The coun­try’s hottest sport was all fun and games—un­til celebri­ties got in­volved. Read More America Has Made a Monster Out of Pickleball

Tennis is un­der­go­ing a dra­matic change be­cause even god­like play­ers are prov­ing to be hu­man. Read More How Will We Remember Roger Federer?

The day af­ter win­ning the U.S. Open, his first grand slam ti­tle, the 19-year-old Spaniard spoke with GQ about em­u­lat­ing Nadal, liv­ing with his par­ents, and look­ing to the fu­ture. Read More Carlos Alcaraz Is the New King of Tennis

It’s not that shirt­less pic­tures of Tommy Paul stand­ing next to a trac­tor on his mother’s New Jersey farm don’t ex­ist. It’s just that, con­trary to the im­pli­ca­tions of an ar­ti­cle that ap­peared on the ATP’s web­site dur­ing his ca­reer-best run at this year’s Wimbledon, he knows noth­ing about farm­ing be­yond what he’s seen on Yellowstone. When he does make it home to visit, his mom and step­dad are al­ways busy tend­ing to the an­i­mals — horses, sheep, chick­ens — and Paul can’t help but chip in. Read More Don’t Sleep on Tommy Paul

Unless Serena Williams pulls off the kind of feat typ­i­cally re­served for Hollywood end­ings at this year’s U.S. Open, 23 is the num­ber of Grand Slam sin­gles ti­tles with which she will re­tire. It is a num­ber that makes her the all-time win­ningest, slam­mi­est sin­gles cham­pion, of any gen­der, in the mod­ern in­car­na­tion of ten­nis (Rafael Nadal did re­cently inch closer to her record, cap­tur­ing his 22nd at this year’s French Open, but still). Read More Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different

The newly minted Hall of Famer opens up about her tri­als out­side the ring: sub­stance abuse, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and an at­tempted mur­der by her hus­band, who left her to die on their bed­room floor. Read More Boxing leg­end Christy Martin — ‘My hus­band told me for 20 years he would kill me’

Hours be­fore the March 20th men’s fi­nal at Indian Wells, the biggest and toni­est of ten­nis tour­na­ments out­side of the four Grand Slams, 24-year-old Taylor Fritz was seen limp­ing out of a warm up. He was on deck to play Rafael Nadal, the ven­er­ated Spaniard and peren­nial fa­vorite, un­beaten for the year and two months off his his­toric 21st Grand Slam sin­gles ti­tle. In the semis the day be­fore, Fritz had tweaked his an­kle dur­ing the match against world num­ber 7 Andrey Rublev. Read More Taylor Fritz Is the Great (and Slightly Reluctant) Hope for American Men’s Tennis

In September, Rafael Nadal was on crutches. After pulling out of the U.S. Open and the re­main­der of his 2021 sea­son, the Spaniard un­der­went surgery for the chronic is­sue that had plagued his left foot for years. He’d been side­lined with in­juries be­fore —in 2005, he fa­mously won the Madrid Open fi­nal with a bro­ken foot—but this was dif­fer­ent. Read More Rafael Nadal Stakes His Claim as the Greatest

My fa­ther col­lapsed in his own back­yard in the early spring of 2019, all 6 feet 5 inches of him, struck down in a thun­der­bolt of car­diac ar­rest. Read More My Father, the White Supremacist

Before the Chinese ten­nis player Peng Shuai went miss­ing on November 2, the most no­table sources of ten­sion be­tween Western sports leagues and China usu­ally ended with those leagues do­ing their best not to of­fend the ris­ing su­per­power. Read More Women’s Tennis Had to Stand Up to China

On Friday, Rafael Nadal, the undis­puted de­ity of clay, will face Novak Djokovic in the French Open men’s semi­fi­nals. Should Nadal win and then tri­umph again in Sunday’s fi­nal, he will sur­pass Roger Federer in to­tal Grand Slam cham­pi­onships and sit alone at 21. Since June 2005, when a baby-faced, long-haired 19-year-old Nadal in Capri pants played and won his first French Open, he has lost only twice at Roland-Garros: once in the fourth round to Robin Söderling in 2009 and again in the quar­ter­fi­nals in 2015 to Djokovic. Read More Rafael Nadal Is an Artist Too

The process of re­tire­ment from men’s pro­fes­sional ten­nis, par­tic­u­larly from the up­per ech­e­lon of the ATP tour — where the bulk of prize money and en­dorse­ment deals and cul­tural rel­e­vance ex­ist — usu­ally be­gins the same way. The player in ques­tion, no longer the phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non he was at age 20, much less 30, is dogged by months, or even years, of sus­pi­cion about the qual­ity of his move­ments on court. Read More The Strange Beauty of Seeing Andy Murray Lose

Today, Simone Biles learned she can pro­tect her health first and win Olympic medals sec­ond. What did we learn? Back in 1996, the an­swer was noth­ing. That was the year 14-year-old Dominique Moceanu be­came the youngest gold medal­ist in the his­tory of American Olympic gym­nas­tics. I had her pic­ture taped to my bed­room wall. I loved her pony­tail. I loved her scrunchies. I loved how fast she flew down the 82-foot run­way to­ward the vault. I was 12, and I was cap­ti­vated. Dominique was part of the Magnificent Seven, the United States Olympic teen-dream squad for that year’s Atlanta Games. Dominique was the small­est of the group, America’s 72-pound princess, Team USA’s adorable lit­tle mas­cot. Read More USA Gymnastics Isn’t in Charge of Its Future

Roger Federer is many things. He is, de­fen­si­bly, the great­est male ten­nis player of all time. He is one of the ten high­est-paid ath­letes in the world (last year, he pulled in $90 mil­lion dol­lars, a few mil­lion more than his el­der foot­ball-play­ing friend, Tom Brady). He’s about to turn 40. He is 20 years and 20 Grand Slam Championship ti­tles into his ca­reer, and he is still some­one who, af­ter 18 months of global chaos and dev­as­ta­tion—and, for him per­son­ally, two knee surg­eries and five weeks on crutches—has high hopes: Namely, to win (at least) one more (one last?) Grand Slam. Read More Roger Federer on Retirement, Wimbledon, and Becoming Switzerland’s New Tourism Ambassador

In 1989, when I was 5, I spent sev­eral weeks in a chil­dren’s psy­chi­atric ward. My fa­ther, who be­gan abus­ing me sex­u­ally three years ear­lier, was out­raged by the hos­pi­tal­iza­tion be­cause he feared I’d be­come per­verted by lis­ten­ing to “all the sex talk” from the coun­selors. A so­cial worker told him I’d been ad­mit­ted be­cause of some of my new be­hav­ior: act­ing out to­ward other kinder­gart­ners, mak­ing com­ments about my pri­vate parts and theirs, telling my mom I was go­ing to kill my­self, be­fore laugh­ing un­con­trol­lably. Read More Watching the Outrage Over Cuties as a Survivor of Pedophilia

Half an hour be­fore he was due on court for his Sunday af­ter­noon Round of 16 match at the U.S. Open, Novak Djokovic was spot­ted in the stands of Arthur Ashe Stadium with a doofy, open-mouthed grin. He and his trainer, Ulises Badio, were film­ing a pre-match dance-off, later posted to their Instagram feeds. Djokovic was the epit­ome of easy con­fi­dence and ul­ti­mate dad vibes as he waved his sun­glasses back and forth in rhythm. He was also car­ry­ing a 26-0 sin­gles record for the 2020 sea­son. Read More Novak Djokovic is the Superhero and the Supervillain of his Tennis Generation

Sam and I be­gan the con­ver­sa­tion partly in jest. His co-worker had just eloped in Hawaii, and as we scrolled through their pho­tos I gave him an el­bow to the ribs and said in a singsong voice, “Well, maybe we should go to Hawaii, too!” Read More Me, My Relationship and PTSD

“I am stand­ing in the mid­dle” of an out­door ten­nis court on a Sunday morn­ing in Brooklyn with my eyes closed. I sway from side to side, barely hold­ing a Wilson Clash across four fin­gers of my right hand. The head of the rac­quet guides the fig­ure-eight move­ments we’re do­ing. It dips; I fol­low. After a while, my wrist re­laxes and flops in co­in­cid­ing loops. A goofy smile ap­pears on my face. I am a mere wit­ness to grav­ity’s nat­ural force, and I will stay loose, loose! and let the weight of this rac­quet head do the work. I will not force. I will not push. My neck tweaks. I open my eyes. I clench my back teeth. “Fuck this shit.” Read More The Beginner