Week 41, 2024

Another Sinner-Sabalenka week on the hard courts. Here’s what we found interesting this week:

• Rafa Sets Retirement

  ATP Player Reactions: Here

  Matthew Futterman for The Athletic: Here

  Jon Wertheim for Sports Illustrated: Here

  Dan Wolken for USA Today: Here

  Three Podcast Reflections: Here

  Steve Tignor for Tennis: Here

  Gill Gross Reaction: Here

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• Wimbledon Breaking Tradition

  Why It’s Interesting: This leaves Roland Garros as the last slam to adopt live electronic line calling. Wimbledon employed about 300 line judges, and acted as a golden carrot to sustain interest in judging lower level tournaments. There’s much less incentive now, and one line judge wrote an op-ed expressing her disappointment.

• Gauff’s Double Fault Problem, By The Numbers

  Golden Nugget: In the last 15 years, only two players have double-faulted with more frequency than Gauff and finished top-5; none have broken the top-3.

• More Than 7 Months After Reducing Suspension, CAS Publishes Halep Decision

  Analysis: The stunning discrepancy between the ITIA tribunal and the CAS decisions went unexplained until now. Ben Rothenberg combed through the decision (partially paywalled) on Bounces. To our knowledge, this is the only outlet to have done so.

• Richard Gasquet Marks Roland Garros 2025 As His Last Tournament

  A Quote: “The end is always complicated, as all the former great players have often told me. You never know when, how, where. As far as I'm concerned, it was obvious."

  Retirement Carnage in 2025: Here’s a full list.

• Contextualizing Sinner’s Recent Success vs. Djokovic

• Nick Kygrios Talking A Big Game Ahead Of Return

  Next Major: Australian Open Tournament Director Craig Tiley stated Kyrgios “will be back” for 2025’s event.

  Gill’s Note: This isn’t something Nick would have said when he was in his early 20s, a time when he wore his lack of ambition as a badge of honor and suffered on the court as a result.

• Bernard Tomic’s Hilarious Role in Tennis History

• Let’s Have 13-year Olds Rafa and Richard Send Us Off

🎙️ Commentary: Gill is doing mornings on Tennis Channel this week for featured coverage of Stockholm and Antwerp

On Monday Match Analysis, Gill breaks down Jannik Sinner's straight set win over Novak Djokovic in the 2024 Shanghai Masters final. It was a second win of the season for Sinner over Djokovic and a 7th title overall. We'll discuss the big takeaways from the week, Sinner's dominance on serve in the matchup, the critical 1st set TB, Djokovic's physicality, Sinner's breakpoint stats, his runaround forehands and more.

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