The American Spectator

Miss Kai-Chen Chang, a small young Chinese lady from Taiwan, put up a good fight but lost to the No. 1 seed in the women’s draw, the powerful and skilled Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova. But this did not cause her to mope. Only a couple hours later, she was on the court again, alongside Shuko Aoyama, a very pretty and little-known Japanese doubles player (she is not competing in the singles draw), face to face with the very pretty and virtually indistinguishable Pliskova sisters, Karolina and Kristyna. Born only minutes apart, they are tall, graceful, lovely, but they played a Czech game, somewhat dreamy and passive. Meanwhile, Miss Chang, which in Chinese means “flower,” was all fire and power, despite her tiny size, whamming and whacking balls from the net and holding up her side on the baseline, while Miss Aoyama was playing a deep groundstrokes game and, it seemed, calling strategy. The Japanese are like that toward the Chinese, but let us not generalize. The point is they played good. And the lovely Pliskova girls threw away points, doubled at crucial moments, did not fight.

If what matters is how you play the game, you ought to win, at least from time to time, because “how you play the game” means giving it your best shot, not giving it away. The baron may have had a romantic idea of how gentlemen were made on the playing fields of Eton, but he must have heard Wellington’s quip that it was on those fields that the battle of Waterloo was won. Anyway, the great 16th Street Tournament continues, and — this is not a placement ad — thanks to Citi for sponsoring it.