Once again, the top four seeds are in the quarters of a Grand Slam, and most likely, once again they’ll reach the semis.  How many times are we going to see Djokovic, Fededer, Nadal, and Murray play one another?  They’ve played so many great matches already — what more can they do?  The rematches will [...]

All my life I have been playing tennis and reading Tennis Magazine, so it was a thrill two years ago when Peter Bodo published an essay I wrote about searching for Bill Tilden’s grave in the U.S. Open issue. Earlier this year I happened to play Anna Mamalat, a 15-year-old girl with a professional world [...]

Even though Andy Roddick once pondered how someone could spend four hours watching cars make left turns, the ATP tour and NASCAR have a lot more in common than you might think.  For starters, the season-ending pinnacle events in both solo sports take place at the same time — The Sprint Cup finale is today, and [...]

Tuesday night my buddy Anthony and I had planned one last match outdoors before the days get too short and the weather too cold and play moves under the inflatable bubble that covers four of the nine courts at Green Valley Tennis Club in Haddon Township, N.J. My mother-in-law was in town to babysit, and [...]

I’ve been updating this blog more infrequently than I’d like over the past few months, in part because of a new job but also due to the distraction of a major renovation of our row house in Philadelphia.  I didn’t think this project — tearing down and rebuilding the brick three-story front of a 103-year-old row [...]

Jim Courier often does not get his due when American tennis players are discussed, but  he is the only one to win two French Opens (’91, ’92) since pros started playing Grand Slams 42 years ago.  And he is one of only three Americans in history to win the tournament twice (the others being Frank [...]

On mornings the past few weeks before work I’ve flipped on the Tennis Channel with breakfast, watching the ATP matches on red clay from Monte Carlo, Barcelona and this past week Rome, perhaps the best time of year for the tennis tour as long as you don’t mind that there aren’t any American competitors deep in [...]

Let me set the scene for you:  Weekly doubles match, indoors, Court 3, under a bubble covering four clay courts.  In the very first game I was struggling to hold serve when Anthony Pozzi, a good friend and lefty opponent possessing a devastating drop-overhead volley (yes, it doesn’t seem possible but it is — a dropper from [...]

I doubt most readers of this blog have been to an American dog track, where greyhounds run a frantic loop chasing an electronic rabbit that scoots along the rail.  In Sarasota, Fla., the announcer starts each race with a fevered, “Here comes lucky!” the dogs take off, and hundreds if not thousands of fans hold their [...]

I feel like I’ve been watching James Blake lose tough matches all of my life, from the  five-set defeat to Lleyton Hewitt in the 2001 U.S. Open to the brilliant fifth-set tiebreaker agaisnt Agassi in 2005 to his defeat to Fernando Gonzalez in Bejing that cost him an 2008 Olympic medal to early this morning in [...]