Category: Sport

I was on duty again tonight as coordinator for the Seattle Tennis Alliance’s Tuesday night social doubles.
I had to put some skilled players with some very green ones on the same court tonight (a combination I try to avoid), but everyone seemed to be fine with it.

Carlos is the winner, and became the youngest No 1 in the 50 years that the ranking system of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) had been in place.

Yes, he is supremely talented and had worked tirelessly in his young career for this achievement, but as Christopher Clarey explains in the NYT, there was timing and extraordinary circumstances that also came into play:

At 19, Alcaraz is the youngest No. 1 since the ATP rankings were created in 1973. That is quite a feat in a sport that has had plenty of prodigies: from Bjorn Borg to Mats Wilander, Boris Becker to Pete Sampras, to Alcaraz’s Spanish compatriot Rafael Nadal, who also won his first major at age 19 (at the 2005 French Open).

But Alcaraz’s meteoric rise to the top has not been due simply to his genius — though the word, which should be used very sparingly in tennis or anything else, does seem to apply in his acrobatic case.

His coronation is also due to timing:

To Novak Djokovic’s refusal to be vaccinated for Covid-19, which kept him out of this year’s Australian Open and U.S. Open and four Masters 1000 events in North America.

To Nadal’s limited schedule because of a series of injuries.

To the extraordinary situation at Wimbledon, which Djokovic won again in July but which earned him no ranking points; the tournament had been stripped of points by the men’s and women’s tours because of Wimbledon’s ban on Russian and Belarusian players over the war in Ukraine.

Carlos Alcaraz (19, Spain) has played three phenomenal five-set matches this week to reach the US Open Men’s Final.
He beat Marin Čilić (33, Croatia), the 2014 U.S. Open champion, at 2:23 a.m. on Tuesday;
he beat Jannik Sinner (21, Italy) at 2:50 a.m. on Thursday after surviving a matchpoint, and
he beat Frances Tiafoe (23, USA) shortly before midnight on Friday. (There was American royalty in the stands, watching this match: Michele Obama).

(Yes, New York City never sleeps⁠— but what a ridiculous state of affairs, with the evening matches obviously starting wa-a-ay too late).

Alcaraz is playing against Casper Ruud (23, Norway).  For the first time ever since the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) ranking list was established in 1973, will the outcome of a major final will also determine who of the two players will become world No 1.

It was a beautiful and mild blue-sky day (73 °F/ 23 °C) here in the city.
The amigos played a little pickleball before going for a beer and a bite.

Serena Williams (40) bowed out of the US Open tonight, losing in the third round against Ajla Tomljanovic (29) of Australia. She had indicated before the start of the tournament that this would be her last.

It was at the 1999 US Open where Serena won the first of her 23 Grand Slam titles*— at only 17 years old. She defeated in succession Grand Slam champions Kim Clijsters, Conchita Martínez, Monica Seles, and defending champion Lindsay Davenport, to reach the 1999 US Open final. In the final, she then defeated world No. 1, Martina Hingis, to become the second African-American woman, after Althea Gibson in 1958, to win a Grand Slam singles tournament.

*The most by any player in the Open Era, and the second-most of all time (behind Margaret Court’s 24).

Williams was a power player: an aggressive baseliner, whose game was centered around her powerful serve and forceful groundstrokes.

My top-of-the-line paddle for pickleball has arrived.
The CRBN ¹ Elongated Paddle is slightly longer than others (but also approved by USA Pickleball).
It has a carbon fiber face with a honeycomb polypropylene core.

Pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, not far from Seattle. It is played on a hard surface with paddles and a hard plastic ball.
The game has seen a surge in popularity here in the city, with many tennis courts used for pickleball sessions.

Wimbledon 2022 is about to wrap up with the Ladies’ Singles Final and the Gentlemen’s Singles Final on Sunday. (That’s right. Ladies and gentlemen only. No hoi polloi, plebeians, women on the loose, or scoundrels are allowed.)

As for the gentlemen— Carlos Alcaraz (19, 🇪🇸 Spain) had lost against Jannik Sinner (20, 🇮🇹 Italy) in the round of 16, then Sinner lost against Djokovic (35, 🇷🇸 Serbia) in the quarterfinal, after being two sets up to none.

At the bottom of the draw, Nadal (36, 🇪🇸 Spain) took out Taylor Fritz (24, 🇺🇸 USA) in five grueling sets, but injured an abdominal muscle in the process.
So Nadal had to forfeit his semi-final match against Nick Kyrgios (27, 🇦🇺 Australia).

So now we have a Djokovic-Kyrgios showdown for Sunday, which will be very interesting. Kyrgios is very talented but very volatile. He has beaten Djokovic both times in their two previous meetings, which should boost his confidence.

There was rain in London’s SW19 just an hour after Day 1’s tennis had gotten underway at the All England Club.
Centre Court has a retractable roof, though (since 2009), as does Court 1 (since 2019).

Court 1 was where the fierce battle in the Gentlemen’s First Round, between Carlos Alcaraz (19, Spain 🇪🇸) and Jan-Lennard Struff (31, Germany 🇩🇪) was taking place.
Struff’s coach must have instructed him to play gangbusters and go for the margins, hit two first serves every point, just to have a shot at beating Alcaraz. He did just that, with great effect.
Alcaraz had to pull a rabbit out of a hat in the must-have fourth set-tiebreaker, to be at 1-2 and not 0-3.
Struff followed his shot in the forehand corner to the net. Alcaraz got it back, then had to streak crosscourt like a cheetah, to pick up the volley from Struff. He made a scorching one-handed backhand winner out of it. (Under normal conditions the Alcaraz backhand uses two hands).
Final score: Alcaraz 4-6, 7-5, 4-6, 7-6(3), 6-4 after 4 hrs 11 mins.

The short lawn tennis season is in full swing with the ATP tournaments in Eastbourne and Mallorca this week⁠— and then there is Roehampton, the qualifying tournament for Wimbledon (that starts on Monday).

Wimbledon has banned Russian and Belarussian players from the tournament this year. The ATP and WTA (representing the players) have retaliated by announcing that no ranking points will be awarded for those that are allowed to play.

Seven-time Wimbledon champ Serena Williams (40), has been given a wildcard to play. Rafael Nadal (36) has announced he is good to go as well (he has had a lingering foot injury).

Well, I got up at 6 am Pacific Time to watch the Nadal-Ruud French Open Men’s Final, but the match was very one-sided.

Nadal was never in trouble and won easily: 6-3, 6-3, 6-0. A ‘bagel’ for Casper Ruud (Norway, age 23) in that last set, as we say in tennis.

Rafael Nadal ⁠—the King of Clay⁠— turned 36 on Friday.
Will the king reign for one more year? We shall see, of course.

I basically turned off Twitter and the TV this week, and just watched French Open tennis on the Tennis Channel (it’s a subscription streaming service).

The men’s professional tennis tour action is in Lyon, France, and Geneva, Switzerland, this week. The clay court season is nearing its end, with the French Open in Paris starting in just a few days on Sunday.

Lyon (also spelled Lyons) is the capital of both the Rhône département and the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes région, in east-central France. It is set on a hilly site at the confluence of the Rhône and Saône rivers. Lyon is the third largest city in France, after Paris and Marseille.
Geneva (French Genève, German Genf, Italian Ginevra) is the capital of Genève canton, in the far southwestern corner of Switzerland that juts into France. [From britannica.com]

Carlos Alcaraz finds himself at No 6 on the ATP rankings after his spectacular run in last week’s Madrid Open. He took out Nadal, Djokovic and Zverev to win the championship.

He is not playing this week in Rome, though⁠— he is resting up a sprained ankle for the French Open that starts in less than two weeks.

The Italian Open tennis tournament in the Eternal City has started, at the beautiful Foro Italico sports complex.
The tournament was first held in Milan in 1930 as the Italian International Championships, and was moved to the Foro Italico a few years later, in 1935.

Djokovic lost yesterday in the Monte Carlo Open, but so did young Carlos Alcaraz, today (against Sebastian Korda). Aw. That really hurt my interest in the tournament, but I will continue to watch.

Writes Christopher Clarey in the NYT: ‘Davidovich, 22, looks like a Viking prepared to make mayhem with his head closely shaven on the sides and his fair hair pulled back into a knot. His father Eduard Mark Davidovich, a former boxer, is originally from Sweden and his mother Tatiana Fokina from Russia. But he was born in Malaga, Spain, and raised, as his accent makes clear, in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. He started playing tennis at age 2 — even younger than Djokovic did — and has become one of the flashiest, fastest men in the game under the tutelage of his longtime coach, Jorge Aguirre’.

The annual Monte Carlo* Open tennis tournament has started.
It is one of the big 9 second-tier tournaments on the calendar (the big ones are the four Grand Slams: Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, US Open).

*Monte Carlo is one of the four quartiers (sections) of Monaco. It is situated on an escarpment at the base of the Maritime Alps along the French Riviera, on the Mediterranean, just northeast of Nice, France.

Novak ‘No Vax’ Djokovic will play (still unvaccinated), as will Carlos Alcaraz, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Sacha Zverev.