An Honor to Watch
Last night, Rafael Nadal became the seventh man to win a career grand slam. He's 24. Photography by Michelle V. Agins. Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. So it...
View ArticleIt Never Gets Old
Photograph by Alex Livesey. When an athlete grows old, when she slips and starts making errors, you say that her body betrays her. What you mean is that she betrays you. A superhuman should not age. So...
View ArticleStage Struck
Most of what I read about professional tennis, particularly the profiles of the game’s biggest names, appears around the Grand Slams, three of which are played over the summer here in the northern...
View ArticleAre You Experienced?
On the 2017 Australian Open. Nadal defeated Dimitrov this morning in Melbourne. It’s slightly past dawn and I’m up. The sky is a dull, file-cabinet gray, the thick cold scouring down on the thin...
View ArticleThe Idea of Order
Nadal and Federer at the Australian Open final. Federer and Nadal shake hands after the blistering final match of this year’s Australian Open. Every possible end to this year’s Australian Open...
View ArticleOrange Crush
Photo: Krbo, Flickr Late in the nineteenth century, William Renshaw, an Englishman famed for his tennis game—he’d won six Wimbledons in a row—found himself with a dilemma. He was in sunny Cannes on...
View ArticleThe End of the Tour: Tennis Stars in Twilight
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Photo: Christopher Clarey There are stories. And then there are “story-stories.” The twin reemergence of Roger Federer and Rafael “Rafa” Nadal this year has been one...
View ArticleThe Ghost in the Dirt
John Lavery, Tennis under the Orange Trees, Cannes, 1929, oil on canvas. The clay season is a ghost story. It always has been. There’s a ghost in the red dirt. He ran hotels for a living, and oddly...
View ArticleAn Honor to Watch
Sunday mornings can be such a bummer, time for reflection and for regret. So it was the morning after Roger Federer’s loss to Novak Djokovic in the men’s semifinal. New York was chilly and...
View ArticleIt Never Gets Old
When an athlete grows old, when she slips and starts making errors, you say that her body betrays her. What you mean is that she betrays you. A superhuman should not age. So you punish her with your...
View ArticleStage Struck
Most of what I read about professional tennis, particularly the profiles of the game’s biggest names, appears around the Grand Slams, three of which are played over the summer here in the northern...
View ArticleAre You Experienced?
On the 2017 Australian Open. Nadal defeated Dimitrov this morning in Melbourne. It’s slightly past dawn and I’m up. The sky is a dull, file-cabinet gray, the thick cold scouring down on the thin...
View ArticleThe Idea of Order
Nadal and Federer at the Australian Open final. Federer and Nadal shake hands after the blistering final match of this year’s Australian Open. Every possible end to this year’s Australian Open...
View ArticleOrange Crush
Photo: Krbo, Flickr Late in the nineteenth century, William Renshaw, an Englishman famed for his tennis game—he’d won six Wimbledons in a row—found himself with a dilemma. He was in sunny Cannes on...
View ArticleThe End of the Tour: Tennis Stars in Twilight
Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Photo: Christopher Clarey There are stories. And then there are “story-stories.” The twin reemergence of Roger Federer and Rafael “Rafa” Nadal this year has been one...
View ArticleThe Ghost in the Dirt
John Lavery, Tennis under the Orange Trees, Cannes, 1929, oil on canvas. The clay season is a ghost story. It always has been. There’s a ghost in the red dirt. He ran hotels for a living, and oddly...
View Article
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