Gerald Marzorati

Fresh injuries were continually added to what would eventually be a long list; in his roughly two-decade-long career, Nadal has been sidelined for sixteen majors. But the list of victories would grow along with it: ninety-two singles titles, including twenty-two major titles and, among those, an astounding fourteen French Open wins. Nadal, who will turn thirty-eight next month, is in Paris once more to compete in what is likely to be his last French Open, and perhaps his last tour tournament as…

Alcaraz wasn’t wrong. The contest between him and Djokovic was a fight between generations—the greatest player in one cohort trying not to pass the torch to the one who’s up next. But tennis’s true rivalries pair players who are coming of age at roughly the same time, arriving at the cusp of preëminence together. These battles, if they last long enough, become mnemonic, helping us to recall eras: the Borg-McEnroe period of the late seventies and early eighties, the Agassi-Sampras age in the nine…

Aryna Sabalenka, at age twenty-five, is now the preëminent power player in women’s tennis, and, in the Australian Open women’s final, on Saturday, she overwhelmed her opponent, China’s Qinwen Zheng, 6–3, 6–2. If it was drama you were after, or even a few lengthy, all-court rallies, it probably was a hard one to watch. But if you focussed on Sabalenka, directed your attention to her game, you were afforded a near-perfect master class: power at its finest, in tennis, anyway, is more beauty than br…

The 2024 Australian Open is getting under way, and it will mark Osaka’s return to Grand Slam tennis after she gave birth, last July, to a daughter named Shai, which is Hebrew for “gift.” Since she won the Australian Open for the second time, three years ago, Osaka has rarely played at a title-contending level; before her pregnancy, she was hampered by injuries and by strains to her mental health. Last year, she described her mood after that Australian Open win, her fourth victory at a major: “I’…

This summer, it was mostly Gauff’s offense—the aggressive mind-set that saw her stepping inside the baseline, getting her body behind her ground strokes, and ending points quickly—that raised the level of her game and won her a pair of hard-court titles in the weeks leading up to the Open. She arrived in Flushing being discussed, for the first time in her still young career, as a favorite to win a major championship. But, from the opening moments of Saturday’s final, it was clear that offense wa…

The young American player has inherited the mantle of the big servers of the past—and it’s thrilling to watch.

Hard as it may be to believe, this is the fifth time that Gauff has had a spot in the U.S. Open’s main singles draw. She is still a teen-ager—she will turn twenty next March. She was only fifteen years old, and just months into her first season on the W.T.A. tour, when she caught the world’s attention by stunning Venus Williams in the first round at Wimbledon, in 2019. She left the court overwhelmed and teary; the Williams sisters had inspired her to take up tennis. People already knew that Gauf…

In the most absorbing Grand Slam championship match on the men’s side in years, what mattered most was in-the-moment decision-making.

Zheng may no longer be the face of a national movement, but she has become one of the game’s most promising young players.

The great tennis champion, who has announced his retirement, got as close to the sport’s formal ideal as anyone ever has.

The nineteen-year-old, who just won the U.S. Open and became the No. 1 men’s player in the world, has a whole host of skills. But his speed is essential, and unmatched.

Williams, who lost possibly her last match on Friday night, made herself felt beyond the game as arguably no player ever has.

Wimbledon was once home to a specific style of tennis, perfected by Roger Federer. A nineteen-year-old phenom from Spain offers the best chance for its return.

Saturday’s match, between Świątek and Coco Gauff, provided a chance to glimpse potential greats at the beginning of their careers.

The new No. 1 player in women’s tennis brings a five-tournament, twenty-eight-match winning streak to the French Open—and she may be the best clay-court player on the tour since Chris Evert.

At the Australian Open, two great champions, Nadal and Ashleigh Barty, showed what tennis can be.

Great rivalries don’t always yield great matches. Nadal won this year’s final in Paris, his gobsmacking thirteenth, 6–0, 6–2, 7–5. It brought to an end a French Open delayed four months by the coronavirus pandemic and played most days beneath the mizzling skies that, with game birds on the menu and chestnuts beneath the trees, lend Paris its particular autumnal ambience, a somber moodiness deepened this year by a gathering second wave of COVID-19. Much of Paris was closing up again, and the play…

Fans want to see Williams win a twenty-fourth major and make history. But that is the wrong way to watch her play now.

Andreescu was something of a beast herself as the night of Labor Day gave way to Tuesday morning inside Arthur Ashe Stadium. She was playing the American Taylor Townsend in the fourth round at the U.S. Open, and she scuffled and snarled—battling with herself as much as with Townsend—and finally struggled to a patchy but wildly entertaining victory, 6–1, 4–6, 6–2. The win earns Andreescu a spot in the women’s quarter-finals. In recent years, only two teen-age players have advanced as far: Ana Kon…

Defying how? An English journalist asked him about his deployment of underarm serves in his just-completed match on Centre Court at Wimbledon against Rafael Nadal. He had used it twice, effectively. Why not more? “I don’t know, man,” Kyrgios replied, looking away, far away, then back at his questioner, then away again. “If I do something outrageous, I get, like, destroyed in the media for it.” Something outrageous. Serving a tennis ball underhand. Nadal smiled when Kyrgios served underhand the f…