Canada’s Milos Raonic returns to Tommy Paul of the US in a men’s singles match on day four of the Wimbledon tennis championships in London, on July 6.Alberto Pezzali/The Associated Press
The other day, Milos Raonic was asked what tradition or ritual in tennis he would change if he could.
Raonic seems different since returning from his years in the wilderness. Less tightly wound. More forthcoming. The old Raonic would have slapped the question away. New Raonic just shot off the top of his head.
“‘Followed by’ matches,” the Canadian said. “I think it would change the average fans’ experience if they knew when a match started. And when, if they were excited for a match, when that would be on TV. Not with this ‘followed by’ stuff.”
Right? Seriously – what’s with ‘followed by’ in tennis?
This is the process at a big tournament in which most matches are followed by another, especially in the early going. So if Match 1 starts at 11 a.m., it is followed by Match 2, which might start at 1 p.m. Or 3. Or if Match 1 turns into a five-set all-timer, at 5.
How many fewer people would watch baseball if the Jays played some time after the Cubs’ game ended? ‘Coming up – the Cubs, followed by Toronto versus New York. We’ll get that second one started before midnight. Fingers crossed.’
There’s no fixing it altogether, but there is a way to make things better – start earlier. More available work hours in the day equals more certainty.
But morning starts are bad for TV audiences, which is bad for advertisers, which is bad for business. So the pain is passed on to players.
It would be one thing – still not a great thing, but a different thing – if that pain was spread around equally. But it isn’t. The lower you are on the greasy tennis pole, the more likely you are to get jobbed by ‘followed by.’
At this year’s Wimbledon, Canada’s Bianca Andreescu has been caught in that scheduling wood chipper.
Andreescu was scheduled to begin her tournament on Tuesday. She didn’t exactly get a prime-time spot – fifth match on Court 16. If the weather had been perfect, that would still have been a tough ask. The weather wasn’t perfect.
So after showing up and hanging around for hours, Andreescu was told to come back to try again on Wednesday. She was scheduled for the fifth match again, this time on Court 14.
More rain. That didn’t happen either.
The obvious thing would have been to schedule her first on whatever court for Thursday. That also didn’t happen. Andreescu and her Hungarian opponent, Anna Bondar, were given the second slot on Court 17.
On Thursday morning, world No. 1 Iga Swiatek, who plays under a roof on Centre Court or Court 1 with the cool kids, advanced to her third-round match.
Hours later, Andreescu, world No. 50, who plays out in the open with the rest of the WTA’s plebs, started her first-round match.
“It’s definitely very frustrating having to wait around. … That’s life for many of us,” Andreescu said. And that was after winning her match. It would be a lot more frustrating had she lost.
“I’m trying to control the controllables,” Andreescu said. “And those things I can’t control [shrug] until I’m seeded again.”
She gets it. Even at this level, the players exists in two worlds – haves (rankings) and haves not. By design, only one of them is conducive to winning majors.
If the seeds versus non-seeds is one dividing line, so is the young versus the aged.
The budding star of this tournament is Franco-Russian 16-year-old, Mirra Andreeva. You know how some people have that thing? That thing that’s hard to define that gets people interested? Andreeva has so much of it, she must make the sound of a cash register as she passes. If she is anywhere near as good as people say she will be, she’s going to be bigger than the Beatles.
But Andreeva is still 102nd-ranked in the world, meaning she also got put through the weather wringer. Her first-round match was played late Wednesday evening. Her second-round match began about 12 hours later. Andreeva ground her way through the first, and romped in the second.
“Today, I can say I feel fresh,” Andreeva said later, and then – “I feel tired. But that’s okay. I feel tired almost every day.”
Ah, youth.
Meanwhile, Raonic was over on Court 4-hundred-and-something proving his own point.
Playing ranked American Tommy Paul was always going to be a big ask for a man who is returning after a years-long absence. But playing Tommy Paul less than a day after his previous match was like asking Raonic to turn water to wine. Some miracles are too much to ask.
Halfway through the first set, Raonic was laid out on the deck while a physio worked on his shoulder. He muscled his way through the rest of the match. He even looked like he was fully in it at times. But it was never in any doubt. Raonic went down in four sets.
So how are things looking for Canada? Better than you feared, and not as good as you hoped.
Leylah Fernandez was a third-set tiebreak from upsetting world No. 5 Caroline Garcia. Though she lost on Thursday, Fernandez, 20, kind of, sort of resembled the player she was when she made a U.S. Open final in 2021.
The most hopeful development is Denis Shapovalov. Several good things happened for him on Thursday.
First, he won his second-round match.
Second, the guy you assumed he’d be playing in the third round, French Open finalist Casper Ruud, lost.
Third, the guy who beat Ruud, Liam Broady, did so in a five-set comeback. Afterward, Broady, a Brit, said, “I said to my mom this morning – she doesn’t like watching – I said, ‘Look, I’ve already won 80 grand this week so you can chill out.’”
Not exactly the eye of the tiger, is it?
And lastly, because of the goofy scheduling, Shapovalov and Broady will play Friday.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
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