perfection

CRISTIANO RONALDO’S fiancee Georgina Rodriguez took social media by storm once more.

Georgina, 31, has amassed a large audience on social media thanks to her relationship with Ronaldo, 40.

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And the content creator treated her 69.9million Instagram followers with another glam snap.

The Argentinean model posed in a barely-there see-through outfit at the beach.

And Georgina‘s fans were left in awe as they stormed the comments’ section.

One followers posted: “Perfection.”

Another commented: “Wowwww.”

A third wrote: “What a beauty and glow!”

This fan said: “Queen!”

And that one gushed: “You’re glowing.”

Georgina and Ronaldo finally got engaged after a long nine-year relationship.

The couple met in 2016 when she was working at a Gucci store in Spain during the five-time Ballon d’Or winner’s time with Real Madrid.

They have two children together – Alana, seven, and Bella, three – and formed a family with the Manchester United legend’s three kids born to two surrogate mothers.

That includes Cristiano Jr, 15, as well as twins Mateo and Eva Maria, both eight.

Inside the glamorous world of Georgina Rodriguez…

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LONDON — Jannik Sinner defeated two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 on Sunday to win his first Wimbledon championship and reverse the result of their epic French Open final five weeks ago.

The No. 1-ranked Sinner earned his fourth Grand Slam title overall, moving him one away from No. 2 Alcaraz’s total as the two no-longer-rising-but-firmly-established stars of the game separate themselves from the rest of the pack in men’s tennis.

This victory also allowed Sinner, a 23-year-old Italian, to put an end to several streaks for Alcaraz, a 22-year-old Spaniard.

Alcaraz had won the past five head-to-head matches between the pair, most recently across five sets and nearly 5 1/2 hours at Roland-Garros on June 8. Sinner took a two-set lead in that one, then held a trio of match points, but couldn’t close the deal, allowing Alcaraz to improve to 5-0 in major finals.

Jannik Sinner holds the trophy after winning the Wimbledon men’s singles final against Carlos Alcaraz in London Sunday.

(Kirsty Wigglesworth / Associated Press)

“I had a very tough loss in Paris. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter how you win or you lose the important tournaments. You just have to understand what you did wrong. Trying to work on that — that’s exactly what we did. We tried to accept the loss and then just kept working,” Sinner said Sunday. “And this is, for sure, why I’m holding this trophy here.”

This time, he didn’t waver, asserting himself in a match that featured moments of terrific play by both men, but also the occasional lapses — and one memorable, brief, interruption right before a Sinner serve when a Champagne cork came flying out of the stands and settled on the turf.

With Prince William and Princess Kate in the Royal Box, along with King Felipe VI of Spain, Alcaraz stepped into the sunlight bathing Centre Court as the owner of a career-best 24-match unbeaten run. He had won 20 matches in a row at the All England Club, including victories against Novak Djokovic in the 2023 and 2024 finals.

“It’s difficult to lose,” Alcaraz said. “It’s always difficult to lose.”

The last man to beat him at Wimbledon? Sinner, in the fourth round in 2022.

So this served as a bookend win for Sinner, who proved what he kept telling anyone who asked: No, there would be no carryover from his heartbreak in Paris. Hard to imagine, though, that that collapse wasn’t on his mind at least a little on Sunday, especially when he faced two break points while serving at 4-3, 15-40 in the fourth set.

But he calmly took the next four points to hold there, and soon was serving out the win.

“Very happy that I [held] nerves,” Sinner said.

When it ended, Sinner put both hands on his white hat. After embracing Alcaraz at the net, Sinner crouched on court with his head bowed, then pounded his right palm on the grass.

Yes, Sinner put the French Open behind him in the best way possible and demonstrated that his matchups with Alcaraz could delight tennis fans for years to come.

“Really happy to be able to build a really good relationship off the court,” Alcaraz said, “but then a great rivalry on the court that makes me improve every day.”

Sinner told Alcaraz: “Thank you for the player you are. It’s so difficult to play against you.”

Jannik Sinner reacts after defeating Carlos Alcaraz to win the Wimbledon championship in London on Sunday.

(Kirsty Wigglesworth / Associated Press)

These two guys have divvied up the past seven Grand Slam trophies, and nine of the last 12.

Fittingly, this marked the first time the same two men faced off in the title matches on the clay at Roland-Garros and the grass at the All England Club in the same year since Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal did it in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It hadn’t happened for more than a half-century before that trilogy.

Sinner has participated in each of the last four major finals, a stretch that began with a triumph at the U.S. Open last September and was followed by another at the Australian Open this January.

Wearing the same tape job and white arm sleeve to protect his right elbow that he has been using since falling in the opening game of his fourth-round win on Monday, Sinner never showed any issues, just as he had not while eliminating 24-time major champion Djokovic in the semifinals.

Fendrich writes for the Associated Press.

If only! On June 18, 2014, the airwaves and the internet lit up in collective awe at one of the greatest athletic feats in modern history. Clayton Kershaw recorded 15 strikeouts in a 107-pitch no-hitter that many consider the best single-game pitching performance of all time. The asterisk of this epic Dodgers game was the one error in the seventh inning that prevented its official recognition as a “perfect game”: When the Rockies’ Corey Dickerson tapped the ball toward the mound, Dodgers shortstop Hanley Ramirez botched a throw to first base, and Dickerson made it to second.

If only Ramirez had made the play at first! If only coach Don Mattingly hadn’t substituted the ailing Ramirez one inning prior! Los Angeles was one bruised right finger away from celebrating perfection.

Baseball has a celebrated history of quantifying value. No professional sport embraces numbers and statistics in the way baseball does. Statisticians are as much a part of the game as the dirt, chalk and grass. Although baseball has been collecting data since the late 1800s, the empiric statistical analysis that is part of our game today dates back to 1977 with the introduction of sabermetrics.

It’s critical to the game: How else are we to determine success when the majority of what we see is failure? The best hitters in baseball are those who only fail less than 70% of the time; in other words, have a batting average over .300. These perennial all-stars will experience the dissatisfaction and humility of an out in 7 out of every 10 plate appearances. In what other profession can you fail 70% of the time and be considered one of the greats? Consider the mental strength required to accept failure as part of the game and the focus to view each at-bat as an opportunity to fail a little bit less.

We need a similar kind of thinking in life to quantify value in our failure rates.

A “perfect game” is defined by Major League Baseball as a game in which a team pitches a victory that lasts a minimum of nine innings and in which no opposing player reaches base. It’s so rare because failure — by pitchers as well as batters — is expected as a matter of course. Francis Thomas Vincent Jr., the eighth commissioner of MLB, is quoted as saying: “Baseball teaches us, or has taught most of us, how to deal with failure. We learn at a very young age that failure is the norm in baseball and, precisely because we have failed, we hold in high regard those who fail less often — those who hit safely in one out of three chances and become star players. I also find it fascinating that baseball, alone in sport, considers errors to be part of the game, part of its rigorous truth.”

On June 19, 2014, the fans and commentators of baseball praised in dramatic fashion Kershaw’s dominant no-hitter, but with a subtle tone of confusion and denial of the ugly blemish recorded across the team’s box score: 0-0-1. Zero runs. Zero hits. One error. One base runner. An imperfect game. If only!

The collective hope for perfection is understandable. Most people are afraid to fail.

Parades aren’t held for the runner-up. Grades aren’t given just for trying. Job promotions aren’t offered for making mistakes. Placing perfection on a pedestal relieves the collective anxiety — but prohibits the opportunity — of accepting failure as an integral part of life. For an individual, failure is an opportunity to grow and become a better person. For a business, failure is an opportunity to pivot and redefine success. The opposite of perfection is not failure. It is accepting the opportunity to learn from transgressions. Winston Churchill once quipped, “The maxim, ‘Nothing prevails but perfection,’ may be spelled P-A-R-A-L-Y-S-I-S.”

Almost to the day, 75 years before Kershaw’s no-hitter, the world of sports witnessed the catastrophic reality of paralysis. In June 1939, after a week of extensive testing at the Mayo Clinic, Lou Gehrig announced to the world that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This announcement happened to fall on his 36th birthday. This represented the end of Gehrig’s illustrious baseball career. But 75 years later, what is remembered about this man is not his career batting average of .340, seven-time All-Star appearances, six-time World Series championships, winning of the Triple Crown or two-time league MVP. Sabermetrics could not possibly explain Gehrig’s value to the sport. What endures is what no statistic can capture: his grace. His humility. His courage in the face of loss. What is remembered and honored is his response to the ultimate “failure”: a failure of upper and lower motor neurons to make necessary connections that ultimately leads to rapidly progressive muscle weakness and atrophy. In defiance to an illness that is uniformly fatal, Gehrig paid homage to his teammates, professional members of the MLB and its fans by proclaiming himself “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Similarly, sabermetrics misses the true greatness of Kershaw’s no-hitter. What could never be displayed in statistics or numbers was Kershaw’s response to the error. After Ramirez’s throwing error, his hat lay at the base of Kershaw’s pitching mound. As I watched from the stands, I could not hear what Kershaw said to Ramirez as he picked it up, dusted off and handed the hat back to his humiliated teammate. But his body language appeared unbelievably humble, accepting and supportive, as if to recognize the lesson of baseball, which is that errors are a celebrated part of the game. To dwell on errors and think “if only” leads to disappointment and blame, but to accept and embrace imperfections with a positive and optimistic attitude defines the ultimate success.

If only we could all be that perfect.

Josh Diamond is a physician in private practice in Los Angeles and a lifelong Dodgers fan. Some of his earliest memories are of attending games with his father; he now shares his love of the Dodgers with his son.