One of the biggest surprises of the 2025 film awards season was seeing the way Challengers (2024)—a film starring Zendaya set on the lowest rungs of the professional tennis tour—was completely panned by the Academy of Motion Pictures.
Despite all the buzz around its Golden Globes-winning techno soundtrack created by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, the Luca Guadagnino film didn’t receive a nomination in any category—triggering waves of online discourse among movie fans.
Read More: ‘Challengers’ star Josh O’Connor reacts to film’s Academy Awards snub
For tennis fans, though, that’s just par for the course: Even the most highly acclaimed films where tennis plays a significant role seem to get regularly overlooked by awards committees. The biggest one in recent years, King Richard (2021), finally broke the joyless streak when Will Smith won an Oscar for his performance as Serena and Venus Williams’ father and coach.
In this Baseline series, our editors break down what makes a ‘good’ tennis movie by dissecting some of the sport’s cult classics through the lens of a fan—starting with Woody Allen’s 2005 hit Match Point:
Match Point (2005)
- Directed by Woody Allen
- Starring Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Synopsis: Tired from the grind of Tour life, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a recently retired high-ranked pro, takes a job as a tennis instructor at a ritzy tennis club in London. The connections he makes there help propel him into elite circles, and into tangled webs: Chris friends one of his students, wealthy Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), and begins dating his sister, Chloe Hewett (Emily Mortimer), who snags him a job at her father’s company. Along the way Chris falls for Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), a struggling American actress who was engaged to Tom. Chris has to decide between his passion for Nola and the high-end lifestyle he’s become accustomed to, and finds himself taking extreme measures to keep up appearances.
