Nothing adds to world-class tennis quite like world-class creative writing. Fighting hard for enough verbs to describe today’s first-round action in the first Grand Slam of the year, TSN’s mobile site today set a high mark early for 2012 with some outstanding thesaurus-consulting.
Here’s what the poets & scholars at the site first came up with to chronicle the wins of Nadal, Federer, Berdych, Fish, Almagro, del Potro, Dolgopolov, and others:
“cruised past”
“leveled”
“posted a decision over”
“rolled to a victory over”
“overcame a first-set defeat to record a victory over”
“battled back from an early setback to move on”
As the battle raged on, however, with more matches to report on, ever more obscure reaches of the thesaurus were plumbed as the writer(s) found their bags o’ verbs unduly taxed:
“downed”
“handled”
“waltzed past”
“fought back to dismiss”
“took out”
“knocked out”
“rolled past”
“was driven out by”
Like a flurry of aces in a late-game tiebreaker, though, the best strokes were saved for the last few lines of this timeless piece:
“swatted”
“outlasted”
“got past”
“earned a victory over”
Read the full piece on TSN’s mobile app – and stay tuned for more fine tennis reporting.
According to reports from the North Pole the day before Christmas, Santa Claus is getting behind the unfairly charged Luis Suarez. Santa has come out to say that he believes little Luis when he says:
Santa says that he came to this conclusion only days ago after a card arrived at his workshop world headquarters. The card was from Suarez and in it he pleaded to be removed from his infamous Naughty List.
Santa told Bestplayerintheworld.com: “I find the many and various charges against Luis a little hard to believe. And trust me I’ve compiled quite a Naughty List over the years. How could one player have done so many things? I think that there may be a little conspiracy at work against Luis and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt this Christmas.”
Santa revealed that in the card, Luis showed his sweet human side:
”I’m upset by the accusations of racism. I can only say that I have always respected and respect everybody. We are all the same. I go to the field with the maximum illusion of a little child who enjoys what he does, not to create conflicts.” (ESPNSoccernet)
Well if that is true Santa, then Suarez deserves a present just like every girl or boy.
And what could be a better present for that “little child” who accidentally ended up on the Naughty List than a reduction in that 8-match ban?
Just want to clear one thing up for soccer fans though Santa – you do exist – right?
—
Send Santa your own opinion on whether or not Luis Suarez belongs on the Naughty List:
Throughout Movember at BP, we’ve spotlighted some mighty fine staches. And one or two (hello, Sidney Crosby) have lacked a little something, too.
When you spend a month trolling the interweb for moustache pictures, two things can happen. One, you run the risk of losing friends and of having colleagues call the workplace counselors for a wee sitdown with you. And two, you end up looking at a lot of pictures of baseball players – pretty much all of whom sport really dated Peter Brady-style hairdos poking out from underneath the ol’ caps as well as the standard-issue 70s porn-star staches. For this reason alone, we’re glad that Movember has drawn to a close.
Baseball, basketball, and a smattering of other sports… We’ve chosen to end off the month’s moustache gallery with a truly fine specimen from retired NHLer Denis Maruk. It’s one of the best we’ve seen all month – and with this, we put Movember to the straight razor for another year.
BP’s stache of the day goes this evening to BC Lions receiver Kierrie Johnson – though in this 2007 Texas high-school photo, Kierrie can barely scrape together the testosterone to darken his upper lip.
These days, Johnson’s a rookie with the BC Lions, who until tonight hadn’t made a huge mark in his first CFL season. But it was his 66-yard touchdown that broke the back of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and won the 2011 Grey Cup for the Lions. Kierrie’s unforgettable catch was not only the most exciting play of the Grey Cup game but also arguably the most important in their 34-23 victory.
Kierrie Johnson – and his moustache – have come a way since Grade 12. Congrats, Kierrie.
In the BP Movember tradition of comparing ugly pics of athletes to same from the acting world, here we go with another… Don’t you agree that it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Ovie, above, in a decade or so (around the time his big fat Russian contract expires, in fact), as former James Bond villain Richard Kiel?
"If that fool Boudreau hadn't benched me in 2011, I'd never have sat out the last 10 years of my contract. Peasant."
Fabulous American swimmer Mark Spitz was unbeatable in the pool for a while in the 70s. He claimed gold medals and world records at every turn…but as we see here, he had an advantage over all of his competitors: he was the only one among them who was the secret younger brother of Burt Reynolds and Tom Selleck.
The uni-brow, the ubiquitous 70s low-grade porn stache…and ooh, the helmet hair, pool be damned. Spitz was a sight for sore eyes, and in fact enjoyed a lucrative post-Olympic career in Hawaii as a stunt double on Magnum PI.
"HIggins - I don't want to get wet again. Call that swimmer guy."
