Dinara Safina’s 6-1, 6-0 loss to Venus Williams in Wimbledon’s easily-forgotten “other semifinal” might have taken only 50 minutes, but the impact of the event is still being felt throughout the WTA Tour. The biggest story of this year’s ladies’ singles tournament at Wimbledon centered around the Williams sisters, back in the final of the [...]
How complex and contradictory is Dinara Safina’s career? One only needed to consider how the woman ranked No. 1 in the world managed to advance to her first-ever Wimbledon semifinal on Tuesday afternoon. Laboring for two and a half hours on a sweltering summer day in England, Safina played–by any reasonable standard–a grubby, patchy, subpar [...]
All the quarterfinal matchups for both singles competitions are now set at the All-England Club. The round of eight has acquired a very unique composition in the ladies’ and gentlemen’s draws, but that doesn’t mean the occasion will be any less meaningful for the participants involved. Some members of the 2009 “Quarterfinal Club” at SW19 [...]
Remember what was said yesterday about the elusiveness of consistency in women’s tennis? Saturday’s play at the All England Club only affirmed the theme. Shortly after sixth-seeded Jelena Jankovic got taken out by no-name American Melanie Oudin, fifth-rated Svetlana Kuznetsova–the reigning French Open champion–succumbed to the firepower of Germany’s Sabine Lisicki. Unseeded but quite dangerous, [...]
What is it like to witness a dominant champion operating at the top of his game? From 2004 through 2007, Roger Federer dominated on grass and hardcourts at a level rarely seen in the history of tennis. Today, Rafael Nadal’s conquests of clay represent the most awesome displays of excellence in a sport that’s anything [...]
Gambling is one of the many pleasures to be found in the destination city of Monte Carlo. Saturday afternoon at the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters, a king and a joker found a winning hand, and a ticket to Sunday’s championship match. The king, of course, is Rafael Nadal. The current master of men’s tennis and [...]
As the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters heads toward a pair of Saturday semifinals, it’s just as the oddsmakers predicted heading into the tournament: Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray join a Swiss tennis player in the final four. Oh, wait: Stanislas Wawrinka, not Roger Federer, is the man representing Switzerland as the year’s first [...]
