Tennis sport

Five-time Grand Slam winner Maria Sharapova, one of the most recognizable and highest paid sportswomen in the world, announced her retirement on Wednesday at the age of 32.

“Tennis – I say goodbye to you,” Sharapova said in an article for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines.

“After 28 years and five Grand Slam titles, however, I’m ready to climb another mountain – to compete on a different kind of terrain.”

Sharapova burst onto the scene as a gifted teenager and won her Grand Slam before serving a 15-month ban for failing a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open.

The ranking of the former Russian world number one is currently 373rd.

Sharapova hardly played last year due to long-standing shoulder issues.

When she played she lost as many matches as she won and was knocked out in the first round at Wimbledon, the US Open and, most recently, the Australian Open in Melbourne.

Born in Siberia, Sharapova first bought a racket at the age of four in Sochi, where her Belarusian-born parents had settled after escaping the deadly clutches of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.

She rose to fame as a Wimbledon winner at age 17 in 2004, the third youngest player to conquer the sacred grass courts at the All England Club.

“Tennis gave me life”
She became world number one in 2005 at the age of 18 and won the US Open the following year.

“One of the keys to my success was that I never looked back and I never looked forward,” Sharapova said Wednesday.

“I believed if I kept grinding and grinding, I could push myself to an amazing place.”

But in 2007, Sharapova started her long battle with shoulder problems.

She would win the 2008 Australian Open before a second shoulder injury prevented her from touring for the second half of the season, missing the US Open and the Beijing Olympics.

In 2012, Sharapova, of Siberian descent, won the French Open to become the 10th woman to complete a Grand Slam career. She added Olympic silver to her resume that year.

His title at Roland Garros in 2014 was another high after a disheartening injury trough.

Other fitness issues followed before the explosive news that he tested positive for meldonium, a banned heart drug.

Always a fighter
Still a fighter – Seven-year-old Maria and her father Yuri left for the United States in 1994 with only $ 700 borrowed from their name – Sharapova returned to the sport in 2017.

“By giving my life to tennis, tennis gave me life,” Sharapova said in her retirement letter.

“I will miss it everyday. I will miss the training and my daily routine: waking up at dawn, lacing my left shoe before my right shoe and closing the court door before hitting my first ball of the day.

“I will miss my team, my coaches. I will miss the moments sitting with my dad on the training bench. The handshakes – win or lose – and the athletes, whether they know it or not, that made me do my best.

“Looking back, I realize that tennis has been my mountain. My path was filled with valleys and twists and turns, but the views from its top were amazing.

Sharapova had been the highest-paid female athlete in the world for the past 11 years until 2016, according to business magazine Forbes.

She alone raked in $ 38.8million (€ 35.7million) in a career in which she won 36 singles titles. Forbes, in her 2016 article, said the Florida-based Russian has collected nearly $ 300 million in awards, appearances and mentions since turning pro in 2001.

She has also established herself as an entrepreneur, launching her own line of candies, “Sugarpova”, and warned on Wednesday that her “relentless pursuit of victories … will never abate”.

“No matter what awaits me, I will apply the same goal, the same work ethic and all the lessons I have learned along the way.

“In whatever I can choose for my next chapter, my next mountain, I will keep pushing. I will still climb. I will still grow.

Diabetes is a common disease affecting over four million people in the UK, and 90% of cases are caused by type 2 diabetes. The disease can be caused by the pancreas not making enough of the hormone insulin. or the body is not responding to insulin. But exercising could help lower your risk of developing symptoms of diabetes or high blood sugar. One of the best exercises you should do every day to prevent illness is tennis, it has been claimed.

Tennis is a type of aerobic activity that is especially beneficial for diabetic patients, said the American Diabetes Association.

Aerobic exercise improves insulin resistance, while lowering blood sugar levels, he said.

For the greatest benefits, try to go no more than two days without exercising and aim for five days of training in a single week.

“Aerobic exercise helps your body make better use of insulin,” said the American Diabetes Association.

“It strengthens your heart and bones, relieves stress, improves blood circulation and reduces your risk of heart disease by lowering blood sugar and blood pressure and improving cholesterol levels.

“Some examples of aerobic activities [include] brisk walking, dancing, swimming, tennis, [and] Trek.

“We recommend aiming for 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise at least five days per week, for a total of 150 minutes per week.

“If your busy schedule doesn’t allow you to exercise for a 30-minute period during the day, you have the option of breaking it down into periods of 10 minutes or more. Research has shown that the health benefits are similar when you do this.

Playing tennis might also help strengthen some of your major muscle groups, LloydsPharmacy added. It will burn calories, improve reflexes, and benefit your cardiovascular health.

All diabetic patients should also consider regular weight training, the American Diabetes Association said.

Exercise makes your body more sensitive to insulin, he said. Good examples of strength training include lifting weights and using free weights at the gym.

Regular exercise will also help patients lose weight, which in turn helps reduce the risk of hyperglycemia.

If you are trying to lose weight, you may need to get more than 60 minutes of aerobic activity in a single day.

Many people can have diabetes without even knowing it because the symptoms do not necessarily cause discomfort.

Common symptoms of diabetes include fatigue, feeling very thirsty, and passing more urine than normal.

Talk to a doctor if you worry about diabetes symptoms or if you think you are at risk.

The exciting new sport of Touch Tennis makes its Ayrshire debut at the National Sports Center in Inverclyde on Sunday 7th October. The Center organizes a free tasting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the main gym. All equipment will be provided along with advice on how to play. So there is no excuse not to try it.

The dual purpose is to provide an opportunity for people in North Ayrshire in particular to try the sport and also to establish whether there is sufficient interest to start a regular weekly program of Touch Tennis sessions.

First played in 2002, Touch Tennis quickly established itself around the world and now features its own professional circuit with tournaments featured regularly on Sky Sports. Its popularity is such that it is considered one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

Touch Tennis is a modified version of tennis played on a smaller badminton court, with foam balls, shorter racquets (21 “) and a low height net.

Singles or doubles can be played. The rallies are generally longer than full court tennis, which is a lot of fun, the key to success is outsmarting opponents rather than just power. The equipment used and the smaller size of the pitch also allow beginners to adapt and become proficient relatively quickly against more experienced players.

Organizer John Wilson, President of the West Kilbride Tennis Club, says: “Since learning about Touch Tennis I have read and heard a lot about how much fun it is and how easy it is to learn. play for everyone, regardless of age or athletic ability. I can’t wait to try it out and hope we can establish it in Inverclyde as a truly accessible sport option for a wide range of local people.

PARIS: A fuzzy orange-sized ball runs along a sloping ledge before falling to the ground and bouncing off the strings of a waiting wooden racket.

The game begins again in a real game of tennis, a sport that began in the Middle Ages and continues to this day, kept alive by around 10,000 enthusiasts from Boston to Melbourne.

“We are amateurs in the true sense of the word,” confides Matthieu Sarlangue, six-time French amateur champion among other titles.

The game is teeming with eccentricity, from the asymmetrical court whose parts include “penthouses”, “hazard” and “inside”, to a multitude of serving styles with names like railroad, giraffe and boomerang. .

Most unusual is a complex set of rules surrounding what is called “chase”, which occurs when the ball bounces twice.

The point is held “hanging” until the players change ends and the player who has let the ball bounce twice must try to “beat the chase” by hitting a shot deeper than his opponent.

“Other sports are more monotonous,” says Sarlangue. “With real tennis you learn new things every day, different strokes, different situations … It’s harder than it looks.”

Few concessions to modernity

Sport has made few concessions to modernity. White dress is still required, even for informal practice. The balls are still painstakingly handcrafted, although the felt coatings on the balls turned bright yellow in the 1980s for better visibility, as in modern tennis.

The ball, whose cork core is wrapped in fabric under the thick felt, weighs 73 grams (2.6 ounces), about 30 percent more than its modern tennis cousin.

Because they are made by hand, no two balls are the same. Likewise, no two pitches are the same size, which gives home players a considerable advantage.

“It’s the effervescent side of real tennis,” said Tim Batten, France’s team captain for the Bathurst Cup, the Davis Cup national team tournament equivalent of modern tennis. “You have to adapt to different terrains. ”

With its Art Nouveau ceiling of ironwork and glass, the only Parisian courtyard still in use, opened in 1908, is the highest in the world at some 11 meters (35 feet) – easily accommodating the giraffe service.

In real tennis, tactics are as important, if not more, than physical strength, which helps explain the longevity of its top players.

Rob Fahey of Australia has been dubbed the Roger Federer of real tennis. He has 10 world titles to his name from a championship dating back to 1740.

“He could almost get out of bed and win most tournaments,” said Simon Marshall, a pro at the Paris club.

It is only now, at 46, that Fahey is starting to look over his shoulder to the next generation, having lost the world number one last year to American player Camden Riviere, 19 years his junior at 25 years.

Sarlangue meanwhile carries on his 22-year-old shoulders the hope of a revival of true tennis in his ancestral homeland.

Medieval monks

The grandfather of today’s racquet sports evolved from a game played by medieval French monks with their bare hands – the French name, jeu de paume, literally means game of the palm.

Eventually gloves appeared, followed by flat wooden bats, and then rackets designed to resemble the hand, with the face slightly bent away from the grip – a shape that makes it easier to retrieve low-rebound balls.

At the height of the game’s popularity in the late 16th century, France had around 1,500 courts, of which around 250 were in Paris alone, according to real expert and tennis player Gil Kressmann.

Today that number has dropped to just one in Paris, and the only other court in all of France is at the Royal Chateau of Fontainebleau.

The center of gravity shifted long ago to England, which today has the strongest tennis scene in the world, with three dozen clubs and the world’s busiest venue at Hampton Court, the historic home of Henry VIII.

“In England most of the kids were dragged to Hampton Court so they all saw the game play out,” Marshall said. “You have to book two or three weeks in advance to play it.

The Duke of Orleans, a French nobleman imprisoned by Henry V for two decades in the early 15th century during the Hundred Years War, is believed to have brought the sport to England.

The very name of the game of tennis, the same in English and French, reflects a linguistic back-and-forth across the Channel, as the word derives from the French “tenez” (to hold or take care), which a player would say. before serving.

Likewise, the word “ace” for a service winner in modern tennis almost certainly derives from “ais”, the French word for a wooden stick that once stood in a corner of the real tennis court that was worth an automatic point. if he was hit, Kressmann mentioned.

And “love,” the curious word for the starting score, comes from the egg, the French word for egg, once used in real tennis to indicate failure to earn a point.

The “sport of kings” was a staple for generations of royalty, not only in France and England, but throughout Europe.

The long line of kings of France who were true tennis enthusiasts ended with Louis XIV, whom doctors banned him from playing because he suffered from gout, Kressmann said.

The Sun King instead turned to billiards, launching a new fashion for royalty and high society.

Reused for Molière

Kressmann says two-thirds of the courts in Paris had disappeared by the time of the French Revolution, mostly victims of real estate speculation as the population grew.

A key place has been preserved as a museum – the site in Versailles of the “tennis court oath” of June 1789, considered to set in motion the French Revolution.

Many courtyards were transformed into theaters at a time when a biting satirist like Molière was unable to stage his plays in the bourgeois halls of the time.

The 17th century playwright “was very frowned upon. You didn’t criticize royalty, ”Kressmann said, adding that the resulting rectangular theaters would be known as“ a la française ”, or a la française.

The Jeu de Paume art gallery on Place de la Concorde is the most important converted tennis hall in Paris. It was its closure that led to the construction of the Parisian club where Sarlangue, Batten and Kressmann play.

She was the princess of the Dunedin table tennis royals – and now Yvonne Fogarty is back in action.

The former New Zealand champion chats with sports editor Hayden Meikle about the sport that has opened up her world.

The Haig brothers in rugby, cricketers McCullum and Blair, Yvette and Roy Williams, and the multi-talented Turners.

Otago sport has produced many prominent families, but it’s hard to believe they had the impact on their sport that the Fogarty family had on table tennis.

It’s a classic New Zealand story: a working-class family of 11, a railroad worker father, a full-time mother with household chores, a ping-pong table set up in a shed next to the greenhouse and a factory line from Otago and New Zealand. champions.

“Wild Bill”, Patriarch Fogarty, who died last year at the age of 88, started his grade A career in Dunedin in 1938 and was still playing 50 years later.

Sister Margaret became Otago’s first national singles champion in 1939 and Bill won her own New Zealand title in 1948.

From the same generation, Doreen and Phyllis also played for Otago.

Then Bill and Audrey started their one-family club and Joan, Maree, Yvonne, Kevin, John, Terry, Barbara, Catherine and Kerry started racking up the Otago titles.

Stars, all of them, but everyone agrees that Yvonne had something special.

She was the precocious schoolgirl, snatched from table tennis in Dunedin at 15 to represent New Zealand at the 1967 world championships in Sweden.

She would later win two singles titles in New Zealand and wear the black blazer as the national representative in Singapore, Nagoya, Cardiff, Yokohama, Melbourne and Calcutta.

Then, at age 25, Fogarty was married and started a family and his years of table tennis were over.

But when a sport is in your blood – and table tennis surely runs through every Fogarty’s veins – it can be hard to say goodbye.

Fogarty has returned to the top of club competition in Dunedin this year and, at 57, is equal with players decades younger.

“I guess it’s mostly to keep fit,” Fogarty tells me in the kitchen of the Leith Valley house where she and her husband Tony have lived for 20 years.

“But it’s also… I don’t know. It’s pretty hard to play a game that you used to play so intensely and enjoy it when you don’t win.

“But I love it. You forget how nice it is to compete for every point and feel the thrill of a good shot.”

Fogarty last competed at the National Championships in 2001, and his return to competitive play will not involve any major tournaments at this point.

This means that there will be no opportunity to add to the spoils of medals, certificates, trophies and 25 national titles that she has accumulated since 1965.

Success came naturally to Fogarty when she followed her father’s lead and started table tennis in the 1950s.

But there was no silver spoon for the third of nine children spread over 20 years.

“Life was very different in South Dunedin in the 1950s than it is today,” she recalls.

“You know, we didn’t have a TV and we didn’t even have a car in the beginning.

“Dad loved all sports, but table tennis really became his passion, and I guess I grew up immersed in the sport.

“We have had an incredible opportunity to be successful at table tennis, thanks to the truly supportive family environment created by mum and dad.”

Bill and Audrey Fogarty bought the family home in Oxford St and turned the old stables into a shed which in turn became a sort of table tennis sanctuary.

There were waxed floors and decent lighting, and the table was neatly placed next to the compost bin.

People came from around Dunedin to walk the way back and play Bill or one of the kids.

In time, the Fogartys would form their own club called, and rightly so, United.

There were early mornings and long drives to tournaments around the South Island, and little Yvonne Fogarty was taken to her first national tournament at the age of 5.

In 1966, Yvonne won the South Island junior title and her father Bill won the senior singles.

It was a pretty good story.

But the real excitement came when the starched New Zealand Table Tennis Federation blazers informed a 15-year-old Dunedin schoolgirl that she was going to be the fourth member of the New Zealand women’s team to compete in the championships. of the world in Stockholm the following year.

One problem: Fogarty would have to find 500 to finance his trip.

It was a lot of money for anyone in 1966, especially a member of a family who used every penny to feed and clothe nine children.

What happened next reminded Fogarty of the power of community.

A committee was formed, headed by the Mayor of St Kilda.

A fair in Culling Park, a big Christmas raffle and a basketball game between members of an Antarctic ship crew and the Otago Harbor Council, donation of silver coins at the gate, took place .

By the time of the trip to Sweden, 700 had been collected.

“It was remarkable how everyone came together to help,” Fogarty recalled.

“I guess I must have captured the imagination a bit. I was only 15 and a local girl from a big family who had had a bit of success.”

Fogarty went on to represent New Zealand at four World Championships and three Commonwealth Championships.

His best international results have been a team silver medal at the 1971 Commonwealth Championships, a singles bronze medal at the 1973 Commonwealth Championships and a team bronze medal at the impressive Asian Championships in 1974.

Off the table, Fogarty played his part in the unique sporting code known as “ping pong diplomacy”.

From 1971, communist China and capitalist America used sport to rebuild relations that had not been so strained as broken since 1949.

A friendship had unexpectedly developed between the best American player Glenn Cowan, a Californian with long hair, and the Chinese world champion Zhuang Zedong.

Their report so impressed Chairman Mao Zedong that he ordered his foreign ministry to invite the US team to China.

Soon many western nations were involved.

A Chinese team toured New Zealand in 1972, played a match in Christchurch which was broadcast live on television, and was greeted in Dunedin by billboards in the newspapers proclaiming “THE CHINESE ARE HERE. “.

In the China-South Island clash, played at the Otago University Union, Fogarty won the home team’s only match, beating Chang Tsui-chih 17-21, 24-22, 21-18.

“They knew this was my hometown and they let me win. It was a little embarrassing.”

Fogarty was then part of the New Zealand team invited to China in 1974.

She fondly remembers the visit.

“We were treated like royalty everywhere we went and had these great meetings with the most senior officials.

“We were given copies of the Little Red Book, we were shown all the sites and we played many games in front of 18,000 to 19,000 people.”

Fogarty returned to China in 1975, when she had just taken a teaching post in Auckland.

She and three national teammates spent six weeks training in Canton and Fogarty received a personal trainer and interpreter.

The coach, a woman, then wrote to Fogarty asking for sponsorship to move to New Zealand.

“This big letter arrived and of course it was entirely in Chinese.

I took it to my local fish and chips and the people there translated it for me.

“My trainer was asking for money and help to come and live in New Zealand.

“There were all kinds of forms she was asking me to fill out and I just wasn’t comfortable with that. I felt like I had let her down somehow.”

Fogarty now works with international students at Otago Polytechnic and believes her experiences in China have helped her understand young people studying in another country.

Otago table tennis celebrated its 75th year last year, but celebrates this milestone in July.

Registration for the celebrations ends June 12.

Yvonne fogarty

Age: 57 years old.

Family: Husband Tony Eyre, children Sarah, Theresa, Michael and Daniel.

New Zealand teams: World Championships 1967, 1971, 1973, 1975; Commonwealth Championships 1971, 1973, 1975; Asian Championships 1974; vs. Australia 1969, 1975; against China 1972; against Japan 1973; University tour in Australia 1970.

New Zealand titles: four open (singles 1969, 1974; doubles 1974, mixed doubles 1978), eight under 18 (singles 1966, 1968, 1969, doubles 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, mixed doubles 1968), seven under 16 years old (singles 1965, 1966, 1967, doubles 1965, 1966, mixed doubles 1966, 1967), three over 35 (singles 1992, 1997, mixed doubles 1992), three over 45 (singles 1997, 1998, mixed doubles 2000).

Other accomplishments: New Zealand Player of the Year 1969, 1973; inducted into the New Zealand Table Tennis Hall of Fame in 2005.