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…
Novak Djokovic is no longer just a tennis player; he is a walking diplomatic incident wearing sweat-wicking polyester. To the untrained eye he chases fuzzy yellow balls, but to immigration officers, constitutional lawyers, and Balkan conspiracy theorists he is a one-man geopolitical crisis who happens to have a two-handed backhand. In the grand carnival of…
Shabana Mahmood: The Woman Reheating Britain While the World Burns By our correspondent in a climate-controlled bunker somewhere neutral Ladies, gentlemen, and whichever gender the algorithm assigned you today, meet Shabana Mahmood—Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood, Shadow Justice Secretary, and, to the surprise of everyone who still thinks Britain’s biggest export is self-deprecation, a potential…
Norman, Oklahoma—population 128,000, longitude 35.22° N, latitude 97.44° W—doesn’t usually appear on the radar of the average Berlin stockbroker, Lagos software contractor, or Singaporean port-logistics clerk. Yet every autumn, when the Sooner Schooner rolls onto Owen Field and 80,000 crimson-clad pilgrims howl at a sky the color of dried blood, the University of Oklahoma football…
CARLOS ALCARAZ: THE 20-YEAR-OLD WHO MADE THE WORLD REMEMBER TENNIS STILL EXISTS By our International Desk—where the coffee’s bitter and the optimism is imported duty-free Madrid, Riyadh, Melbourne, New York—pick your time zone and you’ll still find Carlos Alcaraz’s backhand ricocheting off every screen like a geopolitical ping-pong ball. In an era when the planet’s…
Ljubljana, May 2024 – Slovenia, population two million and change (roughly the head-count of a midsize Shanghai apartment block), is once again being invited to punch well above its Alpine weight. The opponent this week is Sweden, whose population is larger than the entire Western Balkans combined, whose arms exports keep half the world’s warlords…
Saints vs Warriors: A Global Scorecard of Moral Glory and Collateral Damage Byline: Dave’s Locker, International Affairs Desk Across continents, the phrase “saints vs warriors” no longer belongs to stained-glass windows or dusty history books. It’s trending on Manila TikTok, trending in Kyiv basements, trending wherever the Wi-Fi still works. From the Vatican’s corridors to…
