By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England—For Roger Federer, it might have been a last great hurrah.
Time and a young Canadian caught up with Federer on Friday in the Wimbledon men’s semifinals, with Milos Raonic scoring a 6-3, 6-7 (3), 4-6, 7-5, 6-3 win in what appeared to be a changing of the guard.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England — Serena Williams never lost her serve. Sister Venus had trouble even holding hers. And so one last all-Williams final at Wimbledon, where they’ve made so much history — and, in Serena’s case, still making it — is not to be.
Serena needed only 48 minutes to crush Russia’s bewildered Elena Vesnina, 6-2, 6-0, on Thursday in the first women’s semifinal on Centre Court, dropping only three of a possible 31 points on her serve. “Serve is very important for me,” Serena affirmed.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
WIMBLEDON, England — It’s the old guy who’s taking the beating. Not Roger Federer. Not, on the ladies side, Venus Williams. It’s Father Time — Mother Time, if you will — getting smacked around like one of those official Slazenger balls they use at Wimbledon.
We keep hearing about the next generation, about the youth movement, about the future of tennis. So far this Wimbledon, future is very much of the past, of two players who, as Federer’s former coach Paul Annacone said about his onetime pupil, “wrestled Father Time to a stalemate.”
Federer did better than that against Marin Cilic, Thumped him but good. Came from two sets down in their quarter-final Wednesday, came from a situation where we were hoping Federer, a month from his 35th birthday, wouldn’t be embarrassed by Marin Cilic.
But it was Cilic who was not so much embarrassed as stunned. Federer saved three match points, beat Cilic 6-7, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-3, and now will face the Canadian Milos Raonic in one of Friday’s semis.
Venus, of course, advanced Tuesday. Her semi is Thursday against Angelique Kerber, and because Kerber — the Australian Open champion who beat Venus’ sister Serena in the final in January — is eight years younger than 36-year-old Venus, you’d think Kerber would win.
But we also thought Cilic, after winning the first two sets, would win. Especially because we thought Federer was too old. On the contrary, he’s too good. Maybe he doesn’t win an eighth Wimbledon. Maybe he doesn’t win an 18th Grand Slam. What he’s done is enough. Now and forever.
Federer saved seven breakpoints out of eight. Three of those were match points. Against Cilic, who won the U.S. Open in 2014, against a man with a huge serve and a big forehand. Against a player who had Federer off balance and out of sorts.
“Yeah, I mean I remember just being in trouble the whole time,” agreed Federer.
What others will remember is that Roger Federer somehow won a match even he was unsure he could win. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my God,’ all of a sudden there’s match point, all of a sudden there’s a breakpoint to save," he said. "It just was continuous, for an hour or two. After I lost the second set, anything you touch and do is crucial.
“You always know at that point, as well, he’s going to have his chances.”
Chances mean little unless they can be used to one’s advantage. “Huge disappointment for me losing this way,” said Cilic. How many times do you think that thought has appeared after matches against Federer? You have him beat. Then you don’t. All the magic without a rabbit or a hat.
“I managed to hit pretty good shots,” said Cilic, “but he ended up hitting great passes. Nothing that I could do there.”
In another semi, Raonic made Sam Querrey feel much the same. Querrey, who was born in San Francisco and grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, was the first American male to get to the Wimbledon quarters since Mardy Fish in 2011. Querrey had upset top-ranked Novak Djokovic in the third round. Against Raonic, he was always trailing — other than the third set.
“I felt like I had some momentum there,” said Querrey. “Had a breakpoint the first game of the fourth set. If I can somehow get that point, it might change the match around, move it more to 50-50. He threw in a good kick serve as a first serve, which he hadn’t done. Then I was back on my heels a little bit, kind of always playing catch up.”
Then Raonic was headed for a 6-4, 7-5, 5-7, 6-4 victory and a battle against Federer. “I’m happy to have another shot at him,” said Raonic. So, of course, was Cilic.
“He plays at a great level most of the time,” said Cilic of Federer. “His physique allows him to play an aggressive game. From the back court, players can’t hurt him.
“He’s not superhuman. But I don’t believe he’s slowing down. He possesses great speed. That’s something you’re born with.”
Whether he was born with a fighting spirit doesn’t matter. He has it. So does Venus Williams. They keep beating the old guy.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
LONDON — The tweet had nothing to do with tennis, but everything to do with Brad Gilbert. “Did you order your Durant Dubs jersey yet?” the messenger wondered. “Which one, baby blue, gold or home Wimbledon white.”
Gilbert had a ready if slightly inaccurate response. “I don’t wear jerseys, I am 55 years old, maybe a new lid though.”
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England — It was a day that had occurred only three times the previous 138 years of the Championships, a day so special there was an imprint on the program cover, “Middle Sunday.” A day that left Coco Vandeweghe enthralled, Serena Williams noncommittal and weary John Isner understandably disenchanted.
Frequent rain had forced Wimbledon to go against its best plans, and the wishes of the town that makes up one of many in greater London. Wimbledon, Borough of Merton, chooses for players, grass courts and the thousands of fans who overwhelm to have a break the end of opening week. But when the weather messes up the schedule, then there’s Middle Sunday, or because tickets are available to anyone who moves fast, “People’s Sunday.”
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
WIMBLEDON, England — The great Roger Federer could see the upset coming. Even if the rest of us, and Novak Djokovic, perhaps did not.
Californian Sam Querrey defeated Djokovic, the No. 1-ranked player in the world, in four often-interrupted sets played over two days.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
Los Angeles Times
WIMBLEDON, ENGLAND — He looked across the net, this tennis player with a dream but no reputation, this Englishman who somehow made it not only to Wimbledon but also Centre Court, and there he saw Roger Federer.
“It was a bit surreal,” he confided.
Copyright © 2016, Los Angeles Times
By Art Spander
WIMBLEDON, England — Chaos anyone? Sorry, I meant tennis anyone. Yes, another Wimbledon, with fans queuing overnight and swallowing strawberries and cream. But really not another Wimbledon.
This is the first Wimbledon after, against the best advice, Great Britain waved goodbye to logic and the rest of Europe, voting itself into isolation and, some warn, economic disaster. Brexit was the clever phrase about the not-so-clever move out of the European Union.
“It’s been like threatening to leave home when you’re 13,” the novelist Howard Jacobsen wrote Sunday in the Observer about the vote. “You hope it will scare the living daylights out of your parents. But only the insane actually do it.”
So perhaps the return of the All-England Championships for a 130th time is specifically what the battered, shattered non-united kingdom needs to remind itself that all is not lost, unless like poor Englishman James Ward on Monday you had to face Novak Djokovic and were dropped 7-0, 7-6 (3), 6-4.
As always there is change. The newsstand next to Wimbledon’s first aid office has closed, another blow to journalism. Ah, but the shuttle cabs from Southfields station on the District Line — “Alight here Wimbledon tennis,” advises a disembodied voice — still cost two pounds, 50 pence. Even though, because of the pound’s devaluation, the dollar cost is less than it was last Friday, something like $3.23 as opposed to $3.60.
And Venus Williams, who turned 36 a week and a half ago, still plays capably, despite the years and the anti-immune syndrome from which she has suffered. On this very memorable first day, Venus, a surprisingly high eighth seed, beat Donna Vekic of Croatia, 7-6, 6-4.
“I still feel 26,” said Venus, who won women’s singles in 2000 — 16 years ago for heaven’s sake — and three other times. “I don’t know if anyone feels older. You have this infinity inside of you that feels like you could go forever. That’s how I feel on the court. As long as I can get my racquet on the ball, I think I can make something happen.”
Younger sister Serena (who will be 35 in September) is defending champion. Yet Serena, favored at the subsequent U.S. Open in an attempt to win the true "Grand Slam" or all four majors in a calendar year, was upset in the semifinals. Serena then lost in the finals of both the Australian Open in January and the French, three weeks ago.
She plays Tuesday as tradition holds: the women’s champ returning the second day, the men’s, the seemingly unbeatable Djokovic, the first day. “The first part of the match,” confirmed Djokovic of his play against Ward, “was almost flawless. So I’m very pleased with the way I started Wimbledon.”
Djokovic, of course, is from Serbia, which is waiting to be accepted into the European Union. Well, there’s an extra space now, isn’t there? One country wanted out, another wants in. Seems like a good swap, knowing the way the British majority voted.
“I’m just curious to see what the future holds for Britain and for the European Union,” said Djokovic when quizzed about the loss of money from Wimbledon due to the pound's decline. “I’m not in a position to more profoundly discuss this matter.”
Nor would he speculate on whether he can do what Serena in 2015 could not, win a Grand Slam, last accomplished by a male player by Rod Laver in 1969 — who also won all four in 1962 as an amateur.
The only other Grand Slam winner was Don Budge, in 1938. Budge, who grew up in Oakland where the courts he learned on are now named for him, wanted to be a baseball player. Joe DiMaggio, who grew up across the bay in San Francisco, told Budge he had hoped to play tennis. The second choice wasn’t bad for either.
Djokovic, 29, beginning with last year’s Wimbledon, has won the last four majors, a “Novak Slam,” if you will, but he’s still only halfway to the Grand Slam, needing victories here and in September at the U.S. Open. Serena, hesitant last summer to ruminate about her chances, is very willing to do so about Djokovic’s this summer.
"He has every opportunity to do it," she said. "I think he'll get it easy. So he should be fine."
Not to be the skeptic, but didn’t the experts predict the Brits would choose to stay in the European Union? We all make mistakes. Especially, we’re told, the British electorate.
By Art Spander
Global Golf Post
OAKMONT, PENNSYLVANIA — He had telegraphed his feelings clearly upon arrival. "I'm obviously excited to be here," Rory McIlroy told us a few days earlier at Oakmont. But now after missing the cut he wasn't saying anything other than, "I'm not talking."
Copyright 2016 Global Golf Post
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
The crowd had come for a coronation, a celebration, an evening of noise and joy on which their basketball team, the Warriors, the record setters, the defending champions, would make it two titles in row, would start an NBA dynasty. But something was missing — maybe because someone was missing, Draymond Green.
And so the noise ebbed, the joy diminished. The coronation was put on hold.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
There’s only one winner. As we know so well. And so painfully, if the players we choose, the team we choose, is not that winner. Then too often, that ultimate loss, in the Wimbledon final, in the Super Bowl or in this instance for the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup, overwhelms all the bliss and the results that went before.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
SAN FRANCISCO — Bruce Bochy told us it was just a game. Of course, that was before it was played. That was two hours before the first pitch, and a reporter wondered if the Giants against the Red Sox would give both teams, particularly San Francisco, the chance to find out whether each was as good as some thought.
Including the players.
“Same thing when the Cubs came in,” said Bochy, the Giants manager. “What these guys (his Giants) have been through, I don’t think they have to measure themselves against anybody.” Then he added, “This is a tough group, Boston.”
Very tough. And if the game, which the Sox won 5-3 in 10 cold innings Tuesday night at AT&T Park, wasn’t a measure, for the Giants it had to be a disappointment — and proof that missed tags and wild throws will beat you just as quickly as big hits.
No, this one wasn’t ordinary. Maybe no game involving the Red Sox is ordinary. Boston people can’t get out of their city quick enough. They go to Florida, to California, everywhere.
But if they leave the premises, they don’t leave their fanaticism for the old town team. They take great delight in overwhelming visiting ballparks, chanting “Let’s go Boston,” and generally acting as if the Red Sox had never traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.
It’s one thing when, say, the Boston expatriates fill the normally empty seats at the Oakland Coliseum when the Red Sox face the A’s. But to see them swarming sold out AT&T is a bit unnerving. The place looked and sounded like Fenway West.
“Boston has a huge following,” Bochy as much as warned pre-game when asked if this two-game series were special, “and so do we. Both are storied franchises that have been very successful the past decade. It creates interest. These two teams are having great years.”
The most recent part of the Giants’ year has been less than great. San Francisco now has dropped three straight, two on the road to the St. Louis Cardinals and then the return home against the Red Sox.
“The little things hurt us,” said Bochy. He meant catcher Trevor Brown throwing the ball into center field on Jackie Bradley Jr.’s steal in the seventh, then on a ground ball to short by pinch hitter David Ortiz, the runner from first, Chris Young, eluding the tag by a diving Brandon Crawford. What looked like it could have been a double play instead was only a single out, and Bradley dashed in from third to tie the game, 3-3.
In the 10th, with Santiago Casilla working his second inning for the Giants, Boston’s Mookie Betts laid down a bunt with two on and no one out — and beat it out. “We didn’t handle that one,” said Bochy. Not at all.
The Giants did get the runner from third on a force at home, but then with two strikes Xander Bogaerts blooped a ball in front of center fielder Denard Span, driving in the game-winners.
If there was any consolation for the Giants, it was the pitching of Albert Suarez, making his second start of the season. “We just want him to give us a chance,” Bochy said before the game. “I hope he throws like he did in his last start.”
He threw better, allowing only five hits, one walk and two earned runs in 6 1/3 innings. “Albert did a great job,” affirmed Bochy.
Which most of us wouldn’t say about Casilla, although Bochy wasn’t critical of his closer, especially since he pitched more than the normal one inning. Sandy Leon led off the 10th with a double, however, and Casilla and the Giants were in trouble.
“That’s a tough lineup,” said Bochy of the Red Sox. “They lead the majors in offense and scoring. I thought our pitching did a very good job.”
When someone wondered if he might change his closer, Bochy all but shrugged. “I still have confidence in Casilla,” he said.
By Art Spander
SAN JOSE — What are the Sharks going to say? That they’re not as good as the Pittsburgh Penguins — which, obviously, they’re not. Athletes never say that, even though deep down, beneath the beards and the clichés, they may think that way.
Instead, they tell us what we’ve heard dozens of times from teams in a hole — mainly that they just need a break or, more precisely, a goal.
Just need to play from in front, something that in the first Stanley Cup final of their quarter-century history, the San Jose Sharks have been unable to do.
They did win the third game in overtime on Saturday. But those few seconds that led to eternity marked the only time in four games, including Monday night’s 3-1 loss, that the Sharks held a lead.
The Penguins were favored in this final, and it’s easy to understand why. They skate better, score faster and keep control. Four games, the last two here at SAP, where the enthusiasm of the sellout crowds diminished as the periods mounted — reality can crush even the most optimistic of fans — and there’s no mistaking a trend. Or a mismatch.
So strange the comparisons between the Bay Area’s two teams in the finals, the Warriors, rolling along in the NBA over a Cleveland Cavaliers squad that is saying it just needs to perform as normal, and the Sharks, being rolled over — all right, skated over — and uttering the same responses.
This doesn’t mean either the Sharks or Cavs are to be keel-hauled by that awful description, loser, because how can you be a loser if the team has won enough to reach the final step? It’s just that the media and the fans put so much stock in championships that sometimes the character and success that had everyone gleeful is abruptly discounted.
Sure, the Sharks could win the next game, Thursday in Pittsburgh, but also it could snow Thursday in San Jose. Neither will happen. Yes, as Sharks coach Peter DeBoer said matter-of-factly, the games have been close — Game 4 on Monday was the only one decided by more than one goal — but that emphasizes even more the difference between the teams.
The Penguins find ways to win the close games. That’s the ultimate mark of a champion.
“We’ve got to find a way to get on the board early,” DeBoer said. Exactly. But why would they be able to do it now when they couldn’t four consecutive games?
The only thing that’s certain is if they don’t have the lead when the next game is over, the series is over, and the Sharks will be standing there at the handshake contemplating next year.
Maybe they already are. Joe Pavelski, who played so many years before reaching the Cup final, implied that the Sharks on occasion have been virtual spectators, maybe overwhelmed by playing on the NHL’s biggest stage.
“Sometimes the players didn’t make the play,” he said. “You want to keep it simple.” You’ve heard it before in other sports: the Super Bowl is just a football game, the U.S. Open just a golf tournament. But when you’ve never been there after waiting your whole career, years and years, to get there, the approach is different — not necessarily frenzied, but less focused. Or too focused, not relaxed.
After the game, too many of the Sharks used the word “if” in their conversations with the media. If they had capitalized on the passing early on. If they had played the first and second periods as intensely and aggressively as they did the third, when they got their lone goal, by Melker Karlsson, well ... you know the rest of the comment.
But they didn’t, because the Penguins, who locked it up with that third goal after Karlsson’s score, wouldn’t let them.
“We have to find ways to get the first goal,” said the Sharks' Logan Couture. “We haven’t played our best hockey. I think everyone has another level they can rely on.”
Said DeBoer: “We’ve been chasing the lead the whole series.”
The lead and the Penguins.
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
OAKLAND, Calif. — This is a basketball team at its best, mentally, physically, emotionally. A basketball team that may or may not be the finest in history but certainly is remarkable after winning a record 73 games in the regular season and the first two games of the NBA Finals so impressively.
Once the Golden State Warriors got it rolling Sunday night at Oracle Arena, where the chants of “Warriors . . . Warriors” poured down as the baskets poured in, they became an even heavier favorite to win a second straight championship.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Strength in numbers, indeed. If it isn’t Steph, it’s Klay. If it isn’t Klay, it’s Andre. If it isn’t Andre, well, Sunday night, when the Warriors looked like the greatest basketball team in the history of the universe — hey, what’s a little exaggeration among admirers? — it was Draymond.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
Special to Newsday
OAKLAND, Calif. — Around him, on the floor of Oracle Arena, men from the team for which Jerry West now works as a consultant were shooting basketballs. And you knew West, who a few days ago turned 78, so wished he was one of them.
West, whose graceful dribble became the model for the NBA’s logo, is knowledgeable, opinionated, supportive, appreciative. In a way, he’s responsible for the success of the Warriors, who on Sunday night will attempt to build a 2-0 lead over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.
Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
So why should we be surprised by anything — and that’s anything — Andre Iguodala does, or maybe considering the (ooh!) low grab, intentional or unintentional by the Cavs’ Matthew Dellavedova, by anything that’s done to Iggy?
This is dog-bites-man stuff, the fact Iguodala can enter a game and as calmly and reflectively as he pointed out, play like every small detail matters. Which of course in playoff basketball, it does. Iguodala is not the only reason the Warriors won the opener of the NBA finals from the Cleveland Cavaliers, 104-89, but surely is a prime reason.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
It was Steph. It was defense. It was Shaun. It was the crowd. It was bedlam. It was the Warriors at their finest, Oracle at its noisiest, and basketball at its most hectic, frantic pace, sending Northern California into a Golden State of euphoria and the defending champions to the NBA finals a second-straight year.
By all rights, and most odds, the wonderful, unorthodox, irrepressible Dubs, shouldn’t be there. Shouldn’t even have been in that hysterical seventh game Monday night, in which showing the courage and remarkable distance shooting skill which have become their trademarks, they defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder, 96-88.
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner
By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner
Hi, Draymond, and welcome back to our world, really to your world, the one where you didn’t so much work basketball as play it. The world from where you mysteriously left sometime during Game 3 of the NBA Western Conference Finals at Oklahoma City and then voila, returned Thursday night in Game 5 at the “Roaracle.”
Where was the passing, the rebounding, the leadership? Where were you? Someone suggested you had gone to a parallel universe. Even you conceded, “I was on another planet somewhere.”
©2016 The San Francisco Examiner