For the first time in the game’s modern era, the top five players in the world—and the top five seeds at Wimbledon—are over 30 years old
For the first time in the game’s modern era, the five best players in the world—and the five top seeds at Wimbledon—are all over 30 years old.
.. Half of the 32 seeds at Wimbledon, which starts Monday, are older than 30. Four others are 29.
.. According to Gilbert, tennis players began thinking they could play longer when Agassi made the U.S. Open final in 2005 at 35.
.. a variety of factors—including skyrocketing prize money, better knowledge of fitness and nutrition, and the shaky psyches and physical weaknesses of players who were supposed to bump off the aging greats—have made thirtysomething the new twentysomething in tennis.
.. Tennis experts say both players have recaptured their former glory with a similar strategy—improving their backhands and using the shot as a weapon rather than a defensive tool to set up a forehand.
.. Money, and the opportunities and comforts it provides, is driving the demographic change.
.. The money allows the top players to travel with entourages that include coaches, trainers, physiotherapists, masseuses and nutritionists.
.. Instead of banging balls on the court for four hours of practice, they may hit for 90 minutes but do 90 minutes of strength, agility, flexibility and fitness training.
.. serial beatdowns have likely caused chronic mental damage.
“Generally if you are going to be a multiple slam winner you will win when you are young,” he said. “When you don’t do that the mental game comes into play.
Watch Out World, Trump’s Coming
while visiting both Saudi Arabia and Israel is a welcome gesture, Richard Nixon tried the same thing in 1974, and nobody was distracted.
.. It’s true that during the campaign Trump suggested the Saudis were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, that they “push gays off buildings” and “kill women and treat women horribly.” On the other hand, he also told one rally that he got along “great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Whatever else you complain about, give the man credit for flexibility.
.. Peter Baker reported in The Times that as heads of state were preparing for the big trip, all of them were being primed to remember to bring up that Electoral College thing a lot.
.. Pope Francis, with whom Trump conducted a verbal war over wall-building. But that’s all over, and the president now clearly appreciates Francis as the great moral leader he is. (“I think he’s got a lot of personality.”)
.. When the meeting is over, the other people at the table often come away very pleased with themselves, unaware he has already forgotten everything they said.
.. The Vatican talk will probably be about refugees and immigration. It’s possible Francis will feel they had a real meeting of the minds. The president will recall that the pope is shorter than he is.
.. There definitely is something about him that makes people want to increase their defense budgets.
.. Trump has spent his entire political career warning Americans that “the world is laughing at us.” But now it really, really is. Europe is awash in stories about the two-to-four-minute limit on remarks during the NATO discussions.
Smart Approaches, Not Strong-Arm Tactics, to Jobs
He can make you so nuts — he can so vacuum your brains out — that you can’t think clearly about the most important questions today: What things are true even if Trump believes them, and therefore merit support?
.. But I worry about his pugnacious tactics. I would be negotiating with Beijing in total secret. Let everybody save face. If he smacks China with “America First,” China will smack him with “China First,” and soon we’ll have a good ol’ trade war.
.. But what Trump doesn’t see is that while this may get him some short-term jobs headlines, in the long-run C.E.O.s may prefer not to build their next factory in America, precisely because it will be hostage to Trump’s Twitter lashings. They also may quietly replace more workers with robots faster, because Trump can’t see or complain about that.
.. “Trump wants to protect jobs,” explained Gidi Grinstein, who heads the Israeli policy institute Reut. “What we really need is to protect workers.”
You need to protect workers, not jobs, because every worker today will most likely have to transition multiple times to multiple jobs as the pace of change accelerates. So the best way you help workers is by ensuring that they are flexible — that they have the skills, safety nets, health care and lifelong learning opportunities to make those leaps and that they live in cities open to innovation, entrepreneurship and high-I.Q. risk-takers.
.. Eric Beinhocker, executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford, calls this the “new progressive localism.” For too long, he argues, “progressives have been so focused on Washington, they’ve missed the fact that most of the progress on the issues they care about — environment, education, economic opportunity and work-force skills — has happened at the local level.
Because that is where trust lives.”
Trust is what enables you to adapt quickly and experiment often, i.e., to be flexible. And there is so much more trust on the local level than the national level in America today.
.. he is saving jobs but hurting workers, because he is making workers less secure and less flexible.