The first thing that needs to be said about Marat Safin is that 99.5 percent of human beings would love to have this enigmatic Russian’s problems.
This magnetic Muscovite with movie-star looks, a body tailor-made for tennis success, and a full assortment of formidable skills won over $14 million, traveled the world, won two Major tournament [...]

Throughout his storied career, and especially over the past three years, Roger Federer possessed feet of clay in the men’s singles final of the French Open.
The second-best claycourt performer in the latter half of this decade showed a manifest ability to play for championships on the terre battue of Paris, but the Swiss legend could [...]

Over the past month and a half, only Rafael Nadal had played better claycourt tennis than Novak Djokovic. On a stunning Saturday afternoon in Paris, the Serbian superstar wasn’t as good as a 29th-seeded floater from Germany. As a result, the French Open has been turned upside-down… and a prolonged stretch of steady play no [...]

In horse racing, “winning by a head” represents a very small margin between the winner and the runner-up. In tennis, the same phrase could accurately characterize the way in which champions so frequently fend off talented challengers in the early rounds of Grand Slam tournaments. After surviving a scare from amped-up Argentine Jose Acasuso in the second round [...]