Volume XXIV

Rarely does a non-traditional sports fan in America get such a fortuitous day. I arrived home this past Sunday after a short shift at the day job catering for the University of Oregon. I tiptoed into the house so as to not disturb my sleeping beauty, heading straight back into the den for some writing time and a flip through the television. As the screen illuminated, I could barely contain my excitement. Everywhere I turned was one underappreciated event after another. 

I hit the channel button once, and there was Usain Bolt breaking his own world record in the 100-meter dash at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin. Another click of the remote, and there was Tiger Woods frittering away his fifteenth major on the final day of the PGA Championship at Hazeltine and in the process paving the path for the first Asian-born winner of a major championship. A few more clicks upward and there was tennis action from both the men and the women as everyone prepares for the final Grand Slam event of the year. 

As the days get shorter and we near football season here in the United States, chance occurrences like I experienced this past Sunday become less and less likely. But for sheer depth of athletic achievement, few days can beat the surge of adrenaline that accompanied my gluttonous devouring of everything the television had to throw my way. I’m not one to pass up the challenge -- so let’s dive right in and start noshing like Kobayashi on the smorgasbord that sports all around the world had to offer this week... 
 

For the past couple years, the lion’s share of any casual discussion about men’s tennis has centered on the Federer-Nadal rivalry. At times we’ve seen one or another player look ready to break through to challenge the twin towers of tennis. Following his trip to the finals of the U.S. Open in 2007, Novak Djokovic parlayed his hot form into a season-opening Australian Open victory in 2008. After his first Grand Slam victory, Djokovic seemed poised to turn the duel at the top of the game into a three-way brawl. Yet in six Grand Slam tournaments since his ascension, the Serbian star has yet to return to the finals at any major. He hasn’t won an event since the Italian Open in the run-up to the 2008 French Open, and recently just slipped to fourth in the standings. Just 22 years of age, many are already writing off the young pro as a failed contender. 

Yet the man who surpassed him, Scotland’s Andy Murray, is being touted as a player on the rise whose best years are yet to come. The funny thing about such an assertion, though, is the reality that Murray was born exactly seven days before Djokovic. Honestly, it is quite interesting how the sport has progressed and the field has emerged in the past few years. Federer’s rise to the top of the sport really didn’t begin in earnest until he took three of the four Grand Slam titles in 2004 and 2005. 2006 and 2007 were the years where Nadal began to blossom as more than merely a clay-court specialist, demonstrating his burgeoning abilities with one after another classic duels with Federer. 2008 saw Federer contract mononucleosis early in the season, Djokovic make his charge into third place in the standings and Nadal finalize his rise to the top of the standings. 2009, it seems, has been Nadal’s turn to succumb to health issues... which has opened the door for the arrival of Andy Murray in the upper echelon of the tennis hierarchy. 

Murray has not disappointed. He defeated Andy Roddick in the final at Doha way back in January. He conquered Nadal at Rotterdam the next month. Djokovic fell in the final in Miami; it was James Blake’s turn at Queen’s Club in the preparatory tournament prior to Wimbledon. And now, this weekend in Montreal, it was the Argentine Juan Martin Del Potro -- himself a 20-year-old rising star on the scene -- who could not tame Murray’s game in a championship match. Del Potro seemed to have the upper hand early, taking the first set in a tiebreak. But by the time the second set began, the gap began to widen. Murray took the second set easily 6-1, setting up what looked to be a rout. 

But the Scotsman still has some consistency to discover. Murray allowed Del Potro back into the match, with the Argentine youngster finding himself at championship point several times but never being able to pull the trigger. This is where Andy proved his resiliency, clawing his way back into the match and earning his fifth title of the 2009 season. Also with the victory, the points toward his ATP rankings vaulted Murray into second place in the world. Benefiting from Nadal’s knee troubles which have plagued him since the French Open back in May, Murray has amassed the points necessary to leapfrog the Spaniard and slot in just behind Federer. Heading into the final Grand Slam of the year, it is important to remember just who it was losing to Roger Federer last season. With Murray already having proven his talent on the hard courts and that he is capable of reaching the finals at Flushing Meadows, look for him to make a serious run on his first Grand Slam title. 
 

The WTA tournament in Cincinnati, between Jelena Jankovic and world number-one Dinara Safina, was hardly as suspenseful. Jankovic, herself a former top-ranked player at the end of last season, used a nuanced game to best the sheer power of Safina. In straight sets -- 6-4, 6-2 -- Jankovic simply wore out Safina, running her all around the court. Neither has been the most consistent of players throughout her career, but Jankovic strung it all together in the summer heat of Ohio to earn her eleventh career title. 

Throughout the match, Safina’s inability to hit a consistent first serve or to make sure her second serve was in play plagued her. Coughing up far too many double-faults, the Russian handed the first set to Jankovic. And then, into the second set, the Serbian made the top dog pay. Since neither of these gals is one of the shriekers which have become so much more prominent in the past year or two on the women’s tour, it was indeed bizarre to hear Safina getting audible with every swing as the second set wore on. It seemed as though the craftiness of Jankovic in guiding her shots wide was putting Safina on the verge of an asthma attack. It will be interesting to see if she can finally break through at a Grand Slam event, especially if this noise increase is indicative of a lack of fitness. But at this point, it looks like the former number-one is more likely to be on the verge of her first Grand Slam than is the current number-one. 

Wow... we’ve seen both losing finalists from last year’s U.S. Open now take tournament victories in the summer run-up to the main event. Whether either can sustain this pressure is another story, but so far as the tour around America gets ever closer to New York and the start of the Open it looks increasingly as these two players might just find themselves back in the finals this year. Then, it just comes down to a matter of the luck of the draw to see if they can make the surge from Grand Slam finalist to Grand Slam champion. 
 

Winning is something that Usain Bolt has certainly never had a hard time making happen. For all the pre-race banter about how the 100-meter final at the IAAF World Championships in Berlin would be the biggest challenge in Bolt’s career, the highly anticipated clash of titans Bolt and Tyson Gay of the United States proved in the end to be heavy on talk and light on action. In the same graceful, loping strides which propelled him to gold in Beijing, Bolt shaved another eleven-hundredths of a second off his already blazing world-record pace to become the first human to ever eclipse the 9.6-second mark over the distance. His American challenger, who was forced out of last year’s Olympics with hamstring troubles, came in second as anticipated. But Gay couldn’t even match Bolt’s dance-supplemented 9.69 from China, finishing two-hundredths of a second behind the Olympic mark to leave the Jamaican with the two fastest times ever recorded in the event. 

Following the implication of five Jamaican sprinters prior to the World Championships in the use of the stimulant methylxanthine -- a diuretic found in such everyday products as coffee, tea, cocoa and cola -- the talk will likely heat up that Bolt couldn’t be accomplishing such feats without the use of performance-enhancing drugs. But Bolt was not implicated in the scandal, and indeed none of the five sprinters will face public sanction. Ultimately, Bolt was just realizing his potential... following his Olympic race last year, a team of Norwegian scientists analyzed the results of the 100-meter final and determined that Bolt could have shaved up to fourteen-hundredths of a second off of his world-record time had he not danced his way across the line. This was, as far as the most sophisticated substance-testing procedures can determine, a pure demonstration of what the human is capable of achieving in athletic competition. 

The real question, then, is whether anyone can challenge Bolt’s supremacy at the top of the sport. With a firm grip on the world record in both the 100- and 200-meter disciplines, the Jamaican runner simply can’t be beat at this moment. And at just 22 years old, there are many prime years ahead of the sprinter. As long as he can remain healthy -- and as long as all the tests prove true and he is accomplishing all these amazing feats legitimately and without supplement -- we could see him dominate in each of the next two Olympiads and at every major meet in between. 
 

I must confess that I did not witness the collapse of Tiger Woods this weekend. Sure, I was flipping on commercial breaks over to the PGA Championship from Hazeltine. But it had appeared at the beginning of the final round on Sunday that Woods had his fifteenth major championship all locked up. Who would’ve known that Yang Yong-Eun -- a South Korean golfer whose greatest success prior to this point had been a victory earlier this year at the Honda Classic in Palm Beach, Florida in March -- would pull off one of the greatest upsets in the sport’s history to best Woods on the final leaderboard... 

And the most stunning part is that he did it not by the skin of his teeth but by three full strokes. After making the cut, Yang had ripped up the Hazeltine course with a searing five-under 67 to claim the best score of the day on Saturday and pull into contention. Two strokes back of Woods to begin Sunday, Yang tied for the best score of the day yet again with a two-under 70. Woods, who usually is unflappable when he carries a lead into the final day of any tournament, shot an uncharacteristic three-over 75 to toss away his chance at pulling closer to Jack Nicklaus in the record books.  

I’m constantly ranting on about how we need more young stars to step up and challenge the beast that is Tiger. While Yang, at 37 years old, is hardly that person to keep up sustained pressure on Woods, the mere fact that he broke through and put together four solid rounds to become the first Asian-born golfer to win a major championship is inspiring. Few people had heard of Yang prior to his success in Minnesota; now, he can serve as an inspiration for the burgeoning populations of golfers all throughout the world’s most populous continent. 
 

Because, in the end, that is what we all strive to witness as spectators -- inspiration. From the moment we call out our own commentary on the sandlots of our youth to our adult years, where we buy the equipment the pros use in hopes that their vicarious magic might rub off on our own games, we remember for a lifetime those surreal moments that captivate us to no end. I know, when I look back on the past week in sports in the twilight of my life, the vivid sounds of Safina’s struggles, the blinding streak of Bolt on the track, and the images of Yang hoisting his golf bag high overhead like a winger with the Stanley Cup will still come surging back. These are the moments we live for as fans...