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Tag Archives: Tennis

A Barber At Work And Men Waiting Their Turn

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September 9, 2025
Sports, Tennis
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Walking the grounds at Flushing during mixed-doubles time was an A+ way of avoiding most of the insanity that accompanies singles tourney play while still being able to see the stars. A grounds pass during the family-oriented days (I know) can be extremely affordable (free) if you know where to look for people who don’t particularly enjoy that there is a next generation, or at least people who openly do not enjoy their own releases while the genre’s popular[1].

Join the relevant servers, fan communities and message boards: this is now the way to not spend $1,000+ in a single day at a 7 train stop, provided you’ve got a full day off from work or, as was just relayed to some of us from people some of us had never heard of before and will likely never see again, do not have a job anymore. Nevertheless.

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Summertime Serenade

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July 31, 2025
Sports
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One of my greatest weaknesses is an inability to remain calm; even when silent, my hands are shaking, or my feet are bouncing, or my eyes are darting. Because of the prolonged, unnecessary chaos happening in previously functional communities here and abroad, this is now my default state.

When the going gets tough, sometimes the going has to come to a complete stop. In a summer sponsored by atrocity, brought to you by the same people who convinced your bosses to lay you off or, better, yet, convinced you to get a STEM degree a decade ago before eliminating the sciences in favor of the bomb, it’s been a little difficult to focus on any one thing and even more so for the good.

Acknowledging all of that, though, means acknowledging the rest, the aforementioned good. The candle of joy, wherever and however possible, is now the daily pursuit of millions of us. Maybe we even shared in one of these instances.

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He Says He Must, And Then He Does

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September 2, 2023
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An approachable, non-violent civil war always serves as a nice backdrop to a tennis match: think Sabarenka-Azarenza in 2019, or Wawrinka-Federer in Australia in 2017. For a moment there, we could’ve been talked into an incredible upset from one countryman to another, one of the late-night stunners that occasionally resonate into conversations about legacy and impact.

But Novak hit the switch in the third round of the US Open, and he never looked back. This is LeBron in 2018: penetrable, but incredibly dangerous when he commits to it. Realizing he was in something approaching trouble down two sets to none, Djokovic simply decided to win.

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Different Class

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September 16, 2022
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It’s pronounced FAY-der-er, by the way, and he wasn’t always like this. Early on, Roger Federer stylized himself as the tortured genius, that well-worn mentality many kids inhabit once they hit high school and discover Dylan, or Cudi, or Sondheim, or Swift, or whomever they think can better express their ideals than themselves.

His mother, Lynette, was a secretary in the South African office where his father worked for a time after university. Neither possessed particular athletic skill, nor were they disproportionately different in any way which may foreshadow a dynamo talent such as that of their son.

Of course, pharma money gets you a club membership, but that still doesn’t make you the greatest man ever to effortlessly walk a tennis court. On the occasion of Roger Federer’s impending retirement from professional tennis, which he announced Thursday morning via Instagram and elsewhere, and because he has mostly avoided competitive tennis for the past few years, we must look back.

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Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

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September 12, 2021
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Novak Djokovic's Grand Slam bid fails as Daniil Medvedev wins US Open | RSN

It had to be Daniil, didn’t it? The long, brash Russian seemingly spent the past two years gearing up for just this moment, playing to the whims of various audiences and knocking on the door of his first Slam title without ever kicking it entirely in. He had very openly been thinking about it, and since Dominic Thiem finally broke through the Big Three née Four’s hegemony with his first Slam title at Flushing Meadows a year ago, it seemed that Daniil Medvedev would soon enter the chat himself.

Djokovic v. Medvedev, the top two seeds facing each other, was the logical end, and the one that most wanted: even after Novak’s dressing down of Daniil in straight sets in Melbourne in January, there was a feeling that the latter was gearing up all along for another match with the current best player on the planet. He got it, and with nothing less than a calendar Slam on the line.

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Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?

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June 13, 2021
Sports, Tennis
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Novak Djokovic wins French Open in dramatic comeback

It’s one thing to win a Grand Slam in the first place – to be physically gifted enough from the start, to train hard enough to be the best tennis player in your town, and then your region, and then your country, and eventually the world, at least for a moment. To do that once is a monumental feat, a testament to all the things we’re told we should aspire to cultivate.

On Sunday, Novak Djokovic won his nineteenth singles title and second French Open championship. Nevermind that he is now only one behind Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal for the men’s record for career Slams – he had to beat Nadal, the clay king and thirteen-time champion at Roland Garros to do it, and then overcome a two-set deficit, something he’d never done in a Slam final, to Stefanos Tsitsipas. All the while, he never looked in doubt.

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Ashes to Armstrong: Snapshots of the 2019 US Open

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August 29, 2019
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Photo courtesy of moi

On a breezy August evening, one perfectly fit for briefly forgetting both the sweltering summer and its miserly, frozen, hibernating kin, I sojourned to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens to take in the selected offerings from the first round of this year’s US Open. Specifically, three players – Rafael Nadal, Aryna Sabalenka and Nick Kyrgios – offered their assorted splendors to varying degrees, making for predictably excellent tennis. There are worse ways to turn the night into the morning.

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Don’t Breathe Too Deep

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January 28, 2019
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Saeed Khan/AFP

On many more occasions than is worth counting throughout this Australian Open, announcers made mention of how hot it is, how hot it’s gotten, how hot it can be. All of us know this all the time, increasingly, even in the sullen cold of a North American East Coast early morning in January. When it’s cold, we pine for the heat; when it’s hot, oof, maybe the cold isn’t that bad, actually.

In leaving behind what I imagine is the world’s most-discussed small talk topic, we broach the actual tennis. Seven years ago, on this very court, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal battled over five sets and nearly six hours, culminating in a Djokovic win but what Rafa referred to in the interim as the greatest match he ever played.

Who knows how the Spaniard feels about that assessment now, but it would be hard to imagine him bestowing such an honorific on his showing in this year’s final. With Djokovic’s 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 victory, the Djoker claimed his seventh title in Melbourne and his third consecutive major. The heat never bothered him anyway.

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Getting Over Down Under

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January 26, 2019
Sports, Tennis
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Resilience is a dual-edged sword. On the one hand, we admire and commend it, a necessary tool in every aspect of life at some time or other. We see it in others and say, “Wow, I’m not sure I could’ve recovered from that like that.” On the other, needing it at all reveals a prior shortcoming, if not an outright failure, or an unknowable psychological trauma, either of the self-imposed or externally-driven variety. In some cases, it’s both.

The 2019 Australian Open women’s final, between Naomi Osaka and Petra Kvitova, was one of mutual resilience. Each player carried something into the match, and with each point, it seemed to weigh ever more heavily. When Osaka finally prevailed over Kvitova, and everything else, to win 7-6, 5-7, 6-4, it seemed that the relief of not having lost was all that was keeping her upright on the podium.

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Under The Flushing Moon

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September 7, 2018
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Photo courtesy of moi

“Ladies and gentlemen, due to the humid conditions, Millman is going to change his attire.”

In the middle of the second set on during the men’s quarterfinal at the US Open on Wednesday night, with his opponent, Novak Djokovic, up a set already, unseeded John Millman took a precautionary measure with regard to his attire. He was sweating through his shirt, his shorts and maybe his shoes and hat, and he wasn’t going to stand for it anymore. For all intents and purposes, it’s been the story of the tournament in Flushing Meadows: the heat is just too damn hot.

The weather is a clichéd topic, one befitting casual acquaintances at a party while waiting for someone better to arrive, anyone who rides public transit at any time and Al Roker. At best, it should merely be tertiary fare for the final Grand Slam of the year. Yet, it has defined many of the matches so far, including Millman’s shocking, four-set upset of Roger Federer in the round of 16. Mother Nature would not sway Novak Djokovic so easily.

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