Michael Russell won a set but fell in four to Juan Martin Del Potro.  Mardy Fish, but Andy Roddick and Wayne Odesnik moved onto the second round.  In Tuesday’s schedule, starting Monday night at 7, the remaining eight Americans see action.  The most interesting match is wild card 17-year-old Ryan Harrison versus Serb Janko Tipsarevic.  They are scheduled fourth on [...]

I wrote in May before the French Open that the tennis world should get ready for a Rafael Nadal grand slam.  That seems like a very long time ago.  In that post I quoted from the then out-of-print Rod Laver biography, The Education of a Tennis Player.  I was delighted to learn today that it’s coming [...]

I had a dream sometime before dawn Thursday morning that my match in the Lukoil Open had gone to 15-games all in the third set, and that people all over the world were following it on the web.  That’s obviously a combination of my own delusions and a hangover from the agonizing loss Andy Roddick [...]

Of the five Green Valley Tennis Club members in this year’s Lukoil Open, Anthony Pozzi had a bye in the first and then won his second round match and is still in the hunt.
Jim Lewis won his first round easily, and then put in a strong showing in a los to the number one seed [...]

Andy Roddick was so close, the ball high above his shoulder but on his strings, an open court awaiting an angled backhand volley to give him a two sets-to-none lead over Roger Federer.   I hate the dreaded high backhand volley, and apparently Roddick does too, missing the ball badly wide, and blowing the fourth of [...]

Against steep odds and the whole of the U.K., Andy Roddick played a fantastic match Friday and beat the hometown hero Andy Murray on his own turf of Wimbledon Centre Court.  (Both players are on Twitter, and should be interesting to see if and what Roddick and Murray post.)
Now, on to the final.  An all-American sweep [...]

It always rains heavily.  And give us the option to hit the close button on John McEnroe and Brad Gilbert.

When I was young and watched Wimbledon in the seventies and early eighties, I knew Bud Collins as only the man in the unbelievably loud clothes with a garrulous and colorful broadcasting style to match. I remember John McEnroe derisively beginning an interview with him circa 1982 or so with a comment along the lines [...]

In the 1920s, Bill Tilden’s fame was on par with that of Babe Ruth and Bobby Jones. He won seven U.S. Nationals (now the U.S. Open), but today he is mostly forgotten. I went in search of his small Philadelphia grave, and wrote an essay about him that is appearing in the September/U.S. Open issue [...]

When Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal step onto the red clay of Court Phillippe Chatrier on Sunday, Federer’s claim to be the greatest of all time—the GOAT, as Peter Bodo calls it—hangs in the balance. Because while this debate is one that will never have a definitive answer, I believe a player can only claim [...]