0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/26/2015
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 6/8/2015
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 6/6/2015
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 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 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 5/31/2014
It’s inside baseball for the tennis diehard, but for the casual American sports fan, the reference needs explaining: There are two “Vic-es” (or “vitches,” take your pick) in women’s tennis. Who (or what) are they? They’re the two best WTA players from Serbia: Ana Ivanovic and Jelena Jankovic. One of them is still alive at […]
