Can Rafa finally get a win? Can Djokovic tie Federer? Which of the Next Genners stands the best chance? In this week's Rally, Joel Drucker and Steve Tignor preview the Nitto ATP Finals. Hi Steve, This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Nitto ATP Finals. Granted, that hasn’t always

The days are flying by here, in a steady torrent of words tapped out my small keyboard. Every night the press room empties little by little until all that’s left are the American and Canadian reporters. Their deadlines are much later in the U.S. because of the time difference. You

We’ve had the Persistents and the Dominants: What’s the best co-word to describe Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams now? The Inescapables? The Undeniables? The Irresistibles? The Inevitables*? The Amazins? All of them apply: This weekend Rafa and Serena each made good on their pre-tournament favorite status and wrapped up the

“She’s looking very relaxed!” Martina Navratilova, commentating in a TV booth above Court Philippe Chatrier on Monday, sounded frankly surprised to be uttering these words. It wasn’t hard to understand why: She was talking about Ana Ivanovic. Ivanovic is a former No. 1 and Grand Slam champion, but “relaxed” is

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. Steve, Looks like my lament about a watered-down Sunday schedule raised the ire of the tennis gods. I’ve been punished with a waterlogged Tuesday. Unfortunately

The night session is old hat to many Open fans. We’re all a little tired of listening to Ted Robinson tell us that “crazy things happen in New York late at night,” as if a bunch of tipsy yuppies were preparing to hurl garbage cans through storefronts in Queens. Still,

"Tennis Honors: Kobe Bryant" premiered Sunday night on Tennis Channel Live. The 8:40 piece includes exclusive interviews with Nick Kyrgios, from a basketball court in Canberra; Rob Pelinka, general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers and Kobe's hitting partner on the tennis court; Annie Matthew, who worked with Kobe on

RELIEF. That was the word to describe the feeling that hit Simona Halep and her team on a warm Saturday afternoon in Paris.

Hey, Tribe. It was a cold, wet weekend at the farm in game-rich Andes. Daybreak Saturday morning, the opener of deer season in New York's Southern Tier, I sat on the small fold-down seat of a tree stand about 20 feet off the ground in the biggest cherry tree I've

Okay, let’s start things off with a confession; covering my “home” Grand Slam (I’m both an American and a New Yorker) just doesn’t feel the same. Roll out of bed, go to the hardware store and get shelf-liner, wait for the babysitter to show up, jump in the car and

by Pete Bodo It's official; Serena Williams has joined Roger Federer in that hazy, uncertain land tennis players enter when they turn 30. It shouldn't be a big deal. It may not be a big deal. Thirty is just a number. But it's a big deal. At the professional level,

Well, you know we’ve come to the slow portion of the year when one of the rotating lead headlines at the ATP’s official website is: Istomin Loses St. Pete Opener. Stop the presses! That would be St. Petersburg, Russia, not St. Petersburg, Fla., which is—coincidentally enough—the home of the WTA.

-Mrs Santa, TW Guest Contributor I spent 3 days sulking in London and pretending to do touristy things before my new best friend Gavin magically produced center court tickets for the men’s quarters and women’s semis. Gavin apparently had to do the sort of nasty degrading things that a nice

NEW YORK—It was reckoning time, that point in some matches when two players simultaneously sense that a potentially decisive point beckons, that the match has reached some sort of crossroads. They can feel it in their bones. Shahar Peer, once No. 11 in the world but currently the top seed

In the wake of the news that this week will mark the first in ATP history that no players in the Top 10 possess a one-handed backhand, Tennis.com offers a look back at a 2023 series counting down the 20 most impressive one-handers, and how their combination of beauty and

Hyeon Chung, it seemed, had played his part in the script, and he had played it well. But now it was time for him to step aside and let the star take over the stage. In front of a fully packed in Rod Laver Arena—with the Rocket himself in attendance—Chung

The pros are gathering in Paris as we speak. For a U.S. tennis fan, the city represents a mirror universe—kind of like that Star Trek where Kirk and Scotty travel through the looking glass and meet a version of Spock who has a goatee. My first experience in this alternate

"That’s where both Rafa and myself said, ‘OK, enough of this already.’ Let’s get back to 100 percent, enjoy tennis, enjoy the practice. Not just practice, treatment, match, treatment. All the time all you’re doing is fighting the fire.” When Roger Federer said these words near the end of the

Steve Tignor recently released High Strung: Bjorn Borg, John McEnroe, and the Untold Story of Tennis's Fiercest Rivalry, and Peter Bodo’s The Courts of Babylon, originally published in 1994, has now been re-released as an eBook. We thought it was a good time for both authors to ask each other

Sixth in a series on players to watch in 2012. Ominous: That was the word a commenter on this blog used last January to describe Novak Djokovic’s form at the Hopman Cup, an exhibition just before the Australian Open. Exo or not, it was true: Djokovic, fresh off of his