I recall @SeanJCrow following tennis pretty heavily and was even at one of our recent nattys?
Kinda strange to think of our Men’s tennis team (and Lax/women’s swimming) as the equivalent of UCLA basketball in the 70s and it not being a gross exaggeration (not sure if 10 titles in 12 years dominant lol)
Women’s swimming is particularly remarkable. If not for Covid, they would have 4 NC’s in a row, and they are heavy favorites again this year. On top of that, if things go as expected, we should get to see multiple UVA swimmers on the podium in Paris this Summer!
Navarro wins her first tournament!!
Australian open popped up after the Manning vision of Eagles game. And they did a split screen with Navaro and Collins. That was cool
Cool little breakdown of Navarro’s rise:
She grinded through a huge amount of matches for a tour level player, especially a lot more on the circuit that is a notch below the WTA. And she is a late-bloomer (by pro tennis standards) who also had a big acceleration in rankings:
It’s not unusual for a player to finally achieve a double-digit ranking when they are 21 or older, but it’s rare for a future starto do so–and now that Navarro is a tour-level title-holder ensconced in the top 30, she deserves that label. Since 1990, there have been 207 players who finished their age-21 season ranked between 101 and 200 without a previous appearance in the top 100. Only 25 of them reached #100 at the end of the following year; Navarro was only the fourth to crack the top 50.
Of those 200-plus players, only 35 of them ever achieved a top-40 ranking. (A few more, including Katie Boulter and Katie Volynets, could still join the group.) On average, it took them 1437 days–just short of four years–to do so. Navarro needed only 315 days, the second-fastest in the last 30-plus years.
Navarro also won her doubles match last night. Dont know if its worth it to waste energy instead of focusing on singles. Or maybe it keeps her warmed up for the next singles match
I think it was the $17k for making the second round (after splitting with her partner) that maybe makes it worth it.
When I get small POs w/ very little margin that equates to almost no commission, I always equate it to how many times I could order a cheeseburger instead of a hamburger at McDonalds.
That was a hell of a match by Collins. They looked evenly matched most of the way. Hate that she couldn’t pull it out.
Ill be long asleep by then but looks like Navarro will probably be on in one to two hours. Mens match before hers just started on court kia.
Wow. Feels like she’s still at the top of her game, especially after that match. But she mentions kids (among other things), and she’s 30, so I get it.
Its always been wild to me how the men have been this dominant force while the women have merely been very good, yet the women’s team is the one producing successful pros.
Yeah, and tennis has historically been a young person’s sport. It doesn’t seem like a rough physical sport, but playing at that level is just brutal on the joints. We used to host women’s players for the pro tournament at the Boars Head and got to be pretty good friends with some of them. And they all talked about how it beats the hell out of you.
Something like 40% of all men’s grand slam tournaments won by guys over the age of 30 have happened in the last 10 years. For decades, it was just a given that once you hit 30 you were either done or nearly done, especially for women.
Steffi Graff retired at 30, Justine Henin retired at 29, Monica Seles retired at 30 (though her situation was so weird and tragic its hard to say what her trajectory would have been if she hadn’t been stabbed), and Martina Hingis retired for the final time at 37 but it was almost all doubles as she’d basically quit playing singles by 27. 30 is just the point where, historically, the wheels come off.
Interesting article. Top women’s players are definitely going pro later than when I was growing up and following tennis much more closely than I do now. They’re also still playing at much older ages and post-childbirth, which was unheard of in the 80s.
Like Navarro’s hitting the top 100 at age 22, which is on the older side, but the article mentions the median is age 19.5 or so and I was thinking back to when Jennifer Capriati and Aranxta Sanchez and Martina Hingis were making their debuts and moving up the rankings at like 14-15.
Tennis… the young person’s pickleball
I’m sure all the retired tennis pros are dominating their local pickleball leagues and blowing out their Achilles & ACLs in the process. 
