Week 30, 2024

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Osaka in Tokyo, Nadal & Mauresmo in Paris. Tennis is on an Olympic torch-bearing streak. Here’s what we found interesting this week:

• Olympic Seeds Shot Quality, Mapped

  Some Takeaways: Zverev is the current king of serve-return, save some of that Tsitsipas’s backhand hate and allocate it to Auger-Aliassime, and Paul is not digging these analytics (peep the comments).

• Rohan Bopanna’s Late-Career Surge

  Why It’s Interesting: Rohan Bopanna’s story is awe-inspiring at every turn, beautifully profiled by Matthew Futterman. At 44, Bopanna is among the oldest Olympians whose sport does not allow him to compete while sitting or standing still at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

• Rune X Mouratoglou Split Again

  Full Picture: Mouratoglou was not in Rune’s box at Wimbledon or Hamburg. This doesn’t qualify as a full shakeup for Rune. His “new” head coach Kenneth Carlsen has actually been with the team for a while. Rune is currently rehabbing a bone bruise in his left wrist. He says the pain has lingered throughout this year’s clay and grass seasons, a span in which he recorded a 3-8 record against top-50 opponents.

• WTA Palermo Organizers Sell License, Predict Demise of 250s

  Calendar Implications: The license was quickly snatched up by the organizers of the Transylvania Open in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. That event will continue in 2025.

• Excerpt from Michael Chang 30 for 30, Which Premiered Monday Night on ESPN

  From ESPN Communications: “American Son” tells the story of Chang’s improbable rise as a young American tennis star, and his family’s immigrant journey which shaped his destiny. The story is centered around his winning the 1989 French Open at age 17, including his unforgettable upset of top ranked Ivan Lendl – a match that unfolded in the shadow of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China.”

  How to Watch: Stream with an ESPN+ subscription or check local listings to catch it airing on ESPN’s family networks.

• ATP Mics Up Doubles Players

  Why It’s Interesting: It feels like every other week on The Draw, we’re sharing a new ATP experiment for bolstering interest in doubles. Bugging players with tiny microphones has been a part of sports television for a long time, but tennis will take the radical step of taking the audio live. Ben Shelton is out.

• Hat Tip to NBC For Posting This Insane Murray-Evans Escape in Full

On Gill’s latest post-match analysis, Gill breaks down the 60th meeting between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal in the familiar territory of Roland Garros at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

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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