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      in Tennis

      U.S. Open: Rajeev Ram and His Partner Just Keep Winning Open Doubles

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      They have won three years in a row and are on an 18-match winning streak.Nearly two weeks had passed since Rajeev Ram had again come painfully close to an Olympic gold medal.“It’s still hard,” he said in an interview this month. “Even many days after now, it’s still hard. I knew what a big opportunity this was.”In Ram’s Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, he settled for silver in mixed doubles with Venus Williams. Eight years later in Paris, it was silver again, this time in men’s doubles.Ram and fellow American Austin Krajicek did get their scrapbook moment by eliminating the Spanish superstars Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz in a quarterfinal in front of a center-court crowd at Roland Garros that was hardly in Team U.S.A.’s corner.Ram teamed up with Austin Krajicek during the Summer Olympics in Paris and won a silver medal.Clive Brunskill/Getty Images“Even if they’re not cheering for me, I’ll take that atmosphere any day of the week,” Ram said.But Ram and Krajicek could not hold a second-set lead in the final and lost the gold in a match tiebreaker to Matt Ebden and John Peers of Australia by the crepe-thin margin of 10-8.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Open: The Tennis Player Emma Navarro Is Getting Someplace Fast

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      Navarro, 23, has been steadily climbing up the tennis world rankings and will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.As speedy as Emma Navarro is on the tennis court, she is never in a rush.By her own admission, Navarro isn’t very good at time management. But she defends herself by explaining that her most enduring trait, one of the reasons she has catapulted from playing low-level challenger tournaments to being ranked just outside the world’s top 10, is that she makes it a point to stay in the here and now.“I’m naturally very present, which makes it hard to plan ahead,” Navarro, 23, said by video call from Toronto earlier this month. “But I think it helps with just taking one thing at a time and feeling like I’m not in any rush to be anywhere that I’m not yet.”Navarro has been one of the biggest surprises in women’s tennis over the last 16 months. In January 2023, she was ranked 149th and playing in a $25,000 tournament in Naples, Fla., which she won. Now she is ranked 13th. She will be seeded at the U.S. Open for the first time.Navarro has never advanced beyond the first round of the main draw at the U.S. Open and has won only one match, in the junior tournament in 2019. Last year she lost in the first round to Magdalena Frech.She was born in New York City, and her family left Manhattan for Charleston, S.C., shortly after 9/11. It was there, at age 14, that Navarro began working with Peter Ayers, who remains her coach.Navarro lost to Amanda Anisimova in a semifinal game at the National Bank Open in Toronto earlier this month.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Micky Lawler, a Longtime Tennis Executive, Turns to Basketball

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      She was a force at the WTA and is now the commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league.Micky Lawler knows a thing or two about starting over.As a child, Lawler, whose father was an executive with a Dutch electronics company, lived in seven countries: the Netherlands, where she was born, Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Kenya, France and Belgium.But the move that impacted Lawler the most came when she was 24 and returning to the Netherlands after finishing graduate school in Delaware.“As the plane pushed back, I could see my friends, who had come to the airport to say goodbye, standing by the gate, and I realized that I would miss them much more than they would miss me,” Lawler, now 63, wrote in an email last month. “For me, this departure entailed closing a very important chapter and leaving behind everyone I held so dear.”Lawler felt the same chapter-closing emotions when her position as president of the Women’s Tennis Association was eliminated last December, months after the WTA announced its partnership with the venture capital firm CVC Capital Partners. That ended a 38-year career in tennis, during which Lawler was instrumental in overseeing the growth of tournaments, sponsorship, marketing and broadcast deals for the largest women’s sports entity.But Lawler has already moved on. In June, she was named commissioner of Unrivaled, a new women’s basketball league to debut next January.Unrivaled is designed to be a complement, not a competitor, to the W.N.B.A. It was founded by, among others, Breanna Stewart, the New York Liberty forward, and her United States Olympic teammate Napheesa Collier, a forward with the Minnesota Lynx. The league features three-on-three play on a court that is about 70-feet long, two-thirds the size of a traditional basketball court. Each hourlong game consists of four seven-minute quarters designed to attract the devotion of younger, goldfish-attention-span fans. Media rights deals are still being worked out.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Every 4 Years, Timmy McCarthy Gives Ireland a Reason to Watch Basketball

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      While the Irish have no team in the Olympic tournament, Timmy McCarthy’s eccentric, enthusiastic commentary has earned him his own fervent fan base.Every four years, the Summer Olympics brings forth a collective fever dream of strange, communal treasures. We discuss synchronized diving instead of the weather. Flava Flav is temporarily rebranded as a champion of women’s water polo. The phrase “pommel horse” re-enters our shared lexicon. Snoop Dogg feeds carrots to dressage horses.And, for those who know where to look, the lyrical lilt of Timmy McCarthy returns to the Irish airwaves to commentate — at loud, joyous volume — on basketball. He growls. He sputters. He shrieks so loudly the microphone crackles.SHAKE AND BAKE!COAST TO COAST!Taking a shot from….DOOWWNNTOWWNN!In a crowded field of feel-good Olympic quirks, Mr. McCarthy, who turns 64 on Friday, may be one of the longest-running — a hidden gem that is both uniquely Olympian and uniquely Irish, broadcast only to those with access to Ireland’s state broadcast channel.First tapped by Raidió Teilifís Éireann in 2004 to anchor basketball for the Athens games, Mr. McCarthy’s commentary has since spawned memes, a Soundboard, Facebook fan pages, YouTube remixes and a modest but mighty fandom for whom his appearances are an Olympic touchstone — and the only Irish connection to the Games’ popular basketball series, in which Ireland has failed to qualify.“Timmy is a national treasure that gets dusted off every four years,” said Brendan Boyle, an Irish writer and basketball fan who lives in Spain and has followed Mr. McCarthy’s broadcasts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Golf

      British Open: Brian Harman Reflects on Last Year’s Title

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      He won by six strokes last year, an accomplishment that showed him that he was capable of really big things.In 2023, Brian Harman came out of nowhere to win the British Open by six strokes.Harman, a left-hander, had won only twice on the PGA Tour since turning professional in 2009 — the John Deere Classic in 2014 and the Wells Fargo Championship in 2017. And in the majors, he had posted just two top 10s: A tie for second in the 2017 U.S. Open and a tie for sixth in the 2022 British Open.With this year’s Open, the final major of the season, starting on Thursday at Royal Troon in Scotland, Harman, 37, reflected recently on winning the claret jug in 2023 and his slow preshot routine.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.Where has the claret jug been these last 12 months?It’s been kind of everywhere. Georgia-Ole Miss game, I got it on the field at halftime. I had my family there, probably my favorite experience I had with it. I took it up to Augusta National. Mostly, it’s been here [Georgia] at the house.What strikes you when you think back to your victory?I haven’t reflected on it that much. I’m not just getting started in my golf career. I’m trying to look forward and try to take advantage of the time that I’ve got. But there will be a time when I sit down and count them all up.Everything was going so slow all weekend. You want time to go by so fast, and it just doesn’t. It’s a really hard thing to manage.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evian Championship: Céline Boutier Returns Home to Defend Her Title

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      Last year she became the third Frenchwoman to win a major and the first since 2003.Céline Boutier, the most successful French women’s golfer ever, has spent much of her adult life outside of her home country.At 18, she left France to study psychology and play golf at Duke University, winning the N.C.A.A. team title and becoming the world’s top-ranked amateur.After college, she moved to Dallas to live near her swing coach Cameron McCormick, who had helped Jordan Spieth scale the heights and win majors. Since 2018, she has been a full-time member of the L.P.G.A. Tour, reaching No. 3 in the rankings last year.But Boutier, now 30, made the most of one of her rare moments in France: winning her first major last year at the Amundi Evian Championship by a commanding six strokes and getting doused with Champagne on the 18th green by friends and fellow players.“I think it was the most powerful moment of my career so far,” she said in a telephone interview from Dallas. “Just because it was something that I had wanted to win for so long, and it was a tournament that I really watched when I was young. I was always drawn to it, and so it honestly felt a bit surreal to be the one at the center of this award ceremony that I had watched so often with the trophies and the national anthem.”She was the first French golfer to win the title on the picturesque course at the Evian Resort Golf Club. Boutier became the third Frenchwoman to win a major after Catherine Lacoste at the 1967 U.S. Women’s Open and Patricia Meunier-Lebouc at the 2003 Kraft Nabisco Championship. Lacoste, the daughter of tennis star and entrepreneur René Lacoste, is the only amateur to have won the U.S. Women’s Open.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Evian Championship: Angela Stanford Ponders the Past and the Future

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      She won the Evian Championship in 2018, her only major title. At 46, she is about to reduce her playing time.In 2018, Angela Stanford’s prospects looked bleak after she failed to birdie the 72nd hole of the Evian Championship in France.The leader, Amy Olson, however, later double-bogeyed the same hole, giving Stanford her first and only major title.Stanford had hoped to play in 100 straight majors, but the streak ended at 98. She failed to qualify and wasn’t given an exemption into this year’s United States Women’s Open.With this year’s Evian Championship beginning on Thursday, Stanford, 46, reflected on her 2018 triumph and future in the game.The following conversation has been edited and condensed.What is your favorite memory from the 2018 event?Finishing Friday afternoon. I’d played really well that day. Coming up at 18, the sun was setting and you could see the lake. That was kind of a cool moment. To have a chance to play for a major on the weekend was pretty special.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wimbledon: Andy Murray, Battling Injuries and Age, Faces Final Call

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      He is the last British man to have won this very English tournament. He did it twice, along with grabbing two Olympic golds.“I guess I’ll just need to win Wimbledon to shut everyone up.” — Andy Murray to The Daily Telegraph in June 2004Mission accomplished, although it took nearly a decade for Murray to manage it. He had to scrap and scream through all sorts of tennis trouble before finally putting a halt to all the annual chatter about when a British man might finally win Wimbledon again.Now, at 37 and at the end of his career — win or lose (or forced to withdraw because of recent back surgery) — he is saying goodbye to a tournament he conquered not once, but twice. Three years elapsed between his first victory in 2013 and his second in 2016, when his proud country rewarded Murray with a knighthood. In that same year, he won his second Olympic gold.For more than 70 years, the hope that a British man would win Wimbledon had become a tradition in a country that still likes its tradition: a part of the landscape at the well-tended All England Club where Fred Perry had won the men’s singles in 1936, but had long gone without a British successor.Tim Henman was still the local focal point when Murray emerged in 2005. Henman had reached four singles semifinals by rushing the net, but had always fallen short, handling each setback with a firm handshake and a dignified demeanor.Murray — a scruffy shock-absorbing baseliner from Scotland — managed the pressure and the project quite differently: muttering, moaning and sometimes swearing between points. But above all, he embraced the challenge as he trundled about the grass with a heavy gait only to move with astonishing quickness once the ball was in play.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More