Day 5 of Left Open, Club Leftist Tennis’ daily leftist coverage of the 2022 US Open.
By Billy Lennon
Tennis will never be a fully coastal elite, or gulf coastal elite, sport, and we have Ohio, in part, to thank for that. Cincinnati hosts the Western and Southern Open every year leading up to the US Open; Cleveland has its own professional ATP and WTA tour events; Ohio State and Case Western are top tier NCAA programs for Divisions 1 and 3 respectively. And in this years US Open, we have JJ Wolf and Lauren Davis.
JJ Wolf, from Cincinnati, had a sterling career at Ohio State, where he was regularly first team all Big Ten, and at one point won conference player of the year. Now 24, he is now ranked in the top 80 in the world and has gotten to the round of 32 of the US Open after beating 16 seed Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain and the Chilean Alejandro Tabilo. While it’s certainly not leftist for an American to take down a Chilean in anything given what went down in 1973, Wolf is doing important work, nonetheless, in representing the heart of the heart of the country in a sport that a greedy 1% wants to claim as a sport for the elite, a proper sport white collar sport. Wolf howls, enraged, at such attitudes.
Davis, hailing from Gates Mills, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, is also in the round of 32. She beat Lucia Bronzetti of Italy (see yesterday’s piece from yesterday for more on Italian tennis) and the Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova, which must have greatly pleased Rachel Maddow enjoyers across the country. From one of the more affluent suburbs of Cleveland, Lauren forgoed going to college like most of her peers, cementing herself as somewhat of a class traitor as she left the posh suburbs for the life of a journeyman on the tour.
Davis also hails from a family that has stood up to major capitalist organizations, namely Big Cereal. Her dad, a cardiologist, wrote a book, Wheat Belly, about the dangers of modern wheat which incurred the wrath of Big Cereal. From his wikipedia page: “Davis says that all modern wheat, which he refers to as "Frankenwheat", is as toxic and as addictive as many drugs and makes people want to eat more food, especially junk foods.”
Big Wheat sicced their dogs on him immediately. A 2013 review in the Journal of Cereal Science stated "we consider that statements made in the book of Davis, as well as in related interviews, cannot be substantiated based on published scientific studies,” and a review by the American Association of Cereal Chemists noted that "the great majority [of studies] found no associations between the intake of refined-grain foods and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, weight gain, or overall mortality."
They threw everything they had at him, but he kept fighting. This attitude of taking on the big guys undoubtedly rubbed off on Lauren, and will serve her well as she takes on number 1 seed Iga Swiatek tomorrow.
Look, there are more interesting intersections of leftism and sport on display at the US Open. But it’s important to note that tennis is played everywhere, from the John McEnroe tennis academy to Arun’s tennis academy in Cleveland to the rolling fields of Lexington, Ohio. While it’s fashionable to associate tennis (which, with its global nature, is the most likely sport to help foment an international workers’ movement) with exotic places around the world, we aren’t gonna make it anywhere unless the grizzled Ohioan can look into the eyes of the bronzed Sicilian or the big forehand-possessing Nigerian and see themselves, and vice versa.
Billy Lennon is a leftist tennis player hailing from Northeast Ohio. He was the number one ranked player on tennisrecruiting.net when he was 11.