Status: Tennis historian, journalist, author, reporter, editor, member of USTA Eastern Hall of Fame.

First Tennis Memory: “Watching the Davis Cup final in 1964 in my father’s apartment, Fred Stolle and Dennis Ralston playing their five set match. I got the bug a little for tennis then. Then the real turning point came in June 1965 when my father had moved to London. One day he said, ‘We’re going to Wimbledon.’

"The Osuna match drew me in completely"

As I sat through most of the five hours and 53 minutes it took for Novak Djokovic to finally dispatch of Rafael Nadal in the Aussie Open finals, advancing through dead moments between points with my nifty DVR remote (at one point in the match, a graphic showed that Djoko was taking 30 seconds between points while Nadal was pinching, dribbling, shifting for 33 seconds), I asked myself, “Is this entertaining tennis?”

Battle of Attrition Lacks Quick-strike Tennis

Wow. This match was beyond comprehension. I’ve never seen such an epic display of such talent, stamina and ferocity over the course of six hours. Leonard and Hearns, Ali and Frazier could not have kept it up for as long as somehow Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal did.

Super Novak does it again!

By Jayita Belcourt

Leading up to the Australian Open, there was no question who was the talk of the town in men’s tennis. The top four players, Djokovic, Nadal, Federer, and Murray had all been in great form. Every paper, news article or news piece had their names inscribed across it.

And without a doubt, the top four did not fail to impress at this year’s Australian Open.

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Ivan Lendl told Andy Murray that in the big moments of a match, he wasn’t going to tell him what shot to hit. Andy’s the one on the court, he’s the one that has the juices flowing, and just like Tony Roche once ago told his charge, Lendl, to go with his feeling, Lendl has told Andy to go with the feeling. Murray apparently went with the wrong feeling in his semi-match with Djokovic.

Murray Doesn't Know the Feeling of Winning In A Big Match

2-2 in the fifth, this is going to be epic, fasten your seatbelts, the new Lendlized Murray is fighting to the finish, both gladiators are fresh and ready to take this thing down to the wire…

Djokovic won the first set Murray took the next two and then faltered in the fourth 1-6.

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You always hear the complaints about Maria and Vika’s extreme grunting and shrieking, but why doesn’t anyone ever complain when the mens players grunt and groan? There are some notorious sound effects coming from the ATP Tour though we won’t name any names.

Shadow tennis on the beach?

Fed jumps up 3-0. Serve and volley and a dropper on successive points.

Rafa regains a foothold with some batterings of Fed’s backhand to get on the board 1-3.

But Roger holds again 4-1, battering Rafa’s backhand corner and then hitting forehand winners into the open court.

Nadal-Federer showdown

It’s the 27th meeting between Roger and Rafa (Rafa holds the 17-9 advantage–which really is 17-5 if you didn’t count indoor encounters–7-2 in slams and won the last four contests in slams; Roger hasn’t beaten Nadal in a slam since Wimby 2007) and if anyone thinks La Fed has a chance of winning tonight, they’re loco.

It's the Greatest Rivalry In the History of the Game

Jackson Browne had a song in the 70′s called “The Pretenders” and it opened with the stanza:

I’m going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I’m going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I’ll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I’ll get up and do it again
Amen

The Pretenders Are Gone and The Business End Begins