Every Spring Sport Has Its Glories — And Its Shame

The Miami Open at Hard Rock Stadium was a dramatic tournament this year, with the tough and persistent and courageous Danielle Collins riding a low seed — was she seeded at all? — all the way to the win, her first and likely her last Masters 1000, unless she revises her plan to retire at the end of this season.

The pride of St. Petersburg always wanted this one, and she certainly earned it. She is one of the most hard-working, never-quit, gritty American girls, with a powerful game from the baseline, and she was deservedly the crowd fave and said really classy things when presented with the trophy, thanking not only her team and the sponsors but the security officials and the medics who spring from the sidelines in response to sprains and cramps.

On the men’s side, you could say the same about hard work rewarded for finalist Grigor Dimitrov, with the caveat that he did not quite make it. Also, he has more than a baseline game; Dimitrov is aggressive at the net, has a gorgeous one-handed backhand, and hustles like crazy on every point. He had a fantastic, inspiring run, but this year seems to belong to Jannik Sinner, who knocked him out in the final, 6–3, 6–1. It’s a bit early to speak of the whole year, of course, but still it was astonishing how the Australian Open winner breezed through the draw and beat Dimitrov handily. Dimitrov had got past the mighty Hubert Hurkacz (three sets), world No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz (two sets), and fourth seed Alexander Zverev (three sets).

Dimitrov has been on a gorgeous mid-career resurgence after some tough years with injuries, which proves you should never say quit. But Sinner, who beat both Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev on the way to the Australian Open trophy, is just too good at the moment. The six-two Tyrolean with the form, the feet, the forehand, the impossible down-the-line backhand, the grace — well, you get the picture. His court sense, aka strategic and tactical intelligence, has overwhelmed everybody this year. Alcaraz put it very well: He said Sinner made him feel as though he was 13, flummoxed by Sinner’s game. The shot choices, the placement, require impeccable movement, and it is not irrelevant that, like Djokovic and Roger Federer, Sinner was a passionate skier as a teen, a juniors champ.  Skiing develops the feet, the knees, the “foundation” — abs and lower back — so essential to match play.

American youth sports teams and organizations spend far too much money on secondary items, such as fancy facilities and paraphernalia. There probably are too many school district and athletic associations administrators, too. The focus should be on physical training, learning different sports, getting a grounding in how to think about sports, sports history, chess, and academic subjects. In America we are addicted to throwing money at everything except the basics, and that is why we are on our heels against the barbarians who threaten Judeo-Christian civilization.

Meanwhile the New York Yankees had a great opening series against Houston, and they are in first place and unbeaten going into the second week, so take that, Boston. However — not to get off the point but to stay focused on fair and accurate reporting — anyone interested in Boston ought to forget about the travails of Harvard University’s poor show lately and consider a superb Boston novel, an American novel, a great story of our country and our history, Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day, which I am sure I or one of my pals here at The American Spectator will account for one of these days.

In other tennis news, the wonderful, unseeded, all American women’s doubles team of the irresistible Bethanie Mattek-Sands and the pugnacious, determined Sofia Kenin took the doubles at Miami in a thriller, while the wonderful class-act Aussie-Indian team of Matt Ebden and Rohan Bopanna continued their dream run since winning the Australian Open, also a thriller. Thrill is in the eyes of the observer, you may say, but objectively and going by the old fair-and-accurate, in doubles if you need at least one tie-break and a third set super-tiebreak (first to ten with two-point spread), as both the women and men’s winning teams did, I think it’s fair and accurate to use the term without risking drama inflation.

Baseball season did not start so well for the Dodgers — I always said they never should have left Brooklyn — with a betting scandal involving their Babe Ruth lookalike from Japan, Shohei Ohtani. Babe Ruth, I should note, has an important role in The Given Day; whether it is accurate historically I cannot say, but it does get the Babe right.  However, this gambling matter is embarrassing.

I don’t care much for gambling, but a man — or even a woman — can throw his money away in a free country. The problem is that, in sports, obviously, it’s one of those areas where the possibility of corruption is high — point shaving, throwing games, tanking, faking injuries, and so on; you have read too many stories, real and fictional, to be able to pretend it ain’t so. In this appalling case — the Dodgers have something like $1 billion now invested in its team’s payroll and the team still can’t get its act together to be a credible Series contender — the investigation(s) are still on, so I dasn’t comment. But it ain’t pretty. What this country needs is a serious moral revival, no less than a basic downsizing of government.

Anyway, the Iowa star Caitlin Clark led the Hawkeyes over Louisiana State University Monday night in the girls’ NCAA; they go up against UConn next. On the boys’ side, Purdue–North Carolina State is coming up on the weekend. And the clay court season in tennis begins; baseball heroics continue despite the cash avalanche; the shows go on. Don’t pay any mind to my gratuitous advice, but I’d say catch some of the basketball, stay focused on your own workout schedule, drink water and tea, give a low priority to IRS deadlines — I mean, obviously, request a delay if you need it and pay up later, they’re only going to throw your money away — and read The Given Day, as well as The Voice on the Back Porch and The Adventures of Augie March. Also the Federalist Papers. And a good week to all.

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