The players are playing on grass again, and it’s fun to see even if the weather in Europe has put a damper on things (thud – that doesn’t deserve a rimshot). This ramp-up to Wimbledon is surprisingly festive after the towering drama of the French Open. So far we’ve had Federer winning at Halle (there was a trace of tearful relief on his face at this, his first title for t...

I know this is a leetle bit tendentious, but I’m going to make my French Open roundup a pitch for lady power. Comparisons are odious, but when you compare those two finals, they just don’t. Compare. One had real tension, drama, suspense, and insanely powerful hitting. The other was Nadal-Ferrer. Ferrer scrambled gamely, but to me, he didn’t bring the same kind of do-or-die inte...

Maria Sharapova may now have the skills to beat Serena Williams. She’s worked on her movement, her shot variety, her placement, etc. And it’s worked – she’s in another Slam final, and she just took out no less a powerhouse than Azarenka on her way. So how… how will she ever beat Serena? She must lie awake wondering this. Not all the time, obviously – she has ...

You never know which tennis match will grab you. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of available time – with a full-time job these days, I’ve only been catching snatches of the play at Roland Garros – and sometimes it’s just something about the way two players dig in and battle each other. It doesn’t have to be the top players who provide these crazy-close contest...

To explain a bit more why the cosmology idea relates to athletes: I first came across the word in a biography of Samuel Beckett by Deirdre Bair – she wrote that on a country walk, Beckett explained Dante’s cosmology to his father, and then Milton’s. I assumed “cosmology” was a Christian concept and having been raised strict atheist, I’d never understand it. Bu...