Sports
Party for Barty at Australian Open; Sharapova, Kerber out
MELBOURNE, Australia — It was like a party at Rod Laver Arena. A partisan crowd backed Ash Barty, booed Maria Sharapova and celebrated wildly when the first Australian woman in a decade reached the quarterfinals at Melbourne Park.
Rod Laver was there watching, among the tennis greats. Prime Minister Scott Morrison in his green Aussie cap was cheering from the side of the court. It was in vogue for Aussies to be watching. Anna Wintour, too.
It took four match points and 2 hours, 22 minutes before Barty fended off 2008 champion Sharapova 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, reaching the quarterfinals of a major for the first time. She’s the first Australian woman since Jelena Dokic to reach the last eight at the home Grand Slam tournament. No Aussie woman has won it in 41 years.
“It’s amazing that it’s … happening in Australia,” Barty said, reflecting on her first goal for 2019. “I have given myself the opportunity and the chance to play in front of the best crowd in the world on one of the best courts in the world and in my home Slam. There is absolutely nothing better.”
She’ll next play two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova, who defeated 17-year-old American Amanda Anisimova 6-2, 6-1 in 59 minutes to return to the Australian Open quarterfinals for the first time in seven years.
Another former No. 1 and former Australian titlist quickly followed Sharapova out when Danielle Collins upset three-time major winner Angelique Kerber 6-0, 6-2.
Collins had never won a match at a Grand Slam before coming to Australia — now she’s won four straight and eliminated No. 14 Julia Goerges, No. 19 Caroline Garcia and No. 2 Kerber along the way. She’ll face either 2017 U.S. Open champion Sloane Stephens or Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the quarterfinals.
Sharapova won the first set but was struggling with her serve, and finished with 10 double-faults in the match. After dropping the second set — midway through Barty’s nine-game winning streak — Sharapova took an extended break in the locker room and was booed when she came back to court. That’s a rarity for the five-time Grand Slam winner in these parts.
A comeback was always on the cards, and Sharapova nearly delivered — recovering from 4-0 down in the deciding set, forcing Barty to serve it out, and saving three match points when she did.
Two seasons back from her break to pursue a career in cricket, Barty has become Australia’s best chance of producing a local champion since 1978. In her on-court interview, she saluted her former cricket team and said she’d watched on TV the previous day as they qualified for the national final.
“I needed to take that time away,” she said, reflecting on her time out playing cricket. “I feel like I came back a better person on and off the court, a better tennis player.”
Her immediate concern, though, is getting past Kvitova, who beat her in the final of the Sydney International last week.
Kvitova wanted no part of another loss to Anisimova, who beat her last year at Indian Wells and was the youngest American since Jennifer Capriati in 1993 to make it this far at Melbourne Park.
And so she went on the attack early, breaking in the first game. Kvitova was the model of consistency that the two other seeded players previously vanquished by Anisimova — No. 24 Lesia Tsurenko and No. 11 Aryna Sabalenka — were not.
Kvitova had to miss the Australian Open in 2017 because she was still overcoming injuries to her left hand that she sustained in a home invasion the previous month at her place in the Czech Republic. She lost in the first round here last year.
She’s now on a nine-match winning streak, her four wins here come after a title run in Sydney, and is into the quarterfinals here for the first time since 2012.
“When I’m counting the years, it’s pretty long,” Kvitova said. “But, you know, sometimes the waiting time is worth for it. I’m not complaining at all.”
Kvitova broke Anisimova’s serve five times and never faced a break point. She got 86
“She came out with a really solid game plan against me. That kind of threw me off — it was different from my other matches,” said Anisimova, who will go home with her first Grand Slam match wins to her credit, and a much higher profile. “I was hoping that I’d just win a first-round match, so getting this far means a lot to me.”
Frances Tiafoe celebrated his 21st birthday with a spot in his first major quarterfinal, beating No. 20-seeded Grigor Dmitrov 7-5 7-6 (6), 6-7 (1), 7-5. The American took off his shirt, flexed his right bicep and waved to the crowd on Melbourne Arena.
After beating the likes of No. 5 Kevin Anderson and Dmitrov, the road ahead gets significantly tougher for Tiafoe. He next plays No. 2-seeded Rafael Nadal, the 17-time major winner who didn’t let Tomas Berdych on the scoreboard for 1
Nadal beat Australians in the first three rounds and then dominated a long-time rival, winning the first nine games before the 2010 Wimbledon finalist finally held serve and held up his left fist in mock celebration.
“When you’re back, you need a little bit of the luck in the beginning,” said Nadal, who didn’t play a competitive match between the last U.S. Open and the season-opening major in Australia because of injuries. “I’m in the quarterfinals, let’s see what happens now.”
In other action, Canadian Gabriela Dabrowski and partner Mate Pavic of Croatia, who are ranked No. 1 and the defending mixed doubles champions at the Australian Open, are moving on.
The 26-year-old from Ottawa and Pavic toppled the Australian duo of Priscilla Hon and Alexei Popyrin in first-round action 6-3, 6-3.
___
More AP Tennis: https://www.apnews.com/apf-Tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
John Pye, The Associated Press
The Toronto Maple Leafs made the “what colour is that green light?” decision to fire their head coach Sheldon Keefe last week. The removal of Keefe after five years followed a dispiriting first-round playoff series loss to a very ordinary Boston Bruins team. Coaching may or may not have been the root cause of that loss. (Keefe himself admitted “teams are waiting for the Leafs to beat themselves”.)
The real reason for the firing is 1967, and we don’t think we need add more than that.
In essence, the management of MLSE— the owner of the Maple Leafs and a lot of other sports stuff in Toronto— needed to throw a body to the baying hounds of disappointment. Also known as Leafs Nation. Newly minted CEO Keith Pelley, fresh from the PGA Tour/ LIV psychodrama, was certainly not going to pay the price.
Nor was GM Brad Treliving who has only been on the job for two seasons. The key decisions on Toronto’s lopsided salary cap were decided long before Treliving occupied his desk. That left two people in vulnerable positions. 1) Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan, who has been drawing an MLSE cheque for a decade. 2) Keefe.
When was the last time you saw a coach fire a team president? Precisely. Keefe joins the list of (briefly) unemployed coaches who circulate in the NHL like McKinsey consultants. Shanahan gets a lukewarm mulligan from Pelley. But after the failure of the Kyle Dubas experiment— “who needs experience?”— and now just a single playoff series win in a decade Shanny’s best-before date has arrived.
Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan attends a news conference in Toronto on April 14, 2014. Toronto Maple Leafs president Brendan Shanahan said Peter Horachek will remain the team’s interim head coach until the end of the season. Shanahan met the media Friday for the first time since coach Randy Carlyle was fired on Tuesday. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Depending on who he and Treliving enlist to coach— remember, Mike Babcock was too tough and Keefe was probably too player friendly— it had better produce instant results. Because Shanny, the pride of Mimico, is out of chances. The coach choice will also be affected by whichever player or players that management decides are superfluous to ending the Leafs’ ridiculous run of misery.
The Leafs brass’ press conference last Thursday did little to shed light on what happens after Keefe’s expulsion. Just a lot of MBA determinism on a bed of baffle gab. A crabby Steve Simmons question/rant briefly threatened the harmony of the moment, but order was restored. And the media bitching switched from the press box to social media and podcasts.
Speaking of the fourth estate, the other unmentioned aspect of this story— indeed every story in the NHL these days— is just how it was revealed to the public. When people sipped their morning Tim’s or Starbucks the (almost) coincident bulletins came down the social media pike about Keefe’s dismissal.
Predictably, Chris Johnston of Sportsnet and Daren Dreger of TSN announced the breaking news within heart beats of each other. While there had been speculation on Keefe’s fate for days, the announcement coming from the networks duo confirmed the story in the minds of the industry. That allowed everyone else drawing a cheque as a hockey journalist to pile in and swarm the dead body.
In today’s sports journalism, where social media has replaced newspapers, scoops are governed by a protocol. There are the heralds— in the NHL it’s currently Johnston and Dreger— and then there are the disseminators. The days of a rabble of reporters all scrambling to get a story bigger than who-will-play-in-tonight’s-game are gone. Today, it’s a very narrow funnel for scoops.
It’s the same in the NFL where Ian Rappaport (NFL Network) and Adam Schefter (ESPN) monopolize the tasty scoops on behalf of their employers, who also happen to be NFL rights holders. In the NBA, Brian Windhorst (ESPN) has the inside rail when it comes to the LeBron James/ Steph Curry scoops. In MLB… it’s probably Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic) but no one cares about baseball anymore, do they?
The leagues like it this way, doling out stories to guys they can trust. None of this is criticism of Johnston or Dreger, who have deftly maneuvered themselves into the coveted “from their lips to your ears” spots. From our own experience we can remember the exhilaration of having the best source or sources on the really big stories. Like Johnston/ Dreger, we worked hard for a long time to develop those sources and only very reluctantly let anyone else horn in on our stories.
It was also our observation that this order of things journalistic suited a lot of reporters who either couldn’t get good sources or didn’t want the stress of being first on stuff. It was enough that, like the Keefe story, they’d get the goods eventually and most fans would not care who was first. So long as you had a take. So be it.
Some resentful types took potshots at our work if it upset their pals in the dressing room or the management suite. On the Stephen Ames/ Tiger Woods story in 2001, we had the late Pat Marsden tell us on air that we’d done a great job on Ames’ criticisms of Tiger. Only to hear him lambaste us— again on FAN 590— only minutes later as we listened driving home from the studio. But we digress.
Many reporters are complacent in playing the game, so long as their bosses didn’t enquire why they are getting scooped all the time by the same few rivals. With the death of daily newspapers that doesn’t happen much any longer. (Many editors today may only see stories when publication brings a libel notice.) For them a salty take is good enough.
The scoop business is also affected by the multiple roles now demanded of sports media types. In addition to their “day job” on a beat they also have to supply digital content and talk-back hits to the Mother Ship. Most also are feeding a weekly podcast, dictating time on air rather than time working the phone. There are only so many hours in a day to chase a story.
Better to play the Breaking News waiting game.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Now for pre-order, new from the team of Evan & Bruce Dowbiggin . Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL & Changed Hockey. From Espo to Boston in 1967 to Gretz in L.A. in 1988 to Patrick Roy leaving Montreal in 1995, the stories behind the story. Launching in paperback and Kindle on #Amazon this week. Destined to be a hockey best seller. https://www.amazon.ca/Deal-Trades-Stunned-Changed-Hockey-ebook/dp/B0D236NB35/
Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum
THE HALFTIME REPORT News from the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
New Analysis Shows Just How Bad Electric Trucks Are For Business
THE HALFTIME REPORT News from the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame
AstraZeneca withdraws COVID vaccines worldwide amid lawsuits alleging severe harm
Internet censorship laws lead a majority of Canadians to believe free speech is threatened: poll
Quebec microbiology professor fired for his public opposition to COVID shots
Parent and gender dysphoria groups granted intervenor status in New Brunswick school policy case
Taxpayers Federation presents Teddy Waste Awards for worst government waste
-
conflict2 days ago‘It Makes No Sense’: Experts Puzzled By Biden Admin’s Claim That Rafah Invasion Wouldn’t Help Israel Defeat Hamas
-
COVID-192 days agoThe New York Times Admits Injuries from COVID-19 Shots
-
Bruce Dowbiggin2 days ago
Why Do The Same Few Always Get The Best Sports Scoops?
-
Energy2 days agoFederal government continues to reject golden opportunities to export LNG
-
Energy2 days agoBuckle Up for Summer Blackouts: Wind Is Already Failing Texas in Spring
-
COVID-192 days agoFormer COVID coordinator Deborah Birx now admits jabs could have injured ‘thousands’
-
Opinion1 day agoCanada’s fertility, marriage rates plummet to record lows: report
-
Brownstone Institute19 hours agoThe WHO’s Proposed Pandemic Agreements Worsen Public Health