0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/21/2016
To a certain extent, it will always and inevitably be true that draws don’t matter that much in tennis. What looks good on paper often becomes nothing other than a dream. For blockbuster semifinals to emerge at the 2016 French Open, four players — Serena Williams, Angelique Kerber, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal — must […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/27/2015
The U.S. Open women’s draw is out. Here is the bracket for the year’s final major. We all know who the main story is in Flushing Meadows, New York: Serena Jameka Williams, whose initials — “SJW” — could just as easily refer to the reality of life on the WTA Tour: Serena Just Wins. It […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/11/2015
Purely in a chronological sense, Serena Williams stands in the autumn of her career. If her career could be likened to a 12-month calendar year, she’s in late September as opposed to early April. More years are behind her than in front of her as a transcendent tennis player. Her first major title came 16 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/9/2015
As a Spanish woman, Garbine Muguruza, prepares for a Wimbledon singles final on Saturday, the pages of tennis history turn. Back in 1974, 39-year-old Ken Rosewall contested the Wimbledon men’s final against 21-year-old Jimmy Connors. That’s a college freshman’s lifespan between the two competitors. In the annals of Wimbledon women’s finals with large age disparities […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/6/2015
Manic Monday, as the second Monday of Wimbledon is referred to, claims a special place on the tennis calendar, mostly for good reasons. However, some of the effects of this day are unavoidably unwelcome. You can call it a “first-world tennis problem,” a consequence of the All-England Club’s annual decision (due to the politics of […]
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 1/31/2015
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The above quote is an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City, a proclamation of the mindset postal carriers must bring to their work. If Serena Jameka Williams had been […]
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 9/7/2014
The U.S. Open’s trophy presentation ceremonies are usually the tackiest in tennis, even worse than the Australian Open’s prolonged affairs. The U.S. Open ceremony becomes something of a game show, with the CBS emcee rattling off the prizes and money totals for the champion and runner-up. This time, though, the U.S. Open ended with an […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/29/2014
The day was a wet one at Wimbledon, with rain persisting long enough to force all non-Centre Court matches to early-evening or nighttime conclusions. Some matches didn’t even finish, creating a backlog that will disrupt the second-week schedule at the All-England Club. (More will be said on that subset of problems in a separate piece […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/26/2014
To the uneducated observer, tennis is a simple sport — just whack the ball and keep it within the painted white lines. Thock! Thock! Thock! Thock! The sport is easily pigeonholed as a genteel pursuit in which fans seated on the sides of a stadium turn their heads — left, right, left, right — as […]
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/6/2014
Want to start a good, old-fashioned war among tennis fans? Label players. Ball-basher. A defensive wall. A pusher. Retriever. Servebot (aka, John Isner or Milos Raonic). Fighter. Shotmaker. Showman. The above terms have many connotations, some of them good, most of them bad, especially “ball-basher,” “wall,” “pusher,” and “servebot.” Tennis players come in many forms, […]
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 […]
