Welcome to The Tennis Phile. I will post weekly articles on tennis (with a greater frequency of dispatches during Grand Slam events), covering a variety of issues associated with the sport, concentrating mainly on the ATP tour. Match summaries and analysis will be included, especially during the Grand Slams, but the narrative thrust of The Tennis Phile will focus more on the state of the sport. Another aspect to The Tennis Phile will be placing issues within a historical perspective - superlatives are utilized far too often in contemporary parlance resulting in a dramatic loss of perspective.
The first two posts will cover disparate topics; the call for a return of the Masters Cup to Madison Square Garden, and the need for Rafael Nadal to emulate a fellow clay court icon - Bjorn Borg - in order to meet the challenge that is Roger Federer.
In addition to the weekly posts on this blog, I will attach links to my previously published articles in Tennis Week and elsewhere.
I encourage highly charged and thoughtful comments and debate. Tennis is a wonderful sport and is not receiving the attention it deserves in the conventional sports media. It is a sad state of affairs when car racing and - worst of all - poker command more TV time than tennis. (The Tennis Channel does a great job but is not yet available to most cable subscribers). My hope is that fellow tennis enthusiasts will turn to The Tennis Phile for in-depth and prescient commentary, unique stories and match analysis that will illuminate coverage of our favorite sport.
