Tennis
Story Stream
Coco Gauff Edits Her Game January 16, 2025
Last year, Coco Gauff, who is ranked No. 3 in the world, hit four hundred and thirty double faults—by far the highest total on tour, sixty more than the player with the next most. ...
The Rise and Rise of Jannik Sinner January 09, 2025
The story of how Jannik Sinner, a generational talent, vaulted from being a virtually unknown teen tennis prodigy to a global superstar goes like this: In 2018, at the age of sixteen, the Italian went pro. A year later, while still ranked a lowly 546...
The Ex–Tennis Stars Grinding It Out on the Pickleball Tour January 01, 2025
If you were one of the estimated 40 million people who picked up a pickleball paddle in the U.S. in 2024 and wanted to catch a little inspiration by watching its top athletes dink their way to glory, you might have ventured to Dallas, Texas, to atten...
The Moral Muscle of the Great Rafael Nadal November 20, 2024
These days, one of the few areas of life where I share a genuine interest with the high school seniors I teach, is collegiate and professional sports.I am almost fifty years old. My students are only seventeen. I have been married for over twenty-fiv...
Rafael Nadal’s Last Stand November 19, 2024
Rafael Nadal is afraid of the dark. He has an intense fear of storms. He is afraid of animals, including dogs. (“I doubt their intentions,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Rafa.”) He doesn’t like to swim in deep water, even though he grew up on an is...
The Greatest of All Time September 24, 2024
I think, at some point in my youth, I was a decent tennis player. I took lessons at the park, I competed in tournaments, and played, for two years, on the varsity team. I was in possession of a few physical attributes. Though I wasn’t tall, and would...
Jannik Sinner Spoils an American U.S. Open Dream September 11, 2024
Sometimes in New York it gets late, early. Flushing, on Sunday, was no different. Even before the show started at the halfway-historic men’s singles final of the 2024 U.S. Open, there was a healthy dose of red-white-and-blue showmanship. An early-era...
America’s Unlikely Tennis Star September 10, 2024
It was nearly midnight in New York City when Grigor Dimitrov’s hamstring came unglued. The commentator spoke gravely: “He’s going to dance at his own funeral. Heartbreaking, heartsick. It’s all that.”...
American Men’s Tennis Is Partying Like It’s 2009 September 06, 2024
What were you doing in the summer of 2009? Appraising Bradley Cooper’s comedic chops in The Hangover? Wondering if Obama could really get it together to pass a health-care bill? Collecting unemployment thanks to that pesky global recession? Look, the...
Ben Shelton Is Back in New York August 27, 2024
Last week, in the quiet, upstairs green room of a giant Brooklyn field house that the Swiss sportswear brand On had transformed into a swanky tennis arena for its pre-US Open fête, Clubhouse Nights, 21-year-old Ben Shelton appeared buoyant and relaxe...
A Steamy, Noirish New Literary Beach Read August 20, 2024
Twenty-five year-old Conor O’Toole, fresh out of New York Law School—not New York University Law School—is spending the first summer of the pandemic on Cape Cod, giving tennis lessons to the one percent. He is a working class kid, out of Yonkers, wit...
Althea Gibson Let the Racquet Do the Talking August 15, 2024
Tennis fans streaming into Arthur Ashe Stadium in the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center for the US Open every September might be forgiven for not pausing to notice a statue along the way. People can pass by monuments every day without noti...
The Faith of Djokovic August 12, 2024
No bureaucrat at the IOC was going to steal this performance from Novak Djokovic. Teary-eyed, drenched in sweat, grateful, sprawled out on the clay, Djokovic rose from the Philippe-Chatrier Court at the Paris Olympics and made the sign of the cross. ...
The Tinkerer’s Box of Dreams August 02, 2024
Did you ever have a box of cords in your house when you grew up? You know what I’m talking about: it was some plastic bin of full of cables and connectors for old gadgets, most of which you probably hadn’t seen in a while — but, in the event one of t...
The Best Movies of 2024 (So Far) August 01, 2024
We’re just weeks away from the fall awards race kicking off once again, when talk of Oscar contenders and film-festival premieres will capture all our attention. There’s still lots to come from the festival circuit, too — our tickets for November’s G...
In Depth with Michael Chang July 30, 2024
PARIS – Thirty-five years later, Michael Chang’s underdog run to the 1989 French Open title is still one of the best stories in sports.It was historic. Chang was and remains the youngest man to win a Grand Slam singles title. He was 17 years and 109 ...
Playing to the End July 19, 2024
Just before this year’s Wimbledon final, as Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz waited with their bags in a corridor, a tournament official came up to explain the order in which they would walk out onto Centre Court. According to a Wimbledon custom, th...
The Upstarts at Wimbledon July 16, 2024
Before this year, the past seven women’s singles titles at Wimbledon were won by seven different players. Then, on Saturday, Barbora Krejčíková became the eighth new champion in a row. Her victory was a surprise—but it was not as shocking as what she...
The Loneliness of the Low-Ranking Tennis Player July 02, 2024
I was 10 when I first told my folks that I wanted to give up playing tennis. They didn’t yield then, and they never did. Tennis was our family business. I first picked up a racket at the age of three, and spent 15 years of my life travelling the worl...
