There were future power people
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| Sinner, Seal. |
So many celebrities were there in New York at the last day of the U.S. Open tennis tournament yesterday, for the men's singles final. Taylor Swift! Patrick Mahomes! (On an off day because he played on Thursday night.) Dustin Hoffman! Martha Stewart! Noah Lyles! Stephen Colbert! Seal! Steph Curry! Elon Musk! It's said some spectators paid $56,000 to sit at courtside.
But if they came to see the other Taylor, Taylor Fritz of the United States, take home the big trophy, they were disappointed. Jannik Sinner of Italy won the match in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 7-5. It wasn't close. And I hate to say it, but contrary to my feeble prediction, it wasn't exactly riveting.
Anyway, Sinner won his second Grand Slam tourney of the year, having prevailed at the Australian Open back in our winter. The other two Slams, on clay and grass, were won by Carlos Alcaraz of Spain. The average age of the two champs is roughly 22 years and 2½ months. Okay, that's interesting.
Fritz, who's going on 27 years old, has a great game and is ever improving. But he would have needed to play the match of his life against Sinner, and on this particular nice September Sunday in New York, he didn't.
Overall, the U.S. Open had a lot to offer, with many thrills, chills, and spills. But if all you showed up for was the finale, well, you missed the best parts.
There's been a ton on hand wringing amongst the local sports Illuminati about how the B1G Network isn't available locally on Comcast, something about a carriage dispute. Anywho, folks are cutting Comcast because they couldn't see the Ducks opening weekend.
ReplyDeleteThe MUCH bigger story, that no one locally seems to be covering, is the dispute between DirecTV and Disney. Subscribers haven't had ESPN for a week now. No US Open for me.
It's a wild time in cable and sports. These massive contacts leagues have signed are all predicated on the idea cable networks will carry the networks that carry the games. What happens when the carriers don't play along?
I don’t know if cable television works the way that network advertising used to. In the good old days, the network would guarantee the advertiser a certain number of viewers, based on the Nielsen ratings. If the show didn’t get at least that many viewers, the network would give a partial refund or a credit to the advertiser. My guess is that the cable network doesn’t get to pay the sports league less, but the advertisers may pay the cable network much less, because of the carrier dispute.
DeleteThey showed the finals on ABC, I think. The early round coverage by ESPN was wimpy. They wanted even more of my money for ESPN+ to see most of it. Sorry, dudes, but Comcast is already killing me. I wish the Tennis Channel had had the deal.
DeleteI’m also starting to tire of Chris Fowler or whatever his name is, who seems to call every major final. There’s got to be someone else to mix in once in a while.
Sinner’s PED exoneration is the bigger story. The reason given makes zero sense.
ReplyDeleteI mentioned that earlier in writing about the Open. I hear some of the other players are pretty unhappy with how the matter has been handled.
DeleteThere’s always some sketchy excuse when athletes flunk their pee tests. With this guy I hear it was “healing spray.” With the Chinese swimmers, wasn’t it tainted hamburgers?
Yes it was a “healing spray” with two positive tests within 8 days. As I understood it there was an actual time lapse between the actual use of spray and contact with Skinner and it was a few seconds but much much longer. Imagine using a spray in the morning on your hands and several hours later holding your wife’s hand and she tests positive.
DeleteI'm sure Simona Halep is not amused.
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