0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/27/2014
Look at the photo of Petra Kvitova. Notice the background of shade, contrasting with the ribbon of golden light on the top of Kvitova’s head. That’s the kind of camera shot that can be found at Centre Court Wimbledon during the five o’clock hour on a sunny summer afternoon. During that particular part of a […]
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 […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
The Wimbledon ladies’ singles draw was announced Friday morning. Click on each quarter of the draw to see the full 128-player bracket, with 32 players in each quarter. What stands out in the WTA portion of the 2014 Wimbledon bracket? As is the case with Novak Djokovic’s quarter in the men’s draw, it is as […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek on 6/9/2014
The second week of a major tennis tournament will regularly offer broadcast outlets fewer chances to make mistakes in terms of programming and match selection. The first week is chock full of matches, so in many ways, that week tests a network’s commitment to tennis in ways the second week can never really match. The […]
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 5/26/2014
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 on 5/25/2014
American fans will tell you that tennis is treated much more poorly on U.S. television than other major sports, including and especially golf, the other main solo-athlete sport in this country. What are the moments (not industry realities, but live on-air occurrences) that have stayed in the minds of American tennis viewers? 5 – THE […]
0 comments by Matt Zemek
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 […]
