These are not the best of times for us Nadalistas. Our beloved Rafa has lost five times this season on his best surface, clay, most recently in the quarterfinals against Stan Wawrinka at the Italian Open in Rome.
In the past, Rafa could count on clay to rev up the old engine when he flamed out at Wimbledon or was returning from an injury. Not anymore.
The question is, Has his intense playing style taken too much of a toll on his body and thus affected his mind, or is he having a crisis of conscience that is affecting his style of play?
It’s hard to say. With a top athlete, the mind-body connection is so complex that it may be a bit of both. ...
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Read MoreThat is the question now that the bay has won the Preakness Stakes in commanding fashion (seven lengths) on a muddy track that caused Firing Line, the Derby runner-up, to stumble out of the gate, and AP stable-mate Dortmund, who finished third at the Derby, to fade to fourth at Pimlico.
History does not favor the Pharoah. Two charmers named I’ll Have Another and California Chrome took the first two legs of the Triple Crown in 2012 and 2014 respectively only to come up short on the Belmont Stakes’ 1 ½-mile course.
It’s no coincidence that the three horses that won the Triple Crown in the 1970s – Secretariat (1973), Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978), the last horse to do so – all called Belmont Park home.
Then, too, many trainers save their horses for the Belmont, skipping the Preakness. Already, experts are talking about a fresh Frosted and Materiality giving the Pharoah a run for his money.
But I prefer to think the Pharoah will do it. He has endurance in his genes and a talent for adversity as his rainy Preakness triumph attests (even if he has to wear earplugs to keep himself calm). ...
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Read MoreDeflategate gets curiouser and curiouser and curiouser. Now the New England Patriots would have you believe that it wasn’t about deflated balls but inflated bladders and waistlines.
In an attempt to seize control of the narrative, the Pats now contend that the time equipment manager Jim McNally spent in the bathroom before the AFC Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts wasn’t about emptying balls of their air but emptying his bladder. And his “Deflator” nickname referred to his trying to lose weight.
You know that when men start talking about their waistlines and their bladders it’s a sure sign they’re desperate.
I think, in the end, however, that we shall discover that this is less a story about waistlines than frown lines and perhaps being a step slower and seeing the young guns who idolize you making their way up the ranks, standing across the field where you once were.
Tom Brady has it all except for one thing – youth. Turning 38 on Aug. 3, he’s actually a middle-aged man. (The life expectancy for an American man is 76.4 years. What’s two times 38? Oh.) ...
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Read MoreWell, with all the talk of deflated balls and overinflated bladders and tummies, we’ve lost sight of the bigger picture – Andy Murray, married man, has become a superb clay court player.
Remember, folks: It was only a few short months ago that Murray lost to Novak Djokovic in the finals of the Australian Open and the “Whither Andy Murray?” articles began to pour in, mostly from British journalists who can’t bear the thought of any imperfection in the life of the Great Brit Hope. The trouble with that is that the pendulum tends to swing way over in the opposite direction when he wins. He won the Munich Open, his maiden clay-court title, and then at the Madrid Open, beat Rafael Nadal (shocker of shockers but then, maybe not, given Rafa’s current Hamlet-like mental state). Suddenly, it’s adios, Rafa.
Indeed, there are those who think Andy can not only make the finals in Paris but actually win. ...
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Read MoreWell, what a weekend for horse lovers. The main event is, of course, the running of the Preakness Stakes, the second leg in the Triple Crown, at Pimlico in Baltimore on Saturday, May 16. NBC will be going live at 4:30 p.m. EDT, with post-time set for 6:20 p.m.
Will American Pharoah become the first horse since my beloved Affirmed in 1978 to win the Triple Crown? Or will Firing Line and Dortmund, his Kentucky Derby rivals, overtake him in the run for the black-eyed Susans? Or will it be the proverbial dark horse?
We can’t say for sure. That’s what makes it a horse race, as they say – and an inspiration for “Criterion,” the third planned novel in my series “The Games Men Play.”
The 6:20 post-time gives folks in the New York metro area plenty of time to enjoy the elegant yin to horse racing’s thunderous yang – the Spring Horse Shows at Old Salem Farm in North Salem, which conclude Sunday, May 17. ...
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Read MoreThe new film of “Far From the Madding Crowd,” based on the evocative Thomas Hardy novel, has gotten mixed reviews – which is too bad. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg and adapted by David Nicholls, it is a movie of great feeling and equally great subtlety, not an easy combination to come by, with cinematography by Charlotte Bruus Christensen that captures the bucolic moodiness of England’s “Hardy country” and a haunting score by Craig Armstrong that makes excellent use of both the folk and symphonic traditions.
“Madding” is also superbly acted by a cast that conveys the emotional complexity of an independent young woman navigating a man’s world. Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is the woman in question. Poor and orphaned but nonetheless well-educated, she has no inclination to marry. A turn of good fortune (her late uncle leaves her his farm) ensures she won’t have to. But if it’s true, as Jane Austen said ironically, that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a wife, then it’s equally true, as Hardy implies, that a single woman of great beauty must be in need of a husband. Before you can say “The Bachelorette,” Bathsheba’s suitors are lining up. Rising farmer-turned-down-on-his-luck shepherd Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) is first up, with his offer of a pet lamb and a piano. He’s kind, intelligent, spirited and hard-working – a woman’s idea of a man’s man – and since he’s played by sex symbol du jour Schoenaerts, the obvious match for Bathsheba. (Indeed, you don’t have to read past the first chapter of the novel to know this.) But Bathsheba is too young and willful to see it. She’d be happy enough to be a bride, the center of attention, as long as she didn’t have the responsibilities of a wife. That never works. ...
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Read MoreEli Manning – the New York Giants’ quarterback and two-time Super Bowl MVP, at Tom Brady’s expense no less – was at Mulino’s restaurant in White Plains, N.Y. May 11, ostensibly to talk about his role as host of next month’s 38th annual Guiding Eyes for the Blind Golf Classic.
But as often happens, there was breaking football news right before the cocktail party-press conference: Tom Brady, quarterback of the New England Patriots, has been suspended four games without pay for his “more probable than not” awareness that two lower-level employees had deflated footballs before the Pats’ AFC championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The implication being that locker room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski doctored the balls according to Brady’s tastes to make them easier to throw and catch, particularly in inclement weather. (The two have since been indefinitely suspended by the team.)
The Patriots were fined $1 million and will lose a first-round draft pick next year and a fourth-round one in 2017. Brady has said he will appeal. ...
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