The Ryder Cup MC: When a Golf Tournament Becomes a Metaphor for Civilizational Collapse By Our Man in the Rough, filing from Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, Rome ROME—In the shadow of a 16th-century aqueduct and the ghost of Berlusconi’s bunga-bunga era, the Ryder Cup’s master of ceremonies took the first tee box microphone…
Straka Golf and the Quiet Globalization of a Very Loud Game by Dave’s Locker International Desk If you were anywhere near the Algarve last spring, you might have mistaken the muffled thuds for distant artillery. They were, in fact, the sound of Austrian Sepp Straka—world-ranked somewhere between “household name” and “who?”—driving Titleists into Portuguese cork…
Universitario vs. Cusco: A Fever Dream at 3,400 Meters, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism LIMA—Somewhere between a quinoa-flavored energy drink sponsorship and a cryptocurrency jersey patch, two football clubs named after institutions nobody fully trusts anymore—Universitario de Deportes and Cienciano del Cusco—met this week in a match that felt less like sport and more…
Noah Price Boxer, Age, and the Global Fetish for Numbers By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Pacific Somewhere between a grainy Instagram story and a Kazakh betting site, the phrase “Noah Price boxer age” has become a minor international obsession—proof that humanity will always find fresh ways to avoid its own…
The Curious Case of BC Football: How a Provincial Pastime Became a Global Rorschach Test By Our Correspondent, filed from an airport lounge where the Wi-Fi costs more than the beer Vancouver—On a continent currently debating whether democracy is an app or a bug, British Columbia’s football scene has improbably become a geopolitical mood ring….
Phoenix, Arizona – In a world where grain futures gyrate like a Tokyo pachinko machine and the Arctic melts faster than a popsicle in Riyadh, the American collegiate pastime known as football somehow still commands transcontinental bandwidth. This weekend’s curiosity: the Arizona Wildcats hosting the Iowa State Cyclones in what U.S. broadcasters call a “non-conference…
The Accidental Geopolitics of a Thursday Night in Blacksburg By R. M. Delgado, International Affairs Desk Somewhere between the Blue Ridge and the broad Atlantic, two modest land-grant universities will collide Thursday night in what the American sports-industrial complex bills, with endearing provincial grandiosity, as “Virginia Tech vs. NC State.” The rest of the planet,…
Atlas-Necaxa: When a Mexican Soccer Match Becomes a Geopolitical Mood Ring By Our Correspondent, who has watched enough football to know the offside rule is less a regulation than a philosophical debate Guadalajara, Mexico – Somewhere between the agave fields and the chip factories, the city’s Atlas football club recently hosted Necaxa in a Liga…
The Bagman Who Carries the Weight of the West By our correspondent in Dubai, where the sand traps are air-conditioned and optimism is tax-free Tommy Fleetwood’s caddie—currently Ian Finnis, affectionately nicknamed “Fino”—has spent the last fortnight schlepping a 40-pound leather suitcase across four continents, three time zones, and two climate crises. From the manicured lawns…
Liberty vs. Old Dominion: A Cage Match Sponsored by Everyone Else By our man in the cheap seats, watching empires negotiate the fine print PARIS—If you squint at the headlines long enough, “liberty” and “old dominion” start to look like the same tired couple in a long-running sitcom: one swears this season they’ll finally break…
The Global Parable of Two Golfers, or How Justin Rose and Bryson DeChambeau Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By our man in the 19th-hole press tent, still nursing yesterday’s painkillers and tomorrow’s regrets PARIS — Somewhere between the Seine and the artificial intelligence expo that’s currently turning the City of Light into the City of…
Garrett Nussmeier and the Geopolitics of a Third-String Quarterback By Our Man in Exile, Dave’s Locker Global Desk Somewhere between the irradiated sushi counters of Tokyo and the smoke-choked cafés of Beirut, the name “Garrett Nussmeier” flickered across sports tickers last January like a misspelled ransom note. LSU’s erstwhile clipboard curator had just been handed…
