Thursday, September 16, 2021

Tenni(y)s Week

There are examples of professional athletes and entertainers conspicuously doing the right thing, so I'm not here to claim that the event we're here to discuss is entirely unique. But it's on the rarer side of the grilled meat of sporting meals. I'm jumping on zman's beat to celebrate sportsmanship in the face of frustration and the worst pain there is.

Tennys* Sandgren is a modestly-successful American professional tennis player. He's earned more than $3.3m in his ten-year pro career, even reaching a pair of Aussie Open quarterfinals. He's been ranked as high as 41st in the world, and sits today just outside the top 100. Which explains the setting for today's story.

* Sandgren is named for his Swedish grandfather, and kinda didn't have a choice about his career path.

He was the top seed at this weeks ATP Challenger event in Cary, North Carolina. The Challenger Tour is one step below the main tour, kinda like AAA tennis. Sandgren faced fellow American Christopher Eubanks in the first round. Sandgren broke Eubanks to start the match, then faced deuce in the second game.

We'll let Sandgren take it from here:

He followed that Tweet up with another that read, "And just to be clear, this was all totally my fault."

In addition to defaulting the match against Eubanks, Sandgren was forced out of the doubles event, as well. Costly nut shot, but Tennys Sandgren earned some fans by being accountable and even having a little fun at his own expense. He even earned a Twitter follow from me. Which has gotta be worth something.

Here's video of the entire very short match - the action that matters happens at about the 1:20 mark:

9 comments:

zman said...

Puts a whole different spin on the term ballboy. Tort law recognizes that uncontrolled movements shouldn't result in negligence liability. For example, if you sneeze while driving and get in an accident you aren't negligent. Seems to me that if someone smacks you in the testes with a tennis ball you shouldn't be liable for whatever you do immediately afterwards.

And that is the doughiest collection of on-court officials I've ever seen. I wonder if any of them play tennis, or have ever been hit in the testes with a wayward tennis ball in the middle of a match.

Whitney said...

Worst pain there is

rob said...

as noted in the text

on a different topic, econometrically speaking, where does the marginal utility of a very affectionate and sweet cat intersect with the 'that increasingly shits and pisses all over the place' curve?

zman said...

zcat had this problem over the last few months of her life. She would pee in the litter box but for some reason would poop right outside it. She lost her aim. After 13 good years I accepted the fact that I had to deal with it. I got a bigger litter box which helped a little bit, and picked up poop when necessary.

I am not, however, dealing with zdog's errant turds in the dining room. I made it clear that this is zwoman/zson's dog. I forfeited all dog selection and naming rights (zmother-in-law vetoed Georgia, somehow she had a say in all this), and thus all accompanying in-house excreta responsibilities.

Whitney said...

Sorry. I meant: in the family jewels?

rootsminer said...

Zmother-in-law gets veto rights over your dog name? You ok, Z?

zman said...

Run the family jewels?

zman said...

I threw my hands up and walked away from the entire canine undertaking. I play with her and walk her when I feel like it, but otherwise she isn't my responsiblity.

rootsminer said...

What name did Zdogparents choose?

I'm looking forward to Zman's first installment of "I guess it's my dog, after all".

Hopefully it won't be directly related to the pup eating something it shouldn't, then requiring emergency vet services on a weekend.