Word: wimbledonized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...genius of this piece is that Wallace makes no pretense of covering the tennis star as a personality or phenomenon - "Journalistically speaking, there is no hot news to offer you about Roger Federer" - even though he is a witness to the famous 2006 Federer-Nadal final at Wimbledon. Instead, Wallace, who played competitive tennis in his teens, tries to explain why the experience of watching one intelligent but fairly dull man hit a ball is among the more beautiful things a person can see. One of the best magazine stories of the past decade, and the best piece of sports...
...Chinese women may garner an Olympic medal from tennis, either from women's singles player Li or women's pair Yan Zi and Zheng Jie. Li, hardly a household name overseas, survived a treacherous draw that pitted her against both world No. 3 Svetlana Kuznetsova and Williams, who won Wimbledon this year. Certainly, the support of a raucous home crowd helped buoy the 25-year-old Chinese athlete, who is ranked No. 42 in the world. "Wow, I don't think you could see that in another country," said Li of the support from the local audience. "This...
China's success so far in women's Olympic tennis - coming close on the heel's of Zheng's strong performance at this year's Wimbledon - is a relatively recent phenomenon. In China's more vehemently socialist days, tennis was frowned upon, viewed as a marker of capitalist excess. (Any sport in which a major tournament has English nobility sampling strawberries and cream on the sidelines hardly bespoke of communist equality.) But China has changed, and a decent backhand is now considered de rigueur among many progeny of the Chinese elite. There's also the matter of international glory: Like...
...plan seems to be working. In the 2004 Athens Games, a Chinese women's pair brought home a surprise gold. Two years later, at the Australian Open, Yan and Zheng claimed the country's first Grand Slam title. Then came Wimbledon, when the diminutive Zheng made it to the semi-finals as a wildcard before succumbing to the younger Williams sister. Zheng, a native of Sichuan province, which was rocked by the May earthquake, donated her Wimbledon prize money to the reconstruction effort...
...Broader participation in sports seems to have spun a unique thread of national identity as well. Spanish athletes often use their moment of glory to give a nod to the patria. After winning Wimbledon, Nadal ran to embrace his coach and family, then stepped into the next box to greet Spain's Prince Felipe and Princess Leticia, thanking them by name minutes later while addressing the crowd from center court. Sastre spoke on Spain's national evening news of his pride in bringing glory to his country. Through sports Spaniards seem able to find a sense of national identity that...