NFL Football Tonight: The American Gladiator Show That Pays for Half the World’s Cable Bill By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk While the rest of the planet is busy arguing about tariffs, TikTok bans, and whether the North Atlantic is still a thing, tonight’s NFL game (Cowboys-Eagles, 8:15 p.m. ET for those keeping score in Zulu…
Carey Price and the Unbearable Lightness of Being a National Saint By Dave’s Locker International Desk, somewhere between a Tim Hortons and a UN peacekeeping outpost MONTREAL—If you want to watch a country negotiate with its own mythology, just mention Carey Price’s name in any bar from Chicoutimi to Chilliwack. The man has become a…
John McEnroe: The Last American Who Could Scream at Authority and Still Get Applause By Dave’s International Desk, still picking up the pieces after another Grand Slam meltdown somewhere on the GMT timeline PARIS—In the VIP box above Court Philippe-Chatrier, a silver-haired man in a bespoke blazer sits with the serenity of a retired apex…
Sweden’s national football team, once the polite cousin who brought lingonberry jam to Europe’s raucous potluck, has lately become the guest who drinks everyone else’s aquavit and starts quoting existentialist poetry at 3 a.m. The Blågult’s recent flirtation with relevance—qualifying for Euro 2024 after a play-off that resembled a Nordic noir cliff-hanger—has rippled far beyond…
Tyler Bass and the Curious Global Aftershock of a 27-Yard Miss By “Globetrotting” G. Mallory, Senior Field Correspondent When Buffalo Bills kicker Tyler Bass hooked a 27-yard field-goal attempt wide right last January, the ball did not simply sail into the Kansas City night. It kept traveling—across oceans, borders, and time zones—picking up symbolic baggage…
Budapest, 3:07 a.m. local time—while the rest of the city nurses pálinka hangovers and debates whether the Danube is rising fast enough to solve the parliament-building real-estate problem, a man named Za’Darius Smith is simultaneously being discussed in five different languages on three continents. Not bad for someone whose surname sounds like an investment bank…
Martina Navratilova: The Defector Who Beat the World at Its Own Game by Dave’s International Desk Prague, 1975. Somewhere behind the Iron Curtain, an 18-year-old left-hander with a serve like a guillotine and a mullet that mocked the very concept of aerodynamics decided she’d had enough of velvet revolutions and state-sponsored haircuts. She slipped out…
Jimmy Butler, the NBA’s resident philosopher-king in basketball shorts, has spent the last decade exporting a very American product—pure, weaponized spite—to every corner of the globe. From the frostbitten arenas of Minnesota to the pastel humidity of Miami, he has played the same tune: “You didn’t believe in me? Good. Let’s make this awkward.” It’s…
Novak Djokovic: The Last Sovereign of a Crumbling Empire By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk There’s a small, rectangular kingdom that exists wherever a tennis court has white lines and a net. It has no parliament, no currency, and no immigration queue—only a scoreboard and the faint smell of overpriced sunscreen. For the better part of…
Sergio García: The Man Who Turned a Golf Club into a Global Rorschach Test By Our Correspondent in a Café That Charges Extra for Existential Dread If you mention “Sergio García” in a Madrid tapas bar, a Dubai boardroom, a Tokyo driving range, or a Wyoming truck stop, the reactions split faster than a Brexit…
The World According to Alcaraz: How One 20-Year-Old from El Palmar Turns Global Panic into Forehand Therapy Dave’s Locker | International Desk | 14 June 2024 It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever the planet feels as though it’s sliding down a compost heap of wars, inflation, and algorithmically generated pop stars, humanity demands…
Arthur Ashe Stadium, Flushing Meadows, New York—where the world’s best tennis players come to grunt in eight languages while a global television audience pretends to understand line-call replays. From the upper deck, you can see LaGuardia’s planes descending like anxious pigeons, reminding everyone that even aircraft want a closer look at a facility named for…
