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Aug 23, 2015; Cincinnati, OH, USA; Serena Williams (USA) holds the Rookwood Cup after defeating Simona Halep (not pictured) in the finals during the Western and Southern Open tennis tournament at the Linder Family Tennis Center. Mandatory Credit: Aaron Doster-USA TODAY Sports

Federer and Serena Win Cincinnati, But There’s More To The Stories

Before telling you about tennis over the past few weeks in North America, take just two minutes to appreciate the site of Roger Federer’s and Serena Williams’s victories on Sunday afternoon. * Cincinnati, for the international readers in the crowd, is an American sports city starving for a professional sports success story. The Reds are […]

Cincinnati ATP & WTA Recap: Steel Beneath The Velvet

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 […]

Montreal-Toronto Combo Review: A Weekend In Canada, A Change Of Scene

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 […]

5 Ways The 2014 French Open Redefined Tennis

The four major tournaments do a lot to redefine the sport of tennis. Yes, these two-week events affirm many of pre-existing truths — Rafael Nadal’s a tolerably good tennis player on clay; Maria Sharapova is no longer a cow on ice when it comes to crushed red brick — but it’s always particularly fascinating to […]

Roland Garros: The Top 5 Stories

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 […]

A Champion’s Contradictions

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 […]

Opposites Attract

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, […]

We Got Your Personality Right Here

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 […]

Tennis On TV: 5 Embarrassing Moments

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 […]

Roland Garros Women’s Draw: 5 Takeaways

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 […]

What Rome Means For Paris

“You can have Rome — I’ll take Paris.” It’s a statement the French would readily agree with, but it’s also something tennis players would agree with as well. Winning the ATP Masters 1000 stop or the WTA Premier 5 event in Rome is certainly a nice prize to have, but it doesn’t hold a candle […]

Roland Garros: 5 WTA Question Marks

This is a pre-draw assessment of the uncertainties that will greet the 2014 Roland Garros women’s tournament. When the draw is announced this Friday morning in Paris, the process of “tennis bracketology” can begin. For now, though, one can only look at a few players irrespective of the draw and ask questions about what they’ll […]

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