Week 19, 2024

Rome wasn’t won in one day. Here’s what we found interesting this week:

• Tumaini Carayol Surveyed Pros

  Why It’s Interesting: Sometimes the simplest questions are the ones that provoke the most insightful answers. This piece is about what adjustments pros make to play on clay. We hear from Naomi Osaka, Andrey Rublev, Daniil Medvedev, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Maria Sakkari… and yes, Sascha Bublik.

• Caroline Garcia X Andrey Rublev Podcast

  Why It’s Interesting: Caroline Garcia is the latest current player to launch a podcast. It really feels like you’re a ‘fly on the wall’ for casual conversations between pros. Garcia has also featured Gaël Monfils, Ons Jabeur, and Alizé Cornet on the show so far.

• The Dominic Thiem Legacy, Unpacked In Gill’s Mailbag

  Why It’s Interesting: Thiem announced that 2024 would be his last year on tour. The first 26 minutes of the show are devoted to the former world #3 and US Open Champion. What made him so great to watch? Why does Gill disagree with how his career is often framed? What might have been had the wrist injury never occurred? All of those questions, explored.

• Andy Murray FINALLY Changes Frames

  Why It’s Interesting: Andy has played his entire career with an ancient racquet (over 20 years old) called the Head Pro Tour 630. He has gone through many bouts of testing other frames, only to go back to old reliable every time. It appears he has finally pulled the trigger on a change to a Yonex Ezone 100. As usual, we like TennisNerd’s take on everything racquets.

• The Camila Giorgi Retirement Seems Complicated

  Further Development: Giorgi referred to “inaccurate rumors” in her farewell Instagram post.

• Karolína Muchová Back on Court

  Why It’s Interesting: We love to see the 2023 French Open finalist hitting again. She has had Del Potro-esque injury proneness in her career so far.

• Ben Shelton Is Definitely Different

  Why It’s Interesting: Patience is a virtue, and Ben has used it every step of the way in his tennis career. From why he signed with On Running, to everything he’s doing to grow accustomed to clay: this is a quality deep dive on the young American.

  Gill’s Take: While I appreciate how Futterman showcases Ben’s desire to conquer the dirt, I do think it’s disingenuous to suggest he’s the trendsetting American in this vein. Taylor Fritz, for example, has taken a lot of pride in honing in his clay court game with great effect. He’s made clay Masters 1000 semifinals in back-to-back years.

• Your Eyes Did Not Deceive You. Hubert Hurkacz Was Redlining vs. Nadal.

On this week’s Monday Match Analysis, Gill breaks down blowout wins over Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal by Alejandro Tabilo and Hubert Hurkacz respectively, at the 2024 Rome Masters. He analyzes both matches, plus addresses the water bottle incident and Roland Garros prospects. He also takes a fresh look at the Rome draw with the Round of 16 stage ahead.

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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