Carlos Supreme: Alcaraz Achieves Career Grand Slam

On Sunday, Carlos Alcaraz made history when he became the youngest man ever to complete a career Grand Slam after defeating Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open to claim his seventh major title. Alcaraz dropped the first set, but he rallied to win 2-6, 6-2, 6-3, 7-5. Here are the highlights of an electrifying match:

The career Grand Slam is a rare feat. Only five players have achieved it in the Open Era (the period starting in 1968 when both amateurs and professionals were allowed to compete in the major tournaments). Agassi, Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic were the other others. Moreover, they were all in their mid to late 20s when they did it. Alcaraz is just 22 years and 272 days old!

Source: nbcnews.com

Yet, it's probably  not be all that surprising. Even a couple of years ago experts were commenting how Alcaraz had "the most complete game for a player his age men's tennis [had] ever seen." Ever seen? He's been frequently compared to the "Big Three" of Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic, almost as a sort of composite of the trio: having the creativity of Roger, resiliency of Rafa, and the "wow factor" of Novak. And why not? A 22, he's won as many Grand Slams as the three of them combined at that age. It's interesting to compare the career progression of the Big Three and Alcaraz and Jannick Sinner, a possible rival to Carlos in the years ahead if both stay healthy. The chart below shows the number of Grand Slam won by each over time.

Source: Wikipedia and Mantabye calculations.

There's number of interesting things to gleam from his chart. First, what's remarkable is the sheer number major titles won by this group since the turn of the century. Of the 91 Grand Slam tournaments since Roger won his first at Wimbledon in 2003 through today's Australian Open, 77, or 85% of the titles, have been won by one of the five! (As context, there are roughly 1,800 professional players ranked on the men's ATP tour) Second, Roger seemed to be at his best in his 20s and faded a bit in his 30s. Rafa, started winning early and except for a brief lull in his late 20s consistent won major titles until his mid-30s. Novak took a little time to really get started but then won Grand Slams with remarkable alacrity through his mid 30s; in fact, about half of his 24 Grand Slams have come after 30! The typical professional men's tennis player appears to peak at 25/26 years of age. He's a machine!   

Which brings us back to Alcaraz...he's on a blistering pace to get to 10 or perhaps even 12 Grand Slams by the time he's 25. If he's the complete player as people say he is--the finesse of Roger, strength of Rafa, and peak conditioning of Novak--and stays healthy he could get to 30 Grand Slams and stake a resoundingly claim to be the best ever? We'll see...

Perspectives: Land Inequality

The global population is estimated to be over 8 billion (and perhaps even as high as 10 billion). Regardless, there's a lot of people in the world and it already feels very, very crowded. Just look at Tokyo, Jakarta, Delhi, Shanghai, etc. Imagine how it'll be in 2050 when the global population is anticipated to be 25% higher! Where will people live? Will we run out of space?

The below chart puts some of our demographic challenges into perspective. Excluding Antartica, the sum of the land area across the U.N.'s 193 or so countries is 57.5 million square miles. Roughly half of the world's population live in 20 Asian countries with a combined land area of only 7 million square miles (highlighted in yellow). So, 50% of humanity lives across just 12% of the world's land.  

But that's not all. There is also significant land inequality within nations. Consider China and India, two of the world's most populous countries. About 94% of China's 1.4 billion people live inside 50% of the country's land area. In India, 50% of its 1.4 billion people live on 27% of the country's land in the north. Add in Bangladesh and its 175 million people sitting next to India and below China and you have about a fifth of humanity living across less than 4% of the planet's land--roughly 730 people /square mile! 

Of course, we are not suggesting (by extrapolation) that earth can support 40 billion people! The question of how many people our planet can permanently support is a complex one and hotly debated. Various studies on the subject, based on the idea of "carrying capacity," have produced enormous ranges from 2 billion (were way past that!) to one trillion! Though the majority of studies put the earth's carrying capacity at around 8 billion. But maybe if we could just move people around a little better (immigration!), we might safely be able to support a few billion more! Consider Australia and Canada, they occupy 11% of the world's land area but have just 0.8% of its population!  

Land, labor, and capital...inequality exists across each of these key economic inputs.

Share Warne Dead at 52

Australian cricket legend Shane Warne died Friday of a suspected heart attack. He was just 52. Warne is widely acknowledged to be one of the, if not the, best bowlers the game has ever produced. He revived the lost art of leg-spin bowling which had lost ground to hard-charging fast-bowlers in the 1970s and 1980s. Warne played in 145 Test matches and 194 ODIs for Australia between 1992 and 2007. He took 708 Test wickets and 293 one-day wickets with a 25.4 and 25.7 bowling average, respectively. He was also handy with the bat...his full stats are here. A larger-than-life character, occasionally embroiled in controversy, Warne helped Australia win the 1999 cricket World Cup. He will receive a state funeral.

Shane Warne bowled over 50,000 balls in his illustrious international cricket career, but none may have been better, or certainly as famous, as his "ball-of-century" that completely bamboozled Mike Gatting in the 1993 Ashes series against heated rivals England: