PARIS—A good way to describe Andrea Petkovic and Bethanie Mattek-Sands: cult players. Skilled enough to have had excellent and rewarding careers, but also occupying that place separating aspirants from Grand Slam singles champions that can best be defined as indeterminate. Petkovic and Mattek-Sands each bring considerable flair to the court.

Located in London’s opulent Belgravia district, The Alfred Tennyson draws a diverse crowd—locals, tourists and passers-by frequent this elegant pub for a meal, conversation and, more often than not, a cold drink. On this day, the day before Wimbledon was to begin some six miles to the southwest, it also

How it typically goes in a Naomi Osaka tennis match is that she is the court commander, her big serve and massive groundstrokes the alpha and omega of a blistering attack. On Wednesday night at the US Open, though, Osaka won by letting someone else try to take charge. Her

NEW YORK (AP) From his tiny booth near the top of Arthur Ashe Stadium, David Law paints pictures for the ear. Thwacks of the balls, squeaks of the shoes, roars of the crowd, grunts and sometimes curses, from the players, are just the backdrop. Law, a BBC play-by-play announcer, layers

NEW YORK—“I was actually, like, flying in the cockpit,” Jelena Ostapenko said when she made her first trip back to her native Latvia after winning the French Open in June. “When I saw the red carpet out of the plane, I was a little bit nervous. I didn’t really want

Has a marathon runner ever gone 26.2 miles, approached the finish line, and then just...stopped? That’s what Dominic Thiem appeared to do while serving at 5-3, 40-15 in the fifth set—double match point—against Novak Djokovic on Saturday at Roland Garros. Thiem had survived two days and 24 hours of topsy-turvy

WATCH: Tennis Channel Live on Naomi Osaka's decision to opt out of press conferences at Roland Garros

MELBOURNE—We understand “Come on!” We know “Vamos!” We get “Allez!” And we’ve heard “Ajde!” and “Davay!” even if we’re not prepared to shout them ourselves. Is the tennis world ready to add another word to its lexicon of exhortation? It’s going to get one on Saturday night, when the surprising

What is it about 40-year-old Hall of Fame tennis players and their calves? If you’ve won eight or more Grand Slams, do they automatically get lean to the point of vanishing once they retire? As much as we like to say Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi are opposites (aren’t all

LONDON—“Outclassed, outfought, outthought.” Who is the Telegraph thrashing today on the front page of its sports section? Maria Sharapova, after her final-round fizzle? Or do they have secret tapes of Andy Murray losing at Playstation? No, the moron in question is British boxer David Haye, who lost the world heavyweight

While we were playing mini-tennis to start our warm-up, John told me about the vacation to France he had just taken with his wife. “I definitely recommend getting out of Paris,” he said as he patted a backhand over the net to me. “We loved just walking and biking through

Foul weather, as much as anything else, has been the early theme at the French Open. Coming into the event, there was widespread dread over the two-week forecast, which made it look like the tournament had been relocated from Paris in spring to London in November. On Tuesday we saw

Uh oh, he’s pointing again. That would be Lleyton Hewitt, of course, who kept jabbing his finger toward his loyal and long-suffering supporters in the stands this afternoon as he turned the clock back inside Centre Court. The aging, scrapping Aussie upset No. 5 seed Juan Martin del Potro, and

It's never too late in the season to read the readers, and write back. If you have a question or comment for this column, email me at stignor@tennismagazine.com.

“People who watch tennis are knowledgeable and passionate. They aren’t afraid to let us know what they think.” These are phrases you hear a lot when you talk to people who do tennis programming at ESPN. By which they really mean: “Tennis fans are a tough crowd.” It’s true. Give

Tennis is a game of personality, we’ve been told. But you have to look hard for it. A good player in the middle of a match won’t show you much; he can't afford to. I can remember being 13 years old and watching an important 16-and-under sectional junior tournament. I

Doping, match-fixing, appearance fees straight through the roof: When you think about it, tennis isn’t all that bad today. You should have seen it in the 1980s, when there seemed to be no cure for an even more dangerous disease: the exhibition. At a certain point, Ivan Lendl, world No.

Just in time for Easter: Our weekly resurrection of Reading the Readers. If you have a question or a comment for a future edition of this column, please email me at stignor@tennismagazine.com.

Friday at the Australian Open was billed as a clash of generations in Rod Laver Arena: Two top male players in their 30s were going up against two promising players in their 20s. If you’ve followed tennis in any way, shape, or form for the last 10 years—or if you’ve

NEW YORK—“I don’t know what’s happening right now.” These were Stan Wawrinka’s first words to the audience in Arthur Ashe Stadium after his 6-7 (1), 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 win over Novak Djokovic for the U.S. Open title on Sunday night. On the one hand, you could forgive Wawrinka’s bewilderment. The