Federer gets some swagger back

September 6, 2008

The surprise that Roger Federer was about to spring Saturday was the best proof yet that his champion's conceit is back, not just his game. For Federer this has been a year of near-misses, blunted ambition, and lost chances to make some more tennis history.

Recent columns

• Time’s working against Andy

  September 5, 2008

  Andy Roddick is only 26 years old. But at times, between launching some of the best wisecracks and serves on tour, the years and the psychic scars are starting to show.

• Federer came along at worst time for Roddick

  September 4, 2008

  Andy Roddick is only 26 years old but at times, between uttering some of the best wisecracks and serves on tour, the years and the psychic scars are starting to add up.

• Venus, Billie Jean have a bond, mutual respect

  September 3, 2008

  On the surface, they would seem to be the yin-yang couple of women's tennis. Billie Jean King is short and feisty and crackles with an irrepressible energy. When 6-1 Venus Williams is really, really upset, she's liable to frown slightly on the court. But that's it.

• Federer belies his calm over demotion to No. 2

  September 1, 2008

  It's a harsh thing to call a man an outright liar. So let's just say Swiss star Roger Federer is in a forgivable state of denial. That's it. He hasn't been exactly lying over the past eight months while the rest of men's tennis has been ganging up on him and gaining on him. He's just been engaging in a forgivable deceit since arriving at the U.S. Open.

• Lots of members in Federer conqueror club

  August 29, 2008

  It was a little disconcerting to see Roger Federer's head floating detached from his body yesterday, even if it was just on a new T-shirt that's being sold at the U.S. Open by his apparel company. But it's been that kind of year - weird looking - for Federer. When Federer had a stranglehold on the No. 1 ranking the past 4½ years and built his argument as Best Ever, it was short work to list everyone who defeated him in a single year.

• Lots of members in Federer conqueror club

  August 28, 2008

  It was a little disconcerting to see Roger Federer's head floating detached from his body Thursday, even if it was just on a new T-shirt that's being sold at the U.S. Open by his apparel company. But it's been that kind of year -- weird looking -- for Federer. When Federer had a stranglehold on the No. 1 ranking the past 4½ years and built his argument as Best Ever, it was short work to list everyone who defeated him in a single year.

• Reason to watch women other than Serena, Venus

  August 27, 2008

  You could call this the first annual Adopt-a-Nobody plan. Or, kinder yet, five good reasons to reject that lazy but rampant talk that there's no women that's "interesting" or possessing any personality in this year's U.S. Open other than Venus and Serena Williams, who both - yawn - predictably pulverized their opponents in their opening-round matches yesterday:

• Nadal clearly No. 1, but what happened to Federer

  August 24, 2008

  Rafael Nadal rolls into the U.S. Open as the world's newest top-ranked player, but much of the pre-tournament conversation and lingering disbelief surrounds Roger Federer, the man Nadal has displaced.

• Nadal clearly No. 1, but what happened to Federer?

  August 24, 2008

  Rafael Nadal rolls into the U.S. Open as the world's newest top-ranked player, but much of the pre-tournament conversation and lingering disbelief surrounds Roger Federer, the man Nadal has displaced.

• Yankees should be worried about the Angels

  August 1, 2008

  Henry Kissinger was riding in the elevator to George Steinbrenner's box at Yankee Stadium last night, his thumbs hooked around the canary-yellow suspenders he was wearing, when WFAN reporter Sweeny Murti couldn't resist asking him if he was surprised that Boston had traded Yankees-killer Manny Ramirez yesterday. "Yeah, I was," Kissinger nodded.

• Yankees need some relief from sudden skid

  July 30, 2008

  This was a bad throwback game for the Yankees in more ways than one. It started with the sight of a female fan who went walking down a Stadium concourse just before last night's first pitch wearing a T-shirt that read "Anybody but Farnsworth."

• Yankees need relief from sudden skid

  July 30, 2008

  It sounds odd to say a lot has fallen right for the Yankees this season when so much has gone wrong. It sounds like the title of some tortured country-western song. But last night was a bad throwback game for the Yankees in a lot of ways. Maybe it was a bad omen when a female fan went walking down a Stadium concourse just before the first pitch wearing a T-shirt that read "Anybody but Farnsworth."

• Beltran stays lukewarm on red-hot Mets

  July 27, 2008

  Jose Reyes is really rolling now. Carlos Delgado, too. Even Mets starter Mike Pelfrey, who knows something about canyon-deep slumps, got an engraved watch from Major League Baseball before yesterday's game against the St. Louis Cardinals for being the National League's Player of the Week.

• Oliver Perez's unpredictability part of his charm

  July 25, 2008

  If you're a baseball general manager, an opposing hitter, even Oliver Perez's own catcher or manager, the ever-changing charm and danger of the quirky Mets lefthander is that you never know what you'll get.

• Can the ace go a little longer?

  July 23, 2008

  Johan Santana pitched fine. That wasn't the problem. The rub was yet another game that left you somehow wanting more. The problem was with his closer, Billy Wagner, out of the game with shoulder spasms, with the surging Mets playing arch nemesis Philadelphia for first place in the NL East, with his pitch count at a reasonable 105 pitches after eight innings, why didn't Santana bark "Over my dead body" when the Mets told him he wasn't going out for the ninth? Why didn't he growl and dare them to pry the ball out of his cold, clammy hands?

• Talking Tiger Woods? Newbie Kim aces the test

  July 18, 2008

  Many of Anthony Kim's elders on the PGA Tour could learn a lot from the 23-year-old former bad boy who arrived at the British Open this week playing red-hot golf and talking boldly and refusing to shrink from the questions about whether Tiger Woods' absence from the field is "de-valuing" the event.

• Nostalgia reigns for icons at Yankee Stadium

  July 16, 2008

  The send-offs for Yankee Stadium have been rolling out long before the 79th All-Star Game pulled into the old ballpark last night. But for the first time, it really did feel as if the countdown had begun. And it really did feel like the start of goodbye.

• George: A real All-Star

  July 13, 2008

  George Steinbrenner has come to New York for only one other game this season - Opening Day - but he plans to be in the house Tuesday night when the All-Star Game visits Yankee Stadium one last time.

• No reason to feel sorry for unwanted Bonds

  July 11, 2008

  Barry Bonds is not a victim, and he's not caught up in some expertly coordinated, widespread conspiracy to keep him out of baseball. That discussion needs to stop before it picks up any more steam now that the Diamondbacks, like the Mets and Tigers before them, have decided Bonds isn't the answer to their problems, even if the all-time home run king is still sitting out there, unemployed, as the All-Star break approaches and the division races heat up.

• Jeter turns back clock to championship years

  July 9, 2008

  He came up with the sort of defensive play and the sort of clutch hit before that, that he seemed to make three or four times a week back in the day. This has not been Yankees icon Derek Jeter's best season, not by any measure. Yet here he was last night in an early July game the Yankees had to have - which tells you everything you need to know about their ragged season thus far - and suddenly it felt like time was spinning backward as Jeter ranged deep into the hole in the seventh inning to backhand a ball you didn't think he was able to get to anymore.

• Yanks aren't holding up their end of the rivalry

  July 4, 2008

  The game ended at 9:54 p.m. but the Yankees' clubhouse door stayed shut for 15 minutes, then 20. At one point a team spokesman poked his head out and said, "We're gonna be here a while, folks." And he wasn't kidding.

• Never a dull moment with A-Rod

  July 2, 2008

  You should see the view up here from Idiot Hill. How did I get here? Another A-Bomb from A-Rod, that's how. Let this be a lesson. I'm the genius who wrote a column just last week remarking about how controversy free Alex Rodriguez has been this season - only to get to the ballpark yesterday and find out that Us Weekly was reporting that Rodriguez is allegedly having an affair with Madonna and has been seen slipping in and out of her uptown apartment in the middle of the night. Her doormen said so.

• New-found patience paying off for Cashman

  June 29, 2008

  People are clamoring for Yankees general manager Brian Cashman to stop sitting there and do something already - something big - to improve the Yankees' tattered pitching staff.

• A-Rod's finally realized saying less is more

  June 27, 2008

  The way Alex Rodriguez is smashing out hits is recognizable. It's the rest of what surrounds him that's been startling this season.

• Mets show they're alive, it's NL East in coma

  June 26, 2008

  The Mets are like that cold, creepy hand that comes up out of the grave and grabs your wrist just when you think they're dead and buried, nothing but a bunch of stiffs. They're not hard to figure out anymore. Stop saying that. This is what they are: They're as warped as a funhouse mirror. That's the answer.

• 601 homers, a million what-ifs

  June 23, 2008

  He's working on his 20th season in the big leagues, and he's not what he was. But Ken Griffey Jr. still has that sweeping home run swing and he still has a terrific hold on people's imagination.

• Yankees' surge adds juice to Red Sox series

  June 20, 2008

  If they can keep this up for the next 12 games, the streaking Yankees will have their first chance this season to make Boston sweat, to make Boston notice them more in the AL East race and forget about that ugly little blood feud the Red Sox have brewing with upstart Tampa Bay.

• Omar deserves plenty of blame for Mets' fiasco

  June 18, 2008

  Mets general manager Omar Minaya has done a worse job than Willie Randolph during the past year. Minaya just didn't harp on that much when he took the microphone yesterday afternoon and ineffectually explained his bizarre handling of Randolph's firing in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the most classless move in sports since Colts owner Bob Irsay had the Mayflower vans pull out of Baltimore in the dead of the night.

• Mets needing big change could cost Randolph job

  June 13, 2008

  If Mets manager Willie Randolph does get fired someday soon, it won't be because he deserves the entire blame for the Mets' play. It'll happen because a change, almost any kind of change, will feel needed after one too many Mets collapses like yesterday, when the hits just kept coming off the Arizona Diamondbacks' bats no matter which reliever the Mets tried after starter Johan Santana. Smith. Wagner. Heilman. The last names didn't matter. All of them stunk.

• For Willie, it's win or else

  March 28, 2008

  The new season is here, but he is the only Met who doesn't get to shake the team's collapse last fall. As long as the 2008 Mets win, everything will be fine for manager Willie Randolph. But the first time the Mets show any serious vulnerability -- and you know slumps will come -- the memory of last September's disaster will come rushing back and Randolph will be on the hot seat. For him, it's pennant or bust in 2008. Win or else.

• Clemens dug a hole and Pettitte can't help him

  February 13, 2008

  If the leaks about Andy Pettitte's deposition are correct, Roger Clemens will sit in a congressional hearing room today on Capitol Hill and continue a crash to Earth of his own making. The narrative about whether Clemens cheated to become the greatest pitcher of his generation will sharpen into more detail. And Clemens' crossover from icon to con man could be near complete.

• Giants made themselves into champs

  February 5, 2008

  That the Giants' hotel was still standing yesterday morning after a raucous postgame celebration that stretched on until 4 a.m. ranked as only the second-biggest upset they pulled off as a team in the previous 24 hours.

• MVP Eli outduels Golden Boy Brady

  February 4, 2008

  Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was hammering his feet up and down, anxiously slapping the ball against his left hand, hurriedly scanning the field to find someone open, but the Giants' pass rush just kept coming toward him like a lava flow, incinerating everything in its path.

• Amazing Eli outduels Golden Boy Brady

  February 3, 2008

  Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was hammering his feet up and down, anxiously slapping the ball against his left hand, hurriedly scanning the field to find someone open, but the Giants' pass rush just kept coming toward him like a lava flow, incinerating everything in its path.

• They should interview Pettitte, McNamee instead

  January 4, 2008

  I know 10 million people are expected to watch disgraced pitcher Roger Clemens defend himself on "60 Minutes" Sunday night, but interviewer Mike Wallace is talking to the wrong guy. Clemens, in addition to being Wallace's self-described good friend, doesn't have anything new to tell us about his alleged steroid and HGH use. Clemens' lead attorney, Rusty Hardin, said so himself in an interview this week.

• Mitchell Report has plenty to blame for steroids

  December 14, 2007

  With every turn of the page in the Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use that was released yesterday, what had been seen as a baseball-wide scandal at the start of the day narrowed swiftly and sharply, at least for New Yorkers. It became a Yankees and Mets story that will cast aspersions on everything from the Yankees' title runs of the 1990s to the damaged Hall of Fame candidacy of Roger Clemens. A few minutes after 2 p.m, Clemens officially became the white Barry Bonds.

• Mitchell Report has plenty to blame for steroids

  December 14, 2007

  With every turn of the page in the Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drug use that was released Thursday, what had been seen as a baseball-wide scandal at the start of the day narrowed swiftly and sharply, at least for New Yorkers.

• Beltran' best shot to being key to city

  May 20, 2005

  He will go into this weekend thinking less about what his first Subway Series will be like and more about whether this will be the weekend when something big finally happens for him. Is this the weekend when something inside of him finally ignites, clicks in and breaks out?

• Make it not pay to use

  December 8, 2004

  It's a consoling little idea to think that the baseball players' union and baseball commissioner Bud Selig will agree swiftly to a neat and tidy policy that will snare the steroid cheats, and quiet the federal prosecutors and grandstanding lawmakers who are baying at baseball's door and threatening to intervene. It's equally nice to daydream about a time in which Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and every other alleged steroid user will have to live in a prison of his own shame, even if they're not prosecuted in court.

• Quite a show on back nine

  June 21, 2004

  Phil Mickelson was straining at the seams of his talent and his patience and his nerves, he was pushing, pushing, pushing, trying not to wait till the last minute, trying his damnedest to send a wave of cheers, a heart-sinking roar - something - rolling back up the fairway at Retief Goosen, just to let Goosen know that his final-day lead suddenly wasn't safe at the U.S. Open, and that Mickelson had just done something to threaten him in this taut, two-man fight to the finish.

• Mean course is great theater

  June 20, 2004

  The winds finally were gusting at Shinnecock Hills yesterday and suddenly, the golfers' scores were bobbing up and down like some poor little buoys on whitecapping seas. Jeff Maggert's score sank six shots during yesterday's third round.

• Phil a major domo

  June 19, 2004

  Two months ago he still was dogged by that ear- burning, career-long refrain that he can't win the big one. Then Phil Mickelson won the Masters. Now the crowds swoon for him.

• Enough already! We need old Tiger to be Tiger of old

  June 18, 2004

  Hey! I want the Master of the Golf Universe back. It's hard to see Tiger Woods reduced to this. It really is. I don't mean the sight of Woods landing only five of 14 shots on driving holes in the U.S. Open fairways yesterday or the sight of him muttering, cussing and slapping his thigh in anger during his fitful 2-over-par, opening-round 72. Anyone can have a rough day. What was extraordinary was the spectacle of seeing the once mighty Woods smile (smile?) after his petulant round and say - with a lilt in his voice, no less! - "I played all right."

• Driven Singh not shy about dishing it out

  June 17, 2004

  Given his terrific tournament success, his penchant for blunt talk, his occasional willingness to rattle Tiger Woods' grill more often than anyone else in golf, fear is not a word you'd typically associate with Vijay Singh. Neither is guilt.

• Masters win wipes away pained refrain

  June 16, 2004

  For two months, Phil Mickelson has been basking in the validation his Masters victory gave him. He has lapped up the affectionate applause from fans. He admitted on national television that he went to sleep that giddy night still wearing the green jacket he'd just won. He's no longer the best player never to win a major. He turns 34 today but suddenly he's seen as someone bursting with untold possibilities, a golfer whose ceiling has turned limitless, a remarkable athlete who finally understood the swashbuckling shot isn't necessarily the smartest one.

• Much ado about 'I do'

  June 15, 2004

  Raymond Floyd has been a lot of colorful things during his 40-year golf career - big-time PGA Tour winner and high-stakes hustler, playboy/bar owner and backer of an all-female topless band called the Ladybirds during his hell-raising bachelor days.

• Images of the Heart Are the Best Memorial

  September 11, 2002

  The first few days after it happened, the image that haunted me most wasn't the sight of the Twin Towers tumbling down one by one, horrific as that was as viewed from my Brooklyn apartment window. It wasn't the memory of that muffled boom I had heard before that as I sat on my sofa last Sept. 11, drinking my morning cup of coffee. "What the heck was that?" I asked a friend sitting next to me, not yet knowing a second plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Had I looked over my left shoulder, I would have seen both Twin Towers sheared open and belching smoke.

• One Eye on Field And One on Sky

  September 16, 2001

  THE METS have followed the gruesome stories and mounting toll of Tuesday's plane hijackings and terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon as closely as anyone. But as the Mets drove into the parking lot at Shea Stadium yesterday to get back to work, what confronted them were a host of sobering new reminders.

• Tragedy Hits Close to Home

  September 12, 2001

  Nothing immediately suggested something unspeakable had happened just outside my window, just seven miles away. All I heard was a muted boom. Then the Venetian blinds in my Brooklyn living room shuddered ever so slightly.