For someone with a mouth on him, Nick Kyrgios went quietly in his opening round match at the Western & Southern Open, losing to Richard Gasquet 6-2, 61.
You’ll recall that Gasquet was Kyrgios’ opponent during Socks-gate at Wimbledon when he nonchalantly decided to change his socks in the middle of the action. But that was nothing compared to going all “Scarlet Letter” on Stan Wawrinka’s girlfriend at the Rogers Cup in Montreal. ...
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In my debut novel “Water Music,” the first in my series “The Games Men Play,” tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar befriends rising Australian star Evan Connor Fallon – a rebel forever in search of a cause, a Bolshevik always in need of a revolution. When a grumpy flight attendant denies Evan an extra bag of peanuts on an American flight, he flies into a tizzy that lands him and traveling companion Alí in trouble with the TSA – an incident that the ever-unimaginative press soon dubs “Nutgate.”
But Evan isn’t the long-suffering Alí’s only troubled friend on tour. There’s his Olympics’ doubles partner Ryan Kovacs, who makes a mountain out of an ingrown toenail and who’s thrown into a tizzy of his own at the New York Games when his parents can’t get the accommodations they want at The Four Seasons ...
Read MoreSo Roger Federer and Switzerland finally have their Davis Cup. Fed defeated Richard Gasquet 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 to win the opening singles match Sunday, Nov. 23 and give Switzerland the three matches (out of five) it needed against France.
"It's not for me. I've won enough in my career and did not need to tick any empty boxes," Federer said of the emotional win. "I'm just happy for everybody else. I'm happy we could live a great tennis historic moment in our country."
Yeah, uh-huh. Let’s not pull any punches here. Winning the Davis Cup was the only thing Federer hadn’t done in tennis. Tennis and thus, the Davis Cup may no longer be a big deal in this country, as American men’s tennis is somewhat in disarray. (If you want to see America win the Cup, check out my novel “Water Music,” part of “The Games Men Play” series, in which Iraqi-American prodigy Alí Iskandar delivers the goods.)
But tennis and the Cup are still a big deal internationally. With this win, Fed’s career is complete. It has to be satisfying, particularly as rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic helped the Spanish and Serbian teams respectively to Cups.
But Spain and Serbia have a lot of tennis depth. Switzerland has Feddy and Stan “the Man” Wawrinka. Credit “the Stanimal” with playing lights out against Jo-Wilfred Tsonga on Friday, then teaming with Fed to win the doubles Saturday. ...
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