Three-times Olympic gold medallist has progressed from a brilliant point guard to NCAA championship-winning coach with the South Carolina women basketball team and will take charge of the USA Olympic side at Tokyo 2020Among the small handful of warm memories from the Atlanta Olympics, Dawn Staley stands out. Her combination of gnarly competitiveness and glorious skills – a repertoire of feints, no-look passes and behind-the-back smuggles (her “signature play”, she said) – made the little point guard of the USA women’s basketball team a compelling figure as she and her colleagues swept to victory.At the time she was a woman playing what many still saw as a man’s game. In later years I was reminded of her playmaking skills while...
There was a time when the 23-year-old made playing Augusta National look easy but on Thursday he had to exorcise the demons of 2016Just after two in the afternoon Jordan Spieth set himself for the most keenly awaited shot of the day, one the world had been waiting 362 days to see him play. Spieth has been around Augusta National almost half a dozen times since he took that quadruple bogey and blew a three-shot lead at the 12th back in 2016. He played once with his father, once again with Tom Brady, a couple of times with the members and a couple more in practice this week. Which helped “get rid of some”, as he put it back in...
Player, Nicklaus and ‘Arnie’s Army’ gather at Augusta to remember the legend with the blacksmith’s arms who put the Masters on the mapThe sun came up at 7.10 in Augusta but it was another 30 minutes before it reached the first tee. By the time it rose above the clubhouse roof there were already several thousand fans gathered all around, packed so thick there was no way to weave through, and latecomers had to turn back and find a spot to watch from somewhere down the fairway.This year they had not just come to see the old champions taking part in the honorary start but to mark the one who was missing, Arnold Palmer, who died last September. In his...
The end of the NBA season is approaching, which means it’s time for fans of teams out of the playoff hunt to start rooting for lossesSomething disastrous happened to the LA Lakers on Sunday: they actually won a game. Before beating the Memphis Grizzlies 108-103, things had been going fairly well for the Lakers: they were on a four-game losing streak, and were playing badly enough that they could have conceivably lost their remaining games of the season. With the win, however, the Lakers’ chances of getting a top three pick in this year’s NBA draft lottery took a huge hit, dropping below 50%. That’s a huge deal, because if their pick ends up being No4 or lower, it will...
Is the supposed leftward shift in sports reporting the product of vast liberal conspiracy – or what happens when the myth of sports as escapism is dispelled?There has been a lot of buzz lately about sportswriting’s shift to the left. Last month, Bryan Curtis wrote in the Ringer: “There was a time when filling your column with liberal ideas on race, class, gender, and labor policy got you dubbed a sociologist. These days, such views are more likely to get you a job.” Not only have liberal ideas found a foothold in sportswriting, Curtis claims, “now, there’s at least a social price to pay for being a conservative.” Related: Colin Kaepernick is unsigned because NFL coaches still play not to...