1. ‘“I come from a different generation,” Jiménez says. “And I’m not a hypocrite. I don’t hide the way I am. If I want to have a drink, I have a drink. Why shouldn’t I? Is it illegal to drink alcohol? Is tobacco illegal? So why should I care if people see me smoking? I do what I do out in the open. If people have a problem with that they can stick their tongue up their ass and let the rest of us do what we want to do. You can quote me exactly the way I said that.” He cracks an impish smile. “And what else do you want me to tell you?”‘

Alan Shipnuck presents Miguel Angel Jimenez as the most interesting man in golf. He’s not wrong.

2. ’His mother, Karen Kinzle Zegel, sent him a maternal text message to calm down, all will be well. He sent a quick response that, if you knew Patrick Risha at this stage, reflected either bristling anger or unnerving apathy: I am calm.

Now her son was on the phone again, saying disturbing things in a casual tone. As she looks back on that late night last September, their conversation wasn’t just about a measly $400 bank overdraft. It was about football. The word was never uttered, but that’s what this was really about. Football.’

Dan Barry tells the tragic story of Patrick Risha and of a life defined by American football for all the wrong reasons.

3. ‘It is striking, even after a push for equality in recent times, how variable the public recognition and financial compensation for women is in all the different sports. The more popular sports seem to give scant recognition or reward to their women athletes: football, cricket and rugby are all about the men. There are more and more moves to correct this, but women athletes in these sports are woefully under-represented in the media, while in tennis, athletics and now track cycling, the women are closer to being equals, at least in profile. We think of Victoria Pendleton as we do of Chris Hoy, and Serena Williams is as much of a superstar as Novak Djokovic.’

James Willstrop takes a closer look at the inequality that still exists between male and female athletes.

4. ‘Mourad Boudjellal once dubbed them “The Trolls of the Massif Central”. Back then, the Toulon owner was an angry man. He’d spent much of the previous season serving a league banning order for a remarkable verbal attack on a Top 14 referee after his side’s narrow and ill-tempered defeat at the Stade Marcel Michelin. Truculence was oozing out of every pore. It was a year-long temper tantrum that told us all we need to know about the relationship between Toulon and Clermont Auvergne. They loathe one another …even on a good day.’