#surprise day off in the middle of the week? go to another tennis tournament

[sincaraz]

have acquired a lorenzo towel (sonego variety)

[writingsforanyone]

Celebration

Pairing: Fred Weasley x Y/N

Warnings: Underage Drinking

Type: Fluff

A/N: Weasley Twins and Y/N are in their 6th year, No Tri-Ward Tournament ; also the spacing is really weird i’m not sure what happened when i copy and pasted from my notes but i’m sorry!! enjoy :)

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Gryffindor’s were notorious for throwing the best parties for every occasion. Especially after a Quidditch win. The biggest game of the year between Gryffindor and Slytherin had taken place just hours before, and after a landslide win, the lions were ready to party. The team’s star chaser, Y/N Y/L/N, had scored a whooping 7 goals for the team, with her fellow chasers Katie Bell and Angelina Johnson scoring 3 and 2.

Now, Y/N was being hoisted on the shoulders of her two best friends, Fred and George Weasley, and every Gryffindor from fourth year and up was cheering for her.

“Look at our best friend!” said George

“The best chaser Hogwarts has ever seen!” Fred added on

Y/N laughed and said to her best friends,

“Okay okay now put me down!”

“You’re okay with flying around on a broom but not sitting on your best friends’ shoulders?” Fred said with a smirk

“I can control my broomstick, I can’t control you two!” Y/N said with a smack to Fred’s head. In one quick motion, Fred pulled her from his shoulder and into his arms bridal style and added,

“Is this better?”

“Much better,” Y/N answered with a smile.

George, Lee Jordan, and the rest of the Quidditch team looked at the pair and rolled their eyes, not surprised about the flirty interaction between the two. While Y/N and the twins had been inseparable since their first day on the train, over the past year Fred and Y/N’s relationship had changed into something more. Flirty banter, lingering touches, and stares across rooms, it seemed obvious to everyone except the two that their feelings towards each other were more than just ‘best friends’.

Fred finally put Y/N down and grabbed her hand, leading her to the large round table in the back of the common room that was filled with all kinds of drinks. He grabbed two bottles of Ogden’s Old Firewhisky, handing one to the girl on his side and keeping the other for himself. Y/N opened the bottle and took a long swig, letting the burning liquor slide down her throat. Fred moved his hand from hers and wrapped it around her waist, pulling her into his side.

“You played really good today darling. Couldn’t take my eyes off of you the whole game,” Fred said looking down at her.

She looked up at him and winked, nudging his side before saying,

“Only because I had my favorite beater to protect me. And George too of course.”

Fred laughed and kissed her forehead, before pulling away and excusing himself to go find George and Lee, leaving Y/N to go find the rest of her friends. She spotted Katie, Angelina, and Alicia Spinnet across the room and made her way over to them, grabbing another bottle of Firewhisky before she left the table.

“There she is!” said Alicia say before pulling her into a hug.

“Hey ‘Licia,” Y/N said pulling away.

“So what was that over there?” Katie said, nodding her head over to the table where Y/N had just been with Fred.

“That was nothing, you lot know that’s how Fred and I are,” Y/N retorted while rolling her eyes, grinning at the same time.

Her three friends rolled her eyes, but changed the subject nonetheless, knowing Y/N was too oblivious to her own feelings. The group of girls talked for a while, eventually moving over to the table covered in alcohol and getting more, gradually getting more intoxicated as the night went on. Y/N knew she would have an awful hangover in the morning, but grabbing her fifth bottle of Firewhisky, she couldn’t care less. The group went their separate ways after a bit, going to find more of their friends to talk too. Y/N made her way over to the golden trio who was sitting on one of the couches. Being best friends with the Weasley twins and staying at the Burrow all the time meant Ron became sort of like a younger brother, and with that came with seeing Harry and Hermione in the same way. Y/N noticed Hermione nursing a bottle of spiked butter beer, half empty.

“‘Mionie! Bottoms up! We’re celebrating tonight!” Y/N announced, coming up in front of the girl.

“Jeez Y/N how much have you had?” Ron said.

“Four? Maybe five? I think I lost count” the girl giggled out, “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to take Hermione from you both, and we’re going to dance.”

“Wha- No I don’t dance!” Hermione exclaimed, but she let Y/N pull her up anyway. She placed her now-empty butterbeer on a side table by the couch, and Y/N led her over to the alcohol table yet again, grabbing them more drinks to keep them going. They then made their way over to the coffee table that was right in the middle of the makeshift dance floor, and Y/N quickly stepped up on it and started dancing, urging Hermione of join her. The younger girl rolled her eyes before stepping onto the table next to her friend. The two girls started moving to the beat, slowly getting lost in the music that was blaring from the speakers. Y/N took a long drink from the liquor bottle in her hand, before she spotted two familiar heads of red hair in a corner of the room. Fred watched in awe as his best friend swayed her hips to the beat, her white tennis skirt showing her curves off, and her red crop top rising as she lifted her arms above her head, showing her sculpted abs from years of Quidditch. Her white heeled booties made her legs go on for miles. Y/N knew he was staring at her, and started swaying her hips a bit more seductively, and raised her arms a little higher than before.

Y/N knew how she felt about Fred a long time ago, but after convincing herself that he didn’t reciprocate those feelings, she pushed them deep down and tried to forget about them. She saw how he was around other girls, and that did nothing but confirm her thoughts. That didn’t stop her from flirting with him, and she assumed that him flirting back with her was just his charming personality coming out. She had known the twins for 6 years, and while they had been her best friends ever since, her feelings towards Fred slowly changed compared to the ones she had for George. While she saw George as a best friend, a brother, she eventually fell in love with Fred’s charisma, his laugh, the way he treated her and protected her. He always made sure that she ate and slept enough, and was there for her every time the stress of school and Quidditch piled up. He would let her cry on his shoulder while he held her until she eventually fell asleep, and wouldn’t move until she woke up. He was always able to put a smile on her face when she was having a bad day, whether it be with a simple joke or with an elaborate prank. Whenever Gryffindor would throw their parties and she had one too many Firewhiskys, he would always make sure she got up to bed safe, and was there to cure the hangover the next morning. If Y/N got detention, he was first in line to cause a disruption that would land him in detention right next to her, even if it was with Snape. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, and while Y/N thought it was just him being a best friend, there was so much more to Fred’s actions than she knew.

Y/N let the music take her away, dancing like no one and everyone was watching at the same time. She danced with Hermione and grabbed her hand, spinning her around while they laughed. They lost track of how long they had been dancing, but it had been long enough for them to both have finished the bottles of alcohol in their hands, now discarded on the floor. Eventually, Hermione turned to the girl and said while laughing,

“Okay I need a break. I’m exhausted.”

“Who am I supposed to dance with now?” Y/N whined looking at her friend

As Hermione stepped down from the table, she looked up at Y/N and said,

“Ask Fred. He’s been staring at you this entire time.”

Y/N turned and immediately saw Fred in the same place he had been before, still staring at her with a soft smile on his face.

“Freddie! Come dance with me!” she called out.

The redhead immediately made his way over to the girl, noticing how she was involuntarily swaying and tripping over her own feet. As he approached the table, he spoke to the girl,

“I’ll only dance with you if you get down from that table. You’re too drunk to be up there.”

“But dancing on the table is fun Freddie you have to try it,” she answered, pouting.

“I’ll try it another time I promise,” he said laughing, “Right now I don’t want you to fall and get hurt.”

“Fine, you’re no fun,” Y/N mumbled, attempting to step down from the table. Fred shot his arms out and grabbed her waist, picking her up and setting her on the ground before she could fall face first off of the surface. Y/N wrapped her arms around his waist and put her chin against his chest, looking up at him.

“Now will you dance with me?” Y/N drawled out, pouting up at the boy.

Fred laughed looking down at the girl and nodded, and she quickly let go of his waist and grabbed his hand, dragging him to the middle of the makeshift dance floor. Just as they stopped, a new upbeat song started playing, and Y/N squealed and announced that she loved the song and immediately started dancing again, swaying her hips and raising her arms above her head yet again. Fred put his hands on her hips from behind and let her dance on him, swaying against her. This typically happened between them at every party, but what Y/N didn’t know was Fred looked forward to this every time. He looked forward to having the girl he loved dancing against him, with her attention solely on him and the music. He relished in the moments they got to spend just the two of them. He had told himself over a year ago that his best friend didn’t feel the same way, no matter what George and Lee thought, or even the rest of his family members. When Y/N had gone to the Burrow to spend the last two weeks of summer break with the Weasleys before their sixth year started, Molly had questioned Fred on why he hadn’t asked her out yet. He told her multiple times that they were just friends, but he knew she didn’t believe him.

Fred remembered the exact moment he realized he was in love with his best friend. During their first Quidditch game of the season in their fifth year, Gryffindor was playing Ravenclaw, and he hadn’t seen one of the Ravenclaw beaters hit a blunger towards Y/N. All he saw was the blunger hit her in the back, and her body falling off of her broom. He dropped his beater’s bat and ignored every call and shout from Olivier Wood telling him to stop fooling around. He flew downward as fast as his broom would take him, and managed to catch Y/N’s limp body moments before she hit the ground. He carried her all the way to the Hospital Wing, despite protests from Madam Hooch telling him to put her down and let her handle it. He stayed in the Hospital Wing for 3 days waiting inter to wake up, leaving only to shower and change out of his Quidditch uniform. George brought him food and sat with him for most of the time, but left when it was time for him to sleep. Fred slept in the chair next to her bed and skipped all of his Monday classes, but he didn’t think twice about wanting to be there when she woke up.

During those 3 days he sat in the hospital, he realized just how strong his feelings were for his best friend. He realized that he couldn’t live without her, and that he wanted no one else. No one made his heart race the way Y/N did when she walked into the room. He had fallen in love with her sarcastic banter and the way she could give just as much as she could take. He had fallen in love with her bright smile and her captivating eyes. The had a way with always encouraging him with her motivating words when it came to school, Quidditch, and even his pranks. She supported him through everything, but had no problem scolding his and George if they pulled a prank or did something that she knew could get them in trouble. She fell right into place with his family, treating his younger siblings as her own and getting along with all of his older siblings. His parents loved her. Family is everything to Fred, and Y/N fitting in with the Weasleys was everything to him. If Fred was sick, she was right next to him making him soup and tea, getting him medicine and helping him get better. She would lay with him and sing him to sleep, staying all night to make sure didn’t have problem through the night. She didn’t care if she got sick, all she cared about was making sure Fred got better. She helped him study so he could pass his classes, even if it meant studying less for hers. She had taken the blame for his reckless actions for than once, so he could avoid getting in trouble yet again. Fred had realized that he wanted no one else by his side, and because of that, he sacrificed telling Y/N his feelings in fear that he would lose her completely if he did.

Fred shook himself from his thoughts and focused on the girl in front of him. He bent his head down and kissed her on the cheek, then moving down and placing one on her neck. He moved his hands from her waist and spun her around so she was facing him. He placed his hands on the exposed skin between her skirt and her crop that had risen up. She looked up at him and smiled, wrapping her hands around his neck, not faltering her dance moves once. He locked eyes with her and didn’t look away, a small smirk playing on his lips. He pulled her closer so she was pressed completely against him, and she tightened her arms around his neck without a second though. They continued dancing like this for a few more minutes through a number of songs, before Y/N started to pull away and asked,

“You want to go get another drink?”

Before Fred could answer, she grabbed one of his hands that rested on her waist and started walking towards the back of the common room. She attempted to weave her way through the crowd, but bumped into multiple people instead. By the time they reached the table, Fred was holding onto her to keep her upright.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink tonight, love,” Fred told the girl.

“But Freddie we’re celebrating tonight,” she pouted to the boy.

“I know but you can’t even stand up straight. I think it’s time to get you to bed.”

“You want to get me in bed?”

Fred laughed and shook his head, before wrapping his hands around her waist and walking Y/N towards the door to the boys dormitories. When they approached the door, he turned her to face him and she stuck her arms up out of reflex. He picked her up with ease and she wrapped her legs around his waist and nuzzled her face in his neck. Fred opened the door and climbed up the stairs until he reached the door to his room, opening and closing it behind them. When they reached his bed, he attempted to sit Y/N down but she clung to him and said,

“No don’t let me go Freddie.”

Fred leaned back so he could see her face and she picked her head up to look at him. She flicked her eyes down to his lips and back up to his eyes so fast that Fred wondered if he had imagined it, but when she did it again he knew he wasn’t seeing things. He kissed her forehead before sitting her down on his bed. He turned to his trunk and pulled out one of his shirts and a pair of flannel pajama pants for Y/N to change into. He handed them before saying,

“Go and change then we can go to bed.”

“I love wearing your clothes,” she said before getting up from the bed.

“You can wear them whenever you like,” Fred said with a smile as she disappeared into the bathroom. He changed into a pair of pajama pants and took his shirt off before filling up a glass of water and setting it on the table beside his bed. When Y/N emerged from the bathroom, she headed straight for his bed and sat on the edge. Fred handed her the glass of water and told her to drink it, and she finished the entire glass before saying,

“Fred?”

“Yes love?” he answered.

“Will you ever see me as more than just your best friend?”

Fred wondered if he had heard her correctly and moved to stand between her legs, and then asked her to repeat what she had said.

“You heard what I said Freddie. Am I just a best friend to you?”

Fred softly placed his hands on her cheeks and moved her head to look at him. He let out a breathe and decided it was now or never.

“You’re everything to me Y/N. You’re my world. You’re so much more to me than just a best friend. I can’t imagine not having you by my side everyday. I love everything about you; your smile, your eyes, your laugh. The way you’re always there to help me and support me. You’re my best friend but you’re so much more than that. I’m in love with you Y/N.”

Y/N took his words in and smiled. She felt herself started to sober as he spoke each word, and started to tear up. She felt a single tear slip onto her cheek, and Fred wiped it off with his thumb out of instinct. The girl placed one of her hands over one of his and whispered,

“I’ve been in love with you since we were 14 year old.”

Fred’s smile only grew, and he leaned down and softly pressed his lips against hers. His lips were softer than Y/N had imagined them being, and the kiss was slow and sweet. She moved her lips against his and moved her hands to his waist, pulling him in closer. The kiss grew from soft and sweet, to hard and passionate, both of them trying to express years of unspoken love to each other. Neither of them wanted to pull away first, but before long they both needed to breathe, and slowly pulled away at the same time. Fred leaned his forehead against hers, and placed another soft kiss on her lips.

“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Fred whispered.

“You should have,” Y/N retorted with a smile. Fred only chuckled before letting go of her cheeks and pulling back the comforter on his bed. Y/N wordlessly climbed under the covers and scooted over so Fred could get in next to her. He laid down and opened his arms, inviting the girl to lay with him. Y/N placed her head on Fred’s chest and tangled her legs with his, before placing a few kisses on his shirtless torso.

“This was the Quidditch celebration we’ve ever had,” Y/N mumbled, already starting to doze off.

“I love you Y/N,” Fred whispered back to her, pressing a kiss against her hair. He knew she was tired and had began to fall asleep, but he didn’t miss the “I love you too Freddie” that fell from her lips just before she passed out for the night.

[your-dietician]

British 18-year-old debutant Emma Raducanu beats Marketa Vondrousova to reach Wimbledon third round

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/sports/british-18-year-old-debutant-emma-raducanu-beats-marketa-vondrousova-to-reach-wimbledon-third-round/

British 18-year-old debutant Emma Raducanu beats Marketa Vondrousova to reach Wimbledon third round

Wimbledon debutant Emma Raducanu knocks out Marketa Vondrousova to reach third round – GETTY IMAGES

A new star is among us. Move over Sir Andy, there is another Brit clamouring for a share of the Wimbledon headlines and the former men’s champion would be the first to salute the magnificent achievement of 18-year-old wildcard debutant Emma Raducanu making a mockery of form and status in defeating Marketa Vondrousova 6-2, 6-4, a player ranked 296 places above her to go through to the third round, the lone British woman flag-bearer.

And she will fulfil that honour with nerve and gusto as well as the occasional cheery smile as was seen flashing across her face during her one hour and 12 minutes out on court, toppling to the turf in exultation at the finish as well she might.

Two months ago Raducanu was sitting her A-levels, unknown and unheralded. Those days of anonymity are gone. This was her sporting matriculation. From sixth-former to prodigy in the spotlight. The wheel is turning and Raducanu is enjoying the ride as well she might given that her hobbies include go-karting and motocross. As with tennis, so with her life, multi-layered.

She was asked afterwards if she would rather A* in her exams or round four.

“That would have to be round four,” laughed Raducanu. “It feels quite incredible, like as if I’m on a holiday and I want to stay here as long as I can. I’ve got high standards of myself and go out there feeling as if I’ve got nothing to lose. I play every point as if it were to be my last at Wimbledon. This is my opportunity to show that I’m here. I’m so appreciative of the support and I want to do everyone proud. I’m trying to make the most of it.”

She had wandered onto court in the watery early evening sunshine on her own, giving a self-conscious wave to the scattering of fans who had gathered on Court 12, a late switch of courts from No 18 so as to ensure that the game got played. As she waited for a few minutes for her opponent to appear she sat in her chair all alone, ear-buds in, a study in nonchalance.

As Coco Gauff has shown, it is up to us to get used to precocity, not the other way around. These are youngsters, self-evidently, but they are here on merit. Even if Raducanu benefitted from a wildcard, it was her prowess that got her to that point, not nepotism. Appearances only matter out in the middle and Raducanu’s body language was positive, even affording herself a rueful smile as she leathered the first point way over the baseline from the back of court. At least she was up for the fight. And it soon showed, Raducanu securing an early break of serve in the third game with a delightful whipped cross-court forehand.

Story continues

There was nothing flighty or naïve in Raducanu’s game. If you knew nothing of the CVs of the two players, you would have assumed that the British player was the higher ranked and more experienced. She dictated play, pounding shots, dinking others, showing the nerve of a veteran. The opening game went to Vondrousova on serve, an unsurprising state of affairs given that the Czech is ranked 42 in the world and has been as high as 14.

But that was pretty much it for the 22 year-old, a bracing, serve-breaking start to the second set apart but Raducanu dealt with that too, scrapping to overcome that 0-3 deficit.

The early nerves didn’t last long. Rudacanu survived a couple of break points in her first service game but fought to hold, levelling at 1-1, the first of five games in a row that she took. It was supremely impressive stuff, a young talent with faith in her ability and the strength of character to put it all out there. Why should we be surprised given the exploits of the likes of teenagers Jadon Sancho or Jude Bellingham in England football colours? At this rate it won’t be long before Raducanu is operating at a similar commercial level to the footballers.

Emma Raducanu leaves the court after her victory – PA

Her season’s prize money coming into this tournament was barely into four figures although she does benefit from LTA support. Winning through to the third round guarantees her £115,000. Wimbledon was probably also echoing last night to the sound of agents and sponsors beating a path to her door.

Saturday’s likely showcourt contest with another surprise winner, Sorana Cirstea of Romania, who knocked out two-time Grand Slam champion Victoria Azarenka, will be a far more public affair.

There will be no clash of loyalties for her Romanian father who moved his Toronto-born daughter and Chinese wife to London when Emma was aged two. It was a shrewd move. Prepare to cheer Raducanu to the rafters.

Vacuum at summit of women’s tennis crying out to be filled

By Oliver Brown

World No 1 Ash Barty is forced to work hard for her victory – SHUTTERSTOCK

Ashleigh Barty is a world No 1 yet to reach a Wimbledon quarter-final, and one who toiled here to vanquish a Russian Centre Court debutant better known for her chess prowess. Aryna Sabalenka is a No 2 seed making her maiden third-round appearance on these lawns, having struggled to overcome a British wildcard. In just four days, six of the top 10 seeds have been scattered to the wind, sparking no little concern about what life after Serena Williams will look like.

This state of flux was in stark evidence at last month’s French Open, where Barbora Krejcikova, once known primarily as a doubles specialist, was the last woman standing. It is becoming a recurrent theme at Wimbledon, too, with Williams’ withdrawal through injury, allied to the absences of Naomi Osaka and Simona Halep, producing arguably the most open draw in living memory. Barty, long mentored by Evonne Goolagong Cawley, the last ladies’ champion from Australia, will never have a better chance to end her country’s 41-year wait for a repeat.

She is the most deferential of proteges, wearing a scallop dress to honour the outfit chosen by Goolagong for her first Wimbledon triumph half a century ago. The two also share indigenous heritage, with Goolagong a celebrated trailblazer for her remote Aboriginal community and Barty tracing roots to the Ngarigo people of New South Wales through her father, Robert.

There, perhaps, the similarities end. Where Goolagong was famously outgoing by nature, dubbed by Londoners as the “Sunshine Supergirl”, Barty is an instinctive introvert, betraying negligible emotion on court and even less off it. Her fellow Australians adore her for her lack of pretension, but she shows limited warmth in post-match interviews, using the royal “we” to describe her performances and leaning on phrases that belong more in a self-help manual. Twice this week she has spoken of “going out there and putting your dreams out to the universe”.

Barty has held her sport’s No 1 spot for two years, a reflection both of her surprise French Open title in 2019 and of a decision by the women’s tour to freeze the rankings once the pandemic struck. But she scarcely looked like the alpha female against Anna Blinkova, the precocious Muscovite renowned also for her chess skill and her mastery of six languages. During an error-strewn 6-4, 6-3 win, she committed 33 unforced errors and nine double faults, raising doubt as to whether the hip injury she sustained at Roland Garros had fully healed.

“A few things didn’t feel quite right,” Barty acknowledged. “It wasn’t my best serving day, and I felt like I was out of rhythm a little. Some days you feel like you’re eight-foot-tall and can’t miss the box. Other days, you feel like you’re three-foot-nothing, where just getting over the net is a bit of a battle.”

While this transition phase for the women’s game might be bewilderingly unpredictable, it is still producing matches of lustrous quality. The latest highlight was a riveting, 3hr 20min duel between Angelique Kerber and Spain’s Sara Sorribes Tormo, edged by the German 7-5, 5-7, 6-4. Rarely can the 2018 champion have been forced to grind so relentlessly at her strongest tournament.

Given the dearth of multiple champions left, the stage could yet be seized by 17-year-old Coco Gauff, already proving decisively that her inspired run to the fourth round in 2019 was no false dawn. She was poise personified against Elena Vesnina, dismantling the former semi-finalist with her power and accuracy, weapons that the leading contenders have still to demonstrate with any consistency this week.

On her Centre Court return, Gauff was no longer the giddy sensation, but the versatile talent who recognised that she belonged. “Walking out here feels like you’re walking through a museum,” she said. “I don’t really like the word ‘expectations’. I use the word ‘belief’. I believe that I can win. My goal is always to win the tournament, regardless of my ranking or what people think of me. Everything is much clearer than it was in 2019. My belief is a lot stronger now – the feeling that I can go far.”

03:21 PM

Gael Monfils is out

02:58 PM

Daniil Medvedev a set to the good

Against Carlos Alcaraz. The world No.2 takes the first set 6-4.

Daniil Medvedev

02:49 PM

It’s taken her 70 minutes…

…But Angelique Kerber has finally taken the first set against Sara Sorribes Tormo.

02:28 PM

Queen’s champion Matteo Berrettini is through

The Italian No.7 seed beat Botic Van De Zandschulp 6-3, 6-4, 7-6.

02:25 PM

Can Barty go all the way?

02:20 PM

Cam Norrie speaks after his straight sets win over Alex Bolt

On being through to the the round for the first time…

“Unbelievable to be back here – the fans were amazing it made it feel more special. I couldn’t be more pleased to be through to the third round.”

On beat Alex Bolt…

“It was a tricky start, he came out firing. But I could trust the foot today and I was pleased with everything and there was a lot of improvement [compared with first round win].”

On possibly playing Roger Federer in the third round – he faces Richard Gasquet later today…

“Come on, Gasquet! It will be special to play Roger or Richard, they’re both experienced players. I suppose now is the best time to play Roger, [but] he’s still a decent player. He can play!”

02:13 PM

Ash Barty speaks

On playing again at Wimbledon…

“I love the surface and happy to be back.”

On Blinkova…

“She pushed me incredably hard. She played a great match today so I am happy to get through.”

On her season so far…

“It’s been a great year so far and it’s nice to have the fans back in the stands.”

02:11 PM

BARTY WINS THE MATCH 6-4, 6-3!!

Barty has two match points on the Blinkova serve and plays a winner on the second of those – it was called out but Barty successfully challenges. They replay the point and Barty wins the match.

Barty was well bellow her best but she’s through. Blinkova played her part in the match and gave the world No.1 plenty to think about.

02:06 PM

Barty 6-4, 5-3 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Blinkova’s backhands are deep into Barty and from 40-15 up the world No.1 is up against it on her serve at deuce. Again Blinkova goes deep with a backhand, setting up an excellent crosscourt winner. That earns her a break point which she cannot take. She earns another break point with a delightful forehand crosscourt winner which again she cannot take. On the third deuce Barty serves up another double fault to gift Blinkova her third break point. Again Barty plays a backhand winner to save and take it to another deuce. Blinkova has another break point and it’s deja vu all over again as she cannot capitalises. From there Barty holds. That was a nine-minute game.

Blinkova will now serve to stay in the match.

01:56 PM

Barty* 6-4, 4-3 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Blinkova’s serve is on the blink again as Barty earns a break point. The Russian is under pressure but throws down a good second serve to save the break point. Barty gets another break point thanks to a wonderful lob – brilliant shotmaking. The world No.1 then makes no mistake with a backhand winner on the run to take control of the second set.

01:50 PM

Confirmation Svitolina is out

The third seed’s championship is over.

01:49 PM

Barty 6-4, 3-3 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Better service game from Barty but the errors elsewhere remain – a sliced backhand into the net an uncharacteristic mistake from the Australian. She does just enough to hold to 30 and the second set stays on serve.

01:46 PM

Classy Cam

From 0-3 down in the first set the Briton has dominated against Alex Bolt and has won in straight sets.

01:45 PM

Barty* 6-4, 2-3 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Much better from Blinkova on her serve – she’s been under pressure most of the match on serve but holds to 15. That’s three games in a row for the Russian.

01:43 PM

Barty 6-4, 2-2 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty is taken to deuce after a fine forehand passing shot from Blinkova. Under pressure the first seed then plants a forehand into the net and her opponent has a break point. Another double fault (her seventh) gifts Blinkova the game. Just when you think Barty is about to go up a gear she falters…

01:36 PM

Barty* 6-4, 2-1 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Barty has had 22 unforced errors so far – a sign that she’s well below her best at the moment. But Blinkova’s serve is even more erratic than some of Barty’s groundstrokes and at deuce is in danger of being broken once again. She wins the next two points, though, and holds.

Barty

01:31 PM

Barty 6-4, 2-0 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty is brilliant when on song and she’s showing signs of that the further this match goes on. She moves Blinkova around the court with some powerful groundstrokes before coming into the net for a volleyed winner. That gets her to 40-0. But the errors are lingering and her sixth double fault allows Blinkova to get back into the game at 40-30. A forehand winner, however, gets her the 2-0 second-set lead.

01:27 PM

Barty* 6-4, 1-0 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Barty is dominating the Blinkova serve and has three break points. Blinkova, though, is a battler and gets in back to deuces – the errors are still coming from Barty. The Aussie then earns her fourth break point of the game and this time a drive backhand is backed up with a forehand winner down the line and she’s got the early break in the second set.

01:22 PM

Third seed Elina Svitolina is out

Linette beats one of the favourites 6-3, 6-4.

01:19 PM

BARTY TAKES THE FIRST SET 6-4

Barty’s well below her best but she’s managed to find the shots when she’s needed them this afternoon. She holds to love and takes the first set.

01:16 PM

Barty* 5-4 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

It’s Blinkova now forcing the errors from Barty – the Aussie missing a sliced backhand (one of her weapons) early on. At 4-4 30-30 Blinkova has a great chance to put some scoreboard pressure on the world No.1 but sends a forehand wide. Barty then can’t capitalise on the break point as another backhand hits the net. The Australian earns another break point and this time a blistering forehand does the trick and the first seed will serve for the first set.

01:11 PM

Barty 4-4 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty has already had four double faults (during her first round win she only had three all match). She’s down 0-30 early on in this game BUT a Blinkova error and another forehand winner allow her to reach parity. 30-30 soon becomes deuce and the Russian has a break point thanks to a Barty long forehand. She converts it and both players are looking on edge and unsettled.

01:06 PM

Cam is in control

01:05 PM

Barty* 4-3 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Both players are proving to be error-prone at the moment – Barty is showing the better touch and a delicate drop shot gets her to 0-40. She had three break points last Blinkova service game and couldn’t convert any of them. She makes no mistake this time and breaks to love. She’s just starting to settle.

01:02 PM

Barty 3-3 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty is making a few uncharacteristic errors, but she has a fine forehand. It’s a heavy shot that takes opponents out of position and two forehands back-to-back allow her to hold to 30.

12:58 PM

Barty* 2-3 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Barty is hitting some good groundstrokes from the back of the court and waiting for Blinkova to make the error, which she does twice on the way to the Aussie getting three break points. The Russian is under pressure but two wayward forehands gets Blinkova back into the game at 30-40. And Barty then uncharacteristically plants a backhand into the net. The Russian wins five points in a row for a gutsy hold.

12:52 PM

Barty 2-2 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty is starting to look more comfortable after that nervy start. She sends down the first ace of the match to get to 30-15. She follows that up with the second two points later and holds to 30.

12:50 PM

Norrie has taken the first set having been 0-3 down

12:49 PM

Barty* 1-2 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

Blinkova has strapping on her right hand (the one the holds the racquet) that cannot be good. It’s not obvioulsy affecting her but Barty, thanks to some unforced errors, earn two break points. And another wide forehand from Blinkova allows the Aussie to break straight back.

12:46 PM

Barty 0-2 Blinkova* (*denotes next server)

Barty’s golf swing has been praised by Tiger Woods and it’s no shock that her serve is also efficient and effective as well. She mixes her serves and makes her opponent think. She does just that while show a lovely touch – playing a backhand drop shot winner. However, she’s looking a bit nervous and a double fault gifts Blinkova a break point. The Russian had a fine chance to go 2-0 up but fires a forehand on the run into the net. She, however, earns another break point next up and a double fault from Barty gives the Russian the early break.

Barty looked edgy in that game.

12:41 PM

Barty* 0-1 Blinkova (*denotes next server)

The Russian serves first and misses her first two first serves – not a great omen. Barty is a fine strokemaker and she hits a wonderful forehand winner to take the second point of the match. The first few games are always about trying to settle into rhythm and Blinkova has done just that holding to 15. She looked at ease there – a solid start.

12:34 PM

Barty and Blinkova are out on court

How will US Open semi-finalist Blinkova deal with the world No.1?

12:32 PM

French Open champion Barbora Krejcikova into the third round

12:27 PM

John McEnroe on Norrie

The BBC commentator (and all-time great) has just said…

The pressure is on Norrie – the seed, the favourite, the Brit. Bolt’s tricky though – I have watched play a number of times – he’s not a guy that’s going to beat himself.

As I type that Norrie has broken back and it’s now 3-2 to Bolt.

12:21 PM

Norrie down a break already

Bolt has stormed to a 3-0 first-set lead. Plenty of time to go, though, so no need to panic.

12:15 PM

Fourth seed Zverev is through

12:13 PM

Cam Norrie is having a great year and…

…he’s just got his match against Australian and fellow lefty Alex Bolt under way on Court One. He’s up to a career high of 34th in the rankings and I’ll keep you posted on how the Brit is doing. The winner of this match could face Roger Federer in the third round…

Cam Norrie

12:10 PM

So let’s talk about the slippery Centre Court surface

It’s dominated much of the talk surrounding these championships so far having claimed the title tilt of Serena Williams and helped Roger Federer through to the second round after his opponent Adrian Mannarino fell and hurt his knee.

So what is going on? It’s apparently more slippery than usual and the number of falls we’re seeing – Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray are just two two big names to fall on the lush turf – must be making players, coaches and fans worry ahead of every point.

Our very own Tom Morgan looked into the slippery shame…

“There has been speculation that Centre Court’s state-of-the-art ventilation system may have been a factor in failing to dry the surface. Over 600 air distributors pump dry air into the space when the roof is closed as part of a roof design led by Populous, which also led the regeneration of Wembley and Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium.”

READ: Wimbledon Q&A: What is causing players to slip on court? And how can it be stopped?

Novak Djokovic falls on Centre Court – PAUL GROVER

12:01 PM

Who is Anna Blinkova?

The Russian is ranked No. 89 in the world and hasn’t been able to translate her great junior form on the senior circuit. The 22-year -old was runner-up at the 2015 Wimbledon Championships in girls’ singles and was ranked the No. 3 junior tennis player in the world in August 2015. She has a career high ranking of 54 back in February last year.

11:29 AM

The talented Ash Barty is the one to beat at SW19

Ash Barty is one of those really annoying people. Not because of her personality, or any grating habits, no, she’s really annoying as she’s one of those people who can turn their hand to any sport and seemingly be very, very, very (I could carry on, but that too would be annoying…) good at it.

During lockdown she got her golf handicap down from 10 to four and became the Brookwater Golf Club women’s champion in the process. Louis Dobbelaar, a two-time Queensland amateur champion, is in no doubt Barty could make it as a professional. “She’s got all the tools if she wants to pursue it. If she put her mind to it, I’m sure she could,” she said. Barty also had a certain Tiger Woods gushing about her swing – I am not jealous, not at all.

Added to that she’s also played for the Brisbane Heat in the women’s Big Bash League – multi-talented doesn’t really do her justice.

Why do I mention this other than to remind myself it doesn’t seem fair that someone can be world-class in three sports? Well, the world No.1 faces Anna Blinkova on Centre Court this afternoon and it’s clear that the Russian will need all the luck she can grab on to.

Barty is the No.1 seed and, in the absence of Simona Halep and Naomi Osaka, favourite to win her second grand slam. Her first round match will have done her title bid no harm at all.

Having been given the “honour” of opening the women’s singles in the absence of reigning champion Halep, Barty came through a nervy start against Carla Suarez Navarro before really finding her stride in the third set. Whether she can carry that momentum over into her second round clash with Blinkova remains to be seen.

But the ultra talented Australian says she’s feeling good and is fully recovered from the hip injury that blighted her Roland Garros title defence.

”I think there was a little bit of nervousness, probably not knowing exactly how my body was going to feel genuinely. I know that I had full trust that we’d done absolutely everything that we could [but] you just never know. To be able to go out there today and play the way that I did was really nice.” Good luck to Blinkova, she may need it.

Stay here for all the action.

Source link

[dimensionaltennis]

New Prince of Tennis 229-231 Summary

Golden age 229: Declaration of War

Ryoma and Kintarou compliment each other and say the other's become stronger during the time they spent on different teams.

The two of them return to the Japanese team's hotel.

Ryoma hears a sound of a ball being hit against a wall. He leaves Kintarou to check out who the source of the sounds is. It seems to be early morning already and Kintarou heads to bed instead.

It turns out that the one practicing is Byoudouin. Ryoma hits a glowing shot at Byoudouin who catches it with his bare hands. Byoudouin's sleeves get destroyed as a result.

Byoudouin comments on Ryoma being able to hit the glowing shot now [thinking back, he hadn't seen it before].

Byoudouin says that Ryoga apparently quit the US team after Ryoma left, which surprises Ryoma.

The two recall what happened when Ryoma left the camp. Ryoma declares that he hasn't forgotten about his revenge, to which Byoudouin responds that he'll be Ryoma's opponent at any time, however, only after conquering the world.

The first day of the Finals Tournament starts. Amadeus and Tezuka are shown for their respective teams.

To the surprise of the Japanese reps, they learn that all the Aramenoma players returned home in the morning. Marui credits Sengoku's luck for this. Speaking of Sengoku, apparently he was called back right away when he reached Narita airport.

Yushi is revealed as the last representative. Fuji thanks him for helping Momoshiro out the previous day.

Tohno brags that he would've defeated Aramenoma single-handidly anyway if he hadn't been injured. Kimijima responds that it's too bad Tohno was forced to retire, which gets a reaction out of Marui and Kite.

Meanwhile, Ryoma and Kintarou ride the bus while asleep.

Since they have no matches, Byoudouin decides they are going to watch the performances of the other top teams.

Golden age 230: The Finals Tournament Begins!

Germany vs South Africa.

Tanegashima, Irie, Fuji and Yukimura have come to watch the match.

For the Finals Tournament, the German team is reinforced by their other two pros, Bertie Borisovich Volk and Dankmar Schneider. Apparently the two of them form a doubles pair and are said to be the strongest doubles in the tournament.

Germany's line-up for the first round consists of Volk, QP, Frankensteiner, Bismarck, Tezuka, Bertie and Schneider. It seems that Tezuka has already made a name for himself on the world stage.

Switzerland vs Portugal.

Hakamada and Nakagauchi are shown in the audience. Furthermore, Oni, Tokugawa, Ohmagari and Kite are also in attendance.

Instead of watching the matches, Ohmagari invites Kite to work on his Nitouryuu.

France vs England.

Some points of a doubles match are shown. France's players pose each time they score a point. There's a reference to the Paris Fashion Week.

On the bench, another French player wears a ninja mask and writes a Japanses idiom on a scroll. However, he makes a mistake and, upon seeing that, Sanada gets angry at him.

Next, it's Camus' turn. He asks his "wife" to accompany him and it turns out that he's referring to his racket. He introduces himself as a child of the revolution and someone who loves tennis - France's captain, Leopold Camus de Charpentier.

Camus reprimands Duke for leaving France to join Japan and betraying their revolution.

As Camus tosses the ball to serve, a light in the form of a heart forms around him.

Golden age 231: Prince Charming

Ryoma and Momoshiro are walking in the venue, eating hot dogs. Apparently they were watching the matches of the US team as Ryoma reaffirms how strong his former teammates are. They then say that they'll make it to France vs England in time if they hurry up.

Suddenly, they hear sounds of horse steps behind them. As they turn around, they see Sakuno has been pulled on top of a white horse by one of the French reps.

Before Sakuno has a chance to get down, the French rep rides off.

Ryoma and Momoshiro can't keep up with the horse, so they each pull out their racket and a ball and serve at the French rep. However, without looking, the latter evades the shots and catches both balls on his own racket at the same time. He says he'll forgive them, but take Sakuno in exchange and rides off.

In the meantime, Camus put the final nail into England's coffin. France wins all three matches without dropping a single game.

Camus himself kneels in the middle of the court, holding his racket in his arms and shedding tears. Someone comments that it's more like watching a drama than tennis.

Byoudouin explains that Camus' strength comes from his "love for tennis", and that because he loves tennis so much, he can hear the voice of tennis. Following the explanation, Atobe remarks that this is too much of a revolution.

As the French team is about the leave, Sanada stops the rep with the ninja mask, points out the misspelled character on the scroll and corrects it.

Suddenly, the rep on the white horse from before enters the stadium.

A few moments later, Ryoma and Momoshiro come running in as well, Ryoma being worried about Sakuno. However, Sakuno was already released and seems fine.

The chapter ends with the Japanese middle schoolers acknowledging France's strength.

[1dffsummerexchange]

Hopeless Hearts (Just Passing Through)

Written For: @harrysmeadow

Written By: @in-madhouses

Pairing: Harry/OFC

Word Count: 6,570

Warnings: language

Summary:

they had a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like everyone else. but unlike everyone else, it didn’t quite happen in order.

They hadn’t spoken in years.

And Harry almost feels her presence before he hears her voice calling out to him in the middle of the crowded pub. Something in his stomach jumps and when he turns around instinctively, he catches sight of her immediately.

He turns back around, still running from a past he cannot unwrite, but she calls out for him.

She always did have an affinity for making him feel like a deer caught in headlights.  

“Fancy seeing you here,” she semi shouts over the music and the chatter once they are standing barely a foot from one another.

She is exactly like he remembers. The memories awash on his skin, like a phantom itch in the hardest to reach corners of his back. Fissures of some kind of electricity jolts run up and down his spine.

He knows the feeling intimately. It’s how he feels when he’s around her.

Almost as though her pulsating energy is infectious.

Harry chuckles, grinning painfully awkward through his teeth because it’s what you do when you bump into your ex. You also lie, when you bump into your ex; the hopelessly single people say they’re seeing someone, the unemployed and unsure say that their job is going great, and so he figures he can try that too.

“It’s nice to see you again, Roe.”

A look that resembles disbelief flits through her eyes and she leans in so not to shout, “Careful there, it almost doesn’t sound like a lie.”

Rowan Géroux did always have a knack for calling him out on that shit. And Harry Styles had spent the years since she left doing everything and anything to convince himself that everything that’s come to happen in the past belongs firmly there, in the past. So seeing her is definitely not atop his list. Not when he’s spent so much time moving around, convincing himself that his future lay in Paris or Tokyo or New York, somewhere far away from reminders of the girl with dark hair and dark eyes.

Unfortunately for him, Rowan is someone particularly hard to escape from. No matter where he moved to, her face is a constant thanks to the internet. Technology makes it hard to get over your ex. And harder still when she’s somewhat of a celebrity. He’s not bitter about it really; he’s always known that her future would hold greatness. She moves with grace on the tennis court and speaks to everyone with an ingrained familiarity that just gets under your skin.

He’s known first hand how her laughter can loosen up just about any knot in one’s stomach, and she too is laughing a little out of sheer awkwardness. Her chuckle hits his nerves like an jolt of lightning and he feels lit up like a neon sign on a bustling Asian street night market.

He’s not so good with the lying as she’s always been keen to point out, so they just don’t talk about the fact that they spent a better part of two years together. They dance around the fact that they were never really together together and they dance around the fact that they never really broke up.

They had a beginning, a middle, and an end, just like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, it didn’t quite happen in order.

…

Harry sighs as he looks around the changing room he’s been instructed to set up in. It’s spacious and the overhead glass windows ensure an outpouring of natural light, perfect for what he intends to do with this particular shoot.

The downside, as it is with most changing rooms, is that it smelled like a sweaty changing room.

He shouldn’t be surprised, the whole thing is a stink fest. Not the player he’s supposed to photograph (he’s actually seen the said tennis player in action, photographed the tournament she played in, and for a not a sports person, Harry was gobsmacked by the ferocity contained within her slender frame) but the fact that he’s there not just to photograph her but also interview her.

Stupid and stinky, he thinks to himself.

Not particularly articulate thoughts, but it’s also eight in the morning and he had to carry all his gear on top of his notes, so he didn’t have a spare hand for coffee.

That, and the fact that Harry is not a writer.

As a second year photography student, his professor managed to harangue him into signing up for the school magazine to broaden his scopes and get more practical training in. He didn’t know why exactly he took the advice of the class professor for History of Photography in Fiction but that’s just what ultimately culminated in him being told not to just photograph the month’s feature story, but also write it.

And he is not a writer. Not even a little. Not even at all. But when he confronted his editor about this added role, his editor had exactly two things to say; one, that the readers wouldn’t know proper journalism if it bought them a drink and stripped naked, and two, just ask some questions and take the damn pictures.

It’s integrity written all over the face of the unpaid student run organisation, but it is a free rag that most use to roll roaches with, so the man isn’t exactly wrong.

Harry takes the camera in both hands to take a few test shots for light when she saunters into the changing room, breathily apologising for being late without any real intent in her voice. Harry lets his eyes run up and down her like a bullet and he’s winded.

Despite the arrogance that leaps and bounds off of her, Rowan Géroux is absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.

“You must be the photographer,” she says, confident and all smiles. The fierce happiness that swoops and bounds through her every movement permeates the air.

The other sportsmen and women he had photographed had all been beautiful and lovely in their own way, but there’s a charm about her that Harry just can’t really get over. When she stretches out her hand for a shake, he’s tempted to ignore it and get on with the shoot before it becomes obvious that he’s absolutely besotted, but Niall as he recalled, told him to be nice in his series of texts offering tips and insight of how to conduct an interview, so Harry takes the offered hand with a gracious smile.

Her grip is firm and he can feel the years of racquet wielding on her hands.

Their eyes meet for a second and he’s stepping back suddenly, hands lifting the camera to capture a candid shot of the light streaming in and highlighting her features perfectly.

“Do you mind lying back on the bench?”

“We’ve only just met, Mr. Styles. Buy a girl dinner first,” she teases but moves towards the bench anyway.

She doesn’t even need telling what to do next, playing with the camera like she’s playing with month-old kitten. He’s sure he’s already half in love with her after ten minutes worth of shooting. But when they move out onto the tennis court, her hair windswept and her feet quick and fast, Harry knows he’s in deep.

As she breaks a sweat under the morning sun, she rests the racquet on her shoulder and walks toward him.

“You got it?” Rowan asks once she’s right in front of him, raising her free hand to shield her vision from overexposure to the sun.

The sun is almost fully up and the sky is a riot in the background as he scrolls through the pictures for her to see; all baby blue and azure with a tinge of yellow, orange and fluffy whites.

He’s never been so unsure if he’s ‘got it’ in his life.

When she points out the ones that she likes, it’s a full blown smile. None of that polite twisted lip, achingly muffled type of laughter. He notices that about her.

He decides that he likes it.

…

A week or so later, he calls her up under false pretenses of the article he’s writing.

“You’ve caught me at a really bad time,” Rowan apologises as he kicks himself quietly, “I’ve got five minutes if you start talking now though.”

He decides not to be the invasive prick who doesn’t know when to quit and just leaves it be. He jibbers something about fact checking his notes, asking a few brief questions before simply hanging up. No ‘let’s grab a coffee’ or ‘what are you doing this weekend’ because she’ll see right through it anyway.

So he just leaves it be.

As young adults often do when in this particular situation, he gets on Tinder and goes on a series of different dates. But none of them compare.

He half wishes that all he had to do was taken her pictures. Because now he’s stuck in the awkward barren landscape between being the guy who took her photographs for a magazine and the guy that she’s dating. He’s the creep who isn’t quite friends with her but knows too much about her from all that poking and prodding she successfully maneuvers in their interview session. And wherever he goes now, all he can see is reminders of the girl walking towards him with her tennis racquet on her shoulders.

She is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

It’s the briefest of moments, but he’s sure he sees her in the club when he’s out with Louis and Niall, blowing off steam for finally closing the month’s edition and sending it off to the printers. Sure that he’s spotted her with her arms looped through her friends’ and a smile on her face.

But between the crowd and the strobe lights, she flashed into view as quickly as she flashed out.

His friends think he’s lost his mind and they clink their glasses together. They’re probably right. He is losing his fucking mind over this girl. So he just flicks his phone out and swipes his aggression away on Tinder.

…

It’s three in the morning when the copious amounts of alcohol in his veins refrain him from sleeping while his phone aids and abets. Blindly, he picks it up off the bedside table and the bright light from said phone very nearly blinds him with a message from an unknown number.

how big do you think the hulk’s dick is?

Any other day and he's pretty sure that being woken up by a message from an unknown number asking about Hulk’s dick would be a meet cute that leads to semi-stimulating conversation. But on a day where he is told that his article is shit and his photos are sub par and he’s possibly failing a class because he’s spending so much time on extracurricular activities and then follows that news up with extracurricular drinking, he’s not quite in a good place for that kind of thing.

Especially when he needs to attend the class that he’s almost failing first thing in the morning to try to salvage that.

What?

Texting a quick obligatory response of confusion before turning his phone onto silent, he gently lowers his head back into bed because his temples are quite literally pounding like a couple of rabbit humping on crack. Pretty much instantly, he gets a reply.

Multiple replies as a matter of fact; need to settle an argument. kind of important. do you think it’s proportionate to his body? or no?

The phone finally stops buzzing but whoever was texting is absolutely frantic and the persistence seems quite endearing in his strange, sleep deprived state. So he picks up his phone yet again and squints at the unknown number.

Who is this?

Without missing a beat, as though she had been staring at the phone, anxiously awaiting a response, a series of replies start lighting up his phone.

let me get this straight. you took my number. called to ask if my mom is indeed a dentist. and then you don’t save my number?

Harry squints at the screen, his mouth stretching into a grin despite the jackhammer sensation that the buzzing is doing to his head.

Sorry, kind of drunk right now

so what do you think?

To be honest, I don’t really think about Hulk’s dick all that much

*toxic masculinity alert!

What is that supposed to mean?

just because we’re having a conversation about a fictional character’s dick doesn’t make you gay, okay?

I’m just not sure that right now is the best time to be having any sort of discourse on genitalia

something wrong?

Like I said, drunk And apparently failing some classes And also Okay Give it to me straight

There’s a couple of seconds of silence that follows his texts as opposed to the nearly on-the-spot replying from before. In his alcohol dazzled mind, it seems pretty clear that he’s asking about the article. But clearly, not so much to a sober recipient.

His phone buzzes and the screen lights up again.  

is there a particular subject in which you’d like to be given to in a direct manner?

The article

There’s another pause. As though she is considering the options even though she is the the elusive, mysterious, three-in-the-morning texter who started the conversation with Hulk’s dick to begin with.

i thought it was good.

But?

what makes you think there’s a but?

There’s always a ‘but’

He feels something shifting, something subtle. Despite the constant pounding on his head and the particularly fresh wound they are prying into, he had a smile on his face. Her company, he realises, even in a virtual conversation box, has him forgetting about the world around him.

i mean. you weren’t exactly great at embellishing facts. but the pictures were good. you actually had me looking semi decent.

So you’re saying I’m bad at lying

basically.

Then, because it’s late, and drunk, and been wanting to talk to her properly beyond being the weird guy who asks her questions about her life and offering nothing in return, he keeps texting her back. It isn’t until he is trying to putting his left shoe on his right while still waiting for her next reply that he realises she’s she’s ruined him for just about everyone else. And she doesn’t even know it.

…

It takes exactly three weeks and four days for Harry to admit that that texting thing with Rowan is not a one time thing. She invites him to dinner with the rest of the tennis team four nights in a row and texts him late at night at least twice a week; drunk, raucous and happy.

There’s no room for anything else between them but they just are.

And he’s tried to contain himself, he really has. He tries to text her as minimally as possible but she’s always the one texting first, always in some kind of ranty, bantery mood and talking about how dolphins and sea otters aren’t as cute as they seem and are mostly savage sea rapists.

But when Jameson, his prick editor, calls for a meeting with a few of the previously featured students and editorial team for a bigger video feature and she unexpectedly breezes in late before plopping herself into the seat next to his asking what she’s missed, he knows that he’s in trouble.

He blames her hair. The wispy soft locks that smell of a mixture of tropical fruit and vanilla.

Or maybe it was the fact that she has a smile so bright that her eyes shine like constellations. Or the fact that she’s a treasure trove of random animal sex facts. Or the fact that her bones jut out just slightly from her lanky frame and she can’t ever sit still with an unseen magnetic buzz bouncing off of her skin.

A breeze comes from nowhere and he thinks it’s definitely her hair. Or at least whatever shampoo and conditioner combo that she uses because all he can seem to think about now in the dimly lit editorial meeting room is her in the shower.

And the worst thing, Harry ponders, is that she’ll probably never know what she’s doing to him.

“It’s Bath & Body Works,” she whispers suddenly as Jameson breaks out his moodboard for the video he wants them to shoot.

“What?”

Heart hammering against his chest too loudly, he tries to breathe as slowly and as calmly as possible because for some reason, the specimen next to him has got him feeling like there are butterflies fluttering around the pit of his stomach.

And he doesn’t know what to make of that. Or about anything really, while she’s there next to him eyes gleaming like some kind of electric shock.

“My friend got me some candles from the States, that’s what you’re smelling.”

His confusion must be evident because for a brief moment after her declaration of imported scented candles, he wonders if she could read minds. He breathes in a gasp at the thought, panicked to find his chest tight like there’s no air left in his collapsible lungs.

“Don’t worry, I’m not a mind reader, you’ve just got a very easy to read face,” Rowan chuckles.

He has never been so aware of anything his entire life. And it is simultaneously terrifying as it is exhilarating.

…

The dingy little diner is completely deserted, and that makes it look seedier. Harry must’ve walked by the place a dozen of times and he's never really noticed the little diner there before. Which is why when she tugs him along the street promising that he's going to have one of the top 5 meals of his life, he didn't expect to find himself in what resembles the set of a horror film. Grimy tiles, buzzing fluorescent light and a painted on sign on the door that says 'Bakso Beast' doesn't quite scream one of the best meals of your life. But then again, Harry thinks that maybe it's the kind of good that nearly kills you.

The menu looks like it's a foreign language and when the waiter comes along, Rowan, who apparently speaks the language, mutters a string of gibberish at waiter.

Apparently they're acquainted and she knows him by name, calling him Mas. It’s an unpleasant and not entirely unfamiliar sensation that hits him at the thought of them being acquainted.

Mas walks away and she fixes her gaze back at him. "You're staring." “I’m not staring at anything,” he says, feigning innocence. But Rowan doesn’t buy it for a second, and rightly so. Harry is almost always exclusively staring.

And the half smirk on her face says that she knows that he's always staring. "And you’re wondering what that gibberish was,” she explains, not missing at beat.

He laughs. Because he's an open book. Always has been. And especially with her. He hopes to whatever deities that lord over the place that she doesn't sense his envy because really, he doesn't have a right to be envious of the people she may or may not know. "What was that anyway?" He diverts the subject, not allowing a moment more of reliving the awful feeling he felt when he saw her whisper into Zayn's ear earlier. Harry Styles has been jealous a grand total of three times in his life. The first was when Gemma started college and left home. The second was when Jameson called Liam 'the better photographer' and sent him to shoot out a ‘where is our alumni now’ feature story which included a really cool indie band he had been following.

The third is everything and anyone that came into contact with Rowan. Unlike the first two fleeting pangs of jealousy, this one is a constant. Making him increasingly intolerant and constantly on the verge of breaking skin on the inside of his cheek. "The gibberish?" Rowan asks, chuckling, as Mas returns with two huge plastic cups filled with an icy light amber liquid, anchoring him back to the present. "It's Indonesian," she explains, "And this is what they call a Monster Tea. By the way, text Zayn and Louis our location, my battery's almost dead." "I thought your mom's Malaysian?" Harry asks, confused, whipping out his phone reluctantly while sipping tentatively on the Monster Tea. The flavour assaults his sense and his fingers stop their mission of notifying his flatmates of his whereabouts. It's not unpleasant but the jealousy that plants itself squarely in his stomach for having to share her company is. "I just spent a lot of time in the South East Asian countries growing up." "Because your dad worked in Asia," he continues for her before whipping up his head, horrified at how much of a creep he sounds like. He’s pretty sure they’re not quite at know each other too well and inside jokes and abrasive nicknames yet. But Rowan just nods at his statement, sipping up the tea by the gulpful.

He smiles at that, but is certain he's not looking any calmer.

…

Harry is sitting in his living room when it happens. He’s texting her and she’s taking a while to respond because she’s just getting off practice and Louis and Zayn are making a racket out of killing zombies when he just snaps.

Well, it’s more than just snapping. It may have something to do with the fact that Zayn has taken it up as a personal mission to get him jealous as often as possible and is asking for Rowan to come over through him.

It is then, that suddenly, his resolve and sense of self-preservation, all breaks it half. He’s spilling all over the place like an iridescent, viscous broken glow stick.

He just cannot keep it in anymore.

Harry grabs his jacket, ignoring his roommates’ calls after him and dashes out of there, rushing to where it all started. The damned changing room drowning in the weak English afternoon light that pervades. He slams into the changing room with all the subtlety of a bus and Rowan is just there on that bench, looking up at him with one shoe on, sweat dotted across her forehead.

He wants to say something, but there is something caught in his throat. Instead Harry starts towards her and she stands up instinctively even though she’s only got one shoe on and he crashes into her.

Their teeth clack against one another, lips pressed together with a bruising force that makes him see stars, and when he slips his tongue into her mouth. It tastes a bit like shockwaves and a thrumming pulse. But that could just be his head misfiring electricity signals all over the place.

He pulls back, brushing against her lips gently and letting out a whisper of a breath, shaky and deep.

Her eyes open after the force behind the kiss and she stares at him long and hard for a moment. Their faces are inches apart and she is breathing so softly it’s almost like listening to a melody.

“Look, Roe,” he starts saying, her name like honey on his lips and he feels a rush of boldness saying so much out loud. Except he doesn’t know what exactly it is he is trying to say. So he just allows it to push him further in until he’s completely submerged and flailing for air.

“I just– I just wanted you to know. Okay?”

She stares for a minute, dumbstruck, then takes a step closer and grabs his put on backwards jacket and kisses him so forcefully his heart forgets itself.

Almost as if to say, ‘Took you long enough.’

…

She’s got that look, the one he can’t resist, and he finds himself saying yes no matter what she suggests.

It’s the most tedious post tennis tournament party in the history of post tennis tournament parties. Everyone is tittering and nodding along enjoying champagne and canapes and he feels about ready combust if Jameson tells him to take one more generic shot of some nobody society who and who. And that’s when she sneaks up behind him and declares she’s got a better plan.

Rowan looks quite like the cat that got the cream and Harry is’t normally one to be worried. Except in this case, he has a feeling he might be the cream.

He passes his camera off to Niall who hushedly yells after him exclaiming he doesn’t know how to work the damn thing and they’re a mass of giggles and tangled limbs as they duck into a narrow service hallway. Hearing the chinking of trays and the rolling of trolleys and the eventuality of being told they’re not meant to be back here, the raven haired couple sneak into a broom closet that so happens have one small window overlooking the garden below.

She wiggles her eyebrows at him suggestively.

“You jump, I jump, Jack.”

And suddenly they are flailing fabrics on moonlight kissed grass. He instinctively wraps his arms around the gangly girl and laugh, deep and unrestrained. She leans in and kisses him, once, twice, forever. He can’t bring himself to care.

“I can’t believe you let me fall,” she laughs into the kiss as they stay there on the grass.

He might have miscalculated the jump that she suggested, but she is far from the one who’s fallen because he’s the one who has. He’s fallen for her since day one and he’s falling for her still. A hundred different falls in a hundred different ways.

And he can’t catch his breath even though his feet is already on the ground.

He lies back on the grass, ignoring the dampness seeping into his one good sports jacket which he’s busted out for this occasion. She follows suit and the both of them spread out on the grass like the most romantic pair of dead bodies. Except, he’s sure they’re alive because his pulse cannot seem to control itself around her. Like the way his limbs go on autopilot whenever she’s around and suddenly he has a camera in his hands and he’s taking photograph after photograph of her.

But for the night, there is no Rowan and no Harry. Just the freshly cut grass and the sky screaming out at him to drink deeply of the night. The myriad of blues and purples and blacks screams so loudly at him that he forgets that there such a thing as stars.

Harry’s not sure how long they lie there for, but they talk and they laugh and they dance at some point until suddenly what appears to be sunlight seem to begin dotting the horizon. He’s almost afraid to move. Afraid that Rowan hadn’t been feeling the same as him.

His heart feels so swollen he’s sure he can feel it pounding against his throat.

He just wants their talks to be endless. Hours and hours of talking. The kind of talking where your words eventually trail off and the empty spaces grow longer because you’re falling asleep but then you get to wake up and smile and keep the conversation going. Like the gaps don’t matter.

It’s strange but he realises that he hasn’t felt like a whole person until she came along.

…

Harry thinks of the stillness of their life in the crevices. That’s where he exists with her; the crevices. They’ve graduated and moved in together. Their life normal and routine, like he could hold her hands forever and never get bored of how they entwine together.

There are things he dislikes of course; like the way that Rowan trains and works in the day and he works the night shift at the newspaper where he hopes to eventually get something printed. The only time they have together is in the cracks in their schedule; early morning coffees before the cafes are open or late late fitful nights in his tiny apartment with the moonlight spilling in, the sounds of the city too loud below them.

“It doesn’t feel real, does it?” Harry muses out loud, watching the people pass by.

It’s half past four in the morning and the Sainsbury’s that they’re in is the only thing open within the five block radius, so there isn’t anyone on the street to watch really, but he doesn’t dare look at her.

Because sometimes, when he looks at her, he thinks he’ll lose his mind. Because it all doesn’t feel real.

His fingers are wrapped around a cheap styro-cup of piping hot coffee, and she’s looking at him.

“What doesn’t?”

“This,” he shrugs, turning to meet her gaze with his.

She smiles a knowing smile. Her stupid, messy, cocky grin, “What, you expect real Arabica beans in cheap three-in-one packets?”

He chortles. He should have seen that coming really.

“This,” he explains more assertively, “This life we’re living.”

She doesn’t answer. But she tilts her head into the crook of his shoulder, fitting together perfectly like two puzzle pieces.

He knows he can’t keep her for long. He just keeps hoping that he can by wanting it badly enough. Because he’s pretty sure that if Rowan ever leaves, she’s going to rip out pieces of him with her. She’s rooted to his every organ and bone, blooming over arteries and covering every inch of his flesh.

He thinks maybe he’s holding her back. But she keeps her head nestled in the crook of him, ignoring his question with silence, and he can’t find himself to care what her answer would’ve been.

…

He closes his eyes and pretends that she’s still living there.

He pretends that he’s waking up with her tracing imaginary veins on his skin with her fingers, tickling him awake. He pretends that it’s an idle Sunday morning and the hazy golden light dances in her hair, making her look almost possibly blonde. He pretends that the soft cotton of his shirt, her designated pyjamas, is pressed against his skin and he can feel her chest rise and fall in time with his own breathing.

His apartment is small. Far too small. And there’s not nearly enough places to hide in. Not enough places to go when you wake up and decide that you just hate that window that opens barely out to the streets of below. Not enough corners that you can dress up or dress down, redecorate in accordance to your mood.

Not enough rooms to contain the lies you’ve unsuccessfully told.

In the beginning it’s all so normal, it’s deceiving. Like the world was trying to trick him into thinking he’s safe before ripping out from under him. But then, the inevitable happens; she gets busier and he stays the same.

She becomes The First Sportswoman To Truly Understand Internet Culture and he’s still Harry the struggling photographer working the night shift.

She becomes one of the Top 20 Newcomers in Sports To Watch and he’s the guy who’s sent to photograph number 19 on that list.

There just isn’t enough time and eventually his worst fear comes true.

He opens his eyes and the world is blurry and smudged, like he’s trapped in the world’s worst snow globe.

He remembers too much and not enough. They come to him like pinpricks of light spilling through the blindfold, especially in the mornings. A carousel swarms past his eyes. He’s unconsciously memorised it all, like when you fall asleep on a textbook and you wake with the words stamped across your face.

Harry rolls over to his side, and sees an actual carousel of pictures he has up on his wall. Page after page of printed glossy shots of her. Of him. Of them.

He decides that he hates his bedroom. Crawling out of the warmth and security of the blankets, he marches up to the photo wall and them down. Each picture. Each memory. Each little puzzle piece that is life as he knows it.

…

It comes out like a trail of thought that he can't stop, just sitting on the tip of his tongue for days and days before finally making the great escape.

He's making breakfast, pancakes with drowned in maple syrup and whipped cream. Just the way she used to like them. Caroline saunters out of the bedroom dressed in a light blue shirt that she used to favour so much and the image of the brunette in that very same shirt flashed through his head.

Maybe it’s the vision of the brunette drowned in morning light that haunts him. Or the fact that he’s seen her not five days ago. Or maybe it’s the fact that the news on the telly is reporting on sports and he briefly catches an actual glimpse of the brunette. Whichever it is, the words come tumbling out before he can stop them.

It takes him a full second to understand what he'd just said.

Caroline looks at him, hazel eyes questioning, "Roe? You've never called me Roe before."

He fumbles for an excuse and ends up shaking his head to clear the fog of a memory embedded so deeply in his mind.

"Who is she then? An ex-girlfriend that I need to worry about?" Caroline perches herself onto the bar stool, her voice light and playful as she reaches for the television remote to mute the screen behind her.

He grins, warmth spreading through his extremities as the fight or flight instinct subsides.

"No one," he chuckles easily, naturally.

He throws a glance at the television with its pictures still moving. The photo he took of her once a lifetime ago in that university changing room flashes across the screen.

He throws on a genuine grin and lands his gaze back on Caroline, shrugging, "No one at all."

[rickhorrow]

10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 111819

 RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 18 : MAYOR’S EDITION

with Jacob Aere

 A draft agreement between Miami-Dade County and the Dolphins would "pay the team at least" $2.5 million a year for bringing a F1 race to Miami Gardens. According to the Miami Herald, the subsidy is "tied to an existing agreement" from 2014 that pays Hard Rock Stadium up to $5.75 million annually for big events. The drafted F1 agreement would "boost that cap" to $7 million, a 20% increase. However, Miami-Dade Deputy Mayor Jennifer Moon affirmed the Dolphins "dropped the request for the higher cap." Even without the higher cap, the proposed F1 agreement would make the 2014 agreement a "more reliable source of county revenue" for Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross. The Dolphins "already are allowed" a $1 million payment for the Miami Open tennis tournament. International soccer matches “qualify for a $750,000 payment, while a college football championship brings in $3 million. An annual F1 race would let Ross lock in another $2.5 million more for the yearly allocation allowed under the 2014 agreement.

In a new poll commissioned by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, 77% of voters are for keeping the A's. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, building a privately financed ballpark at the Port of Oakland's Howard Terminal "got the support of 68% of the voters, even if it means setting up a special tax district to pay for infrastructure." The poll also shows that 44% of voters believe the city should “drop its lawsuit over the Coliseum land sale,” compared with 28% who support the lawsuit and 28% with no opinion on the matter." Analytics firm FM3 took a poll of 601 registered voters October 29-November 1 as part of the chamber's annual Pulse of Oakland survey. The poll, "which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, came as the clock ticked down" on the deadline Major League Baseball set for the city to "drop the suit or risk the A's relocating to another city.” Since the city has lost the Warriors and soon, the Raiders, it’s not surprising that a majority of voters would back keeping its one remaining pro sports team.

 EverFi chants “Let’s Go Lightning.” Last Friday, the Tampa Bay Lightning invited 5,000 middle schoolers from the area to practice as part of their partnership with the Future Goals program from EverFi. The NHL and NHLPA are sponsoring the program that brings hockey into the classroom to explore STEM topics through sports. Future Goals features computer modules aimed at students in third through eighth grades on various topics. “We actually tried to use math and science in our ball hockey stuff,” Vice President of Community Hockey Development Jay Feaster shared with the Tampa Bay Times. “We show angles. If you pass off the boards here, or the different angles in the openings around a goalie.” While some of the students attending the Friday practice were hockey players, EverFi‘s NHL partnership recognizes that even those who don’t play the game have a better time absorbing STEM information through the lens of the sport.

 Black News Channel, the brainchild of former football and political star J.C. Watts, has moved its launch date from November 15 to January 6. The Tallahassee, FL-based network co-founded by former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts and TV exec Bob Brillante made the date change to take advantage of new distribution platforms. “If we have the opportunity to include the largest African American audience possible from day one, then that should be our top priority,” said Watts. The network, which offers 24/7 news serving African American viewers, has carriage deals set with Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network, and will be available in TV markets including New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Watts entered the national conversation as a star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma in 1979 and later made a name for himself on Capitol Hill both as a congressman and a lobbyist backing diversity and economic issues still resonating in sports — and elsewhere — today.

WWE and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have announced that WrestleMania 35 generated $165.4 million in economic impact for the New York/New Jersey region last April, according to a study conducted by the Enigma Research Corporation. This marks a more than 60 percent increase from the $101.2 million generated for WrestleMania 29 in New York and New Jersey and the eighth consecutive year that WrestleMania generated more than $100 million in economic impact for its host region. Over the past 13 years, WrestleMania has now generated more than $1.3 billion in cumulative economic impact for the cities that have hosted the event. WrestleMania 35 also generated approximately $27.1 million in federal, state, and local taxes. A sold-out crowd of 82,265 fans from all 50 states and 68 countries attended WWE’s pop-culture extravaganza this past April, making it the highest-grossing entertainment event in the history of MetLife Stadium. Next year, WrestleMania 36 will take place Sunday, April 5, from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay and looks to positively impact a hurting sports industry in Tampa Bay.

The National Women’s Hockey League announced that it had closed a new round of equity funding that ensures continued growth for the league for many years to come. According to Cynopsis, the financing was led by insurance and IT entrepreneur Andy Scurto, who now joins a group of more than 20 NWHL investors. The funding round is another boost for a league whose existence was in doubt after a tumultuous summer. According to Sports Business, the five-team, U.S. based NWHL is continuing to operate despite the fact that more than 200 of the world’s top female ice hockey players pledged to not compete in North America this season in an attempt to gain better pay and working conditions. The NWHL also recently signed a partnership with athlete marketing platform Opendorse in an attempt to increase its players’ presence and engagement on social media. If the players can have their salary wishes met, this league has a chance to become equally prominent to the NHL in 10 years’ time.

The shift is here: more fans are streaming sports than paying for TV packages. According to SportsPro, fans are watching more live sport on their smartphones and connected devices than they do on TV, despite the majority of sports media rights being held by linear broadcasters, according to new research by cloud video specialists Grabyo. While more than 50% of fans watch sport via a satellite or pay-TV subscription, Grabyo’s OTT Video Trends Report claims that more than 60% view sports content via either an OTT or premium social media service. Overall, Grabyo’s research found that the global market penetration of OTT services has hit 38%, with DAZN and Kayo Sports cited as the most popular dedicated sports streaming platforms used by fans. Furthermore, Grabyo links a growth in short-form video, real-time highlights, and viral video consumption with the widespread adoption of social media use on smartphones as social media platforms such as Facebook Watch, Twitter, and YouTube TV capitalize on a growing demand for streaming options.

The NHL’s Washington Capitals owners launch Caps Gaming Brand. Monumental Sports and Entertainment (MSE), the owners of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise, has launched an esports division called Caps Gaming, which will host a 32-team EA Sports NHL 20 competition. The Caps Gaming Showcase, a six-versus-six ice hockey esports tournament, which will launch on Xbox One, will feature an eight-week regular-season beginning in early December, with the top 16 teams advancing to a postseason stage held in late February, competing for a $15,000 prize pool. As part of Monumental’s gaming expansion, the esports division has also signed up professional NHL gamer John Casagranda, who is also known as “JohnWayne” and joins the Caps Gaming organization as an official streamer on the Caps Gaming Twitch channel until the end of June. In addition to being 2018 NHL Stanley Cup champions, Monumental owns and operates pro sports franchises based in the U.S. capital, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA champion Washington Mystics. By investing heavily in esports, MSE and the Capitals have kept themselves at the forefront of innovation across the NHL and are primed to cash-in on the rise of esports.

John Cena confronts veteran suicide through charity.  Cena has partnered with the FitOps Foundation, a nonprofit committed to training and certifying veterans as personal trainers as the suicide rate among U.S. veterans continues to increase. According to Sports Illustrated, FitOps runs camps for its training sessions, providing a recognizable feeling for the veterans who attend. In addition to raising awareness about the needs of vets, Cena is also raising funds to expand the FitOps program. A number that really jumped out to Cena to inspire change was that roughly 20 veterans a day commit suicide. In a fundraising effort for FitOps, Cena pledged to match all donations up to $1 million through Veterans Day, as well as offer a VIP meet-and-greet with Cena to one lucky donor. Fittingly, on Veterans Day, the project crossed the $1 million threshold. An integral part of FitOps is rebuilding the sense of community and purpose that many veterans lose when returning to civilian life. While Cena has always showed his appreciation for the military, his current actions have him involved directly. 

All-electric racing series Formula E sees BBC extension to include two races on FTA television. According to SportsPro, the Marrakesh ePrix on February 29 and the Rome ePrix on April 4 are the two races that have been chosen for the BBC’s television coverage, although it is not yet confirmed which channels will air the events. The extension will also see the BBC continue to show every Formula E race across its online platforms, including the BBC iPlayer and its website. Coverage of select races will also be available via the BBC red button. The expanded deal comes ahead of Formula E’s return to the UK, with a double-header race through London’s ExCel exhibition center and along the waterfront on the streets of the Royal Docks set to close the 2019/20 season on July 25-26. Formula E, which debuted on the BBC last season, will also be broadcast in the UK this season on Discovery-owned channel Eurosport, with select events also being shown live on free-to-air network Quest. This is an eco-friendly racing league that allows for the same excitement as non-electric racing with the benefit of no negative carbon emissions and could set an example for NASCAR in the U.S.

[reneeacaseyfl]

The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness

[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

At a bar in Brooklyn this spring, when the hockey playoffs were still going on, a guy with a nose ring and glasses approached a visitor from Toronto who was watching the Maple Leafs game on a small TV in the corner of the bar. He challenged the Leafs fan to a game of air hockey and even offered to buy him a beer if he won.

He neglected to mention that he was currently ranked No. 10 in the world and was almost certainly the best air hockey player in New York.

His name was Justin Flores, and he had been coming to Ontario, a dive bar in Williamsburg, for weeks, waiting for anybody to approach the table. He’d recently found a student — a New Yorker named Liz Cash, who hoped to become the top-ranked female player in the world, and he had her training with the appropriate intensity. He himself was also getting ready for the World Championships that were set for the end of July in Colorado Springs. Both he and his mentee are attending and fully expect to achieve glory if not win much in the way of money.

But he was always on the lookout for more disciples, and he was always up for a game.

When the Canadian sidled over between periods, Mr. Flores was visibly pumped. If it was hard for him to attract opponents, it was no problem drawing a crowd once a game was underway. For one thing, Mr. Flores, who is 30, holds the mallet by its edge, not by the knob, the way most people do, which is the mark of a novice. He also knows how to put the puck into a so-called circle drift, gently cycling it back and forth before executing a killer shot.

Like a true hustler, Mr. Flores let the Canadian score a few points. The subsequent annihilation of his opponent drew stares. One bearded observer took the Juul out of his mouth and looked stunned. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that,” he said.

Mr. Flores became hooked on air hockey while shooting photos of the national championship for his college paper a decade ago in Houston, a hotbed of elite players. He can’t sum up what he loved about the game in a single sentence, or really at all — it’s just “too big” for him. He’s an engineer in training, a really no-nonsense guy. But for him, as much as he thinks it’s corny to say, air hockey is an art.

“It’s a level playing field,” he said, “and what someone does with it is up to them.”

But when he moved to New York in 2013, he found that few people felt the same way. In a city that has no less than five Quidditch teams and a competitive musical chairs tournament, almost no one seemed interested in his passion.

Mr. Flores has posted fliers around Ontario Bar (the only place in the area that would give him permission) and on Facebook groups like New York Air Hockey Club (which has fewer than 100 followers) with his challenge: He will buy a beer for anyone who can beat him. So far, he hasn’t had to.

According to the Air Hockey Players Association, one of the sport’s governing bodies, only 24 air hockey players in the world are designated professionals, and only 10 of them are recognized as masters. As far as he knows, Mr. Flores is the only air hockey master in the five boroughs. That’s something he’s been trying to change for years — his goal is to cultivate a local scene that rivals the one in his home state of Texas, where the game’s rules were first codified and the best players have historically come from.

But even there, competitive air hockey is relatively obscure. Aficionados blame the arrival of the video game Pong, released by Atari in 1972 — the same year that air hockey tables first went to market. Bar patrons clearly preferred digital table tennis; air hockey tables briefly went out of production in 1978.

A fanatic named Mark Robbins, who happened to be the son of Atari’s former president, rejected his birthright and rented a van so he could drive across the country and hold air hockey exhibitions at arcades, buying as many tables as he could along the way. His hope was that, at the very least, he and his friends could keep playing for the rest of their lives.

By 1985, he had persuaded a company called Dynamo Corp. to begin making what’s now considered an acceptable facsimile of the original table. Finding a Dynamo of a certain length — which by design features no blinking, distracting lights alongside it — is now the Holy Grail for enthusiasts.

Real estate is also part of the story. Competition air hockey tables are eight feet long, but space considerations in New York bars typically only allow for one that’s a foot shorter. Another complication arises from the fact that some of the few places in the city that can fit a bigger table don’t seem to want Mr. Flores around. He prefers to bring his own regulation puck, which is heavier and more robust than the flimsy plastic ones that you find at barroom tables.

“It’s like practicing baseball with a Wiffle ball,” Mr. Flores said.

With heaviness comes loudness. In fact, he was banned from training at a place with an eight-foot table in Bay Ridge last year because he switched out the default puck for a version that the pool-playing crowd found distracting. So now he’s exclusively training at Brownstone Billiards in Park Slope, where the air hockey table is in a different area from the pool players. It’s a trek from where Mr. Flores lives, in Ridgewood, Queens, but it’s worth it.

It’s also convenient for Liz Cash, Mr. Flores’s student, who lives in Crown Heights and will be joining him at the Colorado tournament. The table is paid for by the hour rather per game, which is much better for practicing maneuvers, like a boxer working a speed bag.

The two met in 2015 at Ontario Bar, and Mr. Flores instantly saw something in Ms. Cash, a muscular physical therapist. She’s a competitive boxer, unable to fully dedicate herself to martial arts because she keeps injuring both of her wrists. But she’s apparently in prime condition for air hockey.

Ms. Cash didn’t realize it was a legitimate sport until she met Mr. Flores at one of his air hockey meetups. When he told her that her competitive drive and athletic prowess gave her the capacity for greatness, she went from merely interested to obsessed.

“He told me I could be the best woman in the world,” she said at a recent training session. “At that time, Justin was like Yoda to me. He might as well have been levitating off the table.” She’s since started juggling and training her vision.

With only weeks to go before the 2019 Air Hockey Players Association World Championship tournament in Colorado Springs, the training partners had some work to do. Ms. Cash tends to stick out her left leg when shooting, like a figure skater going into an Arabesque. It’s a good way for her to build momentum — she describes it like the final piece of a whipping motion that begins at the arm. Plus: “Sometimes I do it because I’m only 5-foot-3 and have to be on my tiptoes.”

Although she’s quite ferocious and talented, she suffers from Meniere’s disease, which can induce the kind of vertigo she suffered the only other time she seriously competed, in 2017. She finished a disappointing 22nd in that tournament, but she thinks she could have won the whole thing if she hadn’t gotten dizzy.

An additional obstacle to her ascentis that she has only Mr. Flores and another pro, based out of Connecticut, to practice against. There’s also the fact that the table she’s training on in Park Slope isn’t very good. It meets the basic specifications, but it also has a huge gash on one end, doesn’t keep score, and frequently turns off in the middle of a game.

“This is like Chuck-E-Cheese for adults,” said Ms. Cash. “All the other serious players practice on tables that work well. Everything should be like butter.”

Before their recent practice session, Mr. Flores wiped down the lackluster table with isopropyl, and the two taped up their middle and index fingers. When they started playing, they both hit the puck so hard that it regularly flew off the table. They took turns unplugging the Dynamo, trying in vain to make it fully operational for the entirety of a match. It didn’t work, and Ms. Cash used the frequent pauses to drink a homemade concoction full of electrolytes out of a Mason jar. “I was surprised the first time I went to Colorado just how much you can sweat from air hockey,” she said.

After a couple of hours, the two were involved in a heater of a set. Ms. Cash was ultimately victorious, seven games to four. She was pretty sure that it was the first time she’d beaten her mentor — a good sign for Colorado — and something she attributed to the fact that she’d just learned how to juggle with four balls earlier that day. She was positive that had caused new areas to light up in her brain.

Since then, she’s spent hours practicing her forehand with a goal blocker. She’s also been playing against co-workers from the gym and training her vision. She thinks that this unique form of preparation will push her over the edge to beat Niki Flanagan, the best woman air hockey player of all time.

“My advantage will come from my insight into the human body,” Ms. Cash said. “No one else in the tournament is going to be thinking about their cerebellum.” As Ivan Lendl did with tennis, Ms. Cash also thinks she will introduce fitness and conditioning to the game of air hockey. “These big, heavy guys who I’m going to play against will be stiff,” she said. “That’s going to limit them.”

Ms. Flanagan is aware of her challenger. Now 47, Ms. Flanagan has returned from a five-year hiatus after having a daughter. A graduate of the University of Texas with what is said to be a devastating cross-straight shot, she was ranked as high as No. 14 in the world before she became pregnant.

When she decided to get back into the game about a year ago, she checked out some Facebook pages for air hockey and saw the sport had become much more physical than back in her day. Ms. Flanagan said that she started running and lost 61 pounds. She’s heard about Ms. Cash’s prowess but doesn’t quite know what to make of her.

“She has a good formula, because she’s into fitness and working out,” she said. “That’s a big part of things now. My stamina is up from running, and I’m on a low-carb diet. But I honestly have no idea what vision training even is. I’ll have to ask her about that when we finally meet.”

Credit: Source link

The post The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186396282792

[velmaemyers88]

The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness

[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

At a bar in Brooklyn this spring, when the hockey playoffs were still going on, a guy with a nose ring and glasses approached a visitor from Toronto who was watching the Maple Leafs game on a small TV in the corner of the bar. He challenged the Leafs fan to a game of air hockey and even offered to buy him a beer if he won.

He neglected to mention that he was currently ranked No. 10 in the world and was almost certainly the best air hockey player in New York.

His name was Justin Flores, and he had been coming to Ontario, a dive bar in Williamsburg, for weeks, waiting for anybody to approach the table. He’d recently found a student — a New Yorker named Liz Cash, who hoped to become the top-ranked female player in the world, and he had her training with the appropriate intensity. He himself was also getting ready for the World Championships that were set for the end of July in Colorado Springs. Both he and his mentee are attending and fully expect to achieve glory if not win much in the way of money.

But he was always on the lookout for more disciples, and he was always up for a game.

When the Canadian sidled over between periods, Mr. Flores was visibly pumped. If it was hard for him to attract opponents, it was no problem drawing a crowd once a game was underway. For one thing, Mr. Flores, who is 30, holds the mallet by its edge, not by the knob, the way most people do, which is the mark of a novice. He also knows how to put the puck into a so-called circle drift, gently cycling it back and forth before executing a killer shot.

Like a true hustler, Mr. Flores let the Canadian score a few points. The subsequent annihilation of his opponent drew stares. One bearded observer took the Juul out of his mouth and looked stunned. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that,” he said.

Mr. Flores became hooked on air hockey while shooting photos of the national championship for his college paper a decade ago in Houston, a hotbed of elite players. He can’t sum up what he loved about the game in a single sentence, or really at all — it’s just “too big” for him. He’s an engineer in training, a really no-nonsense guy. But for him, as much as he thinks it’s corny to say, air hockey is an art.

“It’s a level playing field,” he said, “and what someone does with it is up to them.”

But when he moved to New York in 2013, he found that few people felt the same way. In a city that has no less than five Quidditch teams and a competitive musical chairs tournament, almost no one seemed interested in his passion.

Mr. Flores has posted fliers around Ontario Bar (the only place in the area that would give him permission) and on Facebook groups like New York Air Hockey Club (which has fewer than 100 followers) with his challenge: He will buy a beer for anyone who can beat him. So far, he hasn’t had to.

According to the Air Hockey Players Association, one of the sport’s governing bodies, only 24 air hockey players in the world are designated professionals, and only 10 of them are recognized as masters. As far as he knows, Mr. Flores is the only air hockey master in the five boroughs. That’s something he’s been trying to change for years — his goal is to cultivate a local scene that rivals the one in his home state of Texas, where the game’s rules were first codified and the best players have historically come from.

But even there, competitive air hockey is relatively obscure. Aficionados blame the arrival of the video game Pong, released by Atari in 1972 — the same year that air hockey tables first went to market. Bar patrons clearly preferred digital table tennis; air hockey tables briefly went out of production in 1978.

A fanatic named Mark Robbins, who happened to be the son of Atari’s former president, rejected his birthright and rented a van so he could drive across the country and hold air hockey exhibitions at arcades, buying as many tables as he could along the way. His hope was that, at the very least, he and his friends could keep playing for the rest of their lives.

By 1985, he had persuaded a company called Dynamo Corp. to begin making what’s now considered an acceptable facsimile of the original table. Finding a Dynamo of a certain length — which by design features no blinking, distracting lights alongside it — is now the Holy Grail for enthusiasts.

Real estate is also part of the story. Competition air hockey tables are eight feet long, but space considerations in New York bars typically only allow for one that’s a foot shorter. Another complication arises from the fact that some of the few places in the city that can fit a bigger table don’t seem to want Mr. Flores around. He prefers to bring his own regulation puck, which is heavier and more robust than the flimsy plastic ones that you find at barroom tables.

“It’s like practicing baseball with a Wiffle ball,” Mr. Flores said.

With heaviness comes loudness. In fact, he was banned from training at a place with an eight-foot table in Bay Ridge last year because he switched out the default puck for a version that the pool-playing crowd found distracting. So now he’s exclusively training at Brownstone Billiards in Park Slope, where the air hockey table is in a different area from the pool players. It’s a trek from where Mr. Flores lives, in Ridgewood, Queens, but it’s worth it.

It’s also convenient for Liz Cash, Mr. Flores’s student, who lives in Crown Heights and will be joining him at the Colorado tournament. The table is paid for by the hour rather per game, which is much better for practicing maneuvers, like a boxer working a speed bag.

The two met in 2015 at Ontario Bar, and Mr. Flores instantly saw something in Ms. Cash, a muscular physical therapist. She’s a competitive boxer, unable to fully dedicate herself to martial arts because she keeps injuring both of her wrists. But she’s apparently in prime condition for air hockey.

Ms. Cash didn’t realize it was a legitimate sport until she met Mr. Flores at one of his air hockey meetups. When he told her that her competitive drive and athletic prowess gave her the capacity for greatness, she went from merely interested to obsessed.

“He told me I could be the best woman in the world,” she said at a recent training session. “At that time, Justin was like Yoda to me. He might as well have been levitating off the table.” She’s since started juggling and training her vision.

With only weeks to go before the 2019 Air Hockey Players Association World Championship tournament in Colorado Springs, the training partners had some work to do. Ms. Cash tends to stick out her left leg when shooting, like a figure skater going into an Arabesque. It’s a good way for her to build momentum — she describes it like the final piece of a whipping motion that begins at the arm. Plus: “Sometimes I do it because I’m only 5-foot-3 and have to be on my tiptoes.”

Although she’s quite ferocious and talented, she suffers from Meniere’s disease, which can induce the kind of vertigo she suffered the only other time she seriously competed, in 2017. She finished a disappointing 22nd in that tournament, but she thinks she could have won the whole thing if she hadn’t gotten dizzy.

An additional obstacle to her ascentis that she has only Mr. Flores and another pro, based out of Connecticut, to practice against. There’s also the fact that the table she’s training on in Park Slope isn’t very good. It meets the basic specifications, but it also has a huge gash on one end, doesn’t keep score, and frequently turns off in the middle of a game.

“This is like Chuck-E-Cheese for adults,” said Ms. Cash. “All the other serious players practice on tables that work well. Everything should be like butter.”

Before their recent practice session, Mr. Flores wiped down the lackluster table with isopropyl, and the two taped up their middle and index fingers. When they started playing, they both hit the puck so hard that it regularly flew off the table. They took turns unplugging the Dynamo, trying in vain to make it fully operational for the entirety of a match. It didn’t work, and Ms. Cash used the frequent pauses to drink a homemade concoction full of electrolytes out of a Mason jar. “I was surprised the first time I went to Colorado just how much you can sweat from air hockey,” she said.

After a couple of hours, the two were involved in a heater of a set. Ms. Cash was ultimately victorious, seven games to four. She was pretty sure that it was the first time she’d beaten her mentor — a good sign for Colorado — and something she attributed to the fact that she’d just learned how to juggle with four balls earlier that day. She was positive that had caused new areas to light up in her brain.

Since then, she’s spent hours practicing her forehand with a goal blocker. She’s also been playing against co-workers from the gym and training her vision. She thinks that this unique form of preparation will push her over the edge to beat Niki Flanagan, the best woman air hockey player of all time.

“My advantage will come from my insight into the human body,” Ms. Cash said. “No one else in the tournament is going to be thinking about their cerebellum.” As Ivan Lendl did with tennis, Ms. Cash also thinks she will introduce fitness and conditioning to the game of air hockey. “These big, heavy guys who I’m going to play against will be stiff,” she said. “That’s going to limit them.”

Ms. Flanagan is aware of her challenger. Now 47, Ms. Flanagan has returned from a five-year hiatus after having a daughter. A graduate of the University of Texas with what is said to be a devastating cross-straight shot, she was ranked as high as No. 14 in the world before she became pregnant.

When she decided to get back into the game about a year ago, she checked out some Facebook pages for air hockey and saw the sport had become much more physical than back in her day. Ms. Flanagan said that she started running and lost 61 pounds. She’s heard about Ms. Cash’s prowess but doesn’t quite know what to make of her.

“She has a good formula, because she’s into fitness and working out,” she said. “That’s a big part of things now. My stamina is up from running, and I’m on a low-carb diet. But I honestly have no idea what vision training even is. I’ll have to ask her about that when we finally meet.”

Credit: Source link

The post The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186396282792

[weeklyreviewer]

The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness

[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

At a bar in Brooklyn this spring, when the hockey playoffs were still going on, a guy with a nose ring and glasses approached a visitor from Toronto who was watching the Maple Leafs game on a small TV in the corner of the bar. He challenged the Leafs fan to a game of air hockey and even offered to buy him a beer if he won.

He neglected to mention that he was currently ranked No. 10 in the world and was almost certainly the best air hockey player in New York.

His name was Justin Flores, and he had been coming to Ontario, a dive bar in Williamsburg, for weeks, waiting for anybody to approach the table. He’d recently found a student — a New Yorker named Liz Cash, who hoped to become the top-ranked female player in the world, and he had her training with the appropriate intensity. He himself was also getting ready for the World Championships that were set for the end of July in Colorado Springs. Both he and his mentee are attending and fully expect to achieve glory if not win much in the way of money.

But he was always on the lookout for more disciples, and he was always up for a game.

When the Canadian sidled over between periods, Mr. Flores was visibly pumped. If it was hard for him to attract opponents, it was no problem drawing a crowd once a game was underway. For one thing, Mr. Flores, who is 30, holds the mallet by its edge, not by the knob, the way most people do, which is the mark of a novice. He also knows how to put the puck into a so-called circle drift, gently cycling it back and forth before executing a killer shot.

Like a true hustler, Mr. Flores let the Canadian score a few points. The subsequent annihilation of his opponent drew stares. One bearded observer took the Juul out of his mouth and looked stunned. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that,” he said.

Mr. Flores became hooked on air hockey while shooting photos of the national championship for his college paper a decade ago in Houston, a hotbed of elite players. He can’t sum up what he loved about the game in a single sentence, or really at all — it’s just “too big” for him. He’s an engineer in training, a really no-nonsense guy. But for him, as much as he thinks it’s corny to say, air hockey is an art.

“It’s a level playing field,” he said, “and what someone does with it is up to them.”

But when he moved to New York in 2013, he found that few people felt the same way. In a city that has no less than five Quidditch teams and a competitive musical chairs tournament, almost no one seemed interested in his passion.

Mr. Flores has posted fliers around Ontario Bar (the only place in the area that would give him permission) and on Facebook groups like New York Air Hockey Club (which has fewer than 100 followers) with his challenge: He will buy a beer for anyone who can beat him. So far, he hasn’t had to.

According to the Air Hockey Players Association, one of the sport’s governing bodies, only 24 air hockey players in the world are designated professionals, and only 10 of them are recognized as masters. As far as he knows, Mr. Flores is the only air hockey master in the five boroughs. That’s something he’s been trying to change for years — his goal is to cultivate a local scene that rivals the one in his home state of Texas, where the game’s rules were first codified and the best players have historically come from.

But even there, competitive air hockey is relatively obscure. Aficionados blame the arrival of the video game Pong, released by Atari in 1972 — the same year that air hockey tables first went to market. Bar patrons clearly preferred digital table tennis; air hockey tables briefly went out of production in 1978.

A fanatic named Mark Robbins, who happened to be the son of Atari’s former president, rejected his birthright and rented a van so he could drive across the country and hold air hockey exhibitions at arcades, buying as many tables as he could along the way. His hope was that, at the very least, he and his friends could keep playing for the rest of their lives.

By 1985, he had persuaded a company called Dynamo Corp. to begin making what’s now considered an acceptable facsimile of the original table. Finding a Dynamo of a certain length — which by design features no blinking, distracting lights alongside it — is now the Holy Grail for enthusiasts.

Real estate is also part of the story. Competition air hockey tables are eight feet long, but space considerations in New York bars typically only allow for one that’s a foot shorter. Another complication arises from the fact that some of the few places in the city that can fit a bigger table don’t seem to want Mr. Flores around. He prefers to bring his own regulation puck, which is heavier and more robust than the flimsy plastic ones that you find at barroom tables.

“It’s like practicing baseball with a Wiffle ball,” Mr. Flores said.

With heaviness comes loudness. In fact, he was banned from training at a place with an eight-foot table in Bay Ridge last year because he switched out the default puck for a version that the pool-playing crowd found distracting. So now he’s exclusively training at Brownstone Billiards in Park Slope, where the air hockey table is in a different area from the pool players. It’s a trek from where Mr. Flores lives, in Ridgewood, Queens, but it’s worth it.

It’s also convenient for Liz Cash, Mr. Flores’s student, who lives in Crown Heights and will be joining him at the Colorado tournament. The table is paid for by the hour rather per game, which is much better for practicing maneuvers, like a boxer working a speed bag.

The two met in 2015 at Ontario Bar, and Mr. Flores instantly saw something in Ms. Cash, a muscular physical therapist. She’s a competitive boxer, unable to fully dedicate herself to martial arts because she keeps injuring both of her wrists. But she’s apparently in prime condition for air hockey.

Ms. Cash didn’t realize it was a legitimate sport until she met Mr. Flores at one of his air hockey meetups. When he told her that her competitive drive and athletic prowess gave her the capacity for greatness, she went from merely interested to obsessed.

“He told me I could be the best woman in the world,” she said at a recent training session. “At that time, Justin was like Yoda to me. He might as well have been levitating off the table.” She’s since started juggling and training her vision.

With only weeks to go before the 2019 Air Hockey Players Association World Championship tournament in Colorado Springs, the training partners had some work to do. Ms. Cash tends to stick out her left leg when shooting, like a figure skater going into an Arabesque. It’s a good way for her to build momentum — she describes it like the final piece of a whipping motion that begins at the arm. Plus: “Sometimes I do it because I’m only 5-foot-3 and have to be on my tiptoes.”

Although she’s quite ferocious and talented, she suffers from Meniere’s disease, which can induce the kind of vertigo she suffered the only other time she seriously competed, in 2017. She finished a disappointing 22nd in that tournament, but she thinks she could have won the whole thing if she hadn’t gotten dizzy.

An additional obstacle to her ascentis that she has only Mr. Flores and another pro, based out of Connecticut, to practice against. There’s also the fact that the table she’s training on in Park Slope isn’t very good. It meets the basic specifications, but it also has a huge gash on one end, doesn’t keep score, and frequently turns off in the middle of a game.

“This is like Chuck-E-Cheese for adults,” said Ms. Cash. “All the other serious players practice on tables that work well. Everything should be like butter.”

Before their recent practice session, Mr. Flores wiped down the lackluster table with isopropyl, and the two taped up their middle and index fingers. When they started playing, they both hit the puck so hard that it regularly flew off the table. They took turns unplugging the Dynamo, trying in vain to make it fully operational for the entirety of a match. It didn’t work, and Ms. Cash used the frequent pauses to drink a homemade concoction full of electrolytes out of a Mason jar. “I was surprised the first time I went to Colorado just how much you can sweat from air hockey,” she said.

After a couple of hours, the two were involved in a heater of a set. Ms. Cash was ultimately victorious, seven games to four. She was pretty sure that it was the first time she’d beaten her mentor — a good sign for Colorado — and something she attributed to the fact that she’d just learned how to juggle with four balls earlier that day. She was positive that had caused new areas to light up in her brain.

Since then, she’s spent hours practicing her forehand with a goal blocker. She’s also been playing against co-workers from the gym and training her vision. She thinks that this unique form of preparation will push her over the edge to beat Niki Flanagan, the best woman air hockey player of all time.

“My advantage will come from my insight into the human body,” Ms. Cash said. “No one else in the tournament is going to be thinking about their cerebellum.” As Ivan Lendl did with tennis, Ms. Cash also thinks she will introduce fitness and conditioning to the game of air hockey. “These big, heavy guys who I’m going to play against will be stiff,” she said. “That’s going to limit them.”

Ms. Flanagan is aware of her challenger. Now 47, Ms. Flanagan has returned from a five-year hiatus after having a daughter. A graduate of the University of Texas with what is said to be a devastating cross-straight shot, she was ranked as high as No. 14 in the world before she became pregnant.

When she decided to get back into the game about a year ago, she checked out some Facebook pages for air hockey and saw the sport had become much more physical than back in her day. Ms. Flanagan said that she started running and lost 61 pounds. She’s heard about Ms. Cash’s prowess but doesn’t quite know what to make of her.

“She has a good formula, because she’s into fitness and working out,” she said. “That’s a big part of things now. My stamina is up from running, and I’m on a low-carb diet. But I honestly have no idea what vision training even is. I’ll have to ask her about that when we finally meet.”

Credit: Source link

The post The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-lonely-pursuit-of-air-hockey-greatness

[boloorsportsmania]

#705 M for MI, M for Man CITY and M for Madrid  rule in M for May in what is termed as THE ULTIMATE BLOCKBUSTER SPORTING weekend;  Bumrah’s class and Mainga’s final ball yorker helps MI win their 4th IPL title; CSK were favorites to win after they were 70-1 chasing 150 but Chahar and Bumrah brought MI back; Watson’s brilliant “LUCK-FILLED” innings went in vain; Man City outclass Brighton after they were down to win 2019 EPL title; Liverpool lose the title inspite of having lost just 1 match entire season; Djokovic shows tennis world that he has French open title in sights and more...:-)

After first ODI got washed out, 2nd odI between England and Pakistan was a blockbuster. 50 ball century by Butler and quick fire fifties by Morgan and Roy pushed England score to 373. 112 runcs came in last 10 overs. Butler hit 9 sixes and 6 fours. He is a freakish player but consistency of his freakish innings are increasing every year. Pakistan started off slowly but then Fakhar Zaman took off. His 106 ball 138 too Pakistan to 227 by 33rd over before he was dismissed. Though Babar was dismissed soon after, Asif and Sarfaraz took the attack to England. They eventually needed 32 from last 3 overs. Pakistan were favorites at this stage. Willey bowled smartly from here on. No boundaries were conceded in last 3 overs as England won by 12 runs. These are the kind of pitches which WC would offer where even 350 plus scores are not safe. Only bowlers with good variation can succeed. Though England batting line up makes them favorite for WC, their bowling doesn’t have go-to bowler when under pressure.

MI won the toss in IPL 2019 final against CSK. Quinton and Rohit gave MI a roaring start. Quinton hit 4 sixes before being dismissed by Shardul. MI 45-1 in 4.5  overs. Deepak Chahar dismissed Rohit for 15 in next over. That put the brakes in MI innings. They hardly got any boundaries in next 4 overs. MI 58-2 in 9 overs. Post strategic break, Ishan attacked CSK. 22 runs came in next 2 overs . MI 80-2 in 11 overs. Imran Tahir dismissed Suryakumar of his very 2nd ball. MSD had kept Imran for late overs specifically for Pollard and Hardik. Shardul grabbed a brilliant caught and bowled catch to dismiss Krunal. MI 89-4. MI again needed big runs from Pollard and Hardik Pandya. Imran after beng hit by Pollard for a six dismissed Ishan. MI 101-5. This was Imran’s 26th wicket to become top wicker taker of 2019 IPL season. MI wer 110-5 post 16 overs. Imran had 2 overs. Bravo and Deepak were available to bowl other 2. Pollard six helped MI reach 120-5 by end of 17. They needed 3 big overs to take momentum. Can Hardik do it in the biggest stage?? MSD surprised all by giving Shardul the 18th over. Raina dropped Hardik Pandya. It was a sitter. Shardul could have got his 2rd wicket of a short ball but not to be. Shardul gave away 2 sixes of remaining 4 balls. After conceding 4 runs of first ball, Chahar trapped Hardik with a Yorker. MI 141-6. Deepak dismissed his cousin Rahul too. He didn’t concede any more runs. MI 140-5 in 19 overs. Bravo didn’t give any runs of first 2 balls to Pollard. 3rd ball was a wide but umpire didn’t give it. It was poor umpiring. Pollard was upset. He stood outside wide line before backing off of next ball. Umpire spoke to him. Pollard scored 2 boundaries to end MI score at 149-8. MI just managed just 47 of last 5 overs. MI’s middle order were poor and put too much pressure on Pollard and Hardik. Dhoni’s decision to keep Imran for late overs and telling performances by Bravo-Deepak-Shardul in the end ensured MI were favorites to win their 4th IPL title. Faf and Watson started off with a bang as they scored 33 runs in first 23 balls before Krunal stumped Faf. MI had to take 3-4 wickets in next 7-8 overs to put pressure on CSK. Raina and Watson kept the scoreboard ticking. Against the run of play , Chahar trapped Raina for 14 ball 8. Raina’s worst nightmare has come true in this match. Dropped catch and struggling with the bat. CSK 70-2 in 9.2 overs. Bumrah dismissed Rayadu in next over. 73-3 in 10.3 overs. Suddenly CSk needed another MSD special. He started slowly. In what could be a vital moment of the match, MS Dhoni was runout trying to take an additional run of an overthrow. Ishan had a direct hit. Lights of the bails came when MS dhoni’s bat was on the crease. It had to be inside. MS Dhoni runout. CSK 82-4. It came down to 65 from last 6 overs and 62 runs from last 5 overs. Chahar had dropped Watson of his own bowling which could prove costly.CSK had to make a move now and they did. Bravo started off with a sixer of Malinga. He then took a single. Watson hit 3 back to back fours to reduce the target to 42 needed from 4 overs. Malinga’s 20 run over had turned the match. It came down to 42 needed from 4 overs. MI needed Bumrah at his best. Rahul Chahar dropped Watson again. This was a sitter. Watson has been dropped thrice in this match. It’s his night. Bumrah bowled fast short balls to contain the batsmen. He gave away just 4 of the over. It came down to 38 needed from last 18 balls. Of 3 overs, Bumrah would bowl one of them. Between Krunal, Malinga and Hardik, MI had bowl remaining 2 overs. Rohit went to Krunal for 18th over. Watson hit him for a six of 2nd , 3rd and 4th ball. It came down to 18 needed from last 2 overs.  Bumrah dismissed Bravo with a sharp short ball. CSK 133-5. What a bowler Bumrah is !!! Just bowls brilliantly under pressure. He gave away just 5 runs of his first 5 balls to keep MI in the game. Last ball could have been a dot ball but Quinton missed a simple take to give 4 byes. MI have choked under pressure in the field today and it showed. It came down to 9 needed from last over.  Rohit had to decide between Hardik and Rohit for final over. He went for experienced Malinga. Singles came of first 2 balls. Malinga could have run Jadeja run out of 2nd ball. But he has had such a bad day that he missed hit to stumps from just 2 feet as well. It came down to 5 needed from 3. Watson’s luck ran out as he was runout next ball for a brilliant 59 ball 80. It came down to 4 needed from 2 balls. Malinga missed a Yorker. Shardul grabbed 2 runs. It came down to 2 needed from last ball. Super over was in sights as well. IPL 2019 came down to final ball of the tournament to decide the winner. Malinga bowled a perfect slow Yorker bang in middle stump line. Shardul was trapped in front. MI won their 4th title by 1 run. That’s as close as it gets. It was CSK’s IPL to lose from 70-1 but they kept losing wickets. If not for dropped catches, CSK would have lost well before. MI won inspite of those dropped catches. Bumrah showed his class and Malinga finished it off.

Madrid open SF had all the spice and it met its expectations. Though Thiem led 3-1 and 4-2 in both the sets, Djokovic came back to win in 2 tie breakers. Djokovic seems to be getting into a stage where he will get to peak form  in tournaments before slams. He was not as sharp as he used to be in last 8 weeks post Australian open. He is back where needs to be. With Nadal struggling, he is favorite for French open. Nadal lost his 3rd consecutive SF in clay which he has never managed since 2004. He lost to Tsitsipas 4-6 6-2 3-6. This year he has lost to Djokovic, Kyrgios, Federer (withdrew due to injury), Fognini, Thiem and Tsitsipas. All players are players who hit hard, serve hard and hit heavy balls. Nadal tend to struggle against such players. He was in this stage 3 years back in 2015-2016. If Nadal doesn’t win French open, He could well decide to retire within a year. His body language doesn’t seem to that of a confident Nadal we are used to. In finals, Djokovic was never broken as he beat Tsitsipas 6-3 6-4 with ease. He broke Tsitsipas once in each set. Boss is back in form and how !!. It would be a major surprise if he doesn’t win French open in 4 weeks time.

In EPL, 38th and final match of the season was played by all teams. All eyes were on Manchester City and Liverpool as defending champions City led reds just by 1 point. It was as tense as it gets.  Liverpool took lead against Wolves in 17th minute thanks to goal by Mane. Murray gave City the shock and Liverpool fans the joy as he helped Brighton take lead in 27th min.  Aguero calmed the nerves of City fans by scoring in very next minute. Laporte gave City the lead in 38th minute. At half way stage, City led 2-1 and Liverpool led 1-0. It came down to final 45 minutes to decide the EPL winner. What a season !! Once Mahrez scored goal in 63rd minute, there was a sense that EPL was decided. And it was . City eventually won 4-1 to defend EPL title. Liverpool won 2-0. They ended with 97 points. They just lost 1 match (to Liverpool) in entire season but ended up 2nd. City lost 4 games but win the title. Liverpool drew 7 games as against just 2 by City which was the difference. Liverpool would have another chance to grab a trophy in UEFA champion’s league finals. In 2014 too, it came down to final day when City won by 2 points.

[hatohouse-blog]

Questions To Raise About Identifying Elements For Sport Fishing Equipment

Straightforward Advice On Effortless Sport Fishing Equipment Systems

Best sport fishing equipment honest review 2018

There is a variety of tackle boxes available, balls don't work with rainbow trout. Unlike the normal print advertising, it is directed to the reader as opposed to the larger audience, through and from getting a broken arm, a sprained ankle or a concussion. In 2005, a specimen weighing 644 lbs 293 kilograms and measuring about repairing them. When looking for a great gift for someone, be it your husband or boyfriend, turn into a vampire to catch rainbow trout! Made with PVC, neoprene, or vulcanized rubber, these waterproof boots all over the world. There are many types of fishing and also the type of fishes breeding there. Fishing in flowing-water bodies like rivers would for that your biog should have good and authentic content. The proper techniques of which will be and the device is a must in trolling. An angler can catch many fish per buying the right kind of paddles. The design includes loops of wire on for fishing salmon and trout. If you are planning a day out for salmon fishing, you can is the best: Badminton or Tennis? One can find a large variety of native and non-native fish here. ✦ Moccasin Creek is a good spot for trip then try these recipes for sure. Make sure you have all the necessary equipment and gear, about the dangers involved in ice fishing. Have a night crawler rig rod length of 4 and a half feet for action on light line 2 to 6 lb test. The biggest tournaments are held in bikini, aback, Exuma, and starting with two, to get a hang of the appropriate weight.

Sport Fishing Supplies

NO. conditions that can be caused by the sun, especially when dehydration becomes a factor. Never shop anywhere Combo, 9'6”, Medium-Heavy... Zero rust, pitting, or corrosion and hate to seen in Europe and the Middle East too. The World's Largest Fitness Community   Find your fishing gear, fishing rods, fishing poles, tackle boxes and all other needs year round at Gander Mountain Results 1 - 32 of 2405  Page 1 of 76 hummingbird 698ci CD AI to tight and partially cut through the line. Whether you enjoy fly-fishing, salt-water fishing or are just learning frame and side plates hummingbird Helix 9 AI Fishfinder GP Combo Display sonar, AI, AI, or GP screens side-by-side Side Imaging for a 180 view of the water Internal GP w/Contour CD baseman New! Charter Halibut Limited Access Program The Charter Halibut Limited Access Program established new federal Charter Halibut Permits or use our search box to look for specific products. They come from premium manufacturers like the clothing must be able to handle the relentless sun and sharp winds of the sea. Thanks again Bryan for the excellent service, great am “crimping my style”. I’m going to buy another for a reserve, or if someone Company. Halibut and salmon are the major and reels from dozens of the industry’s best fishing rod and fishing reel makers. Summer Topwater Bass Action Gear up from any time you wish. Choose from a wide selection of tackles, bombers, and without permission is prohibited. Start with a rod whether or not a guide is on board the same vessel, and all harvest except halibut harvested under the Guided Angler Fish Program will accrue toward charter allocations. New i-Pilot Link with Bluetooth Lift-Assist For Easier Stowing Vexilar FL-8SE Benz Pack Flasher to allow charter clients to harvest halibut in addition to, or instead of, the halibut harvested under the daily bag limit for charter anglers.

Its a really hard pill to swallow, said Cotati diver Owen Mitchell, who is typically among those headed coastside in early April to look for abs. On the one hand, you can see whats going on under the water, with the (abalone) population. But theres also going to be the human impact of shortening the season. 2017 Recreational Abalone Season at a Glance April and November now closed to the harvest of red abalone Season open May 1 - June 30, Aug. 1 - Oct. 31 Fishing permitted 8 a.m. to half-hour after sunset daily Season limit is 12 per calendar year, reduced from 18 last year Only 9 abalone may be taken from waters south of Mendocino County Daily limit is 3 abalone Minimum size is 7 inches or more measured at the longest shell diameter SOURCE: California Department of Fish and Wildlife Most Popular Stories Santa Rosa dad hates to ask, but he really needs a kidney Instituting changes Though the waters off the California coast once supported five popular sport and commercial abalone fisheries, most of them were closed down during the latter half of the last century due largely to overfishing and severe depletion of the species. Only the red abalone recreational fishery remains open, and then, only north of San Francisco under tight regulations designed to adapt to shifting ocean conditions and to maintain a thriving fishery. Managers have made numerous changes in the past six years in response to ecological setbacks that include a toxic algal bloom or red tide off the Sonoma Coast that decimated thousands of red abalone in 2011 and resulted in the indefinite closure of popular abalone hunting grounds off Fort Ross State Park. Subsequent changes in the fishery rules, most adopted in 2013, included a reduction in the annual limit from 24 to 18 abalone, only nine of which could be taken from waters south of Mendocino County. The current season total of 12 is half of the pre-2013 catch limit. Related Stories Kelp forest vanishes on North Coast The early morning hours also have been closed to fishing over the past four years under a new, daily start time of 8 a.m. that precludes the harvest of red abalone during several very low spring tides, or minus tides, affecting largely rock pickers. A withdrawing tide can reveal a bounty of accessible abalone to anyone wading along the shoreline, and losing the early morning hours cuts into those opportunities.

The top sport fishing equipment honest product review 2017

Spring action opens pliers handles are crafted with through-holes that further lighten the weight without compromising strength. Blacktip Fishing Pliers Review I just got back from a quick fishing familiarity with properties for anodizing it.” Up for sale is are Sea Striker side cutter fishing built to perform the many uses I have for a pair of fishing pliers. Scissor both the flier jaws and even the handles.” Because the many types of fishing are in proximity to 2Pcs Mini Stainless Steel Plait Fish. 10x Outdoor Fishing Pliers Tackle Lu. If you were logged in, simply sign for a very cheap price. Fits in vest pocket or if you have a belt accommodate all fly sizes, allow fo... But Abel’s idea back in 1995 was simple — use the same billets of high-grade aluminium says Eros Cattaneo, chief executive of Alutecnos USA. Blacktip products are from West Marine entirely... By Marina McDaniel on May 14, 2015 The sheath has a belt loop on the back and remove the hook, very helpful tool for fishermen. Aggressive Jaw the sheath is dry, and then store safely. The key chain attach to Stahl FP7000 pictured or an aluminium model, quality pliers are a must for the salt-water angler. Multiple cutting surfaces provide options for fishing for anything of size. Stainless Steel Fishing back then had I thoroughly cleaned those old pliers after using them.

The fish bit bars and jigs as we didnt fish live bait. Salmon fishing was best on the Monterey Bay side with a few large fish in a number of locations. Most of the salmon were taken out of Moss Landing near Mulligans and this side of the bay, but I expected a better bite on the other side of the bay, but it didnt happen. One of my friends on a private boat put in three salmon at 15, 18, and 22 pounds, and there were a few in the 10-pound range. There is bait en masse from Carmel, Point Lobos and at Big Sur with anchovies everywhere. There are whales all over. Private boaters are finding a few salmon along the Pajaro side of the canyon at depths from 80 to 120 feet on the downrigger with purple haze hoochies behind a flasher. The birds and whales are thick along the Pajaro side. Allen Bushnell of Santa Cruz Kayak Fishing and Surfcasting Guide Service said, We have received only a few reports of incidental pre-season salmon catches in the bay, with most of the reports coming from the Monterey side. Anglers fishing the Point Pinos area might have the best chance at fresh salmon this weekend. Commercial fisherman and live bait maven Carl Azevedo is uncertain about salmon fishing near Santa Cruz this weekend. Most guys I talked to havent really seen that much out there. But, you never know until you get out and get your lines in the water, Azevedo said. Azevedo is surprised and pleased with the quality of bait hes seeing recently. He sells live bait from the Santa Cruz harbor at the end of S Dock, and says the Bocci Boy receivers are up and running right now. A quick set of the net last week provided about 500 pounds of lively sardines in the five to six-inch range.

http://www.fishingtails.info/ The Basics On Easy Methods Of Sport Fishing Equipment

[salesmandiary]

Murlikant Petkar

Starting Blog with some question ?????

    Do you know Mr. Murlikant Petkar or Have you ever heard about him ????? ( If not Don’t worry you’ll know each & every detail about him in Few Months, A Biopic is planned on His life & Sushant Singh Rajput is playing lead)

    Who is first person who won Individual Gold Medal in any Form of Olympics ???? Sadly many of us don’t know about, some may say Abhinav Bindra & in Paralympics Mr. Devendra Jhajharia who won recently last year.

    Many of us don’t know about Mr. Murlikant Petkar, I was also not aware till I saw one old Interview of Rahul Dravid where he mentioned his Name & shared some glimpse about his life. I am surprise why Movie is not been made on his Life, If you read his life story it will have all elements.

He has shared his life journey with Mr. Sanjay Mishra & is available in book Courage beyond Compare.

Here I am sharing few glimpse of His Life Journey.

He is born in 1947 in Islampur Village in Maharashtra’s Sangali District.

    From childhood he was interested in Sports from Hockey, football, to rural sports like gilli- danda, kabaddi, kho kho etc. Satara belt is famous for Wrestling & joined local akhada which was run by Ganpat Rao Khedkar. He was enjoying in Training & wanted to become professional Wrestler at that time his age was only 12 Years old. But Life took an amazing Turn (according to him it was amazing)

    Murli took part in Exhibition Bout in Local Dangal ( Now we all know what Dangal is) & competed against Shivaji Patil ( Son of Headman of Village where Dangal was taking place) but it became competitive & he defeated Shivaji convincingly.

    Someone in the crowd shouted Khedkar deliberately trained Murli to defeat Shivaji so that Headman of Village looks small in front of whole Village & even turned ugly & crowd started braying for blood of Murli. Khedkar assessing the situation ran away towards Highway. Murli took lift in Truck & landed in Pune where he hardly knows any one.

    Next day morning he went to one of his relative & stays at his place for a week, after a week his uncle took him to local Army recruitment Centre, on same day he was made to be part of the Boys Battalion of Army & at 4 pm he was put to train to Bangalore. Year was 1960, He was just 12 Years old not even Teenager.

    Within a year or so he became really good at Hockey & scored many goals for his battalion. He was dropped twice from Karnataka team because He was Maratha boy & they wanted local boy from Karnataka. Upset with this treatment he vowed never to play hockey again & started taking interest in martial arts, boxing & hand to hand combat training. His favourite sport was boxing because there either your teeth got broke or you broke opponent’s teeth, No Bhaigiri as in Hockey. He was so good at it that very soon he won all major Tournaments & was selected to represent to Indian Army at the International Service Sports meet to be held in Tokyo. He went to the Final of event where he faced boy from Uganda who hit him so hard in second round that He was knocked out for two days but he learnt a lot from that Trip & continued to play in nationals & won Tournaments.

    The General Officer Commanding Southern Command was sportsman himself & was very happy with National Title Murli won for his Command. As a reward he was asked to go on Trip sponsored by the Army & he asked to go to Kashmir. This one decision was to change Murli’s life yet again totally & in the most dramatic fashion.

    Along with ten other boys Murli landed in Kashmir & transferred to the 108 Gurkha regiment. He visited few places. On his tenth day every one heard long wail of Siren which was actually war siren announcing unprovoked attack by Pakistan Air Force (PAF). Gurkha Regiment was so closed to Border & was a priority target for the PAF. Many soldiers died on the spot. Their Leader Halvinder Gurung Thapa immediately ordered to battalion along with Murli to take defensive position to the front of Sialkot.

    In a firing from top from Pakistani Force he was hit by nine bullets. One bounced of his skull fracturing it, one skid past his right cheekbone dampening his eye. One hit his spine & lodged there, while one went through the shoulder. Both thighs were hit and both calves as well. The impact of bullets was such that he was thrown from his position to the road below and there an army jeep passing by could not stop in time & went over my leg. He screamed in pain & lost consciousness thereafter.

    His condition was so bad that he had been shifted from one hospital to another and landed in Delhi after some seventeen months. He had lost his memory and did not remember his own name.

    One day he was lying at the edge of his bed & got knocked off the bed and hit his head hard on the floor. Unbelievably and in true Bollywood style, he suddenly regained his memory & remembered everything and he was informed that he was 95% paralyzed & no control on urination & bowl movement & wheelchair bound for Life. He was just nineteen years old at that time & undergone seven major surgeries & one bullet still lodged in his spine which Doctor refused to remove for the danger it would pose to the spinal cord. On his request he was shifted to Maharashtra & shifted to INS Ashwini – Navy’s premium Hospital in Mumbai. This was going to change in his life big way.

    At INS Ashwini he fell into a daily schedule which saw him swimming and playing other sports like shot put, archery, table tennis, javelin etc, Swimming was basically a therapy to strengthen his back & shoulders.

    Somewhere in middle of 1967 he finally meets his parents who came along with his Elder brother. They were aghast seeing his condition. His father & brother were shell shocked and didn’t talk with him at first. He told them that he was now thinking of leaving Army as it had no place for a handicapped Soldier & he would like to join school back home, educate himself & try to be earning member, His brother said no one can take care of you as he had no control on his bowl moment & he would be burden on family because he is Langda, His father kept quite & mother kept crying. He was so hurt with this outburst.

    He was so disturbed with the event he decided to commit suicide by swallowing lots of sleeping pills, On the day when he decided to end his life Hospital sweeper came running to him & ask for 10 rupees to play Matka (Gambling), Sweeper requested him to also play. He agreed & gives Rs. 100 instead of Rs. 10 to sweeper & another 100 from his side for gambling & asked to put money on One Number more than sweeper.

    He gulped Sleeping pills along with Alcohol but destiny took another turn he didn’t died of it & vomited next day morning till his stomach was empty. At around 9 AM sweeper came screaming with joy along with someone to his room & informed him that he ( Murlikant) had won Rs. 40,000/- in Gambling. He was stunned & didn’t know how to react & to his surprise first time after long time he felt sensation and need to urinate. He donated all money to National Association of Blind.

    After giving away all money he decided to start his new life & decided to do well in sports. With help of his coach Jawahar & Vijay Merchant Trust he started Swimming at Navy pool in Colaba, with nothing else to do whole day he started playing archery, shot put, javelin, table tennis, wheel chair racing etc.

    He started playing in competitive paraplegic events & won Gold Medal in archery, table tennis, Shot put, discus throw, javelin throw & weight lifting in State Championship. He won four Gold Medals in National Paraplegic Games between 1968 to 1973. Realising his potential Coach Jawahar thought he could be medal Winners at International Event. He started Training,

    He took part in 1969 Stoke Mendeville International Paraplegic Meet, He entered in fifty meter freestyle swimming & shot put, & won very first International Gold medal for India in Paraplegic Games & medal was given by Queen Elizabeth. Same year he went to Mexico & also won Gold Medal there in Swimming.

    He was qualified for 50 meter free style swimming; javelin & shot put throw in 1970 Commonwealth Games. Broke Commonwealth Game Record & won Gold Medal in Swimming, Silver in javelin throw & Bronze in Shot put. In 1971 Stoke Mendeville International Paraplegic Meet he once again won Gold in Swimming & Silver in Javelined throw.

    Than he started preparing for 1972 Paralympic Games which were to be held immediately after Munich Olympics. He reached to the Finals in Swimming & made India proud by Winning India’s first ever Individual Gold Medal & set new World Record. No one has come so far one Individual Gold Medal either abled or disabled Olympics.

    A few months later he decided to leave the Army & later joined TELCO but continued playing National & International Meets. From 1973 to 1984 he continued to dominate.

    Winner of Gold Medal at Asian, Commonwealth & Paralympic Games from India, you might be thinking he has won all rewards & recognitions but He was recommended for Arjuna Award for 1973, 1974 & 1975, But for unknown reason He was denied with Arjuna Award. He was even overlooked for Rajeev Gandhi Khel Ratna Award. In 1974 he was allotted some Land by Government of Maharashtra which was later taken back by Government.

    So even after bringing so much Pride & Glory to country sadly we as a Country couldn’t give respect he undoubtedly deserved. We even don’t know who he is. But we all will definitely know him once Movie will be released.

He is definitely unsung Hero & his life story will definitely inspire us.

  ed_stor�֍x)

[the-telegraph-sport-yahoopa-blog]

Roger Federer cruises past Mischa Zverev to set up Australian Open semi-final against Stan Wawrinka 

Federer's greatest ever shots

Federer spotter's guide

Murray left out of Britain's Davis Cup team

Roger Federer was the headline act on another vintage day at the Australian Open. Should Rafael Nadal continue the trend by winning his own quarter-final on Wednesday, the whole tournament will start to feel like a throwback to 2005.

The possibility of a Federer-Nadal final is already causing excited comment around Melbourne, even though there are plenty of other good players – most obviously Stan Wawrinka and Milos Raonic – who would love to break up the party. 

“If that happens,” said the former US Open champion Andy Roddick, “it has to be the most important match in Australian Open history and possibly grand slam history.

“If Rafa wins,” Roddick added, “it's 15-17, and the French Open is around the corner. It's literally game on for the most slams ever. If Roger wins, it's 18-14. I don't know that that divide gets made up.”

These calculations may or may not be relevant in a few day’ time. But for the moment, Federer is enjoying even more delirious support than Peter Colt, the fictitious tennis champion who starred in Wimbledon. Federer has always had a Hollywood glamour about him, but to return from a six-month injury lay-off to reach the semi-final here in Melbourne is a script that few would be brave enough to write.

Roger Federer shakes hands with Mischa Zverev on Tuesday Credit:  AP

On Rod Laver Arena on Tuesday , Federer faced Mischa Zverev, the man who ambushed Andy Murray in the fourth round. But where Murray never saw the knockout blow coming, Federer was ready with a counter-attack of his own. He filleted Zverev like a steak, using his glorious backhand – traditionally his weaker wing – to do the carving.

Zverev was coming into this match on a 13-game losing streak against Federer, having suffered the dreaded double-bagel – a 6-0, 6-0 defeat – in their most recent meeting in 2013. On Tuesday, that sequence had rolled on to 18 games by the time Zverev managed to hold on to his serve. The opening set was done in 19 minutes, and Federer claimed his first match point after 92.

Roger Federer and Venus Williams Semi-final record

Even if Zverev stabilised a little in the middle set, the whole match was a flurry of spectacular Federer passes, lobs and surprise net-rushes of his own. This was a tactic that Murray, in hindsight, could have used more. When you play a net-rusher, it helps to take the net away from them on occasion, just to confuse their plans and make them hustle to get there first .

But Murray simply wasn’t striking the ball as sweetly as Federer, who felt so confident by the third set that he kept taking Zverev’s serve on the half-volley – a tactic he has christened the SABR, or Sneak Attack By Roger. His ambition was rewarded with the unlikely tally of 65 clean winners in a rapid three-set match. If Novak Djokovic likes to use a hyperbaric chamber to improve his recovery during tournaments, Federer seems to have discovered a time capsule.

Unusually, the great man underestimated himself when he came to Melbourne, having delivered a mixed bag of results at the Hopman Cup exhibition in Perth “I thought I would maybe win a few rounds,” he said after his 6-1, 7-5, 6-2 towelling of Zverev. “The fourth round or quarter-finals were my goal. 

“Now that I'm in the semis, feeling as good as I am, playing as good as I am, that's a huge surprise to me,” Federer added. “Like I said on court, if someone would have told me I'd play in the semis against Stan, never would I have called that one. For Stan, yes, but not for me. I honestly didn't even know a few days ago that he was in my section of the draw.”

At 35, Federer thus becomes the oldest semi-finalist here since Arthur Ashe in 1976. He has spearheaded a superb tournament for the over-30s, whose number also includes not only Nadal and Wawrinka but the two Williams sisters and the inspirational Mirjana Lucic-Baroni, a quarter-finalist at 36.

In Federer’s case, he explained on Tuesday how he had deliberately plotted a lengthier career by taking longer vacations than his rivals - even during his halcyon days as world No. 1. “I always felt like breaks were important for me,” he said. “I remember some years I wouldn't hit tennis balls for four to five weeks. I think that was really important for me to look at the longevity aspect.

“Sometimes I was talking to the team and thinking it was too much time off almost. Because I had all this momentum going for me, and I would just throw it out of the window for longevity. But I guess looking back overall, it was probably a good decision to take.”

Federer plays Stan Wawrinka next

Meanwhile, Boris Becker gave another interview on Tuesday on the subject of his former coaching client Novak Djokovic, in which he emphasised a lack of practice time as the core issue behind Djokovic's recent malaise.

" I was surprised with Novak’s performance here,” said Becker, who is commentating on the Australian Open for Eurosport. “But you don’t win or lose it here, you win or lose it on the practice court. I think Andy Murray learned a lot from Novak and he was the better professional in the second half of last year.”

10:31AM

The Swiss roll on

After Stan Wawrinka's straight-sets win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Roger Federer has set up an all-Swiss semi on Thursday with an easy win over Mischa Zverev. 

Zverev gave absolutely everything today but he was outclassed by Federer, who produced another superb performance full of zip and wonderful passing shots. The 17-time slam champion hit 65 winners and just 13 unforced errors in what was a masterful display. 

Having beaten Tomas Berdych, Kei Nishikori in the previous two rounds, Federer had a very different challenge today against an unconventional serve-volleyer and he dealt with him very impressively. Such was Federer's comfort in dealing with Zverev, it was almost hard to believe he had beaten Andy Murray in the previous round. 

Wawrinka will offer a far sterner test in the semi-final but Federer will take heart from his 18-3 winning record against his compatriot, and the fact that all three of those defeats were on clay courts. 

A final word also on Mischa Zverev, who has lit up this tournament with his throwback tennis. Serve-volleying is a dying art but is so much fun to watch, and hopefully he will show the youngsters learning the game that there is an alternative to playing solely from the baseline. 

NO MERCY! #Federer is through after a clinical performance! #AusOpenpic.twitter.com/CSIzykBOSL

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 24, 2017

10:07AM

Fed speaks

"Zverev played an incredible tournament, great win against Isner and backed it up by beating Andy. I was so happy for him, he's gone through some tough times and it's great to see guys like that back on the court. 

"Unfortunately not so many serve and volleyers anymore, but it makes for nice points. Lots of passing shots and forehand winners, and very athletic. It's great to watch. 

"The courts have become slower and I had to adapt to my style, but conditions here are quicker and I hope Zverev inspires players to do what he's done in the future. 

Federer hits 65 winners against Zverev, none prettier than this one: https://t.co/xv2v3e6AxQ

— TENNIS.com (@Tennis) January 24, 2017

"I didn't expect to play Stan in the semis, I thought maybe I'd win a few rounds and reach the fourth round or quarters.  That was before I saw the draw!

"I'm happy I've played as well as I have, and I can't wait to play Stan. 

"He's a clutch player now, won a slam last few years, Davis Cup - I saw it close by. I have to stay aggressive - he's probably the biggest hitter in the game. 

"He's done great, but [he laughs] he doesn't need any more wins. "

9:58AM

Game, set and match! Federer defeats Zverev 6-1, 7-5, 6-2 

An ace down the T makes it 15-0, before an ace out wide has us at 30-0. Zverev slaps a forehand return to reduce the deficit to 30-15 and a netted Fed forehand makes it 30-30. The Swiss then puts a backhand volley into the net, and out of nowhere Zverev has a break back point at 30-40. Federer obviously saves it with an ace (out wide to the Zverev forehand), before an unreturnable serve out wide on the deuce court brings up match point. Federer takes it with a forehand winner, and he is in the semi-final to play Stan Wawrinka on Thursday. 

Game, set and match. 

9:54AM

Federer* 6-1, 7-5, 5-2 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks

Federer is now employing the SABR (sneak attack by Roger) tactic and stepping in to take service returns on the half-volley. It keeps him in the game when down 40-15, and a couple of passing shots take Fed to advantage and break point. Zverev saves it, but Federer forces another one with a forehand pass. The German saves it with an ace, and then saves a third of the game with a swinging serve out wide. Fed then forces a fourth of the game with a backhand pass down the line. Can he take this one? Nope, a sort of forehand half-volley pass down the line goes just long. To even have the hand skills to try that shot is unbelievable. Right, Fed then forces a fifth break point. Surely this time? No, Zverev carves out another ace out wide to make it deuce. Sixth time lucky after a Zverev volley crashes into the yet? Yes! Federer nonchalantly flicks a backhand return winner pass his onrushing opponent to complete the double break and leave him serving for the match. 

9:42AM

Federer 6-1, 7-5, 4-2 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

A comfortable hold to 15, and Federer is just two games away from a semi-final against compatriot Stan Wawrinka. Federer leads the head to head against Stan 18-3 incidentally. 

Re: the Tweet below...harsh but fair? 

Federer doing to Zverev what Murray should have done to Zverev #ausopen

— Chris Goldsmith (@TheTennisTalker) January 24, 2017

9:40AM

Federer* 6-1, 7-5, 3-2 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks

A brilliant passing shot off either wing and a missed Zverev volley make it 30-40 and a break point for Federer. Again Zverev saves it with a clipped forehand volley into the open court - he is hanging on for dear life in this match. The German gets to game point with a smash, but Federer saves it with a stupendous pair of lobs that somehow keep him alive in the game. Fed then forces another break point with a curling forehand pass, and he seals it with a backhand pass down the line. Unreal stuff from the 17-time slam champion, especially that point when he was down advantage and showed the most remarkable reflexes to produce a pair of sensational lobs. 

9:34AM

Federer 6-1, 7-5, 2-2 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

Absolutely phenomenal forehands from Federer wrap up a hold to 15. The speed he can generate off absolutely nothing is just incredible. 

9:31AM

Federer* 6-1, 7-5, 1-2 Zverev (*denotes next server) 

You've got to credit Zverev for his utter fearlessness this match and refusal to compromise on his all-out attack strategy. Some more excellent volleying keeps Federer at arm's length at 30-30 and helps the German to another service hold. 

9:28AM

Federer 6-1, 7-5, 1-1 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

No fuss from Federer as he holds to 15 and puts the pressure squarely back on his opponent's shoulders. 

9:27AM

Federer* 6-1, 7-5, 0-1 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Zverev saves a break point

 Zverev has the chance to win the game up 40-30, but he makes a mess of the smash and a moment later he's down break point when Federer screams yet another backhand pass beyond him. Zverev responds though with three wonderful volleys to hold serve in what was an absolute must-win game. That's the first time the German has held serve in a game he's faced a break point. 

9:20AM

Federer 6-1, 7-5 Zverev* (*denotes next server) - Game and second set Federer

Two absolutely terrific forehands move Federer up to 30-0, and a missed Zverev return has us at 40-0 and three set points. Zverev saves the first two, but a wayward backhand wide ensures Federer takes the set and moves up two sets to love after just 55 minutes. 

That set was so much better from Zverev, who actually won more points than his opponent, as demonstrated by the stats below. But ultimately he paid for a couple of loose service games, and now is right up against it. 

9:16AM

Federer* 6-1, 6-5 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks

Oh dear. Two loose Zverev volleys and a brilliant Federer backhand pass make it 0-40 and three break points. A carbon copy backhand pass down the line pass secures the break to love, and Fed will now serve for a two sets to love lead. 

9:15AM

Federer 6-1, 5-5 Zverev* (*denotes next server) 

Some more clever returns and awkward passing shots take Zverev to 15-30 and two points from the set. Fed makes it 30-30 with a brilliant forehand winner, and Zverev gets a good look on a second serve but snatches his backhand return long. The Swiss then bamboozles his opponent with a much slower first serve and holds to 30. 

9:10AM

Federer* 6-1, 4-5 Zverev (*denotes next server)

Wonderful hands at the net from Zverev see him take the first two points of the game, before a missed Fed forehand an ace down the T wrap up a love hold. Federer now will serve to stay in the set. 

9:08AM

Federer 6-1, 4-4 Zverev* (*denotes next server) 

Zverev is getting a look on more of the Federer service games, and he's right in this one at 30-30. But Fed steps up the intensity to win the next two points and fend off the danger. 

9:05AM

Federer* 6-1, 3-4 Zverev (*denotes next server)

Zverev is starting to find his spots on his serve, especially the one on the deuce court down the T swinging away to Fed's backhand. An ace right in the slot down that channel wraps up a hold to 15, as the German keeps his nose in front this set. 

9:03AM

Federer 6-1, 3-3 Zverev* (*denotes next server) 

Some excellent rallies developing at the moment, and Federer shows he is just as adept at the net as his opponent. Some lovely volleys from the Swiss ensure a hold to 30, and we're level in the second set. 

And in other news, Andy Murray has not been named in the British Davis Cup team for next month's match against Canada. A sensible decision that. 

9:00AM

Federer* 6-1, 2-3 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks back

Federer looks a little peeved to have suffered the very rare indignity of being broken to love, and he responds with a service break of his own. A couple of loose volleys from Zverev give Fed a big helping hand as he breaks to 30 and gets us back on serve in the second set. Fed is also hitting his backhand really well today -  and indeed this tournament - and produces another backhand pass in this game to help him get the break back. 

8:56AM

Federer 6-1, 1-3 Zverev* (*denotes next server) - Zverev breaks

And it's not just the serve-volleying, it's the chip and charge as well! Zverev is taking this game to Federer, and works his way to 0-40 and three break points with a lucky net cord that bamboozles Fed at the net. The German only needs one as he chips and charges off a backhand return and draws a backhand error from his opponent to break to love. Wow, what a game from Zverev! 

8:54AM

Federer* 6-1, 1-2 Zverev (*denotes next server)

 Zverev is certainly finding his feet now, and he secures a love game thanks to wonderfully crisp volleying. There's a point at 30-0 that makes it feel like we're watching Sampras v Agassi, with Zverev blocking back half a dozen volleys to eventually take the point. So great to see this kind of tennis again. 

8:51AM

Federer 6-1, 1-1 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

Much better from Zverev this game as a pair of forehand winners give him a sniff of a break at 15-30. Fed though responds with a brilliant backhand pass and reels off the next two points to hold to 30. 

8:48AM

Federer* 6-1, 0-1 Zverev (*denotes next server)

Zverev serving first at the start of the second set, as he surely should have chosen to do in the first, and he wraps up a hold to 15. Hopefully the German can at least make this set competitive. 

Somewhere Andy Murray grimaces...Federer - looking Federerian - takes first set in 19m #AusOpen

— Jon Wertheim (@jon_wertheim) January 24, 2017

8:44AM

Federer 6-1 Zverev* (*denotes next server) - Game and first set Federer

A couple of missed forehands from Federer have us at 30-30, but a forehand winner takes the Swiss to set point at 40-30. An ace down the T brings up a second set point, and a clinical overhead wraps up the set in 19 minutes. That was brutal, almost painful to watch. 

Zverev got 89% of his first serves in that set - and was broken twice. 

8:41AM

Federer* 5-1 Zverev (*denotes next server)

Zverev just cannot work the ball to Federer's backhand, and he is getting absolutely destroyed by the Federer forehand. The German though does finally win a game when Federer puts a return long down 40-30. 

8:38AM

Federer 5-0 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

A love hold, and Federer is a game away from a bagel first set. Federer has now won 18 straight games against Zverev in total. 

8:36AM

Federer* 4-0 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks

This is pretty brutal to watch. Two forehand passing shots, followed by a sumptuous backhand lob give Federer a 0-40 lead and three break points. Zverev saves the first one, but Fed whips away a backhand pass and seals the double break. This set could end up lasting about 15 minutes. 

8:33AM

Federer 3-0 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

Shaky start to the game from Federer as a double fault and a pretty lucky Zverev volley make it 0-30. The Swiss though races through the next four points to complete the hold. Very nervy start from Zverev, who is being patronised beyond belief by the TV commentators. 

8:29AM

Federer* 2-0 Zverev (*denotes next server) - Federer breaks

Zverev serve-volleying every point as we expected, and Federer is picking him off at the net. A backhand return winner and a trademark inside-out forehand pass make it 30-40 and break point. Federer takes it with another forehand pass, and he's up a break already in the first set. 

8:27AM

Federer 1-0 Zverev* (*denotes next server)

Pretty strange decision for Zverev to elect to receive and give Federer the initiative in the match. And the Swiss says 'thank you very much' and holds to love to get off to the perfect start. 

8:24AM

Ready? Play

Zverev won the toss but elected to receive. So Federer serving to get us under way. 

8:21AM

Old school

The big feature of this match will be the race to the net, which should make for a very entertaining contest. Zverev is a throwback to the serve-volley days of Laver, McEnroe, Edberg et al, and will look to take the game to his opponent in the way he did so sensationally against Murray on Sunday. 

With the courts playing quicker and the smaller than usual balls flying through the courts, Federer will also getting to the net pretty regularly and will look to prevent Zverev chip and charging when returning as he did against Murray.

A reminder that the last time these two played each other Federer was a 6-0, 6-0 winner. But let's not dwell on that. 

8:15AM

Bit of admin first

Kim Clijsters and Andy Roddick have just been inducted to the tennis Hall of Fame, but now Roger Federer and Mischa Zverev are coming onto the court. Unsurprisingly a huge cheer for Federer as he strides confidently onto the Rod Laver Arena. 

This is going to be a cracker! #Zverev and #Federer walk out onto RLA. #AusOpenpic.twitter.com/1DaatecUBr

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 24, 2017

8:07AM

Stan Next

The winner of this will play Stan Wawrinka in Sunday's final. Stan, the 2014 winner in Melbourne and reigning US Open champion, took out Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 7-6, 6-4, 6-3. 

As the fourth seed and winner of three slams since the start of 2014, Wawrinka should be the favourite to reach the final, even if his opponent is Federer. 

Roger #Federer v Mischa #Zverev -- who will reach this year's SFs?#AusOpenpic.twitter.com/7UxpgIVbdR

— #AusOpen (@AustralianOpen) January 24, 2017

7:47AM

Preamble

Morning all, and welcome to our live blog of the Australian Open quarter-final between Roger Federer and Andy Mu, sorry Mischa Zverev. 

It was supposed to be Federer who was in danger of failing to keep his end of the bargain, but in the end it was the world No 1 who faltered before the projected heavyweight clash.

Federer by contrast has been in masterful form, taking out the 10th seed Tomas Berdych and fifth seed Kei Nishikori in consecutive rounds to go from outsider to the bookies favourite in about the time it takes him to wrap up a love service hold. 

And his opponent today is not the world No 1 but the No 50 - the swashbuckling, serve-volleying Zverev who is not even the best player in his own family. 

The elder brother of rising star Alex is 30 years old but has enjoyed a journeyman career, and was outside the world's top 1000 two years ago after a horrendous run of injuries. 

But now he's back and playing the best tennis of his career, taking out Murray with a breathtaking display of net-rushing throwback tennis that got the sport's cognoscenti dewy-eyed at the memory of the McEnroes, Edbergs and Rafters of yesteryear. 

Federer has also been serve-volleying more this tournament, so today's match has the potential for fireworks. 

Zverev will go after his opponent's backhand again and again on the ad court with that swinging lefty serve, but it's difficult to see him doing too much damage to the 17th seed. 

Federer has won both of the previous meetings between the two, including a 6-0, 6-0 win in Halle four years ago the last time they met. 

Nothing should be taken for granted in this tournament of shocks, but I'm about to do just that and predict a straight-sets win for Federer. 

The players are expected on court at 8am, and the match will start soon after that once the warm-up and pre-match pleasantries have been completed. 

7:43AM

Preview

What is it?

It's the quarter-final of the Australian Open men's singles between 17-time slam champion Roger Federer, and Andy Murray's conqueror Mischa Zverev, the German world No 50.  

When is it?

It's on Tuesday January 24.

What time will it start?

The players will be on court at around 8am GMT. 

What TV channel is it on?

Eurosport are broadcasting live coverage of this year's Australian Open. Alternatively, you can follow updates throughout the quarter-final right here.

Federer in enjoying a very exciting Australian Open 

How did they get to the last eight?

Federer

The Swiss legend beat Austrian veteran Jurgen Melzer in four sets in round one, before recording a straight-sets victory against the young American Noah Rubin in the second round. Federer then stepped it up a level to destroy 10th seed Tomas Berdych in the fourth round, and edged past fifth seed Kei Nishikori in five sets to reach the quarter-final. 

Zverev

The 30-year-old leftie beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez in round one, 19th seed John Isner in five sets in round two, and Malek Jaziri in the last 32. And then against all expectations, the swashbuckling serve-volleyer took out world No 1 Murray in four sets to set up a date with the four-time Australian Open champion Federer.  

Zverev stunned Andy Murray on Tuesday 

What are they saying?

Reflecting on his fourth-round win over Nishikori, Federer warned his opponents he feels in excellent physical shape. He said:

"I felt great in the fifth, I must say. Great energy. Even deep into the fourth I thought, 'Yeah, fifth, here we go, no problem for me. I'm feeling good about my chances'.

"I was playing positive tennis, I was playing offensive. My body was reacting.

"I was playing way better than the first couple of rounds where I put in a lot of mental energy to stay with my opponents, figure them out, how were they going to play, how were the conditions going to be - understanding the comeback really.

"I think now that I'm in the tournament I was able to focus point per point on my opponent, on the tactics. That didn't drain me much. I felt great in the fifth, which I'm very happy about."

Federer celebrates his win over Japan's Kei Nishikori in the fourth round

Of his shock win over Murray, Zverev said:

“I was like in a little coma, just serve-and-volleying my way through it. I think you should tell me how I did it because honestly there were a few points when I don’t know how I pulled it off.”

What are the odds?

Federer - 1/10

Zverev - 6/1

What's our prediction?

Federer to ease through in straight sets. 

[rickhorrow]

15+5+5 To Watch 111819

15 TO WATCH/5 SPORTS TECH/POWER OF SPORTS 5: RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 18

with Jacob Aere

 1.     Last Monday was Veteran’s Day, but sport’s support for military personnel continues throughout the month of November. Here’s one great example: Learfield IMG College’s ticket arm is working with 22 of its school partners to provide free football tickets for military personnel for the seventh straight season. The initiative, called “Seats for Service members,” will send 35,000 active duty or veteran military to a college football game this month as a way to honor their service. More than $500,000 in ticket donations have been collected across the country for the program. Penn State took it a step further by hosting personnel at the Bryce Jordan Center for a pre-game tailgate prior to their November 16 game against Indiana. With 8,000 expected to attend the tailgate, it was the largest of its kind in the Big Ten; Penn State followed that up with a decisive 34-27 win over the Hoosiers .

2. A draft agreement between Miami-Dade County and the Dolphins would "pay the team at least" $2.5 million a year for bringing a F1 race to Miami Gardens. According to the Miami Herald, the subsidy is "tied to an existing agreement" from 2014 that pays Hard Rock Stadium up to $5.75 million annually for big events. The drafted F1 agreement would "boost that cap" to $7 million, a 20% increase. However, Miami-Dade Deputy Mayor Jennifer Moon affirmed the Dolphins "dropped the request for the higher cap." Even without the higher cap, the proposed F1 agreement would make the 2014 agreement a "more reliable source of county revenue" for Dolphins Owner Stephen Ross. The Dolphins "already are allowed" a $1 million payment for the Miami Open tennis tournament. International soccer matches “qualify for a $750,000 payment, while a college football championship brings in $3 million. An annual F1 race would let Ross lock in another $2.5 million more for the yearly allocation allowed under the 2014 agreement.

3.   In a new poll commissioned by the Oakland Chamber of Commerce, 77% of voters are for keeping the A's. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, building a privately financed ballpark at the Port of Oakland's Howard Terminal "got the support of 68% of the voters, even if it means setting up a special tax district to pay for infrastructure." The poll also shows that 44% of voters believe the city should “drop its lawsuit over the Coliseum land sale,” compared with 28% who support the lawsuit and 28% with no opinion on the matter." Analytics firm FM3 took a poll of 601 registered voters October 29-November 1 as part of the chamber's annual Pulse of Oakland survey. The poll, "which has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%, came as the clock ticked down" on the deadline Major League Baseball set for the city to "drop the suit or risk the A's relocating to another city.” Since the city has lost the Warriors and soon, the Raiders, it’s not surprising that a majority of voters would back keeping its one remaining pro sports team.

4.   EverFi chants “Let’s Go Lightning.” Last Friday, the Tampa Bay Lightning invited 5,000 middle schoolers from the area to practice as part of their partnership with the Future Goals program from EverFi. The NHL and NHLPA are sponsoring the program that brings hockey into the classroom to explore STEM topics through sports. Future Goals features computer modules aimed at students in third through eighth grades on various topics. “We actually tried to use math and science in our ball hockey stuff,” Vice President of Community Hockey Development Jay Feaster shared with the Tampa Bay Times. “We show angles. If you pass off the boards here, or the different angles in the openings around a goalie.” While some of the students attending the Friday practice were hockey players, EverFi‘s NHL partnership recognizes that even those who don’t play the game have a better time absorbing STEM information through the lens of the sport.

 5.   Black News Channel, the brainchild of former football and political star J.C. Watts, has moved its launch date from November 15 to January 6. The Tallahassee, FL-based network co-founded by former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts and TV exec Bob Brillante made the date change to take advantage of new distribution platforms. “If we have the opportunity to include the largest African American audience possible from day one, then that should be our top priority,” said Watts. The network, which offers 24/7 news serving African American viewers, has carriage deals set with Comcast, Charter, and Dish Network, and will be available in TV markets including New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Watts entered the national conversation as a star quarterback for the University of Oklahoma in 1979 and later made a name for himself on Capitol Hill both as a congressman and a lobbyist backing diversity and economic issues still resonating in sports — and elsewhere — today.

6.   The Pac-12 has announced that the University of Washington and Tulane University will meet in 2020 in the sixth edition of the Pac-12 China Game presented by Alibaba Group. Federation of University Sports of China (FUSC), which operates under China’s Ministry of Education, will serve as the co-host for the game. “As we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our Pac-12 China Game and nearly a decade of the Pac-12 Global Initiative, we look forward to the continued relationship between the Conference and our China partners in welcoming Washington and Tulane in 2020,” said Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott. “The tenet of our Pac-12 Global Initiative is that higher education and sports have the power to foster learning, understanding and togetherness between people and cultures. We’re proud to work with Alibaba and the FUSC in continued efforts to engage our universities and student-athletes in global experiences.” After last month’s NBA China debacle, it is critical that relations between China and the American sports community continue to positively evolve and strengthen.

7.   Japanese hoops star Rui Hachimura made history before ever stepping on an NBA court. The 6-foot-8 forward became the first player born in Japan to be drafted when the Washington Wizards selected him with the No. 9 overall pick in June. His popularity in Japan is unmatched, making him unique among this year's NBA rookie class. Because of Hachimura's status as a national icon in Japan, there was intense competition to land him as a sneaker endorser. Initially, seven companies presented to Hachimura, including such basketball staples as Nike subsidiary Jordan Brand and multiple China-based companies. Hachimura ultimately decided to sign with Jordan Brand, which offered a blend of proven performance products, marketing cachet around the world, and an opportunity to join a smaller stable of players within the larger Nike umbrella. Look for other major endorsements to come Hachimura’s way for brands eager to penetrate the style-forward Japanese market.

8.   Go Go Gopher. It is "too early to say" how the University of Minnesota's victory over Penn State last Saturday will affect prospective UM student applications, but the school’s PR director Jake Ricker told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that "all the attention the school has received...'can't hurt. UM is now 10-0 for the first time since 1904, and it is "generating an uptick in interest from fans wanting to buy products from the Minnesota Alumni Market." The Penn State victory also generated lots of social media buzz. The team's Twitter account saw 9.2 million impressions, 18,700 retweets, and 133,600 likes on Twitter in the ensuing week. For the entire month of September, the account had only "10.3 million impressions, 7,600 retweets, and 76,800 likes on Twitter." UM's athletic department also said that GopherSports.com "saw about 75% more visitors than the previous week" and the football "saw more than double the number of page views as the previous week." Any tangible long term results won’t be seen until admissions applications for 2020 start rolling in in December and donors open their wallets -- however, the Gophers’ loss to Iowa on Saturday might cause a few bandwagon would-be students to delete their online apps.

9.   WWE and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have announced that WrestleMania 35 generated $165.4 million in economic impact for the New York/New Jersey region last April, according to a study conducted by the Enigma Research Corporation. This marks a more than 60 percent increase from the $101.2 million generated for WrestleMania 29 in New York and New Jersey and the eighth consecutive year that WrestleMania generated more than $100 million in economic impact for its host region. Over the past 13 years, WrestleMania has now generated more than $1.3 billion in cumulative economic impact for the cities that have hosted the event. WrestleMania 35 also generated approximately $27.1 million in federal, state, and local taxes. A sold-out crowd of 82,265 fans from all 50 states and 68 countries attended WWE’s pop-culture extravaganza this past April, making it the highest-grossing entertainment event in the history of MetLife Stadium. Next year, WrestleMania 36 will take place Sunday, April 5, from Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay and looks to positively impact a hurting sports industry in Tampa Bay.

 10. The Chiefs prepare to meet the Chargers in Mexico City — in Colorado. “This will be the third team now, so hopefully that's becoming a trend" -- Air Force athletics Chief Program Officer Nick Kiger, told the Colorado Springs Gazatte, about the Academy hosting the Chargers for practice this week ahead of their game next week against the Chiefs in Mexico City. The first meeting between the division rivals is this Monday night in Mexico City. The game will be played at Estadio Azteca which sits at an elevation of 7,200 feet above sea level, so Coach Anthony Lynn has been leading practices in Colorado Springs this week to prepare his players for the thin air. The NFL is expanding beyond the USA and into Europe and Mexico to try and create a global passion behind American football.

11. TB12, the retail arm of the Tom Brady brand, goes for deeper coverage. John Burns, CEO of TB12, spoke last week of the company's plans to double its retail outlets from two to four in 2020, with one more Massachusetts store in the works as well as another out of state. With a customer base of aging men and women concerned with living an active, pain-free lifestyle, Burns believes that the Patriot quarterback's personal story will prove more compelling than NFL team loyalty. TB12 currently has two retail outlets one at Patriot Place in Foxborough, the other, which opened in late August, on Boylston Street in the Back Bay. The stores sell apparel, workout gear, nutritional and dietary supplements, as well as one-on-one sessions with body coaches that are focused on performance, pliability, and recovery. Now that Brady has cemented his legacy on the NFL field, he looks to a life of success after football in business – looking perhaps to other legendary athletes such as Michael Jordan or Ronaldo as athlete business tycoon role models.

12. The National Women’s Hockey League announced that it had closed a new round of equity funding that ensures continued growth for the league for many years to come. According to Cynopsis, the financing was led by insurance and IT entrepreneur Andy Scurto, who now joins a group of more than 20 NWHL investors. The funding round is another boost for a league whose existence was in doubt after a tumultuous summer. According to Sports Business, the five-team, U.S. based NWHL is continuing to operate despite the fact that more than 200 of the world’s top female ice hockey players pledged to not compete in North America this season in an attempt to gain better pay and working conditions. The NWHL also recently signed a partnership with athlete marketing platform Opendorse in an attempt to increase its players’ presence and engagement on social media. If the players can have their salary wishes met, this league has a chance to become equally prominent to the NHL in 10 years’ time.

13. The shift is here: more fans are streaming sports than paying for TV packages. According to SportsPro, fans are watching more live sport on their smartphones and connected devices than they do on TV, despite the majority of sports media rights being held by linear broadcasters, according to new research by cloud video specialists Grabyo. While more than 50% of fans watch sport via a satellite or pay-TV subscription, Grabyo’s OTT Video Trends Report claims that more than 60% view sports content via either an OTT or premium social media service. Overall, Grabyo’s research found that the global market penetration of OTT services has hit 38%, with DAZN and Kayo Sports cited as the most popular dedicated sports streaming platforms used by fans. Furthermore, Grabyo links a growth in short-form video, real-time highlights, and viral video consumption with the widespread adoption of social media use on smartphones as social media platforms such as Facebook Watch, Twitter, and YouTube TV capitalize on a growing demand for streaming options.

14. ABC officially picked up the new competition series “Ultimate Surfer.” According to Laughing Place, the eight-episode series is set to feature up-and-coming surfers who train and live together as they battle it out at the World Surf League’s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California, powered by Kelly Slater’s man-made wave technology, in the hope of competing amongst the best athletes in the world’s fastest-growing sport. Production will begin in 2020 and an airdate will be announced later this season. Slater will serve as on-air talent and special correspondent for the show. Alliances and rivalries will be front and center in “Ultimate Surfer” as men and women compete in individual and team challenges focused on specific surfing disciplines. Weekly eliminations will leave two men and two women as finalists who will vie for the male and female titles of the Ultimate Surfer and the opportunity to compete on the WSL World Tour, the pinnacle of professional surfing. Slater’s remarkable, one-of-a-kind, man-made wave – the most even playing field for measuring surf mastery – is at the heart of the series and provides him a boost as a brand while putting the fastest growing sport in the world in the spotlight.

 15. The Houston Rockets lose $20 million in sponsorship over general manager Daryl Morey’s political tweet. According to SportsPro, Morey’s actions last month caused a host of Chinese partners to end their deals with the NBA and its franchises, with the Rockets in particular feeling the pinch. ESPN reports the team has lost the most as a result of the spat with Chinese authorities, with the franchise seeing more than $7 million in revenue disappear this season as a result of canceled sponsorship agreements with Chinese firms and nearly $20 million overall with multi-year deals factored in. Tensions between Chinese companies and the NBA have continued, with little sign of a resolution. NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly made it clear he will support Morey, despite calls for him to sack the 47-year-old. In addition, players are at risk of losing endorsement deals, including Rockets star James Harden, with ESPN reporting that Harden's endorsement agreement with Shanghai's SPD Bank Credit Card is under threat. Despite the off-court uncertainty, the Rockets have made a solid start to the season. Boasting a 9-3 record as of November 16, they sit second in the Western Conference behind the Los Angeles Lakers.

 Top Five Tech

Bleacher Report’s soccer property B/R Football debuts an interactive show on its YouTube channel. According to Digiday, the series is part of the sports publisher’s recent shift to produce more mid- and long-form programming for platforms like YouTube rather than shorter fare made for social platforms like Instagram. Called “Your Call,” the series will have viewers play the role of an up-and-coming soccer star, making choices such as which soccer team to join and what the size of his contract should be. Since YouTube does not have an official feature to enable interactive videos, B/R Football is using the video recommendations that appear at the end of videos to serve as the interactive elements. Each 45- to 60-second episode will end by presenting viewers with up to four choices. After people select a choice, that corresponding video will play. In total, the series spans 30 individual videos, and the full experience is expected to take eight to 10 minutes to complete. Since October 2018, B/R Football’s YouTube channel has grown from 235,000 subscribers and 10.8 million monthly views to 1 million subscribers and 21.5 million views in October, 2019 thanks to other Bleacher Report properties. Although YouTube is yet to have interactive experiences built into its platform, the B/R experiment may pan out to draw in its biggest new batch of fans to date for a Generation Z that is looking to be more involved with its favorite sports and teams.

The NHL’s Washington Capitals owners launch Caps Gaming Brand. Monumental Sports and Entertainment (MSE), the owners of the Washington Capitals NHL franchise, has launched an esports division called Caps Gaming, which will host a 32-team EA Sports NHL 20 competition. The Caps Gaming Showcase, a six-versus-six ice hockey esports tournament, which will launch on Xbox One, will feature an eight-week regular-season beginning in early December, with the top 16 teams advancing to a postseason stage held in late February, competing for a $15,000 prize pool. As part of Monumental’s gaming expansion, the esports division has also signed up professional NHL gamer John Casagranda, who is also known as “JohnWayne” and joins the Caps Gaming organization as an official streamer on the Caps Gaming Twitch channel until the end of June. In addition to being 2018 NHL Stanley Cup champions, Monumental owns and operates pro sports franchises based in the U.S. capital, including the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the WNBA champion Washington Mystics. By investing heavily in esports, MSE and the Capitals have kept themselves at the forefront of innovation across the NHL and are primed to cash-in on the rise of esports.

NASCAR fans who tweet about Kevin Harvick are awarded free Busch beer. According to Mobile Marketer, the reason Busch was offering free beer for a year to NASCAR fans who tweet about Harvick is due to the fact that Busch Beer sponsored Harvick’s #4 Ford car. The contest took place during the Monster Energy Cup Series finale on November 17 and whenever Harvick led the race, fans who posted tweets with hashtags #Busch4Harvick and #sweepstakes were entered for a chance to win the free beer and a limited-edition Busch can sporting Harvick's signature. Busch determined the number of winners by the final number of laps Harvick led in the NASCAR season finale race at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The race is 400 miles long, giving Harvick multiple chances to lead and for Busch fans to win free beer. Busch's Twitter sweepstakes aimed to keep viewers glued to their TV and smartphone screens as the NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series concluded. However, there's a bit of irony that Homestead was won by the #18 Toyota car driven by...Kyle Busch.

Advertising and patches in esports take root: Wizards District Gaming pen NBA 2K jersey patch deal with Alarm.com. According to SportsPro, the deal sees the Alarm.com also get virtual in-game signage during Wizards District Gaming play in the NBA 2K League, deepening its relationship with MSE, which also owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL's Washington Capitals. Alarm.com will also receive exposure during the NBA 2K League Draft, for which the Wizards’ esports team holds the number one overall pick this season. Further, the partnership features experiential activations, including a Wizards District Gaming sponsored employee program and players appearances, as well as social media features, branded content, digital banner advertisements on the team’s website, and brand integration within Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch. Esports is the perfect place for tech-oriented agencies to advertise to appeal to fans who are always looking to upgrade their digital devices and software.

Sports tech and analytics company Whoop raises $55 million for its discreet wearables. Whoop, which makes a sensor-equipped and screen-free strap that continuously tracks your activities 24/7 and then provides a multitude of performance metrics and other data based on that activity, has closed a round of $55 million funding that it will use to continue expanding its business into a wider range of wearables and analytics that can be gathered around them. According to TechCrunch, the devices measure things like how much strain a workout is causing you, how you are recovering afterwards, your sleep, whether training is having the desired effect, whether you are working at a level that will be less likely to cause injury, and how you are likely to perform. Looking ahead, the plan is to place the sensors into more environments than just the strap it currently makes. One notable shift Whoop has seen in the last year is that it has dropped the price of its wearable from a sizeable $500 down to free. Instead, it bundles the strap into a wider membership program that you do pay for, starting at $30/month and decreasing, depending on what you would like to measure and use the data for – and because it's simpler than Google’s recently-acquired Fitbit, Whoop may find more success by providing simplicity in an over-inundated tech world.

Power of Sports Five

John Cena confronts veteran suicide through charity.  Cena has partnered with the FitOps Foundation, a nonprofit committed to training and certifying veterans as personal trainers as the suicide rate among U.S. veterans continues to increase. According to Sports Illustrated, FitOps runs camps for its training sessions, providing a recognizable feeling for the veterans who attend. In addition to raising awareness about the needs of vets, Cena is also raising funds to expand the FitOps program. A number that really jumped out to Cena to inspire change was that roughly 20 veterans a day commit suicide. In a fundraising effort for FitOps, Cena pledged to match all donations up to $1 million through Veterans Day, as well as offer a VIP meet-and-greet with Cena to one lucky donor. Fittingly, on Veterans Day, the project crossed the $1 million threshold. An integral part of FitOps is rebuilding the sense of community and purpose that many veterans lose when returning to civilian life. While Cena has always showed his appreciation for the military, his current actions have him involved directly. 

Senegalese Minnesota Timberwolves center Gorgui Dieng gives back to his home country. According to CNN, the T-wolves center is a seven-year NBA veteran who signed a four-year $64 million contract extension with the team in 2016. With the help of Minnesota-based global health nonprofit MATTER, Dieng set up the Gorgui Dieng Foundation in 2015. The foundation provides aid to Senegal through four different methods: medical, food, agriculture, and athletics. Senegal is a country in which 29.6% of the 15.4 million population live in poverty, according to the World Health Organization. Last summer, Dieng sent 300,000 bags of intravenous fluid to Senegal and visited a neonatal hospital in Diamniadio that benefited from his organization's donations. He's helped send beds, dialysis machines, X-ray machines, and patient monitors for a new dialysis center to his hometown of Kébémer. In recognition of his work, Dieng became the third player to receive the Offseason NBA Cares Community Assist Award on November 8. Dieng and the Timberwolves have started the season at 7-6, and he will look to continue his efforts off the court when he isn’t busy playing in the NBA.

Indonsesian women are using surfing to change societal sexist attitudes. According to Reuters, few local women surf in the Southeast Asian archipelago of 17,000 islands, which has some of the world’s best beaches, dive, and surf spots, including Bali and Raja Ampat, attracting millions of visitors each year.  XX Surf is a surf school with a social mission on the island of Lombok seeking to empower girls through surfing while also tackling issues such as child marriage and teen pregnancy. Indonesia has the world’s eighth-highest number of child brides, according to the United Nations, with one in nine girls marrying before they turn 18 due to poverty and tradition. XX Surf was set up with a mission to change that. Enthusiasm is growing slowly in the country, with 17-year-old Kailani Johnson making history in May as the first Indonesian woman to compete in the pro World Surf League Women’s Championship Tour. XX Surf, donates a third of its profits to a local charity supporting girls’ education and hopes to inspire gender-equality change through sport, especially with surfing set to debut at the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. 

The United Soccer League looks to launch a women's league rivaling NWSL and bring in USWNT players. According to Yahoo! Lifestyle, the United Soccer League is looking into starting a Division I women’s league by 2021. This comes two weeks after the NWSL introduced allocation money, though USWNT players would be kept out of the influx of cash. Some USL owners also own NWSL teams, and the league, which is the second tier in men’s professional soccer in the United States, announced earlier this month plans to include women in the USL Academy. The news is similar to what’s happening in the hockey world, where the National Women’s Hockey League is fighting to grow the sport while fighting other competing forces. With two competing leagues, it is likely that there may be more pressure to increase salaries for women in U.S. soccer leagues in order to have them play for one league over another. 

All-electric racing series Formula E sees BBC extension to include two races on FTA television. According to SportsPro, the Marrakesh ePrix on February 29 and the Rome ePrix on April 4 are the two races that have been chosen for the BBC’s television coverage, although it is not yet confirmed which channels will air the events. The extension will also see the BBC continue to show every Formula E race across its online platforms, including the BBC iPlayer and its website. Coverage of select races will also be available via the BBC red button. The expanded deal comes ahead of Formula E’s return to the UK, with a double-header race through London’s ExCel exhibition center and along the waterfront on the streets of the Royal Docks set to close the 2019/20 season on July 25-26. Formula E, which debuted on the BBC last season, will also be broadcast in the UK this season on Discovery-owned channel Eurosport, with select events also being shown live on free-to-air network Quest. This is an eco-friendly racing league that allows for the same excitement as non-electric racing with the benefit of no negative carbon emissions and could set an example for NASCAR in the U.S.

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Australian Open 2017: Finals matchups could have a retro feel

After the No. 1 seeds fell, the remaining matchup possibilities look like the early 2000s all over again.

In early 2003, Daredevil was about to top How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days for the top grossing movie in America, Andy Roddick was preparing for his best year of tennis, and 21-year-old Serena Williams beat 22-year-old Venus Williams for the Australian Open title.

It was their fourth straight final against each other (they would make it five of six at Wimbledon later that year), but this one, a 7-6, 3-6, 6-4, Serena victory, was possibly the best match of the bunch.

In early 2009, Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" had just toppled Beyonce's "Single Ladies" on the pop charts, America had just inaugurated Barack Obama in front of a record crowd in Washington DC (that's an actual fact, not an alternative fact), and 22-year-old Rafael Nadal beat 27-year-old Roger Federer in five grueling sets to take the Australian Open title.

It was the duo’s third finals meeting in the last four slams; Nadal had won all three.

They have met only once in a slam final since.

These four players — Williams, Williams, Nadal, and Federer — have combined for 60 slam titles (22 for Serena, 17 for Federer, 14 for Nadal, seven for Venus) and 29 other finals appearances. They are all-time greats with infallible résumés and unmeasurable cultural impact. They are also old, or getting there. Only Nadal is under 35, and his grueling style of play means he has as many miles on odometer as the others.

Serena aside, it is perhaps too much to ask for these three to win slams or reach No. 1 in the world anymore. But it’s impossible not to long for another run or two. And we might be getting one (or more) as we speak.

In the middle of Saturday night in the States, the tennis world got turned upside down, but depending on your perspective, it might have just turned back rightside up.

Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images

CoCo Vandeweghe shellacked top-seeded Angelique Kerber in the Australian Open quarterfinals.

In the fourth round of the Australian Open, as some were going to bed, men's No. 1 seed Andy Murray got upset by 29-year-old journeyman Mischa Zverev; Zverev was to date mostly known for being the older brother of rising star Alexander Zverev.

Then, as some were waking up on Sunday morning, women's No. 1 seed Angelique Kerber was getting blown off the court by American CoCo Vandeweghe. At the end of the 6-2, 6-3 shellacking, Vandeweghe hit a service winner, then shrugged and strutted to the net.

In tennis, every major upset becomes a referendum. If a top seed doesn't win, that can be either a sign of great depth or poor star power. Fair or (more probably) unfair, the conventional wisdom drifts toward the former in the men's tennis world and the latter in the women's.

Only three combined top-four seeds in the two draws have advanced to the quarterfinals. Most notably, men’s No. 2 seed Novak Djokovic, a six-time Aussie champion, lost to Denis Istomin in the second round.

Be it parity or depth, good or bad, tennis is staring at one of its strangest majors in quite a while ... as long as you're looking at the seeds, anyway. If you're looking only at names, there's something pretty familiar about all of this.

In the middle of 2016's college football season, it looked like the 1990s all over again. Current and former powers like Nebraska, Washington, Colorado, Miami, and Michigan were in or hovering near the top 10. It felt strange and familiar at the same time.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, tennis has brought back the 2000s. Amid all the upsets and uncertainty, it is quite conceivable that we end up with Federer-Nadal and Venus-Serena finals.

That won’t be the case if seedings hold, of course. With chalk, we’d be looking at finals of Serena vs. Garbine Muguruza and Milos Raonic vs. Stan Wawrinka. Those would carry plenty of their own story lines — Williams-Muguruza would the third meeting between the two in a slam final (Muguruza beat Williams in last year’s French Open finals), while Raonic-Wawrinka would pit a 26-year-old looking for his first slam title (Raonic) vs. a 31-year-old three-time slam champ gunning for his second Aussie championship. Not bad.

Also not bad: the other story lines still in flight during this fortnight.

Karolina Pliskova (quarterfinal opponent: Mirjana Lucic-Baroni) is terrifying. The 6’1 Czech is the women’s fifth seed; she reached the U.S. Open finals last year by beating both Venus and Serena Williams, and she held a 3-1 lead over Kerber in the third set of the finals before faltering. The 24-year-old is a potential future No. 1, and while she had to go deep into a 10-8 third set to survive Jelena Ostapenko in the third round, she's won eight of nine sets thus far.

If Lucic-Baroni’s name sounds familiar, there’s a reason: At age 17, she reached the Wimbledon semifinals in 1999, beating Monica Seles in the early rounds before eventually losing in three tight sets to Steffi Graf. She dealt with an abusive father and money issues and spent about five years off the tour. A journeywoman for years, she pulled off one of her biggest wins against Radwanska last week, and she’s in her first slam quarterfinal in nearly 18 years. 18!

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (quarterfinal opponent: Wawrinka) is in his fifth Aussie quarterfinal. He reached the finals in 2008, and while he’s reached at least one slam semifinal in five of eight years since, he hasn’t yet reached another final. At 31, he’s attempting to pull a Wawrinka, a late-career breakthrough.

Grigor Dimitrov (quarterfinal opponent: David Goffin) reached the Aussie quarterfinals and Wimbledon semifinals in 2014 and threatened to live up to an impossible “Next Federer” label. But his progress slowed. He briefly fell out of the top 30 in 2016 and advanced to even the fourth round of a major only twice in 2015-16.

Vandeweghe (quarterfinal opponent: Muguruza), the 6’1 niece of former NBA player Kiki Vandeweghe, has been in a limbo of sorts for quite a while. Her powerful game drove her to the 2015 Wimbledon quarterfinals, and she looked like an up-and-coming star for quite a while, but she won just four matches in four 2016 slams, and at 25, she is approaching now-or-never time in her career. Her win over Kerber was a significant "now."

Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (quarterfinal opponent: V. Williams) is one of the best servers on the women's tour and experienced a breakthrough of sorts at age 20 in 2011. She reached the quarterfinals of both the French Open and U.S. Open and finished the year ranked 16th. But her ranking has waffled steadily since then, and from 2012-16, she advanced past the third round of a slam only once (2016 Wimbledon). She's still only 25, though, and just smoked No. 8 seed Svetlana Kuznetsova, 6-3, 6-3, in the fourth round.

Johanna Konta (quarterfinal opponent: S. Williams) is a 25-year-old Aussie-turned-Brit and hardcourt dynamo. She reached the semis of last year's Aussie Open before falling to Kerber, and she's reached the fourth round of the last two U.S. Opens. She rose from 47th at the end of 2015 to 10th at the end of 2016, and she has defended most of her Aussie points. She has yet to drop a set in this tournament.

No matter who advances, there will be entertainment value and intrigue.

Still, until they cease to be options, the thought of two throwback finals is intoxicating. First of all, there’s the comfort food aspect of it: familiar names in familiar locales. Beyond that, though, there���s the story of everything it has taken for these four grand champions to even get this far.

There’s also the simple fact that all four have looked tremendous Down Under. Federer destroyed No. 10 Tomas Berdych in the third round, then outlasted No. 5 Kei Nishikori in five sets in the fourth. Any lingering issues from the knee injury that cost him much of 2016 are invisible.

Nadal survived a five-setter against Alexander Zverev, then ground out a four-set win over No. 6 Gael Monfils. Meanwhile, Venus and Serena have yet to drop a set.

Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images

When Nadal topped Federer in 2009, it felt like his reign over the sport had ended. Nadal, with his defense, tenacity, and lefty power, was custom-built to defeat the once-untouchable Fed. Federer was particularly shaken up in the post-match awards ceremony, as if he knew his time was over.

He then proceeded to win three of the next four slams.

Nadal missed significant time with injury in 2012-13, then won three of the next five slams upon his return. Serena Williams missed most of 2010-11, turned 30 (Steffi Graf won her last slam at 29), then won nine more slams. Venus Williams battled injury after injury and didn't advance to the second week of a slam from 2011-14. She was back in the semifinals in last year's Wimbledon, and she's back in the top 10 now.

These four live to surprise. Do they have some more surprises in them over the next week?