Alcaraz tops Sinner in a French Open final for the ages
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🏀 All knotted up: The Thunder dominated the Pacers, 123-107, on Sunday to draw even in the NBA Finals and improve to 30-2 against Eastern Conference teams this season.
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🎓 Revenue sharing is here: The NCAA's landmark antitrust settlement was finally granted approval on Friday, ushering in a new era of college sports where schools will make direct payments to athletes. We'll go deeper on this in the coming days.
🥎 Texas breaks through: The Longhorns were in the WCWS finals for the third time in four years. After losing to Oklahoma in their first two trips, they broke through against Texas Tech to win the school's first softball national championship and 64th NCAA crown.
🏀 Behind the scenes at MSG: Complaints from key Knicks players in exit interviews led to Tom Thibodeau being fired, sources told Yahoo Sports. The decision was spearheaded by owner James Dolan, whom sources said was never a huge Thibodeau fan.
🏒 Dallas fires DeBoer: The Stars are parting ways with head coach Pete DeBoer, who has led his team to the Western Conference Finals in six of the past seven seasons… and been fired three times.
🎾 Best match ever? Alcaraz wins five-set epic
Carlos Alcaraz remains perfect (5-0) in major finals. ()
Normally, I wouldn't advise sitting on the couch for six straight hours with your eyes glued to the TV screen. But on Sunday, with Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner engaged in a tennis match for the ages, watching six straight hours of TNT was one of the best decisions you could have made.
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Instant classic: Alcaraz rallied from two sets down and saved three match points to beat Sinner, 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2), and defend his title at Roland Garros in the second-longest Grand Slam final in the Open Era (5 hours, 29 minutes).
Points won: Sinner 193, Alcaraz 192
Games won: Alcaraz 30, Sinner 29
Marathon man stays perfect: Alcaraz's 5-0 record in major finals is the best mark to begin a career since Roger Federer won his first seven. "Carlitos," known for his endurance, is now 13-1 in five-setters, while Sinner falls to 0-7 in matches that last more than four hours.
Alcaraz won this match, nearly two hours later. (TNT Sports)
The second coming: Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal (his childhood idol) were the exact same age when they won their fifth major: 22 years, 1 month, 3 days old. Nadal won No. 5 against Federer in "the greatest match ever played." 17 years later, his protege won No. 5 in another all-time final that rivaled his own. "When I was struggling, I tried to think of Rafa and all of the comebacks he made," said Alcaraz on Sunday.
(TNT Sports)
Summed up in a GIF: This was Alcaraz and Sinner's first meeting in a major final. I have a feeling it won't be their last. When that inevitable rematch does occur, can we please make sure Andre Agassi* is in the crowd? He could not believe what he was seeing on Sunday, and his reactions were priceless.
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🎥 Watch: Match highlights (YouTube)
*Speaking of Agassi: The eight-time major champion is a fantastic analyst. I thought TNT aced its first year of French Open coverage, and he was a big reason why. I could listen to him explain the nuances of Alcaraz's revamped backhand all day long.
🌎 The world in photos
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🇺🇸 Saratoga Springs, New York — Kentucky Derby winner Sovereignty surged ahead of Preakness winner Journalism to win the 157th Belmont Stakes by multiple lengths, earning his owners $1.2 million of the $2 million purse.
Déjà vu: Sovereignty (1st), Journalism (2nd) and Baeza (3rd) finished in the same order at Saratoga as they did at Churchill Downs. We'll never know if they would have done the same at Pimlico, where Journalism took first while the other two skipped the race.
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🇨🇦 Edmonton, Canada — Brad Marchand's double-overtime winner lifted the Panthers past the Oilers, 5-4 (2OT), on Friday to even up the Stanley Cup Final at one game apiece.
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Postseason legend: Since entering the NHL in 2010, Marchand ranks first among all players in playoff goals (63) and playoff game-winners (15). He's also second in playoff points (155) and third in playoff penalty minutes (205).
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🇩🇪 Munich, Germany — Cristiano Ronaldo was in tears on Sunday after Portugal beat Spain on penalties to win their second Nations League title. Ronaldo's 138th international goal (26 more than anyone else) took the final to a shootout, where Rúben Neves converted the winning kick.
Tragic death: A spectator died after falling from the second tier of the main stand during extra time. The match continued as the fan received medical treatment but could not be revived.
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🇮🇹 Venice, Italy — Hundreds of rowboats took to Venice's iconic canals and surrounding lagoon on Sunday for the 49th Vogalonga, an annual regatta to celebrate Venetian rowing culture and protest the use of powerboats in the island city.
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Tourist hot spot: Venice welcomes around 30 million visitors per year, which dwarfs the local population of ~60,000. A fascinating watch if you're interested: Why Nobody Lives in Venice
⛳️ 3 years in, LIV's future is cloudier than ever
LIV signage at this weekend's tournament in Virginia. ()
We're in the midst of two pretty significant anniversaries for LIV Golf. If you weren't aware of that, well, that's one of the many challenges that the breakaway tour continues to face, month after month, year after year.
From Yahoo Sports' Jay Busbee:
Three years ago on June 9, 2022, LIV Golf's first-ever event teed off at the Centurion Club in London. Two years ago on June 6, 2023, LIV and the PGA Tour announced a stunning "framework agreement" that brought an end to the legal hostilities between the two tours and, in theory, laid the groundwork for future reconciliation and unification.
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Now, in 2025, the dream of a LIV-PGA Tour unification seems about as likely as Tiger Woods winning the U.S. Open next week… and no, Tiger Woods is not playing in the U.S. Open next week. Whatever LIV Golf is now, "threat" is not it. And for all the PGA Tour's many missteps, misfires and mistakes, there's a very clear leader in the match-play duel between the two.
It's worth remembering that for several months in 2022, LIV appeared to pose an existential threat to the PGA Tour. Yes, that first tournament was more spectacle than competition, but it did feature some of the biggest names in the sport — Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio García — and some astounding paychecks.
Soon afterward, Patrick Reed, Brooks Koepka and Bryson Dechambeau would join LIV, giving the breakaway tour a shot of juice and attitude the PGA Tour, at the time, simply couldn't match. The problem for LIV, though, was that attitude and gobs of cash were pretty much all the series had to offer.
That's the fundamental problem for LIV Golf — it's a series that still hasn't found a way to connect with most fans on a deep level. And two years out from the "framework agreement," the PGA Tour doesn't seem particularly inclined to do anything but wait out LIV until its Saudi financial backers either capitulate or pull the plug entirely.
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Keep reading.
📊 By the numbers
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🎾 10th American
Coco Gauff beat top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka on Saturday to win her first French Open title and her second Grand Slam (2023 U.S. Open). The 21-year-old is just the 10th American to win an Open Era singles title at Roland Garros, joining six women (Evert, Williams, Navratilova, Capriati, King, Richey) and three men (Agassi, Courier, Chang).
⚾️ 497 feet
Top prospect Roman Anthony hit a 497-foot grand slam on Saturday during the Worcester Red Sox's 10-4 win over the Rochester Red Wings. That's the longest homer in the majors or minors this season, and the fifth-longest since Statcast began tracking fly balls in 2015.
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Name to know: Anthony, 21, is MLB Pipeline's No. 1 overall prospect, and the sweet-swinging lefty outfielder is expected to make it to the big leagues sometime this season.
✈️ 2,541 miles
Edmonton to Miami is the furthest distance between two cities in Stanley Cup Final history. That made Saturday an extra-long travel day, but players were happy to spend six hours relaxing, playing cards and enjoying the comforts of charter plane life. "If you are ever in our room, you hear guys talking about how excited they are to get on the bird," said Oilers forward Evander Kane.
⚽️ 3 straight losses
Turkey beat a makeshift USMNT squad, 2-1, on Saturday in a soaking-wet friendly in Connecticut. That's three straight losses for the Americans, and seven straight matches against a European foe without a victory.
📺 8.91 million viewers
Game 1 of the NBA Finals averaged 8.91 million viewers on ABC, making it the least-watched Game 1 of the Nielsen meter era (since 1988) outside of the COVID downturn in 2020 and 2021. It also marks an 18% drop from last year's Celtics-Mavericks opener.
📺 Watchlist: Monday, June 9
Amerant Bank Arena in Sunrise, Florida. ()
🏒 Stanley Cup Final, Game 3 | 8pm ET, TNT
Aaron Ekblad (Panthers), Sam Reinhart (Sabres), Leon Draisaitl (Oilers) and Sam Bennett (Flames) were the first four picks in the 2014 NHL Draft. 11 years later, Ekblad, Reinhart and Bennett are teammates in Florida and facing Draisaitl in the Cup Final for the second straight year.
⚾️ NCAA Baseball, Super Regionals | 7pm, ESPN
The eighth and final spot in the Men's College World Series is on the line today in Durham, where Duke hosts Murray State. The winner will join No. 3 Arkansas, No. 6 LSU, No. 8 Oregon State, No. 13 Coastal Carolina, No. 15 UCLA, Louisville and Arizona in Omaha.
⚽️ TST, Finals | ESPNU
The Soccer Tournament concludes tonight with $1 million championship games for the women (7pm) and the men (8:30). Team to watch: Carli Lloyd-led US Women are seeking back-to-back titles in the 7-on-7 event.
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Today's full slate →
🏆 NCAA trivia
For the first time ever, the Longhorns are softball national champions. (Tyler McFarland/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Only two Division I schools have won national championships in the "big three" women's sports: basketball, volleyball and softball.
Question: Texas just became the second school to do it. Who was the first?
Hint: Recently switched conferences.
Answer at the bottom.
🍿 Baker's Dozen: Weekend highlights
(Yahoo Sports)
Watch all 13.
Trivia answer: UCLA
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23 minutes ago
Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner now take their terrific rivalry from the French Open to Wimbledon
The takeaways from Carlos Alcaraz's fifth-set tiebreaker victory over Jannik Sinner in the riveting and record-breaking French Open men's final were multiple and significant. Let's start with this: Anyone worried about how men's tennis would survive in the post-Big Three era can rest easy. Alcaraz and Sinner produced 5 1/2 hours of evidence Sunday that the game is in good hands — and that their rivalry will be, and perhaps already is, a transcendent one. Take it from no less an authority than Roger Federer. The retired owner of 20 Grand Slam titles, and rival of Rafael Nadal (22 majors) and Novak Djokovic (24), began a post on social media by declaring, '3 winners in Paris today,' then listed Alcaraz, Sinner and 'the beautiful game of tennis. What a match!' This was the 12th Alcaraz-Sinner meeting, the first in a major final. 'Hopefully not the last time,' Alcaraz said. 'Every time that we face ... each other, we raise our level to the top.' It would be shocking if there weren't many more of these to come — perhaps as soon as at Wimbledon, where play begins on June 30 and No. 2-ranked Alcaraz is the two-time defending champion. His comeback against No. 1 Sinner from two sets down, then three championship points down, to win 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) was unprecedented at Roland-Garros. It was unforgettable. Alcaraz's coach, Juan Carlos Ferrero, described his guy's best trait this way: 'His strength is (to) keep believing all the time, until the last ball is gone.' Alcaraz's five Grand Slam titles at 22 — that's the age at which Nadal, Bjorn Borg and Pete Sampras also got to five; no one's done it younger — show how special he is. So does the Spaniard's 5-0 record in major finals, a career start surpassed among men only by Federer's 7-0. Sinner is pretty good, too. Tuesday marks a full year that he has been ranked No. 1. He has reached the finals of his last eight tournaments, a run last accomplished by Djokovic a decade ago. He has won three majors. He has won 47 of his last 50 matches. Notably, all three of those losses came against — yes, you guessed it — Alcaraz. That hearkens back to the days when Federer would beat everyone other than Nadal. Sinner had claimed 31 Slam sets in a row right up until the moment he was up 2-0 against Alcaraz. What was unmistakable to anyone watching in-person at Court Philippe-Chatrier or following along from afar on TV is that Alcaraz vs. Sinner is a must-see. 'The level,' Alcaraz said, 'was insane.' Sinner's take? 'I'm happy to be part of this,' the 23-year-old Italian said. 'Would be even more happy if I would have ... the big trophy.' As with any great rivalry — think Evert vs. Navratilova or Borg vs. McEnroe or Federer vs. Nadal, no first names needed — Alcaraz vs. Sinner provides a clash of excellence and a study in contrasts. Alcaraz displays emotion, pumping his fists, pointing to an ear to ask for more noise, yelling 'Vamos!' Sinner is rather contained. Sinner's long limbs get him to nearly every ball. Alcaraz's motor reaches speeds no one can equal. Sinner's ball-striking is pure. Alcaraz's drop shots are legendary. Both hammer groundstrokes that leave opponents exasperated and spectators gasping. Both can improve. Sinner has never won a match that lasted four hours. Alcaraz loses focus on occasion. Both are eager to improve. When Sinner returned from a three-month doping ban last month, he introduced a new, angled return stance. Alcaraz tweaked his serve and backhand technique. Who knows what heights each can reach? They split the past six Slam trophies, and eight of the past 11. Federer saw this coming. During an interview with The Associated Press in December 2019, Federer predicted someone would win major after major the way he, Nadal and Djokovic did. Just didn't know there would be a Big Two doing it. 'It's going to happen, inevitably,' Federer said. 'And it's almost not going to be that hard, maybe ... because the players will have seen what we did. And they didn't see just one guy doing it, once every 30 years. They saw like three guys doing it, in the shortest period of time. ... Players are going to believe more."
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