
Nadal Growing Tiresome as Clay-Court Savant
Okay, allow me to invite an avalanche of criticism by saying something heretical, but also something many people are thinking: I’m getting tired of Rafael Nadal and his whole c...
TennisTom Perrotta, Wall Street Journal
Melissa Isaacson, ESPNW
Greg Garber, espn.com
Mike Dickson, Mail & Guardian
Courtney Nguyen, Beyond the Baseline

The general consensus about this year's French Open is that the moment Roland Garros swings open its gates Sunday, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams will begin a slow and inevitab...(full article)

Serena Williams walked into her news conference following an easy straight-set victory over Maria Sharapova for the Madrid Open title two weeks ago wearing a red T-shirt proclaimin...(full article)

This is the WTA's 40th anniversary and there has been a series of events commemorating those four decades of rich history. Thirty years ago, a young American in Paris crafted one ...(full article)

For the latest episode of his extraordinary comeback, Rafael Nadal visited a near-humiliation on Roger Federer. It was as if his seven-month absence from the game with knee troubl...(full article)

ROME — Serena Williams solidified her status as the overwhelming favorite for the French Open by defeating Victoria Azarenka 6-1, 6-3 in the final of the Italian Open on Sunday....(full article)


Okay, allow me to invite an avalanche of criticism by saying something heretical, but also something many people are thinking: I’m getting tired of Rafael Nadal and his whole c...

During his playing days Jimmy Connors was never one for pulling punches, and even though the American tennis icon is now in the business of writing books, his pugilistic side is s...

What was lining up to be Maria Sharapova’s best chance at beating Serena Williams for the first time in eight years turned into yet another example of Serena’s current dominanc...

When I first spoke with Sloane Stephens about her relationship with Serena Williams, her voice lit up with joy. It was during last year's U.S. Open, just before she defeated Tatja...

What is it with the French and Rafael Nadal? Never feeling the full love of the notoriously arrogant and fair-weathered throngs in Paris, Nadal – despite winning the French Ope...

There is a moment most of the way through Venus and Serena, a new documentary about the Williams sisters, in which Serena lists the different personalities she sometimes takes on. ...

Sloane Stephens absolutely obliterated Serena Williams in an interview with ESPN The Magazine, saying the two do not enjoy a close relationship and that she has been shunned by Wi...

It's most likely the last thing she wants to talk about these days, the now 39-year-old Monica Seles. She will turn 40 this December, and yet she hardly wishes to pull up the rei...

Watching the men in Barcelona and the women in Stuttgart on Sunday, I started to wonder: Which is more impressive, that Rafael Nadal won his eighth title at his second clay-court...

It’s a good time to be a tennis player. Every other week, it seems, one of the Grand Slams announces a whopping double-digit boost in prize money. Today it was Wimbledon’s tu...

So much for the injured ankle. Just two weeks after a hobbled Novak Djokovic led Serbia to a thrilling victory over the United States in Davis Cup play, Djokovic played a nearl...

For the last few weeks we’ve been hearing a lot about Andy Murray’s clay-court game. He claimed he had a chance at the French Open title. He said he was going to make a bigge...

On the one hand, we should really know everything there is to know about the Williams sisters by now, shouldn't we? As Venus and Serena, a new documentary, makes clear, the two ha...

Tomorrow, after a few weeks of throat-clearing in places like Monterrey, Katowice, and Casablanca (sounds like a law firm, doesn’t it?), the clay-court season begins in earnest ...

So after a winter of uncertainty we’re back where we were in 2005, 2006, 2007, and pretty much every year since. It’s April, the men are swinging into Monte Carlo, and the wo...

QUEENS, N.Y.—It’s a chilly, metal-bright April afternoon, but the atmosphere inside the tennis facility is cozy. The high-tech lights create an ideal combination of bright and...

CHARLESTON, S.C.—The Sister Sledge anthem “We Are Family” blared from the sound system as the Williams sisters stepped on court for today’s Family Circle Cup semifinal sho...

Once again, emerging Davis Cup hero Novak Djokovic has been asked to step up for Serbia, as well as for the Davis Cup competition. And once more, Djokovic is answering the call. ...

It’s a stretch to say that Andy Murray took the No. 2 ranking away from Roger Federer when he won the Miami Masters on Sunday. It’s more like Federer left the No. 2 ranking o...

The U.S. has never failed to place at least one man in the top 20 since the ranking system was put in place 40 years ago. The streak is just barely intact -- Sam Querrey sits squa...

This time, Maria Sharapova handled business neatly — and quickly. Serena Williams blew past her opponent with a focused fury. It will be a 1 vs. 2 title match at noon Saturd...

Andy Murray tends to play tennis in a simmering fury, and when his temper boils to the surface, he aims for two primary targets: his camp and himself. He has become known for his ...

There he was once again, a champion, Rafael Nadal, he of the bad knees who had not won a title on a hard-court surface since beating Gael Monfils in Tokyo in October 2010, who dis...

First, it was the daughter who was emotional, standing on the Australian Open court in January, having beaten her tennis idol, Serena Williams, and being asked for her thoughts aft...

“Of course [I’m surprised]. But I don't know how surprised I am because Rafa can do everything. . . His team was working with him every day to be in shape for this tournament...

Tennis did its best to serve up a classic dish Thursday night in the BNP Paribas Open at Indian Wells. But a dash of this and a pinch of that were missing. We expect plenty of spic...

In my last conversation with Ion Tiriac, the man behind the blue clay at last year’s Madrid Open, he characteristically cut right to the chase while we were talking about the f...

A European reporter settled into his seat, turned to me and advised, “Watch him.” It was a warm spring night in 2004, and the world’s best tennis player was on co...

Andy Murray still doesn't pack 'em in, even on a sultry desert-perfect night in a big-time tennis event. Not even when he has taken his game to a level projected by many to be ...

Taylor Townsend has both confidence and charm. The 16-year-old can smile when she talks about some hubbub caused last year at the U.S. Open when it was publicly suggested the teen...

When the top players in tennis speak with a united voice, people tend to listen. Thus, the “biological passport” program that was merely bandied about as a potential tactic f...

“I want to be an entertainer,” Victoria Azarenka said a few hours before her making her Madison Square Garden debut on Monday night. Those words may have come a...

As you've heard by now, Rory McIlroy withdrew from the Honda Classic last week with an apparent wisdom tooth issue. Twitter -- and social media in general -- was buzzing with the r...

It appears that the Grand Slam tournaments and the two tours are ready to make a bigger financial contribution to the ITF in order to increase tennis anti-doping efforts. T...

These are strange times for the two most famous rivals in men's tennis. After years of dominating the game's top-drawer events and rewriting the record books, Roger Federer and R...

In summer 2009, Serena Williams was playing a mandatory tournament in Cincinnati against a woman most people have never heard of, Sybille Bammer. By “playing,” what I mean is...

Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle Corp., ORCL -0.34% would like to give tennis players a huge raise. Their union is mulling it over. Ellison, the owner of t...

Rafael Nadal lost a clay court final on Sunday to 27-year-old journeyman Horacio Zeballos, a player who never advanced past the second round of any tournament last season. Whil...

Playing in the occasional pickup basketball game or sandlot ballgame could be an excellent way for young athletes to avoid injuries. Sports medicine specialist Dr. Neeru Ja...

He resembled the man we remember. The hair was the hair; a little shorter, but not short. The biceps were the biceps. The Nike NKE +0.50% get-up, as always, was customized for him...

You can say this for Rafael Nadal: he is certainly not hiding from it. With the eyes of the tennis world upon him, the 11-time grand slam winner, on the shelf for seven months wit...

Davis Cup remains the redoubt of doubles. In this, the second most celebrated and truly international competition (after the World Cup of soccer), doubles matters. The game has its...

Now that the smoke has cleared over Melbourne, let’s take a look back at some of the happenings or developments that resonate even after the last ball has been struck and the re...

After crushing four successive opponents without surrendering a set, Victoria Azarenka finally got what she’d been looking for at the U.S. Open on Tuesday: A fight. And it di...

Agnieszka Radwanska looked little like the player she was earlier in the tournament. As the No. 2 seed in the U.S. Open, the fourth-round match against No. 20 Roberta Vinci shoul...

60-29. What looks like a lopsided college football score was actually the point disparity between Serena Williams and her fourth round opponent, Andrea Hlavackova. It was ...

Andy Murray used his favourite platform in tennis – a night session under lights at Flushing Meadows – to cruise into the US Open third round with an emphatic demolit...

Six years ago, there was the endless loop of the "I Feel Pretty"-themed Nike ad playing throughout the U.S. Open, with Maria Sharapova right smack in the center of the campa...

Mallory Burdette opened the summer plotting how she would take pre-med courses to pursue her dream of studying psychiatry. A few unanticipated wins on the tennis court later...

Serena Williams walked on court for her first-round match at the U.S. Open Tuesday evening in a dark blue dress with sharp, neon-yellow triangular stripes down the middle. Her ga...

Roger Federer was his effortless self Monday in the first round of the United States Open. He was never threatened as he dismantled Donald Young, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4, to stretch his re...

After her latest last, her final news conference before her final Grand Slam tournament, Kim Clijsters retreated to the players’ lawn at the United States Open. Three childre...

Andy Murray's attempt to convert Olympic gold into Grand Slam silverware got off to a winning start on the first day of the US Open here yesterday. As is so often the case, howe...

Howdy, tennis fans. It’s time once again to break out the cape, tall conical hat (the one with the astrological signs and iridescent stars embroidered on it), and my trusty...

The modern U.S. Open tennis player is a master of racquet minutiae. In pursuit of the tiniest advantage, tennis stars tinker with their racquet’s weight, balance, string pr...

Inside Dunblane Youth Centre, strangers hugged, fists were pumped and children cheered. Boys lay on chairs shaped like tennis balls. Girls with Scottish flags painted on their c...

It wasn't long ago that Roger Federer, No. 1 in the world again and a Wimbledon champion for a record-tying seventh time, looked this spectacular all the time. Opponents would pu...

Kate and Pippa Middleton brought some star power to the royal box at Wimbledon for Sunday's men's final. The Duchess of Cambridge, 30, and her younger sister, Pippa, 28, came to ...

An irresistible Roger Federer won his seventh Wimbledon title with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-4 victory over a valiant Andy Murray on Sunday, dashing the world No4's hopes of becoming the ...

Serena Williams' fireworks display at Wimbledon might have been some 18 hours too late to celebrate the Fourth of July, but you can bet that Agnieszka Radwanska is concerned that W...

Holy mackerel! That was something else, wasn't it? What a match and what a bag of nerves all you guys must be after that. For those first two sets Andy Murray played some of the ...

From the moment Rafael Nadal went down, the talk of the men's draw at Wimbledon has been all about the semifinals. That's when Novak Djokovic would meet Roger Federer, and in a s...

Kim Clijsters walked off Court 3 at Wimbledon with a quick one-handed wave to the crowd after a match she never had a chance to win. There was no grand farewell for Clijsters at th...

A bad back in the second week — as Roger Federer remembers very well — is no guarantee of failure at Wimbledon. Federer won his first Wimbledon title in 2003 after expe...

A day after Lukas Rosol’s sensational performance, another Czech briefly threatened another upset of a top seed under the roof on Centre Court. But defending champion Novak D...

More than most folks at the All England Club, Mardy Fish and Brian Baker are genuinely happy to be here. There are plenty of perks, like free changeover towels (which cost 25 poun...

It's an article of faith that the most successful players at Wimbledon are the ones who are the most liquid movers, which would make you think that Jelena Jankovic had good reason ...

It seemed odd when sixth seed Tomas Berdych’s opening match against Ernests Gulbis was placed on Centre Court; after all, Gulbis—once the shining light of the next gen...

As the best tennis players in the world hit the slick green (for now, anyway) grass at the All England Club in Wimbledon, it feels like the right time to pose the timeless questi...

Mardy Fish was high above Wimbledon, perched on a stool in the players’ restaurant with a panorama of green courts and tennis whites stretched out behind him like a landsca...

Kim Clijsters is back at Wimbledon, for only the second time in the past six years—and definitely the last time. The four-time major champion says she'll retire after the U.S...

Centre Court at Wimbledon is not just a cauldron for Andy Murray. When he visits the club to practise between tournaments, when the place is empty of all but the staff and office...

Order, rather than the customary chaos, has been the trend on the WTA tour this year. Victoria Azarenka, Maria Sharapova, and Serena Williams have all had their surges, and have al...

Maria Sharapova was ahead, and that was the problem. She was up a set and a break on an opponent who appeared to be hopelessly overmatched. She was four games from winning a tourna...

Andy Murray retains the belief that he might one day win the French Open, but the 25-year-old Scot will have to put away his clay-court shoes for another year. Roland Garros has...

The view in Paris – and probably further abroad – is that David Ferrer will be too tough for Andy Murray when they meet in the quarter-finals of the French Open on Wedn...

Behind the microphone, Li Na sighed. She had no answers, only questions, like the reporters who packed around her, who wondered about the weather and whether she had prepared pro...

Only once in his career has Jo-Wilfried Tsonga lost when leading by two sets, and that was to Stanislas Wawrinka at Roland Garros in 2011. He came perilosuly close to repeating his...

Defending champion Li Na was at a loss to explain why she was knocked out by a qualifier in the fourth round of the French Open. Last year, Li became the first player from China to...

Victoria Azarenka did damage to her racket but had no such success against her opponent. The No. 1 seed at the French Open fell 6-2, 7-6 (4) to 15th-seeded Dominika Cibulkova on a ...

On a day when youth and audacity threatened genius, one moment illuminated Roland Garros above the many others. It arrived a little after 6pm, with the sun aching to crack the mil...

Becoming a Grand Slam champion can present new and anxiety-inducing challenges and pressures, as Sam Stosur learned after she won the U.S. Open last September. But it also yields m...

Mikhail Youzhny was having such a bad day in the third round of the French Open that he felt the need to apologize, right on court during the match. The 27th-seeded Russian scrape...

The good news is Andy Murray is in one piece going into the second week of the French Open. The other good news is this most stubborn of Scots has been strengthened by a fire sto...

Caroline Wozniacki's slide accelerated when she was dumped out of the French Open in the third round by Estonia's Kaia Kanepi after losing her temper over a controversial line ca...

David Goffin looks like a boy in a sport increasingly populated by older men. But he is in elite, experienced company now in the round of 16 of the French Open. Goffin, a slender...

Sloane Stephens of the United States discovered that nerves are natural on a big stage and shrugged them off Friday in a 6-3, 6-2 victory in the French Open over Mathilde Johanss...

If you were present when Svetlana Kuznetsova won the French Open in 2009, on a sunshot day when the jam-packed Court Philippe Chatrier resembled a bowl of multi-colored gumdrops,...

American teen Sloane Stephens and Maria Sharapova advanced on Friday, while Ana Ivanovic lost in the third round of the French Open. Stephens reached the fourth round by beating M...

Brian Baker’s family and friends had waited years to see him play at the French Open—nine years, to be exact, since he made the boy’s final in 2003. They weren&...

Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer moved into the second round of the French Open without mishap. No surprise there, but how about six American women? Without getting carried away,...

For weeks, Mardy Fish was afraid to close his eyes and fall asleep, living his own terrifying version of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Fish would awake from a deep slumber with his he...