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What's Your Favorite Tennis Nickname?

Greg Del MarJun 9, 2010



Every generation of tennis players has some striking personalities. Some players come across as stoic. Some volatile and combative. Some appear eccentric, or even just a little bit crazy. Naturally, watching their styles and mannerisms, nicknames inevitably come to mind. Some are somewhat unjustified. Some are comical. Some fit so well, that they roll of the tongue and it reaches the point where it's hard to even say some players' names without including their nom de guerre.

With that in mind, lets revisit some of the popular tennis nicknames from the past, and then tick off some present day and up-and-coming players' nicknames and open it up and decide which names fit and which don't, and try and come up with some suggestions, so that we can help the new wave of tennis players trying to "make a name for themselves", so to speak.

See if you remember who these nicknames belonged to (and remember some of these players had several nicknames- some flattering, some definitely not!). There's definitely a lot of "backstory" to some of these names!:

Fraulein Forehand
Superbrat
Nasty
Lithuanian Lion
Ice Borg
The Terrible or Terminator
Boom Boom

OK. That's Steffi Graf, John McEnroe, Ilie Nastasie, Vitas Gerulaitis, Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, and Boris Becker. Some of these names are a reflection of their tennis skills. Some come from their mannerisms, or their personal lives, in or out of the tabloids.

Some more recent players:

Pistol Pete
The Punisher, Double A, or 'Dre
FedEx
The Ogre or The Alien
Djoker
HotSauce
Sliderman
Momma Smash
JuJu or The Belgian Backhand
Berd-Man

Got those? Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Fernando Verdasco, Gael Monfils, Serena Williams, Justine Henin, and Tomas Berdych.

Do some of those more recent nicknames fit? What about suggesting some others. What are your favorite tennis nicknames and why? And how about nicknames for some of the rest of the upstarts. What about Soderling? Andy Murray? Stosur? Wozniacki? Surely there is some gold to be mined here in terms of nicknames. How'd you do on the quiz? Any good ones from the past I forgot? What's your favorite?

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