For most of a decade, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal have been the best tennis players in the world. From Wimbledon 2003 through the French Open this year, they won 26 of 33 grand-slam championships. It seemed as if the only times they lost … were to each other. Even here at the end of […]

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Spent a whole day today covering tennis (and not just writing about it; see yesterday’s entry), and this is what I took from it: I am jealous of tennis writers. It’s very easy to explain, too.

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By the end of the day, I had written something like 2,300 words for The National about the Mubadala World Tennis Championship here in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE. And no one had even struck a ball in anger. But that sort of production is what comes from 1) the day before the biggest […]

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I have written tennis. I covered the entirety of Wimbledon in 1985 and 1986. The first year, some German kid named Boris Becker won. The second year, he won again. Tennis is fairly far down the list of sports I know best … and sports I like. But when the staffing situation at the paper […]

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One of the touted summer signings in UAE soccer was of Jakson Coelho, familiarily known as “Jaja” … a Brazilian attacking midfielder who had been playing in Turkey with Trabzonspor. Al Ahli, one of the Dubai sides, signed him to a three-year, 4.5 million euro ($5.9 million) deal. That’s real money. The idea was to pair […]

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This is epic. And to think I’m still trying to crack double figures in “traffic tickets, lifetime.” The cops in Umm Al Qaiwain, one of the dinky emirates in the north of the UAE, pulled over a 23-year-old guy found to be the country’s leading traffic offender — with 331 outstanding ticket. He also owed […]

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Hard to overstate how big the arrival of Diego Maradona on these shores has been. The former Argentina superstar and national team coach, whose life almost was extinguished by drug abuse a decade-plus ago … has been received with open arms in the UAE and, especially, Dubai … and he seems to be returning the […]

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We here in the UAE are very interested in the 2011-12 Volvo Ocean Race. For several good reasons: 1) Abu Dhabi is sponsoring one of the six boats in the round-the-world event; 2) Abu Dhabi is one of the ports o’ call during the race; and 3) the whole thing is just a lot of […]

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  It’s possible to do Christmas in the UAE, but it takes a bit of extra effort. It’s not like you’re going to find Christmas-tree lots on every corner. Malls may pipe in “wintry” music and create tableaux adorned with some sort of plastic snow (the UAE loves the concept of winter, never having actually […]

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A secret I now will reveal. The final few days in Paris, when it had gotten rainy, and even darker … I was looking forward to getting back to Abu Dhabi. Seriously. My preference, there at the end, was to leave Paris … and go to Abu Dhabi. Yes. Seems a bit daft. But we […]

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