Garbiñe Muguruza Wins Wimbledon, Defeating Venus Williams
July 16, 2017 by admin
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“I grew up watching her play, so it’s incredible to play her in the final,” Muguruza said of Williams as she accepted the Venus Rosewater Dish, which is awarded to the women’s champion.
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Muguruza is now the first Spanish woman to win the singles title since Conchita Martínez in 1994, and what made it a full-circle moment was that Martínez served here as her coach.
“She’s got a game to win it more times, so hopefully she’ll do it,” Martínez said.
Muguruza earned her first Wimbledon title by bouncing back from an emotional fourth-round defeat at last month’s French Open, where she failed to defend her title and ended up in tears at a news conference after losing to Kristina Mladenovic of France.
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She earned it by navigating her way through a difficult draw here in grand style, defeating Angelique Kerber, the world No. 1, in a three-set fourth-round match that was the best of the women’s tournament.
She then earned it on Saturday by holding her own early against the forceful Williams and fighting off two set points in the first set: an intense, corner-to-corner duel in which the grunts from the players and the applause from the spectators reverberated off the closed Centre Court roof.
It was top-drawer entertainment, which made it all the more of a contrast with the second set, which quickly became a procession toward the trophy.
After fending off those two set points at 4-5 — the first by winning a 20-stroke baseline rally — Muguruza took complete control, reeling off nine straight games to close out .the victory as Williams’s forehand and defense continued to crack.
The first set required 51 minutes, the second just 26, and Muguruza finished it off by using technology that was not available when Williams won her first Wimbledon singles title in 2000.
On her third match point at 5-0, Muguruza challenged a call on a shot from Williams that landed near the baseline. When the electronic replay confirmed that the ball had been out, Muguruza dropped her racket, sank to her knees, covered her face with both hands and began to cry before regaining her feet and walking forward to share an embrace with Williams, who was waiting at the net.
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There would be many more embraces to come after Muguruza walked off Centre Court as the new champion. Among the Spaniards who congratulated her were Juan Carlos, the former king of Spain; the former Wimbledon men’s champion Manolo Santana; and Martínez.
Like Muguruza, Martínez had to beat a 37-year-old enduring icon to win her Wimbledon title. She defeated Martina Navratilova in the 1994 final, and the parallels were hardly lost on Martínez, a superstitious player throughout her long career.
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Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“It wasn’t about me,” Martínez said. “It was more about what she had to do to beat Venus and not focus on her age. But in my mind, there were too many coincidences.”
She helped coach Muguruza here in the absence of Muguruza’s regular coach, Sam Sumyk, who missed Wimbledon because of the pregnancy of his wife, Meilen Tu.
“Well, I think I’m here because I’ve done a hard work before,” Muguruza said on the eve of the final of Martínez’s influence. “The magic doesn’t happen just because somebody comes in, and all of a sudden you are incredible. I think she’s helping me how to deal with the tournament, because obviously it’s a Grand Slam, and it’s difficult to handle because it’s two weeks. She has experience.”
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Sumyk and Martínez consulted regularly during the tournament, but Martínez was the one sitting in the players’ box on Centre Court on Saturday, shouting encouragement as Muguruza played in her third Grand Slam singles final.
She lost to Venus Williams’s younger sister Serena in the 2015 Wimbledon final, then upset Serena Williams in last year’s French Open final, generating expectations that she would continue to climb the rankings and be a consistent contender for the game’s major trophies.
Instead, she went into an extended slump, failing to reach another final at any tournament until her run at Wimbledon this year.
She is now a two-time Grand Slam singles champion and will be back at No. 5 in the WTA rankings on Monday.
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Venus Williams will be back in the top 10 at No. 9 and is in the midst of the strongest season of her late-career phase.
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Glyn Kirk/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
She lost the Australian Open final in January to Serena Williams, who was pregnant with her first child and has not played competitively since then. But she and Venus Williams have been in regular contact during Wimbledon, and Serena Williams, a seven-time singles champion here, offered encouragement and tactical advice before the match against Muguruza.
After defeating six younger women, however, Venus Williams did not have the staying power or the solutions to get past the seventh.
Williams, as she so often is, was gracious in defeat. “I know how hard you work, and I’m sure this means so much to you and your family,” she said to Muguruza during the trophy ceremony. “So well done today. Beautiful.”
Victory would have meant a great deal to Williams, as well. This was her 20th Wimbledon. She last won a singles title here in 2008, and three years later she announced that she had Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.
The condition sapped her energy, forced her to alter her diet and curtail her training. But it did not curtail her desire to continue competing at the highest level even when she failed to advance past the fourth round in singles at any major tournament in 2011, 2012, 2013 or 2014.
She endured deep frustrations and retirement questions but continued to maintain that she still had the talent and temperament to contend for the biggest titles.
This season, she is the only woman to have played in two Grand Slam singles finals, but she is still chasing another Grand Slam title.
Asked on court if she had a message for her absent sister, Venus Williams responded: “Oh I miss you. I tried my best to do the same things you do, but I think that there will be other opportunities. I do.”
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That is certainly possible, but it is far from a sure thing with younger talent rising.
Muguruza has now won two major singles titles in two years — beating a Williams in straight sets in each final.
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Deadly Hawaii fire raises concerns about lack of sprinklers in older high-rises across the US
July 16, 2017 by admin
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Jeff Kim was in his two-bedroom apartment on the 33rd floor of the Marco Polo condominium building in Honolulu when a deadly, raging fire broke out.
The 31-year-old member of the Oahu Group Executive Committee of the Sierra Club, who has lived in the high-rise rental since February, said Saturday that he never considered whether it had a sprinkler system installed.
“I did not actually realize we didn’t have them,” said Kim, whose apartment is just a few floors above the units where the fire burned for hours. “I certainly think we should have installed them.”
As he slowly trudged up all 32 flights of stairs to his apartment Saturday, Kim said: “It’s got to be done.”
At least three people died Friday after the fire blazed across the upper floors of the high-rise, shooting flames and plumes of thick, black smoke out windows and causing hundreds of residents to evacuate.
The 36-story tower was not equipped with sprinklers.
The fire broke out on the 26th floor of the complex around 2 p.m. and spread to the 28th floor, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman Capt. David Jenkins said in a statement.
A dozen people were treated by paramedics and evacuated. Four people, including one firefighter, were transported to a hospital with serious injuries.
More than 100 firefighters descended on the scene as the fire broke windows and trapped some residents in their apartments. Many occupants were told to shelter in place until emergency personnel could escort them down stairwells to safety, Jenkins said.
The 568-unit complex, just outside the beachfront neighborhood of Waikiki on the southern shore of the island of Oahu, was built in 1971. Its condominiums sell from around $339,000 to $650,000.
It is not the first fire to break out in the 46-year-old building. In 2013, a fire started in a microwave oven in an eighth-floor apartment, spreading quickly to the unit above, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Residents of both units escaped that fire with no injuries. Seven floors of the building were evacuated, and officials estimated the damage at about $1.1 million.
National building codes have required automatic fire sprinklers in large public and commercial buildings since the early 1980s. Those codes, however, do not apply to older residential high-rises unless a state or local municipality enacts regulations.
Only a handful of states, including Florida and New York, require building owners to retrofit existing high-rise buildings with sprinklers. Multiple cities, including Los Angeles, Denver and Philadelphia, have also introduced requirements, said Brian Jay Meacham, associate professor of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
“The majority of the country is not doing the retrofits,” said Glenn Corbett, associate professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “You see this patchwork of places that have it and others that do not.”
While installing sprinklers in high rises is highly effective — “the chances of dying in a fully sprinkled high rise are just about zero,” Corbett said — the problem is cost.
It typically costs more than $10 per square foot to install sprinkler piping throughout older residential high-rises. Retrofitting sprinklers is more challenging in residential towers than office buildings because they are typically split into multiple compartments.
“Wall after wall, you have to penetrate with piping, and that means moving people around in apartments,” Corbett said. “They can’t live there while workers are drilling holes in their walls.”
Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said Friday that his city needs to look at passing a new law requiring sprinklers in older high-rises.
“The biggest argument is the affordability,” Caldwell told the Associated Press. “Residents have to pay. It’s pretty expensive. But if it saves a life and it’s your life, it’s worth the cost.”
Asked if he was concerned enough over the lack of sprinklers to move out of his apartment, Kim wasn’t sure.
“I’m guessing this isn’t likely to happen any time in the next couple of years,” he said. “But it’s definitely a question that’s making me think right now. It does make me consider moving out. This isn’t exactly a cheap place to live.”
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Special correspondent Chang reported from Honolulu, and special correspondent Jarvie reported from Atlanta.
UPDATES:
2:30 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from a tenant, the mayor of Honolulu and fire prevention experts.
This article was originally published at 11 a.m.