Where it all started for him: Novak Djokovic defeats Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals at Wimbledon in 2011 to capture the number one ranking for the first time en route to winning his first Wimbledon championship.

Olé, Nole

July 15, 2019

The Wimbledon fortnight ended in bizarrely glorious fashion as Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer 7-6(5), 1-6, 7-6(4), 4-6, 13-12(3) for the men’s singles championship. Federer, the far-and-away fan favorite, ostensibly took the match on paper, winning more points and games. https://deadspin.com/novak-djokovic-is-a-fortress-1836369554 But, as anyone will tell you, matches aren’t won on paper. They’re won by coming up big in the big moments, which is what Djokovic – the number one-ranked player but always an underdog in these situations – did to conquer both Federer and the pro-Fed crowd.

Maximum insecurity

May 17, 2019

April is the cruelest month,” T.S. Eliot began his poem “The Waste Land.” But T.S. — we hesitate to be overly familiar and call him Tom — what about May?

Threats to and from Iran, the continuing abortion divide, tariff wars, the stock market bouncing around like a knuckleball again: The only thing that is certain these days is, of course, uncertainty, making us all uneasy.

In the past, culture — specifically, arts and entertainment and sports — has provided stability in a destabilized world. But the real world keeps intruding on these parallel worlds that are framed differently by time and space.

End of a quarterback, birth of an icon, as captured by AP.

The endgame of Colin Kaepernick

February 17, 2019

Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case against the NFL is now one for the record books, though no numbers have been reported. Such is the way with private settlements. My uncle said he probably got $40 million. I think he got at least twice that. The NFL isn’t merely buying his silence in a suit that he may well have won. They’re saying adios to an activist player.

Enes Kanter (right), — then of the Utah Jazz, now of the New York Knicks — attempting to block a shot by Patrick Beverley at the Houston Rockets’ Toyota Center March 17, 2014.

Is some speech freer than others?

January 21, 2019

Everyone is entitled to his opinion, until, of course, someone thinks he isn’t. Recently, three incidents have challenged our concept of freedom of speech.

Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic at The Boodles Tennis Challenge exhibition in Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, England in 2012.

The remains of his day

January 13, 2019

When somebody – or something – dies, the reaction is usually as much if not more about those reacting than the person or thing itself. And so it’s been with Andy Murray’s announcement that he will retire no later than Wimbledon this summer due to a right hip injury.

Read here…

Andy Murray winning his second Wimbledon in 2016. Photograph by Daniel J. Cooper.

Andy Murray: An appreciation

January 11, 2019

When an athlete retires, it is a little death. People start speaking about him in the past tense, as if he were truly gone instead of just moving on to another chapter of his life.

But in a way, athletic retirement is a kind of death. Few occasions remind us so much of our mortality as the thought of a seemingly invincible body now broken down or past its prime. Few engender so many memories and what-ifs, particularly if you identify with the athlete.

Few sports offer that identification the way tennis does. A team like the New York Yankees has a host of players to adore (and, on occasion, vilify). But a tennis match has only four players at a moment at best. And, if you’re a singles player, then it’s just you — and all those people out there who see you in themselves and themselves in you.

Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the retirement of Andy Murray — whom I’ve written much about on this blog and in my other life as an editor at WAG — has been so poignant.