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- Week 9, 2024
Week 9, 2024
Gill Gross & Ben Ornstein
March 05, 2024
Should they even play finals anymore when Ugo Humbert is involved? Hand him the trophy. Here’s what we found interesting this week.
Saudi Arabia 🤝 ATP Tour
Why It’s Interesting: It’s official, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund & the ATP tour have agreed to a five-year, $100M partnership according to Jon Wertheim that includes naming rights for the ATP rankings. This might be the appetizer preceding a much heartier entree in Saudi x ATP relations.
Santiago’s Subpar Clay Conditions
Why It’s Interesting: This might be the worst bounce in professional tennis history. Actually, second worst:
Desconozco como se arreglan las canchas, me declaró un ignorante pero es posible mejorar la cancha en 1 o 2 días.
Algún canchero en Twitter
— Guillermo Rivera (@Willy_Rivera3)
3:20 PM • Feb 27, 2024
The Greatest Serving Era is Now
Why It’s Interesting: The 90s are now known for relentless dosage of one and two shot rallies and serve dominance. The data on display from Matt exposes that as somewhat of a myth relative to current times. The serve plus one era makes for even more holds than the serve-volley era.
It's always interesting that the 1990's are nostalgised as a serve dominant era in men's tennis relative to now. Especially because on average holding serve, 1st serve points won, 2nd serve points won, aces per match, serve speed all increased significantly over the last 30 years
— Matthew Willis (@mattracquet)
6:23 PM • Mar 1, 2024
You can watch Novak Djokovic Full Practicing at UCLA
Kei Nishikori Comeback Imminent
Why It’s Interesting: Raducanu, Wozniaki and Venus were very much expected on the Miami wildcard list, but the former world # 4 is a welcome surprise. Nishikori has been training at the relatively-nearby IMG Academy.
We’re hoping Rublev’s default is a turning point
Why It’s Interesting: The appeals committee concluded his fine wouldn’t include losing his tournament rankings points or prize money. Rublev released a statement that did not read particularly apologetic (see screenshot below)
WTA World #24 Didn’t Start Watching Tennis… Until Last Year
Gill’s Take: I understand why this realization was met with widespread shock, but I’m certain this is way more common than people realize. Some pro tennis players like watching tennis, some do not.
An interesting tidbit from Emma Navarro’s Press Conference after her QF Win
Said she didn’t start watching tennis until last year 😳
“My coach was like yeah you need to start watching tennis, try to watch like an hour a week. Now I’ve become a little bit of a tennis nerd.”
— TennisONE App (@TennisONEApp)
4:09 AM • Mar 2, 2024
This week’s Monday Match Analysis was a bit different. Gill went to Vegas to see The Neftlix Slam in person and gave the 1st person experience.
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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