Week 14, 2024

Hurkacz, Berrettini, Shelton: The big bangers take week 1 clay. Here’s what we found interesting this week:

• Congratulations to former ATP top 30 Joao Sousa on retirement! Hats off to Estoril for putting together this incredible tribute video.

• Goran Ivanisevic Clears The Air

  Why It’s Interesting: Due to lack of information, a lot of the coverage on Djokovic’s coaching split has been shambolic. Goran sets the record straight in this interview with Saza Ozmo. You can also watch the full one hour, 30 minute interview with english subtitles here.

• The ATP Doubles Trial

  Why It’s Interesting: This is very bad news for ‘middle class’ doubles specialists. The tour hopes it is a step towards making doubles more entertaining and therefore more profitable.

  Gill’s Take: I agree that doubles as currently constructed is unsustainable. But I have serious doubts that getting more singles players ranked 15-50 to participate is going to be a fix. And why in the world are they taking steps to speed up the game? Doubles is already lightning quick.

• Another Jannik Sinner Feature Worth Your Time

  Golden Nugget: Jannik on why he began to prefer tennis over skiing: “You can lose points but you can still win the match. In skiing, if you make one mistake, one big mistake, you cannot win.”

• An Inspiring Hit With Sinner

  We Declare This: The Best Thing of the Week

• An Important Follow-Up on WTA Finals Announcement

  Gill’s Take: The fact that this needed to be clarified is the whole reason why moving the WTA Finals to Saudi Arabia is controversial in the first place. But thank goodness there’s some advance notice and future stability for the Year-End championship, because the last couple years have been embarrassing for the WTA.

• A Follow-Up on The Higueras Email from The Preeminent American Junior Tennis Journalist

  Why It’s Interesting: Many of you may have been paywalled from our last feature of the Higueras letter (a piece in The Athletic). This, from Collette, has the entire letter for you to read in full and some excellent perspective on it thereafter.

• Inside Scoop on Pro Tennis Sponsorships

  Further Development: From the University of Tennessee to Challengers and playing in the majors, Walton goes unfiltered on his journey. We’ve linked a clip. Here’s the whole video.

• Thiem Makes Honest Admission on Wrist

• Zizou Bergs Was Asked About Clay…. And Started Talking About A Physio

  We Declare This: The Funniest Thing Of The Week

On this week’s Monday Match Analysis, Gill covers Ben Shelton’s title in Houston, Matteo Berrettini’s win in Marrakech and previews the 2024 Monte Carlo Masters quarter-by-quarter.

Hey everyone, Gill Gross here. While I’m grateful for any amount of success I’ve had talking tennis on the internet for the past half decade, I believe we should all be doing better in this sport as creators and as fans. The tennis content economy is far behind other sports by metrics of engagement and popularity. This newsletter is our effort to DRAW the great things we find in tennis every week- we search for content that teaches us, makes us think, makes us laugh and ultimately makes loving this sport the best possible experience. Our vision is to speed up the growth of a robust content economy in tennis, for the benefit of fans, players and creators alike.

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