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Sports Then and Now



Tennis Players Illustrate How To Win And Lose With Dignity Comments

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Claudia Celestial Girl
Tennis players regularly have to deal with both the emotional high of winning and the emotional low of losing.

Tennis players regularly have to deal with both the emotional high of winning and the emotional low of losing.

After a spectacular loss to Roger Federer in the 2007 Australian Open, Andy Roddick, said, “It was frustrating, it was miserable, it sucked, it was terrible…Besides that it was fine.”

Decades ago, for those of us in the US old enough to remember, ABC used to open a weekly sports show citing, in equal measure: the Joy of Victory…and the Agony of Defeat (using a horrible skiing accident to illustrate the latter).

The truth is that defeat, though agonizing, can often be the most inspiring illumination of character that comes out of a sporting contest.

This year, Roger Federer took two of the most spectacular losses a champion can accept, and also recorded two of the most spectacular wins a champion could ever make in meeting, then breaking, the all-time Slam record formerly held by Pete Sampras.

But this is an article about that state of grace that can sometimes be entered by a sporting champion in defeat.

Read the rest of this entry →

  • Vintage Athlete of the Month

    • Bill Bradley – An All-American Hero
      March 4, 2010 | 11:06 pm
      Bill Bradley was a three-time ALl-American at Princeton.

      Bill Bradley was a three-time All-American at Princeton.

      In honor of the upcoming NCAA “March Madness”, we recognize as the March Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month a former college basketball superstar who helped lift a college not known for its basketball prowess to unprecedented heights.

      Bill Bradley embodied the true meaning of the term student-athlete. A Rhode scholar, Bradley was a three-time All-American at Princeton University and was the College Basketball Player of the Year as a senior in 1965.

      Read more »

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