Subterms
Most of my childhood friends from our predominantly white New Jersey suburb have a story about how their love of sports began — usually involving their fathers. Shaun’s played catch with him for hours in the backyard and took him to baseball card shows, hence Shaun’s love of baseball. Matt’s brought him up watching Knicks […] More
When Roger Federer, with time on his hands in the midst of tennis’s shutdown, floated the prospect this week of merging the men’s and women’s tours, Billie Jean King saw potential for her 50-year dream to come true. “I’m thinking, ‘Yes! Maybe there’s still hope,’” she said in a telephone interview. “I’m 76, but I’m […] More
The leaders of tennis’s governing bodies announced the creation of a relief fund on Tuesday to help lower-ranked players weather the crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s taken us a little bit of time, but the good news is that we’ll be addressing this in the right way,” said David Haggerty, the president of […] More
Roof. Set. Match. After their tennis club in Finale Ligure, Italy, was shut down in early March, Vittoria Oliveri, 14, and Carola Pessina, 11, were challenged to come up with a way to stay in shape. Their teammates (and Roger Federer) posted videos of themselves hitting balls against walls or practicing in stairwells. Vittoria and […] More
Novak Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 men’s tennis player, caused a stir with comments over the weekend suggesting he would have a difficult decision to make if receiving a coronavirus vaccine became mandatory to compete on the tennis circuit. “Personally I am opposed to vaccination and I wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to […] More
Coco Gauff, the American tennis prodigy who made inspiring runs at the last three Grand Slam tournaments, made it clear last week that her precocious rise did not happen without distress. In a forthright post for “Behind the Racquet” — a series created by the American player Noah Rubin — Gauff, 16, discussed grappling with […] More
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the United States Tennis Association will cut its top executives’ salaries by 20 percent for the remainder of 2020 as part of an effort to provide emergency assistance totaling about $15 million to American tennis facilities, teaching professionals and grassroots tennis organizations. The relief program, to be announced on […] More
Televised live sports have all but vanished in the age of coronavirus, but an unlikely exception emerged recently on ESPN3: the “2020 Platform Tennis World Championships.” The name was rather grandiose for a makeshift tournament streamed live from a backyard court in Wilton, Conn. It featured four little-known men playing a little-known game at a […] More
