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 5/11/2015
Every year (since 2011), the chatter builds before the French Open: This is Novak Djokovic’s year. This is the year Rafael Nadal fails to win Roland Garros. Every year, Nadal gathers himself and his resources — no matter how many setbacks he suffers in the month of May — and conquers Paris in early June. […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 4/19/2015
Every tournament matters. Every non-exhibition competition in sports possesses value. Every time professionals take the court — in tennis or any other endeavor — they enhance their levels of integrity to the extent that they take pride in their work, putting in an honest day’s effort for an honest day’s pay. If one dares to […]
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 1/27/2015
It is one of the most famous quotes in tennis history. After beating Jimmy Connors in 1980, Vitas Gerulaitis — who had lost his previous 16 matches to Jimbo — said, “Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!” Never mind the fact that Bjorn Borg had won 20 matches against Gerulaitis without a […]
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 9/14/2014
Rafael Nadal has already compiled a legendary Davis Cup profile. See for yourself — if you click on the results tab at this link, you’ll see that he’s lost only one singles match in his Davis Cup career, and that came in 2004 at the age of 17. Novak Djokovic, though not as accomplished a […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 9/9/2014
The last major tennis tournament of the year is over. The Davis Cup semifinals begin this Friday, and there are a lot of points to be won (or defended, depending on the player) in the Asian swing and the fall indoor portions of the tennis calendar. Both the WTA and ATP will unfurl their year-ending […]
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 8/11/2014
A weekend in Canada, a change of sceneWas the most I bargained forAnd then I discovered you, and in your eyesI found the love that I couldn’t ignore. — Canadian Sunset, 1956 * Norman Gimbel, the lyricist for a song that’s almost 60 years old, knew what a weekend in Canada could do for the […]
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/9/2014
The year’s clay-court major is over, but the memories from Paris are fresh and demand an overview. What were the biggest (though not always the best) headlines from the past two weeks of tennis on terre battue? Without further ado: 5 – IVANOVIC’S AGONY The upsets of Serena Williams and Li Na were notable, to […]
