“Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder,” I heard a friend, a long-time tennis coach, whisper wistfully.

Before I could fully ponder the possibilities of absinthe as an emotional aphrodisiac, he removed the golf-ball sized wad of chewing gum from his mouth that I realized had garbled his words;what he actually said was ”absence makes the heart grow fonder….” (more…)

The halo of  hair framed the bright face of the boy wearing the crocodile on his baby blue sweater and optimism in his eyes as he stood in the corner of the court and bounced the ball to his famous father. Then Erik Wilander watched as his father, Mats Wilander, turned back to the business at hand and delivered a serve to an awaiting John McEnroe.

Standing on the har-tru court of the Westchester Country Club in this Monday morning exhibition match 11-year-old Erik was right where he wanted to be — sharing the same space as his Hall of Fame father — while achingly reminded of precisely what he can’t be: a committed tennis player.

Mats Wilander and son Erik

Erik watched his father’s footprints clutter the clay court knowing he can’t follow in those footsteps without paying a painful price. (more…)

High performance and high fashion can converge on court when Venus and Serena Williams come to play. The Slam sisters, who partnered to claim their second Olympic gold medal in doubles at the Beijing Olympic Games in August, faced off in their latest sisterly sequel in the US Open quarterfinals.

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His swings are largely confined to charity exhibition events these days, but Andre Agassi still knows how to put on a Grand Slam show. (more…)

Marat Safin can transform himself from a tormented tennis terminator to a whimsical warrior faster than a Dostoevsky character thrust into the center of a Dr. Seuss story.

He is the entertaining presence who once celebrated a winner by pulling down his shorts on court at the French Open because “it felt like the right thing to do”; a committed Davis Cup competitor who channeled his inner Mr. T in offering this ominous prediction of masochistic Moscow misery prior to Russia’s victory over the USA in the 2006 Davis Cup semifinals: “Someone has to suffer and it will not be us. That’s for sure”; and a sometime sensualist who showed up for the 2002 Australian Open final, which happened to fall on his 22nd birthday, accompanied by a group of beauties who looked like they could have come straight from the cast of Baywatch. Safin surprisingly lost the final to Thomas Johansson, but conceivably celebrated in style nonetheless. (more…)