Week 4, 2024

The Australian Open 2024 is in the books. Here’s what we found interesting this week:

• Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert joint-write opinion piece for the Washington Post opposing the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia:

  Why It’s Interesting: Jon Werthiem has reported that the WTA received enough internal pushback last year to diverge from a plan to hold the WTA Finals in Saudi Arabia, leading to a disastrous Cancun campaign. This is the first time the pushback has been presented so publicly, by two of the most important women in WTA history. This is a huge decision for the tour.

• Daniil Medvedev’s down the line forehand winner caught the attention of tennis twitter:

  Why It’s Interesting: We love how a mundane replay of Medvedev hitting his bizarre forehand technique is enough to go viral on X.

• Oregon’s men’s doubles player with a service motion that would make Daniil smile:

  Why It’s Interesting: While Medvedev’s technique isn’t typical, this service motion makes Daniil’s form look beautiful. How he developed this motion is unknown, but it’s awesome to watch.

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• Darren Cahill hits the nail on the head when it comes to why Sinner is so good in this piece from Reem:

  Why It’s Interesting: Cahill who currently serves as Jannik Sinner’s coach was correct, he did win his maiden grand slam title. Sinner’s openness to change and evolve his game has yielded him unbelievable recent success, including a 10-1 record in has last 11 matches against top 5 players.

• Daniil Medvedev’s post-final press conference:

  Why It’s Interesting: We won’t usually link to press conferences here. But Daniil Medvedev is, for our money, the single best press conference in the sport. After a fascinating final, this is must watch.

• Australian Open Insights: A Tennis Aficionado and Novice's Take

  Why It’s Interesting: Giri Nathan and Patrick Redford share insights and observations on the matches, players, and dynamics of the tournament, highlighting both the men's and women's brackets with a mix of humor and expert analysis.

• The beautiful and heartbreaking tennis scoring system:

  Why It’s Interesting: Tennis’ dynamic scoring system allows for highs and lows unimaginable in any other sport. It’s amazing, heartbreaking, but exhilarating. Can you imagine being either player on court in this match?!

• In this week’s Monday Match Analysis, I analyzed the thrilling AO men’s singles final:

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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