Thoughts on Men’s Draw Before U.S. Open Semifinals

The chalk held, that’s all that we can say when we look at the final four that survived the first five round of the U.S. Open in Flushing Meadows. There were no real surprises in the end, nothing out of the ordinary that would really leave anybody with a legitimate suspicion that things are in disarray in the men’s game. There’s the world’s top player, Novak Djokovic, is there after Janko Tipsarevic withdrew from their quarterfinal... Read More

Stats and Sensibility: Three Ways to Rethink Serve Stats

  I decided to wander over to the ATP World Tour website for no other reason than to see if the leaders in the various statistical categories were the leaders in the rankings. By and large what I saw was what I expected to see. There were a few oddities there at the top of some of the categories, for sure, but for the most part the top players in the game were the statistical leaders as well. Do the statistics really tell the whole tale of greatness?... Read More

A Few Early-Round Musings from Wimbledon

With the second round closing up today at Wimbledon and the start of third-round matches, we’re nearing the first weekend with the brackets and the shape of this year’s slice of history beginning to crystallize out of the raw materials of pre-match expectation. The first two rounds are the place where we discover the very best that tennis has to offer… and bring out the very worst for those who fail to deliver on expectation. With... Read More

The Importance of the Proper Diet

In this era of sports, where we are always on the lookout for the next athlete to get caught with performance-enhancing drugs, it runs counter to the way we intuitively think to realize how many athletes might be suffering from an intake of performance-hindering substances. Yet after Novak Djokovic revealed recently that he had changed his diet to combat gluten allergies, it is amazing how little we consider the everyday calories that athletes put... Read More

NTSF 129: Fighting Through Adversity…

Boy, do I really need a new pair of glasses. Constructed as much out of electrical tape and Gorilla Glue as they are the original frames these days, my literal worldview just keeps getting more and more askew as they warp and wind around. Yet despite the fact that I seem to be harder on spectacles than Djokovic on his rackets, I keep on persevering. Perhaps that’s why I always see things a little differently… and that’s not necessarily... Read More

Next Page »