Cam

I swear I'll stop talking about tennis in a second, lol, but like. Frances Tiafoe (who plays his semi-final tonight), his parents were immigrants from Sierra Leone escaping civil war. He was able to play tennis as a kid because his dad was a construction worker at a tennis facility, and meanwhile his mom was a nurse. And now he's a huge tennis star.

Compared to Jessica Pegula. Whose dad is a literal oil billionaire. A literal one percent of the one percenters.

This is the duality of American tennis. It's such a weird mix of ungodly amounts of wealth and also these really beautiful human stories of dedication, sacrifice, perseverance and talent.

So, these were the women's semi-finals for the US Open yesterday. In grand slam singles, there are 128 women competing. Of those 128 women, I knew of two of them who have billionaire dads.

They are Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro.

The fact that both of them turned up in the semi-finals wasn't a massive surprise, you can see by the little numbers by their name that that they were top players coming into the tournament. But yeah.

Thankfully Navarro was stopped but JPeg went on to the final and she very well could win the tournament and walk away with the cash prize of $3.6 million dollars. (If she loses, she'll get $1.8. Btw, for making the semi-finals, Navarro will walk away with one million.)

As a big fan of women's tennis for whom the reasons that women's tennis > men's tennis are manifold, this was extremely disappointing to see. I don't hate literally anyone^ in the men's semi-final, which is extremely rare!! Men's semifinals > women's semifinals?? Who allowed this??

^ I also know very little about any of them. I'm still happy for Tiafoe though

Also Navarro beat Coco both here AND also at Wimbledon so you know... she is THE WORST

(This chart shows JPeg's grand slam performance timeline. "A" = Absent, "Q" means qualifiers and the number means what round of qualifiers she lost in, "1R" means that she lost in the first round of the proper tournament, etc.)

JPeg is 30 years old and had a extremely middling career until she cracked the top 100 players in 2019. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But imagine playing an EXTREMELY expensive sport... for almost a FULL DECADE... you are not making enough money to cover your expenses (because that's how women's tennis works until you make it into the top 100 or so) but the people paying your bills continue to pay your bills... for a DECADE

Like I'm happy for JPeg's turnaround. I'm happy for her that she was a mediocre player and now she's in a grand slam final for the first time at 30. I think that's great.

But I wish that ALL of the women playing mediocre tennis out there got to play as long as they wanted. I wish they all got to stick with it until they were satisfied. But they can't, because someone has to pay the bills, and daddy isn't writing them blank checks.

And now no matter what happens tomorrow, she's going to walk away with $1.8 million dollars. This would be lifechanging amount of money for a first-time grand slam finalist. It won't change anything for JPeg.

So, these were the women's semi-finals for the US Open yesterday. In grand slam singles, there are 128 women competing. Of those 128 women, I knew of two of them who have billionaire dads.

They are Jessica Pegula and Emma Navarro.

The fact that both of them turned up in the semi-finals wasn't a massive surprise, you can see by the little numbers by their name that that they were top players coming into the tournament. But yeah.

Thankfully Navarro was stopped but JPeg went on to the final and she very well could win the tournament and walk away with the cash prize of $3.6 million dollars. (If she loses, she'll get $1.8. Btw, for making the semi-finals, Navarro will walk away with one million.)

As a big fan of women's tennis for whom the reasons that women's tennis > men's tennis are manifold, this was extremely disappointing to see. I don't hate literally anyone^ in the men's semi-final, which is extremely rare!! Men's semifinals > women's semifinals?? Who allowed this??

^ I also know very little about any of them. I'm still happy for Tiafoe though

Also Navarro beat Coco both here AND also at Wimbledon so you know... she is THE WORST

Thanks for the ask, fellow Cameron!! (I assume that's the shared name?)

Fencing was fun today! I didn't understand it but I liked it. I may have to google and learn some things.

I totally relate to caring about sports being conditional on the vibes and the people!

My preferred sport is "sport that contains gays and also I know someone I can watch with, and also I can be talked into learning how to watch it." My gf talked me into learning how to watch tennis, so we watch women's tennis. (I bought the peacock subscription thing today for the Olympics to watch Naomi Osaka play Kerber. 🥲🥲🥲 Naomi did not win.)

Maybe I do like individual sports better because the learning barrier seems lower at least to watch one match/game.

My gf and I live relatively close a soccer stadium and we're like..... well maybe we should go watch some women's soccer?? Isn't women's soccer the gayest sport alive?? We’ll get out there one of these days and have to learn soccer.