Week 29, 2024

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Gill Gross & Ben Ornstein
July 25, 2024

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We’re back from a post-Wimbledon vacation and ready for the Paris Games! Here’s what we found interesting this week:

  • 2024 Hall-of-Fame Class Enshrined

    More: Paes was inducted in the player category, while Amritraj and Evans joined the “contributor” category. Paes and Amritraj became the first Indian and Asian men ever to receive the honor. Here’s the official writeup on Paes, one of the greatest doubles players of all-time, Amritraj, a man who helped popularize tennis globally, and Evans, an essential tennis journalist for over six decades. The full ceremony from Newport is also linked.

International Tennis Hall of Fame

www.tennisfame.com/class-of-2024-induction

  • ATP Safe Sport Program Provides Solution To Social Media Abuse

    Gill’s Take: I’ve got this as the best news of the week and also the most surprising. Celebrating because I’ve always loathed the ugliness players contend with in DMs, surprised because I’ve always assumed fixing this issue was a hopeless cause. I guess I didn’t account for the powers of artificial intelligence. Note: this is sure to make WTA players jealous, and rightly so.

ATP launches cutting edge AI-powered service to protect players from online abuse | ATP Tour | Tennis

ATP, Tennis Data Innovations (TDI) and Sportradar have teamed up to launch Safe Sport, a new service to address online abuse targeting professional tennis players. The collaboration breaks new ground by integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) moderation, education and investigation into a single service to protect athletes.

www.atptour.com/en/news/safe-sport-july-2024-announcement

  • Enjoyable Musings From The Defector Team

    Why It’s Interesting: Patrick Redford, Owen Lewis, and Giri Nathan discuss Jasmine Paolini's unexpected success, the good and bad of grass courts, and Carlos Alcaraz's statement-making summer.

A Bird's-Eye View Of Tennis's Post-Wimbledon Landscape | Defector

The action at Wimbledon brought new narratives and revived some old ones. Carlos Alcaraz won the title like last year but seems to have upgraded from king of men to warrior-seraphim, while an unrelenting Barbora Krejcikova unexpectedly bagged her second major title. The grass also hosted endearing underdogs, a new model of servebot, players slipping […]

defector.com/a-birds-eye-view-of-tenniss-post-wimbledon-landscape

  • Daria Saville Demystifying the Olympic Village

  • This Is Not A Normal Tennis Tournament

    Why It’s Interesting: Matthew Futterman with an Olympic primer that tackles the challenges and peculiarities of tennis at the Games head on. You ask 10 different players why or why not they’re playing, and you get 10 different answers.

At the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, tennis is as odd a fit as ever

Squeeze in a clay-court event, or go get ready for the hard-court swing? The Olympics create a complicated situation for many tennis stars.

www.nytimes.com/athletic/5627330/2024/07/19/paris-olympics-2024-tennis-carlos-alcaraz/?redirected=1

  • Giron Reveals Mentorship from Agassi

    Why It’s Interesting: We hadn’t known of a Giron-Agassi relationship until Newport, when the eight-time major champion sat courtside for one of Giron’s matches. Upon further questioning, it’s clear the Andre appearance was far from random. Giron says he often invites consultation from Agassi, who has urged him to play with more attacking aggression and helped him improve the backhand.

Why Marcos Giron believes Andre Agassi has extended his career | ATP Tour | Tennis

Marcos Giron’s 6-4, 6-1 win Friday in the quarter-finals of the Infosys Hall of Fame Open appeared routine on the surface. But it did reveal something interesting. In the front row was Andre Agassi, the former No. 1 player in the PIF ATP Rankings. The all-time great even gave Giron a fist bump during the match.

www.atptour.com/en/news/giron-newport-2024-agassi-feature

  • The Nothing Major Podcast

    Why It’s Interesting: Jack Sock, Sam Queerey, John Isner & Steve Johnson make up the latest tennis podcast launch. It seems at least every two months we’re sharing such news. The trend continues.

  • Rafaraz? Alcadal? Rafalitos? We can’t wait to watch.

On the post-Wimbledon 2024 Mega Mailbag, Gill answers your questions, including how Carlos Alcaraz's four majors stack up against each other, if Alcaraz can beat Novak Djokovic's record number of slam titles, how Djokovic's retirement outlook changed this year, how strong the current era is, how injuries can be avoided on grass, re-assessing Barbora Krejcikova, and more!

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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