0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/7/2014
Maria Sharapova’s 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-4 win over Simona Halep in the Roland Garros women’s singles final on Saturday was, before and beyond anything else, a magnificent three-hour feast of generally great tennis, spiced with maximum drama and enough plot twists to fill a 400-page novel. Sharapova’s victory showcased not just everything that’s great about […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Sports are often cruel and contradictory. They frequently force the human person to do that which is so utterly essential in matters far more important than playing a game: Hold competing, counterintuitive, coexisting truths in tension with each other. Walking in the present-moment reality of complexity, ambiguity, pressure, and conflict — this is what the […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/6/2014
We told you. We told you in our Roland Garros viewer’s guide nearly two weeks ago: The Eastern time zone was the only time zone that could reasonably expect to see the second French Open men’s singles semifinal live on NBC. This was a possibility for the Central time zone, yes, but never a certainty. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
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 6/2/2014
The way in which tennis networks cover major tournaments has been a constant source of exasperation for American tennis fans (and also Canadian fans when their sports networks cede coverage to the American ones). Yet, complaining can only do so much. Why not simply document the various moves American tennis networks make during a major […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/1/2014
After winning the 2007 U.S. Open in a tense straight-set match against a young Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer remarked of Djokovic’s failure to win seven set points in a 7-6 (4), 7-6 (2), 6-4 contest. “You could sing a song about it,” Federer poetically reflected. It was indeed the script that inspires a sad love […]
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/30/2014
It’s a long-running belief among many (maybe not most, but certainly many) in the tennis community that the sport — in order to break through various layers of disinterest on the part of more casual fans — needs more “personality” among its players. Well, this weekend at Roland Garros, plenty of personality will be on […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/26/2014
In an attempt to describe the experience of playing left field at Yankee Stadium during the World Series and its October afternoons, Yogi Berra said, “It gets late early out there.” For Stanislas Wawrinka, this was no October afternoon, but a late May evening in Paris during the longest days of the year. It was […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Tennis coverage on American television was so much worse several years ago. The rise of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal created ample demand for the product itself, but the quality of the product didn’t always meet the standards of tennis fans new and old. In recent years, however, a number of problems have been solved. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Tennis has endured some rough live TV moments on American airwaves in recent years, but those embarrassments are exceeded in severity by the more structural problems tennis faces on the tube in this country. Five lingering deficiencies – pertaining to industry realities, not individual match broadcasts – continue to prevent this sport from being presented […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
Do you really, really want to watch major-tournament tennis? Do you want to set aside two weeks of the calendar to watch this marvelous sport, referred to by many of its best chroniclers as “boxing without the blood”? Advice and pointers will be found in this brief viewer’s guide to the 2014 Roland Garros event, […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/25/2014
Part of the experience of following tennis – especially at the four major tournaments – is significantly enhanced by joining “Tennis Twitter,” the social media community that tweets about tennis. Every community has its flaws (because all human beings are imperfect), but Tennis Twitter is a delightfully diverse place in which a casual sports fan […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 5/23/2014
The Roland Garros men’s draw is out. Here’s the top quarter of the draw, featuring Rafael Nadal. Click on the other three quarters of the draw to pop them up on your computer. Here are five initial impressions of the draw. This year, the draw is newsworthy precisely because… well… no fan base of a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Roland Garros women’s draw is out. You can look at it here. If you’re new to the art of bracket-scanning, realize that you are looking at one quarter of the draw and can click on the other three quarters to bring them up on your screen. Take your time – the first ball won’t be struck […]
