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    Short Courses Are Gaining Favor With Golfing Families

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    Many golf communities are adding pint-size courses, which appeal to children as well as to parents who lack the time to play 18 holes.Even in Cabot Cape Breton, a golf community perched across sandy cliffs in remote Nova Scotia, the waves pounding against the dunes can’t erase the pandemic pressures of video calls and remote-work deadlines.They also can’t extend the stamina of a child or novice golfer, so last summer, Cabot Cape Breton opened the Nest: a 10-hole short course that can be completed in just over an hour.The Nest’s opening came as hundreds of other short courses have been designed or unveiled across the globe in golf communities, which have seen record-breaking sales to families with young children.At Haig Point, a golf community on Daufuskie Island, S.C., where prices are up 14 percent since before the pandemic, families have comprised nearly 25 percent of new buyers and the average age of residents is now 51. Before Covid, it was 63.As parents increasingly convert a quick turn on the golf course into a family activity squeezed between virtual meetings, golf communities are boosting their amenities with pint-size courses that can shift a round of golf into a true family affair.“Short courses are all the vogue now,” said Ben Cowan-Dewar, chief executive of Cabot Cape Breton. “We’ve seen them everywhere.”Short courses are not new — courses with nine or 10 holes have been gaining steam since the 1950s as fast and fun alternatives to the full 18-hole experience.But as social mores have shifted over the decades, so has the demand for a different type of golf experience. Women worked their way not just into the boardroom but also onto the back nine; men began to take more active roles in their children’s lives; smartphones, and all their buzzing alerts, began accompanying people everywhere they went.Then came Covid-19, and its trifecta of remote work, virtual school, and the need for activities in the open air.As sales of golf homes rose among families with children, “short courses really took flight because they allowed families to recreate together safely, outside and socially distanced,” said John Kirk, a partner at the architecture firm Cooper Robertson. “Younger golfers don’t necessarily have the stamina or patience for a more prolonged golf outing, and have other things going on in their lives, so this works.”Short courses, where a round of play can cost half as much as on a full-size course, also are part of a bigger cultural shift, said Rob Duckett, vice president of South Street Partners, which has developed several master-planned golf communities in the Southeast including Kiawah Island Club and Kiawah Island Real Estate, the Cliffs and Palmetto Bluff.With the arrival of younger residents, there’s been a push for more casual, relaxed programming, thinking beyond the traditional parameters of retirees playing golf.“At our properties, we have added fun programming such as night golf, music on the range, and comfort stations to the golf courses with signature dishes and cocktails that make golf more of a social event that is still enjoyable for experienced golfers while less intimidating for new ones,” Mr. Duckett said in an email. “The addition of nongolf amenities that appeal to a broader age range, such as pickleball and shooting, is also a shift I’ve seen. Basically, thinking about programming and activities that appeal to the whole family, rather than just traditionally catering to dads.”Karen and Brad Cook, avid golfers who live in Maui and are building a 3,400-square-foot, four-bedroom home at Cape Breton, are hoping that the community’s new short course will help them pass on their love of golf to their two boys, 11 and 13.“There’s a lot less pressure playing a par-3 course than there is playing the big course,” said Mr. Cook, who owns an engineering company. “And the attention span for golfing for younger kids just isn’t the same.”Cabot Cape Breton has two top-ranked full-length courses: Cabot Links, designed by Rod Whitman, and Cabot Cliffs, designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. Mr. Whitman, along with Dave Axland, was tapped to design the new short course.Cabot Cape Breton’s real estate offerings, which range from two-bedroom golf villas to four-bedroom homes, run about $825,000 to $2.5 million.Mr. Cowan-Dewar said they were often occupied by families with children. That mirrors trends seen across North America among families, who continue to seek new homes outside of cities.Across the United States, relocation from major urban centers to smaller metro areas rose 23 percent in 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors.Mike Williams, managing director of Innisbrook, a golf resort in Palm Harbor, Fla., said that it was not just families who had been drawn to short courses during the pandemic. With business travel shut down and conventions on hold, he has seen a sharp spike in business colleagues gathering on one of the four courses at Innisbrook in clusters of three or four, where they combine networking and novice golf practice into one or two-hour segments.Innisbrook has taken note and is now converting their full-size North Course into a short course. The project will leave them with some unused land, so they plan to convert those additional acres into spots for new residences. They don’t yet have an estimated completion date.“We have seen a very robust golf group segment grow as conventions and conferences evaporated,” Mr. Williams said. He notes that competitors including Pebble Beach and Pinehurst have recently added their own short courses. “In order for Innisbrook to remain competitive and be mentioned in the same breath as some of those resorts, we feel compelled to put in a short course as well,” he said.At Suncadia Resort in Elum, Wash., nearly 300 new homes have been built in the last two years. Mike Jones, Suncadia’s golf director, said that he had seen the number of children on both the Arnold Palmer-designed Prospector golf course, as well as the Jacobsen Hardy-designed Rope Rider short course, increase by 50 percent.“I used to view this as a second home for a lot of people, and the residents that did live here full time, the majority were retired,” Mr. Jones said. “And since the pandemic, all these young kids started moving here and what I started noticing was I’d be at Prospector and I’d see three young kids on the putting green, and they didn’t know the other kids, and there just wasn’t a community feel.”To cater to the new arrivals, Mr. Jones started a PGA Jr. League, and also launched a meet and mingle program on the green, where members could gather to get to know each other and cocktails were served for the adults.Charles Nay, who purchased a 3,000-square foot, four-bedroom cabin at Tumble Creek, a private neighborhood within the Suncadia community, in September 2020 for his family, prefers to play at Prospector. But he believes the short course is ideally suited for his 13-year-old daughter.“When she and her friends want to golf, they get bored and don’t necessarily want to play 18 holes,” said Mr. Nay, who lives in Seattle.In Big Sky, Mont., the Spanish Peaks Mountain Club community will be putting in a new short course this spring in addition to its existing 18-hole Tom Weiskopf-designed course. It will be a 10-hole par-3 course, something that Mr. Weiskopf said the community had been considering for years.“Covid really gave golf a shot in the arm,” he said. “Spanish Peaks has so many members with big families with grandkids, and they want to do what grandpa and grandma do, or with their dad and mom. It’s a great way to get people started in the game.” More

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      The Biggest Dance Show in Town? At a Brooklyn Nets Game

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      Since February, the Brooklynettes have performed live at Barclays Center to crowds that are smaller than usual — but huge for dance.I found an immersive performance — really, a spectacle — at a place I never would have expected it: a basketball game.Since February, the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets dance team, have been a pandemic anomaly: They have been performing live, at games, for nearly 2,000 spectators. It’s not the same as it ever was — it’s better. Barclays Center, at reduced capacity, is more intimate. The ushers treat you like you’re a guest at a dinner party. The players come into sharper focus. And the dancers, whether performing their choreographed routines or reacting to an exciting shot, are vital to the whole.It used to seem that a Brooklynettes number had three characteristics: speed, power and hair. The strokes were broad. Were the dancers skilled and meticulous? Absolutely. But at the games, their hard work was obscured by the noise and the abundance of fans. The reality was that this wasn’t so much a dance team as a group of backup dancers for a basketball team.With the arena at reduced capacity, the Brooklynettes feel more vital to the whole.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThis season though, while the Brooklynettes’ focus is still hip-hop and street jazz, the look is different, more precise. At a recent rehearsal in the arena, Asha Singh, the Brooklynettes coach and sometime choreographer, put the brakes on the dancers, to clean up a routine. “What angle of left are we going?” she asked them. “Are we going to the corner? Are we stepping side?”Why would a position held for a millisecond during a sprint of a dance matter? When these six bodies move as one, they pull you in — not just to their dancing but into the arena, where their movement creates an invisible line of energy between the players and the fans.Even when they aren’t dancing, that vitality continues as they stand, hands on hips, looking like cutouts of Wonder Woman. It sounds strange, but now for the Brooklynettes, a position held for a millisecond in a sprint of a dance does matter, because whether or not you see the effect, you feel it.The Brooklynettes — along with a galvanizing drum line and Team Hype, a male dance crew that performs on the opposite stage — are no longer a decorative afterthought. In prepandemic days, they would perform right on the court; now two stages have been built to provide the necessary social distancing from fans and players. The dancers — there are six per game now, down from 20 — are present throughout. They stand out in a way that they didn’t before, even when they were front and center performing on-court routines during home games.Asha Singh, coach of the Brooklynettes, rehearsing with the team. Back, from left, Celine, Kia and Ashley.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAnd while there is reduced capacity at Barclays Center, the numbers are still staggering for dance. How many dancers do you know who are performing indoors for so many people? (The arena has been at 10 percent capacity, about 1,700 spectators, and will go up to 30 percent on May 19.)“It’s invigorating,” said the dancer Liv David, who added that for many months during the pandemic, “I was just dancing in my little apartment trying not to kick my cats in the face and trying to make the most of it. I almost had forgotten that feeling — that adrenaline.”Live indoor dance performances have been hard to come by in New York; when they do happen, audiences are kept small. The Works & Process series at the Guggenheim Museum started with audiences of 50; as state mandates changed, the number was increased to 75 and now tops out at 90. At the cavernous Drill Hall at the Park Avenue Armory, capacity for “Afterwardsness,” a coming production by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, will be 118.The drum line and dancers during a game.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesDuring the 2019-2020 N.B.A. season, when arenas were at full capacity, all 30 teams featured performances with dancing. Now, in addition to the Brooklynettes, there are 10 other dance teams performing live. (The Knicks City Dancers do not; instead, recordings of past performances are played during games.)When fans were allowed back into arenas, Criscia Long, who oversees the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets Beats Drumline and Team Hype, was charged with figuring out how to bring entertainment back.“We’re in the crowd now — we’re right next to the fans,” Long said. “You get to engage with them; you get to actually feel their energy a little bit more during performances and when the ball is in play. It’s so much more connected now than even having the whole entire crowd there.”An experienced dancer, Long was formerly a captain of the Knicks City Dancers; she also performed with Lil’ Kim, who appeared in a number with the Brooklynettes this season. “She really wanted to be a part of the show,” Long said. “She rehearsed with us, and you know how hard it is with Covid protocols, but she wanted to be in it. It felt like we were on tour with her.”The Brooklynettes backstage in April.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThat was a special occasion. Even so, Singh said that if you took away the basketball team, what the Brooklynettes present is a version of tour-style concert performances. That is even more apparent now. “Very much tour, minus the artist in front,” she said. “Imagine all that crazy dope dancing that you would see around the artist: That’s kind of the energy that we like to provide the arena.”In the past, the Brooklynettes would sometimes share the court with Team Hype for combined routines. Now, though, the two groups perform on stages at opposite sides of the arena; during the games, they play off each other while members of the drum line appear with both groups.They’re all more in the moment. At times, the dancers react to a big play: short bursts of choreography that bloom quickly and disappear. Even those dances, unannounced yet galvanizing, draw attention. As David said: “I feel eyes on us. I feel like people are appreciating what we’re doing and performing for them. And that is very rewarding.”The Wonder Woman pose.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesThe drum line has returned with the dancers.Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAt the start of the pandemic, Singh moved into Zoom rehearsals, like most of the dance world, and found that she needed to focus less on fixing details like exact arm placement and timing — that would be attended to once they were onstage — and more on getting the choreography in their bodies. Dancers would record themselves and send her the videos for individual notes.The emphasis of the movement has also changed. “Before, we would do a lot of big arms,” Singh said. “It was like how do I make the steps as big as possible? How do I make my body look like it’s taking up space?”While they still do that, now, she added, “It’s more about the power behind the movement and less of ‘my arm has to be way up here’ for the upper-level fans to be able to see what we’re doing.”As always, Singh wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn,” she said. “My approach to anything, all Brooklynettes is you’ve got to do it right. At least try to do it right. The last thing I want anyone to say — and especially in our industry — is, ‘Oh it’s inauthentic. They’re appropriating culture. Or they’re not really Brooklyn.’”Asha Singh, the team’s coach, wants the Brooklynettes to look like “an elevated professional dance crew based in Brooklyn.”Kholood Eid for The New York TimesAs for that Wonder Woman pose? “That’s literally our signature,” Singh said, laughing. “I told the ladies the other night, ‘You have to stand like you’re still performing and stay there.’ If your arms get tired, you can relax, but then always come back so it still looks like your body is energized and you’re present. If you’re not backstage, you’re performing. That’s always been my viewpoint — on any show.”It’s another instance of the Brooklynettes doing something that they never had to do. “Now we’re learning that we have to change — we have to tweak our show, the in-between moments,” Singh said. “It’s kind of exciting though because I’m a fan of a stage. I just love lights. I love haze. I love being elevated.”As for that stage in the stands? “It just looks so much more like a show to me,” she said. “So I’m kind of loving our stage moment. We’re not sure how long it’s going to last, but it’s been really fun so far.” More

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      The Gambling Company That Had the Best Pandemic Ever

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      LONDON — At no point during the soccer game between Stoke City and visiting Watford did anyone say, “Tonight’s match is brought to you by bet365,” one of the world’s largest online gambling companies. No one needed to. It was pretty obvious.The game took place at bet365 Stadium, where “bet365” was stenciled across a huge swath of red seats, which were empty because of the pandemic. LED banner ads with the green-and-yellow bet365 logo blinked and rolled around the perimeter of the field throughout play. And every Stoke player had bet365’s insignia emblazoned on the front of his shirt. The company doesn’t just sponsor the team. The company owns it.“We’ve been stuttering a bit,” Peter Coates, who is chairman of both bet365 and Stoke City, said in a phone interview a few hours before the January game. “We need a win tonight.”He didn’t get one. Watford prevailed, 2-1, after more than 90 minutes of sporadically exciting play.Bet365 undoubtedly had a much better night.Bet365, in Stoke-on-Trent, England, thrives in a nation that loosely regulates online gambling.Nathan Stirk/Getty ImagesThe company is private and doesn’t report quarterly earnings. But publicly traded rivals have announced results, and they strongly suggest that gambling operators are one of the big winners in the pandemic economy. The gaming giant Flutter Entertainment announced in November that sports betting revenue rose more than 30 percent last summer from the previous summer. The average daily number of gamblers at all of the company’s chains rose 40 percent.In soccer-crazed England, gambling is one of the few legally available thrills for a nation that is bored, isolated and stuck at home. It’s the British answer to day trading in the U.S. stock market, which has boomed throughout the pandemic and is expected to rise again as a new round of stimulus checks arrives. With an efficiency that seems both grim and arbitrary, Covid-19 has struck down millions but left others unscathed and, in some cases, richer than ever.The latter group includes executives at a select group of companies in a variety of fields including e-commerce, like Amazon, and entertainment, like Netflix. Gambling has a singular distinction in this rarefied class. Much of its gains come directly from people in financial duress — and much of that duress has been caused by gambling.The Gordon Moody Association, a British charity offering residential treatment for gambling addicts, said over the summer that the number of calls from gamblers who said they felt suicidal had recently quadrupled. A House of Lords report found last year that 60 percent of the industry’s profits came from 5 percent of its customers — namely problem gamblers, or gamblers at risk of developing a problem.People like Lewis, a 25-year-old from Hampshire who requested anonymity because few people know about a compulsion he is still struggling to control. He won about $77,000 at age 16 with an online betting account and chased the high of that original hit for years. Since 2016, he said, he has toggled between total abstinence and flat-out mania.To him, bet365 is the most insidious of the many online gambling sites, because it outpaces the rest at catering to the always-on impulse of people who want to wager, day and night, on games happening anywhere in the world.“A gambler is desperate to distract himself, and during lockdown there was nothing to distract me,” he said. “Can’t meet your mates at a pub, can’t go out for a meal. You’re at home every waking second. You end up in a vicious cycle.”A character out of John le CarréDenise Coates, who runs bet365, earned more than $420 million in 2019, the company reported.Felix Clay/EyevineThe online gambling industry has long operated under exceptionally lenient rules in Britain, many of them codified in 2005, with a set of regulations that was largely designed for retail betting shops. It has been described as an analog law for a digital age, and it’s overseen by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, also known as “the Ministry of Fun.”By all accounts, no company has profited more under this light-handed regime than bet365. Which is why it is spectacularly profitable.In 2019, the company stated in an annual filing that Mr. Coates’s daughter, Denise Coates, the co-chief executive, had earned more than $420 million, making her the highest-paid executive in the country and the “highest-paid woman in the world,” according to The Guardian. That was many times more than the chief executives of publicly traded competitors and more than 12,000 times the average salary in Stoke-on-Trent, the struggling city, 140 miles north of London, where bet365 is based.The company floundered last year during the months when soccer games were suspended in Britain, Mr. Coates said. Bet365 leaned on its casino offerings and found some soccer games in Belarus and Australia. Revenue snapped back quickly when play resumed.Ms. Coates, 53, rarely gives interviews and did not respond to messages for this article. She has been described as intensely private, and even to some longtime rivals — the sort of people she might run into at conventions or associations — she remains elusive.“She’s like a character out of a John le Carré novel, a person you know exists but whom you never meet,” said Ralph Topping, a former chief executive of William Hill, one of the country’s largest betting companies. “When I was at William Hill, we would have liked to have had her input on matters important to the industry. I’ve never had a conversation with her.”Ms. Coates’s journey to the pinnacle of online gambling started after she graduated with an honors degree in econometrics from the University of Sheffield and joined her father’s catering business as an accountant. Mr. Coates then owned a few dozen retail gambling shops, essentially a side business at the time.“She said, ‘Dad, that’s the most boring thing I’ve ever done,’” Mr. Coates recalled. “She said, ‘I want to run those shops for you,’ and she was brilliant at it.”She spruced up the stores and added 15 more. In 2000, she bought the domain name bet365 from eBay.“She’s very driven, always likes to be better than anyone else,” Mr. Coates said. “Very organized, good with people. She turned out to be a bit of a star.”Offering wagers all game longA Stoke City match against Leicester at bet365 Stadium. “In-play betting” lets bettors place wagers throughout a game.Getty ImagesThe world that her father credits Ms. Coates with creating is reflected in a television ad for bet365 that ran before the Stoke-Watford game. It featured the actor turned pitchman Ray Winstone, who sat in the back of a luxury sedan, dressed in a dark suit, idling in traffic and exuding ease and control.“At bet365 we’re always innovating and creating,” he said in a Cockney accent, staring at the camera. Cellphone in hand, apparently ready to place some wagers, he ticked through a list of those innovations, including something called “in-play betting.”In-play betting allows customers to wager throughout a sporting event, on minutiae that has little bearing on the outcome. How many corner kicks will there be in the first half of a soccer game? How many players will be ejected? What will happen first during a 10-minute increment — a throw-in, a free kick, a goal kick, something else? When those minutes expire, the site takes wagers on the next 10.“It’s very much like being in a casino,” said Jake Thomas, a former gambling industry executive who chaperoned a reporter, over the phone, through the website during the Stoke-Watford game. “Why wait 90 minutes to find out if your team is going to win? Why not get a little buzz betting on the next corner kick?”As Mr. Thomas spoke, and the minutes ticked by, the odds of dozens of wagers were constantly repriced. A bet that Stoke would score in the first 30 minutes paid 9 to 1 at just over 25 minutes into the game. A moment later, as that outcome appeared fractionally less likely, the same bet paid 19 to 2.The company has said it takes action on 100,000 events throughout the year, on sports and races around the world — greyhounds in New Zealand, women’s table tennis in Ukraine, golf in Dubai. There’s even a section on politics. (George Clooney is currently 100 to 1 to win the American presidency in 2024.)If no live events appeal, virtual events beckon. These are video-generated simulations of tennis matches; games of football, soccer, basketball and cricket; and on and on. One afternoon, bicycle races in a virtual velodrome were running every three minutes, each lasting about a minute.James Grimes, the founder of an antigambling group, and an ad for the gambling app Paddy Power in Manchester.Andy Haslam for The New York TimesOther gambling operators now offer just about everything found on bet365’s site. But rivals say Ms. Coates and her team led the way.“We were always looking at them to see what they were doing and how they were doing it,” said Peter Nolan, a former group director at William Hill. “And to the extent we could, we competed with them.”Because of that competition, fans 40 and younger grew up inundated with gambling ads. The subtext, and sometimes the text, was that soccer and betting don’t merely go together — they enhance each other.“I trusted the messages that football sent me,” said James Grimes, who lost $140,000, two jobs and all of his friends before he quit gambling and founded the Big Step, an antigambling group. “A slogan that I heard a lot as a kid” — from Sky Bet, an online gambling company — “was ‘It matters more when there’s money on it.’ And I believed that.”A tight-lipped companyPeter Coates, left, the chairman of bet365, at a soccer match in Stoke-on-Trent, where the company is the largest single employer.Nick Potts/PA Images, via Getty ImagesStoke-on-Trent is well known for ceramics — it’s where the reality fare “The Great Pottery Showdown” is filmed — but today, with a payroll of more than 4,000, it’s bet365 and not Wedgewood that is the city’s largest single employer. Few employees, even those who have been around for years, have met Ms. Coates. Her reticence is embodied in the company’s approach to the news media. It doesn’t have a press office, and no one responded to messages left with customer service representatives, even to say, “No comment.”Instead, after giving an impromptu phone interview, Peter Coates called to say he would forward any questions to relevant people at bet365. He added, good-naturedly, that speaking to this reporter had landed him in “some trouble.”The origins of bet365 start with Mr. Coates, a Stoke-on-Trent native and son of a coal miner. With money he had earned through a business selling food at stadiums across the country, he bought three local betting shops, essentially as a favor to the brother of an employee. The chain would eventually expand to 35 shops, stretching from the West Midlands to Liverpool.Two decades ago, after getting online at Ms. Coates’s urging, the company operated out of a portable cabin near one of the betting shops. It was a more complicated and expensive proposition than the family had initially realized.“We had to find about 20 million pounds,” Mr. Coates said. “In the early days, we lost a lot of money. They were worrying times, but I felt we were accumulating a customer base, and we eventually passed the critical mass you need.”The last time the company filed a financial report, in December 2019, it stated that operating profit had jumped 15 percent from the previous year, to roughly $1 billion. This capped an immensely lucrative period for Ms. Coates. Forbes recently estimated her net worth at $6.4 billion. For the second year in a row, the Coates family is the United Kingdom’s biggest taxpayer, according to the annual Sunday Times Tax List, published in late January. The family paid the equivalent of $785 million into state coffers last year. Ms. Coates has also set up the Denise Coates Foundation, which focuses on health care and research and charity and in its most recent filing reported $14 million in giving.More quietly, she has been buying hundreds of acres in nearby Cheshire and building what The Daily Mail called a $125 million “glass palace,” along with stables, a tennis court and a 75,000-square-foot artificial lake.In Stoke, Ms. Coates is both acclaimed and largely invisible. She can be counted on to chip in money for civic projects, as she did when the town needed additional funds to erect a statue for Arnold Bennett, a local author who died 90 years ago. Just don’t expect her to show up at the unveiling.“A lot of people who have made money in Stoke leave,” said Fred Hughes, 80, a retired police officer who attended the Bennett statue ceremony. “This is quite an impoverished area, and it’s always looking for outside investment. The Coates family is the exception.”Winners not always welcomeMark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead, has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesThe success of bet365 stems in large part from the way it pampers bettors. It offers, for instance, refunds to anyone who bets on a soccer team to win in a game that ends without any goals. (Nil-nil ties enrage bettors.) And in certain circumstances, the company will pay out winners before a game is over.This is not exactly altruism.“The logic from their point of view is that if you’ve got your winnings before the game is over, you can use that money to bet again,” said Warwick Bartlett of Global Betting & Gaming Consultants.The company is far less hospitable to another type of customer: consistent winners. Brian Chappell said he had a falling out with bet365 a few years ago after earning about $4,800 over a summer of gambling on horses. A retired health care researcher, Mr. Chappell said he simply studied the sport and understood the complexities of hedging well enough to come out ahead on weekly races.“Then one Saturday I went to place a bet and the most I could wager was £1.60,” or about $2.20, he said. “They don’t tell you it’s going to happen — there’s no interaction at all. Just one day, your bet is restricted.”After learning that others had encountered similar obstacles, at bet365 and other operators, Mr. Chappell founded Justice for Punters — “punter” is slang for bettor — to fight back.“I call it the ‘ban or bankrupt’ strategy,” he said, describing what he calls an “amazing” business model: “If you’re any good, you get banned. If you’re useless, you get a V.I.P. manager who will keep you gambling.”Antigambling activists contend that such stratagems are just part of the problem, especially during the pandemic.“The lockdowns have accelerated the growth of online gambling and increased the use of more addictive gambling products,” said Matt Zarb-Cousin, who runs Clean Up Gambling, a nonprofit. “This means an entire generation is now far more vulnerable to gambling addiction.”Without new regulations, separating soccer and gambling will never happen, Mr. Zarb-Cousin and others say, because the two are now essentially fused. About 70 percent of teams in the top two English leagues earn millions by wearing betting company logos on their uniforms. Even the few soccer team owners who refuse gambling money, on principle, end up taking it just by competing.Mark Palios, owner of the Tranmere Rovers in Birkenhead has spoken out against gambling operators as a malign force in the game. He was appalled two seasons ago when bet365 wound up with broadcasting rights to some games. The Football Association, which markets those rights, shares revenue with teams in the league.“And bet365 decided that if you wanted to watch games you needed to go to the company’s website and sign up for an account,” Mr. Palios said. “The company was nakedly leveraging its market power to compel people to gamble. I thought that was obscene.” More

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      Dayton Flyers Fan Is Ready for Conference Tournament

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Superfan Is Ready for the Game, if They’ll Only Let Her InRosie Miller, 74, who has followed Dayton basketball since the early 1950s, has her wardrobe, Christmas tree and vaccinations ready for the Atlantic 10 Conference tournament.Rosie Miller, longtime Flyer basketball fan and former companion of University of Dayton player Dan Obrovac, at her home last year.Credit…Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2021, 12:01 a.m. ETRosie Miller, 74, a devoted Dayton fan since the early 1950s, has red sweatshirts and navy slacks ready for the Atlantic 10 Conference men’s basketball tournament, which begins Wednesday. She has worn her basketball earrings all season. Her tree, still up from Christmas, is decorated with lights and ornaments in the Flyers’ red and blue team colors. Her arm is decorated with two vaccinations against the coronavirus.“I’m dressing as if I’m going to the arena,” Miller, a neighborhood preservationist in Dayton, Ohio, laughed in a phone interview last week.Instead, she planned to sit at home in front of the television. For a year, a reporter has followed her story as she has come to represent the agony of sports fans everywhere separated from their teams by the pandemic, which has intervened for a second consecutive college basketball season.The restructured A-10 tournament will stage the preliminary rounds in Richmond, Va., through Saturday, take a hiatus and conclude March 14 in Dayton. Last season, the tournament was halted just after it began, when the Flyers were 29-2, angling for a No. 1 seed in the N.C.A.A. tournament and seeking to reach the Final Four for the first time since 1967.This season, spectators were limited to 300 for games at the Dayton Arena. Miller’s only presence was a cardboard cutout that she bought for $55. Even if the Flyers were to reach the A-10 final next week, Miller initially thought, she would not have the connections to get a ticket. She might have been inoculated against the coronavirus, but not against frustration.“Screaming in my house is not the same as screaming in the arena,” Miller said of watching games on her sofa. “And I don’t think my cat is very happy.”Miller has worn her basketball earrings all season. She has not taken down her Christmas tree, which features an ornament memorializing the famous 1967 tipoff between Dan Obrovac and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Credit…Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesCredit…Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesShe began watching the Flyers on TV in the early 1950s. Hers, she said, was the only family in her first-grade class with a TV. She began attending Dayton games as a freshman there in 1964. On Sundays, she did not hesitate to stop then-Coach Don Donoher in the parking lot outside church to query him about a particular play. Her former companion, Dan Obrovac, started at center for Dayton in the 1967 N.C.A.A. title game against U.C.L.A. From 1985 through the 2019-20 season, Miller figured she missed about only a dozen home games in person. And she caught those on the radio or television.Even now, she planned her vacation around the college basketball season. Her hobbies, she liked to say, are basketball and gardening and “thank God they overlap.”Last March 11, Miller wore a throwback Dayton sweatshirt as she boarded a flight to New York for the Atlantic 10 tournament. The Flyers were a fashionable pick to win the national title. Forward Obi Toppin, a Brooklyn native, would be named the national player of the year and become a lottery pick by his hometown team, the Knicks.The Ivy League had canceled its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments on March 10, but the Atlantic 10 was still intending to proceed at the Barclays Center. Miller and her traveling companion, a friend from high school named Angie Hellwig, landed at La Guardia Airport in late afternoon and took a chartered bus with other Dayton fans to the Hampton Inn on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.Miller had bought new clothes for the trip, including sweatshirts and a pair of red slacks. She also carried Obrovac’s Dayton letter sweater from the 1960s. But she was wary of the coronavirus outbreak. Miller and Hellwig carried wipes and disposable gloves, swabbed down their plane seats, their hotel room and the table at Junior’s restaurant in Brooklyn, where they went for burgers and cheesecake at dinner.Somehow, they missed the news later that night that Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz had tested positive for the coronavirus and that the N.B.A. season had been suspended.At breakfast on March 12, talk about the pandemic filled the hotel lobby. The A-10 tournament planned to continue, but without fans, except for families and guests of the players. Miller tried to rent a car to drive back to Dayton, but it was never delivered to the hotel.Miller was in New York, and in denial, when officials canceled the 2020 Atlantic 10 men’s basketball tournament.Credit…Mike Stobe/Getty ImagesThe news got worse. Before noon, as Massachusetts and Virginia Commonwealth were set to meet in a second-round game, with the winner to face Dayton in the conference quarterfinals, the tournament was canceled. “Are you sure?” Miller kept asking in the hotel lobby. “Are you sure?”Hours later, the N.C.A.A. men’s and women’s tournaments were also canceled. Deflated, Miller and Hellwig made their way to La Guardia Airport. With the help of an understanding American Airlines agent, they booked a flight back to Dayton that evening.“Well I’m bummed,” Miller texted a reporter. “I feel so badly for the team. Our first big chance in years.”Her son, Gregorio, found out that she had flown during the growing pandemic. He was not happy. Miller said he messaged her from Portugal, telling her “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but” and cursed.Miller arrived home after midnight. A night owl, she checked online to see if, somehow, the decision to cancel the N.C.A.A. tournament had been reversed. It had not.“I’m superdepressed,” Miller said over the phone on the morning of March 13. “I live for March Madness. It’s like my Christmas.”That afternoon, she sent a text: “Been thinking about my Flyers all day. And also about the ’67 team and it just occurred to me Obi was our Kareem.”Her former companion, Obrovac, had outjumped Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, on the opening tip of the 1967 N.C.A.A. final. Everything then went wrong for Dayton as U.C.L.A. won the first of seven consecutive championships. But, for fans of a certain era, the tip remained the most iconic play in Dayton basketball history and was commemorated with a stained-glass mural in the university library.Decades later, Obrovac and Abdul-Jabbar developed a brief, poignant relationship when both men developed cancer. Obrovac died in 2010 at age 62. A photograph of Obrovac winning the tip was fashioned into a Christmas ornament and hung on Miller’s tree every year.Miller in her kitchen with historic magazines, photos, and letters about her beloved Dayton Flyers.Credit…Brian Kaiser for The New York Times“I may put a sheet up over it to keep from crying every time I walk past,” Miller said.On March 14, Miller asked on Facebook, what does one do in March without basketball? She replied, “My house is going to be so clean it’s going to be disgusting.”She watched as many replays of college games as she could find. She also watched a DVD of Obrovac’s glory days. On March 31, she texted a reporter to say that she had finally taken down her Christmas/basketball tree, adding, “Thank God for gardening. That will carry me through ’til the season starts again.”On Dec. 3, she texted to say that her tree was up again for the 2020-21 college season. It now included an ornament featuring Toppin and a shrine to the unfulfilled 2019-20 season. Anchoring the shrine was an old pair of Obrovac’s size 19 sneakers, fashioned into what were surely the world’s largest elf shoes, and a rock from a garden center etched with the words, “Life begins when the season starts.”“People walk in and look at me like I’m nuts,” she said. “I probably am.”Dayton, 13-8 after winning Monday’s regular-season finale at St. Bonaventure, will likely have to win the A-10 championship to reach the N.C.A.A. tournament. But at least the Flyers would play for the conference title at home. On Sunday, Miller got some good news. One thousand spectators will be allowed for the A-10 final. She began to think aloud.“I’ve got a couple heavy-hitter friends,” she said. “Maybe they can get me in.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Nets and Knicks Welcome Back Fans for First Time

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The NBA SeasonVirus Hotspots in the N.B.A.LeBron and Anthony DavisThe N.B.A. Wanted HerMissing Klay ThompsonKobe the #GirlDadThe fans allowed into Barclays Center in Brooklyn were scattered about to ensure social distancing.Credit…Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersFans Return in New York, Thrilled to Cheer (and Jeer) AgainThe Nets and the Knicks were the first teams to take advantage of New York’s relaxed rules on attendance at sporting events. It was … different, but also a welcome bit of normalcy.The fans allowed into Barclays Center in Brooklyn were scattered about to ensure social distancing.Credit…Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 24, 2021Updated 9:24 a.m. ETThe lights went dark before the game at the Barclays Arena on Tuesday night. A glossily produced video blared from the video screens, filling the 19,000-seat venue with sound and clips of Nets dunking or shooting through colored wisps of smoke, along with the words “Brooklyn Together.” Then the team’s starting lineup sprinted onto the court, one by one, as they were introduced by the public address announcer. And with each name, the crowd roared.Well, it was a fake crowd mostly — piped in through the speaker system — that provided the roars as the Nets got set to play the Sacramento Kings. The actual crowd in attendance — about 300 or so — mostly sat quietly in their seats, lightly clapping as if they were watching a Dvorak symphony or a middle school graduation.Tuesday night was the first time that the Nets allowed fans to watch a game in person since March 8 of last year, when more than 15,000 people attended. Two weeks ago, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that venues with 10,000 or more seats would be allowed to host fans at 10 percent of the venue’s capacity.James Harden had a triple double in a win over the Kings.Credit…Kathy Willens/Associated PressStephen Curry said it felt good to be heckled again.Credit…Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBarclays could have hosted thousands more fans, but opted to start small. To attend, patrons had to take two coronavirus tests — one within 72 hours of the game and another, rapid version on site.Across New York’s East River, similar scenes were playing out when the Knicks hosted the Golden State Warriors at Madison Square Garden. The crowd was a bit bigger in Manhattan — about 2,000 fans — but it was enough that Knicks Coach Tom Thibodeau called the night “a first step back toward normalcy.”The Knicks boasted the game had been a “sellout,” and before it began the fans chanted “M-V-P! M-V-P!” and nearly drowned out the remarks of Julius Randle, who addressed the crowd after being named the Knicks’ first All-Star Game since 2018. By the second half, even the visitors got a sense nature was healing. The Warriors won, 114-106.“There were some fans heckling,” Warriors guard Stephen Curry told reporters after the game, “which was awesome.”Credit…Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe former Giant Justin Tuck and the actor Tracy Morgan were courtside at the Garden.Credit…Pool photo by Wendell CruzIn Brooklyn, the return of fans meant the return of the Nets’ dance team, too.Credit…Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Nets and the Knicks are two of 14 N.B.A. teams allowing patrons to attend games in some way.“It’s a nice change,” Nets Coach Steve Nash said. “We obviously have been playing in empty stadiums for the most part, at least at home. And so to have some fans and a little bit of life and energy, and hopefully we can safely incorporate more fans as we go here.”Barclays Center was a microcosm of the disruption that the world has gone through over the last year. At times, it felt like an uneasy blend between a haunted house and a private Beyoncé concert. Thousands of seats remained unavailable, many still covered by tarps. Almost all of the arena’s restaurants were closed.There was no line for bathrooms, and inside them some sinks had tape over them to encourage social distancing. A sign outside the arena, where scalpers used to roam, offered free testing for the coronavirus, the specter of which was never far away: After walking inside for the game, patrons were greeted with a warning sign that included the line, “Traveling to and from, visiting, and/or providing services in and around the arena may lead to a risk of exposure to COVID-19.”Dozens of ushers stood idly by — back to work for the first time all season — holding placards shaped like stop signs that read, “Please wear your masks.” One remarked that while it was good to be back, she was befuddled by the lack of hallway traffic. “So why am I here?” she said. “There’s no guests!”While the Barclays Center crowd was limited to a few hundred by the Nets, Madison Square Garden welcomed about 2,000 fans. “Even just having a couple thousand fans makes a difference,” Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said. “It just feels more normal, more real.”Credit…Pool photo by Wendell CruzBut as the Knicks’ Thibodeau noted across the river, Tuesday night also represented the first tentative steps back to normalcy in New York sports. Along with the ushers came the return of the Brooklynettes, the Nets’ dance team, and the team’s drum line. Before tipoff, a woman with a headset approached the rehearsing dancers, who were on an elevated podium far from the court, and pleaded: “We have to be really on it with our masks. Please.”One drummer yelled across the arena — possibly to a team of breakdancers — “You all look wack over there.” In previous years, his voice would not have carried so far.Shortly before tipoff, the Nets debuted a video of players speaking the lyrics to the Bill Withers classic, “Ain’t No Sunshine,” dedicated to absent fans. Then Kyrie Irving waved to the crowd on both sides of the court; in an arena with hundreds instead of thousands of people, fans might have been forgiven for thinking Irving was waving to them individually.“It felt like you were sitting in your living room,” said Dylan Schultz, 27. “I’m sitting just with my friend. Not too many people around me. But there’s still this environment of the game is right directly in front of you. You could hear them talking to each other. Sick.”Some in the building tried to keep up traditions, like trying to interrupt opponent’s free-throw shooting. On Tuesday, that effort — normally taken up by thousands of fans screaming and waving objects — fell to four drummers behind the basket, joined occasionally by the five dancers. (Statistically speaking, they could claim success: The Kings shot 13 of 19 from the line, slightly below their season average.)As far as the game itself, the Nets led most of it and won their seventh straight, 127-118. Bruce Brown, the starting guard, got a rare turn in the spotlight, scoring 29 points, as did James Harden, who had a triple-double: 29 points, 11 rebounds and 14 assists.For the most part, the crowd — scattered throughout courtside seats, luxury suites and some in the lower level — stayed subdued, in spite of having the most hyped Nets team in years to watch in person.“It feels like you’re watching a practice session,” said Rich Schaefer, 42, a season-ticket holder. “You’re at a high school gym, and there’s no one there. But you’re watching the best players in the world. It’s not the same energy you get during sold-out games. But there is something incredible, as a basketball fan, of watching and hearing everybody talking and not being distracted by what’s happening around you.”But for the players, the sight of friendly jerseys was a welcome one.“Just having somebody in there to cheer you on is better than nothing,” Nets guard Joe Harris said. “It was definitely nice, even though 300 is not a lot in the big arena. But it’s still a better feel than the empty ones.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Australian Open Offered Unexpected Lessons About Pandemic Sports

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenOsaka Wins TitleMen’s Final PreviewDjokovic’s RideWilliams’s Future?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAustralian Open Offered Unexpected Lessons About Pandemic SportsThe goal was to hold a major international sports event without putting public health at risk. Mission accomplished, but pulling it off presented major, unforeseen challenges and many sleepless nights.Naomi Osaka won the women’s singles final, claiming her fourth Grand Slam championship.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Updated 8:06 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The leaders of the Australian Open wanted their intricate safety strategy to teach the sports world important lessons for the coronavirus pandemic: How to hold a major event with big crowds without worsening the dangers to public health.It pulled off its event — a collection of tennis tournaments played over three weeks in a major city of a country that has sacrificed much to minimize infections and deaths. But as the virus inevitably made its presence felt both directly and indirectly, the Australian Open experienced unforeseen headaches and complications that became warnings for the next group that tries to pull off a major international sporting event (hello, Tokyo Olympics).Surprise setbacks are inevitable, and don’t expect to make many friends.As the Australian Open closed Sunday night with Novak Djokovic winning his ninth men’s singles title here, it was clear that the difficulties could last for months or perhaps even years.Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, said local organizers of the Tokyo Games reached out to him for advice about staging the Olympics, which are scheduled to begin in July. “I just told them, ‘Good luck,’” he said.Tennis Australia officials regularly briefed reporters on coronavirus protocols.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesProblems started even before participants traveled internationally, as tournament organizers had to scramble to make sure they could get to Australia following late cancellations of charter flights. Once the players were in Australia, strict quarantine restrictions got even tighter for roughly 25 percent of the athletes for two weeks. Then there was an unexpected day of isolation and emergency testing just before the start of the marquee event. And a statewide lockdown, prompted by infections that were not related to the tournament, banished fans from Melbourne Park for five days, a move that cost organizers dearly in ticket revenue.Amid the changing dynamics, those involved with the tournament had the persistent worry that if even a few players tested positive the event would have to shut down. That was the ante backing the deal organizers made with government officials to stage the tournament without endangering the public, a prospect that meant strict protecting against a reintroduction of the virus to the Melbourne region, which had emerged from a 111-day lockdown last year and was living life much as it had before the pandemic.Jessica Pegula, who made the women’s singles quarterfinals and whose family owns the Buffalo Bills of the N.F.L. and the Buffalo Sabres of the N.H.L., said the challenge and complexity for those organizing and competing in worldwide events is far more complicated than for domestic leagues and the N.H.L., which has teams in Canada and the United States.Jessica Pegula during her quarterfinal match against Jennifer Brady.Credit…Daniel Pockett/Getty Images“It’s so tough with an international sport having to travel,” Pegula said. “Do all the logistics of going to another bubble, figuring out I got to get tested three days before, I got to get my results, make sure I get tested when I land.”Organizers were somewhat ready to deal with some developments, like a shift to empty stadiums in the middle of the tournament. But other difficulties they were not prepared for at all.“It’s been relentless,” a sleep-deprived Tiley said of the daily problems as he watched the women’s semifinals last week in a bunker beneath Rod Laver Arena. “A roller coaster from the start.”Government officials imposed a hard lockdown for 72 players who were aboard charter flights that carried 10 passengers who tested positive after arriving in Australia. The new restrictions meant those athletes, even if they continually tested negative for the virus, could not leave their hotel rooms at all for 14 days before the first tuneup tournaments before the Open. Some of those rooms had windows that could not be opened, which became a magnified irritation when some of the players were not allowed to leave for any reason.Organizers had also set aside 11 exercise bicycles in case some players were isolated, but after getting more bikes for the players who couldn’t leave their rooms, they got similar requests from the rest of the field since their training was limited to two hours on the court and 90 minutes in the gym each day. So, Tiley needed several hundred bicycles, plus yoga mats, kettlebells and medicine balls.Only one player tested positive, Paula Badosa of Spain, and organizers could not do much for her beyond transfer her to a medical hotel and keep her there for 10 days with no exercise equipment.Once the quarantines ended and the warm-up tournaments began, a security worker in the main hotel for players tested positive. Health officials ordered more than 500 people who were staying there, including many players, to be tested and remain in their rooms for the day. The start of the Australian Open was five days away, and no one knew what another positive result might prompt. Fortunately there were none.But five days into the championship, a small outbreak in the Melbourne region caused health officials to send the entire state of Victoria into a five-day snap lockdown. They allowed the tournament to continue, but without crowds.Tiley said that cost Tennis Australia as much as $25 million in ticket revenue, money that it desperately needed because crowds were already limited to 50 percent of capacity and the tournament has so many extra expenses this year.Each day without crowds, more tarps with the Australian Open logo appeared on the seats in Rod Laver Arena. Workers installed them as soon as manufacturers could deliver them to make the tournament look better on television.An empty Rod Laver Arena on Day 6 of the tournament following a hard lockdown of Victoria to curb a coronavirus outbreak.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesThen came the injuries to several top players, especially on the men’s side — Djokovic and Alexander Zverev played their quarterfinal match with tape on their abdomens. Grigor Dimitrov’s back seized during his quarterfinal. Matteo Berrettini of Italy, the No. 9 seed, could not take the court for his fourth round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece. Some players blamed injuries on the quarantine and limited training.“I want to understand what continuation of the season post-Australia is going to look like, because this is definitely not good for the players in terms of their well-being,” Djokovic said.The problem is that what is good for athletes, who thrive on routine and training and normalcy, may not be good for anyone else, and finding a balance that will satisfy everyone will be a major challenge until Covid -19 in no longer the menace it has become.An organization with a seemingly airtight plan to keep everyone safe had to scramble to make it to the finish line. Tiley said it was worth it, because no one can say with certainty that all will be well a year from now. The challenges and the need to adjust on the fly will be with everyone in sports for a while yet.“You can either choose to play and go through whatever you have to go through, or you stay home and practice and that’s it,” Dimitrov said in a philosophical moment. “We all know what is going on in the world, we all know what is going on in every single country. It’s tough. It’s very uncomfortable. It makes life difficult for so many, not only for us as athletes but people around the world.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How to Watch the Australian Open Tennis Matches

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySet Your Alarm to Watch Great TennisFor two weeks starting Sunday, more than 1,000 hours of Australian Open matches will be available to American audiences during the night and into the morning.Naomi Osaka, last year’s U.S. Open champion, will be seeking a fourth Grand Slam title.Credit…Andrew Brownbill/Associated PressFeb. 6, 2021Depending on your appetite and geographic location, the Australian Open can be the equivalent of a midnight snack or an after-hours all-you-can-eat buffet. Held in Melbourne, Australia, which is 16 hours ahead of the East Coast of the United States, the Grand Slam event is an annual tennis treat for nocturnal American sports fans. This year, more than 1,000 hours of coverage of the singles, doubles and wheelchair competitions will be broadcast in the United States through the night and the morning.The tournament, which begins Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern (30 minutes after the kickoff of the Super Bowl), may not get too much attention in its opening hours. But once a champion is declared in Tampa, Fla., the Australian Open could find itself in a unique position to hold the attention of the sports world for the next two weeks, not overlapping with the most crucial stretch of any major sport’s season.How to WatchIn the United States, the matches will be broadcast on ESPN platforms. If you can stream ESPN3 or ESPN+, either online or with a Roku, Apple TV or similar device, you will have to do the least searching to find which app or site is airing the tennis at any given time. You will also exert the most control over what you watch, with the ability to pick streams from up to 16 live match courts, as well as on-demand replays of matches you may have missed.If you rely on traditional cable, you may have to do a bit more work to keep up with where to find the matches. On the first day, the tournament will begin on ESPN for three hours before shifting to ESPN2. Coverage for the next nine nights will be primarily live on ESPN2, beginning (all times Eastern) at 9 p.m., though the first two hours of play on those days, from 7 to 9 p.m., will be available on ESPN’s streaming platforms. On Feb. 17 at 10 p.m., coverage shifts to ESPN from ESPN2, starting with the women’s semifinals. The men’s semifinals are scheduled to begin at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 18 and Feb. 19. The women’s final will be at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 20, and the men’s final will be at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 21.If you’re a more diurnal viewer who still prefers tuning into live terrestrial television, ESPN2 will show replays of the previous day’s matches at various times on most afternoons, or starting in the late morning on weekends.What to Keep in MindFor the second year in a row, understanding the Australian Open will require understanding the distinct Australian geopolitical and health backdrop. After last year’s tournament was largely overshadowed by ravaging wildfires, this year’s tournament, like all other sporting events, is at the mercy of the coronavirus pandemic. Australia has combated the virus more effectively than nearly any other country, which makes it both uniquely capable and uniquely anxious when it comes to staging a major international event at this time. Up to 30,000 fans could attend the tournament each day, but whether Melburnians are ready to embrace the event remains to be seen; the special treatment tennis players received during the quarantine process rankled many locals, and crowds were scant at the warm-up event held at the same facility last week.The Players to WatchSerena Williams is once more vying to extend her Open-era record of 23 Grand Slam singles titles to 24, matching the record set by Australia’s Margaret Court. Williams won her last Grand Slam title four years ago in Melbourne, during the early stages of her pregnancy with her daughter, Olympia. Naomi Osaka, last year’s United States Open champion, will be seeking a fourth Grand Slam title. The top-seeded woman, Australia’s Ashleigh Barty, is seeking a second Grand Slam title after not competing most of last year because of the pandemic.In the men’s draw, the top-seeded Novak Djokovic will be vying for his ninth Australian Open title, while the second-seeded Rafael Nadal looks to increase his overall Grand Slam haul to 21, breaking his current tie at 20 with Roger Federer, who will not be in attendance.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More