0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/14/2015
BLOGUIN NOTE Before we begin, a reminder for readers: Attacking The Net is a major-tournament tennis blog, not (yet) a full-service year-round tennis blog. You’ll get coverage of the Davis Cup semifinals and finals; the WTA Finals; and the ATP World Tour Finals, with perhaps a wrap-up of the Masters 1000 events in Shanghai and […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/4/2015
Twice in a span of 24 hours at Wimbledon, the same basic drama unfolded… and cut in different directions. On Friday, Serena Williams — one of the two players expected to make the women’s final — found herself at 4-4 in the third set on Centre Court. She lost serve at 4-4 and watched Heather […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/30/2015
In tennis, it’s important to emphasize the following point, lest this discussion veer in an unwanted direction: Much as duration of match and quality of match have little to do with each other, qualities such as parity and depth are value-neutral. They require circumstances in order to be seen as positive or negative. A division […]
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 women’s singles draw for the 2015 French Open has been announced. What stands out about a bracket that features so many delicious (or perilous, depending on your viewpoint) uncertainties? You can debate which item is the second most important one on your list, but there should be no discussion about the top story to […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 2/3/2015
The Australian Open is done, and so is daily coverage of tennis at Attacking The Net… for now. This is still a major-tournament-focused blog. We hope to branch out in the coming months, but at the present time, our resources only enable us to cover the majors in full. We will provide Sunday or Monday […]
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 1/15/2015
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 on 10/26/2014
The Women’s Tennis Association moved its end-of-the-year showcase event from Istanbul to Singapore this year. The time difference put a lot of matches on American television in the middle of the night. The sport is bigger than one country or continent, and Li Na — who retired before the 2014 WTA Finals began — had […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/11/2014
A weekend in Canada, a change of sceneWas the most I bargained forAnd then I discovered you, and in your eyesI found the love that I couldn’t ignore. — Canadian Sunset, 1956 * Norman Gimbel, the lyricist for a song that’s almost 60 years old, knew what a weekend in Canada could do for the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/5/2014
For the casual sports fan — in America but also in other nations — the final weekend of Wimbledon is much like Christmas or Easter Mass for the fallen-away or secularized Catholic. You watch. You go. It’s an event. You might even catch a moment of inspiration and walk out of the cathedral with a new […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/3/2014
In tennis, the hammer — the weapon that can take the racquet out of an opponent’s hand — is the serve. In the face of a hammer, it is up to the opponent to show enough steel to get serves back and create attritional baseline tennis with extended rallies that wear down the quick-strike artist. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/2/2014
It was a memorable Tuesday afternoon at the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Two significant upsets visited SW19. On the men’s side of Wimbledon, Nick Kyrgios had no mercy in his takedown of Rafael Nadal. A write-up of “Kyrgios Eleison’s” victory can be found here. A few hours earlier, on the same hallowed patch […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/9/2014
The four major tournaments do a lot to redefine the sport of tennis. Yes, these two-week events affirm many of pre-existing truths — Rafael Nadal’s a tolerably good tennis player on clay; Maria Sharapova is no longer a cow on ice when it comes to crushed red brick — but it’s always particularly fascinating to […]
