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

Jannik Sinner
Tennis ginger

Love this Defector interview with tennis stenographers. It’s the kind of person who usually gets overlooked in the whole tournament scene even though they’re doing important stuff.