At some point in the not-so-distant past, Andy Roddick was our great American hope. It was early in the decade, and Pete Sampras was calling it quits. Andre Agassi was slowing down, and New York–area tennis fans turned to a cute, plucky native of Texas. He was going to be the new king of Queens. Read More
On the morning of Aug. 22, three days before the start of the U.S. Open, James Blake posed as a tennis star.
On a makeshift blue tennis court set up in the backyard of the Winter Garden in Lower Manhattan, Blake, the biracial darling of American men’s tennis, had just hosted Read More
It happens every August: The month drags along, too long, too long, tourists swarm the city, cicadas drone in the suburbs, fist fights break out in the Hamptons over a Sunday Times … until, suddenly, at the end of the month, the U.S. Open pops out of nowhere, to wake us up and yank us, Read More
It happens every August: The month drags along, too long, too long, tourists swarm the city, cicadas drone in the suburbs, fist fights break out in the Hamptons over a Sunday Times … until, suddenly, at the end of the month, the U.S. Open pops out of nowhere, to wake us up and yank us, Read More
As we gear up for the U.S. Open, I’m reminded of a remarkable thing I witnessed at the men’s championship at Wimbledon in July. At the end of the match, while Pete Sampras climbed over thin-lipped Brits to hug his choked-up father with the Greek unibrow, Princess Anne (the one who, after the whole Novotna Read More
I was watching Pete Sampras lose a match he should have won blindfolded. Here was the best player in the world, a cultivated assassin in his winning lethal way, unable to beat an average player who wasn’t in the top 100. It was as if he couldn’t even play the game! There were flashes of Read More
