Blog

Aug 18, 2023

Monday Cannon Fodder: fun and entertainment

Filed under: Good Monday morning, TSFers. I hope everyone had a nice weekend and is prepared for the relentless heat that has already or will hit most of the United States this week. Stay cool and

Filed under:

Good Monday morning, TSFers. I hope everyone had a nice weekend and is prepared for the relentless heat that has already or will hit most of the United States this week. Stay cool and hydrated — extreme heat is no joke.

Sidenote: you know how people joke about getting older — stay off my lawn and be careful, you’ll put an eye out? I’m periodically having out-of-body experiences where I realize all of those jokes are spot on. A heatwave wouldn’t have registered with me 10 years ago. Now, I’m concerned about people being negatively affected and reminding y’all to drink water.

Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about this morning. There were some really fun and entertaining sports over the weekend. If you’ve been reading CF for a while, you’ll probably recognize the variation on a theme: sport is great and meant to be enjoyed.

The Wimbledon finals were incredible. Unseeded Marketa Vondrousova beat returning runner-up Ons Jabeur in the Women’s Singles to become the first unseeded champion ever. Vondrousova missed last year’s competition recovering from surgery on her wrist. She had some success early in her career — runner up at the 2019 French Open and a silver medal at the Olympics — but those who know tennis said she was probably underperforming her potential. That is, until now. Jabeur, despite the heartbreak, is a fantastic story. As an Arab woman from North Africa, she is a trailblazer and a standard-bearer in tennis. She’ll get her breakthrough win soon.

The Men’s Final was an instant classic, one of the better tennis matches in terms of overall quality that we’ve seen in years. 20-year old Carlos Alcaraz beat Novak Djokovic in a five-set thriller to become the youngest men’s winner since Boris Becker in 1985. Just four men have won Wimbledon since Alcaraz was born — Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray. Alcaraz’s win might be an inflection point in men’s tennis, the tournament we point to as the moment when the next generation of stars started to take over. The tennis was excellent too, incredible shot after incredible shot from both competitors.

The American Century Classic, the celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe, was a different kind of fun and entertaining. Steph Curry went birdie-birdie, including a long eagle putt on the 18th to win. Not for nothing, he also shot a hole-in-one on Saturday. That tournament is always a great watch — the players have fun, the fans are into it, there is plenty of off-course hijinks to lighten the mood, and the Lake Tahoe backdrop is gorgeous.

We get so involved in Arsenal and our other teams that we can sometimes forget how incredible sport can be. It’s meant to be fun and entertaining. It’s nice to be reminded of that from time to time with a few days of excellent sport — this weekend delivered.