Little by little

Tennis and English Premier League soccer are added to the list of sports that will officially be coming back soon.

In tennis, it looks like the U.S. Open will be one of the first tournaments to be played. If this is the case, it will be interesting for the players to go right into playing a major championship instead of the usual ramping up process. I’ve already heard that some international players will not be playing because of safety concerns. I hope they change their minds and play if things leading up to the tournament go well. As of now, there will have no fans in the stands for the event which is becoming easier to get used to with soccer doing that first. Soccer fans are some of the loudest fans, so tennis will not be quite so odd now that we are used to it. And, unfortunately, Roger Federer is out for the season. He is recovering from knee surgery, so we probably won't see him until next year.

I know I said I had no more sports books, but that is not completely true. When all the talk by the pundits was about the tennis, I remembered a good book worth mentioning. “Unstoppable” by Maria Sharapova. She tells her amazing story of coming from Russia at the age of 7 to become a hall of fame-worthy tennis player. Her story is powerful and interesting. Definitely a good read.

The English Premier League soccer officially resumed this week, and they will have games almost every day to catch up in time to finish the season as fast as possible. Liverpool is obviously going to win this year by a big margin. It is great to have soccer back. Go Chelsea!

I actually think Major League Baseball could learn a lesson from the Premier League. Taking advantage of having no fans, the Premier League soccer teams are having all their substitute players sit in the stands. This solves the socially distancing and gives them a bit of an audience. Baseball should do this too!

Baseball is making some progress toward a possible agreement to play 60 or 70 games, but the way these negotiations are going, that could fall apart any second. Hopefully by next week they will have a start date for a training camp. That may be wishful thinking on my part.

And, of course, you know I have been watching the golf. Daniel Berger won last week’s PGA tournament in Texas in a playoff over Collin Morikawa who is in his first full year on the PGA tour after attending the University of California. He is going to be a very good player. The biggest difference I saw in the players after the forced break was their inability to make short putts down the stretch in the tournament. For example, Xander Schauffele missed a three-footer on the 17th hole Sunday to miss the playoff by one shot and Morikawa missed a two-foot putt that would have extended the playoff.

Have a good weekend and everyone stay healthy.