Tag: tennis

Chase Hodges, the first tennis coach Georgia Gwinnett College has ever had, is clearly comfortable in the environment he helped build: “We’ll play anybody, anytime, anywhere!”

A yoga festival, a prohibition-era cocktail party, and the BB&T Atlanta Open closes with a celebration.

The Atlanta Comedy Arts Festival kicks off Thursday and the seventh-annual Atlanta Ice Cream Festival hits Piedmont Park this weekend.

Nick Kyrgios and John Isner will be back this year, along with top U.S. men’s player Jack Sock. But they aren’t the biggest names on the bill. Seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams will play an exhibition match on July 23 against Canada’s number one player, Genie Bouchard.

On a pristine spring afternoon, a half dozen teenagers practice their groundstrokes at the Sandy Springs Tennis Center. Home to two dozen outdoor courts, it’s the largest public complex of its kind in metro Atlanta.

These five Atlanta athletes represent a range of disciplines and abilities, but they’ve all got one thing in common—a staggering amount of determination, something that even the most casual exerciser could probably use more of.

Every July thousands of fans brave blistering temps to see top tennis talent like John Isner, Andy Roddick, and Mardy Fish sweat it out on the hard courts at Atlantic Station. A few fast facts about the pro tournament:

After Sunday’s finals singles match, the Atlanta Open crowned a new champion: John Isner. Isner, twenty-eight, is a 2007 graduate of the University of Georgia, and as a senior, led the Bulldogs to an NCAA National Championship. Isner is currently the highest-ranked male American tennis player, coming in at twenty. His opponent from Sunday’s championship, South African Kevin Anderson, is ranked twenty-one.

Tennis fans rejoice: the BB&T Atlanta Open is in full force this week. The tournament began Saturday and the first round of the main draw started yesterday. Both the singles and doubles championship matches will be played on Sunday, July 28.

It turns out that playing tennis is not at all like riding a bicycle: there is a painfully steep re-learning curve.