0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/23/2015
We’ve traveled many thousands of miles as tennis fans and chroniclers with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Billions of words have been written about them. Millions of arguments have been launched by their partisans. Neither man should be favored to win the 2015 edition of Wimbledon, though both have a chance and could slip through […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/8/2015
The championship match of a major singles tournament always influences and changes the larger story of tennis, but much as some points in a tennis match are more important than others, some title tilts acquire more importance than others. Let’s be clear: What you’re about to read is not a final verdict on history or […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The 2015 French Open figured to be crazy… and it was. Let’s review the past two weeks, shall we? * 10 – WOZNIACKI’S WOES — NOT TO BE OVERSTATED, BUT NOT TO BE IGNORED, EITHER The (lack of) fortunes of Caroline Wozniacki in 2015 should not be given too much play after Roland Garros — […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/7/2015
The 2015 Roland Garros men’s singles final between Novak Djokovic and Stan Wawrinka carried the weight of history. It also carried the flavors of the 2009 final between a Swiss player and a man who had beaten Rafael Nadal earlier in the tournament. In 2009, one man was trying to win a career Grand Slam, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/6/2015
It’s not as though Serena Jameka Williams has cruised through most of the 20 — yes, twenty — major tournaments she has now conquered. Winning a major is almost always a hard thing to do. (Rafael Nadal at the 2008 French Open and a few other select individuals could offer exceptions to the rule.) Serena, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It’s all so deliciously historic, spiced with the flavor of recent tennis years at Roland Garros. Sunday in Paris, Novak Djokovic will play for a piece of immortality in the sport he has mastered so fully. The world No. 1 will get a chance to complete the career Grand Slam because he typically steeled himself […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/4/2015
It is one of the constant points of contention in the global tennis community: When is a player “faking discomfort” on the court, and when is pain real? There’s a double-meaning in the act of mentioning “discomfort,” because taking on the topic is supremely uncomfortable. Choosing to talk about player discomfort — real, false, or […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/3/2015
The toughest thing to do in tennis is to win the calendar Grand Slam, of course, so if you wanted to be really nitpicky about this conversation, fine — what’s about to be said is not 100 percent accurate. However, for all intents and purposes, the toughest thing to do in men’s tennis over the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/2/2015
When any high-profile person fails on a public stage, people talk. A palpable buzz rolls through the community most affected by the episode. Sometimes that community is a small neighborhood rocked by an unexpected scandal from a supposed pillar of the town council, revealed to have led a double life. Sometimes that community is as big […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/1/2015
For the men at Roland Garros, the end of play on Monday evening marks the calm before the storm of four blockbuster quarterfinals. For the women competing for a major championship in Paris, everything is possible… despite what you might think about the hollowed-out nature of the bracket. In 2013, Serena Williams fended off Maria […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Every tournament takes on a life of its own, in any sport. Some tournaments become interesting from the very start and stay that way. Others start brightly but then slow down and descend into dullsville, with a predictable forced-march of a denouement giving fans and pundits very little to chew on. Still other tournaments gain […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/30/2015
Saturday’s third-round match at the French Open between Serena Williams and Victoria Azarenka began as a ho-hum affair. It became a match worthy of a major semifinal or final… and of the legacies of two major champions. It then gave way to two of the best post-match press conferences of 2015 (in any sport, not […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/27/2015
Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (pictured above) didn’t score an aberrational victory over Simona Halep in last year’s U.S. Open in New York… because she defeated Halep again in the second round of the 2015 French Open on Wednesday. Lucic-Baroni, whose remarkable tennis story can’t be repeated enough, won a 7-5 first set and then hammered Halep (and […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/26/2015
No earth-shaking upsets occurred in the first round of the 2015 French Open, but on Tuesday, two players who left a noticeably positive imprint on the 2014 tennis season were quickly dismissed from Paris. In the men’s tournament, Grigor Dimitrov was swept out of France by Jack Sock, 7-6 (7), 6-2, 6-3, while in the […]
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 […]
