0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/29/2015
Lleyton Hewitt’s tennis career isn’t over, but his Wimbledon career is. Jarkko Nieminen, also playing in his last Wimbledon, extended his stay another match (but only one more match; Novak Djokovic is next) at the Big W. In a marvelous match, Nieminen defeated Hewitt, 11-9 in the fifth set. The battle took almost four hours […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/26/2015
The gentlemen’s singles draw for Wimbledon 2015 has been released, with seeded players in white: Here are the items of foremost importance after the revelation of the brackets: The biggest question in the men’s draw, in terms of pointing the path to the eventual champion, was whether Novak Djokovic or Roger Federer (the top two […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The women’s draw for Wimbledon was announced Friday morning. Here it is: The first thing which stands out about the women’s draw is that the bottom half is a vast green field (word choice intentional, since this is lawn tennis) of opportunity for everyone in it. Petra Kvitova has to be very happy with the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/24/2015
When Stan Wawrinka won his second major a few weeks ago in Paris, he forever banished the possibility that his only major title would come against a physically compromised opponent in the final. Wawrinka registered an achievement which will rightly change the way we think about him as a tennis player. Something else Wawrinka did […]
0 comments by Joe Webb
On Monday, June 29, all eyes will be on the London for the opening of the most anticipated tennis event of the year. The tournament will encompass a surplus of talent making for a fierce competition between the best of the best in the sport. Serena Williams is looking to make a comeback from last […]
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
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 […]
