If Roger Federer were a carpenter, his serve would be a saw, the handiest tool in the kit. But his forehand? That would be the wood itself. It’s the very essence of his game. Federer, 41, announced his retirement last week, marking the end of 24 years of professional tennis in which he played more […]
Serena Williams described her desire to be “perfect.” “I know perfect doesn’t exist,” she wrote in Vogue earlier this month, announcing her plans to leave professional tennis. “But whatever my perfect was, I never wanted to stop until I got it right.” Williams’s serve — the most elementally sound component of her game — might […]
When Iga Świątek won her second French Open this month, she also won her 35th consecutive match, tying Venus Williams’s run in 2000. This week, Świątek will aim to keep her streak going at Wimbledon, where she is the top seed. Świątek is enjoying one of the best runs in WTA history. Earlier this year, […]
Spare a thought for the younger contenders trying to stop Novak Djokovic from winning the men’s calendar-year Grand Slam at the U.S. Open, which started Monday in New York. The 34-year-old Serbian is one of the greatest tennis players ever to grip a racket. By winning this year’s tournament in Flushing Meadows, Queens, he would […]
Year after year, experts repeat the same mantra about the Australian Open: expect upsets. “Tennis’s annual surprise party,” read one headline years ago about the first Grand Slam of the tennis year. But in the past decade, compared to the other majors, the Happy Slam has resembled more of a Somber Slam for underdogs. Despite […]