It’s a Win for Sinner and Woke Rejection at the Australian Open

You use everything you’ve got to get everything you need — or as much of it as you can.

Appropriately, it was an overhead forehand smash at the net that clinched the men's doubles at the Australian Open for the Anglosphere team of Matthew Ebden and Rohan Bopanna. The big man from Bangalore, at 43 one of the masters of the doubles game but lacking a Slam, concentrated on baseline placement and power while his Aussie partner was clutch at the net in a 6–4, 6–5 win over Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori. Bopanna surely deserved this, and so did Ebden, a player with a classically handsome style who somehow never got near the top in singles but has proven to be consistently excellent in doubles. READ MORE from Roger Kaplan: Where Are the Israeli Players at the Australian Open? And if you like doubles, you had another treat from a great and popular veteran, Free China's Hsieh Su-wei, at 38 still working her magical slices and angles to win the women's draw with Elise Mertens, and the mixed with Jan Zieliński. Notable too, Israel's Guy Sasson came to Melbourne Park and had a terrific run. Or, in a sense, ride. The genius of wheelchair tennis was, to say, basically, no handicap for the handicapped. The only concession is allowing the ball to bounce twice. This makes sense because on one bounce the rallies just would not happen on a regulation court, 78 feet by 27 inches, 36 for doubles. By the same logic, the second bounce can be outside the lines. Handicapped athletes at such elite levels as the tennis Slam circuit are paragons of the not-how-you-fall-but-how-you-get-up ethos that rejects the world's-against-me excuse so common in ordinary (and political) arenas. Sasson, a 43-year-old Israel Defense Forces veteran, successful businessman in both the U.S. and Israel, husband and father, made it to the finals in both the doubles and singles quad draws, for athletes who, in addition to paralyzed legs, suffer from additional upper body difficulties — arm, hand, neck, torso. Sasson damaged his spine on a snowboard run, walked out of rehab with braces and crutche...