Two 40-year-olds won their first Grand Slam with a tennis miracle

OK, one of them is only 39. Also, cricket's biggest star finally wins his first league championship, a million-dollar arm runs out of gas, and Tom Thibodeau's combover.

Jun 09, 2025

I have spent most of the past week wrestling with the Knicks’ decision to fire Tom Thibodeau, the joyless basketball savant whose tenure with the Knicks perfectly coincides with their rise from decades of irrelevance to consistent playoff success.

I think about Thibodeau’s coaching the same way I think about Thibodeau’s combover.

Thibodeau is down to the last 17 hairs on top of his head. But he remains determined to maximize the impact and utility of every possible follicle in ways that few would even dream of. He stretches each strand as far as it will possibly go, a miracle of cosmetological engineering. I’ll remember that hair, and these Knicks runs, for the rest of my life. But perhaps Thibodeau pushes those hairs a bit too far. We wouldn’t think twice if Thibodeau simply shaved his head—the NBA is full of proudly bald ballers!

When the Knicks were building from nothing, Thibodeau’s bold vision for basketball (and hair) was necessary. But now they’ve built an excellent roster that has proven they can go deep in the postseason. They don’t need to alchemize the impossible out of thin air (or thin hair) anymore. They just need someone who can make normal decisions with their roster/hair. And Thibs did just get outcoached by a guy who decided to simply shave his head.

Hopefully the decision to fire Thibodeau is a sign the Knicks are dedicated to taking the next step instead of being content with contention. Either that or… you know… we’re rashly trashing our best coach in decades, will never achieve the success we just achieved, and are once again back to being a franchise imprisoned by the whims of a mad owner.

I guess we’ll find out!

🎶 Someone pour me up a doubles shot of whiskey 🎶

Alcaraz-Sinner was an all-time French Open final, but instead of talking about those two glowing, growing tennis talents, I’d like to talk about two doubles dudes double their age: Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos, who won their first Grand Slam Saturday a combined 40-ish years into their tennis careers.

They won the French Open men’s doubles title thanks to one of the most brilliant tennis shots you’ll ever see.

Tied in the third set and facing multiple break points, Zeballos pulled off a miracle desperation shot around the net, threading a needle between on-court obstacles, skimming the ball inches above the Roland Garros clay like a skipping stone on a lake. A miss, and their opponents would’ve gone up 4-3 in the third set and needed to hold serve twice to win, which they did. But he made magic and won the French Open.

This is why I remain the internet’s #1 Doubles Tennis Fan. While the sport lacks the one-on-one drama of Alcaraz-Sinner, it makes up for it with points like this—rapid-fire sequences with absurd angles, with ridiculously skilled players attempting and executing shots that would never come up in a singles match.

It’s the first Grand Slam victory for Granollers, a 39-year old Spaniard, and Zeballos, a 40-year old Argentine. The pair were a combined 0-for-5 in Grand Slam finals: three losses as a pair, two losses by Granollers with another partner in 2014. Granollers reportedly considered retirement after the 2024 season.
With a combined age of 79, I think Granollers and Zeballos are the oldest combined Grand Slam doubles champions ever—men’s, women’s, mixed doubles. (Fact-check me, please, I don’t have an editor.)
I know what you’re thinking: Rodger, if you’re so enamored by Gen X-ers pinging a ball over a net, why not watch professional pickleball? Do not suggest this to me. I have watched pickleball and it does not hold a candle to the majesty of doubles tennis.
It’s basically just doubles tennis players and LeBron still thriving in their 40s. Last year, Rohan Bopanna became the oldest man to win a Grand Slam doubles championship, winning the Australian Open at 43 years old. That record had only been set two years prior, by 40-year old Jean-Julien Rojer at the 2022 French Open. The youngest player currently in the top 10 doubles rankings is 29-year old Henry Patten, and there are ten players aged 40 or older in the top 100.
Women’s doubles players skew a bit younger, but 38-year old Sara Errani backed up her 2024 Roland-Garros Olympic gold with a French Open win this weekend, her first Grand Slam title since 2014.
Point being: There’s still hope for you, 36-Year Old Guy Reading This Newsletter! Hire a babysitter while you and a partner attempt to qualify for the US Open.

Guns… Down 😞😞😞

The championship series between Texas and Texas Tech at the Women’s College World Series was devastatingly anticlimactic. The Red Raiders and Longhorns split the first two games to force a decisive Game 3… only for Texas to run riot in the final game, taking a 10-0 lead before ultimately winning 10-4.

Former Texas Tech QB Patrick Mahomes was in attendance, so I guess he finally knows what it’s like to get really excited to watch the biggest game of the season, only for one team to completely dominate a noncompetitive mismatch.

The most compelling player of the series, without a doubt, was Tech’s million-dollar arm, NiJaree Canady—even in her failures.

Texas Tech lured Canady from Stanford after she powered the Cardinal to last year’s WCWS with a 0.73 ERA. She famously inked a $1 million NIL deal to come to Lubbock, which revamped a historically middling program in one offseason with a new coach and a bunch of transfers.
$1 million has to be the largest salary any softball player has ever received, at any level. Players in the new AUSL can receive up to $75,000 based on performance incentives; a Front Office Sports article about American softball stars playing pro ball in Japan indicates they can receive “six figures.” But $1 million? That required a softball superstar at a school trying to make a splash.
Canady was worth every damn penny. She led college softball with a 0.90 ERA heading into the championship series while also hitting cleanup and leading Texas Tech in batting home runs. Canady started every WCWS game for the Red Raiders, which is Reason #1 softball is simply a superior sport to baseball, a sport where teams regularly play their fifth-best starter instead of just throwing their MVP every day.
But Canady lost Game 1 in bizarre fashion, failing to intentionally walk Texas catcher Reese Atwood. Canady hadn’t given an intentional walk all season long—why would she? She just struck everybody out!—and clearly seemed uncomfortable and unpracticed with the process. She couldn’t miss the zone, and Atwood reached out and hit a grounder that scored two runs.
The Raiders won Game 2, and Canady took the circle again for Game 3… but got rocked for 5 runs in the first inning. Her ERA jumped all the way to 1.11, dropping her from first to second in the nation.
Glasco said Canady was dealing with arm fatigue, although other pitchers have pitched for much, much longer without burning out. Perhaps Texas simply got timed up to Canady’s pitches after facing her for 14 consecutive innings.
But also… Texas has Canady’s number! (Like 800 words in, I’m finally ready to write about how the team which took a 10-0 lead in the national championship game is extremely good.) Texas beat Canady in February, and beat Canady twice last year’s WCWS to eliminate Stanford. All in all, Canady has a 72-12 record against Not Texas… and a 3-5 record against Texas.
Luckily, we get to do this again next year—Canady has agreed to another million-dollar NIL deal to pitch in 2026. I bet Canady is hoping to play against Anybody But Texas in the national championship game.

The Quest For The Kohli Grail

Cricket’s biggest megastar finally won the sport’s biggest league. Virat Kohli led Royal Challengers Bengaluru to their first-ever championship in last week’s Indian Premier League final:

(Yep, that’s the best video I can find!)

I got to see the cult of Kohli at last year’s T20 World Cup in Long Island. One fan had a sign saying “CRICKET IS MY RELIGION, KOHLI IS MY GOD.” Another had a meticulously hand-drawn poster of Kohli’s face that must have taken hours to make.
To put Kohli’s fame into context for Americans: Kohli has the 13th-most followers on Instagram, sandwiched between #12 Taylor Swift and #14 J. Lo. Who have a combined ZERO Cricket World Cup titles, by the way.WE’RE the weird ones for needing a Virat Kohli explainer!
Over the course of Kohli’s career, IPL has gone from an experiment to one of the world’s biggest sports leagues. He played in the league’s very first match in 2008, as the IPL attempted to pioneer an American-style franchise model for cricket. Instead of 5-day long test matches between international teams, it has 4-hour long games between teams in big cities paying top dollar for the world’s best players. It’s been a huge success, with the TV contract rivaling the NFL and Premier League on a per-game basis.
Kohli holds the league’s all-time records for runs, catches, 50-run performances, 100-run performances, and runs in a single-season. He’s also just about the only player to play his entire career for one team. Most IPL players go up for auction every year, but RCB got lucky enough to select Kohli—big mistake by the team with the first overall pick—and have opted to retain his rights at every opportunity since. (It’s similar to the NFL franchise tag—they keep him and agree to pay him a very high salary.)
But Kohli had never actually won the league. RCB was runner-up in 2009, 2011, and 2016. More like the Bengaluru Bills, amirite?
The actual final was won by RCB’s bowlers, but Kohli was their leading batter with 43 runs. Just a reminder: That’s 43 more than Kohli scored against Team USA in the 2024 T20 World Cup, when Oracle employee Saurabh Netravalkar retired him on the very first ball he faced.

Quick Hits

Seven of the eight spots in the Men’s College World Series have been decided. Murray State is playing Duke tonight for the eighth spot in a rematch of the 2019 NBA Draft. If the Racers win, they’ll be just the fourth team which started their run as a 4-seed in a regional (essentially, a 13-14-15-16 seed in the NCAA hoops tournament) to make the College World Series.
18-year old Summer McIntosh set the world record in the 400m freestyle at the Canadian national championships. She also swam the third-fastest 800m of all time, making her the only person in the all-time top 10 besides Katie Ledecky. They’ll go head-to-head at next month’s World Aquatics Championships.
Another horse won the Belmont Stakes, continuing a 157-year streak.