There will be no Rafanole this year at the US Open, which gets underway Saturday with “Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day” at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow, Queens, N.Y.
The big news is that defending champ Rafael Nadal has pulled out due to the wrist injury that kept him out of the early portion of the hard-court season. There appears to be a pattern here: Rafa plays lights out to ace the clay-court season, peaks at the French Open, cries when they hand him the umpteenth trophy at Roland Garros in Paris, flames out at Wimbledon, gets injured, takes some time off and starts the whole cycle again.
This would seem to favor Novak Djokovic, but wait. After a trifecta of Ws (Wimby championship, world No. 1 ranking and wedding to longtime love Jelena Ristic), Nole burned out of tournaments at Toronto and Cincinnati. The New York Times, which seems to have no enthusiasm for Nole, noted that he’s been “fending off charges” that he hasn’t been practicing much since the wedding. Fending off charges? Really? Is he a criminal? What’s next, blame the wife?
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Read MoreThe U.S. national championships have been a disappointing meet for fans of Phelpte, the Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte rivalry. (Also known as Phlochte, which sounds better.)
Anyway, Phelpte, Phlochte, it boiled down to the same thing: Phelps finished second in the 100 butterfly, perhaps his signature event; sixth in the 100 back and seventh in the 100 free. Lochte was second in the 100 free and third in the 200 back.
The only time the old rivalry kicked in was in the 200 IM, in which Lochte bested Phelps, with both posting among the fastest times in the world this year. They didn’t race next to each other, however, in the center of the pool, eyeballing each other as they used to, matching stroke for stroke, breath for breath. Instead they were in outside lanes, where mere mortals dwell.
"I guess we can say this is kind of our off-year," Lochte said of himself and Phelps. "Well, I can say that." (Love Ryan, and the way he can defer to Michael in friendship while still holding his own.)
Bottom line...
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Read MoreOvershadowed by the World Cup and Wimbledon – OK, and LeBron James returning to Cleveland and baseball’s All-Star Game and lots of other sporting events/news – the recent Bulldog Grand Slam at the University of Georgia in Athens nonetheless had a pleasure all its own, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte testing each other in a pool once more.
Is there a more pleasant rivalry? Look at the pictures from wherever, whenever they meet. They’re like two buddies who can pick up the threads of a conversation over distances and time.
“It never gets old,” Lochte says in the teamusa.org piece of swimming against his rival. “I love it. He’s the toughest racer I’ve ever had to go up against. No matter what stroke, what event, he’ll race you to the end. It’s a challenge to race against him and I’m always up for a challenge. Win or lose, no matter what, at the end of the race, we’re still going to be friends. We’re not going to hold a grudge, so, I love it.”
It helps that swimming is a relatively marginal sport, except at Olympic time – Phelps and Lochte are basically swimming to get in shape for Nationals in August – and that Phelpte are teammates as well. Whereas Rafanole are competitors locked in a continuing battle for titles and trophies attached to big prize money. Although I’m not convinced that Rafa and Nole aren’t so chummy anymore.
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Read MoreOK, true story: Several weeks ago during the French Open, I had a dream in which I saw Novak Djokovic – dressed in blazing white, legs spread in typical Nole-Gumby fashion – leaning forward on a grass court, butt up in the air as he drew a white line on the green with his racket and wept.
“My God,” I thought to myself, “he’s going to win Wimbledon this year.”
Which he did, defeating Roger Federer 6-7 (7), 6-4, 7-6 (4), 5-7, 6-4 in the battle of the fertile male tennis titans. (Feddy and wife Mirka recently welcomed their second set of twins, while Nole and fiancée Jelena Ristic are expecting their first child this fall. So they have a bit of catching up to do in that tournament.)
It was no easy victory, but then for our dear Nole (pronounced "no-LAY"), it never is, is it?
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Read MoreI think it fair to say that the World Cup has eclipsed Wimbledon this year, what with the biting and the shouting and the salsa-dancing and the making of breakfast chicken enchiladas for the U.S. team and the holding up of the Uruguayan team’s dulce de leche in Brazilian customs and a point system that implies that even I might make the finals, just the whole internationalism of it. And you know what? Tennis is fine with it, because a lot of tennis players are soccer buffs.
Tennis actually has a lot in common with soccer as both require lots of fancy footwork. Indeed, YouTubers can check out videos of Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic playing soccer tennis, in which they use only their heads and feet to get the ball over the net. That Rafa and Nole, never at a loss for a way to entertain.
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Read MoreSo Cinderella turned out to be just as unpalatable as her stepsisters. By that I mean that the world is a little less enamored of Steve Coburn since he started crying foul – repeatedly – after his horse, California Chrome, lost his Triple Crown bid at the Belmont Stakes to Tonalist, who didn’t run in the Kentucky Derby or Preakness.
I never thought Coburn and the partner were interesting. I mean, how classy can you be when you name your venture Dumb Ass Partners? No, what was fascinating, beautiful, a dream, was that bright as a penny of a horse with his blaze and four white socks and curiosity about us two-legged types and poise and smarts and heart and in the end, none of it was enough.
And that’s heartbreaking but such is life. I still agree with Coburn, though, that it isn’t fair to come into the Belmont all fresh as a daisy and play spoiler. And I see that plenty in the blogosphere were thinking what I was thinking: You have to play every round of the French Open to get to the final.
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Read MoreNo, not that kind of love story. And certainly not the spicy, sensual goings-on of my new novel “Water Music.” But long before there was Fedal, Rafanole and Novandy, there was – well, they didn’t combine names in those days, did they? So there was Björn and Johnny Mac – a tennis rivalry and bromance set to the Stones and Sex Pistols, with a little ABBA thrown in for good measure.
I’ve been looking back on them in “Epic: John McEnroe, Björn Borg and the Greatest Tennis Season Ever” by Matthew Cronin (John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2011). It’s part history lesson, part psychological study. As a history lesson, it is, as Mac himself might say, “the pits.” I never trust a title, nor use phrases, that proclaim such-and-such the greatest ever, because you know what? Time ain’t over.
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