For the first time since high school – and the days of Reed, Frazier, and Bradley – I am a Knicks fan, for the simple reason that three of its starters – Hart, Bridges, and Brunson – are graduates of Villanova (like me – and the pope). But if not for them, I would find the team – thanks to its kindergarten of courtside millionaires – hard to stomach.
Pretty much everything about this year’s French Open has been a surprise, including the weather, which was oppressively hot the first week (the reason for Jannik Sinner’s demise) and cool and blustery today (part of the reason for Aryna Sabalenka’s). Among the other players sent home early were grand slam champions Djokovic, Rybakina, Gauff, and Świątek (who won this tournament four times in the past). The women’s semifinals do include a Pole, Maja Chwalinska, who is 5’5’’ but plays with a steadiness Świątek can only dream of. She will play the Russian who beat Sabalenka, Diana Shnaider, while in the other matchup, the Ukrainian who beat Świątek, Marta Kostyuk, will play the Russian Mirra Andreeva. It will be neighbor against aggressive neighbor on the red clay of Roland Garros.
I spend the first week of a tennis tournament cheering for upsets and the second week bemoaning the lack of marquee matches.
Posts are going to be short this week as every morning I wake up and turn on the French Open. Matches go sometimes till early evening, after which the Tennis Channel, which relinquishes daytime coverage to TNT, does its nightly roundup. It is Grand Slam tennis from 5 am to bedtime. But I take time out to watch Jeopardy! – and a show I’ll write about tomorrow.
I have been observing May 6 – Willie Mays’ birthday – ever since I learned the date, probably from the back of one of his baseball cards. (Wish I had that card today.) My love for the Say Hey Kid made me a San Francisco Giants fan, and a rebel in a family of Phillie fanatics. But even they admired the way he played the game, which was not just with preternatural skill and talent but with an infectious, boyish joy. Mays, who died in 2024, would have been 95 today.
Halfway through the game last night I realized I was in an impossible position: I wanted Michigan to lose, but I didn’t want Connecticut to win. So I turned it off and went to bed.