Tag Archives: tennis

High Strung, Ready to Explode

By Robin Bates | Published: August 27, 2011

Abraham Verghese uses the tightly strung rackets of Swedish tennis great Bjorn Borg as a metaphor for the state of his marriage, pushed to the breaking point by his workaholism.

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Spain’s Tiger Burning Less Bright

By Robin Bates | Published: July 9, 2011

Did the god that made the elegant strokes of Roger Federer also make the bruising style of Nadal? Like William Blake gazing at the lamb and the tiger in “Tyger, Tyger,” we can only shake our heads bemused.

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In Life as in Poker, Trust What You Know

By Robin Bates | Published: July 2, 2011

Novelist Rachel Kranz talks about trust, both in poker and novel writing. Once you have the knowledge and the skill, she says, what remains is trusting yourself.

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2010 Sports, Seen through Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: January 1, 2011

Sports Saturday – 2010 in Review Since New Year’s Day falls on a “Sports Saturday” this year, I’ll take the occasion to review the year in sports through the vantage point of renewal. The first year of the new decade had a number of joyous firsts. It was a year when the city of New […]

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Poetry at Wimbledon

By Robin Bates | Published: July 3, 2010

Sports Saturday I’m still trying to process the Ghana and Brazil defeats and will write about the World Cup in the next two Friday posts.  For the moment, I’ll take a breather and turn to tennis. Trust Wimbledon, the classiest of the tennis tournaments, to work poetry into the occasion.  I wrote last year about […]

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Soccer Highs and Lows and a Tennis Epic

By Robin Bates | Published: June 26, 2010

John Isner         Sports Saturday – “It’s incredible!  You could not write a script like this!” So proclaimed the announcer in the U. S. – Algeria World Cup match when Landon Donovan netted a stoppage time goal to avoid elimination and send the Americans forward to the next round. In other words, a sports announcer’s ultimate […]

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The Prizefighter vs. the Yokel

By Robin Bates | Published: June 5, 2010

Sports Saturday So my tennis idol, Roger Federer, is out of the French Open.  Before the semi-finals.  Federer’s astounding streak of 23 straight appearances in Grand Slam semi-final matches is one of the great streaks in sports and will never be approached.  (To get a sense of its magnitude, consider that Rod Laver and Ivan […]

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Applying Kipling’s “If” to Wimbledon

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2009

An exhilarating and exhausting week at Wimbledon has come to an end with an exhilarating and exhausting match between Swiss player Roger Federer and American Andy Roddick. Roddick was once my favorite player and Federer is my current favorite so I felt torn as I watched the longest match in grand slam history. It came […]

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Roger Federer and the Cavalier Poets

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2009

I’m going to put off my follow-up post to Twelfth Night until Monday because I just came across an interesting article that invites a timely response. As a tennis player and fan of Roger Federer, I am still vibrating over his having won at the French Open this past Sunday. After his archrival Rafa Nadal […]

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