OK, maybe it has been about homerism. I have a fairly strong recollection of a time when I was more interested in men’s tennis than I am now. A decade-plus ago. Which would coincide with what turned out to be the end of American significance among the world’s elite male tennis players. U.S. men’s tennis […]

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I was going to do this as a list. “The five dreariest assignments in sports journalism.” Down from the normal 10, when I do lists. (And I ought to do some sort of list soon, just cuz.) Then I realized I would have trouble coming up with even five events that felt like drudgery, while […]

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Serena Williams won the Australian Open today, defeating her sister, Venus, 6-4, 6-4. Serena has won more women’s grand slam singles titles in the open era (23) than anyone. And her victory, at age 35, makes her the oldest woman to win a major championship. A strong case can be made that she is the […]

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There were times, more than a few, when I wished Roger Federer would go home to Switzerland and take up yodeling. This would have been during the zenith of his career, which went on for most of a decade, when he hardly gave anyone else in the game room to breathe. It got to be […]

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With only marginal fanfare, one of the most interesting players in modern tennis history retired two weeks ago. Ana Ivanovic, 29, had twice been ranked No. 1 in the world and won the 2008 French Open as well as 14 other WTA titles. How the willowy Serbian managed to do that seems almost beyond explanation, […]

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Serena and Venus Williams have reached the singles semifinals at Wimbledon, which is a remarkable event, for siblings. It gets more remarkable. This is the 11th time the two of them have reached the semifinals at a grand-slam tournament. On the previous 10 occasions, one of them went on to win the championship, contributing to […]

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Ranked No. 1 in the world and carrying streaks of four grand slam championship and with 30 consecutive major-tournament match victories, the notion of Novak Djokovic losing at Wimbledon to an American — any American, unless maybe John McEnroe came out of the announcer’s booth — seemed ridiculous. But there was Sam Querrey yesterday, celebrating […]

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Sometimes dog food smells … not awful. Maybe because dog-food producers strive to make dog-food look/smell like something we human shoppers almost could eat. Which makes sense, since Fido doesn’t carry cash. Serena Williams may have been turning that over in her head after a salmon-and-rice dish intended for her little dog, Chip, arrived at […]

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The New York Times has an interesting piece about three smart-alecks who cooperated on a newspaper hoax in 1941, convincing several newspapers (including The Times) to run the weekly scores of a make-believe college football team and its make-believe opponents. What the hoaxers did was simple: They called in the made-up score to the sports […]

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As a sports editor, it is easy to wonder why various fields of endeavor cannot arrange their schedules so that they don’t overlap and dilute their audience — as well as the media recognition they might get that night or the next morning. Today, for instance, we had at least four events that could have […]

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