By Jay Winik Whether he was the bratty, scrawny teenager from Las Vegas bursting onto the tennis scene in 1986 or the bald, buff 36-year-old elder statesman who received an emotional eight-minute standing ovation at the U.S. Open when he retired in 2006... Full Article at Wall Street Journal

Tennis Correspondent MIKE DICKSON analyses a complicated character who fooled tennis officialdom and fans alike... Full Article at Daily Mail - UK

October 28, 2009 5:00 AM EDT TABLE 1 GREATEST SPORTS STAR - TOP 10 RANKING "Thinking about the sports you know, please indicate which two you think are the greatest sports stars of all time." Full Article at Street Insider

It's not every week that a two-time slam winner and major personality retires, so to mark the occasion of Marat Safin's departure, Long John Silver and I look back at his career. Full Article at Bleacher Report

Well, Stockholm got underway with a bang, almost (and for you wags I'm going to specify that I'm talking about Juan Monaco's 7-5-in-the-third win over Jan Hernych, of course). Full Article at Peter Bodo's TennisWorld

Winning ugly! That phrase was mostly associated with American tennis star Brad Gilbert, whose style of playing a slow, grinding rhythm destroyed his more glamorous opponents like Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and Jimmy Connors. Full Article at Sportingo

Sometimes right-handed people are a little cocky. They think that just because ninety to ninety three percent of the world is right-handed that they are better than the left-handed people in the world. Full Article at Associated Content

Agassi’s balls look more like (Bjorn) Borg’s balls would have looked if Borg had been on a yearlong regimen of both steroids and methamphetamines and was hitting every single f***ing ball just as hard as he could. Full Article at Bleacher Report

Never mind the Champions Trophy, Chris Evert is back on the market. According to Hello magazine (a must-read in the Times sports department), the tennis player has split up from Greg Norman, her third husband, which means that there is a vacancy. Full Article at Times Online

Whether spurred by their love of one competitor over another or simply liberated by the cumulative effect of too much beer and afternoon sun, they bellow, bray and jeer with far more abandon than the daytime crowd. Full Article at The Washington Post

The two keys for Nadal will be fitness and rust. Nadal is a player who thrives on playing several matches, but he has been knocked out for most of the summer with tendinitis in both knees. Full Article at MyDesert.com | The Desert Sun