Enes Kanter (right), — then of the Utah Jazz, now of the New York Knicks — attempting to block a shot by Patrick Beverley at the Houston Rockets’ Toyota Center March 17, 2014.
Everyone is entitled to his opinion, until, of course, someone thinks he isn’t. Recently, three incidents have challenged our concept of freedom of speech.
Read MoreAndy Murray and Novak Djokovic at The Boodles Tennis Challenge exhibition in Stoke Park, Buckinghamshire, England in 2012.
Andy Murray winning his second Wimbledon in 2016. Photograph by Daniel J. Cooper.
When an athlete retires, it is a little death. People start speaking about him in the past tense, as if he were truly gone instead of just moving on to another chapter of his life.
But in a way, athletic retirement is a kind of death. Few occasions remind us so much of our mortality as the thought of a seemingly invincible body now broken down or past its prime. Few engender so many memories and what-ifs, particularly if you identify with the athlete.
Few sports offer that identification the way tennis does. A team like the New York Yankees has a host of players to adore (and, on occasion, vilify). But a tennis match has only four players at a moment at best. And, if you’re a singles player, then it’s just you — and all those people out there who see you in themselves and themselves in you.
Perhaps that’s why the reaction to the retirement of Andy Murray — whom I’ve written much about on this blog and in my other life as an editor at WAG — has been so poignant.
Read MoreThe Blues Brothers: Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic bow as a doubles team at the Laver Cup. Photograph by Clive Brunskill for Getty Images North America
“You’re only as good as your opponent makes you play,” Martina Navratilova observes in “Strokes of Genius.” It’s a documentary about Rafael Nadal’s hard-fought triumph over Roger Federer in the 2008 Wimbledon final, which Jon Wertheim describes in his book of the same name as the greatest tennis match to date….
Read MoreChristie’s will be auctioning off an historic Novak Djokovic racket, along with one of his watches, Thursday, Sept. 20.
Now you can swing a racket like a US Open champion — not to mention tell time like one. On Thursday, Sept. 20, Christie’s will conduct an online-only auction of the Head racket US Open men’s singles champion Novak Djokovic used to defeat Roger Federer in the Open tune-up, Cincinnati's Western & Southern Open.
Read More: Hot, hot, hot Stefanos Tsitsipas – who became the youngest man to beat four top 10 players in a row earlier this summer at the Canadian Open – lost to the heat and Daniil Medvedev Wednesday at the US Open. Photograph by Getty Images.
The US Open – the last of the Grand Slam tournaments, celebrating its golden jubilee this season – is one of sports’ greatest events and one of its most challenging.
For fans, that is due in part to the difficulty in getting into the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens. Then once inside, members of the New York City Police Department, along with the Open’s security and ushers, have a poor sense of what’s where. (We ourselves were dropped off on Northern Boulevard, which we surmised correctly would be the shortest walk to the Media Center.)
So unless you have the directional skills of a Lewis and Clark, it can be tough going. Equally daunting for fans but especially the players this year has been the soaring heat and humidity….
Read MoreThe trophies from the US Open's men's and women's singles championships gleam against the backdrop of the Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan. Tim Camuso/USTA
