With no tennis to show, the Tennis Channel has been replaying classic matches, and the other day I caught some of the 1975 Wimbledon gentlemen’s final between Arthur Ashe and Jimmy Connors. The racquets were wood, the balls white, the shorts short. The lines judges were older men wearing glasses and – even more oddly – sitting in chairs. But perhaps the most striking thing was the way the chair umpire, at one point, pleaded with the crowd for silence. It was in a schoolmasterly voice that carried notes of dismay and disappointment that he even had to make the request.
Yesterday morning I played an hour of tennis with our neighbor Petra, the former #1 female player in Slovakia, and then went with friends to Voo La Voo for crepes and a bottle of Vin de Provence. My afternoon nap was one of my finest ever.
The obituary for Colette Evert in today’s Miami Herald features comments from Chris about her mother’s innate kindness, which included cheering for Chris’s opponents when they were playing well against her.
The Dolphins got a new quarterback (and it worked out fine). Now maybe the country can do the same.
I’m rooting for the Tampa Bay Rays over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series not just because they’re a Florida team but because they’re the underdog, a team with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. The Dodgers, by contrast, have one of the highest; pitcher Clayton Kershaw earns more in a year than the entire Rays squad, which contains a number of players who bounced around a lot before landing in Florida. My favorite is first baseman Ji-Man Choi, the first Korean to play in a World Series. Wednesday evening, after a Dodger took first base on a walk, Choi gave him a friendly pat on the helmet.
Iga Swiatek won the French Open without losing a set during the entire tournament, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda ended Magnus Carlsen's 125-match winning streak in chess.