When Kathy Rinaldi was seven years old, a second grader growing up in Stuart, Fla., she wrote these words for a school assignment: “If I can’t be a tennis player/I think I’ll just be me.” Rinaldi did become a tennis player. Over the course of nearly 20 years, between 1980

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) Andy Murray had a struggle on his hands, constantly trying to find his rhythm against Alexandr Dolgopolov before advancing 7-5, 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-3 to the Australian Open semifinals and a possible showdown with Rafael Nadal. Dolgopolov had already beaten 2008 runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and French Open

OSLO, Norway—People-watching: it’s one of life’s addicting activities that doesn’t cost a dime to pass the time. It can be especially useful when the forecast isn’t great, or when finding yourself in an unfamiliar city. Looking outside my hotel room in Oslo, snowflakes signal winter is already here. Icy sidewalks

NEW YORK—“Louis Armstrong Stadium has got to be the worst-stewarded court in tennis. People always moving around. Players always getting annoyed.” A British tennis journalist tweeted these words of frustration while he watched Andy Murray play inside Armstrong, the U.S. Open's second-largest stadium, last week. You could understand the writer’s

The big sun was dropping slowly, the sky was turning a thin shade of purple, the crowds were getting a little younger, a little more diverse, a little more raucous by the minute. Tennis fans will know what that means: We had reached the first weekend of the Miami Open.

Did you wonder, in recent years, what the United States' strategy was for improving on clay? Did you wonder if there was one? If so, you were obviously wrong to worry. After this past weekend, we know what the plan was all along: Wait for a 30-year-old, oft-injured, oft-distracted 13-time

Tennis Channel Live: Before Sabalenka's loss in the night session, Maria Sakkari defeated Iga Swiatek.

This week’s China Open marks an endpoint to the WTA’s inaugural Roadmap schedule. It’s the last of the tour's “Premier Mandatory” events, the four tournaments—Indian Wells, Key Biscayne, and Madrid are the others—that the top players must enter. Getting everyone together four times in 11 months was a decidedly modest

Hi Steve, Yes, tennis is bigger in Montreal than in Toronto, but I have to say the grounds were packed yesterday and all the upper-stands tickets were sold out before 12:30. Maybe it's because Monday was a holiday, or maybe this tennis thing is catching on. It's funny that you

On Friday I said that I was attending a family reunion this weekend. That was the idea, anyway, until what I’ll call the Lukas Rosol of storms rolled through the Mid-Atlantic the night before and upended everything. Power was out through the region, and I was forced to turn around

Sometimes the great players rise to the occasion, as they say; sometimes the occasions maintain the upper hand. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal staged a classic last month at the Italian Open, a tune-up for Roland Garros. Today, for the second straight year at Roland Garros itself, they seemed weighed

There’s a sense of renewal to the first week of a Grand Slam. Each day, various potential futures briefly announce themselves, before packing up their racquets and heading to the next far-flung stop on the circuit, not to be seen again for months. That’s been especially true in Melbourne this

For the first week of Roland Garros I'll be exchanging emails with TENNIS Magazine senior editor Jon Levey, who's in Paris to cover the tournament. Jon, Nick, Nick, Nick [Editor’s note: In real life Jon and Steve, like Woody Allen and his old buddy in "Annie Hall," refer to each

NEW YORK (AP)—Rafael Nadal won his first U.S. Open title to complete a career Grand Slam, beating Novak Djokovic 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 Monday in a match interrupted by a thunderstorm a day after it was postponed by rain. It is Nadal’s third consecutive major championship and ninth overall. He

*98648016 by Pete Bodo Mornin'. I was not exactly surprised by some of the reactions to my comments about Dinara Safina in yesterday's post; I'm accustomed to the ease with which some people toss around words like "sexist" and "misogynist." Such ease that it seems almost Pavlovian. If you examine

96465064 by Pete Bodo When Ana Ivanovic repaired to the locker room in the bowels of Madison Square Garden after losing a very close one-set semifinal tussle in the Billie Jean King Cup exhibition yesterday, her first words to Kim Clijsters, the woman who beat her, were: "I've never been

Players converge in the carousel capital of the world this week, playing for a ticket to ride into the U.S. Open. The road trip to the New York City major begins at a Southern New York Challenger. The Levene Gouldin & Thompson Tennis Challenger, a $50,000 USTA Pro Circuit men's

The Rally returns today, with a discussion between freelance tennis writer Kamakshi Tandon and I on the 2016 season that just was. Below is the first of three parts. Hi Kamakshi, We’ve done it. We’ve made it all the way to another offseason. Or off-month, anyway. That’s still a ridiculously

LONDON—Very clearly marveling at where he has found himself, Marcus Willis walked onto Centre Court on Wednesday to thunderous applause from a packed crowd. His esteemed opponent, Roger Federer, came out next. “I thought it was cool that he got out first because it's his moment, in my opinion,” Federer

Every week Tennis Channel and Tennis.com will be introducing a Tough Call around a thought provoking topic - and our panel of experts will chime in both on-air and online. Be sure to join the discussion, weigh in on our polls, or comment on Facebook and Twitter using #TennisToughCall. Here