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    1. I guess you’re not a big tennis fan. She’s the best in the world.

      She will soon be playing in one of those gimmicky “battle of the sexes” matches against a solid male pro. I reckon she’s sexing it up a bit to promote the December match.

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      1. Correction: “She’s the best female in the world.” (although Swiatek may have something to say about that.)

        I mean, she wouldn’t stand a chance against Alcaraz or Sinner. I guess maybe you figured that it was understood you were talking female tennis players only.

        As for her sexing it up…..if you see her on the tennis court, she is not at all attractive but, as they say, she cleans up nicely.

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        1. Yes, I assumed you knew that I was talking about “best in the world of women’s tennis.” Offhand, I can’t think of any sport where a woman is better than all the men. There may be sports where a woman could play on a D1 men’s college team – golf, maybe?

          Even against Kyrgios, who is coming off an injury-riddled year, she needs special rules to make the match interesting.

          If she played against Ben Shelton with no rule adjustments, I would not bet on her to return many first serves. And, as you noted, she would have no chance to defeat Sinner or Alcaraz. I have to admit, though, that I would like to see any of those three matches, just to see how well she could do. I don’t think she could beat the top players in D1 men’s tennis, but I wonder if she could make the team and win some matches.

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          1. Yes. I do consider chess a sport. Judit Polgar wasn’t better than all the men, as you say. But she’s kind of the exception that proves the rule since she was a danger to even the top men, in head-to-head matches.

          2. Wrong answer.

            Women can probably beat men in Parcheesi, Crosswords, Chinese Checkers, Bridge, and probably most video games (I don’t know).

            But those things don’t require speed or strength. You could make an argument for some video games as sports, specifically the ones what require speed and co-ordination, but not chess.

            Here’s how you know: people who are completely paralyzed are capable of playing chess at the very highest level, and it can be played at the highest level without even being physically present, so it is obviously 100% mental, 0% physical, irrespective of what people say to try to drum up support for the opposite argument.

          3. Sure. Good points.

            I did say “I do consider”. I do consider the differene between a sport & a game to also be a matter subject to opinion. I also consider bridge, both contract & duplicate to be “sports”. I simply have a different take on what makes a game a “sport”. To me, it’s in the structure of the competition. I don’t think we should do battle over a definition. One of us isn’t gonna persuade the other to move.

          4. Well. You’re right about not changing my mind. I won’t consider anything a sport if you don’t have to be present to play it, and you can play it if your body is totally paralyzed. That’s a game, not a sport.

            You’re wrong about equating sport to competition. Not all sports require competition, and not all competitions are sports.

            Two kids may race to get the last piece of turkey at Thanksgiving. Not a sport.

            Kids compete to build the best sand castle. Not a sport.

            I compete to get scenes before Mr. Skin. Not a sport.

            Mountain climbing is a sport. It requires co-operation, not competition. (While there is always gossip about who did it first or fastest, the primary purpose of the sport is to summit. To use strength, co-ordination, bravery, skill and brains to conquer the mountain.

            There are some activities that fall in the cracks: Is deer hunting a sport? Is fishing? They do require physical skills and they sometimes involve competitions, but they kind of fall into the cracks.

            But poker, bridge, chess, go fish, etc are not.

            Ironically, some of the dumbest card games are sports, while the intelligent ones are not. Slapjack, for example can be a sport: it requires, speed, quick hands, co-ordination, and is played in direct competition with another person. Poker, on the other hand, requires no physical skills other than the ability to stay awake. Chess doesn’t even require that. If the other guy is agreeable, you can resume the game at a later date. For years, people played chess by mail, and you could answer when convenient.

            It’s probably safe to say that anything you can play by snail-mail is not a sport.

            Don’t get me wrong. Chess is not just a game. It is the BEST game. It is an infinite game. I love to study unusual strategies and “white to play and win in 3” puzzles. (I wish I didn’t, because they are addictive.) But a sport it ain’t.

          5. Also, I should mention that stamina figures prominently in the history of world chess championships. There’s no sharp dichotomy between mental & physical. Or, I don’t make such a distinction except as maybe a fuzzy rule of thumb in category labeling.

          6. Stamina is totally irrelevant to whether something is a sport. Some sports require it, others do not. Some sports just require a single brilliant burst: the hundred-yard dash; the javelin throw.

            If you want to structure a competition a certain way, stamina can literally figure into any human activity, but not every human activity is a sport. Stamina can required for a staring contest. Stamina is sometimes required to win a game of Monopoly. Stamina is necessary to win a long poker tournament.

            But those are not integral to the activities. Chess itself requires no stamina. Poker itself requires no stamina. Staring at someone requires no stamina. You can structure those activities to require stamina, but it’s not related to whether it is a sport.

            But the main point is that stamina is not necessary to play chess. And it is not necessary to be the best player on the planet. It may be necessary to win a chess tournament in a certain format, but that’s not the same as being the best player. No physical movement of any kind would be required to beat the best player in the world if you were a better chess player. The two best players in the world can play it by mail, and stamina would play no part in the results. It is possible to structure a tournament so that stamina is required, but that’s not an integral part of the game itself. You could also structure the game so that no stamina is required. And you can do the same thing with any human activity – a weight-loss competition, for example. That does not make them sports.

            Again, I would stress – anything where you don’t have to be there to be the best in the world is not a sport. Anything you can play by mail is not a sport.

          7. Yeah. Fine. Great points again.

            I didn’t say just “competition”. You should attack what I did say. Which was that what makes a game a sport is “in the structure of the competition”. Not all games of chess played are “sporting events”. I admit that my framing is squishy. But then, you mentioned at least one way in which so’s yours. Your two examples of activities that fall in the cracks show how you’re fitting your subjective judgements into your straitjacketed definition.

            I’m not doing that. I object to doing that. I think definitions are helpful. But they can’t be sacrosanct. That approach was a terrible move in the course of religious history. Our sciences have largely abandoned their formerly sharp prescriptivist tendencies. In many sciences, it’s bad form to declare “that’s wrong”.

            I could go on & on poking holes in your dualist philosophy & a kind of fun of your need to hone the world into razor edges. But then, my own holistic view of mind & body is my own idiosyncratic thing too. Tough beans. We each make our choices in life. Very little of what we believe stands up to scrutiny. Call that my religion, call me superstitious. In the end, our disputes will crumble into dust.

          8. Let me repeat the essential point.

            The essence of chess is 100% mental, 0% physical.

            If you were the best in the world, you could win it if in an iron lung. You could win it if 99.9% physically incapacitated, ala Steven Hawking. You could win it without being present. You could win it by mail.

            Therefore, the only way you can call it a sport is if you accept something that is 0% physical is a sport. I guess you accept that. I don’t.

            I’m pretty liberal about my definition. I will concede that some (but not all) video games are sports. I will even concede that competitive eating is a sport, as stupid as it is. But not something that is 0% physical.

            Hell, I will even concede that ice dancing might be a sport.

            Or might not.

            I guess I have a prejudice against any “sport” where the winner is decided by people’s opinions rather than objective facts. I suppose I’m a Philistine, but for me, ice dancing is no more or less a sport than ballet. Either both or neither.

          9. Without taking sides overall on this interesting argument, I will just note that my understanding is that grandmaster-level tournament chess actually takes incredible stamina. The brain is a greedy organ and exercising it continuously at a very high level really takes it out on the body.

          10. 1) It might be essential to the tournament format, but not to the game itself, which can be played in any format, even without the competitors present.

            2) But even if stamina is essential to a tournament, that doesn’t make it a sport. As I mentioned elsewhere, stamina is irrelevant to whether something is a sport. Some sports require stamina, some do not (100-yard dash, javelin throw). Some non-sports require it (baby-sitting, coding), some do not. Any human activity can be structured to require it competitively (the example I gave was a staring contest), but not all human activities are sports.

            Sure, underwater chess without diving gear would be a sport, but that’s not the essence of the game of chess.

          11. Again, you keep saying chess isn’t a sport. Sure. I agree with that.

            What I said is that chess is a game.

            When it’s conducted in a sporting manner, that’s a sport. Attack that.

            Do not wave your magic wand over the whole game as your strawman & beat that down. I never claimed that & I shall not. It’s not the game of chess I’m talking about, nor the game of poker. It’s the tournament & especially the situation that such an event puts the competitors in.

            But here I’m splitting hairs. I don’t even want to defend my definition.

            Because I don’t care if I win or lose the debate. There is no debate.

            There is only the fat tail of the usage distribution of the word sports. If I’m wrong about that, it doesn’t matter.

            Because I’m old, I’m not going to change appreciably, & being right or wrong is of so low consequence that I don’t even think there’s a right or wrong to speak of. It’s a loss of energy into heat.

            In short, you can call balls & strikes on which things are sports & what the reasons are, but no amount of data like that adds up to any sort of definitive knowledge of the real world.

          12. Well, I can’t attack it because that point applies to any human activity. By that definition, any activity can be conduced in a sporting manner, as you put it – belching, trigonometry, debating, entering an essay contest – even golf!

            So by that definition I would have to concede the point, based on the following syllogism:

            Any human activity can be a sport if conducted in a sporting manner
            Chess is a human activity
            Therefore, chess can be a sport if conducted in a sporting manner

          13. Well, go ahead, quote me saying “chess is a sport” at the beginning. I didn’t shift my goalposts on purpose but I guess I did. My bad. Consider this a retraction.

            I perceive that our residual difference of opinion about the rest nonetheless remains asymptotically at odds. I can’t even think of a fair way to adjudicate a game to our mutual satisfaction to settle the matter. Maybe you can explain to me how we should think about this collision of views we’re having. Do you really think you’re “winning”?

          14. Then let me move the goalposts properly. Tournament chess is a sport. Do you like that better? It’s not vacuous like your insinuation of “can be a sport” would contend. By this new yardstick, I’d have to say a chess tournament is — not would be — an actual sports event.

        2. I agree completely with what you wrote about her appearance. She kinda looks like a big galoot out on the court, but she looks much better than expected when she glams up or wears a swimsuit.

          Reply

          1. A lot of people “clean up nicely”. Attire, makeup & lighting can make a huge transformation. Have you noticed how universally flattering close-up shots are? I mean, they often make me almost fall in love.

            As for “big galoot”, we do say that, don’t we? Sure, sometimes it’s just “galoot”, but I can’t recall seeing “little galoot”. Why’s that?

            There’s one origin story connecting the word to “Goliath” via Arabic. It appears to be a fabulation. I think a reason big goes with galoot is the stereotype that equates clumsy with lumbering. A tall person can be awkward but that’s also a kind of big. Lurch & Herman Munster were both big galoots.

          2. I guess you missed the famous Disney movie, “The Littlest Galoot.”

            In old movies they called people “big lugs,” and “big galoots,” but I don’t know whether they are interchangeable.

            There was also “big oaf” – I think that requires physical clumsiness, but I don’t know whether the others do. Can a large, graceful man be a big galoot? A big lug? I can imagine calling (let’s say) Wilt Chamberlain “Ya big galoot” affectionately, but he was clearly not a big oaf.

            Here’s an interesting article about the word galoot. I have heard other people claim that it is derives from “goliath,” which makes sense, but many things that make sense turn out to be false etymologies.

          3. Yup yup yup. Nice article too.

            I’d wanted to add a couple tidbits. First, let’s add Peter Boyle’s The Monster in Young Frankenstein to my two earlier examples.

            Second, I forget if you marked Teri Garr’s passing for us. A remarkable person with such bright beginnings & then such tragedy. Two great quotes lifted from iMdb.

            [2005, on living with multiple sclerosis] I really do count my blessings. At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.

            [on her autobiography] You know I was originally going to call that book, Does This Wheelchair Make Me Look Fat? And they wouldn’t let me, because it might offend someone. And now I know — live and learn — that I don’t care. I should have done it.

  2. Yes there’s biological differences between men & women. Athletic attributes are affected by hormones in a ton of ways. Testosterone & estrogen ranking high among them. The optimal female for any given sport is a totally different configuration from the optimal male. Relevant to tennis, men on average have advantages in speed & endurance over women. I feel like men are more injury prone, & their injuries are related to the style of play among the men. Being more muscular could lead to some injuries, fend off some others.

    There’s one simple physical thing I’d point out that changes the ways men’s & women’s tennis are played. Height. This makes a huge difference in the serve. Basically, the serve as a weapon is drastically more potent the steeper the down-angle at the point of contact. It’s easier to get the ball over the net when the net is far below your trajectory, & easier to get the ball in when the service box is the side of a barn. It’s not primarily strength that makes the men’s serve speed so much higher than the women’s. It’s just the whole balance of physics that permits more aggressive technique with disproportionately less extra risk. With modern rackets, women can certainly launch a bullet. But their percentages favor slower serves to get the ball in. This leads to rallies. I so like that style of tennis play. More drop shots, lobs, & an ebb-and-flow in incremental advantage during a point.

    Back in the day, my dorm had the U.S. #4 woman in ping pong, & a guy just barely in the U.S. top 100. No U.S. player was even close to competitive internationally. Still, there wasn’t even a question who would beat whom. I never saw them play each other. It was just so clear, the giant discrepancy in their level of play.

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