Belinda Bencic and Karolina Pliskova are two players who could each use a little of what the other one has. If Bencic has a weakness, it’s her lack of putaway power, something that comes naturally to Pliskova. Conversely, Pliskova’s flaw—the long strides that can keep her from moving forward proactively—is

Daily Serve—Breaking down the US Open draws from Flushing Meadows

With 2017 nearing its close, it's time to decide what was the year's best match. Steve Tignor will relive his top 10 contests over the next two weeks—but which was your favorite? We want to know, so vote for your favorite match in our poll. Tennis Channel will air the

MELBOURNE—“I felt like I was one foot out of the tournament.” Those were Caroline Wozniacki’s words on Wednesday at the Australian Open. Now she’s into the quarterfinals after a routine 6-3, 6-0 win over Magdalena Rybarikova. Another player once said nearly the same words here and won the whole thing.

WATCH—Stories of the Open Era - Williams sisters return to Indian Wells:

DOHA — Maria Sharapova took to the court on Monday night against an unfamiliar opponent, fellow 30-year-old Monica Niculescu. On paper, it was the former No. 1’s match to win, but the Romanian qualifier ran away with the upset, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3. Though it was her first time playing Sharapova,

To put it in fiscal terms, we’ve reached the end of Q1 in 2019. The season is three months old, the spring hard-court events in the U.S. are over, and the clay swing, which will occupy us until the middle of June, has tentatively begun. What should the biggest story

Sp A shorter version of this post appeared on ESPN.com yesterday. Shahar Peer, with the winds of poetic justice firmly at her back, is on a run at the women's event in Dubai. Today the Israeli, who was denied a visa by the United Arab Emirates last year to play

It's hard to see how my predictions could have been further off. I picked Henin-Hardenne in two and Nadal in five. As we all know, it was Mauresmo in three and Federer in four. The first one was the real surprise. Henin-Hardenne folded and Mauresmo kept her game and her

NEW YORK—Can a five-set match contain just two thoroughly competitive games? That’s how Roger Federer’s strange, topsy-turvy, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1, 1-6, 6-4 win over Frances Tiafoe in the first round on Tuesday night felt. The match went the distance, but lasted just two hours and 37 minutes; that’s 13 minutes

After a flying start, the new tennis season slows back down during week two. Most of the the game’s single-name stars—Nole, Roger, Rafa, Serena, and Maria—are in practice-and-promote mode before the year’s first major, the Australian Open, begins next Monday. But there are still four tune-up events on tap, and

“The change on the men’s ranking, top of the men’s rankings, is coming,” Novak Djokovic said earlier this week in Rome. “Whether it’s gonna happen in a month or a year or whatever, I don’t know.” You might think Djokovic would be the last person to welcome this change. He

Last week, the men opened their European clay-court season in Monte Carlo; this week the women do the same in Stuttgart. The cavernous indoor arena there doesn’t come with quite the same view—you can’t see the sun, let alone the Mediterranean—but it does come with a similarly stacked field. On

“I just have to figure out a way to win a final,” Serena Williams said at Wimbledon last summer, after losing the championship match to Simona Halep. “Maybe playing other finals outside Grand Slams would be really helpful, just to kind of get in the groove, so by the time

We went from one night to remember to another this week in Key Biscayne, though that may be all that the Tuesday and Wednesday evening sessions had in common. Caroline Wozniacki’s win over Serena Williams was followed by more drama—namely, the end of Victoria Azarenka’s 26-match win streak—but arguably less

We know that certain points mean more than others in tennis. Sometimes, if they’re long enough and exhausting enough, and they come at just the right time, they can send a match off into an entirely new direction. In Rafael Nadal’s 6-4, 6-1 win over Dominic Thiem in the Barcelona

It looked ominous from the start for Novak Djokovic today. Not only did he come out struggling with his own game—his footing, his movement, his forehand, even his defense—but his opponent, Roger Federer, appeared to have something extra in the bag today. At 1-1 in the first, Federer missed a

TOKYO (AP) — Kei Nishikori thought he was playing well. Then he played Novak Djokovic. The top-ranked Serb never gave Nishikori a chance in a 6-2, 6-0 rout of the home favorite from Japan to reach the semifinals of the tennis tournament at the Tokyo Olympics on Thursday. "He was

PARIS (AP) — Winning a match against Rafael Nadal at the French Open is downright difficult, of course: He went into Tuesday with a 100-2 career record at the place. Just taking a set off the guy is nearly impossible, too. So when Alexei Popyrin twice came within a point

When the French Open's third round gets underway Friday, there will be four men from the United States on the schedule — the largest contingent from the country to get that far in Paris in 25 years. "It beats all of us losing and getting on flights home," said one