Iga Swiatek continued her tear—the most dominant 60-day streak of WTA tennis since the Williams sisters. Carlos Alcaraz continues his whooshing ascent. Novak Djokovic is back—sort of. He won some matches but fell in the final of the Serbian Open. Meanwhile, another Russian won in Istanbul.
But the chatter this week was, not surprisingly, mostly about Wimbledon’s decision to ban Russian and Belarusian players for 2022. Lots of opinions—running the spectrum. Lots of passion. Lots of angles of entry. I wrote this when this decision came out. I think this is a swing-and-a-miss, one that sets horrible precedent, discriminates unfairly, and, above all, doesn’t achieve its aims—if anything it can (and has/will) be crudely propagandized by Putin. But to try and incorporate as many of your questions/thoughts as possible, here are some scattered bullet points:
• Let’s begin with some consensus: We are all outraged by Russia’s act of aggression. We are all supportive of Ukraine. We all find Putin to be some variation of a vile, narcissist, mass-murdering dictator executing an unjust war. Literally not one correspondence argued otherwise. No one is arguing in support of Russia. No one is not outraged. The issue here is how best to stand against Russia’s immoral, amoral war while doing so in an effective and principled way.
