Consolidated Break

  8/2 JJ Wolf, who is competing as a wildcard in Cincinatti, just shot up the rankings a whopping 283 spots, to #280. If I followed it correctly, JJ had a wildcard to the qualies in Montreal. But he wound up winning the Vancouver Challenger and couldn't make it. He's beaten Mark Lajal, Coleman Wong, Jay Friend and Z.Z. Zhang as of late, not a bad list. JJ seems ready for a return to the top of the sport. Even with the huge jump, and the Cinci wildcard, JJ is far from the U.S. Open entry list. He could garner a wildcard into the qualies for sure. But with Cincinatti, and perhaps Winston Salem, JJ has a shot at winning some matches on the ATP tour before the year is out. This rise, after injuring his shoulder, is positively Agassi-like.  Greg "Lex" Gunther Spring Hill College Tennis USPTA / PTR / YONEX USA

  8/2 Aren't ends supposed to excuse the means ? It is troubling how many people get fired by the administration, how many people die by their hands and how much money they spend, with absolutely no results. Congress is right there, rubber stamping the rollover, cheering on the aggression and ignoring all the paperwork. We have a country on edge and a world at war due to strictly Republican goals, and their supporting decisions. Bankrupt are the Republicans, in their ends, and their means. Nevermind the enormous gulf between what the CIA has in its bank account, what ICE has in its account, what has been appropriated for the war in Iran, and what has been appropriated by Republicans for ordinary Americans. The Republicans are acting like the CIA and ICE are the institutions we rely on to keep the American Dream alive. They have jettisoned federal agencies, threatened the judiciary and unleashed lawfare on Democraic states and the media. And this is all being done under the guise of...

  7/30 How has Iran heard of Muhammad Ali, but not Trump ? Most pundits, well paid or not, declared that Trump had lost to Iran months ago. All that seemed left was Congress reeling him in. But Trump is still cursing at Iran on his own personal social media platform, as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait are added to the theatre of war.  The United States attacked terrorist camps in Iraq yesterday. You might ask, what year is it ? But the Pentagon never shut down the war in Iraq from 1990. Did you know that ? The United States Department of Veterans Affairs legally defines the Gulf War as ongoing. Aug.2,1990 to the present day, a continuous period. That's 40 years y'all. And this has always been a Republican led effort.  God Bless Lindsey Graham, but wasn't he wrong about most things ? Trump eulogized Graham by saying he never met a war he didn't want to fight, or something really masculine like that. Yet isn't Lindsey Graham the perfect example of an American po...

  Vice President JD Vance went on the most popular podcast in the country this past week. In it he described what he called secretive forces within Israel's government who were trying to manipulate both American opinion and the administration. Vance's conclusion was that these mysterious forces were attempting to "keep the war going" for what he called unknown reasons.  In 2026, could a Democrat go on a podcast, talk about scary, war mongering actors inside Israel and not be called a bunch of names ? Vance seems to cozy right up to some of the same opinions that Saudi Arabia, not to mention Iran, have held for some time. Well I'll be, won't you look over there, it's Trump promising the Saudis nuclear technology. So now that we are going to sell nukes to the Princes, it's ok to question Israel's motivations.  Trump himself has criticized Netanyahu for going to war with Lebanon. So here we have the Vice President questioning the legitimacy of the war...

  The break that the great Novak Djokovic and Jannick Sinner are taking, in between the end of Wimbledon, and the start of the Western & Southern, is almost as long as the break they'll take at the end of the year. In fact, I venture to say it is longer than most players' break at the end of any given year. We're talking a complete month, four entire weeks. The Canadian Open doesn't even start until the second week of next month. Why would anyone need to pull out now ? And how did Novak & Jannick cancel on the same day ? There is so much stupidity here. How about show up and lose guys ? How about not taking a ridiculously long break since you're supposed to be two of the top ten players ?  So many guys are in North America right now. There is a star studded list of entrants for the Citi in DC. In fact, Alex Michelson, who just won the Michigan Challenger, is drawn against Jack Draper, who was  scheduled to play a Challenger in Canada, before I believe smartl...

  It's difficult to avoid the 'broken record' syndrome when criticizing professional tennis. So why don't I begin with a victory, at least in my eyes.  One of the long held criticisms of pro tennis was its lack of integration with the American college system. That is not only over, the success of players who have attended college proves that all we needed was a system that was fair. And it helps highlight what is special about tennis, that we produce athletes that can not only succeed in college, they can succeed period.  It was once probably taboo for tennis fans to even know that a player went to college. But that snobbery should never have existed. Connors (UCLA) and McEnroe (Stanford) were "one and done" decades before Mike Krzyzewski used the term. But all the pieces seem to be there for the tour to promote more than just the top ranked players. Tennis has players coming from big colleges, some with NIL, so people should stop thinking that these athletes ...

  7/26 Many have a right to be scared of the Republicans in 2026. They're deporting people showing up for court. They're deporting people after changing their status. They're literally driving around and racial profiling America as I type. And they are covering up what Blackwater is doing in Haiti to combat gangs, despite wanting to send hundreds of thousands of Haitians home. There's also a cover up as to why they are shooting missiles at speed boats coming from other countries they want to deport people to. The Republicans, for a lot of people, are either shooting at them directly, or sending them directly to a shooting gallery.  But I'm not scared and neither should anyone reading this. I am frankly fascinated that the Republicans are copying literally every movie I have ever seen that details authoritarianism, and seemingly jumping from the pages of Orwell's 1984 on a daily basis. It's as if the Republicans are totally ignorant to history, decency, art o...