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      Retirement in Florida? Tom Brady’s Next Move Might Be to the Super Bowl

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and Cases13,000 Approaches to TeachingVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRetirement in Florida? Tom Brady’s Next Move Might Be to the Super BowlThe inglorious interception at the end of his career in New England seems a distant memory as he leads the Buccaneers into the N.F.C. championship game on Sunday.Florida man, 43, vows to play in the N.F.L. until he is 45.Credit…Chris Graythen/Getty ImagesJan. 22, 2021Updated 4:59 p.m. ETOne year ago, Tom Brady’s last pass as a New England Patriot was intercepted and returned for a touchdown, the final mortifying act of a bitter first-round playoff loss.Brady, 42 at the time, had endured an erratic season, his 20th in the N.F.L., and with that performance slump came incessant conjecture about whether he would, or should, retire.Less than a minute into a news conference after the Patriots postseason exit, Brady, a six-time Super Bowl champion, was asked if he was going to quit football.Brady paused, with a faint look of exasperation.“I would say it’s pretty unlikely,” he finally said.Now, he is a game away from another Super Bowl appearance. He will lead his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, into the N.F.C. championship against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday.For Brady, win or lose, his 14th appearance in a conference title game will serve as the most defiant answer to those who wondered if — or secretly hoped — he would walk away from pro football forever, leaving a substantial void in the game itself.The N.F.L. finds itself at an inflection point with aging stars at quarterback like Brady, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees in their final years as emerging young stars like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson put their stamp on the position with multifaceted talents.But Brady is perhaps the most polarizing of the elders because of his longstanding ties to the Patriots, who have been heavily fined and punished with lost draft picks for various violations of league rules for nearly 15 years. Then there was Brady’s showcased role in the contretemps known as Deflategate, when the search for the cause of underinflated footballs in a 2015 playoff game resulted in a four-game suspension for Brady.For now, Brady is not going away. Often called the greatest quarterback in history, and a fixture of the N.F.L. playoffs this century in a Patriots uniform, he will appear on televisions screens Sunday in the pewter and red colors of the Buccaneers. Fans may have to adjust to that scene for a while, because Brady has for years indicated that he plans to play until he is 45. And who is going to stop him?“I’m definitely older,” Brady said this month after helping Tampa Bay win its first playoff game in 18 years. “But I’m hanging in there.”Brady, who won 30 postseason games with the Patriots, is also clearly relishing a period of vindication, since the second chapter of his career would seem to prove that past successes were not solely the result of his partnership with New England’s coach, Bill Belichick, or the influence of the noted “Patriot Way.”After the Buccaneers’ divisional round playoff victory over the New Orleans Saints last weekend, Tampa Bay Coach Bruce Arians was asked if he could tell that Brady was savoring a different kind of career milestone — a momentous playoff victory detached from the Patriots.“Yeah, you could tell,” Arians responded with a smile. “The emotions were really good — good moments on the field, in the locker room.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Super Bowl to Host 22,000 Fans

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and Cases13,000 Approaches to TeachingVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuper Bowl to Host 22,000 FansAbout 7,500 health care workers who have been vaccinated will be given free tickets, the league said, but it will sell 14,500 tickets to customers who will not be required to get inoculated.The attendance at Super Bowl LV will be the smallest in the history of the game. Fans will be given masks and hand sanitizer.Credit…Jason Behnken/Associated PressJan. 22, 2021, 12:04 p.m. ETIt won’t quite be the usual full house, but 22,000 seats, or roughly 30 percent of capacity, will be filled at the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., the N.F.L. said Friday.About 7,500 of those seats will be occupied by health care workers who are being given free tickets by the league. Those attendees will all have been vaccinated for the coronavirus, the league said, and most will come from the Tampa area though the league will also allot tickets to workers from other N.F.L. cities.The league said that it would sell 14,500 tickets to the game, set for Feb. 7, with the buyers selected by lottery, as in normal years, with ticket allocations for every N.F.L. team. That total does not include about 2,000 seats in luxury suites at Raymond James Stadium, the site of this year’s Super Bowl. Fans seated there will not be required to be vaccinated. Throughout the pandemic-hit season, attendance figures varied from venue to venue, depending on local guidelines. In some cities, a significant number of fans were admitted: Dallas led the league with an average of 28,187 fans at its eight home games, followed by Jacksonville and Tampa Bay. But 13 of the 32 teams did not allow fans at any games.N.F.L. teams drew 1.2 million fans to attend games in the regular season, well below the normal total of 17 million.All fans who attended N.F.L. games this season were required to wear masks, and were kept apart in seating “pods,” policies that will continue at the Super Bowl. Super Bowl attendees will be given masks and hand sanitizer, the league said.The attendance this year would be the smallest in the history of the Super Bowl, an event that in ordinary years could undoubtedly sell out many times over. The previous low was 61,946 at the Coliseum in Los Angeles for the first game in 1967, when it was still known as the A.F.L.-N.F.L. World Championship Game.The Tampa Bay Buccaneers travel to face the Green Bay Packers in the N.F.C. championship on Sunday with a chance to play in a home Super Bowl. The winner of that game will meet the A.F.C. champion, which will be decided in Sunday’s game between the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs.No team has ever played a Super Bowl in their home stadium, though in 1985 the San Francisco 49ers played Super Bowl XIX at Stanford Stadium in nearby Palo Alto, Calif., and in 1980 the Los Angeles Rams played Super Bowl XIV in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.Ken Belson contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open: See How Tennis Players Train in Quarantine

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNo Courts, No Going Outside: How Tennis Players Are ImprovisingThe athletes waiting in quarantine for the Australian Open are figuring out creative ways to stay busy (and swing a tennis racket) before they can hit the court.Roberto Carballés Baena waits in his hotel in Melbourne.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJan. 21, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Thump, thump, thump on the ceiling. Thwack, Thwack, thwack on the wall.After seven days restricted to a hotel room as part of a 14-day quarantine ahead of the Australian Open, it’s fair to wonder if paranoia has entered like a stealth intruder. Are the thumps and thwacks my version of Edgar Allan Poe’s beating heart?Thank goodness, no. The player in the room directly above is practicing footwork drills. The player directly next door is hitting balls against our shared wall.This is what final preparations for this year’s Australian Open look and sound like for more than three dozen players forced into a hard 14-day lockdown after people on their chartered flights tested positive for coronavirus after arriving in Melbourne.The other athletes lucky enough to have traveled with nobody who tested positive? They get five hours outside their rooms each day to practice, train and eat.Novak Djokovic, right, hitting on a hotel room balcony with a support staff member in North Adelaide, South Australia.Credit…Morgan Sette/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPlaying a Grand Slam tennis tournament in a country that has managed to contain the coronavirus – and wants to keep it that way – was always going to require the fearlessness of Rafael Nadal and the ingenuity of Hsieh Su-wei. If, in addition to singles and doubles, this year’s tournament were to add another category – suites – the hands-down favorites would be Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay and Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan.Sven Groeneveld, the Dutch tennis coach, riding a stationary bicycle in his hotel room.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo practice his groundstrokes, Cuevas has turned a spare bed into a vertical backboard.Once he is finished, he converts the bed to … a surfboard.Putintseva has created a doubles-alley-sized course in her room.She set up plastic cones to complete her cardio-blast agility drills.But at one point, her self-isolation was breached by a Melbourne mouse, prompting a change in rooms. (She had to change rooms again because of a second mouse.)Creativity, unlike the quarantined players, knows no boundaries. Tennys Sandgren of the United States demonstrated on his social media feed how to get double the fun out of an exercise bike, taking hold of the one in his room to whip out a set of clean-and-jerk lifts.Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic affixed rectangles made of tape across her picture window and directed forehands and backhands at the small targets.The motto of the 2021 Australian Open: Where there’s a wall, there’s a way.Ben Rothenberg contributed reporting from Washington.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Car Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCar Rides. Meals. On-Court Play? Tracing the Virus in the N.B.A.A surge in coronavirus cases and game postponements has led to tighter rules about player interactions, on and off the court. But it’s not always clear where the outbreaks began.The N.B.A. is working to keep players from shaking hands and hugging before and after games as virus infections persist.Credit…Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports, via ReutersJan. 20, 2021, 6:59 p.m. ETLast Tuesday, the N.B.A. and its players’ union tightened their coronavirus protocols — mandating that players spend at least the next two weeks almost exclusively at home or at their hotels on the road when not playing basketball.Three days later, the Washington Wizards held a news conference saying that six of their players had tested positive for the coronavirus and that the team did not have enough players to practice. That same day, Karl-Anthony Towns, the Minnesota Timberwolves star whose mother died of Covid-19, said that he, too, had tested positive.Almost one month into the season, the N.B.A. has struggled to contain the coronavirus while playing outside of the restricted campus at Walt Disney World in Florida where it finished last season. Stars have been sidelined. Several teams, including the Wizards, Boston Celtics and Phoenix Suns, have postponed multiple games. Some, like the Philadelphia 76ers and Miami Heat, have taken the floor with skeleton crews, missing most of their top players because of contact tracing. More than 40 players have tested positive since training camps began in early December — 27 of them in the past two weeks. Only nine of the league’s 30 teams have not had a game postponed at least in part because too many of their players could have been infected.And starting Wednesday, team security were to be stationed at midcourt before and after games to remind players not to hug each other.The protocol shifts signal the difficulty in trying to play a contact sport indoors during the winter, when health experts said the pandemic would be at its worst. The N.B.A. was praised for being among the first major sports leagues to stop play when the pandemic reared its head last March and for finishing its season in the summer. But now some are openly wondering whether the league should be playing at all.Even so, the league remains confident that its health and safety protocols are strong enough to withstand the outbreaks and that the postponements won’t threaten the integrity of its season. The players’ union declined to comment.“I think it’s in line with where we thought we could be given how serious the pandemic was getting,” David Weiss, a senior vice president of the league, said of the postponements in an interview.He added: “This exact time period is when we thought it was going to be difficult.”The N.B.A. only scheduled the first half of its season, which was shortened to 72 games from the usual 82, in part because it predicted some postponements. In nearly 160 pages of protocols sent to the league’s 30 teams before the season, the N.B.A. said it was “likely” that some players and personnel would test positive and that it “may be necessary” to later modify the guidelines.The Boston Celtics have played shorthanded and postponed games because of the virus and injuries.Credit…Maddie Meyer/Getty Images“Your protocol is only as good as the people are able to follow it,” said Dr. Cindy A. Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida. She said not being in a bubble, as the league was during the summer, matters more than whatever the rules may be.“The protocols could be great,” she said. “They’re relying, though, on individuals again. But now they’re relying on individuals with a lot less oversight. And they’re relying on people to understand what puts them at risk in getting Covid. We’re not good at that. I think we’ve proven that as a country.”George Hill, a guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder, told reporters last week in response to the tighter protocols: “I’m a grown man, so I’m going to do what I want to do. If I want to go see my family, I’m going to go see my family. They can’t tell me I have to stay in the room 24/7. If it’s that serious then maybe we shouldn’t be playing. It’s life. No one’s going be able to just cancel their whole life for this game.”The league’s contact tracing protocols, positive tests and injuries have at times left several teams without the minimum eight players required to compete. Those who test positive must isolate for at least 10 days or test negative twice more than 24 hours apart. Exposure to someone who has tested positive may also require a quarantine, depending on the setting and timing of the interaction. The N.B.A. uses the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines to define close contact as being “within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period” in the two days before a positive test or the appearance of symptoms.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      For Elite Golfers, Money Talks

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesU.S. Travel BanVaccine InformationTimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFor Elite Golfers, Money TalksSponsors have long paid players to compete in tournaments, but that money has become more important to get players to travel during the pandemic.High-profile players like Rory McIlroy, seen putting during round two of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship in 2018, bring in fans and make sponsors happy, so their presence is important.Credit…Matthew Lewis/Getty ImagesJan. 20, 2021, 5:02 a.m. ETCraig Spence has no doubt that the shot he hit into the 18th green in the final round of the Australian Masters in 1999 was what granted him entry into the lucrative world of international golf, with its larger purses and equally attractive appearance fees.That shot set Spence up for a putt to beat Greg Norman, who at that point had twice won the British Open, and Spence did it in their home country at its most important tournament.“I hit the perfect shot, four feet behind the hole,” he said.When he made the putt, for a birdie and the win, invitations to play on the Asian and Japan tours, the PGA Tour and the European Tour came pouring in.Those were great, but it was the appearance fees from sponsors for top international players and up-and-coming ones like him that made a few of the long trips easier to make. Those fees eased the pressure on Spence to cover the costs of bringing his caddie, coach and family members to tournaments.“Now you’re teeing it up and playing for free,” said Spence, who now teaches golf in Western Australia. “You’re not going to lose anything if you don’t play well.”In 1999 Craig Spence won the  Australian Masters and moved into the echelon of elite golfers offered appearance fees.Credit…Jack Atley/Getty ImagesPaying players to fly to a professional golf tournament might seem unnecessary. But it’s an old practice used even in events where the winner receives millions of dollars and where an also-ran can make tens of thousands.And coming out of 2020, when professional golf events after March were largely closed to fans because of the pandemic, those fees have become more important this year and are an integral part of a tournament’s marketing budget.Without marquee players, fewer fans will watch at home, further worsening the return for sponsors. As one agent pointed out, if viewership numbers were down, sponsors would be even more concerned with their marketing spending than they were now.“Appearance fees do still exist at certain events for certain players,” said James Dunkley, manager for Lee Westwood and other players.The European Tour’s swing through the Middle East is known for using appearance fees to build top-notch fields. Those tournaments include the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, which starts Thursday, followed by events in Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, with prestige falling by the last two events.The reasons for paying fees are many. Without them, some top players won’t attend and the strength of the roster falls, which reduces the number of points available for the world golf rankings. That can further keep top players away. Sponsors, doling out millions of dollars, want to guarantee a strong field.Top players, who are mostly based in the United States, often want to avoid the travel and instead play in the early events on the PGA Tour, in Hawaii and California. They also have other commitments to schedule around.“Players typically commit to play 35 weeks, which leaves you 17 weeks a year off, or for holidays or sponsor obligations,” said Nick Biesecker, a longtime golf agent. “Time is your most valuable commodity. It has to be lucrative to carve out a week.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Rash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRash of Coronavirus Cases Poses Early Challenge for the Australian OpenWith several positive tests among people arriving from abroad, and a strict quarantine, the Australian Open is not going the way organizers expected it would.Australian Open officials have been criticized for tough measures after a rash of virus cases.Credit…Mike Owen/Getty ImagesJan. 18, 2021, 4:44 p.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — It was late December, and Craig Tiley was feeling good. After months of negotiations with government officials and the world’s top tennis players, Tiley, the head of Tennis Australia, finally had the green light to stage the Australian Open in the middle of the pandemic.Health officials and government leaders had come around to the idea of more than a thousand people arriving from overseas, including hundreds of players who would enjoy privileges during their 14-day quarantine period that Australian citizens could not. And the players had agreed to spend virtually their entire day in their hotel rooms for two weeks and to limit their on-court practice time to just two hours each day.“The players are being great,” Tiley said then of the deal for a limited quarantine period. “They realized if they didn’t want to do it, there would be no Australian Open, no lead-in events and no chance at $83 million in prize money.”A month later, Tiley, a native of South Africa and a former college coach in the United States, is at the center of mounting anger from every side after six people on three chartered flights tested positive for the coronavirus upon their arrival in Melbourne.The positive tests have rankled citizens, some of whom complained that Tennis Australia was putting residents at risk to placate millionaire tennis players. The chief health officer for the state of Victoria took action, ordering everyone on the chartered planes, including 72 players who were supposed to be able to practice and spend time in the gym at the tennis center, to stay in their hotel rooms for 14 days, even though none of the players had tested positive.Then came a report that the top-ranked men’s player, Novak Djokovic, the leader of a nascent players’ association, issued a series of demands, including reducing the isolation period for players who continued to test negative and moving as many players as possible to private homes with a tennis court to facilitate training. Health officials quickly rejected them.“We’ve been knocked around because of the flights and the challenges,” Tiley said Monday afternoon during a teleconference with some of the people in quarantine. “I have not had any place I can hide.”In a matter of days, Tiley has gone from one of the most visible cheerleaders for Australian sports to its leading punching bag, while his organization’s signature tournament has transformed from a potential celebration in the rare corner of the world where the virus has been kept under control to yet another symbol of virus uncertainty.Craig Tiley, the tournament director, has defended the quarantines that are rankling the players. Credit…Michael Dodge/EPA, via ShutterstockIn the past 48 hours, government officials, including members of parliament and the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, went on television and attacked the decision to prioritize tennis over what they believed were more essential needs, such as bringing in seasonal workers, easing state border restrictions or allowing some 40,000 Australians to return from overseas. They cannot, in part, because of strict limits on daily international arrivals.The limits remain even though Australia long ago ended one of the world’s strictest virus-related lockdowns. In Melbourne, the police enforced a nearly four-month assault on the virus. During that time, schools and businesses were closed and residents were allowed outside for just one hour (and later two) each day, either to exercise or to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. They also had to remain within three miles of home unless they had a permit.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      With Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in Australia

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith Positive Tests, the Rules Change for Some Players in AustraliaAfter some passengers on charter flights tested positive for the coronavirus, 47 players will not be allowed to practice for two weeks.Players, coaches and officials arriving at a hotel in Melbourne where they will be required to spend most of their time before the start of the Australian Open.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMatthew Futterman and Jan. 16, 2021MELBOURNE, Australia — Organizers of the Australian Open faced a rebellion from players after passengers on two charter flights bringing them to Melbourne tested positive for the coronavirus, prompting orders for everyone aboard to go into quarantine for two weeks.The flights carried 47 players — including several top competitors who had just played the first event of the women’s tour last week in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates — as well as some journalists, coaches and others.Passengers were asked to have negative test results for the virus within 72 hours of the flights’ departures from Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi. They were tested again after landing in Melbourne, and four people on the flights were found to have the virus as of Sunday afternoon, prompting health officials in the Australian state of Victoria to order that all passengers remain in their hotel rooms for 14 days.For the players on the flights, that means stricter restrictions than they had planned on before the Australian Open, the first major tennis tournament of 2021, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8.Entrants in the tournament agreed to stay in their rooms for 19 hours a day and were allowed five hours daily at the tennis center to practice, train and eat.Those rules got even tighter Saturday for the 47 players on the two charter flights, who were told they could not leave their hotel rooms at all.Tennis officials appealed for more leniency for players who repeatedly test negative in their first days in Australia, but government officials declined to soften the rules. Players and tennis officials were not aware when they moved ahead with plans to stage the tournament that the government might impose such restrictions.“We are communicating with everyone on this flight, and particularly the playing group whose conditions have now changed, to ensure their needs are being catered to as much as possible, and that they are fully appraised of the situation,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which is organizing the tournament.Tiley held a series of difficult videoconferencing sessions with players to explain the changes.In a livestream on Instagram on Saturday night, Marta Kostyuk of Ukraine told her fellow player Paula Badosa of Spain that she had been blindsided by the ruling and would have to compete on an uneven playing field.“It’s about the idea of staying in a room for two weeks and being able to compete,” said Kostyuk, who could not remember the last time she did not pick up a racket for two weeks. “We have to stay in quarantine, but we have to fulfill expectations.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      Kyrie Irving Fined $50,000 for Attending Indoor Party

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonJames Harden Traded to the NetsThe N.B.A.’s Virus CrisisThis Is for Stephen Curry’s CriticsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKyrie Irving Fined $50,000 for Attending Indoor PartyIrving, the star Nets guard, was found to have violated the N.B.A.’s coronavirus health and safety protocols that bar players from attending indoor social gatherings of 15 or more people.Nets guard Kyrie Irving was fined after a video emerged on social media that appeared to show him at a birthday party while not wearing a mask.Credit…Sarah Stier/Getty ImagesJan. 15, 2021, 12:56 p.m. ETThe N.B.A. has fined Nets guard Kyrie Irving $50,000 for violating the league’s health and safety protocols after a video emerged that seemed to show Irving maskless at a family birthday party last weekend.The league’s guidelines bar players from attending indoor gatherings of 15 or more people, as well as going to bars and clubs. The N.B.A., in its announcement of the fine on Friday, said Irving was in a five-day quarantine but that he would be eligible to return to team activities on Saturday if he continues to test negative for the coronavirus.But it is unclear whether he will return. Irving has been away from the team for what the team has called “personal reasons” since playing in a game on Jan. 5 Before a Jan. 7 game against Philadelphia, Nets Coach Steve Nash said he did not know why Irving wasn’t playing and that he had not heard from him. Since then, Nash has said he has been in touch with Irving, but has declined to provide more details.On Thursday, Nets General Manager Sean Marks said he was “disappointed” that Irving was “not amongst us, not in the trenches with us.”“I don’t want to speculate and say why he’s out and so forth,” Marks said. “I’ve had conversations with him, and I’ll continue to have conversations, and I look forward to him being back in the gym and he will address this and we’ll sit down with him.”The Nets have started the season 7-6, a slower beginning than many anticipated considering the team’s headline talents of Irving and Kevin Durant. If Irving does return Saturday, he’ll have a new teammate: James Harden, whom the Nets acquired from the Rockets earlier this week. In December, Harden was also fined $50,000 for violating the league’s health protocols by going to a large indoor party.This week, the N.B.A. released a stricter set of health protocols to combat a rise in coronavirus cases among players that has forced the postponement of several games. Among the new rules, players and staff are expected to confine themselves to their homes for at least the next two weeks, aside from going to practice and games, and doing essential activities.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More