INJURY TIME

ROGER Federer had a unique quality: he made you feel something that was inexplicable. David Foster Wallace, writing about Federer in The New York Times in 2006, encapsulated that “feeling” best. In describing “Federer Moments”, he wrote the following: “These are times, as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you’re okay.” Federer is in a select club of elite athletes who had that ability – Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Usain Bolt, and the late Ayrton Senna. They were enormously successful, but their success wasn’t robotically achieved. They did what they did with a certain beauty.

THE EAST RAND’S ROGER FEDERER

FEDERER, of course, has very close connections to South Africa through his mother, Lynette. She met Federer’s dad in 1970 in Kempton Park. A former filler of these pages, Kevin Mccallum, got to interview Federer in 2013 – something which still causes jealousy among his former colleagues. Anyway, Federer was late for the interview and apologised. And while Mccallum was told he only had 10 minutes for the chat, it turned into nearly 20, because Federer is just that kind of guy – once he gets talking, he finds it difficult to stop. Mccallum, who lived in Boksburg at the time, had long since referred to Federer as “a son of the East Rand” and recounted this to Federer in their chat. “In an interview on Talk Radio 702 some years back, Lynette Federer said we should consider her son as a South African as well as a Swiss player,” he wrote in 2013. “She said that?” Federer laughed, when told this by Mccallum. “I took it a step further. ‘As your mother once lived in the East Rand, I call you the ‘East Rand’s Roger Federer’? Is that okay?” He sat forward and laughed hard: “You do? Okay, okay… ’”

PAWN-OGRAPHY

IN the world of chess, they’re all still abuzz about a cheating scandal after a teenager, Hans Niemann, beat five-time world champion and chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. It’s messy, but in brief Niemann was accused of getting electronic assistance via a sex toy to help him make the right moves to beat Carlsen. “If they want me to strip fully naked, I will do it,” Niemann said in the aftermath. “I don’t care because I know I am clean. You want me to play in a closed box with zero electronic transmission? I don’t care. I’m here to win, and that is my goal.” Naturally, there is now the desire to see this nude chess unfold at some point. Vice.com reported that Stripchat, an adult webcam site that claims to have a monthly viewership of 400 million people, has offered Niemann $1 million (about R17.7 million) to broadcast himself playing a live game of chess completely in the buff.

‘STINKIN’ UP ARIZONA’

If you’ve never come across the loudmouth American television sports personality Stephen A Smith, relax – we’ve got you covered. Smith is known for his brash opinion-making on ESPN, and specifically the talk show First Take. He doesn’t hold back, and let’s just say his, er, “style” wouldn’t go down well in South Africa, where folks are decidedly conservative about their sports analysis (among other things). Smith offered the following on the Arizona Cardinals football team after they lost their opening encounter in the new NFL season. “I expected you to lose,” Smith began. “What I didn’t expect was the butt-whippin’ that we witnessed… It’s still no excuse to get romped the way that they did. They looked ill-prepared to play a regular-season football game. And not one, not two, but three of their top dudes – their boss, their coach, and their top player – all got (contract) extensions. And that’s how you started off the season: stinkin’ up the state of Arizona.”