Daily Bagel: The Onion takes on Andy Murray's Wimbledon victory
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMCNltgrs1U
The Daily Bagel is your dose of the interesting reporting, writing and quipping from around the Internet.
• Video: From one of Jon Wertheim's readers, here's a Monty Python sketch mocking Scottish tennis.
• From The Onion: Andy Murray claims it's kind of pathetic that Britain is taking so much pride in his win at a tennis tournament. (Warning: Link contains strong language.)
"I’m a professional tennis player who beat another professional tennis player, and people are seriously calling it one of the greatest moments in Britain’s history?” said Murray, adding that while he understands his victory means a lot to the United Kingdom, the British public needs to “get their priorities straight, and do it fast.”
• Agnieszka Radwanska and Jerzy Janowicz meet the Polish president.
• Wimbledon exposed the sexism in how players' girlfriends and wives are covered.
• Catching up with Andy Roddick during a World Team Tennis match.
Only while discussing Wimbledon did Roddick sound wistful. It was the one time he sensed acutely that he was no longer playing. "It seemed like a lot of stuff changes very quickly," he said. "Including Roger [Federer] losing."
Roddick laughed, but Federer's early exit was the cruelest twist for him. Federer had foiled Roddick three times in the Wimbledon finals. And this year, Federer had been upset in the early rounds.
As Roddick finished his news conference, he was asked where, exactly, he had watched the tournament. "Where was I?" Roddick said, thinking. "I was back at home in the living room." He paused, thinking again. "Like everyone else," he finished, and he smiled and walked away.
• Great piece from ESPN The Magazine on breasts: They're real, they're spectacular and they can be a pain if you're a professional athlete. Simona Halep, Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki all get name-checked.
Breasts are an impressive network of milk glands, ducts and sacs, all suspended from the clavicle in twin masses held together by fibrous connective tissue. But a mounting body of evidence suggests that they pose a serious challenge in nearly all corners of competition. Gymnasts push themselves to the brink of starvation to avoid developing them. All sorts of pro athletes have ponied up thousands of dollars to surgically reduce them. For the modern athlete, the question isn't whether breasts get in the way -- it's a question of how to compete around them.
• Martina Hingis will be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame this weekend. She's also making headlines of a different sort.
• The only Wimbledon photo recap you need, courtesy of Michelle Collins of Vanity Fair. Simply superb.
• Peter Bodo on the complex case of Juan Martin del Potro, the Gentle Giant who knows he belongs.
To that crowd, del Potro may seem to lack some vital spark of determination or some facet of competitive character to back up that early burst of success, the way gamers like Jimmy Connors, John McEnroe, or Pete Sampras did. As a result, they think, del Potro just doesn’t have the requisite confidence and, as that has become manifest, his game has lost some of its original splendor—some of its “bigness.”
It’s easy to equate shyness with timidity in someone like del Potro, although no real equivalency exists. That brings us to theory No. 3, and the one I find myself leaning toward in the wake of this Wimbledon. And that’s the idea that del Potro has had some pretty rotten luck—or at least too little good luck—and is slowly being tortured by fate. Renewed greatness is dangled before him like carrot on a stick that remains just out of reach, no matter how diligently he plods along.
• The Wimbledon men's final shattered viewing records in Britain. The U.S. ratings were a different story.
• A man was arrested after a tennis fan alleged that she was raped while queuing to see the Wimbledon men's final.
The Cosby Show
Blurred Lines
