Great Tennis Writing From the Magazine

Ewing Galloway

1935

In 1890, when [H. W. Slocum Jr.] was champion, tennis was relatively soft. His advice about serving illustrates that. ''A very swift service is, in my opinion, a waste of energy,'' he gravely admonishes.

By Frank Ernest Hill|Sept. 1, 1935

Arthur Ashe

Associated Press

1966

Probably his best asset is the variety of his stroking. Most ''big'' servers of recent years have been notable for their lack of imagination — their inability to alter their belt-'em-hard serve-and-volley technique. Ashe, though, plays his shots rather as he used to play a trumpet in high school, improvising here and there, mixing sweet, fluid notes with a few ambitious, off-key ones.

By Harry Gordon|Jan. 2, 1966

Evonne Goolagong

Corbis

1971

Weeds sprout in it . . . but it is identifiable as a tennis court because of the gappy, time-rotted net that drapes across its middle. In all the world, it would be hard to find a more utterly undistinguished court. Except for one thing: If you drew a graph to represent the career of the young woman who rules ladies' international tennis, the beginning point would have to be here. On this dry red ground, with a similar cast of chickens and dogs as her gallery, Miss Evonne Goolagong began to hit a tennis ball sweetly and hard.

By Harry Gordon|Aug. 29, 1971

Roger Federer

Rob Tringali/Sports Chrome

2006

Federer's forehand is a great liquid whip, his backhand a one-hander that he can drive flat, load with topspin, or slice -- the slice with such snap that the ball turns shapes in the air and skids on the grass to maybe ankle height. His serve has world-class pace and a degree of placement and variety no one else comes close to; the service motion is lithe and uneccentric, distinctive (on TV) only in a certain eel-like all-body snap at the moment of impact. His anticipation and court sense are otherworldly, and his footwork is the best in the game -- as a child, he was also a soccer prodigy. All this is true, and yet none of it really explains anything or evokes the experience of watching this man play. Of witnessing, firsthand, the beauty and genius of his game. You more have to come at the aesthetic stuff obliquely, to talk around it, or -- as Aquinas did with his own ineffable subject -- to try to define it in terms of what it is not.

By David Foster Wallace|Aug. 20, 2006

Helen Willis

The New York Times

1928

Conservative graybeards . . . could recall the time when women played pat ball in tight-waisted dresses of ankle length. . . . This stalwart young American girl — in short-sleeved middy blouse and skirt . . . hammered the ball with tremendous blows of her racquet such as were rarely seen even in men's play in the past.

By Allison Danzig|Sept. 9, 1928

Maureen Connolly

National Archives of Australia

1953

Like Helen Wills, [Maureen] Connolly practices against men because there are so few players of her sex who can give her a match and extend her sufficiently for her to profit from the workout. Not since Miss Wills was in her prime has any woman played with such force as the little girl from San Diego. Possibly Helen may have hit harder from the forehand, with her greater weight behind the racquet, but from the backhand Maureen, with her perfect timing, fluency, balance and confidence, has developed the most overpowering stroke of its kind the game has known.

By Allison Danzig|Aug. 23, 1953

Billie Jean King

The New York Times

1967

When she was 15 she won her first big tournament with her own hard-hitting style, and since then she hasn't slackened a bit. She still plays a man's game, darting toward the net and glowering over it like an angry bear, covering the court as a fly covers a sugar bowl, slamming serves and mixing ground shots the way Juan Marichal mixes pitches.

By Hal Hidgon|Aug. 27, 1967

Bjorn Borg

Uncredited

1980

Despite all that he has not accomplished at the U.S. Open, [Borg] is a veritable atomic reactor in short pants, a sporting god in sneakers — a champion, in the opinion of some old-timers, who matches anything we've ever seen before.

By Bud Collins|Aug. 24, 1980

Serena Williams and
Venus Williams

Damon Winter/The New York Times

2012

It's more something that [Venus, in a videotape of her as an 8-year-old,] doesn't even know she's doing, something having to do with the transfer of force, of mass, from the back of her body to the front, and the way that this transference is passed along into the shot, the way it enters her racket head at precisely the millisecond she hits the ball . . . the thing you simply cannot and will never learn to do if you are a hack or even a pretty good player who has hit that cruel ceiling, the limits of your own physical ability.

By John Jeremiah Sullivan|Aug. 26, 2012

Produced by TROY GRIGGS, SAMANTHA HENIG, HEENA KO and MAYA LAU. Photo Editor: STACEY BAKER.

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