• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Republica Press

Your Business & Political News Source

REPUBLICA PRESS
Your Business & Political News Source

  • Home
  • BUSINESS
  • MONEY
  • POLITICS
  • REAL ESTATE
  • SCIENCE/TECH
  • US
  • WORLD
  • VIDEOS

Australia news

Statistics prove Roger Federer’s class, but his love for his opponents shows his greatness | Greg Jericho

by

Has there ever been greater proof that nice guys finish first than Roger Federer?

As his career came to an end you could fill the centre court of Wimbledon with the pages written about his brilliance. His forehand – that liquid-whip as David Foster Wallace so famously described it – his serve, his one-handed backhand. Insert your favourite metaphor – use words like ballet, compare him not to other players but to painters. Compare him to mythology, he is less a man than a god who walked among us!

For the statistically minded, there is so much data you can lose yourself for days. Yes, the 20 grand slams, but for me the best was that he made the semi-finals of a grand slam 23 times in a row without missing a tournament due to injury or choice.

How long is that? Current world number one, Carlos Alcaraz would need to play and reach the final four in every slam until the French Open in 2028 to equal it. Maybe though he could aim lower and just reach the quarter-finals. He only needs to do that until the 2031 Wimbledon tournament to equal Federer’s record of 36 straight slams.

How a ballboy became a legend: Roger Federer’s career highlights – video

And yet for all the words about Federer’s play – and I have written my fair share – after the memories of the backhand and inside-out forehand fade, I will remember the sight of him after playing his final match sitting next to his longest and greatest rival, Rafa Nadal, both men in tears.

Sport, we are told, is war without bullets. Where winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing. Where beating your opponent means not just outplaying them but engaging in “mental disintegration”.

It is an environment where you may respect your opponent, but you really should not like them, and certainly not love them.

Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

In sport, toxic masculinity can take hold – not just by participants but by those watching. We see this of course most clearly in football (of any code) where players will be criticised for not looking as if they care enough, or they are not tough enough – criticism Federer himself was subject to in his early days.

And yet there were Federer and Nadal together in tears. Two men, who for 18 years had engaged in zero-sum competition. Nadal was not Federer’s coach or hitting partner. He was the man who frequently hit Federer off the court.

In the six years from the end of 2003 to the start of 2010 Federer was essentially unbeatable – except when he met Nadal, and especially when he met him on clay in Paris. Even worse Nadal then beat Federer at Wimbledon.

‘A huge honour’: Federer gives an emotional farewell as career comes to a close – video

Talk about disrupting the narrative.

In tennis there is nowhere to hide; no one else to blame. Two enter, one leaves.

And here were two who have been against each other for the longest time, not just showing respect of each other, but love.

It says so much about both. Federer you can understand crying, because his career is over – all sportsmen and women do that (how can you not!). But for Nadal to cry says so much of both. How they have played how they have fought and how they have not lost their humanity to the lust for victory.

Before his match, Federer last week told the media of this career that in the early days he was told “you have to be tougher and not so nice maybe”. He recalled that “I tried, but it was all an act and I said, ‘Well let me try the nice way. Let’s see where it takes me’.”

It took him all the way, and it took us and sport with it. And we are all the better for it.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: POLITICS, US Tagged With: Australia news, Roger Federer, Sport, Tennis

Young women like Grace Tame weren’t socialised to shut up when authority figures speak – and it feels like progress | Katharine Murphy

by

I can’t imagine you aren’t across it, but in case you missed what the outgoing Australian of the Year Grace Tame did on Tuesday, let me run you through it.

Tame went to the Lodge as part of the annual pre-Australia Day festivities. Naturally, her arrival was captured by waiting cameras. The prime minister extended his hand and congratulated the sexual assault survivor on her recent engagement to partner Max. Tame shook Scott Morrison’s hand without meeting his gaze.

Tame was stony-faced, and seemed to take a very close interest in a spot on the ground away from Morrison. The prime minister piled more wattage into his smile, correcting for the lack of warmth adjacent to him, rendering the tableau even more unbalanced. Jenny Morrison, always gracious, also smiled at Tame, seeking to hold her gaze momentarily, and the young woman smiled back. Having traversed the grip and grin pleasantries in memorable and didactic fashion, a short session of steely side-eye ensued.

In an era when everything is recorded, and everything is polarised, Tame’s decision to eviscerate Morrison with her body language was always going to be #AMoment™.

And so it was. Social media exploded with feelings. Grace Tame is my spirit animal. That Grace Tame is a very rude young woman.

James McGrath (a Liberal senator very few people will have ever heard of outside his home state of Queensland) took to Facebook to characterise Tame’s behaviour as “partisan, political and childish”. Striking a fresh blow in the outrage economy, and bringing more eyeballs to his page, McGrath declared: “If she didn’t like being Australian of the Year she should hand back the honour.”

Hmm, yes. It is tempting at this juncture to observe that men can be so emotional. If you are an admirer of Tame, McGrath’s critique sounds very much like a tantrum. The Liberal senator’s rebuke was the sound of a door slamming as an irate teenager returned to his room.

Grace Tame appears stony faced next to Scott Morrison during Australian of the Year photo op – video
Grace Tame appears stony faced next to Scott Morrison during Australian of the Year photo op – video

But depending on your point of view is the operative observation in that sentence. If Tame’s Lodge entrance was pointedly didactic, McGrath’s rebuke was performative. McGrath knows precisely who he’s offending with his Facebook #FU to #GT, and who in the community will tut-tut along sympathetically with his sentiments.

That’s the problem with young people today. No manners.

Peter van Onselen, political editor at Network 10, was also sufficiently moved to bash out a quick column for the Australian. Very enterprising of him – carving out an unexpected side hustle as the national broadsheet’s Lodge etiquette editor.

Van Onselen felt Tame was “ungracious, rude and childish … refusing to smile for the cameras, barely acknowledging [Morrison’s] existence when standing next to him”.

Brave, this righteous parsing of Tame’s manners, when you consider Van Onselen is a journalist who believes he’s entitled to be rude to the prime minister any time he believes rudeness is warranted. Political commentators like Van Onselen, like myself, like many of our peers, routinely deploy rudeness in order to nail a point that needs nailing. Rude is in fact part of the arsenal when you seek to serve truth.

So I’m not sure why one Australian of the Year, nearing time on her tenure and determined not to waste her public platform, has different rules of engagement. That all seems pretty arbitrary. This point of view begs a lot of questions: who decides who can be rude and the circumstances in which rudeness is permissible? Who appointed the rude police? Can we appeal their rulings?

In any case, I’ll keep my closing observations simple lest I irritate blokes who continue to lose their minds when women won’t stop talking.

Tame’s finale, her Australian of the Year coda, was entirely as you’d expect. This recipient has shown absolutely no interest, at any point, in being transactional about her honour. She doesn’t seem to want a shiny badge in return for a head pat. Having been silenced in the most harrowing of circumstances, this woman wants to speak, on her own terms, and if she gets that opportunity, she will not waste it.

I don’t know Grace Tame. I imagine she’s just as complex and flawed and difficult as the rest of us. But this much can be safely observed: the woman I’ve watched over the past year has zero interest in cooption, no people-pleasing compulsion to be grateful, no instinct to genuflect before smug, self-satisfied systems or conventions.

She exhibits some of the defining qualities of her generation. I know a lot of young women like Grace Tame – women who have not been socialised to shut up when an authority figure (generally a man) is talking. She is very recognisable to me. She resonates because she feels like progress.

Grace Tame: powerful moments from her time as 2021 Australian of the Year – video
Grace Tame: powerful moments from her time as 2021 Australian of the Year – video

This ornery quality Tame has, the absence of forelock tugging, the element of kinetic unpredictability, can make other people uncomfortable, not because she is wrong or her cause unjust, but because Australians love rules.

Rules keep everything comfortable and nice. Rules minimise the element of surprise.

Australians like to think of ourselves as rebels – plain speakers, never standing on ceremony, devoid of stiffness. Culturally we are informal, but actually we love rules and we aren’t always kind to rule breakers. Convention is our refuge.

So what we learned on Tuesday was Grace Tame has managed to end her tenure as Australian of the Year continuing to teach us about ourselves.

What an achievement that is.

View Source

>>> Don’t Miss Today’s BEST Amazon Deals! <<<<

Filed Under: POLITICS, US Tagged With: Australia Day, Australia news, Australian politics, Grace Tame, Scott Morrison

Primary Sidebar

More to See

RPM Living’s Marketing Team Named Department of the Year for Superior Performance and Talent

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As the first multifamily management company to be recognized in the Public Relations and Marketing Excellence Awards, … [Read More...] about RPM Living’s Marketing Team Named Department of the Year for Superior Performance and Talent

These San Francisco homes sold for less than $1 million in October

There have been whispers of cooling housing and rental prices in the San Francisco Bay Area, but that hasn't yet translated into practical, noticeable … [Read More...] about These San Francisco homes sold for less than $1 million in October

Tuesday, November 1. Russia’s War On Ukraine: News And Information From Ukraine

Cars pass in Independence Square at twilight in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 31, 2022. Rolling ... [+] blackouts are increasing across Ukraine as the … [Read More...] about Tuesday, November 1. Russia’s War On Ukraine: News And Information From Ukraine

Copyright © 2023 · Republica Press · Log in · As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.

Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy