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Caira Conner
25 items
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Caira Conner
25 items
01
The Olds of Men’s Tennis Are Lighting It Up at the Olympics
New York Magazine
As a generation of men’s champions slowly exits the court — their retirement news and speculation lapping in and out of the press in undulating waves — the Paris Games have become something of a final commune for tennis’s elder statesmen.
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02
Jamie Campbell Bower Is the Best Damn Thing About Horizon
Esquire
Whether he’s playing Vecna on Stranger Things or Caleb Sykes in Kevin Costner’s new western, the temperature drops when his characters enter a room.
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03
Wagner Moura Is Chasing the Truth
Esquire
The actor has played serious characters (namely, Pablo Escobar) with villainous aplomb, but he brings much-needed levity to A24’s political thriller Civil War. “I read the script and felt there was a perfect film in there for me,” he says.
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04
The Agony and Ecstasy of Rafael Nadal
New York Magazine
Rafael Nadal has been able to transcend pain his entire remarkable career, until now.
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05
Can Ons Jabeur Finally Go All the Way?
New York Magazine
Even if Ons Jabeur were from somewhere else, she’d be a fan favorite because of her grin, her kindness, her taste in olive oil — the list goes on. But she’s Tunisian, and this has created a level of interest and expectation beyond casual fandom.
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06
Novak Djokovic Is the Perfect Champ for the Age of AI
New York Magazine
Novak Djokovic has become a kind of freakish human algorithm, a self-learning model trained on 30 years’ worth of performance data, one whose outputs have only become more responsive — and iterative — over time.
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07
Like You, Phil Dunster Already Misses Jamie Tartt
Esquire
“I’ll miss just knowing this dude intimately and all of his choices,” the 31-year-old tells Esquire, a week before Ted Lasso calls it quits. “It was a real gift.”
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08
Reid Scott Is Actually Very, Very Nice
Esquire
The actor famously played an almost-lovable asshole on Veep. Now, the 45-year-old stars as a less asshole-ish Gordon Ford in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. But Reid Scott isn't an asshole. He promises.
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09
America Has Made a Monster Out of Pickleball
The Atlantic
The country’s hottest sport was all fun and games—until celebrities got involved.
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10
How Will We Remember Roger Federer?
The Atlantic
Tennis is undergoing a dramatic change because even godlike players are proving to be human.
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11
Carlos Alcaraz Is the New King of Tennis
GQ
The day after winning the U.S. Open, his first grand slam title, the 19-year-old Spaniard spoke with GQ about emulating Nadal, living with his parents, and looking to the future.
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12
Don’t Sleep on Tommy Paul
New York Magazine
It’s not that shirtless pictures of Tommy Paul standing next to a tractor on his mother’s New Jersey farm don’t exist. It’s just that, contrary to the implications of an article that appeared on the ATP’s website during his career-best run at this year’s Wimbledon, he knows nothing about farming beyond what he’s seen on Yellowstone. When he does make it home to visit, his mom and stepdad are always busy tending to the animals — horses, sheep, chickens — and Paul can’t help but chip in.
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13
Why Serena Williams’s Retirement Is Different
The Atlantic
Unless Serena Williams pulls off the kind of feat typically reserved for Hollywood endings at this year’s U.S. Open, 23 is the number of Grand Slam singles titles with which she will retire. It is a number that makes her the all-time winningest, slammiest singles champion, of any gender, in the modern incarnation of tennis (Rafael Nadal did recently inch closer to her record, capturing his 22nd at this year’s French Open, but still).
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14
Boxing legend Christy Martin — ‘My husband told me for 20 years he would kill me’
The Guardian
The newly minted Hall of Famer opens up about her trials outside the ring: substance abuse, domestic violence and an attempted murder by her husband, who left her to die on their bedroom floor.
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15
Taylor Fritz Is the Great (and Slightly Reluctant) Hope for American Men’s Tennis
GQ
Hours before the March 20th men’s final at Indian Wells, the biggest and toniest of tennis tournaments outside of the four Grand Slams, 24-year-old Taylor Fritz was seen limping out of a warm up. He was on deck to play Rafael Nadal, the venerated Spaniard and perennial favorite, unbeaten for the year and two months off his historic 21st Grand Slam singles title. In the semis the day before, Fritz had tweaked his ankle during the match against world number 7 Andrey Rublev.
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16
Rafael Nadal Stakes His Claim as the Greatest
GQ
In September, Rafael Nadal was on crutches. After pulling out of the U.S. Open and the remainder of his 2021 season, the Spaniard underwent surgery for the chronic issue that had plagued his left foot for years. He’d been sidelined with injuries before —in 2005, he famously won the Madrid Open final with a broken foot—but this was different.
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17
My Father, the White Supremacist
Vox
My father collapsed in his own backyard in the early spring of 2019, all 6 feet 5 inches of him, struck down in a thunderbolt of cardiac arrest.
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18
Women’s Tennis Had to Stand Up to China
New York Magazine
Before the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai went missing on November 2, the most notable sources of tension between Western sports leagues and China usually ended with those leagues doing their best not to offend the rising superpower.
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19
Rafael Nadal Is an Artist Too
New York Magazine
On Friday, Rafael Nadal, the undisputed deity of clay, will face Novak Djokovic in the French Open men’s semifinals. Should Nadal win and then triumph again in Sunday’s final, he will surpass Roger Federer in total Grand Slam championships and sit alone at 21. Since June 2005, when a baby-faced, long-haired 19-year-old Nadal in Capri pants played and won his first French Open, he has lost only twice at Roland-Garros: once in the fourth round to Robin Söderling in 2009 and again in the quarterfinals in 2015 to Djokovic.
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20
The Strange Beauty of Seeing Andy Murray Lose
NY Magazine
The process of retirement from men’s professional tennis, particularly from the upper echelon of the ATP tour — where the bulk of prize money and endorsement deals and cultural relevance exist — usually begins the same way. The player in question, no longer the physical phenomenon he was at age 20, much less 30, is dogged by months, or even years, of suspicion about the quality of his movements on court.
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21
USA Gymnastics Isn’t in Charge of Its Future
The Cut
Today, Simone Biles learned she can protect her health first and win Olympic medals second. What did we learn? Back in 1996, the answer was nothing. That was the year 14-year-old Dominique Moceanu became the youngest gold medalist in the history of American Olympic gymnastics. I had her picture taped to my bedroom wall. I loved her ponytail. I loved her scrunchies. I loved how fast she flew down the 82-foot runway toward the vault. I was 12, and I was captivated. Dominique was part of the Magnificent Seven, the United States Olympic teen-dream squad for that year’s Atlanta Games. Dominique was the smallest of the group, America’s 72-pound princess, Team USA’s adorable little mascot.
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22
Roger Federer on Retirement, Wimbledon, and Becoming Switzerland’s New Tourism Ambassador
GQ
Roger Federer is many things. He is, defensibly, the greatest male tennis player of all time. He is one of the ten highest-paid athletes in the world (last year, he pulled in $90 million dollars, a few million more than his elder football-playing friend, Tom Brady). He’s about to turn 40. He is 20 years and 20 Grand Slam Championship titles into his career, and he is still someone who, after 18 months of global chaos and devastation—and, for him personally, two knee surgeries and five weeks on crutches—has high hopes: Namely, to win (at least) one more (one last?) Grand Slam.
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23
Watching the Outrage Over Cuties as a Survivor of Pedophilia
The Atlantic
In 1989, when I was 5, I spent several weeks in a children’s psychiatric ward. My father, who began abusing me sexually three years earlier, was outraged by the hospitalization because he feared I’d become perverted by listening to “all the sex talk” from the counselors. A social worker told him I’d been admitted because of some of my new behavior: acting out toward other kindergartners, making comments about my private parts and theirs, telling my mom I was going to kill myself, before laughing uncontrollably.
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24
Novak Djokovic is the Superhero and the Supervillain of his Tennis Generation
GQ
Half an hour before he was due on court for his Sunday afternoon Round of 16 match at the U.S. Open, Novak Djokovic was spotted in the stands of Arthur Ashe Stadium with a doofy, open-mouthed grin. He and his trainer, Ulises Badio, were filming a pre-match dance-off, later posted to their Instagram feeds. Djokovic was the epitome of easy confidence and ultimate dad vibes as he waved his sunglasses back and forth in rhythm. He was also carrying a 26-0 singles record for the 2020 season.
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25
Me, My Relationship and PTSD
The New York Times
Sam and I began the conversation partly in jest. His co-worker had just eloped in Hawaii, and as we scrolled through their photos I gave him an elbow to the ribs and said in a singsong voice, “Well, maybe we should go to Hawaii, too!”
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