Walt Chamberlin, interviewed by Ann Liguori in 1992, animated by Patrick Smith for Blank on Blank, PBS Digital Studios.
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Many of the world’s sports records are held by women, but due to human bias, search engines have learnt to prioritise sportsmen in our search results, even when the facts put sportswomen first. You can help correct the record with just a couple of clicks. Sign into the search engine of your choice and Correct the Internet.
Hey Americans: These are world’s records, so “football” means “soccer.”
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Over $7 billion in public money has financed construction and renovation of NFL football stadiums. Billionaire owners claim public investment in their private football franchises will bring an economic boom to local economies. It doesn’t. Stadiums and their upkeep wind up costing cities millions of dollars. As long as city residents crave hometown teams to worship, taxpayers are going to keep footing the bill.
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Celebrity golf cheat, grand jury target, and former US President Donald Trump, fresh from his triumphant Senior Golf Tournament cheat last week, has scored three LIV Golf tournaments at his East Coast golf courses for the 2023 season. They will be televised on the CW Network. The Saudi-funded LIV Golf Tour “sportswashing” campaign’s 2022 tour stained the Trump National Golf Clubs in Bedminster, New Jersey and Doral, Florida, and was only seen on YouTube.
Another big difference this year: Donald Trump will be taking foreign money while he is an officially-declared candidate in the 2024 presidential election. When he appears at the LIV tourneys, will the FEC deem them campaign events? We’ll see.
Mr. Trump embraced the insurgent Saudi-backed tour in revenge after the U.S.-based PGA pulled its 2022 championship tourney from his Bedminster course, but he has history backing upstart sports leagues, and it’s not the first time Donald Trump has taken Saudi money. Saudi cash saved Trump from bankrupcy, and, despite anti-Saudi rhetoric during his 2016 campaign, he and son-in-law Jared Kushner have kept their shoddy businesses afloat on an Arabian Gulf of Saudi money.
By April 2022, Jared Kushner’s equity firm primarily depended on Saudi money. Previously, as Trump’s Secretary of Everything, Mr. Kushner had defended Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman. In 2021, after Steven Mnuchin stepped down as Treasury Secretary, the Saudi fund invested $1 billion in his business. It’s unclear how much Mr. Trump will earn from the Saudi-backed golf tour in 2023 but, knowing him, he’ll probably start bragging about it.
Last year there were strong objections to Trump’s embrace of Saudi golf money by the PGA, by survivors of the victims of 9/11, and National Press Club members who remember the “grisly-bonesaw” murder of their collegue Jamal Khashoggi.
More:
“Trump courses hosting three tournaments for Saudi-underwritten LIV Golf,” Stephen Neukam, The Hill
“Trump courses to host 3 events for Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour,” Herb Scribner, Axios
Related:
“Hosting Saudi Golf Tourney, Trump Has Forgotten He Used to Blame Kingdom for 9/11,” Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone
“Trump: LIV Golf tournament a ‘great thing’ for Saudi Arabia,” Jared Gans, The Hill
“The marriage of LIV Golf and Donald Trump is the stuff schemes are made of,” Eamon Lynch, Golfweek
“Donald Trump’s Sketchy Playbook for Blowing Up a Pro Sports League,” Ian Ward, Politico
“Remembering The Tour De Trump, Donald Trump’s Failed Bike Race,” Patrick Redford, Deadspin
“Does Saudi Arabia Own Donald Trump?” NotionsCapital
“Ivana Trump was buried near the first hole of Trump National Golf Club. Her gravesite could offer tax breaks for the business.” Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Isabella Zavarise, Business Insider
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Celebrity golf cheat and former US President Donald Trump held a Senior Golf Tournament at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach last week. The winner? Surprise! It was Donald Trump, and he wasn’t even there for half of it:
“Trump told tournament organizers he played a strong round on the course Thursday, two days before the tournament started, and decided that would count as his Saturday score for the club championship. That score was five points better than any competitor posted during Saturday’s first round.” — Tom D’Angelo, Palm Beach Post
Mr. Trump plays 18 to 26 rounds of golf each week, so the cherrypicking adds nuance to the jawdropping phantom round.
More:
“Trump pilloried as ‘4-year-old cheat’ over golf tournament claims: ‘Guy can’t even con right anymore,’” Namita Singh, The Independent, via Yahoo Sports
“Trump declares himself the winner of his own club championship – in the Trumpiest way ever,” Tom D’Angelo, Palm Beach Post
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4.8 million Americans play pickleball. It’s America’s fastest-growing sport. There are pro tournaments and professional pickleball teams, and sports celebrities are buying franchises. Every luxury real estate development now needs to offer pickleball courts. Municipal rec departments love the sport, since they can fit 4 pickleball courts into the same space as one tennis court and serve more players.
What’s not to like? Noise.
Pickleball is played with hollow plastic balls and hard wooden or composite paddles, and impacts bring loud pops, higher in frequency than the thud of felt tennis balls against racket strings. If you live near public pickleball courts, you’ve got four times the density of noise generation you’d get from tennis courts. Pickleball sounds are typically about 70 dBa at about 100 feet away from the strike of the ball.
About 60 percent of core pickleball players are over 55 years old, and 33 percent are over 65. You might ungenerously say their high frequency hearing is bad anyway, but the pickleball pop sound is in the 1,000 to 2,000 Hz range, not in higher ranges where that would make a difference.
While some pickleball paddles advertise low-noise qualities, it’s only relative. There are also low-noise balls, but they’re foam rubber and behave nothing like the plastic ones, so who’d bother?
Pickleball courts are trying noise-reducing curtains on their fences, and they’ll probably try those highway noise walls as the neighborhood lawsuits grow as rapidly as the sport.
Related:
“Pickleball Is Expanding. Tennis Is Mad.” Steven Kurutz, New York Times
“Tom Brady, Kim Clijsters latest to invest in pickleball team”, D’Arcy Maine, ESPN.com
Updates:
“Major League Pickleball finalizes 2023 expansion plans,” Kendall Baker, Axios
“ESPN Takes Swing at Pickleball With New TV Rights Pact,” Brian Steinberg, Variety
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Dan Snyder, owner of DC’s allegedly-professional football team, is gathering dirt on his fellow NFL team owners and the league commissioner, says ESPN. Mr. Synder, long regarded as pro football’s worst owner, stubbornly retained the team’s former racist name until well into the 21st century, meddled in team coaching, and was rumored to fiddle with the books and female employees. The last became subjects of congressional investigation. He seems to have gathered dirt on other team owners and Commissioner Roger Goodell to blackmail them into letting him keep ownership of the Commanders.
More:
“Sources: Commanders boss Snyder claims ‘dirt’ on NFL owners, Goodell,” Seth Wickersham, Don Van Natta Jr. and Tisha Thompson, ESPN
“Dan Snyder’s dirt can’t cause NFL more harm than he’s already done,” Nancy Armour, USA Today
“Is this why Daniel Snyder hasn’t been drop-kicked out of the NFL?” Eric Blum and DJ Dunson, Deadspin
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Émile Vernon (1872 – 1919)
At the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, the men have fuzzy balls. The women have smooth balls, and they’re not happy about it.
To explain: Wilson makes both “regular-duty” and “extra-duty” tennis balls. The regular-duty balls are sold as “ideal for clay and indoor surfaces,” while the extra-duty are “ideal for longer play on hard court surfaces.” The U.S. Open is outdoors, a hard-court event. Men’s matches are played with “extra-duty” balls, as you’d expect, but women play with “regular-duty” balls.
The felt on the men’s “extra-duty” balls is fluffier, and the racquet strings get a better purchase on the thicker surface. The felt on the “regular-duty” women’s version has a tighter weave, feels lighter on the stringbed, and the balls play faster and go farther because they’re more aerodynamic.
Men and women play on the same courts, with the same type of racquets. No other major tennis tournament uses different balls for men and women. To make matters even worse, the “extra-duty” ball is used in the Open’s mixed doubles, a severe disadvantage for women doubles partners who have been playing with the “regular-duty” ball in the tournament’s women’s matches.
More:
“Women use faster balls than men at U.S. Open. Some players are over it.” Julian Mark, Washington Post
“‘You’ve just started a war’: Iga Swiatek wades into row over US Open balls,” Tumaini Carayol, The Guardian
“Badosa joins Swiatek as she hits out at U.S. Open balls,” Anita Kobylinska, Reuters
“New Balls Please,” Giri Nathan, Racquet
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Georgia’ GOP candidate for the US Senate is Hershel Walker, a former University of Georgia Heisman winner, All-American, and NFL veteran. He was endorsed by Donald Trump, who was his pre-NFL employer as the owner of the failed New Jersey Generals of the United States Football League. In just a few short years, as Mr. Walker raced down the field, Mr. Trump managed to tank the entire USFL.
Hershel Walker and Donald Trump have something else in common: they are both phenomenal liars. Mr. Trump told over 30,000 lies while he was in the White House, and continues to lie about losing the 2020 election. Mr. Walker lied about graduating from college, then lied about lying that he graduated from college. He lied about being a policeman and an FBI agent. He lied about his business ventures, including his “mini-Tyson’s chicken empire“. And while Dr. Oz can’t remember all the houses he owns, Walker can’t recall all the children he’s sired.
Despite his sports celebrity and Trump endorsement, the drip of revelations has raised been understandable questions about Herschel Walker’s electability. All that lying doesn’t help when you’re running against an incumbent who’s a Baptist minister. Weird statements blaming China for US air pollution, evolution denial, claims the US has 52 states, and accusations of spousal abuse should raise even more concern that the ex-Georgia Bulldog is a dog of a candidate.
Herschel Walker was a contestant on The Celebrity Apprentice TV show in 2009. Donald Trump fired him. He might want to fire him as a Trump-branded political endorsee, too.
More:
“Herschel Walker declines invitation to debate Senator Warnock in Macon,” Justin Baxley, WMAZ-TV
“Herschel Walker’s ex-wife recalls him threatening to ‘blow my brains out’ in campaign ad released by opponents in Georgia Senate race,” Dave Goldiner, NY Daily News
Related:
“Republicans rue price of fame as celebrity Senate candidates struggle,” Adam Gabbatt, The Guardian
“Donald Trump’s Less-Than-Artful Failure in Pro Football,” Joe Nocera, New York Times
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While Joe Biden was criticized for his recent fist bump with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump has given a big, wet, sloppy kiss to the Saudi-funded LIV Golf Tour “sportswashing” campaign. The third tournament of the new pro golf league‘s tour is being held at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Mr. Trump may have embraced the insurgent tour because he’s peeved at the U.S.-based PGA for pulling its 2022 championship tourney from Bedminster, but he has backed upstart sports leagues before, and this is not the first time Donald Trump has taken Saudi money. Far from it. Saudi cash saved Trump from bankrupcy, and, despite anti-Saudi rhetoric during his 2016 campaign, he and son-in-law Jared Kushner have kept their shoddy businesses afloat on an Arabian Gulf of Saudi money.
There have been strong objections to Trump’s embrace of Saudi golf money by the PGA, of course, but also by survivors of the victims of 9/11, and National Press Club members who remember the “grisly-bonesaw” murder of their collegue Jamal Khashoggi.
More:
“Trump Seeks Money and Revenge in Hosting the New Saudi Golf League,” John Cassidy, The New Yorker
“Hosting Saudi Golf Tourney, Trump Has Forgotten He Used to Blame Kingdom for 9/11,” Nikki McCann Ramirez, Rolling Stone
Updates:
“9/11 families rip Saudi-financed golf tour ahead of finale at Trump resort,” Olafimihan Oshin, The Hill
“Trump: LIV Golf tournament a ‘great thing’ for Saudi Arabia,” Jared Gans, The Hill
“LIV Golf’s latest stop brings together Trump, Saudi Arabia and plenty of criticism,” Bryan Armen Graham, The Guardian
“The marriage of LIV Golf and Donald Trump is the stuff schemes are made of,” Eamon Lynch, Golfweek
“Bill Maher mocks Trump over golf course comments, suggests US trade him for Griner’s release,” Chloe Folmar, The Hill
“LIV Golf Tournament at Trump Club Sees Thin Crowds, $1 Tickets: Reports,” Jason Lemon, Newsweek
“LIV Golf spectator yells, ‘Do it for the Saudi royal family’ at Phil Mickelson,” Riley Hamel, Golfweek
“Golf takes back seat at Saudi-backed, Trump-hosted event,” Bryan Armen Graham, USA Today
Updated Updates:
“LIV Golf sellouts bailed on the PGA Tour. Now they want back in?” Sally Jenkins, Wasghington Post
“Judge rules LIV golfers can’t play in PGA Tour postseason,” TuAnh Dam, Axios
Related:
“Donald Trump’s Sketchy Playbook for Blowing Up a Pro Sports League,” Ian Ward, Politico
“Remembering The Tour De Trump, Donald Trump’s Failed Bike Race,” Patrick Redford, Deadspin
“Does Saudi Arabia Own Donald Trump?” NotionsCapital
“Tiger Woods turned down offer in ‘neighborhood’ of $700M to $800M to play in Saudi-backed tournament, Greg Norman says,” Sarakshi Rai, The Hill
“Ivana Trump was buried near the first hole of Trump National Golf Club. Her gravesite could offer tax breaks for the business.” Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert and Isabella Zavarise, Business Insider
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