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- Week 3, 2025
Week 3, 2025
Gill Gross & Ben Ornstein
January 22, 2025
Australian Open Week 2
The AO Animation Frenzy
Why It Was Interesting: While Tennis Australia sells exclusive broadcasting rights to media partners for boatloads of money, a loophole allows them to stream live matches themselves for free. It has been a hit among fans and the impetus of many viral clips.
Keys’ Magical New Racquet
Why It’s Interesting: Ben Rothenberg is covering a major on-site for Bounces for the first time, and the yield has been rewarding. Here, he talks with 2025 Australian Open semifinalist Madison Keys, her coach and husband Bjorn Fratangelo, and her agent Max Eisenbud to drill down the story behind her change from Wilson to Yonex.
Karue Sell Tips Modern Second Serve Trends
It's been happening for some time now, but 2nd serves are becoming mostly useless. Kicks to the backhand are not very effective. Players are too good from the back. Most are already going to the forehand more often. But seems like 100mph + is a must for statistical advantage
— Karue Sell (@KarueSell)
10:40 AM • Jan 15, 2025
Darren Cahill To Retire After 2025
Of Note: Sinner casually dropped this bomb in a post-match interview this week.
Jannik Sinner confirms this is Darren Cahill's last season on tour
— Mario Boccardi (@marioboc17)
12:41 PM • Jan 16, 2025
AO Ventures Raised $48M
More: The venture capital arm of the Australian Open and Tennis Australia, raised $48M to invest in technology-led startups that are innovating in the fields of sport, entertainment, media, and health.
Former World #17 Bernard Tomic Being Investigated For Match Fixing
More: See the detailed breakdown from edgeAI here.
Djokovic Watches AO Classics
Why It’s Interesting: Novak reveals his “hardest slam to win” and the most “physically draining” match of his career. We just wish this was about 30 minutes longer.
Exploring Slam Overperformers & Underperformers
Why It’s Interesting: Alex Gruskin and Gill Gross have had many conversations about Matteo Berrettini’s tendency to wilt at ATP hardcourt events, but make deep runs at hard court slams. Data extraordinaire Jeff Sackmann took that as a cue to build some cool metrics on those whose results vary most dramatically between best-of-three and best-of-five.
The Messy Details
Why It’s Interesting: The Athletic’s Tennis reporters team up on this one to bring us the play-by-play on the last two weeks of drama in Rybakina world, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. The major revelations can also be found in this Eliza Wastcoat’s summary.
More From The Athletic: On The Ash Barty Hangover in Aussie Women’s Tennis and a feature on Joao Fonseca.
Leaving You With AO’s Beloved Mascot, John
More: Carlos Alcaraz hanging out with John
#AusOpen mascot John had one of the best days of his life with Carlos Alcaraz 🥰
We all love you, John 💙
— Eurosport (@eurosport)
1:49 PM • Jan 17, 2025
More From Gill: Carlos Alcaraz, with eyes on a 1st Australian Open title, faced the 10-time champion Novak Djokovic in the Quarterfinal stage. Gill Gross breakdown and analysis...
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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.