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Rafael Nadal had to return to tennis some time (hallelujah!), but why Chile? Reeves Wiedeman on Rafa’s rationale: http://nyr.kr/XrbvMe
Like an opera singer coming back from vocal-chord surgery at a performance with the local community symphony, he’s hoping to make sure everything’s in working order before he takes on a tougher crowd.
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Reeves Wiedeman on Sloane Stephens’s surprising victory over Serena Williams in the Australian Open quarterfinals: http://nyr.kr/UW8oO1
Photograph by Paul Crock/AFP/Getty
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Serena Williams has been a professional athlete longer than she has not—she turned pro at fourteen and is now thirty—yet she has never been allowed to be simply an athlete. She has served as a totem for issues relating to race, class, celebrity, sibling rivalry, family conflict, and body image. The last of those threatened to overshadow her latest run to a Grand Slam title…
Reeves Wiedeman on Serena Williams: Just a Tennis Player, Finally: http://nyr.kr/Qfy2d6
Photograph by Al Bello/Getty Images.
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The serve is tennis’s slam dunk, home run, and Hail Mary. Nothing beats it for a quick burst of excitement. The shot is also unique in the realm of sports that involve direct conflict with an opponent—i.e., not golf, bowling, or darts—in that, if it’s performed to perfection, there is almost nothing an opponent can do to stop it…
Reeves Wiedeman on the return of the tennis serve: Serena Williams, Andy Roddick, and Roger Federer: http://nyr.kr/RF4yIB
Photograph by Chris Trotman/USTA/Getty Images.
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Giving credit where it’s due - Reeves Wiedeman on Andy Roddick, Venus and Serena Williams: http://nyr.kr/RtaYuk
Photograph by Elsa/Getty Images.
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Tennis's Strange Summer→
Reeves Wiedeman on the weird turn tennis took this summer: http://nyr.kr/PADd9E
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"He’s about to be thirty-one, for God’s sake, and by all odds he should be in the waning stages of his phenomenal career. Federer had not won a Grand Slam tournament in more than two years, and he looked pretty shaky in the early rounds at Wimbledon, staving off back spasms and several match points against Jean Benneteau, a stylish but underachieving Frenchman, in the round of sixteen. But he crushed the powerful Mikhail Youzhny in the quarters, beat top-ranked Novak Djokovic decisively in the semis, and now here he was in the finals, covering the court with all his usual grace, power, strategic brilliance, and uncanny anticipation, and raising the level of his game as the match progressed."
— Calvin Tomkins on Roger Federer’s Wimbledon Victory: http://nyr.kr/LCqNPe(Source: newyorker.com)
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A Legacy Match at Wimbledon→
What matters here are the numbers thirty—Federer’s age—and nine. That’s the number of majors Federer had played without winning one, over three calendar years, a drought of enough length and severity to build fears among even loyal fans that the man we’d dubbed the greatest ever had lost a step, or that—let’s lower things to a whisper now—perhaps his steps hadn’t been as nimble as Nadal’s or Djokovic’s to begin with. What this win had proved, along with the third-round win from down two sets, the fourth round win on a bad back, and especially the semifinal win over Djokovic, was exactly what our eyes had told us for the past three years, even if the results made it hard to believe: Federer was still there, a few bounces away, and, with all those gaudy numbers, still the sole member of the current troika with a claim to the sport’s highest throne.
Click-through to read more: http://nyr.kr/MgcLik
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Is it wrong to root for an opponent to lose, choke, get hurt? Morally? Ethically? Maybe. http://nyr.kr/MGl6Lk
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Tennis, more than most, is a sport dominated by psychological battles—or, at least, it is a sport whose observers fancy themselves experts in psychoanalysis. The diagnosis of Rafael Nadal over the past nine months has been that Novak Djokovic had found a place somewhere deep inside his head, dark and hidden, impossible to dislodge. Like all such analysis, there was at least some truth to it, but it was also a too-convenient explanation.
Rafael Nadal overcomes Novak Djokovic to win the French Open: http://nyr.kr/JXUmnu
