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In critical situations in matches, female tennis players play more conservatively, commit more unforced errors, and serve slower than male tennis players do in the same situations. “While men’s performance does not vary much depending on the importance of the point, women’s performance deteriorates significantly as points become more important.” (via mr)
As a 14-yo, Donald Young seemed like a can’t-miss tennis prospect. Now, nearly 18, he hasn’t missed but he hasn’t exactly lived up to all the promise either.
Wiimbledon is a Wii Tennis tournament taking place in Brooklyn in late June. I’d come kick your ass, but I have plans that day.
Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are playing a match today on a specially designed tennis court that’s half grass (Federer’s specialty) and half clay (Nadal’s preferred surface). Story includes a photo of the kooky court. (thx, dalben)
Crazy incredible shot by Roger Federer against Andy Roddick. He somehow gets to Roddick’s overhead slam and slips it by him on the baseline.
Daniel Coyle travels to Russia’s top tennis player factory in search of how to grow a super-athlete. “Deliberate practice means working on technique, seeking constant critical feedback and focusing ruthlessly on improving weaknesses.” The article starts off a bit slow but gets interesting a few paragraphs in.
For the first time, Wimbledon will pay this year’s female contestants the same amount of prize money as the male contestants. “The WTA Tour lobbied for years to get Wimbledon to drop its ‘Victorian-era view’ and pay the women the same as the men.”
This just in: Conan O’Brien defeats Serena Williams at Wii Tennis.
If Roger Federer keeps going the way he’s going, he could one day be considered the greatest sportsman in history.
Update: Via email, a nomination for Pakistani squash player Jahangir Khan, who engineered a 5+ year unbeaten streak during which he won the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point. (thx, abbas)
Update: Also via email, a vote for darts champion Phil Taylor, who has won 13 world titles, including 11 out of the last 13. (thx, krush)
Great composite photo of Andre Agassi playing a point against Andrei Pavel in the US Open last night. Looks like Agassi had Pavel running a bit.
Update: Nice appreciation of Agassi with a summary of his career.
Oh happy day, a new nonfiction article by David Foster Wallace! This one’s on Roger Federer. “Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war.” The footnotes appear on a separate page and almost comprise an article of their own. I love reading his writing about tennis. (thx, stephen)
Update: Here’s a short clip of Wallace on NPR talking about Federer. When asked about the similarities between great athletes and great novelists, Wallace suggested that great athletes possess the ability to “empathize without sympathy” with their opponent, something that is useful in fiction writing when putting yourself in the shoes of a character.
Update: This YouTube video shows the Federer/Agassi volley that Wallace describes in the epically long sentence in the second paragraph…look for it starting at 8:10. (thx, marco)
Slate’s Seth Stevenson is liking Martina Hingis more since she came out of retirement. I find men’s tennis boring because of the “big hitters” Stevenson refers to and I think the women’s game has suffered for the same reason of late.
Idea for a web site: a multi-user, multi-threaded journal (think of it like this: a journal like 0sil8.notes + a multi-threaded discussion system). All participating users each write their own journal entries, but they can also respond to other people’s entries. Take 0sil8.notes for example…it would still look and work basically the same, but other participating journalers could respond to or elaborate upon my entries, and vice versa. Visitors to my site would initially see only my journal, but they could quickly find themselves reading journals written by other people. Hopefully, the result will be a community journal of sorts.
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