The Next Point

Cincinnati Masters, Second Round

A fine third day at the Cincinnati Masters yielded the best selection of professional men’s tennis matches in months. As ever in North America this wondrous congregation of talent was witnessed by a formidable array of half-empty stands. Even by the night-match, which featured Roger Federer, the stadium appeared barely two-thirds full. For some reason, Americans collectively find it hard to get excited by a tennis tournament until the later rounds, an apathy shared by their main television networks. CBS doesn’t even show up to the US Open until the last weekend, which it then more or less ruins for everyone. It won’t grace Cincinnati until the last Sunday, while even ESPN won’t trouble itself until Thursday. In the meantime there’s the redoubtable Tennis Channel, as ever a mixed blessing. On the one hand live coverage is hard to fault. On the other hand there’s Justin Gimelstob.

It could be that the long decades of dominance has taught the American sporting public to assume that their countrymen will always feature in the later stages. Why trouble yourself earlier? We Australians long ago learned to cease making such assumptions. If we want to see our compatriots, we tune in early, preferably for qualifying. Now that there are no American men inside the top twenty, it might be wise for them to do the same. Of course, it could be that from my current vantage, precisely one Pacific Ocean and half a continent away, I’m totally misreading it and Cincinnati’s stands are actually jam-packed. Perhaps it’s merely a trick of the telecast: as well as adding twenty pounds, the camera subtracts a thousand spectators.

Dimitrov d. Baker, 6/3 6/2

CBS and ESPN viewers certainly won’t catch any sight of the reliably inspirational Brian Baker, who today went down easily to Grigor Dimitrov. This is a shame, since he’s worth watching and hasn’t been spotted in months. Having cruelly fallen in the second round of this year’s Australian Open – on a day of sustained carnage his injury was at once the worst and the least surprising – Baker was away from professional tennis for almost seven months. Numerically-gifted readers will note that this is the same amount of time that Rafael Nadal missed. Baker’s absence generated considerably less interest. Of course, Baker being absent from the men’s tour is hardly remarkable; it has been one of the constants of professional tennis for the last decade, like top four domination, or the microwave radiation that saturates the cosmos. The anomaly wasn’t that Baker was away, but that he had – and has – returned.

Naturally, I’m pleased he has, since I enjoy the way he plays: at his best slightly reminiscent of Nikolay Davydenko in a way that Davydenko himself rarely is anymore. Beyond that, though, I enjoy the way Baker encourages me in my fantasy that he’s a club player on history’s greatest roll. The truth of the matter is decidedly different, if not completely opposite – he is a talented pro who has had to do everything the hardest way, and whose body contains only slightly less metal than Wolverine’s. But I still experience a slight thrill every time he puts away a simple volley. Good for him, I think, knowing I might well have duffed it into the back fence.

Sadly today he missed too many simple volleys against Grigor Dimitrov, along with just about everything else. It was probably to be expected. Given his modest earnings over the years, it’s not as though he could afford authentic adamantium for his metal joints. He was forced to go with cheaper iron pins. Rust was thus inevitable. As is often the case it doesn’t cause a consistent loss of quality so much as wildly oscillating inconsistency. Baker comfortably saw off Denis Istomin yesterday, but might not have today given the chance. Instead he faced Dimitrov, for whom the phrase ‘wildly oscillating inconsistency’ might well have been coined. Still, he was on his game today, and looked a clear class above Baker. Baker will get better. For now it’s just a pleasure to see him back, and a pleasant surprise to see he still boasts a full complement of limbs. His matches are only ever one mishap away from recreating the Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan.

(3) Ferrer d. Harrison, 7/6 3/6 6/4

Speaking of Private Ryan, or at any rate Senior Cadet Ryan, Harrison managed to lose his nineteenth straight match to a top ten opponent a short while later, against a curiously vulnerable David Ferrer. The Spaniard’s lofty ranking was only apparent from the number next to his name, and not from the quality of his play. Ferrer has been injured for some time, and has barely looked himself since Roland Garros. If ever Harrison was going to beat him, it was today. Still, the American might take some solace from getting so close: he led by a break in the third set, and was briefly magnificent in breaking back late in the match. One doubts whether he will be consoled by that, however, since he continues to give a strong impression that he hates losing far too much to find it merely instructive. The game in which Harrison was broken back in the final set featured an ace clocked at 152mph, as they measure such things in the Cayman Islands, or 244kph as measured elsewhere. If this was an accurate reading, then it would be the seventh fastest serve of all time. But I doubt whether it was an accurate reading. The serve even had topspin on it.

(5) Federer d. Kohlschreiber, 6/3 7/6

Roger Federer rounded out the schedule by defeating Philipp Kohlschreiber for the seventh time, so far without a loss. Neither man appeared to be brimming with confidence, and based on their combined unforced error of sixty-five they had every reason not to be. Federer thoughtfully commemorated each of his previous six victories over Kohlschreiber with a squandered break point early in the first set: performance art of the very highest order, as Robbie Koenig might say. But he mostly served well himself, and broke in Kohlschreiber’s next game. Even if Federer somehow defends his Cincinnati title, he won’t be reprising last year’s heroic effort, in which he took the event without once dropping serve. He gifted a non-crucial break away in the second set, a favour the ever-courteous German repaid immediately. They went back to scrappy holds. Mercifully this couldn’t continue indefinitely, and the tiebreak come around. A match that had been defined mostly by forehand errors thus found its apotheosis. Federer led by 5-2, then saved a set point at 7-8 with an out serve. He finally took the match on his second match point, ironically with a forehand that landed in, a development so miraculous in the circumstances than Kohlschreiber could merely stare at it, dumbfounded.

In other news, Feliciano Lopez won his first Masters level match this year, over Kei Nishikori. Milos Raonic, the first Canadian player ever to enter the top ten, nearly became the first top ten player to lose to Jack Sock. Mikhail Youzhny and Ernest Gulbis turned up dressed identically, a deplorable faux pas that left the crowd aghast. All twenty-five of them.

Montreal Masters, Quarterfinals

(W) Pospisil d. Davydenko, 3/0 ret.

(11) Raonic d. Gulbis, 7/6 4/6 6/4

(1) Djokovic d. (7) Gasquet, 6/1 6/2

(4) Nadal d. (Q) Matosevic, 6/2 6/4

Two Canadian players have reached the semifinals of the Montreal Masters, an event so rare that it hasn’t happened since before either of the players were born. Given that these two young men are drawn to play each other, Canada is guaranteed to have a finalist for the first time in the Open Era, which is to say since before even Tommy Haas was born. To suggest that no one expect this is barely to say anything at all: it was only a few days ago that we marvelled when the home nation contrived to send five of its men through to the second round. Whether a local can actually win the tournament remains a dicey question. Lurking in the draw’s other half are Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, who will face each other for the thirty-sixth time. That should be all the perspective one needs.

The two Canadian semifinalists are the twenty-three-year-old Vasek Pospisil, considered a promising youngster, and the twenty-two-year-old Milos Raonic, a top player in whom fans have already found myriad ways to be disappointed. Yesterday, facing Juan Martin del Potro, Raonic discovered a way to inspire disappointment on both a new level and a vastly expanded scale. You probably know the story already: leading by a set and locked at 4/4 and deuce, the Canadian put away a winner only for his foot to touch the net while play was live, which usually means automatic loss of the point. Unfortunately the umpire’s attention had wavered, and he missed the crucial touch. It wasn’t missed by Raonic, however, whose face registered first annoyance, then wonder that he’d gotten away with it. Nor was it missed by del Potro, who remonstrated justifiably yet fruitlessly with the umpire, incarnated at that moment by Mohamed Lahyani. (I was immediately reminded of last year’s Indian Wells quarterfinal, when the Argentine was robbed of a point by a combination of Mo’s inattentiveness and a Hawkeye malfunction, inspiring a set-long meltdown.)

Nor was Raonic’s transgression missed by the worldwide audience, which made its feelings known with typical reticence. Forums and social media lit up, the way swamp gas can at the merest spark, and furious debate has ensued. At one end of the argument are those who believe that Raonic cheated, and should thus be taken to with white-hot pincers. There have been summary proclamations that he will never be supported again. But insofar as cheating and lapses in sportsmanship are not the same thing, one can be innocent of the former and guilty of the latter. At the other end are those who hold that it isn’t the player’s job to adjudicate such matters, and that if the umpire missed it, then so be it. There’s no real need to engage with a species of argument that was already considered self-evidently fatuous by Cato the Younger, except to point out that there are real consequences for eroding the moral high-ground, one of which is to diminish the joy of the contest. Beyond that, however, is the consideration that it hardly matters. Del Potro himself briefly vented about it, but has presumably moved on. Those vengeful souls still toiling on his behalf should really do the same, as should those still mounting stout defences of Raonic. I’m sure he’s fine, and doesn’t particularly care what social media thinks. (Tut-tutting disapproval is the default setting on the internet, and if it is going to rise to anything it is generally only to heights of opprobrium, usually heaped in steaming piles. Folks who spend a lot of time on social media, especially Twitter, are very prone to exaggerating its importance.)

In any case, it didn’t seem to affect Raonic today. He was admittedly patchy in seeing off an even patchier Gulbis in three sets, but then he’s been patchy all year. There were some great moments in the match, but these were largely submerged in the torrent of double-faults and weak errors from both men, too many of which came consecutively and at crucial moments. Meanwhile Pospisil was marvellous for three games, at which point Nikolay Davydenko withdrew, citing bronchitis. Raonic and Pospisil have never met at tour level, but they did play a few times in Futures and Challengers. Pospisil leads 3-1, and, having already proven his ability to handle colossal serves, is thus a reasonable chance to reach his first Tour final, at a Masters event. That hasn’t happened in, well, months, since Jerzy Janowicz in Paris. Last week Pospisil was ranked outside the top seventy. Even if he loses tomorrow he’ll reach the top forty. If he wins he has a good chance at a US Open seeding. There are around seven billion people on this planet, and I doubt whether any of them saw that coming, though many of them probably hadn’t given it adequate thought.

Djokovic later moved through after defeating Richard Gasquet in a replay of last year’s final that was even easier than everyone expected, which is saying something: the world number one was already on an eleven set winning streak against this particular opponent. Djokovic had been curiously flat against Denis Istomin last night, but today was excellent. Gasquet as ever was masterful in removing his own form from the equation. It hardly matters how well you play when you retreat that far behind the baseline, especially against a guy with the proven capacity to control the baseline against Nadal on clay. Faced merely with Gasquet on a mid-paced hardcourt, Djokovic was merciless, and never once troubled. The commentators initially concealed their disgust behind a mask of bafflement, but even that façade slipped when the graphic flashed up that the Frenchman had so far ventured inside the baseline precisely never. The whole thing was over in fifty-one minutes.

His opponent safely dispatched, Djokovic got on with the evening’s real entertainment by dancing again for the delirious crowd. They evidently didn’t share my wish that he’d work out some new material. Like crowds everywhere, Montreal’s treasures matched expectations more than novelty. Tomorrow Djokovic will face Nadal, who had no trouble whatsoever beating Marinko Matosevic. I wonder if Djokovic will dance if he wins that one. I imagine he won’t if he doesn’t. He’s as gracious a loser as I’ve ever seen, but there are limits.

Montreal Masters, Day Two

Whatever one’s expectations had been coming into this year’s Montreal Masters – I had few beyond an early loss for Bernard Tomic and ultimate triumph for Mikhail Youzhny – I doubt whether even ardent Canadian patriots foresaw that five of their compatriots would push through to the second round. There are more men representing Canada in the second round than any other nation, including Spain, whose men usually saturate the draw. Alas, only four Spaniards remain, although two of those progressed via walkovers against the ineffable Bye brothers, who once again suffered awful draws. (Nicolas Almagro wasn’t so fortunate. Faced with the ghoulish ghost of Davis Cup finals past, he fell.) The Canadians, on the other hand, had to do it the hard way, by playing actual human opponents.

Indeed, in most cases they did it the very hardest of ways. Filip Peliwo saved a match point against Jarkko Nieminen, before the Finn withdrew injured while trailing in the third set. This was also Peliwo’s first ever tour level victory: something to celebrate. Both Frank Dancevic and Vasek Pospisil came within two points of exiting, against Yen-Hsun Lu and John Isner respectively. All three have merrily justified their wildcards, as did Jesse Levine yesterday when he saw off a sadly jaded Xavier Malisse in straight sets. Meanwhile Milos Raonic only narrowly prevailed over Jeremy Chardy 7/5 in the final set. In each case, one must concede that the Canadian player was lucky not to have faced a sterner first round opponent – Isner was the only seed, and he’d just flown in from Washington, where he’d contested the final – but shouldn’t be dismissed for making the most of it.

Tommy Haas and David Goffin put together a match that was exciting nearly until the end, attacking and virtuosic, with the German’s all-court experience balanced nicely by the Belgian’s superb hands and foot-speed. It was almost enough to give one hope that the Belgian is rounding into some kind of form. The actual end of the match was dissatisfyingly perfunctory, however: at 3/4 in the second set Goffin threw together a poor game, Haas gratefully broke, then served out the match to love in about forty seconds. It reminded us why the first half of Goffin’s season has been so poor, even as we maintain some hope that the second half will see improvement. Richard Gasquet, who is defending runner-up points, made easy work of Martin Klizan. Youzhny’s march towards the title kicked off with a fine win over Jurgen Melzer. Both Nikolay Davydenko and Fabio Fognini proved completely unfazed by awful first sets, and came back to win easily. Their victims were Gilles Simon, who has been poor this season, and Marcos Baghdatis, who stopped compiling good seasons about half a decade ago. There was a time when he was considered a contender. Now few even rate him as a threat. I call it a shame.

Speaking of threats real or imagined, defending champion Novak Djokovic was obliged to face Florian Mayer first up in his first tournament since Wimbledon, where he’d also faced Mayer first up. This astonishing coincidence really rated no more than a bemused smile, but some had heroically risen to the narrative challenge, and dubbed it a tough opener for the Serb. It was hard to see much justification for this. Mayer is good, and extraordinary in many senses of the term, but Djokovic isn’t one to be bamboozled by a drop shot just because it is delivered two-handed, accompanied by a donkey-kick.

The early pattern in the match was for the top seed to struggle successfully to hold serve, while breaking Mayer easily. But it wasn’t a pattern likely to endure for long, and it was unlikely that Djokovic would tire of breaking Mayer. So it proved. Djokovic tightened up his service games – he held his third one in about a minute – and broke the German again to take the opening set. Mayer closed it with a meek double fault. Those first few games notwithstanding, it hadn’t been very close, and Djokovic hadn’t seemed threatened at all.

After Djokovic held and broke again to open the second set, there was reason to hope we’d heard the last of Mayer’s inherent danger, although it’s doubtful. The belief comes from the deep dark well in all fan’s hearts, where lurks a feathery dread of any player who once defeated (or even momentarily) challenged their favourite. (Thus do some Nadal fans momentarily quail at the sight of Ivo Karlovic ahead in a draw, as though a close final tiebreak in Indian Wells one year counts for more than a 4-0 head-to-head in the Spaniard’s favour.) This dovetails nicely with the media’s mission to confect rivalries from nothing, or in any case to market a near-certain thrashing as potential classic worth tuning in for.

Still, assuming you had tuned in for it, the end didn’t take long to come round. Mayer found a few more break points in the second set, but apparently confused them with hand grenades, handled them very gingerly, and discarded them immediately. Djokovic was more astute, and eagerly picked them up. He broke a few more times, and closed the match out in under an hour. Those who’d hung around until the end thus weren’t detained long, and saw the value of their tickets further enhanced when the world number one launched into a dance routine whose spontaneity was somewhat undone by the apparent care with which it had been choreographed. It even included a mascot – Canadian tennis tournaments apparently have mascots – as Daft Punk conveniently blared out over the sound system. Still, all good fun, and the crowd loved it.

Having availed myself of an unanticipated and therefore unannounced break from civilisation, I am now back on deck, and thoroughly enchanted at the thought of writing about whatever meagre tennis remains in the US Summer.

I’m disappointed to note I missed Atlanta, since it is far and away my favourite ATP tournament conducted in the United States that week. Conversely, I’m pleased to note I missed Marcel Granollers recover from a disastrous first set in the Kitzbühel final, although perhaps it can more accurately be said that Juan Monaco somehow managed to lose after inflicting a first set bagel. I didn’t see it, so I can’t say for sure. Access to the internet was limited, and my keenness to make use of even that was more limited still. Sadly I missed Mikhail Youzhny winning Gstaad. With no way to know otherwise, I assume he was magnificent. Holidays, you may be sure, are a mixed bag.

This is especially true when you venture to a quaint beachside town in the middle of winter. Admittedly, winter in southern Australia is gentler than in, say, northern Norway. There are some pretty lighthouses, but no fjords to speak, and the sun makes an appearance from time to time. But it was still sufficiently cold and dreary to remind me that I prefer to be inside drinking wine than slogging along a frigid, sleet-scored coastline with an errant black Labrador. This theory was further proven when I attempted to re-instigate a running regime. Modest improvements in fitness were more than offset by a serious calf-injury. I am reassured that this is a common problem when unfit people try to run to far too soon. Unfortunately, it also lengthens the odds of my appearing on the current season of Dancing With The Stars. Other disqualifications include a strong aversion to sequins and my crippling lack of C-list celebrity. Luckily it has meant more time indoors with the wine. As I say, a mixed bag.

Anyway, I’m back now. You may rest assured that Youzhny’s triumphant month-long progress across North America will not go un-summarised.

BÃ¥stad, Stuttgart, Newport: Finals

(With an excursion through cricket and cycling.)

An Argentine, an Italian and a Frenchman all walk into a joke. Stop me if you’ve heard it. It’s a good one. Within the space of a few hours Carlos Berlocq and Fabio Fognini, hitherto united only in being poster-children for mercuriality, both claimed their first tour titles. Later in the day they were joined by Nicolas Mahut, although this wasn’t his first title. His first title came last month in Rosmalen. He’s now an old hand, as opposed to a mere veteran, and thus knew not to panic even as he repeatedly fell behind in today’s Newport final. Those who wonder what the weeks before and after Majors are for, here is the answer: this is what they’re for. Today was one for those world-weary poseurs who profess to have seen everything, although I’m not convinced this is a market to which professional tennis should necessarily cater.

Meanwhile the butts of the joke were a Spaniard, a German and an Australian, incarnated respectively by Fernando Verdasco, Philipp Kohlschreiber and Lleyton Hewitt, all of whom lost finals there were reasonably expected to win. Kohlschreiber in particular had a strong advantage, playing in Germany, against a guy who has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to save his worst efforts for finals, which is really saying something. Nonetheless, Fognini was in his rare committed mode for this one, although through the first set he, like his opponent, appeared more committed to breaking serve than to holding it. They traded a bunch of games, with Kohlschreiber eventually getting the last couple, which earned him the set. Fognini missed his cue to fade, and instead broke at the start of the second set, and the third. Kohlschreiber fought back well from a double break down in the last of these, but by now Fognini’s commitment was translating into winning decisive points on his own serve, including a few solid ones to see it out. Being a German claycourt tournament, there was naturally a car provided for the champion. In this case a Mercedes Benz courtesy of Henri Leconte, who has recently acquired a tan so profound he looks walnut-stained, but otherwise appears gleefully unchanged. So, gratifying, does Fognini. I can’t imagine what it would take to change him.

The same holds true for Verdasco, who some hours earlier had belied his own recent form by struggling to stay with Berlocq through a fraught opening set, before collapsing entirely in the second. In just his second final, Berlocq showed admirable and unusual focus, looking all day like the eighteen-final veteran, while Verdasco, the actual eighteen-final veteran, showed little of the virtuosity that saw him inflict a collective heart-attack on Britain last week, or any of the doggedness that allowed him to endure Dimitrov yesterday. The Spaniard is now a dismal 5-13 in tour finals, and has finished runner-up at least once for the last seven seasons. I admit I didn’t see all of the second set, although what I did see wasn’t attractive enough to do justice to the venue, which is stunning. But by this time my wife was hollering constant updates from the next room, to the effect that Australia’s haemorrhage of wickets at Trent Bridge had slowed to a trickle, or that a particularly striking field of purple wildflowers had rippled into view somewhere in regional France. Tennis wasn’t the only thing on.

It is a weird reality that the densest concentration of world sports takes place during the Australian winter, and invariably in the dead of night. Wimbledon has barely ended, but there are still plenty of reasons to put off bedtime. There’s the Tour de France, which I confess I watch mainly for the scenery, since its tactical intricacies and eldritch courtesies largely escape me. Thanks to Cadel Evans, I’m patriotically obliged to make the effort. I do know that Our Cadel lost his title to an affable Brit last year, just as the Wallabies lost to the less-affable Lions last week. There’s a pattern here – another Brit is leading this year’s Tour, while Andy Murray just won Wimbledon – which of course brings me to The Ashes.

For a very long time The Ashes was essentially a waste of time freighted down with excessive ceremony, in real peril of sliding wholly into irrelevancy through sheer uncompetitiveness. Australia always won, apparently without trying very hard, and with a thoroughness that made it seem as though their good times would never end. As ever a period of domination felt endless while it continued. Any epoch seems eternal when you’re in it. England was frankly terrible for almost two decades, to the point where any records set against them needed to be marked with an asterisk, like double-bagelling Mischa Zverev. Australia meanwhile fielded a succession of the strongest test squads since the West Indian juggernauts of the 1980s, the personnel of such outrageous quality that even a strategic non-entity like Ricky Ponting could look good leading them. Thankfully, nothing lasts forever, even if an Australian sporting public drunk on decades of easy triumph are only slowly sobering to the fact. It’s not unlike the way casual sports fans still think Federer wins everything, or are surprised when he doesn’t. It turns out dominating isn’t easy after all. Now that Australia’s domination has ended, The Ashes is proving itself to be tremendously diverting, and, for an insufferably arrogant Australian cricket establishment, a sorely-needed lesson in hubris. Now if they win, they have to do it hard, against teams that are better than them. Suddenly Ashes Test matches are worth watching again. The one that ended today was a classic.

Even as Berlocq was finishing off Verdasco on the world’s loveliest centre court in Båstad, England were wrapping up one of the great Test matches on a dull pitch in Nottingham. Australia had come within a whisker of lofting an audacious victory from the most parlous of positions, chasing down a 300+ fourth innings total without discernible help from their batsmen. Australia’s tactic was apparently to deploy their entire top-order as a series of decoys, and fashion each innings around tenth-wicket partnerships. To those who insist with an air of Weltschmerz that there’s nothing new under the sun: I bet they’ve never seen that. Jimmy Anderson’s ten-wicket haul deservedly earned him man of the match, but one feels Ashton Agar was only two runs shy of claiming that honour in a losing team. His 98 on debut was the highest score by a number eleven batsman in history, and was completely unforgettable for anyone who watched it. And he is only nineteen, which is three years younger than Grigor Dimitrov, who’d already proved that, for some, not even weeks like this are for winning titles.

Anyway, where was I? Right: tennis. First there was cycling, although I admit I dozed through much of that, rousing every now and again to watch a garish swarm of absurdly fit men struggle up a cruel hill somewhere in Provence. The severity of Mont Ventoux’s gradient is lost on television, although the length of the ascent was amply evoked by the faces of the participants, none of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves much. I was happy enough where I was, recumbent on my couch. Eventually Hewitt and Mahut appeared for the last grass court match of the season, mere hours after they’d left it. Hewitt had narrowly seen off John Isner in the semifinal earlier in the day, and now he was going to make it all right. Australia had lost the Trent Bridge Test, but at least Our Lleyton could win Newport. It was something.

Except, of course, it wasn’t, at least not for Hewitt. Both finalists are now a ways past thirty (although it’s important to remind ourselves that this hasn’t been considered elderly outside of professional tennis since the late Middle Ages. Watching too much sport can leave one feeling like survival past one’s thirty-fifth birthday is a notable achievement, and that even then you’re merely storing organs for your offspring.) Anyway, both Hewitt and Mahut can lay reasonable claim at this late stage of their careers to being grass court specialists, if only because they seem physically and temperamentally incapable of thriving on any other surface. Beyond that however, their skills, different though they are from each other, are both complimented by grass:  they have that increasingly rare ability to make hay while the turf is still green.

Hewitt was once renowned for his mental strength, but it should be remembered that his legend was built on a capacity to fight when behind, not from the front. Even in the days of his pomp, back when Australia still boasted a world class cricket team, Hewitt was never a great closer. The latter half of his eighty week reign atop the ATP rankings were mostly defined by disinclination to attack, and eagerness to invite it. Today, as he led by a break several times in the deciding set of the final, it was his serve that let him down, and he was found out by an opponent who didn’t stop coming. Mahut, it must be said, maintained his composure beautifully. Two months ago he languished outside the top two hundred without a title to his name. Now he’s ranked 75, with a pair of them.

My television displayed an intrusive close-up of a very sweaty young man in a canary yellow top riding a bicycle up a hill, surrounded by a fleet of automobiles that taunted him with the ease by which they were doing the same. I was incensed on his behalf, and exhausted on my own, so I went to bed.