0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/29/2015
It’s how major titles are won. It’s how high-level success is built and sustained. It’s how a lofty place in a sport’s pantheon is established. Backing up results — not just being good on one day, but the next day, and the day after that — separates the hot player on a feel-good run from […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
It is easy to focus on certain details, certain individuals, certain contexts, to the exclusion of others. Thursday afternoon in Melbourne, Australia, it was so easy to look at Madison Keys — all of 19 years old — crushing a tennis ball with a smooth and relaxed stroke, and conclude that “the future of women’s […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/28/2015
At the 2015 Australian Open, the quarterfinals went quickly, with seven of eight matches (four for both genders) concluding in straight sets. Boring, right? Well, not exactly. Not exclusively. Not even close. Yes, on Tuesday, the women’s quarterfinals fell flat when Simona Halep and then Eugenie Bouchard both had “one of those days” at the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/27/2015
It is one of the most famous quotes in tennis history. After beating Jimmy Connors in 1980, Vitas Gerulaitis — who had lost his previous 16 matches to Jimbo — said, “Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!” Never mind the fact that Bjorn Borg had won 20 matches against Gerulaitis without a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/26/2015
Monday in Melbourne, the host nation for the Australian Open celebrated its foremost national holiday. In the past, Australia Day has marked the day during the Australian Open when play would be interrupted during the night session for a fireworks display. This has been the source of great controversy and angst, given the reality that […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/25/2015
Sports psychologists will tell their clients — or any athletes they might have the chance to speak to in a professional context — that anger must be channeled into more positive emotions. Anger cannot consume. It cannot be nurtured or protected or perpetuated. It will eventually swallow up concentration, devour energy, and hijack the peak […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/23/2015
Andreas Seppi, one of those players who constantly flies below the radar at major tournaments, seemed consigned to a career in which he’d never be able to remember a match on tennis’s biggest stage for all the right reasons. Seppi took a two-set lead on Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2012, but he couldn’t […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/22/2015
The Australian Open isn’t just the first major tournament (the first important event) of the tennis calendar. It is the one major tournament which exists far removed from the other three. The Australian Open really does exist on an island, an appropriate reality for a country which is in fact geographically isolated from other continents. […]
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 […]
The two ATP hardcourt major champions in 2014 were Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nad———
Hey, wait a minute!
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/16/2015
When a major-tournament draw is announced, the attention of the tennis world usually gravitates to the quarters and beyond: Which player seeded 5 through 8 ended up in Novak Djokovic’s quarter? Rafael Nadal’s? Roger Federer’s? Oh, and what about Stan Wawrinka? This was unavoidably going to be a point of interest, but in light of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/15/2015
The draws are out for the 2015 Australian Open. In both the women’s and men’s events, the first few days of the tournament offer the promise of a few main-event matches, which is not always something you get at a major. It can take time to stumble upon the kind of centerpiece which pushes other […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
What is true for women’s tennis is also true for men’s tennis. Through 1987, the Australian Open was not so much a fourth major as a major in lighter clothing. Without a full 128-player draw, seeds received byes into the second round. On plenty of occasions, top pros didn’t make the trip Down Under to […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/14/2015
Before 1988, when the Australian Open moved to its current (and gleaming) facilities at Melbourne Park, the event simply didn’t exist on par with the other majors. Before 1988, the Australian Open lacked 128-player draws, meaning that all players in the tournament did not have to play or win the same amount of matches to […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/8/2015
The 2015 tennis season is just getting started, and in the span of just two matches, tennis fans have had reason to freak out… or make the far more rational decision to accept the fact that after the offseason, rust is going to skew plenty of results in the warm-up tournaments before the main event, […]
