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, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/17/2014
In reviewing a full year of men’s tennis, there’s no need to cover new ground — it’s been covered. You know the major stories. The time spent looking back at 2014 on the ATP World Tour is best used in the service of perspective and, in spots, appreciation for what’s happened since early January. The […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/16/2014
The ATP’s season-ending championship (before the International Tennis Federation puts the capper on the tennis year with the Davis Cup Final) is called the World Tour Finals. The acronym for the event, as you can plainly see, is WTF. This year in London, “WTF” was the universal reaction to the showcase singles tournament held in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 11/2/2014
The BNP Paribas Masters — informally known as “Bercy,” distinguishing this Parisian event from the major championship held at Roland Garros every spring — represent the last stop on the road to London, the site of the ATP World Tour Finals. With 1,000 points being awarded to the winner and stacks of points in play […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/8/2014
It was not a day anyone who follows tennis — as fan or chronicler — expected to see two very long weeks ago, when the 2014 U.S. Open began. It was, however, a one-day window into the future of tennis… not next year or the year after that, but six years into the future, when […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/5/2014
Every single human person brings his or her perspective to an event he or she covers. It is true that when a person’s job is to provide a straightforward match recap (which is not what this or any Bloguin site is meant to do — not centrally, anyway), there’s less room for commentary, so in […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/4/2014
One of the subtle nuances of sportswriting — a nuance that is hard to grasp from the outside, if you’re not used to the process of churning out content after watching yet another sporting event — is that wins and losses are not created equal. Some clusters of successes and failures can be thrown into […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/21/2014
Bracketed tournaments — in basketball, soccer, tennis, water polo, and anything else under the sun — always elicit certain kinds of conversations when the brackets are first revealed. Some people are bracket zealots, in that they think the draws mean everything. Other people, tired of the bracket zealots, think that draws mean absolutely nothing, or […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
You saw this same list (shortened) before the French Open. You saw it before Wimbledon. Now, you get to see it before the U.S. Open. Just so I don’t get any hate mail or hate tweets, this is not a list of the greatest U.S. Open matches of all time. Significance and greatness certainly intersect […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 8/18/2014
We’ve seen two utterly fascinating weeks of North American hardcourt tennis since the world’s best (minus Rafael Nadal, Juan Martin del Potro, and Li Na, among others) came to Canada in early August. Tour action continues this week in New Haven (Connecticut) and Winston-Salem (North Carolina). Moreover, a few of the big names on the WTA […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/5/2014
One of the most influential figures in the history of modern tennis, Billie Jean King, has uttered one of the most succinctly profound truths about competitive athletics: “Pressure is a privilege.” If you’re feeling the butterflies that accompany a Wimbledon singles final or any other championship match, you’re enduring the pressure every tennis player wants […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/4/2014
One of the most important sports books of all time, whether or not you’ve read it, is Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis, published in 1974. Gallwey explored the mental dimensions of tennis, unearthing insights that coaches in the sport have used ever since. Gallwey’s view of tennis has spread to other sports. Pete […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 7/2/2014
There were two kinds of upsets to marvel at on Tuesday, as Wimbledon became “Wimbledonnybrook.” One of those upsets offered a portrayal of an underdog surpassing a favorite on the favorite’s own terms, as Angelique Kerber outfought one of the best fighters in women’s tennis, Maria Sharapova. The write-up for that match is here. The […]
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 6/20/2014
The Wimbledon men’s singles draw is out. Click on each quarter of the draw to scan the full 128-player field. * If there’s a single theme which looms over the 2014 Wimbledon men’s tournament, it is that the first week can no longer be seen as an easy, breezy prelude to the second week. This statement […]
