tennis
No balls
Borg vs McEnroe is a dramatised account of one of the greatest tennis rivalries of all time — between Bjorn…
My wife’s revenge has me at break point
Fifteen years ago, when I was The Spectator’s drama critic, Caroline used to complain that she had become a ‘theatre…
Match made in heaven
Tennis is best played with a wooden racket on a shady lawn somewhere close to Dorking. There is no need…
Always the Superbrat
John McEnroe’s father calls. In fact, he calls McEnroe’s manager’s phone, presumably because dad doesn’t have a direct line to…
Why I won’t be watching Wimbledon
Write about things you really know was the advice Papa Hemingway offered wannabe writers, so here goes: the French Open…
Hearing that 60 is the new 40 makes me want to punch the nearest octagenarian
New York I went downtown to Katz’s the other day and had a pastrami sandwich that made me want…
The secret to doing better at darts – and life
I have always been intrigued by the scoring systems for different sports, and the degree to which they contribute to…
Ray Moore lost his job for telling the truth
My old friend and one-time doubles partner Ray Moore has stepped down as chief executive of the Indian Wells Tennis…
Tim Parks’s one-sided ‘love story’ is a long trudge in the rain
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a…
John Terry’s ‘farewell’ is a load of hypocritical old tosh
Just when you were thinking that the Premier League had become a much nicer place without José Mourinho in it,…
This could be the year that sport starts to die
If sport loses the public’s faith – and it’s starting to – then all its power and glory will fade
The Davis Cup will be one final flourish for Andy’s Barmy Army
There’s nothing quite like a sporting celebration, but the lash-up after Britain’s (almost) inevitable victory in the Davis Cup tennis…
Serena Williams is an all-time great – but is it wrong not to declare her the greatest?
Serena Williams, according to some commentators the greatest woman who has ever graced this earth of ours, will complete the…
Australia’s amazing, exhausting sporting comebacks
I have never met an Aussie I didn’t like, but, crikey, their sporting indefatigability is exhausting. Don’t they ever give…
Ancient and Modern: Juvenal and Cicero on whether grunting has a place in sport
What a pleasure it was to watch the men’s final at Wimbledon contested with a minimum of grunting, exclaiming and…
Croquet is a sport that makes you want to cheat and kill
I have always been what I suppose one could call a weed, and a cowardly one at that. I never…
Roger Federer helped me through my nervous breakdown, says William Skidelsky
Good writing about sport is rare — and good writing about tennis is that much rarer — so it’s conspicuous…
We should be grateful for Andy Murray (and Kim Sears)
It wasn’t that long ago when the most exciting event in any British tennis fan’s life was whether Jeremy Bates…
The missed New Year opportunities I would have rowed the Atlantic for
Gstaad The very end of 2014 laid an egg, and an expensive one at that. I missed David Tang’s bash…
It’s not just Kevin Pietersen. England needs a whole team of new heroes
Englishmen used to be deported to Australia as a punishment. Now they get sent back to England as an act…
Roger Alton: The day Viv Richards came to watch me play cricket
Sir Vivian Richards came to watch me play cricket the other day. That’s the sort of sentence you wait a…
