Note: I am traveling so I wanted to repost a justmytake from January of 2017 – more than five years ago. To date, I have received more comments from this post than any other…and really have no explanation why.
As a tennis fan and recreational player I have followed the sport for a long time. Many of the great players had their own style and temperament (Ilie Nastase, John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors come to mind) and Serena Williams is no different. There have been many times that I watched her behavior with disdain and often stopped watching her play. With that said there is no argument that she is the greatest woman tennis player of all time. Friday night Serena won her seventh Australian Open, her 23rd major singles title of her career. She now is only one victory away of equaling Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Call Serena what you want but she has now won ten major titles after the age of thirty and her career winnings are a staggering $82m. On the men’s side, last night’s final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal was an incredible five set match and after playing well over three hours, ended with Nadal challenging a ball that was clearly in. After not playing for many months and enduring three 5-set matches during his run to the title, Federer now has collected eighteen Grand Slam titles and has earned close to $100m in career winnings. On two consecutive nights we were lucky enough to see the two greatest tennis players of all time.
Weeks ago I wrote about the retail customer experience and how retailers must find new ways to change their styles and merchandising often to drive customers to purchase in-store. Retail executives continuously strive for heightening the customer experience but it seems like to no avail. Last week, Wet Seal, around since the early ’60’s, made the decision to close all of their 171 stores nationwide. This followed American Apparel laying off 2,400 workers, The Limited closing all stores, and Macy’s announcing that they will shutter over 100 stores in 2017. The economic landscape and the ease of online purchasing leads me to believe there is no end in sight for more retailers to either try and pivot their offering or decide, similar to Wet Seal and The Limited, to just give up completely.
Can someone, in simple terms, explain to me what the Women’s March was really supposed to accomplish? I support human rights, LGBTQ, racial equality and freedom of religion, but I found the March and many of the ‘protestors’ embarrassing. I talked to many people, both men and women about the march. A few pointed out that most of women marching were protesting against then President-elect Donald Trump without understanding his platform and pending policies. Too bad this massive force of women could not re-focus their time and energy on important issues. Feeding the hungry is one that comes to mind.
Updates: Matt Ryan, only sixty minutes left in the season….get it done. To the terrorists in Yemen who killed another U.S. soldier yesterday: SecDef Mattis is coming for you. Please Wayne Rooney, don’t get selfish and piss away your career playing in China. Showtime’s Homeland, once a crazy, action-packed sixty minutes has gone politico on us…..the producers and writers should be ashamed. Six weeks to daylight savings time!!