Even so, Shelton acknowledged after his 3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (7-1), 7-5 fourth-round win over Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego at Wimbledon on that his football training has helped him on the court.

Shelton was asked by former British tennis player and current Wimbledon reporter Annabel Croft following his win how playing tennis compared to playing American football. After playfully joking with the crowd at the All England Club about their lack of robust knowledge of the sport, the 22-year-old Shelton explained that playing quarterback helped him develop a high-quality serve.

‘I grew up playing quarterback, or ‘quarterbacker,’ either way,’ Shelton said with a grin, poking fun at Croft misnaming the position. ‘Probably the only thing that is a direct correlation between tennis is the serve, as you guys can probably see. That’s kind of the one thing that I took from football onto the tennis court.’

Shelton isn’t the only one with that view. His father, Bryan – who previously coached at Georgia Tech and Florida before retiring to coach his son – explained in a 2022 interview playing quarterback helped the younger Shelton develop his arm in a way that led him to have a powerful serve.

‘There’s no doubt (it helped). That’s probably the biggest reason,’ the elder Shelton told the ATP Tour of his son’s time playing football. ‘Hopefully there’s something that we passed on as parents. But how you develop what gifts you have is really the key. Getting his elbow up and doing certain things with the football, and really trying to perfect that kind of allowed him to come into tennis and really develop that as a weapon, I think.

‘I think that’s a big part of why he loves everything above his head, whether it’s an overhead or a serve,’ he added. ‘He’s pretty dynamic with that.’

Indeed, the younger Shelton’s serve is one of the best on the ATP Tour. The lefty has converted 75.7% of his first-serve points over the last year – good for 17th among competitors – and has averaged the 13th-most aces per round at 9.7.

At Wimbledon, Shelton’s serving prowess has helped him to win 12 of his first 13 sets at the 2025 championship. His serve has only been broken in four games over the course of his four matches thus far in this year’s tournament.

Will elite-level serving allow Shelton to do something no American man has achieved since Pete Sampras in 2000 and win at Wimbledon? Only time will tell, but the 22-year-old is relishing a chance to compete in the spotlight with the support of his team, which includes his father, girlfriend and USWNT star Trinity Rodman and many more.

‘Obviously I have always loved athletics,’ Shelton said. ‘Playing in a team sports, something bigger than yourself. Now I am obviously playing an individual sport, but I have a team supporting me that I work with every day so that’s the most important thing to me.

‘I don’t want to be out here by myself, I want to be doing it with people that I love and I have a lot of people that I love over there,’ Shelton added, gesturing to his coaching box.

The Washington Commanders are never going back to their former nickname.

It hasn’t stopped the world’s most powerful man from making his opinion on the matter known.

To be fair, President Donald Trump was asked Sunday about the Commanders’ stadium plans within the District of Columbia – and whether the team should have changed its name at all.

“Well, you want me to make a controversial statement? I would,” Trump replied. “I wouldn’t have changed the name. It just doesn’t have the same, it doesn’t have the same ring to me.

“But, you know, winning can make everything sound good. So if they win, all of a sudden the Commanders sounds good, but I wouldn’t have changed the name.”

From 2020-22, the team went by the ‘Washington Football Team’ after it retired the former nickname, which many Native Americans believe is a slur, before becoming the ‘Commanders.’

Franchise names have been an issue not just in the NFL, but across other sports. Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians also changed their name for its reflection about Native American communities.

The Commanders, however, have been adamant that changing the name back is not a priority.

What did Donald Trump say about Commanders’ RFK Stadium plans?

Trump hosted Commanders owner Josh Harris and commissioner Roger Goodell in the Oval Office to announce the 2027 NFL draft being held on the National Mall in D.C.

Since then, the president has been asked about the deal between the local government and the team to build a new stadium near its former RFK site within D.C. The deal still requires approval of the D.C. Council, and members of the group have cost concerns regarding the amount of taxpayer dollars (nearly $1 billion).

‘We’ll see what happens. Looking at the deal, you know, I don’t blame them,’ Trump said. ‘They’re very important pieces of property. It’s a great piece of property. But if I can help (the NFL) out I will.’

Despite Congress handing D.C. control of the land, Trump said the federal government ‘ultimately controls’ it.

‘It’ll be a great place for the NFL to be in,’ Trump said.

The Washington Nationals have named bench coach Miguel Cairo as the club’s interim manager after relieving Dave Martinez of his duties July 6 following a weekend sweep by the Boston Red Sox.

Cairo joined Martinez’s staff last season after previously serving as the New York Mets’ minor league coordinator. He does have previous managerial experience in the majors, serving as interim skipper of the Chicago White Sox for the final 34 games of the 2022 season.

Cairo, 51, played 17 seasons in the majors with nine different teams from 1996-2012. He hit .264/.314/.361, mainly as a utility infielder, with 41 career homers and 139 stolen bases.

“Miguel is well-respected in our organization and around baseball,” said interim general manager Mike DeBartolo. “A diligent worker and student of the game, he has a proven track record of showing strong leadership in a variety of situations, and I believe that his voice and energy will serve as a catalyst to our team and our fan base in the second half of the season.”

DeBartolo took over his post when longtime GM Mike Rizzo was let go along with Martinez on July 6 in a major leadership change from the duo who led the Nationals to a World Series title in 2019.

Martinez, 60, was in his eighth season managing the Nationals, who have not had a winning record since their championship 2019 season. They’ve posted 71-91 marks (.438) each of the past two seasons and are currently last in the NL East with a 37-53 record (.411).

Seattle’s switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh leads Major League Baseball with 35 home runs through July 6. That would be an astounding accomplishment over a full season, but Raleigh has been able to hit that many in just half a season.

Outside of the steroid era, such an impressive power feat is practically unheard of, especially from a catcher. We haven’t even reached the All-Star break, and Raleigh is 13 home runs away from the all-time record by a catcher over a full season. Salvador Perez had 48 in 2021.

Who holds the record for the most home runs at the All-Star break and can Raleigh top that before the break starts on July 14?

Who hit the most home runs before the All-Star Break?

As is the case with most home run records, this record is held by Barry Bonds, who hit 39 homers before the 2001 All-Star break.

Raleigh’s 35 ties him for fifth all-time alongside 2001 Luis Gonzalez and fellow Mariners legend 1998 Ken Griffey Jr. Raleigh already holds the record for catchers, having surpassed the previous high of 28 set by Johnny Bench in 1970, on June 20 against the Chicago Cubs. This year, Raleigh also became the first switch-hitter to reach 30 home runs before the All-Star break.

Can Cal Raleigh break Barry Bonds’ record?

It will be difficult. The Mariners have just six games left before the break − all on the road – against the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers. In 2025, the Yankees and Tigers rank in the top half of MLB in HR/9 allowed (Yankees: 13th, 1.08; Tigers: 9th, 1.02).

But Raleigh has been a much better hitter on the road this year. Despite having played two fewer games on the road thus far, he has 18 home runs away from home compared to 17 at Comerica Park. His batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage are all higher on the road as well.

Additionally, Raleigh has several stretches of at least five home runs in six games. So far in 2025, the most home runs he has hit in a six-game span is nine from April 11 to April 17. More recently, Raleigh hit five home runs in four games between June 20 and June 23. He has been on a cold streak lately, hitting only three homers in his last 12 games.

What is the record for most home runs in a full season?

The full season record is 73 by Bonds in 2001. The American League record is 62, set by Aaron Judge in 2022. Raleigh is currently on pace for 63 home runs.

The FIFA Club World Cup is down to four teams and a clash between the soccer titans that have won the past two UEFA Champions League titles will serve as the headliner.

Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid are set to meet in the semifinal round of the 2025 Club World Cup, and it will be their first match facing each other since the 2022 UEFA Champions League Round of 16. This comes on the heels of some thrilling quarterfinal action as part of this year’s event taking place throughout the United States.

Real Madrid got a 3-2 win over Borussia Dortmund, surviving a flurry of goals in stoppage time behind a spectacular bicycle kick goal from star Kylian Mbappé. Paris-Saint Germain beat Bayern Munich 2-0, to set up Wednesday’s semifinal showdown between two of the pre-tournament favorites.

Chelsea FC from the English Premier League and Fluminense FC of Brazil will meet for the first time in club history in the opening semifinal match on Tuesday. Chelsea defeated Palmeiras, 2-1, in the quarterfinals and Fluminense advanced with a 2-1 win over Al Hilal.

Both semifinal games are slated to take place at MetLife Stadium outside New York. Here’s a look at the complete schedule for the semifinal round of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, as well as how to watch and previous results from the knockout rounds

2025 FIFA Club World Cup semifinal round schedule

Tuesday, July 8

Fluminense FC (Serie A) vs. Chelsea FC (EPL): 3 p.m. ET at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey

Wednesday, July 9

Paris-Saint Germain (Ligue 1) vs. Real Madrid (La Liga): 3 p.m. ET at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey

When is the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final?

The FIFA Club World Cup final is slated to take place at 3 p.m. ET on Saturday, July 13 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It will pit the winner of Tuesday’s semifinals between Fluminense FC and Chelsea FC against the winner of Wednesday’s semifinal between Paris-Saint Germain and Real Madrid.

FIFA Club World Cup games: Full results for knockout rounds

Quarterfinals

Friday, July 4

Fluminense FC 2, Al Hilal 1 (in Orlando, Florida)
Chelsea FC 2, Palmeiras 1 (in Philadelphia)

Saturday, July 5

Paris-Saint Germain 2, Bayern Munich 0 (in Atlanta)
Real Madrid 3, Borussia Dortmund 2 (in East Rutherford, New Jersey)

Round of 16

Saturday, June 28

Palmeiras 1, Botafogo 0 (in Philadelphia)
Chelsea 4, Benfica 1 (in Charlotte, North Carolina)

Sunday, June 29

Paris Saint-Germain 4, Inter Miami 0 (in Atlanta)
Bayern Munich 4, Flamengo 2 (in Miami)

Monday, June 30

Fluminense FC 2, Inter Milan 0 (in Charlotte, North Carolina)
Al Hilal 4, Manchester City 3 (in Orlando, Florida)

Tuesday, July 1

Real Madrid 1, Juventus 0 (in Miami)
Borussia Dortmund 2, Monterrey 1 (in Atlanta)

Club World Cup 2025: How to watch, TV, streaming for semifinals

Every one of the 63 games at the Club World Cup will stream for free on DAZN, while select matches will be carried on TBS, TNT and truTV in English. Univision, TUDN, and ViX will all carry games in the U.S. in Spanish. The semifinal matches will both be broadcast nationally on TNT and truTV. Both games can also be streamed via DAZN.

Watch the Club World Cup FREE with DAZN

Tom Brady served as one of Patrick Mahomes’ biggest on-field rivals during the early stages of the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback’s career.

Now retired, the seven-time Super Bowl champion is serving as a mentor and sounding board for the two-time MVP, as Mahomes explained to Kay Adams on her ‘Up and Adams’ show.

‘I’ve actually talked to Tom a good amount this offseason,’ Mahomes said. ‘It’s cool that he wants to give me advice. He doesn’t have to be like that. He’s such a good dude. And I have so much respect for him, and I’ll take any advice he gives me.’

Mahomes joked he wasn’t able to give specifics about the discussions between himself and Brady.

‘I’ve got to keep the secrets, you know?’ Mahomes said, playfully.

That said, Mahomes did detail one of the most important lessons he has learned from Brady, who currently serves as a game analyst for Fox’s NFL coverage and recently bought an ownership stake in the Las Vegas Raiders.

‘He always talks about being yourself,’ Mahomes said. ‘He thinks that – which I truly believe, too – is that guys can spot when you’re not authentic, and you’re not putting in the work. That’s something that he did every single day. That’s why guys respected him so much.’

‘That’s all I’m going to do for the rest of my career, and I feel like I’ve done so far, is I’m always myself,’ he added. ‘No matter if you like me or don’t like me, you know I’m giving everything I can to win football games.’

Like Brady, Mahomes has found success doing that. The 29-year-old has already won three Super Bowls and earned MVP honors in each of his three victories. He has posted an 89-23 regular-season record in Kansas City and a 17-4 record in the postseason, giving him a combined winning percentage of .797.

Mahomes’ success has earned him high praise from Brady. The long-time New England Patriots starter has expressed his belief that if any quarterback could eventually surpass him in the debate about the NFL’s greatest quarterback, it would be Mahomes.

That praise has meant a lot to the Texas Tech product and has lit a fire under him as he looks to bounce back after a Super Bowl 59 defeat in his ninth NFL season.

‘I think [legacy is] always in the back of your mind, even from the beginning of my career,” Mahomes told Adams. ‘But at the end of the day, it’s about taking it a day at a time … That’s something that I’ve been conscious of – of knowing how blessed I am to be in Kansas City, to have all these great players around me.

“And having Tom – a guy like that – say that, it just motivates me even more.’

The NBA moves keep on coming.

Los Angeles was facing a decision on Powell’s contract, which is worth $20.5 million and expires at the end of the 2025-26 season, per Spotrac.com. The Clippers, however, will need to be conservative with their cap, given that stars Kawhi Leonard and James Harden are linked to the team for the next two seasons.

Powell, 32, is coming off the best season of his 10-year career, averaging 21.8 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game and hit 41.8% of his 3 pointers. Powell had been a reliable bench player for most of his time with the Clippers but was thrust into the starting lineup as Leonard dealt with a knee injury for most of the season.

Collins, 27, recently exercised a $26.6 million player option in his contract. The move gives the Clippers more depth in the front court after the team signed center Brook Lopez during free agency.

Love, who turns 37 in September, was a reserve for the Heat and averaged just 10.9 minutes in 23 appearances. Anderson is now on his third team in a year, after the Timberwolves had traded him to the Warriors in July 2024; Golden State then shipped Anderson to Miami in February as part of the Jimmy Butler deal.

When the Big 12 sent word in June that it would not release a preseason poll this year in conjunction with its media days, it didn’t seem like a huge deal. The Big 12, after all, is just copying what the Big Ten did last year, and everyone who follows college football knows that a projection of how good teams will be from year-to-year is mostly guess work given the amount of roster turnover across the sport.  

On the surface, it’s a sensible trend.

Back in the day, preseason polls were considered crucial in generating interest and getting the public back up to speed on college football after an eight-month hiatus. But now, given the intense year-round coverage of the sport, expansion of the College Football Playoff and the automatic bids that go to conference champions, you can make a solid case that preseason polls have outlived their usefulness and simply exist as fodder for the content machine.

Many fans will say, “Good riddance.”

But the Big 12’s decision is also part of a different trend, which we’ve seen across all the power conferences this summer and is actively harming college football: Distrust of the postseason system they built. 

The brass-knuckle truth about why the Big 12’s coaches and athletics directors voted to eliminate their preseason poll is that that last year, their conference champion Arizona State was picked last by the media. Meanwhile, preseason favorite Utah struggled to a 5-7 record. 

Inside the Big 12, there’s a belief that the upside-down nature of last year’s conference title race – which, admittedly, the voters got very, very, very wrong – created a perception that the league wasn’t very good. As a result, Arizona State did not get enough respect from the CFP committee and, more problematically, Brigham Young got even less. 

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Though Alabama’s exclusion (and the SEC’s subsequent hissy fit) has driven almost all the offseason dialogue over last year’s CFP selection process, there’s an argument to be made that BYU had more of a gripe.

Without doing a full autopsy, the Cougars were 10-2 with a pair of losses by a combined nine points and a head-to-head win over SMU, the team that got the final at-large spot. We can debate whether that made BYU more playoff-worthy than Alabama, but it’s more than fair to say BYU didn’t get nearly as much consideration as it should have – either by the committee or the media, which ranked the Cougars 17th. 

Did the Big 12 get the short end of the stick last year because Arizona State was ranked 16th in a preseason poll and BYU was 13th? I’m skeptical.

But people in the Big 12 believe that. Just like people in the SEC now believe that they’re not getting credit from the committee for their strength of schedule. And just like people in the Big Ten now believe that they need four automatic bids in the proposed 16-team iteration of the CFP because they believe it’s harder to play nine conference games than the SEC’s eight. 

See where this is heading? 

At the SEC’s spring meetings this year, we actually had an athletics director – Florida’s Scott Stricklin – suggest in an interview with Yahoo! Sports that a committee might not be the right vehicle for choosing the postseason field. 

“I question whether it’s appropriate for college football,” said Stricklin, who – wait for it – served on the committee from 2018-21. 

Explaining his position further, Stricklin claimed that football was different from other college sports because there’s a longer season in basketball or volleyball, so the committees that put together those postseason tournaments have more available data to consider. 

But Stricklin has this completely backwards. The relative lack of data available in a 12-game college football, and thus the need for human interpretation, is the very reason why a committee is the best way to choose the CFP. 

Pretty much everyone in the sport agreed with that notion more than a dozen years ago when the CFP was formed and the commissioners flatly rejected using statistical models or computer rankings to pick the teams. 

In fact, the opaque use of computers in the Bowl Championship Series formula was one of the big complaints of the pre-College Football Playoff era. Nobody wanted decimal points on someone’s hard drive deciding a national championship. The entire idea behind a committee was that actual people were best suited to look at a season and judge which teams were most qualified. 

Has it been perfect? Of course not. 

But there is simply no way to boil a college football season down to one number or even one point of emphasis when every conference schedules differently and there are even significant disparities within a conference now that they all have 16-plus teams.

As long as that scheduling model exists, the only way to effectively run the sport is for the conferences to empower a set of impartial human eyes to make decisions and then accept their work regardless of which league it favors in a given year.

College football has brazenly moved away from that ethos this summer. The SEC’s strength-of-schedule propaganda campaign has felt unnecessary and desperate, arguably one of the most embarrassing moments for the league in the last two decades. The Big Ten trying to strong-arm its colleague conferences into four automatic playoff bids cuts against the very idea of competition and threatens to make college football’s postseason look more like WrestleMania. And now the Big 12 thinks its issue is a perception problem, not a football problem, so they’re going to get rid of a preseason poll – as if the committee ever cared about that in the first place. 

Expanding the CFP from four to 12 was a no-brainer. But moving the arguments for or against teams into the margins has come with an unintended consequence. Nobody believes in the system they built, so instead they’ll attempt to game it. 

A French fencer has been cleared of doping allegations after arguing that she unknowingly ingested a banned substance via kissing.

Ysaora Thibus, the 2022 world champion in women’s foil, had been facing a four-year ban from competition after she tested positive in January 2024 for ostarine, an anabolic agent that has been prohibited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) since 2008. She argued that the substance had entered her body via kisses with her then-romantic partner, U.S. fencer Race Imboden.

‘The CAS Panel considered the evidence and noted that it is scientifically established that the intake of an ostarine dose similar to the dose ingested by Ms. Thibus’ then partner would have left sufficient amounts of ostarine in the saliva to contaminate a person through kissing,’ CAS said in a statement announcing the ruling.

‘The CAS Panel ruled that the (doping rules violation) for the presence of ostarine was not intentional, and that it is not questionable that Ms. Thibus bears no fault or negligence.’

WADA spokesperson Andrew Maggio said the organization was ‘disappointed by the outcome’ of the case but declined further comment.

‘WADA challenged the scenario presented by the athlete based on the facts and science of this particular case,’ he wrote in an email.

Thibus, 33, has been under scrutiny for the better part of 18 months − including at the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she had been expected to be among France’s brightest stars.

Thibus was suspended by the International Fencing Federation (FIE) immediately after her positive test in early 2024, then cleared by the federation’s disciplinary panel in May 2024 − which opened the door for her to compete in Paris a few months later, pending appeal. She had been expected to vie for a medal but was upset in the round of 32.

Along the way, WADA exercised its right to appeal the case to CAS, which generally serves as the final arbiter of sports disputes. CAS heard the case this spring and determined that ‘contamination through kissing’ was a plausible explanation. Experts considered the amount of ostarine in the supplement that Imboden was taking, how the substance could spread via saliva and the cumulative effects of such exposure over an extended period of time.

‘At no time did we deviate from our course,’ Thibus’ attorney, Joëlle Montlouis, told French news outlet L’Equipe. ‘From the first instance to the (CAS hearing), we maintained the same line, the same backbone, faithful to the reality of the facts.’

Thibus’ kissing defense is one of several novel explanations that athletes have offered for how and why banned substances got into their bodies. In recent years, some of the most newsworthy contamination cases have revolved around food. Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva famously claimed she accidentally ingested the banned substance trimetazidine through a strawberry dessert given to her by her grandfather, while a group of Chinese athletes said they tested positive for metandienone, an anabolic steroid, after eating contaminated hamburgers.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.