rafa Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Rafa Is About To Do This All Over Again, Isn't He?
Enter Dominic Thiem, the dull boy who is good on dirt. For all his fits elsewhere, the Austrian has mastered clay, a surface that slows things down enough for his deep court positioning, thumping strokes, and one-track mind. He’s the only player who can justifiably hold any ember of hope when facing...
Rafael Nadal Might Have To Stop Picking His Butt Before Every Serve At The U.S. Open
The U.S. Open is getting strict about the time allowed between points, saying that there will be a “serve clock” of 25 seconds during the matches at this year’s event, according to the New York Times....
Dammit, Rafael Nadal Will Be Out For A While
Subtract Rafael Nadal from any given tennis tournament, and boom—the participants collectively give 10,000 percent less of a shit about winning. He treasures every point of every match in every tournament. The man who won 16 Slams, including two last year, reportedly cried for two hours straight aft...
Roger Federer Is Three Wins From Becoming The Oldest No. 1 Player Ever
Fresh off winning his second-straight Australian Open, Roger Federer has taken a wild card to play Rotterdam next week. In his old age/late empire, Federer has opted for a light tournament schedule, and he hasn’t played this particular 500-level event since 2012. But he lost just two sets at the Aus...
Rafael Barba Was <i>Law & Order: SVU</i>’s Best ADA, Fight Me
At the end of his first-ever appearance as Assistant District Attorney Rafael Barba on the 14th season of Law & Order: SVU, actor Raúl Esparza takes off his leather belt, hands it to a defendant in the jury box, and asks him to choke him with it....
Spirit Of Lionel Messi Temporarily Departs Barça Star's Body To Inhabit That Of Valparaiso Player
This is literally the only sporting event on right now....
The TV Is Stuck On The Federer-Nadal Show And The Remote Has Disappeared Into The Sofa
Apologies if you expected the channel to change after the two greatest split the year’s four majors evenly between themselves. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s enduring dominance, and the inconsistency of their most dangerous threats, have frozen everything in place. The hypothetical Next Generation...
Nick Kyrgios's Tantrum Was Rafael Nadal's Cue To Dominate
How was your weekend? I got myself a nice bowl of pasta but some new mosquito bites. Nick Kyrgios, too, had both good and bad times....
The Tennis Will Be Good As Hell This Weekend, If You're Awake For It
Frankly this chunk of the tennis calendar, known as the “Asian swing” because it passes through China and Japan, is the easiest to tune out, especially for a viewer in a U.S. time zone. The year’s last major just wrapped up, the year-end finals are still months away, and the time difference makes it...
Here Are The Most Interesting Guys Of The AL Playoffs
You may have checked out of baseball once your team’s season turned into a trash heap, but that’s okay! You’ve come back just in time for the best month of the year, as all the highest-stakes games with top-quality talent begin. Here’s a guide to the AL players you need to pay attention to as the po...
The Laver Cup Is What You Get When Tennis Tries To Be More Like Pro Wrestling, And That's A Good Thing
The worst-case scenario for the Laver Cup—a first attempt to construct an all-star game for men’s tennis, pitting the best players from Europe against the best players from everywhere else—was that it’d end up an elaborate, expensive excuse to smush nemeses Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal onto the sa...
How Can Anyone Say Rafael Nadal Is Playing The Best Tennis Of His Life?
This much is true: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open, and he’s playing exemplary tennis. In the present, soft field, the tennis is so good that it brought Nadal back to world No. 1 for the first time in four years, with two slams, two masters, and a 56-9 record. But all the hyperbole does make one wond...
Rafa Is Supreme, And Everyone Else Is Allowed To Wake Up Now
Perfect symmetry has been achieved: Rafael Nadal won the U.S. Open. Before that, Roger Federer won Wimbledon. Before that, Nadal won the French Open. Before that, Federer beat Nadal to win the Australian Open. The two greatest players in men’s tennis returned from long injury hiatus to split 2017’s ...
The U.S. Open Men's Draw Is A Joke
If you’re a man who can stand upright without anything hurting, you’ve got as good a shot as anyone to win the 2017 U.S. Open. Gone are the elites usually clotting the late rounds of majors. Of the top 11 players in men’s tennis, five of them are too hurt to play: No. 11 Milos Raonic, No. 10 Kei Nis...
All The Top Men In Tennis Are Broken And Calling It A Day
First it was Novak Djokovic, sitting out the rest of the season to just, uh, generally debug....
Rafael Devers Is 17 Games Into His Major-League Career And Already Getting Intentionally Walked
It’s now been nearly three weeks since Red Sox top prospect Rafael Devers got the call to the big leagues, moving on up at the ripe ol’ age of 20 after spending just nine games at Triple-A. It’s gone better than the team ever could have hoped. In his first 16 major-league games, Devers has hit .339/...
Rafael Devers's Home Run Broke This Yankees Fan
The Red Sox came back to beat the Yankees 3-2 and win the rubber game of their series thanks to their rookies: A ninth-inning home run from Rafael Devers and a 10th-inning single from Andrew Benintendi. And Devers’s homer silenced one very excited Yankees fan:...
Mexican Soccer Star Rafael Márquez Sanctioned By U.S. For Ties To Drug Kingpin
Rafael Márquez, a Mexican national team star and former MLS player, has been sanctioned by the United States government, along with 21 other individuals and more than 40 entities, for allegedly aiding Mexican drug kingpin Raul Flores Hernandez, the U.S. Treasury said today. ...
The Prodigy Rafael Devers Dings A Dong For First Career Hit
Rafael Devers, just called up by the Boston Red Sox, is the youngest player in baseball. Today was only the second MLB game ever for the 20-year-old third baseman, but he has already made an impact:...
On The Busiest Day In Tennis, Rafael Nadal Fell In Five Hours
At Wimbledon, per tradition, the first Sunday is a day of rest. By design there are never any matches scheduled. (Unless rain has derailed the first week of play, in which case, they play out of necessity.) Still, on that day the practice courts are abuzz. Here is how the New York Times describes t...