Teenagers having success at the U.S. Open

The U.S. Open tennis tournament is down to the final four. On the women's side, there are two teenagers still in the tournament. They are Leylah Fernandez from Canada and Emma Raducanu from England. These two players have become favorites in New York since there are no Americans in the singles draw for either the women or the men. Fernandez came out of nowhere. She qualified for the tournament the week before it started! Emma Raducanu is better known because she had a good tournament at Wimbledon this year. For the U.S., Coco Gauff has a lot of potential, but she is only 17 years old. We should give her some more time to develop, but I think she is another one of the young ones to watch. 

On the men’s side, American tennis is a mess. They haven’t had a Grand Slam champion for 18 years, since Andy Roddick won the 2003 U.S. Open. I hope this changes in the near future because it definitely makes tennis more popular when the U.S. fans have someone to cheer for. 

I didn’t know until Wednesday that they had moved the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony to September this year. It is usually in July. Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, Ted Simmons and Marvin Miller were all elected. If Larry Walker can make it, that should give a lot of hope to people like Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins. In my opinion, they were just as good as Walker was. I do wish Marvin Miller was elected sooner. Marvin was the lead negotiator for the baseball Players Union in the 1980s and 90s. I wish he had been able to celebrate this while he was alive.

The qualification matches for the men’s soccer World Cup are finally under way for next year's tournament in Qatar. Usually the qualification process occurs over about a year-and-a-half, but because of the pandemic, they had to defer all the matches into this year. The U.S. cannot afford to miss the World Cup for a second straight time. That would be terrible for soccer in this country. 

Over the past week, the U.S. played three games. They tied the first two and won the last one. They are now in third place in the large CONCACAF qualification group. If they win a few more games next month, they should be in a better position to qualify. I hope they can step up and make that happen.

Last week, I talked about wanting to watch the Solheim Cup. It was an exciting competition which Europe won by the score of 15-13. Europe got off to a great start in the first series of matches Saturday morning and the U.S. ultimately could not catch up. They were always behind on the scoreboard. The biggest difference between this and the Ryder Cup for men is the fans are much more polite toward the players even though it is a longstanding rivalry competition. I don’t know why the difference, but I wish the Ryder Cup fans were a little more polite too.  

I hope everyone enjoys the first week of the NFL! Hard to believe that it's time for that already! Where did the summer go!?