As soon as I write a post about Americans hoisting trophies in the summer hardcourt tournaments, the news all turns bad.   Roddick, Querrey, Isner and Fish all lose early in Washington. Roddick falls to 11 in the rankings, marking the first time since the ATP rankings began that there are no American men in the [...]

It’s about time the USTA amps up the U.S. Open Series with a real tennis town — Hotlanta.  Good to see Atlanta joined by L.A., Washington and San Diego on there too.  One day we’ll quit making the ATP tour pass through Indianapolis and Cincinnati, towns known more for farm shows and fast cars than [...]

Last year, two American juniors bound for the pro circuit — Devin Britton and Jordan Cox — played an epic three-set semifinal in the boys singles.  Cox, then 17, won 6-3, 6-7 (5), 16-14, the final set lasting 83 minutes (which in the pre-Isner/Mahut days seemed liked a long time). Cox lost in the finals (pictured [...]

6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68.
Epic. Unbelievable.  Amazing.  Classy.  Gracious. 
Aces 112 to 103.
Eleven hours, five minutes.

“Even the scoreboard has died,” the announcer on Radio Wimbledon said at 47-games all.  Later, the internet digital scoreboard I was following online flaked out too, unable to post a five in the column that rarely sees a digit, so at 50-50 the score read 0-0.   Ultimately, Georgia Bulldog alum John Isner and Frenchman Nicholas Mahut played to the outrageous score of 59-59  in [...]

First there was the prime-time feature on 60 Minutes last month, and this week a full-length profile by L. Jon Wertheim in Sports Illustrated.  It’s great to see the soon-to-be-best doubles team in the history of tennis getting some recognition.  It has been long overdue, as the media’s attention to doubles has been relatively non-existent.

Peter Bodo of Tennis magazine thinks so.  “I believe he’s going to do it, if not this year, then the next. If not then, then sometime,” Bodo writes on his blog. Roddick is coming off one of his best months ever, winning the Sony Ericsson and finishing second in Indian Wells.  He had not reached a Masters [...]

From Pete Sampras’ win in the 1990 U.S. Open to Andre Agassi’s win in New York in 1999, American men won 21 of the 40 Grand Slams of the decade.  The following ten-year stretch started strong, with Sampras, Aggasi and Andy Roddick combining for six more through September 2003.  However, since Roddick’s U.S. Open win seven years ago, only Andy has come [...]

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 [...]

There’s a Flatlanders song in which Joe Ely sings: “I thought I had died and gone to heaven/in fact, I had lived and gone to hell.”  That might describe the five days that passed for fans of American men’s tennis from the point where Andy Roddick almost took a two-sets-to-none lead over Roger Federer in [...]