Never disrespect doubles tennis again

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The U.S. Open (tennis!) is underway, and the organizers had a novel idea: What if they held a doubles tournament featuring all of the most famous singles players in the world and got rid of all those pesky anonymous doubles specialists who usually win doubles tournaments?

Of the 16 spots in last week’s mixed doubles tournament, 15 went to the teams with the highest combined singles rankings. They reserved one pity spot for a legit doubles team: the Italian pair of Andrea Vavassori and Sara Errani, last year’s mixed double champions, who were given a wild card as an afterthought. The pair called the new qualification system “a profound injustice,” releasing a statement saying that “making decisions just following the logic of profit is profoundly wrong in some situations … putting money above tennis is never a good idea.”

THEN THEY WON THE WHOLE DAMN THING. Errani and Vavassori beat reigning Wimbledon champion Iga Swiatek and former U.S. Open finalist Casper Ruud to not only defend their titles, but the entire concept of doubles tennis.

• Errani and Vavassori dominated, dropping just one set in four matches against their more famous, better-compensated opponents. Ironically, the new format made their championship run easier. Instead of playing the world’s best doubles players, they got to play a bunch of doubles noobs.

• Errani and Vavassori were a well-oiled doubles machine, pouncing on weak shots that would have been winners in singles. They sliced and diced weird-angle winners while their opponents flubbed easy net shots.

• Meanwhile, Carlos Alcaraz was playing his first Grand Slam doubles tournament, and Novak Djokovic was playing his first since 2007. Naomi Osaka had a career 2-14 doubles record coming into the event. They all qualified over elite doubles players because of their high singles rankings.

• Decades ago, the world’s best singles players used to play doubles. The all-time leader in women’s doubles titles is Martina Navratilova, who won 18 singles Grand Slams, 31 women’s doubles Slams, and 10 mixed doubles Slams. Legends like John McEnroe and Billie Jean King were consistent singles and doubles champions.

• But the economics don’t incentivize playing doubles anymore. The prize money for winning the Wimbledon singles tournaments is $4 million, while the winning doubles teams get $918,000, which they split. Why risk your chance at $4 million for $459,000?

• Unbelievably, many singles players feel like they’re the ones being taken advantage of. As Ben Rothenberg wrote in an article about the mixed doubles competition:

  “Many successful singles players feel, increasingly, like the doubles specialists are freeloaders on their coattails, taking up half the space at tournaments and 20 percent of the prize purses while contributing little commercial value.”

• It’s true that doubles matches don’t get the same TV ratings or attendance numbers. They’re played on outer courts in front of sparse crowds. Here’s Vavassori and Errani winning last year’s mixed doubles championship in front of a couple of fans:

• And here they are winning this year’s mixed doubles championship, in front of a sellout crowd in primetime:

  

• The U.S. Open also upped the prize pool this year. Last year the winning team took home $200,000, while this year the prize was $1 million. Vavassori’s $500,000 take is about 20 percent of his career winnings.

• I love doubles tennis. I like the action more than singles. The points are fast-paced and filled with incredible shots. The chemistry of the pairings — or lack thereof — and the way teammates communicate and navigate switches creates dramatic fodder that 1-on-1 tennis can’t.

• Plus, sometimes teammates bang each other! You can’t get that in singles!

• Gonna be honest, I was not expecting ESPN to run a 3,000-word reported feature about fans shipping Carlos Alcaraz and Emma Raducanu because of their mixed doubles pairing. But that’s another bonus.

• Maybe the reason doubles events typically get fewer viewers isn’t because the sport itself is worse. Maybe it’s because we’re told it’s less exciting. Maybe it’s because the games are played on outer courts in the middle of the day while the singles matches are at center court in primetime. Maybe it’s because the singles players are on ads and billboards, and the doubles players are relative unknowns. Maybe it’s because everybody assumes that singles players can show up and win a tournament if they feel like it.

• Maybe, when we play doubles tennis in primetime, and it sells out stadiums, and people watch it on TV, people will see that the skill and talent required is on par with singles. Maybe when the best singles players show up expecting an easy payday and get their asses kicked by anonymous doubles stars, people will start to realize how great doubles tennis is.

Finally, America has rhythm. Sixteen-year-old Rin Keys became the first-ever American to earn a medal at the Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships, and could contend for medals at the 2028 LA Olympics. Here’s her silver medal-winning ball routine:

• Rhythmic gymnastics is the often-overlooked cousin of artistic gymnastics (the thing Simone Biles does). Rhythmic gymnastics broadly resembles the floor routine from artistic gymnastics, except the competitors have four apparatuses (ball, hoop, clubs, and ribbon) that they incorporate.

• At the Olympics, there’s only one individual rhythmic gymnastic gold medal: the all-around. The World Champs celebrate all of the apparatuses individually, giving out medals for all four.

• I was very curious about the ball, so 2024 Olympian Evita Griskenas let me hold all the various pieces of equipment at the 2024 Team USA media summit:

  

  I immediately squeezed the ball:

  

• DO NOT SQUEEZE THE BALL. YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SQUEEZE THE BALL. Here are the anti-squeezing diagrams from the FIG Code of Points.

• Once I realized that rhythmic gymnasts can’t squeeze the ball, it really clicked how spectacular their performances are. They’re rolling the ball on their bodies, tossing it 40 feet in the air, catching it on the small of their backs … all without ever grasping the ball the way an athlete in any other sport would.

• The dominant force in the sport right now is German Darja Varfolomeev, who won the all-around gold medal in Paris and dominated world championships, winning the gold medal in three of the four apparatuses. Here’s her winning ball routine:

• The USA has never had a top-10 finisher in rhythmic gymnastics at the Olympics, but Keys has a shot to medal in the all-around competition in 2028. In addition to her second-place finish with the ball, she finished fourth with the hoop and fifth with the ribbon at World Championships. Let’s hope she keeps balling, hooping, and clubbing with the best in the world. (And ribboning too, I guess.)

Wednesday afternoon, I watched one of the silliest soccer matches I’ve seen in my entire life. Grimsby Town, last year’s ninth-place finisher in England’s fourth-tier, defeated the winningest Premier League team of all time, Manchester United, after 13 rounds of penalties. There was no chance of keeping the 8,000 Grimsby supporters off their home pitch.

• This match was part of the Carabao Cup, which is like the FA Cup but only features teams from the top four flights of English soccer. Grimsby is in League Two, the lowest of those four.

• Is the Carabao Cup important?

• Yes, when your team wins or something funny happens.

• Is Grimsby Town the best soccer club in England? Probably not. Did they take roughly 13 of the best penalties you’ll ever see? YES. They were banging shot after shot past Manchester United keeper André Onana with power and precision. Even the shot he saved was a scorcher that he seemed lucky to tip off the crossbar.

• I probably followed soccer most closely from 2006 to 2012 or so. I talked about soccer with my high school and college friends, played a lot of FIFA, etc. As such, when I hear the words “Manchester United,” I think “oh, the team that wins the Premier League every year.” In reality, they have been a pile of expensive butt for roughly a decade. (HUGE Yankees vibes.)

• Manchester United only had to play in this match, part of the second round of the Carabao Cup, because they finished fifteenth in the Premier League last year, their lowest finish since the Premier League started calling itself the Premier League. The top nine teams advanced straight to the third round.

• Grimsby is a fishing town in Northeast England, and the town and the team have both lost some of their shine over the decades. Grimsby Town played in the top division through 1947, but have ping-ponged back and forth between Tiers 4 and 5 over the past few decades.

• The team’s nickname is the Mariners, and the supporters like bringing inflatable fish to games. (The fish is named “Harry the Haddock,” although the club acknowledges that it is actually a rainbow trout. Their fans like chanting “WE PISS ON YOUR FISH,” per multiple sources.

• Grimsby is, sadly, perhaps best known for the 2016 Sasha Baron Cohen flop Grimsby. Baron Cohen attended a Grimsby match while researching the movie, although it’s unclear why, because the Wikipedia plot summary of the movie may be the worst thing I have read in my entire life.

• Please do not watch this movie. Just watch the penalty kicks.

• In the first game of the Rugby World Cup, the United States women’s 15-a-side rugby team lost to England, 69-7. Just a few months earlier, the United States women’s rugby sevens team beat Great Britain, 17-7, at the Olympics as part of their bronze medal-winning run. Big lesson today between rugby and tennis: When you add twice as many players to a sport, different people win.

• Angola hasn’t produced a lot of NBA players over the years, but it’s consistently the most dominant team in African basketball. (Lusophone? More like WIN-o-phone!) It hosted AfroBasket and won thanks to the flashy passing of my new favorite basketball player, 5’6 point guard Childe Dundão.

• You’re damn right you’re getting Childe Dundão highlights. Dude is a one-man Ang1 Mixtape Tour.

• No. 1 Texas is playing at No. 2 Ohio State on Saturday. The game has the probable top two picks in the 2027 NFL Draft, superstar Buckeyes receiver Jeremiah Smith and Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning, who has famous uncles. It’s also going to be the last College GameDay episode for Lee Corso. Even if you’re one of the people who subscribes to this newsletter for the Olympic sports coverage and not the football, I recommend it.

• The badminton world championships are underway in Paris, and you can stream the whole thing on YouTube! Any active American participants may have been eliminated by the time this publishes, but whatever, badminton is fun. The championships are Sunday. They should start around 7 a.m. Eastern and wrap around 1 p.m.

• The Modern Pentathlon World Championships — now with an American Ninja Warrior-style obstacle course and ABSOLUTELY NO VIOLENT HORSE BEATING —are in Lithuania, with the finals taking place this Saturday afternoon. I think you should be able to watch it here.

• The World Surf League finals are in Fiji and they’ve got a ladder-style bracket rigged up like they’re a one-bid league trying to make sure their best team makes the NCAA Tournament. That’s on ESPN+ starting Sunday if you’d like some wave noises in your life.