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      Aslan Karatsev of Russia Continues an Unlikely Run at Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAslan Karatsev of Russia Continues an Unlikely Run at Australian OpenThe unknown Russian became one of the few players to make the semifinal of a Grand Slam after surviving the qualifying tournament.Aslan Karatsev of Russia serving in his Men’s Singles Quarterfinals match against Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria during Day 9 of the  Australian Open at Melbourne Park on Tuesday.Credit…Cameron Spencer/Getty ImagesFeb. 16, 2021Updated 9:26 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — He is the mystery man who few in the sport had heard of just days ago. But Aslan Karatsev of Russia has landed in the semifinals of the Australian Open.Karatsev on Tuesday became one of the few players to make the final four of a Grand Slam after surviving the qualifying tournament when he beat an ailing Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in four sets, 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2.He will face Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1, in the semifinals. Djokovic beat Alexander Zverev in four sets in their quarterfinal on Tuesday night.Karatsev, 27, was born in Russia and moved to Israel when he was 3. His maternal grandfather is Jewish. He then returned to Russia for his teenage years to pursue better tennis training. That began a meandering journey back and forth across Europe, with stops in Moscow, Germany, Spain and Belarus, where he has been training for three years.“I was moving around too much,” he said on Tuesday night following his victory.He has been playing in the tennis hinterlands for several years with little success and even considered quitting in 2017 when he was suffering from a knee injury. He had never qualified for a Grand Slam before this tournament. He won three straight matches at the Australian Open qualifying event in Doha to win a spot in the main event and came in ranked No. 114 in the world. He has never been ranked higher than No. 111.He has won $618,354 during his professional career. In this tournament, he has already secured a $662,000 paycheck. Another victory would boost it to $1.17 million.Dimitrov, the No. 18 seed, appeared to have the match under control after the first set but suffered back spasms beginning late in the second set. The pain and stiffness worsened in the third set, and he appeared to be on the edge of retiring for the rest of the match, but returned to the court for the fourth set after receiving medical treatment.He said his back initially spasmed on Monday and he struggled to put on his socks before the match. “We just couldn’t fix it in time,” Dimitrov said.Just four other players have made the semifinals of a Grand Slam after getting through the qualifying event.Ahead of the Australian Open, Karatsev played doubles for Team Russia in the ATP Cup, a team event in which players represent their countries. Russia won the competition, but not because of Karatsev, who lost all three matches in which he played, with two different partners.His teammates, however, noticed that he was playing as well as they had ever seen, and yet none of them would have predicted anything like this.“We felt like he could do something amazing,” Daniil Medvedev, Russia’s top player and the No. 4 seed in the Australian Open, said when Karatsev made it through the fourth round. “To be honest, being in your first Grand Slam main draw? Making quarters is something exceptional. He’s not over yet.”He certainly is not.After his win set up a meeting with Karatsev in the semifinals, Djokovic said he had not seen Karatsev play before this tournament but has been impressed the last 10 days.“Very strong guy physically, moves well, has a lot of firepower from the back of the court, great backhand,” Djokovic said. “The Russian school of tennis.”Karatsev was already the lowest-ranked player to reach the quarterfinals at the Australian Open since Patrick McEnroe in 1991. Karatsev was the first qualifier to make the final eight at a Grand Slam in 10 years.Karatsev’s magical run in Melbourne began with two victories over lesser players last week, though his second-round win over Egor Gerasimov of Belarus hinted at bigger things to come. Karatsev beat Gerasimov, ranked No. 79 in the world, 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. After that, he dispatched eighth-seeded Diego Schwartzman in three sets. It was an impressive win, but Schwartzman’s best results have come on clay rather than the slick, hard courts at Melbourne Park.In the fourth round, Karatsev stormed back from two sets down to defeat Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime, the No. 20 seed, 3-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4. Auger-Aliassime is one of the world’s top young players and looked as if he would easily handle Karatsev after the first two sets.Then Karatsev took a bathroom break. He used the toilet and splashed some water on his face; and when he returned to the court, he found his comfort zone. He began firing aces and winners on his serve with abandon and pushed Auger-Aliassime farther and farther back into the court with his deep groundstrokes.Karatsev looked to be following a similar script on a warm, humid Tuesday afternoon.“I was a bit nervous at the start,” he said.The nerves were certainly justified, but the court he was playing on had an unlikely resemblance to the countless courts where he has competed for years in lower-tier events in front of rows of empty bleachers. On Friday night, health officials instituted a five-day lockdown after more than a dozen people tested positive for Covid-19. There were no spectators other than a few journalists, tournament employees and the players’ support teams.No one other than Dimitrov and the few people around him knew that he was taking the court at less than 100 percent. Dimitrov, one of the most talented and physically gifted players on the tour, had breezed through his first four matches, including his three-set dismantling of Dominic Thiem, the No. 3 seed.Karatsev’s nerves showed in the first set, when he made 19 unforced errors and double-faulted three times. In the second set, though, he started standing toe to toe with Dimitrov, playing longer points, sending balls deep into the court and forcing Dimitrov to exert himself and put stress on his back. By the end of the third set, Dimitrov could barely stand.Less than an hour later, Karatsev was in the semifinals.“I’m trying to enjoy the moment, not thinking about it too much, just playing from round to round,” he said.Can he win the tournament?“We will see,” he said. “How can I say?”As unlikely as it might seem, Dimitrov said he was not surprised to see Karatsev, who four months ago had a goal of making the Top 100, surging to the final four.“He’s a great player,” Dimitrov said of Karatsev. “To be here, clearly you’ve done something right. You’ve put in the work; you’ve gone through the qualifiers, went through tough and good matches, built up confidence. There’s so many positives, so why not for him to go further?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Serena Williams Wins and Will Face Naomi Osaka in Australian Open Semifinals

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySerena Williams Wins, Setting Up Showdown With Naomi OsakaWilliams dispatched Simona Halep to avenge an embarrassing defeat in their previous meeting. Next up? Osaka in a star-studded semifinal.Serena Williams is now two wins from her 24th Grand Slam singles title.Credit…David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 16, 2021, 8:45 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams was not about to let Simona Halep derail her run to a 24th Grand Slam singles championship. Not again.The summer of 2019 may seem like a lifetime ago in a world reeling from a pandemic that is taking a second lap of the calendar. But for Williams, the scab from her humbling loss to Halep in the Wimbledon final that July remains as fresh as the day Halep held her to four games on the All-England Club’s hallowed grass.Williams’s 6-3, 6-3 victory against Halep on Tuesday in the Australian Open quarterfinals was not as surgical as the dismemberment that Halep administered in their previous meeting, a performance that Billie Jean King described as “one of the most perfectly executed matches I’ve ever seen.”On Tuesday night, Williams put only 55 percent of her first serves in play, a much lower rate than she expects of herself. She finished with more unforced errors (33) than winners (24). But on the key points, Williams’s moxie and her motor won the day.Williams finished with more unforced errors (33) than winners (24) against Halep.Credit…Paul Crock/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWith Halep serving at 3-3 in the second set, Williams won a 20-stroke rally to earn a break point, then secured the break on a 12-stroke point. Two days after she was extended to three intense sets and more than two hours by Aryna Sabalenka, Williams, 39, was spry enough to outrun and outlast the second-ranked Halep, who is 10 years younger.“I feel pretty good with that performance,” Williams said. “I feel like I needed to have a good performance obviously today, especially after my last match against her.”The 2019 Wimbledon final was the third of four that Williams has played since she won the 2017 Australian Open to pull within one Grand Slam title of equaling the career record held by Margaret Court. She is one victory from earning another shot at it, but to get there she will have to defeat another player who derailed an earlier run.That would be the third-ranked Naomi Osaka, who handed Williams a 6-2, 6-4 defeat in the 2018 United States Open final — the first of Osaka’s three Grand Slam titles. Osaka, 23, who won the U.S. Open again last year, extended her winning streak to 19 matches earlier Tuesday with a straight-set victory against Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei.Williams was brimming with confidence after returning to the semifinals. She will face Naomi Osaka next.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersAfter her victory, Osaka said she planned to stay up to watch the battle between Halep and Williams, though not necessarily to find out who she would face next.“I always watch Serena play,” Osaka said.She was not alone. No fans were allowed inside Rod Laver Arena because of a five-day lockdown imposed after the Australian authorities detected a cluster of coronavirus infections in the area. But Williams and Halep had a crowd of roughly five dozen spectators anyway, as people associated with the tournament slipped into seats to watch.“I feel like everyone in the tournament watches her,” Osaka said, referring to Williams. “Like, whenever I go to the locker room or whatever, there’s always just people lounging around and stuff, watching her match.”Since Williams last won a Grand Slam title, a lot of the attention in women’s tennis has shifted to Osaka. In 2020, she supplanted Williams as the highest-earning woman in sports on the strength of more than $30 million in off-court endorsements. Her rise led a reporter on the eve of this tournament to ask how she was dealing with being seen as the face of women’s tennis.“As long as Serena’s here,” Osaka replied, “I think she’s the face of women’s tennis.”Naomi Osaka stormed into the semifinals with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over Hsieh Su-wei.Credit…David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWho is Williams to argue? She has worn a diamond-encrusted “QUEEN” necklace during all her matches.Thursday’s meeting with Osaka will be Williams’s 40th Grand Slam semifinal. It will also be her first time squaring off against Osaka in a Grand Slam since their 2018 final in New York, a match that turned turbulent when Williams argued with the chair umpire, who called three code-of-conduct violations against her. The incident turned the crowd against him, and indirectly, Osaka, souring her moment of victory.In the afterglow of her quarterfinal victory, Williams’s smile didn’t waver when she was asked about her relationship with Osaka.“I think we both have had closure,” Williams said of the 2018 final. She added, “I think she’s a great competitor and a cool cat.”Williams and Osaka might have squared off in another U.S. Open final last year if not for the heel injury that hampered Williams in her semifinal loss to Victoria Azarenka. Unlike Osaka, who skipped last fall’s rescheduled French Open because of a strained hamstring, Williams played at Roland Garros less than three weeks after the Open. She won her first match before pulling out of the tournament, a decision that proved providential.When the start of the Australian Open was pushed back three weeks because of the pandemic, Williams was gifted with three open months on her calendar, a welcome block of time that she used to heal her injury and improve her conditioning.According to Patrick Mouratoglou, who has been Williams’s coach since 2012, she rededicated herself to the unglamorous work of improving her fitness, with an emphasis on footwork and speed.“It’s a lot of little details that make a big difference,” he said.“I feel like I needed to have a good performance obviously today,” Williams said of facing Halep, “especially after my last match against her.”Credit…Brandon Malone/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe daily conditioning grind she endured through November and December has allowed Williams to run down balls and extend rallies in February. Known for her attacking style, Williams’s best offense in her past two matches has been her defense.“She’s moving better,” conceded Halep, adding: “It’s much easier for her to hit the balls. It’s tougher for the opponents to finish the point.”Williams “has a really good game,” Halep said. Then she caught herself. Laughing, she said, “She always did.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Daniil Medvedev Finds Another Way of Playing Professional Tennis

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDaniil Medvedev Finds Another Way of Playing Professional TennisHow is this elite tennis player different from all other tennis players? Let us count the ways. But can he win a Grand Slam title?Daniil Medvedev has carved out a quirky game in a sport driven by powerful strokes.Credit…David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Men’s tennis in 2021 can feel like a fairly homogeneous affair. Big people. Big forehands. Big serves. A lot of guys seemingly trying to hit the ball through the wall behind the back of the court, even on their one-handed backhands.And then there is Daniil Medvedev, a lanky Russian who provides any number of answers to the question of how he’s different from other tennis players.Where to begin?There’s the bizarre service motion, in which Medvedev bounces the ball twice, then tosses it in the air without first bringing it into contact with his racket (try it sometime — it’s super awkward). In an era of ripped physiques built for power, Medvedev takes the court with a wiry 6-foot-6 frame and a slouching posture that seems like the creation of a caricature artist. Often, he likes to turn a furious baseline rally on its head with a sudden, deadly drop shot from the back of the court. Or a moonball. Or a twisting, beguiling slice.Medvedev has honed a quirky and creative mix of spins and surprise. He seems to care little about trying to dictate the terms of a match, and more about deducing which weapons the match requires and forever looking out for another trick.“That’s what I work on in practice, to have a lot of different weapons,” Medvedev said earlier this month as he was leading Russia to the ATP Cup, in which players compete for their countries. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the opponent is too good, sometimes you don’t play good. It depends. It’s tennis.”Medvedev’s approach has made him the player who now elicits the lusty praise of the tennis aesthetes. Jim Courier, the former world No. 1 and two-time Australian Open champion, has called Medvedev a “shape shifter” because of his talent for taking points where no one thought they would go and finding the undiscovered angle. John McEnroe, the seven-time Grand Slam champion and ESPN analyst who was a favorite among tennis snobs of a previous generation who could tolerate his temper tantrums, said Medvedev was his favorite player to watch right now.“He’s like a chess master,” McEnroe said during a recent conference call. “He just plays old school a little bit. He’s strategizing, he’s thinking ahead. These are the types of guys that we need.”Whether tennis gets them remains to be seen. So many players in the emerging generation rely so heavily on their cannon-like serves and forehands. Also, Medvedev, who does have a booming serve and the ability to blast groundstrokes when he needs to, is already 25 and has yet to win a Grand Slam title. Each year that passes without a major championship will only increase the questions about whether his creativity can prevail during repeated five-set showdowns in the biggest tournaments. (It takes seven consecutive victories to claim a Grand Slam title.)Medvedev hitting a return against Mackenzie McDonald in the fourth round.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMedvedev’s next test occurs Wednesday, when he faces Andrey Rublev, a fellow Russian, close friend and tennis alter ego, in an Australian Open quarterfinal. Rublev rarely sees a ball he does not want to pound into oblivion, or a point he does not want to end as quickly as possible.At 23, Rublev is two years younger than Medvedev and grew up playing junior tournaments against him in Russia. For a long time Rublev, seeded No. 8, and Karen Khachanov, 24, the third member of Russia’s latest golden generation, were better than Medvedev. The rise for Medvedev came in 2018 and 2019, when he nearly beat Rafael Nadal in the 2019 United States Open final.“He reads the game really well,” Rublev said of Medvedev. “It’s amazing, the patience he has to stay so long in the rallies, to not rush, to take the time, because in the end these little details, they make him who he is.”Russia is the only country with two players in the top 10. Khachanov gives it three in the top 20. Aslan Karatsev, 27, another Russian ranked No. 114, came out of nowhere to make the quarterfinals here in his first Grand Slam tournament.Medvedev comes into the quarterfinal on perhaps the best roll of his career. He has won 18 consecutive singles matches. He won the ATP Tour finals in London in November, pulling off the nifty trick of beating the world’s top three players — Novak Djokovic, Nadal and Dominic Thiem — in a single tournament. For Russia at the ATP Cup, he beat Alexander Zverev of Germany, a 2020 U.S. Open finalist, in a tight, three-set match in the semifinal round.Medvedev spent his early childhood in Moscow and played few sports other than tennis growing up. He worshiped Russia’s last golden generation, which included Marat Safin and Yevgeny Kafelnikov, who were in their prime when he was a young child. He moved to France to train as a teenager and became fluent in English and French.Medvedev could be heard screaming at his coach, Gilles Cervara of France, in French during his third-round match against Filip Krajinovic of Serbia, as he frittered away a two-set lead before recovering to win the final set, 6-0.As Krajinovic controlled the match in the third and fourth sets, Medvedev screamed at Cervara — who is prohibited from coaching during the match — to leave him alone and just let him play.It was a flash of Medvedev’s personality from a few years ago, when, as he put it, he “could go crazy” at any moment.“Sometimes that can still get out, and usually it doesn’t help me to play good,” he said.Ultimately, it’s not clear how much any guidance can really affect such an idiosyncratic player and person, someone inclined to go his own way.For instance, Medvedev has spoken with nutritionists about his diet. He is not so strikingly thin because he watches what he eats. He has the appetite of a horse and one of those metabolisms that allows him to sample all the offerings at a Viennese table and never gain a pound, which is good, because he has a major weakness for desserts. Tiramisù, pie, candy; if it is sweet, he wants it.“Many people hate me probably for this,” he said. “I know that with age it can change, so I need to be careful about this because you never know when it’s coming.”He swears he cuts back on his sugar intake during Grand Slam tournaments, but he also said he had several cakes waiting for him in his room for after the tournament.He is hoping the cakes can wait a few more days and serve as a reward for him and his unique style.“I’m 25. I am playing good tennis,” he said. “I have zero Slams.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Hsieh Su-Wei to Face Naomi Osaka at Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAt 35, a Tennis Magician Brings Her Tricks to a First QuarterfinalHsieh Su-Wei’s overhead drop shots, wicked spins and two-handed shots can rattle her opponents. Naomi Osaka will see them next.Hsieh Su-Wei has advanced to her first Grand Slam singles quarterfinal at age 35.Credit…Kelly Defina/ReutersFeb. 15, 2021, 10:21 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The tennis court becomes a fun house mirror when the player across the net is Hsieh Su-Wei, the queen of the overhead drop shot, whose wicked spins, clever angles and two-handed shots from both sides can rattle her opponents.Naomi Osaka, a three-time Grand Slam champion, sighed audibly on Sunday when informed that her reward for fending off two match points against Garbine Muguruza was a meeting with Hsieh, who clinched her place in the quarterfinals while Osaka was struggling to solve the problem that was Muguruza.“She’s one of those players that, for me, if it was a video game, I would want to select her character just to play her,” Osaka, the 2019 champion, said. “Because my mind can’t fathom the choices she makes when she’s on the court.”Osaka, 23, added, “It’s not fun to play her, but it’s really fun to watch.”Hsieh, 35, is more accomplished in doubles, where she and her partner, Barbora Strycova, arrived at Melbourne Park as the top seeds and exited in the second round. A three-time Grand Slam champion in doubles, Hsieh had never advanced to the quarterfinals in singles in 37 prior Grand Slam singles main draw appearances.“She’s probably going to smash me on the court,” Hsieh said cheerfully. “I try to play my game, do my job, see what happens.”Hsieh has a resting happy face, but behind the smile lurks a steely competitor. She has played Osaka five times, and four of the matches have gone three sets, including Hsieh’s lone win, in the third round in Miami in 2019 when Osaka was the world No. 1.Asked what makes playing Hsieh such a challenge, Osaka said, “Have you watched her play?” She laughed. “It’s like, ‘What?’”She added, “I know that for me, whenever I play her I just have to expect everything.”The showdown between Hsieh of Taiwan and Osaka of Japan, is a study in contrasts. Osaka creates pace and Hsieh redirects it. Osaka is a marketing magnet who added Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer and Workday to her endorsement portfolio ahead of the Australian Open. Hsieh has no sponsors, partly by design.“I’d rather stay simple,” said Hsieh, whose tournament routine of shopping for discounted tennis wear has been upended by the statewide lockdown instituted last week.As embodied by Osaka, the power game is in vogue. But Hsieh’s more refined style will never go out of fashion. She is an artist that turns convention on its head with an unusual vision that gives the court its shape, the way a Bundt pan gives shape to the batter poured into it.“I think she has incredible hands and incredible eyes,” said Serena Williams’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou. “She sees the ball very early, seeing and anticipating a lot.”That’s why she has such an economy of movement, he added, “and why she’s so difficult to play.”For the past three weeks, the tricky job of preparing the crafty Hsieh for her matches has fallen to Andrew Whittington, who advanced to the semifinals in men’s doubles at the 2017 Australian Open and has cracked the top 200 in singles.On a sunny Monday on Court 17, hard against the tram tracks on the eastern periphery of the grounds, Whittington spent close to an hour feeding Hsieh the hard, flat, well-placed serves that are Osaka’s signature.Hsieh’s coach, Paul McNamee, instructed Whittington to hold nothing back. After Hsieh failed to get her racket on a ball to her backhand, McNamee sidled up to Hsieh and said she would be seeing that serve a lot from Osaka.Hsieh nodded solemnly. Seconds later, she lifted a ball off the court with her racket, turned her back to the net and hit a no-look rainbow shot back to Whittington, who could only laugh.McNamee described Hsieh as a free spirit and said: “You don’t want to box that spirit. You’ve got to let it rise and be free.”Laughing, McNamee added, “I’ve learned the joy of silence a lot working with Su-Wei.”During the last few minutes of the hourlong practice, Whittington fielded serves from Hsieh, including a few made underhanded. He was more prepared for those than the question she lobbed at him near the end of the drill.“Is my serve very slow?” she said.It was the rare instance when she wasn’t kidding around. Sensing Hsieh’s vulnerability, Whittington moved quickly to assure her that her serve is fine. Like the rest of the arrows in her quiver, it is deceptively sharp. Hsieh has put 71 percent of her first serves in play in this tournament.Hsieh’s unusual style includes two-handed shots from both sides.Credit…Paul Crock/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHsieh’s authenticity, her guilelessness, is “what makes her so unique and so great to work with,” Whittington said.Whittington brought more tennis rackets to the hitting session than Hsieh, who generally travels with one. The ball finds the sweet spot on her racket with such regularity, McNamee explained, that Hsieh went three years without breaking a string.An entertainer who wields her racket like a magician’s prop, Hsieh is sorry that the lockdown will shut out fans through Wednesday — and perhaps longer.“I think I just stay the same, enjoy, try to be positive,” she said. “If I don’t win, I hope quarantine finishes very soon so I can go out to enjoy a little bit.”Even if Osaka comes away with the win, she doubts it will be enjoyable. In the third round of the 2019 Australian Open, Osaka defeated Hsieh, 5-7, 6-4, 6-1.It is not a pleasant memory.“I just remember having, like, so many emotions just because I felt like there wasn’t a lot of things I could control while I was playing her,” Osaka said.It is Hsieh’s greatest strength. She can make the best, most powerful players feel helpless.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Speed of Courts at Issue in Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHow Fast Are Those Australian Open Courts? Does It Matter?Players are calling this the fastest Grand Slam tennis court they have played on. Technicians say the speed hasn’t changed. Who is right?Australian Open officials said the speed of the Melbourne Park courts hasn’t changed, but Dominic Thiem of Austria said they were the fastest he has played on.Credit…Jaimi Joy/ReutersFeb. 15, 2021Updated 8:35 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — The chatter about the speed of the tennis courts at the Australian Open this year started innocently enough.It was just before the ATP Cup, the team competition at Melbourne Park that preceded the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam event. Dominic Thiem of Austria, the winner of last year’s United States Open, mentioned he had been practicing at John Cain Arena, and the ball seemed to be coming off the blue hardcourt pretty darn fast.Days later, Novak Djokovic, the world No. 1 and eight-time champion of the Australian Open, said the court at Rod Laver Arena, which he refers to as his second backyard, felt strikingly fast. Then, after his second-round defeat of Frances Tiafoe of the United States, Djokovic said it was playing faster than at any other time since he began playing here 15 years ago, which is not a bad thing for perhaps the game’s most precise and effective ball striker. He said it again after beating Milos Raonic in the fourth round Sunday night. On Friday night, Thiem, the No. 3 seed, came back from two sets down to beat the fan favorite Nick Kyrgios of Australia in the third round, and spoke of all the challenges he had faced — a hostile crowd, Kyrgios’s booming serve and “the fastest Grand Slam Court I have ever played on.”Few players have disagreed.Their comments have caught Tennis Australia, the organizer of the Australian Open and the keeper of the courts at Melbourne Park, a bit off guard. Last year at the Australian Open, some players complained the courts were too slow.Machar Reid, the head of innovation for Tennis Australia, knows the most about the condition of the courts. He said pretournament tests produced results similar to last year, the first year the Australian Open contracted with GreenSet, which supplies the acrylic coating of the courts, essentially the paint.“What we aim for is consistency, year after year, not just here but for all the facilities in the country, so the players are playing on a similar surface no matter where they are,” Reid said in an interview last week. “All our indications are that the courts are the same.”Without getting overly technical in evaluating the tests against the experiences of multimillionaire athletes who have hit countless shots on countless courts and are sensitive to the tiniest changes in conditions, it is worth noting that tennis players consistently suffer from the Goldilocks syndrome.Tennis courts are always either too fast or too slow, too slick or too sticky. Players can shift their opinion midway through a match if the weather changes. They are not an easy lot to please.Men seem to obsess and complain about the speed more than women, perhaps because they hit harder. A serve traveling at 130 miles per hour is plenty difficult to return on a normal court. On a too-fast court it is tough to get the racket on it.The International Tennis Federation, the sport’s world governing body, classifies tennis courts into one of five categories for its Court Pace Rating: slow, medium-slow, medium, medium-fast and fast. A surface receives its classification after various tests that include measuring how high a ball bounces when it hits the surface at different speeds and how easily it slides when it is dragged across it, as well as other factors.The red clay of the French Open is the slowest Grand Slam surface. Playing on the grass of Wimbledon in certain conditions can feel like playing on an ice rink, with the ball skidding and barely rising above a player’s shins. The slightly cushioned hardcourts at the United States Open and the Australian Open are plenty fast, but the ball generally pops up. The speed can be adjusted from year to year depending on the grittiness of the acrylic coating — think of it as adding sand to paint.All the courts at Melbourne Park were polished and given a fresh coat of the GreenSet acrylic before this year’s tournament. Reid said Tennis Australia aims to provide a court that lands right in the middle of the I.T.F. classification scale because the organization believes that kind of court produces the best tennis.A court rated in the fastest category would too heavily favor the big servers and prevent points from developing. A slow court would encourage players to stay back and turn each point into a defensive chess match. A medium court allows tennis to hit that delicate balance between athleticism and strategy.The problem is tennis tournaments don’t take place in a static environment. No matter what the numbers say, how “fast” a tennis court plays is the result of an incalculable and ever-changing interaction of the ball, the surface of the court and the climate.Changes in the weather can have a drastic effect on how a ball moves. Cooler weather can make a tennis ball feel like a rock on the racket and lessen its bounce. When the temperature rises, the ball becomes livelier. There have been a few hot days in the past month, but the weather has been rather cool for the Melbourne summer.Then again, racket and string technologies are always improving, allowing players to hit harder, with more topspin than ever. Also, courts generally speed up with increased play, and the courts at Melbourne Park have experienced significantly more play than normal this year. Players began practicing on the courts three weeks before the Australian Open. Five separate competitions took place the week before the tournament started.And yet it’s a mystery whether the courts are truly faster and how big a factor that will play in the outcome of the tournament.Fifth-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece, whose game is laced with power, described the court at Rod Laver Arena as one of the slowest at Melbourne Park and not that different from the courts at other Grand Slam events.But Diego Schwartzman of Argentina, one of the game’s great baseline defenders, described the courts as “really, really quick.” Schwartzman, the No. 8 seed, lost in the third round to Aslan Karatsev, a hard-hitting Russian ranked 114th in the world and playing in his first Grand Slam singles tournament. Karatsev dispatched Schwartzman in three sets.“He’s a guy who was doing very powerful shots every single time, and the court was not helping,” Schwartzman said. “I prefer it a little bit slower, to have better conditions so you can think a little bit more in the match and you can have choices, different choices, different shots.”Diego Schwartzman of Argentina lost a third-round match to the hard-hitting Russian Aslin Karatsev. The speed of the courts “wasn’t helping,” he said. Credit…Daniel Pockett/Getty ImagesIn the fourth round, Karatsev came back from two sets down to defeat Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada, the No. 20 seed.“I played here before, and it was slower,” Karatsev said. “But for me, it’s good. I think the fast surface for me, it’s always good.”On Sunday, Thiem, the big hitter who started all this chatter, lost badly to Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria at Rod Laver Arena, 6-4, 6-4, 6-0.“It was very, very fast, probably the fastest Grand Slam I’ve played so far,” Thiem said. “But that wasn’t the issue.”After the tournament, Reid said, he will evaluate the reams of data produced by the Hawk-Eye system, which takes hundreds of measurements per second of the ball and the court position of each player. It should provide some insight into whether the courts were faster this year. Or maybe it won’t.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Serena Williams Turns Back Time at Australian Open

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySerena Williams Turns Back Time at Australian OpenAgainst Aryna Sabalenka, Williams called back to a much earlier phase of her career, well before she was the undisputed queen of her sport.Serena Williams beat Aryna Sabalenka at the Australian Open after several times looking close to defeat.Credit…William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeb. 14, 2021Updated 9:47 a.m. ETMELBOURNE, Australia — Serena Williams became a time traveler on Sunday, pulled back to the past to essentially face down her much younger self.Across the net from her in the fourth round of the Australian Open stood the 22-year-old Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, who turned pro at 14, like Williams, and whose strategy called to mind Williams’s game plan at the same age: If at first you don’t succeed, hit harder.Williams, 39, stared down Sabalenka, and after two gripping hours, Sabalenka blinked. In the 10th game of the deciding set, Sabalenka mustered one point on her serve as Williams, a seven-time champion, seized the break and a 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 victory to set up a quarterfinal meeting with Simona Halep, who dispatched the 19-year-old Iga Swiatek in three sets.Williams’s longevity makes it easy to forget that before she was the game’s grande dame, she was its whiz kid, collecting nine WTA singles titles, including one Grand Slam, before she was out of her teens.Sabalenka, a nine-time winner on the WTA Tour, and Swiatek, the reigning French Open champion, are the latest in a long string of polished phenoms threaded through Williams’s career. One of the biggest stars to emerge, Naomi Osaka, saved two match points to beat Garbiñe Muguruza on Sunday. Still, from Jennifer Capriati and Monica Seles to Maria Sharapova and Sloane Stephens, Williams has watched many young talents come and go and, on occasion, stray far from tennis.A sport with a history of suffocating its young has not stifled Williams, a 23-time Grand Slam champion in singles whose love for the game seems to have deepened over time. Against Sabalenka, she studied a page of written notes during changeovers as if she were back in high school. She fiddled with her “Queen” necklace. She dug balls out of the corners and ran from side to side as if she were on a school blacktop at recess.Darren Cahill, one of Halep’s coaches, described Williams’s movement as the best he had seen from her “in a long, long time” and said, “If you can stay in more points and get more balls back, stay alive, then she’s got the power to turn those points around.”What Williams is doing is also inconceivable to the younger Americans, three of whom have followed her into the second week. Marveled, one of the three, the 28-year-old Shelby Rogers: “What she’s been able to accomplish is absolutely incredible because some days I wake up now and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m not 21 anymore.’”Williams’s serve usually allows her to win her share of easy points. But against Sabalenka, her main weapon continually misfired. Williams put 52 percent of her first serves in play and recorded eight double faults, including one in the fifth game of the third set, which gave Sabalenka two break points.With the state of Victoria in Day 2 of a hard lockdown, no fans were in the stands, but the restrictions placed on the local populace did not extend to Williams’s inner circle, which includes her husband, coach, agent, hitting partner and older sister Venus, 40, who lost in the second round.Williams didn’t need to be told by the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, that her entourage qualified as “essential workers,” a classification that made it possible for them to attend the match. Her team is elemental to her success, and she looked over often to where everyone was seated. When she was down 15-40 in that fifth game, Venus raised both hands as if signaling a touchdown and they locked eyes.Williams’s sister Venus Williams was in the stands for support at crucial moments during the match.Credit…Loren Elliott/ReutersWilliams’s most recent Grand Slam championship came at Venus’s expense at Melbourne Park in 2017, when she was two months pregnant with her first daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian. Since becoming a parent, Williams has found her voice as an advocate for working mothers everywhere, speaking openly of the hardships, both physical and emotional, that she and others on the WTA Tour — and in the wider world — confront daily while balancing their jobs and child-rearing.But in that telepathic moment between the sisters, Serena was not tennis’s earth mother. She was transported back in time to her early years as a pro when she looked to Venus for direction.“When I hear her voice, it just makes me calm and confident,” Williams said. “Yeah, I think there’s something about it that just makes me feel really good.”She got her first serve in on the next three points and won them all, earning an advantage with a 126 mile-an-hour ace. Williams closed out the game on a frazzled Sabalenka’s forced error.Sabalenka fought back, winning the next three games to draw even at 4-4. At that point, she said: “I felt like I should win it. I felt like I was fighting really well.”But so was Williams. She held, and with Sabalenka serving to stay in the match, Williams got enough balls back to fluster her younger opponent, whose service game ended with a double fault and two forehand unforced errors.“I just needed to play better on the big points,” Williams said. “I knew that I could. I still hadn’t reached my peak. I was like, ‘OK, Serena, you got this. Just keep going.’”Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus threw her racket in frustration as she missed opportunities against Williams.Credit…Hamish Blair/Associated PressAfter 23 major singles titles and hundreds of millions of dollars in prize money and endorsements and motherhood, how does Williams find the motivation to keep chasing a tennis ball?The answer could be found in how Williams spent her off day. After her Saturday practice, she put her daughter down for a nap and then made work calls to the United States, finalizing orders and obsessing about fabrics for her fashion line, S by Serena, which she described as her “second career.”There’s a method to Williams’s multitasking. She has been doing it her whole life, she said. She never played a full tennis schedule as a junior and has never played a full schedule as a pro.“I still went to college, I still did a lot of other things,” Williams said. “I had other careers. It was impossible to burn out.”Convention holds that Williams continues to play because she has Margaret Court’s career record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles in her sights. But the truth might be simpler.“I like my job,” she said. “I like what I do. It’s pretty special I get to come out and still get to do it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      2021 Australian Open: What to Watch on Sunday Night

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story2021 Australian Open: What to Watch on Sunday NightFour American players feature as the round of 16 concludes at the Australian Open.Jennifer Brady made the semifinals of the United States Open last year. Can she follow it up with a deep run at the Australian Open?Credit…Jason O’Brien/EPA, via ShutterstockFeb. 14, 2021, 7:53 a.m. ETHow to watch: 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern on the Tennis Channel and 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. on ESPN2 in the United States; streaming on the ESPN+ and ESPN3 apps.Jennifer Brady, the 22nd seed, played college tennis at U.C.L.A. After some initial success on the WTA Tour, reaching the round of 16 at the Australian Open and United States Open in 2017, she struggled for a while. But this past September she broke through with a trip to the semifinals of the U.S. Open after winning her first WTA Title at the Top Seed Open.Having lost only 11 games across her first three rounds, Brady has shown herself to be a real contender at the Australian Open. Against the 28th seed, Donna Vekic, she’ll need to show the consistency she has used to get here.Here are some matches to keep an eye on.Because of the number of matches cycling through courts, the times for individual matchups are at best estimates and are certain to fluctuate based on when earlier play is completed. All times are Eastern.Rod Laver Arena | 7 p.m. SundayElina Svitolina vs. Jessica PegulaElina Svitolina, the fifth seed, reached the quarterfinals of the Australian Open and was the runner-up in the WTA Finals in 2018 and 2019. Remarkably, the defensive baseliner seems to thrive on faster courts, soaking up the pressure from other players and redirecting their pace into clever counterattacks.Jessica Pegula has had a career delayed by injuries. Now, the 26 year-old has reached the second week of a major tournament for the first time, without dropping a set. In the first round, Pegula upset Victoria Azarenka, the 12th seed and a two time Grand Slam champion. Although that match was perilously close, her second and third round matches were little more than mild inconveniences, as she lost just four games across four sets.Although Pegula is certainly improving and showing a high level of play, Svitolina will be a tough challenge. Svitolina’s consistency and former experience in the second week of slams will make her the clear favorite.Margaret Court Arena | 8:30 p.m. SundayMackenzie McDonald vs. Daniil MedvedevAt the 2019 French Open, Mackenzie McDonald tore a hamstring tendon off the bone, leading to a difficult surgery and a lengthy recovery process. Now, he has reached the round of 16, tying his best result from before the injury. McDonald was especially impressive in his second round upset over the 22nd seed, Borna Coric, keeping calm and drawing errors with his consistent, deep shotmaking.Daniil Medvedev, the fourth seed, struggled in his third round matchup against Filip Krajinovic, losing the third and fourth sets in spectacular fashion. Medvedev cycled between yelling at himself in Russian, his coach in French, and Krajinovic’s well placed volleys in English. In the fifth set, Medvedev settled back in and won six straight games.For McDonald to pull off an upset, he will need to exploit Medvedev’s natural volatility. Medvedev should be able to keep McDonald at bay if he can keep calm and use his varied shots to pull the American around the edges of the court.Rod Laver Arena | 11 p.m. SundayRafael Nadal vs. Fabio FogniniRafael Nadal, the No. 2 seed, has struggled with a small back injury throughout the first week of the Australian Open. However, this has not stopped him from rolling past his opposition without dropping a set. Nadal’s powerful topspin shots have consistently pushed his opponents around the court, depriving them of the time necessary to impose their own ideas upon a rally.Fabio Fognini, the 16th seed, has had a roller coaster week. He struggled in a five-set contest against a fellow Italian, Salvatore Caruso, but then dispatched the 21st seed, Alex de Minaur, in just three sets. Fognini, who won a doubles title at the Australian Open in 2015, has been to the round of 16 in Melbourne four times, and will have a difficult time overcoming Nadal.Rod Laver Arena | 3 a.m. MondayAshleigh Barty vs. Shelby RogersAshleigh Barty, the world No. 1, has moved through to the fourth round without dropping a set. In her third round victory over Ekaterina Alexandrova she played smart tennis, not going for big shots and allowing Alexandrova to overplay and extracting 30 unforced errors.Shelby Rogers, an unseeded player, has reached two major quarterfinals, but has never won a WTA tournament. Her inconsistency on tour can partially be blamed on ruptured cartilage in her knee, which required surgery in 2018.Barty and Rogers faced off in the quarterfinals of the Yarra Valley Classic last week, with Barty winning in a third-set tiebreaker. For Rogers to reverse her fortunes, she’ll need to play aggressively without over-hitting, a tough needle to thread.Here are a few more matches to keep an eye on.Donna Vekic vs. Jennifer Brady — 9 p.m.Andrey Rublev vs. Casper Ruud — 11:30 p.m.Elise Mertens vs. Karolina Muchova — 2 a.m.Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Matteo Berrettini — 5 a.m.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Trust Me, Sports Without Fans Is Not Sports

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Australian OpenWhat to Watch TodayHow to WatchThe Players to KnowFans in Virus LockdownFifth seed Stefanos Tsipsipas celebrated facing a cheering crowd after winning his second round match.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesTrust Me, Sports Without Fans Is Not SportsFor five days the Australian Open had cozy stadiums half-filled with fervent fans, and sports once again felt normal. Then a snap lockdown quieted the stands.Fifth seed Stefanos Tsipsipas celebrated facing a cheering crowd after winning his second round match.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyFeb. 14, 2021Updated 6:05 a.m. ETRemember what sports was like with crowds? Listen.Recorded as Nick Kyrgios took on Dominic Thiem in Melbourne on Friday night.MELBOURNE, Australia — For roughly the past two decades, the analytics crowd has peddled the idea that sports is essentially math, that what unfolds on the field of play is predictable and intelligible if viewed through a proper algorithm. Occasionally that crowd has even been right. And in many ways the pandemic sports environment was an analytics aficionado’s dream, a chance for games to unfold in a laboratory, free of the noise, both literal and figurative, that can turn an expected outcome into a beautiful mess.Now, nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, we really do know the roar of the crowd is as vital to sports as a ball or a net. The artificial crowd noise that Major League Baseball, the N.F.L., the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. have piped in, both for those in the stadiums and arenas and for people watching at home, is a terrible facsimile that makes the spectator-free games feel nothing like sports at all. What stage actors refer to as the “fourth wall” — the metaphorical barrier between performers and spectators — doesn’t exist in sports. A crowd’s passion can seemingly help power comebacks. Its scorn can smother one, too. For five glorious days at the 2021 Australian Open, I got to experience that noise again, because government officials allowed up to 30,000 fans, about 50 percent capacity, to attend the tournament each day. It was both a joy and a revelation to rediscover the power of what quantum physicists call the “observer effect” — the fact that any observation, however passive, alters an outcome — even in a half-capacity crowd of tennis fans. Sports felt like Sports once more.Nick Kyrgios and Dominic Thiem in one of the last matches with a crowd before the tournament closed to the public.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesFans left the Australian Open on Friday after it was announced that the tournament would proceed without spectators for the next five days.Credit…Jaimi Joy/ReutersThen on Friday, the coronavirus did what it has done so relentlessly for the past 11 months: It shut down the party. A recent outbreak was what much of the world would consider a nuisance. But in Australia, which has managed the pandemic more effectively than any other major economy, it qualified as a critical mass.The cluster of coronavirus cases grew to more than a dozen, and the state government of Victoria, where Melbourne is, declared a “snap lockdown” of five days, beginning at midnight Friday.Everyone, except those deemed essential workers, must stay home, though two hours of outdoor exercise and one hour to go to the grocery store or pharmacy are permitted. Players and people considered essential in running the Australian Open will be allowed at Melbourne Park. Spectators, sadly, must stay away until perhaps the singles semifinals, scheduled to start Thursday.“The players will compete in a bubble not dissimilar to what they have done throughout the year,” said Craig Tiley, the chief executive of Tennis Australia, which organizes the tournament.No one is happy about it.Fans watched Serena Williams during a practice session at Melbourne Park ahead of her second-round win.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York Times“It’s been really fun to have the crowd back, especially here,” Serena Williams said after she beat Anastasia Potapova in straight sets in the third round Friday. “But, you know what, at the end of the day we have to do what’s best. Hopefully it will be all right.”I am here to tell you it won’t be. After what I witnessed during the first five days, it’s going to be terrible, without the essential dynamics that make sports the ultimate in improvisational theater.Nick Kyrgios, the tennis antihero everywhere except Australia, where he is beloved, rode the fans to a miracle Wednesday night. He saved two match points in the fourth set against Ugo Humbert, the rising 22-year-old Frenchman. Then he edged Humbert in the fifth set in front of an explosive crowd that never gave up on its hometown hero.Kyrgios is the rare tennis player who brings in rugby fans. They screamed their heads off to keep Kyrgios alive and Humbert, the No. 29 seed, on edge until the very last point.“Half-packed and it felt like it was a full stadium,” Kyrgios said. “I got goose bumps toward the end.”Humbert lost those two match points, even though he was serving. He heard the fireworks from the seats a few feet away. As he watched Kyrgios both encourage it and soak it all in, his eyes appeared to fill with fear. There was another set to play, but the crowd was not going to let Humbert get out alive.Fans cheer on Nick Kyrgios of Australia.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesKyrgios has attracted a raucous fan group at the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesIt is not a stretch to say that Humbert wins that match easily on a quiet court.Kyrgios and his crew were back at it Friday night, when he took on Dominic Thiem of Austria, the reigning United States Open champion. The roars started as Kyrgios broke Thiem in the first game. As the crowd bellowed, Kyrgios waved his arms and cupped his ear, signaling to his fans that if he had any chance against the machine-like No. 3 seed, they were it.And so began three-plus hours of interactive drama, with all the seat-banging, taunting and fist-pumping needed for someone who has barely played in a year to stay competitive with one of the best players on the planet. As the match stretched into the fifth set and past 10:30 p.m., a strange clock watching began, because fans were supposed to be home and observing lockdown by midnight.In the end it wasn’t enough, as Thiem prevailed in five sets, 4-6, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, but it’s hard to believe it would have been close without it. “It’s not the same sport without the crowd,” Kyrgios said.So, here is one big reveal of the past week: All those star athletes who have always insisted they are so locked in that they do not hear the crowd? Well, it seems pretty clear they have been lying.Spectators watched the evening matches outdoors on the big screen at Melbourne Park on the fifth day of the Australian Open.Credit…Alana Holmberg for The New York TimesHere was Novak Djokovic, who has won this championship eight times. He has described Rod Laver Arena as his backyard. He was getting ready to play a game the other day, when a clump of women with a Serbian flag stood up and serenaded him with the “Ole-Ole” tune, culminating with, “Novak Djokovic is hot, hot, hot!”Djokovic gave up on trying to play cool. He stepped back from the court, started giggling, then shook his head to regain his focus.Here was Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia, trying to serve out the third set for what would have likely been the biggest win of her career, an upset of Simona Halep, the No. 2 seed. She was in front of a hometown crowd that carried her all night but couldn’t will her to victory.“I felt that rush of people just cheering for you,” Tomljanovich said, her voice breaking following the loss. “I’m afraid to say it, but it could be the highlight of the year with the atmosphere and the crowd.”She is not the only one. I do not know what I am dreading more about the end of this assignment — the last freezing month of a winter in the Northeast, or the largely empty version of sports that the pandemic has wrought.It’s something, yes, but it is not sports.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More