Features

In 1957, John Gardiner raised the bar at a tennis resort in Carmel. There's no one left who can reach it.

Between the brand activations and choreographed energy, it felt like modern China itself: futuristic and polished; still striving to assert its place on the world stage.

Padel has emerged as a more-approachable alternative to tennis, drawing in a vast customer base eager for a sport that eschews the traditional formality often associated with tennis clubs. This shift speaks to a broader opportunity in presenting a warm front door that’s wide open for newcomers; Tennis could stand to take note.

In which a never-cruiser cruises, crushes balls, converts.

We talked with Grand Slam winner and former world no. 4 Roscoe Tanner—at one time everyone’s favorite bad boy—about his time on tour with Borg and Ashe, getting out on the Champions Tour [Jim Courier: please make it happen], and tiny shorts. His new book, Second Serve, reconciles past mistakes (and there were quite a few) with what he’s learned since. 

Wherein Randi Stern attempts her best performance as Calm Person while internally panicking that she's forgotten how to hit the ball and facing questions like “What if your partner’s on fire and you’re spinning in circles like the Roomba when it gets stuck in cords?”

Every fall, the professional tennis tours descend on China. And every fall, the same Western headlines surface: empty seats, muted atmospheres, and the inevitable question, “Does China really care about tennis?”

Lifelong table-tennis player E.Y. Zhao's new book, Underspin (Astra House, 2025), is a coming-of-age story that explores the adolescent pursuit of greatness against the backdrop of a sport that—as with all racquet sports these days—is having a major moment.

Every September, Korea's one and only international tennis tournament, the Korea Open, takes place—and owing to the global influence of K-culture between entertainment like BTS, K-pop Demon Hunters, and the global culinary contribution of Buldak spicy noodles, Seoul has become a city that many players want to visit.

“Great athletes usually turn out to be stunningly inarticulate about just those qualities and experiences that constitute their fascination,” David Foster Wallace wrote in 1992 after finding himself disappointed by Tracy Austin’s autobiography. Thirty-three years later and little has changed about the sports memoir genre, as evidenced by Heartbeats, Björn Borg’s new autobiography, which hits stores in the U.S. next week.