PRELUDE Fashionista or Anti-Fashionista? Tennis Traditionalist or Anti-Traditionalist? For many years now, BMS has pushed and pulled and rocked and rolled the world of tennis fashion: her iconic long socks, her various hats and head gear, her endless variety of dresses: leopard skin, zebra stripe, toga, metallica . . . anything imaginable or unimaginable by […]
The day after Christmas, my two daughters and I scattered Jacque’s ashes on the small beach in the picture above. Then we watched the waves come in and carry them out to sea. I told Anne and Emily to scatter my ashes here in the very same way. Below is the eulogy I read at […]
The Painting: Red, white, and blue. Gold splattered everywhere. The American flag not a Jasper John flag of ironic contemplation, but the rippling backdrop for a full-throated patriotic moment at the 2012 Olympic games. The Bryan Brothers, at 34, have just won their first (and only) gold medal, the greatest moment of their career. Their celebration […]
For two summers in the late 1970s, I played tennis every week with a much older player named Van Nguyen–a refugee from Vietnam who played with his shirt off and had the exact same body as the man in the picture above. He was a devilishly good tennis player who never missed and moved the […]
I’ve read lots of dry prose about Suzanne Lenglen. Words words words words . . . It’s stuffy inside and I open a window. The breeze coming in feels like turning the pages of Tom Humberstone’s new graphic novel: Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis. Suzanne’s not a fixed portrait, but a river, a […]
What’s the most impressive thing about the Egyptian Pyramids, the Terracotta Warriors? More widely known today than in their infancy, they have endured over 4 millennia. The pyramids and the contents within—the pharoah’s chair, his portrait hewed out of hardest stone, are built to last not only as monuments to the dead but as memorial […]
Day 1: Driving all day to Dothan, Alabama. 12 hours in the car with Doug and Bill. We talk tennis, theology, politics. BS, too. Remnants of Hurricane Nicole greet us with wind and rain an hour outside Dothan. Right next to our hotel is a Waffle House. Bill says let’s eat there. It feels like […]
I cry when I see that picture of me as a little girl. Helpless and alone after the surgery, she must lie on her stomach for a week. No one told mom or dad she might need a wheelchair. Alone in the bathroom after another gold medal, I must produce for the mandatory doping test. […]
Note: When I played high school tennis in the 1970s, I heard many say tennis was a “sissy” sport. Not sure I even knew what that meant: effeminate, gay . . . (not sure I even knew what “gay” meant at 15 years old). Those days are gone. Intriguing, though, that Gupta’s gay figure carries a […]
“God gave me two hands. I might as well use them both.” –Randy Sontheimer In the finals of the Colorado State Open, I hit a sharply angled crosscourt backhand. No way my opponent, Randy Sontheimer, could reach the shot. Suddenly he went lefty on me and punched a topspin forehand down the line for a […]