Latest headlines from Inside Tennis Magazine, covering sport, tennis, with clear attribution and direct links to the original publisher.
William Gustave Simons Last week in Germany, Hitler’s notorious mountain retreat, the Eagle’s Nest, burned down. The news carried me back more than a quarter-century – to an ancient Bavarian cemetery where I was astounded to discover my own name on a grave. After all, you don’t see your name on a gravestone every day. […]
Bill Simons Years ago, on the opening night of Arthur Ashe Stadium, after Whitney Houston belted out her epic song, “One Moment in Time,” African American tennis star Leslie Allen suggested Arthur Ashe was looking down from heaven and smiling. Today I had a hunch that, up there, Ashe again may have been checking out […]
Bill Simons At the Open we saw Aryna Sabalenka with her dog Ash on a leash, a $110,000 necklace on her neck, a Tiger tattoo on her arm and a problem on her hands. Elena Rybakina. Never mind that the Australian Open champion had been hobbled by an ankle injury in August, and over the […]
Bill Simons Tennis loves contrasts. Lefty against righty. Power against touch. Youth against age. Fire against ice. But tonight’s US Open semifinal offers one of the most striking personality contrasts in the women’s game. Vibrant and open, tears and giggles – Coco Gauff lets you in. Elena Rybakina doesn’t. Gauff has been on tour since […]
Bill Simons Why? Why, for 23 years, hasn’t American men’s tennis been able to wear a Grand Slam crown? Why hasn’t the greatest sporting nation in the world – the one that soars at the Olympics, whose Michael Jordan-say-hi-to-Tiger-Woods-and-Michael-Phelps DNA is so woven into its fabric – been able to bring it in men’s tennis? […]
Bill Simons There are reasons clichés are clichés. And the biggest cliché in sports is “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” Today, after four hours and 38 minutes of battle, we saw that, in one gut-wrenching moment. The unseeded, under-the-radar Californian, Alex Michelsen, had let victory slip away. In the biggest match […]
Bill Simons We all make mistakes. And when I go on a three-week bender during each of the Slams, writing daily reports jammed with hot takes, endless stats and shoot-from-the-hip opinions, inevitably there’s a mistake or two. I thought tugging on Superman’s cape – asking whether the soul of the US Open was in trouble […]
Bill Simons Arthur Ashe was our conscience. Billie Jean King was our trailblazer. Legendary Stanford coach Dick Gould was cut from the same cloth. He was the heart and soul – the gold standard – of college tennis. Yet, due to the odd quirks of power and perception, one of the great leaders in the […]
