0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/6/2015
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 6/2/2015
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/1/2015
Every tournament takes on a life of its own, in any sport. Some tournaments become interesting from the very start and stay that way. Others start brightly but then slow down and descend into dullsville, with a predictable forced-march of a denouement giving fans and pundits very little to chew on. Still other tournaments gain […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/22/2015
The men’s draw for the 2015 French Open has been announced. A one-word summary of the draw: KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! The doomsday scenario arrived for legions of Spaniards and Serbs on Friday in Paris. Rafael Nadal, seeded sixth at this tournament due to his struggles over the past few months, was slotted to play Novak Djokovic, the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/21/2015
In the Southwestern United States, Cox Communications has been running a series of commercials for a number of years. The point is rather simple: Cox guarantees its products in ways that competitors are prohibited from making certain statements: This is what a lot of tennis journalists and commentators (though not all of them) are doing […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/17/2015
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Then again, numbers — while often telling falsehoods and being eternally subject to manipulation — can also reveal powerful truths. As the Roman road becomes the path to Paris, and the clay Masters 1000 series gives way to the year’s second major tournament, the numbers tell the story […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 3/24/2015
Everyone has his or her own dividing line for when to start — or stop — measuring anything under the sun. In terms of measuring the extent to which the Big Four have dominated the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments, two dividing lines come to mind after Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer — again — in […]
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 1/29/2015
It’s how major titles are won. It’s how high-level success is built and sustained. It’s how a lofty place in a sport’s pantheon is established. Backing up results — not just being good on one day, but the next day, and the day after that — separates the hot player on a feel-good run from […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/25/2015
Sports psychologists will tell their clients — or any athletes they might have the chance to speak to in a professional context — that anger must be channeled into more positive emotions. Anger cannot consume. It cannot be nurtured or protected or perpetuated. It will eventually swallow up concentration, devour energy, and hijack the peak […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/23/2015
Andreas Seppi, one of those players who constantly flies below the radar at major tournaments, seemed consigned to a career in which he’d never be able to remember a match on tennis’s biggest stage for all the right reasons. Seppi took a two-set lead on Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros in 2012, but he couldn’t […]
The two ATP hardcourt major champions in 2014 were Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nad———
Hey, wait a minute!
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/16/2015
When a major-tournament draw is announced, the attention of the tennis world usually gravitates to the quarters and beyond: Which player seeded 5 through 8 ended up in Novak Djokovic’s quarter? Rafael Nadal’s? Roger Federer’s? Oh, and what about Stan Wawrinka? This was unavoidably going to be a point of interest, but in light of […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 1/15/2015
What is true for women’s tennis is also true for men’s tennis. Through 1987, the Australian Open was not so much a fourth major as a major in lighter clothing. Without a full 128-player draw, seeds received byes into the second round. On plenty of occasions, top pros didn’t make the trip Down Under to […]
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 11/23/2014
On a certain undeniable level, the big banner headline for the 2014 Davis Cup Final is simply this: ROGER FEDERER WINS ELUSIVE DAVIS CUP TITLE, ADDING TO HIS LEGACY. When any athlete with Federer’s level of stature and centrality wins a prestigious championship for the first time at a latter point in his or her […]
