Djokovic and Nadal: Threats of Boycotting Madrid Are Childish and Self-Indulgent

Imagine a Pete Sampras at the height of his powers threatening to boycott a hard court because he felt its surface conditions were totally different than what he had expected—or felt entitled to.  Picture in this scenario, not the Pistol we know, but a Petulant Pete who found the court’s surface too grainy and too slow.  So gritty and grippy in fact that to play on it would require... 

Yannick Noah: Why We Should Defend His Remarks on Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Yannick Noah has always been a maverick, someone who walks, sometimes dances, to the beat of a different drum.  He was a fun-loving, flashy figure on the tennis court and remains just as vibrant off of it.  In 1981, Noah infamously admitted to using marijuana, while insisting that amphetamines were the real culprit because they are actually performance enhancing.  A week ago, Noah rattled... 

Rafael Nadal’s Devastating Loss to Roger Federer Is Not Too Surprising

It seems as if this past month someone forgot to remind Federer of his age and that he is finished as a top contender. We had been reminding him of this inescapable fact the whole year. Yet like Swiss clockwork, and in a manner similar to this time last year, he’s reawakened some of that older motivation that used to elevate him to the peaks which are now the stuff of tennis legend.  Compare... 

Roger Federer: Terminating the Serbinator

The shocks are reverberating so loudly I could hardly hear my own thoughts. Paris is in an uproar! This was the unforeseeable prediction; this was the unplayable motif. As I write this, Roger Federer just took Novak Djokovic 6-3 in the second set after taking the first set in a nail-biting tiebreaker. In the process, Roger Federer is making me look quite the fool. The first set started off as a see-saw... 

French Open: Still in the Dark Ages

Dark places scare us. The eyes are empty vessels. They need light to fill them with sensory data- information that then gets converted by the brain into meaningful objects. What is light then? In the philosophical sense, light is knowledge, and in the religious sense, light was equated with God and with creation. Dark places are scary because what we cannot see, we cannot know and... 

French Open Draw Analysis and Predictions: Del Potro Won’t Derail Djokovic

For that special breed of us, the tennis nuts who waited with bated breath for this year’s French Open draw, no more waiting is due. The draw was released today, and the French are indeed cooking up something interesting.  This is probably going to be one of the toughest draws for the top seeds in a long time. Finally, a draw that delivers on the promising plot lines of the tennis season... 

Roger Federer, My Romeo, Romeo, Where Art Thou? Rafael Nadal Asks

Roger Federer isn’t dead. He is undead. He is that creature that roams the fog-enveloped marshes where other dead things slowly rot in the ground. When the sun has sunk into the endless horizon and unspeakable terrors creep in the darkness, raggedy Roger saunters through a leafless forest, searching for his soul. What else would he be searching for? He has a living body, it still seems, and he... 

Roger Federer Taken to the Morgue, Again

In examining Roger Federer’s alleged corpse, I am like a nagging Scully who must remind the Mulders of this world that we should really check the pulse first.  Grasp the wrist and firmly press your fingertips right there, now hold—is there a pulse?  Delicately turning our ear close to the man’s mouth—do you hear breathing?  On the other hand, maybe it... 

Living Legends: Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, Just Avatars for Lifeless Fans

Jake Sully can only be a sillier character if he were to exist in real life. At least, one could claim some form of originality of living life through an alien in a sci-fi metaphor for the Third World. Not so with us flesh and blood folk. When we live through other human beings in the real world we are willingly reducing ourselves to a low-budget Hollywood caricature of human frailty. But before... 

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