williams in little over an hour. The 6-2, 6-2 […]
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Tennis coverage on American television was so much worse several years ago. The rise of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal created ample demand for the product itself, but the quality of the product didn’t always meet the standards of tennis fans new and old. In recent years, however, a number of problems have been solved. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Tennis has endured some rough live TV moments on American airwaves in recent years, but those embarrassments are exceeded in severity by the more structural problems tennis faces on the tube in this country. Five lingering deficiencies – pertaining to industry realities, not individual match broadcasts – continue to prevent this sport from being presented […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Do you really, really want to watch major-tournament tennis? Do you want to set aside two weeks of the calendar to watch this marvelous sport, referred to by many of its best chroniclers as “boxing without the blood”? Advice and pointers will be found in this brief viewer’s guide to the 2014 Roland Garros event, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/25/2014
American fans will tell you that tennis is treated much more poorly on U.S. television than other major sports, including and especially golf, the other main solo-athlete sport in this country. What are the moments (not industry realities, but live on-air occurrences) that have stayed in the minds of American tennis viewers? 5 – THE […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Part of the experience of following tennis – especially at the four major tournaments – is significantly enhanced by joining “Tennis Twitter,” the social media community that tweets about tennis. Every community has its flaws (because all human beings are imperfect), but Tennis Twitter is a delightfully diverse place in which a casual sports fan […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/23/2014
The Roland Garros men’s draw is out. Here’s the top quarter of the draw, featuring Rafael Nadal. Click on the other three quarters of the draw to pop them up on your computer. Here are five initial impressions of the draw. This year, the draw is newsworthy precisely because… well… no fan base of a […]
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The Roland Garros women’s draw is out. You can look at it here. If you’re new to the art of bracket-scanning, realize that you are looking at one quarter of the draw and can click on the other three quarters to bring them up on your screen. Take your time – the first ball won’t be struck […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/22/2014
It’s an old trick when you’re doing a list of five, but this is an occasion in which a fifth-place tie really is needed to put six matches on the short list of the most significant encounters ever staged at France’s major tennis tournament. Go through this list. Just exactly which match doesn’t drip with […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/21/2014
We’ll look at this topic from the men’s side tomorrow, but we’ll get started with the history of women’s tennis at Roland Garros. These are not the five best women’s matches in Roland Garros history, though some of the entries on the list would certainly qualify as such. There’s something different about the most significant […]
