I didn’t mean for it to go this way, but I gotta admit it’s pretty funny to start this newsletter like “I’m gonna cover every sport on Earth!” and then most of the first two months have been dedicated to writing about my favorite basketball team over and over again. Don’t worry: this newsletter is Knicks free.

– Rodger Sherman

Today’s Lineup

1. Jannik Sinner curses the sun

2. Presidents’ Trophy curses the Avalanche

3. 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi crushes Cricket Dingers

🎾🔥  A Sinner Shocker 🔥🎾

An absolute stunner at Roland-Garros, as massive favorite Jannik Sinner melted in the Paris heat and lost to Argentine clay court specialist Juan Manuel Cerundolo.

Sinner was up 5-2 in the third set and mere points away from sweeping Cerundolo in straight sets when he began struggling with the heat. Sinner said he was feeling dizzy and took multiple breaks to deal with cramps. He went on to lose 18 of the final 20 games, falling 6-2, 6-3, 5-7, 1-6, 1-6.

With Carlos Alcaraz missing the French Open due to a wrist injury, Sinner was the biggest betting favorite in a Grand Slam tournament since 2009. Sinner and Alcaraz have combined to win nine straight Grand Slams dating back to 2023, so Sinner’s loss opens the door for somebody new — or somebody old — to win at Roland-Garros.

• It’s tough to oversell how dominant Sinner has been. The Italian had won 30 matches in a row, and five tournaments back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And Sinner absolutely dominated the clay court season, which serves as the run-up to the French Open, sweeping tournaments in Rome, Madrid, and Monte Carlo.

• Only one other person had ever swept those three clay court events in a season: you guessed it, Rafael Nadal. But even Nadal only did it once, in 2010, out of 14 seasons in which he entered all three events. Nadal went on to win the French Open in that 2010 season, which he described as a virtually impossible accomplishment. With Sinner’s loss, Nadal is still the only player to ever sweep the men’s clay court season.

• So I think it’s fair to say this is one of the biggest upsets in modern tennis history. The last time a #1 seed failed to get through two rounds at the French Open was all the way back in 2000, when Andre Agassi lost in the second round. I guess these upsets are only possible when the Knicks are good. [Ed. note: You said this was Knicks free.]

• If you’re a mid-tier tennis fan seeing Sinner lost to Cerundolo, you might think, oh, well, that’s not such a huge upset, Cerundolo’s pretty good! But you’re probably thinking of Francisco Cerundolo, the 18th-ranked player in the world. This was his younger brother, Juan Manuel Cerundolo, who’s ranked 54th, has never been past the second round of a Grand Slam, and had never won a match against a top-10 player.

• So the #1 player in the world lost to the #2-ranked Guy Named Cerundolo.

• Cerundolo #2 is, notably, a clay court specialist. His only ATP Tour win and 11 of his 12 Challengers titles have come on clay.

• With Alcaraz out for the tournament, tennis stats site Tennis Abstract gave Sinner a 75.1 percent chance of winning the entire tournament. Sportsbooks made Sinner a -300 favorite to win, the biggest favorite at a Grand Slam since 2009.

• Obviously everything is fake online, but I did see one post from a guy claiming to have lost $50,000 betting on Sinner’s -10000 moneyline

• As much credit as Cerundolo deserves for the comeback, Sinner really lost to the heat. He has struggled with cramps throughout his career. In October, when he quit a match in Shanghai due to severe cramping, he said that part of the reason for his cramping was “a mental factor.”

• Which is why some felt Sinner was given favorable scheduling Thursday. Ben Rothenberg of Bounces wrote about the unusual choice to give Sinner the first timeslot of the day, despite years and years of the French Open giving primetime slots to its highly-ranked male players. Sinner was playing in the afternoon, when it’s hot, but the heat tends to pick up later in the day, during the second and third timeslots. The favorable schedule backfired: the longer the match went on, the hotter it got, and the worse Sinner performed.

• They did just come out with that movie about Sinners who burst into flames when the sun is out.

• With Sinner and Alcaraz out, we’ve got a rare opportunity for anybody else to win a Grand Slam. The tournament will now be won by either a first-time Grand Slam champion …

• … or the guy with the most Grand Slam victories of all time, 39-year old Novak Djokovic. This is surely his last best chance to win a 25th major tournament and extend his record, but I’ve gotta admit I’m rooting for someone else.

🏒  Another #1 bites the dust 🏒

The Colorado Avalanche were the best team in hockey this year. So of course they’re out of the Stanley Cup playoffs. They were swept in the Western Conference Finals by the Vegas Golden Knights, who won just 39 out of 82 games this season. The ugly exit was partly due to bad luck: Colorado star Cale Makar missed games with injury, and Nathan MacKinnon got banged up. It was also partly due to chokery: They blew a 3-0 lead in Game 3.

This sort of flop has become commonplace in hockey. The winner of the Presidents’ Trophy, the award for the team with the league’s best regular season record, hasn’t won the Stanley Cup since 2013. In fact, they haven’t even reached the Stanley Cup Finals since 2013. All things considered, the Avalanche actually had a pretty solid run! They won two series before getting embarrassed!

So why do the sport’s best teams keep falling flat? A quick look:

• First, you’ve gotta understand how awesome this Avalanche team was. They had one of the better regular seasons in recent memory. They finished with 55 wins (the 12th-most ever) and 121 points (the ninth-most ever.) Their plus-99 goal differential was the fourth-best in the 21st century. They led the league in goals scored (302) and fewest goals allowed (203). They had the league’s leading goalscorer (Nathan MacKinnon, with 53) and the league’s top goaltender (Scott Wedgewood, who led the league in save percentage). They were a wagon.

• Meanwhile, their opponents, the Vegas Golden Knights, got into the playoffs by winning the league’s worst division. Their 95 points wouldn’t have been good enough to make the playoffs in the Eastern Conference.

• And yet, a sweep. There was an element of flukey-ness here. The “Deserve To Win O’Meter” on Hockey analytics site MoneyPuck gave the Avs a 71.2 percent chance of winning Game 1 based on how the game was played. They also had a 47 percent chance of winning Game 3 and a 40 percent chance of winning Game 2. It’s nuts that they got swept here!

• And somehow, the sweep is not even close to the worst result for a Presidents’ Trophy winner in the last decade. The 2023 Bruins set NHL records with 65 wins and 135 points … and lost in the first round to the Florida Panthers. And in 2019, the Lightning had 128 points, third-most all time, and got swept in the first round by the eight-seeded Blue Jackets.

• This phenomenon doesn’t carry over into other sports. The last two NBA champions, the Thunder and the Celtics, each had the best regular season records in the league. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl last year after tying for the league’s best record. The Dodgers won the World Series in 2024 with the league’s best record. The team with the best record in the WNBA won back-to-back-to-back Finals from 2022 to 2024.

• Since 2013, the last year a Presidents’ Trophy winner lifted the Cup, teams with the best regular-season record have won nine WNBA Finals, six NBA Finals, six Super Bowls (including teams tied for the best record) and five World Series.

• Freaky stuff happens in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. It’s actually kinda common for one-seeds to lose in the first round, with both one-seeds losing in 2019. And while there has been one combined comeback from a 3-0 deficit in the NBA and MLB, there have been four in the NHL.

• My theory (and it’s half-baked) is that hockey is just a more random sport with more outlier outcomes due to small sample sizes. The scores are low, often decided by one goal, and sometimes those goals are scored as a result of multiple deflections squeaking through a crowd of defenders. Over an 82-game season, a few bad losses are just a blip within a large body of work. But in a single series, if the puck bounces the wrong way just a few times, it’s all over.

👶🏏 A baby superstar 🏏👶

Last year, 14-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi debuted in the Indian Premier League, becoming the youngest player ever in the world’s biggest cricket league. This year, at just 15 years old, he’s been the league’s best player, smashing records set by actual adults and dominating global superstars twice his age.

Wednesday was his crowning moment. In an IPL playoff match for the Rajasthan Royals, Sooryavanshi hit 12 sixes — essentially, Cricket Home Runs, when a player hits the ball beyond the boundary on the fly. It was the most sixes ever in an IPL playoff game, and the fifth most in any IPL match. The onslaught also helped him smash the single-season sixes record, pushing it from 59 to 65. Watch this kid smash some Cricket Dingers:

Sooryavanshi hit three straight sixes off Pat Cummins, an Australian star who was named the Best Player in the World in 2023.

We Americans may not realize it, but cricket players are some of the most famous athletes on Earth, and this literal teen is well on his way to global superstar status.

• Sooryavanshi’s sixes are even more impressive when you look under the hood. The previous record was held by Jamaican legend Chris Gayle, set back in 2012. Gayle hit his 59 sixes off 456 deliveries; Sooryavanshi hit his 65 off of just 266 balls.

• The kid isn’t just hitting a lot of Cricket Dingers; he’s doing it incredibly efficiently. Sooryavanshi has the highest strike rate ever of any player to score 400 runs in any T20 cricket league in the world, meaning he’s scoring more runs per ball faced than any high-production player ever. And that includes lower quality leagues, and also most of the players close to him were adults.

• One of the IPL’s biggest sponsors is Indian car manufacturer Tata Motors, which gives awards cars to players for various accomplishments. But Sooryavanshi isn’t old enough to drive yet, so he’s been giving the cars he keeps winning to his mom.

• There is some dispute about Sooryavanshi’s age. While his listed birthdate is March 27, 2011, he once gave an interview stating he was born September 27, 2009, which would make him a year-and-a-half older. Even if true, that would still make him just 16 years old as he’s setting all these records.

• Sooryavanshi hasn’t played for India’s senior team yet, probably because of a rule stating players under the age of 15 can’t play international cricket. Sooryavanshi turned 15 in March. He can’t break the world record for youngest test cricketer ever, set by a Pakistani 14-year-old named Hasan Raza before the age limit was put in place, but he’ll likely break the record for the youngest Indian player for the national team set by the legendary Sachin Tendulkar.

• However, Sooryavanshi was able to play in the U19 World Cup earlier this year as a 14-year-old, and absolutely dominated. In the final against England, he hit 15 Cricket Homers for 175 total runs, breaking the tournament records for most sixes in a tournament and in a single game.

• Sooryavanshi still has work to do: On Friday, his Royals play in a semifinal match. If they win, they’ll go on to Sunday’s IPL Final, a game watched by more people than the Super Bowl.

📞 You couldn’t have called? 📞

The World Cup roster for the US men’s national team is officially set. While the roster itself isn’t particularly controversial, people are upset that coach Mauricio Pochettino informed players they were cut via email. The players who made the team got personalized video messages from Pochettino. Not ideal, but, well, there’s no good way to get dumped.

⚡️🤠 THUNDER-SPURS 🤠⚡️

OKC leads 3-2. Game 6: Thursday, 8:30 p.m. ET in San Antonio; Game 7 (if necessary): Saturday, 8 p.m. ET in Oklahoma City (NBC/Peacock)

• Can aliens get tired? Victor Wembanyama struggled mightily in Game 5, going 4-for-15 in the second-worst shooting performance by a player taller than 7’2 in the postseason, which is a hilariously cherry-picked stat. Either way, San Antonio will need more from its superstar if it wants to come back.

🌩️🇨🇦 HURRICANES-CANADIENS 🇨🇦⛈️

CAR leads 3-1. Game 5: Friday, 8 p.m. ET in Raleigh; Game 6 (if necessary); Sunday, TBD in Montreal (TNT)

Montreal had 18 shots in Game 4, which was its highest total in three games! Unfortunately for the Habs, Carolina had 43 shots and won 4-0, putting the Hurricanes a game away from the Finals. 

⚽️ Champions League Final ⚽️

🔫 Arsenal 🔫 v. 🥖 PSG 🥖, Saturday, 12 p.m. ET in Budapest, Hungary (Paramount+)

THE MEAT WALL RISES. Arsenal are looking to pull the double for the first time in 22 years after winning the Premier League. The match will be a clash of strengths between Arsenal’s defense (six goals allowed in 14 Champions League games) and PSG’s attack (44 goals in 16 CL matches).

🥎  Women’s College World Series 🥎

May 28-June 5 in Oklahoma City (ESPN/ABC)

Five of the eight remaining teams belong to the SEC ... but Oklahoma isn’t one of them, after the sport’s most dominant dynasty lost in the super regionals. Texas Tech is back after losing last year’s final, and has certainly had the most interesting path, including an insane comeback and beef in its final game to get to Oklahoma City. The tournament will be whittled down to two over the next few days. The championship series will start next Wednesday.

🐝🤓 National Scripps Spelling Bee Finals  🤓🐝

Thursday, 8 p.m. ET in Washington, D.C. (ION)

America’s most loquacious Lilliputian logophiles take the stage. Here’s what to know:

• There’s a rule that if the finals don’t finish in the allotted time for the TV broadcast, they’ll go to a spell-off in which each competitor will have to spell as many words as possible in 90 seconds. It happened in 2024, and it was absolute cinema.

• There are also vocabulary rounds, so competitors need to know a bit about the words besides just etymology trends.

• Mina Kimes is hosting the event for the first time, which confirms it’s Sports. Mina says she’s trying to bring a “big game” feel to the event and give viewers a little bit more insight into how the kids are figuring out the spellings: “Some folks assume it’s just memorization, and that’s certainly part of it. … I really think there’s an opportunity to teach viewers how the kids are doing it, not just to tell, you know? That’s what I love about great sports broadcasts is they teach, and you come out of it feeling like you know a little bit more about football than you did at the beginning.”

• The finalists range from 12 to 14 years old, but nine-year-old Zachary Teoh made the semifinals before being eliminated. He’ll be back!

• We’re now down to the nine final spellers. My pick? Zwe Spacetime, whose sister Zaila Avant-Garde won the 2021 bee, and whose family has set the record for Coolest Named Kids.

🚣 NCAA Women’s Rowing Championships 🚣

Friday through Sunday, on Lake Lanier, Georgia (NCAA.com)

Stanford and Texas have split the last five championships. Lake Lanier hosted the 1996 Olympic rowing events, and is widely considered haunted and malevolent by locals. Stay safe out there, rowers!

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️ Women’s FA Cup Final 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽️

Brighton & Hove Albion v. Manchester City, Sunday, 10 a.m. ET in London (CBS Sports Network)

It’s unsurprising that WSL champions Manchester City have made it here, although they needed three late semifinal goals versus Chelsea to advance. However, Brighton has been a great underdog story, finishing seventh out of 12 teams in the league with a negative goal differential before playing their way into their first-ever women’s cup final.