I’ve written a bunch of long-form stuff in the past couple of weeks, and so for today’s Thursday issue, I wanted to mix it up and hear from you.
Feel free to ask me any questions you like about tennis, recent/old matches, about the Racquet, or about what you’d like to see more of etc etc. Anything goes. I’ll do my best to answer them all quickly but I might take a bit longer if there are any that require some extra thought.
So, ask me anything (or you could just tell me your Top 5 favourites for the Roland Garros title).
Do you, from a neutral perspective, consider the surface distribution on the ATP tour to be optimal or does it need adjustment? The news of a potential new Grass masters could shake things up, do you think this is necessary?
Who are your faves for Wimbledon?
Also, weird scenario I know, but...: if you could take one player to win one return game without being given preparation or warmup against Milos Raonic on... Indian Wells hardcourt, who would you pick?
No, if I could choose it would be 33% grass, 33% clay and 33% hard court approx. But this isn't going to happen unfortunately. At the top end of the sport right now the split is about 63-5% hard courts, 30% clay and 5-7% grass. This was a slow but conscious decision over many years, to move most of the tour on to hard courts and move away from the natural surfaces dominating the calendar like large parts of tennis history. But given maintenance for Berlin, Stuttgart & Mallorca (grass events) costs about 600k collectively per year, and the bigger tournaments like Masters 1000's make an avg net profit of $6m per year, cost shouldn't be a good justification for not having more grass for the bigger events (masters and up).
RE Milos vs anyone, Indian Wells is an interesting caveat because of how slow and high bouncing it is, but probably still Djokovic given he absolutely smoked Raonic there in 2016 (Raonic only won 2 games).
Do you think increased availability of advanced analytics on either tour would increase fan engagement with the sport? Do you think hawkeye data would ever become public?
Great question Noah. Yes, absolutely. I'm writing a longer piece on this that should be out in the next few weeks, but I think this sport should do everything it can to make its fans as smart and engaged as possible. Tennis is still largely stuck in the dark ages when it comes to data and analysis (mostly thanks to its fragmentation), a bit like where basketball was in the 90's. Tennis at the moment doesn't do enough for either its casual fans or its hardcore fans, and access to, and explanation of, its analytics is one of the ways its hardcore fans are currently underserved. The deeper this sport allows its fans to fall down the rabbit hole of interest, the more they will probably end up spending on the sport. It should be a win win for everyone concerned.
RE hawkeye data, more of it will become available steadily (in my head the deeper stuff should be available to those fans who are already paying 100$+ a year to stream the sport), but a lot of the spatial stuff it captures is slightly harder to present in the moment on live broadcast. I'm confident this will get better in coming years but perhaps slower than we'd like.
I think the main issue of tennis is the small sellable quantity of faces, in the sense that for example we have a number 30 in the world that has been called a journeyman and would not be known by tennis "half passionates", while a top 30 player in football would be a huge star. In my opinion this generates imbalances in prize money and many more recent discussions on the treatment of players.
Do you think team competitions could be a thing to improve the popularity of not-top-10 players? Or maybe just more emphasis on Challengers, 250 etc?
Great question Matteo. I think there are many solutions to that problem. Some of it has to do with media access and exposure for players outside the top 30 (players should be given basic PR training by the ATP/WTA, encouraged to livestream practice sessions, talk to their fans from early on in their career etc), and some of it has to do with the structure of the tour. Yes I'd like to see more team competitions, the Laver Cup is excellent, if a bit elitist, at highlighting how fun these can be for both fans and players. But given the calendar is already incredibly congested I'm not sure how much more room there is for this atm. On the first point, I think tennis needs to do a far better job at letting fans of players create content around those players rather than relying on official channels to do all the marketing. The copyright strikes anytime fans upload gifs or videos of players is a great example of counterintuitive behaviour from tennis orgs when it comes to the growth of the game, both for top 30 and lower ranked players.
Hi Matt do you disagree with the attempt to remove line judges from Tennis when so many use it as a pathway to chair umpire jobs, as a hobby, side job and also a social thing. I don't think a lot of tournaments can afford hawkeye live either.
I disagree for the reason that linesmen/women are a common part of the career path of some umpires, so replacing them completely puts a hole in some umpires career development which will need to be replaced. I agree with it because it seems like an inevitable technological progression, and the costs of hawkeye/foxtenn will come down the more it's used on the tour. It's a complicated problem but I expect most linesmen/women to be obsolete within 5 years.
1. What areas do you reckon does Musetti need to improve, especially if he is to compete outside clay? Physicality will probably come with age, but his second serve looked like a liability vs Felix
2. As a Romanian, I've watched with envy recent Sofia, Budapest and now Belgrade success, reminiscing when I used to see the likes of Simon & Djokovic in Bucharest; any idea what will happen to Țiriac's tournament license ownership (think it's Madrid & Budapest now) if he dies before managing to establish something back home?
3. Which next gen would you put money on retiring with the most accomplished grass career?
Great question Mark. Musetti is a tough one because his upside on clay is very, very high, and yet he has the potential to hit a lower ceiling on faster courts partially because of his western forehand. He looks so much more comfortable with time on the ball. I'm extremely interested to see how he mitigates that in the next few years. And yeah serve needs (and will get) work.
Great Q about Tiriac, I'll have to do some digging for a proper answer for that.
Medvedev (maybe Tsitsipas if he can find a few more ways to protect his backhand defence on quicker surfaces)
Who should we keep an eye on if we want to be a smug tennis hipster next year in terms of young talent? (i.e. people like Sinner, Musetti, Korda, even Ruud to an extent that have made big rankings gains over the last year or so).
Feel like we might see more players like this given that points are starting to be dropped vs last year with Rankings being a little more static given COVID freezes.
Hi Matt, thanks for the work you put in. Very much enjoy what you do. If I could be selfish and offer a suggestion of what I would like to see added…. A hot/cold section. Maybe 3 /5 players, Hot and why they are hot and on the upswing. And same for cold player. Something like a look ahead section. The review and summary material is awesome. I’m not looking for predictions. More of who is in good form. Who is in bad form.
I'm new to your writing. Really enjoying the substack so far. Just wondering how often you play nowadays, and if so at what level, and if your own game brings insights to your analysis.
Thanks Shaun, great to hear. Lockdown in the UK lifted a few weeks ago and courts & clubs are now open again thank god. I play 2-3 times a week usually, occasionally more, but at a more relaxed level these days compared to university. Playing to a certain level of competition probably has helped me understand some of the more basic elements of strategy and at least gives me some idea of what players are feeling on court during matchplay, but to be honest most of my recent analysis probably comes more from having watched, and thought about, the top level of the sport more closely over the past 10 ish years. Although tbh it's quite hard for me to separate what is learned by doing or by watching
Hey Matt! Do you consider playing tennis a privileged or elitist sport? If so, what are some methods one can help spread this sport to the less privileged so they can access it as well (thinking especially in colder climates like Canada).
Great question Akbar. In some countries it is, and others less so. Usually depends on number of courts, club membership fees etc. In cities with plenty of public courts there's not much reason it should be elitist, although learning tennis is likely going to be expensive regardless of where you are. For colder climates the national tennis orgs need to be clever about investing in year round tennis facilities at both grass roots and more serious development level. Like creating courts that can be 'bubbled' for eg in the winter to make outdoor courts indoor courts during colder months. There are really two parts of making tennis less elitist though. 1. Access to participation and 2. Access to watch it. Both help the other significantly (ie if you're a fan of watching tennis you're more likely to play it and vice versa) but are two mostly distinct problems. I'm writing a proper piece on the latter which should be out in the next few weeks
Why isn’t doubles promoted more? All over Europe the sport of ”padel” is growing a lot in popularity and its always 2 x 2. This seems to indicate that tennis doubles could also be more popular if the major tennis organizations gave it more promotion.
Quite a few reasons unfortunately. The prize money structure of pro tennis (ie significantly more for singles over doubles) incentivises tennis' best athletes and competitors to choose singles. And there are a bunch of self perpetuating loops when it comes to lacking promotion, for eg bad court assignments due to lesser prioritizations of doubles vs singles and reality of scheduling difficulties for all big events. I love padel but it's a doubles sport almost by default compared to tennis which is mostly singles by default.
2. court coaching overall (WTA and ATP). Do you like the format used by WTA? If not, what to change. How the men's game would be impacted by these changes.
Hi Matt, can you talk a little bit about your insights into the tennis analytics (software) industry? How are metrics collected on the court (shot placement, speed, distance covered, etc.) and how are infographics created/who chooses what is shown? Who are the big players in providing real-time scoring/analytics services to tournaments and broadcasters? And how do you think tennis compares to other sports in this area? Thanks for doing The Racquet!
Great question Lukas. Tennis is very fragmented in this regard. You have hawkeye at pretty much every big tournament, which simulates everything from spatial stuff, ball flight, player movement, shot speeds and spins etc. And then you also have different data providers and analysis for different tournaments like Infosys for Roland Garros, Australian Open & ATP events, IBM for Wimbledon and US Open, Stats Perform and Sports Radar for WTA etc etc. Then you have smaller private firms who work with individual players to improve performance, which have either developed proprietary match tracking software or use a hybrid of their own methods alongside paid tennis data platforms like SAP's or the ones listed above. The summary is that it's a bit of a mess of vaguely connected nodes, some sharing stuff, some not. I think tennis needs to do a much better job at making its most hardcore fans smarter and letting them go down the rabbit hole of tennis knowledge and analysis (tennis is currently a bit like where basketball was in the 90's in this regard). But it can also be difficult to present some of the more interesting data, especially spatial stuff, concisely and coherently in real time to viewers, so there's a battle there as well. Any follow up Q's let me know as this is a fairly deep topic
Thanks, that's a good overview. Where I'm coming from is basically that I work in tech and I'm also a tennis fan/player and I want to get a starting point to research if there are any "cool" companies to work for that do tennis analytics (to achieve some form of "hobby as job" setup). Dream setup would be AWS Sports to partner with ATP and WTA. Amazon already broadcasts those so the connection is there. It probably depends mostly on ATP/WTA/Slam willingness to choose a new partner.
An AWS for sports would be the dream, but incredibly unlikely in current landscape unfortunately. As for specific companies, have a look at golden set analytics, they've built some interesting stuff: https://www.goldensetanalytics.com/
GSA looks promising, thanks. Their (not very active) Twitter links to a three-part series on tennis analytics, that's a good start.
AWS Sports already exists (https://aws.amazon.com/sports/) they're "just" not partnering with tennis. I'm also not sure how close the AWS teams are to the actual sport vs doing consulting. Although consulting players, tournaments, etc. would already be awesome :).
Not that I have a horse in this race, but don't you believe that the claim that Federer's early slams came against "inferior" competition is simply a myth and that one could argue the game was even deeper at the top with respect to talent? Davydenko, Nalbandian, Safin, Haas, Roddick, Hewitt, Blake, Robredo, Kuerten, Agassi...quite the list there methinks.
I think conversations about the competitive strengths of different eras are fine generally but the idea of punishing players for who they compete against, and had no choice to compete against, is mostly a silly debate. One of the biggest problems for tennis historians looking back at the Big 3 era is that they are just *so* much better than anyone else playing in this period. The competition against each other has been the defining competition strength rather than anyone else. That said, Federer's age relative to the other two was always going to be unkind to him when looking at surface level record, H2H, and competition.
What do you see as the biggest physical changes in tennis over the last 3 decades? Teens used to be able to compete and late 20s was considered old. Is it that speed is less of an issue? Do players need to be better skilled now to compete, which takes time to develop? Is it entirely improved training tactics? In other sports like soccer (football), we've seen careers lengthen but teens have still emerged. That seems less so in tennis nowadays. In baseball, we've seen the average age decrease (mainly due to cost control though).
Great question Phil. I think there are a few different factors at play. Firstly sports medicine, conditioning and injury management and treatment have come a long way in the last 30 years. I think if you picked up the 80/90's players and dropped them in this, or Fed, Nadal, Djokovic's, era you'd see similar longevity. But I'm also not sure the current crop of players are necessarily *that* much healthier than previous generations. Federer, one of the best movers ever, has now had three surgeries on his knees, two of which were to remove small parts of his meniscus as far as I understand. He is essentially trading continuing playing the sport he loves at a high level for what will probably be unhealthy knees, and an increased risk of arthritis, as he ages. None of these guys are immune to the toll of what most demanding sports careers mean for the body, we may just not have seen the ramifications yet. It'll be interesting to see how the Big 3 hold up as they age. There is also an interesting discussion to be had whether the improvement of sports medicine and conditioning may have been offset by the fact we now have 60%+ of the top end of the tour played on hard courts, which are almost certainly the hardest on the body. And yes I do think development age has shifted a bit in tennis, as the expectation of teenage phenoms has perhaps decreased in favour of the early-mid 20's period of rapid development. There are many reasons for this but would need a longer post I think. As for playstyle/physical changes, the increase of player speed along with height is the most interesting to me (along with high margin offence and defence facilitated by modern string & racquet tech). The emergence of fast giants, Medvedev, Tsistipas, Zverev, Hurkacz etc, all over 6ft 5 would have been confusing to anyone watching similarly tall players move in the 80's and 90's.
Would court homogenization also offset the medicine/conditioning aspect to an extent just because rally length (with grass being biggest example, but hardcourts as well slowing) has extended since S&V was a more regular weapon.
Probably yeah, but the avg rally length is actually still very short these days, and not much different across all three surfaces. The 70's and 80's saw longer clay rallies as the norm, but string and racquet tech has made clay much faster and more offensive these days. And while grass isn't the same 1-2 shot servefest of the 90's, it's still not a grind by any means. I think you're right in that the game, partially via homogenization, has undoubtably become more physical thanks to movement techniques, string tech enabling high margin offence and defence etc. And this likely offsets, or perhaps just maximizes the need for, modern sports medicine and conditioning
Tsitsipas has a great chance of winning his 1st slam this year! I've been following him since he was 18, through thick and thin, and I just knew he'd be big one day!
Do you feel like Djokovic's serve is one of the most underrated parts of his game? It seems to me that his resurgence from 2018-present, especially in the last year or two, has as much to do with his serve as it does with anything else. Clutch serving especially.
Question: I tend to try out new racquets frequently and have noticed that some racquets give me access to shots that are not consistently possible on my standard racquet due to string pattern, stiffness and overall racquet physics. On occasion, I will hit a shot with a newer racquet and wonder where it came from, it most likely wasn't me, my swing/mechanics didn't change so I give more credit to the racquet. I know top players change for a smidge extra power/control/stability, but I wonder if new access to a particular difficult shot ever comes into play for them? Or are they so good, that it just doesn't matter and they can hit anything they want with any racquet with some practice.
Any pro can essentially hit any shot with most modern racquets as long as they're strung up with modern strings, either full poly or a hybrid of poly and gut. It's usually the strings which make more of a difference compared to the racquet, although if you go back 20 years + then the changes in racquet composition tend to start making more of a difference.
I wanted to hear your opinion on player development in the UK and what's wrong with it? As a Croatian it always baffled me that the UK had the same number (or less) of top 100 players as Croatia, despite having Wimbledon, tradition, infrastructure and money (unlike the Croatian LTA). Even Andy Murray seems to be an exception rather than a product of the LTA.
What do you think could the LTA do to create more too level professionals?
Thanks Zvonko, great question. I'll write something about this soon as it needs a bigger answer really. The short answer appears to be mismanagement when it comes to development programs, facilities (shockingly low number of indoor courts in some areas of the UK), lack of low level tournament investment not enabling UK juniors to train and compete at a consistently high level locally, to the degree with which you see other strong tennis nations thriving. Some of this has changed in the past few years for the better, but it's a slow road.
Thanks Matt, that already gives me a better perspective on the matter. Looking forward to a more in depth piece if you get to it!
On a separate and more private note - I wondered if you watch tennis as part of your day to day job? I can imagine just writing for The Racquet takes a lot of time, let alone watching all the matches you base the writing on.
I currently have about three different jobs at the moment, 2 of which involve tennis. So I get to watch a fair amount still, but life is fairly busy atm!
What do you think of Thiem's chances at RG v. Tsitsipas's chances ? Oddly, Tsitsipas is a contender to have a strong run and Thiem is becoming a bit of a dark horse competitor in the draw given that he hasn't played a single competitive match since Dubai ? Still on the topic of Thiem, comparing him with Tsitsipas, who according to you is the better clay-courter?
Completely depends how fit Thiem is in the next few weeks. I'd give him a relatively low chance if he's still struggling in Madrid and Rome. Tsitsipas should feel good about his chances at RG unless he has to play Nadal. As for clay court favourite right now? Tsitsipas over Thiem until Thiem shows some signs of form in the next couple of clay events.
Scenario: Let's say you've become a big fan of a dynamic player shooting up the rankings and shaking up the tennis world, but they seem to have come out of nowhere. They bring a lot of excitement to tennis; you and many other fans enjoy watching their game/rooting them on, and you're now invested. But people are asking how they could be playing at such a high level after toiling in obscurity so long.
Then you start seeing rumors here and there on Twitter: the reason no one has seen them/this level of play from them before is that they allegedly engaged in match fixing in challengers or futures. Outside of Twitter, you can't find anything beyond some allegations in a tennis forum thread. How would you process that? If you were reasonably certain the rumors were true, would that be a heartbreaker (or a deal-breaker) for you as a fan?
Ah the struggles of being a Karatsev fan. Unfortunately this question will probably never be answered properly. Unless something concrete somehow comes out on this topic (a paper trail of communication or blackmail), and I see little reason why it would given when the last set of relatively quiet accusations happened and where he is now, I think it's fine to just presume innocence. Tennis' lower rungs are also partially broken, which presents the argument that perhaps players that do make mistakes in said broken system deserve second chances. But it would be up to you as a fan to weigh all that.
How many more Grand Slam titles do you think Nadal can win vs Federer/Djokovic? The way he's going, I think he's a lock for 4-5 more at Roland Garros just given how easily he wins there, which will be hard to beat among the Big 3 given that Federer seems to be slowing down and Djokovic is starting to face stiff competition from the youngsters on other surfaces. What do you think?
Would personally be surprised by 4-5 more RG's as a 'lock', but Nadal's surprised me plenty over the course of his career! The competition on clay is getting increasingly stiff with Thiem & Tsitsipas both counting it as their best surface, & it likely being Zverev's joint-best surface. It's not going to get easier for Nadal, but it all just depends on how quickly he declines, as whether or not he wins RG is always on his own racquet as he's proven. I think Nadal and Djokovic will look dominant at the slams until they suddenly aren't any longer, could be this year, could be in 2-3 years, which will mean that any predictions past a year or so will almost always end up looking bad. I also think Wimbledon could be more up for grabs than usual in next few years given Federer's age and the grass weakness (or really just lack of experience) of most of the younger players. In my mind Nadal almost has a better chance at another Wimbledon title than he does in Australia.
Future of tennis? Medvedev/Nadal style hitting rallies from 20 ft behind the baseline with sharp angles and drop shots to maximize physical attrition? Any technological developments that could change this?
The game is extremely offensive with a focus on short points at the moment, a trend which has been increasing over the last decade. The long rallies tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule (although more common on clay). Future of ATP tennis, probably in the immediate term less variation than the prime big 3 era, as next gen don't have quite as many tools as those three did. Although perhaps that will change as they develop in their 20's.
I really like UTR for the lower rungs, or developmental rungs, of tennis. Tennis is in a weird spot at the moments with ITF, ATP, UTR rankings and ratings. Its fragmentation is hurting it again.
Why do you think players from Europe has been dominating for so many years.. what will it take for asian countries like India to start dominating on tour.. like is the basic structure is lacking or what?
Great question Siddharth. This probably needs a much longer answer but the short version is infrastructure, funding, the size of the young player pools thanks to rich history and development programs, access to steadily improving levels of tournaments (ie opportunities to able to play relatively locally from juniors into itf seniors, into challengers, into main tour etc). As well as an expectation by enough of that population that becoming a pro tennis player is a viable option, which can take quite a long time to achieve and has lots of levers like facilities, the wider economy, government sports funding, inspiration in the form of national tennis heroes etc. I think there is an extraordinary amount of potential coming out of India, and hopefully this sport can continue helping nurture that potential wherever possible (would love to see some more events played in India). I'll try and write something on this properly soon.
Meant to add at the beginning, the competitive talent pool in some of the european nations is extremely high from a very young age. For eg all the spanish, French, Italian, Russian etc men and women playing now were all competiting against each other from a young age. That depth of training level is invaluable and hard to recreate in nations where the development programs aren't quite as far along. With enough work and time though this will change.
How do you see progress & potential of Clara Tauson? Getting little advantage with WC, unlike Rune, Ruud, Korda etc because of their management contacts. Is she the real deal?
I'm very excited about Tauson. Absolutely the real deal and was blown away by her Lyon run. Huge fan of her backhand, and her willingness to stand in and crush some of the softer WTA serves on return, in particular. Serve needs (and will get) work tho
Ditto. Truly impressive development so far and fun to watch. Tauson indeed needs to work on both her serves, but fairly convinced that a year from now, she will have reached a totally different level at serving.
Hi Matt, why couldn't Halep neutralize Sabalenka in Stuttgart and does she have a better chance if she meets her (or somebody that plays similarly to the Belarusian) at RG? Why?
P.S. Awesome picture of the Royal Kona Tennis Center. I have that as background for my laptop and a matching vinyl decal for my touchpad.
Great question Marius. Firstly I don't think Halep played particularly well, and Sabalenka put in a great performance so there was probably a bit of a mismatch in form/level on the day. When Sabalenka is crushing the ball like that, there's often a let up of some sort or she starts missing. But she managed to hit her serve and serve+1 shots huge and accurately all match, and was teeing off on Halep's slightly underpowered serve. Stuttgart is a bit of an odd clay event because it's indoors. My guess is that if they were to meet in Paris or Rome or Madrid the result would probably be quite different. Sabalenka's best is up there with anyone's right now, but that best can also be quite inconsistent if she's forced to play a few more balls outside her preferred baseline hitting zones. I'm guessing Halep would be able to frustrate Sabalenka more consistently should they meet again on clay.
I was going to ask about Kyrgios but someone else has posted first. He is down for Mallorca but apparently he needs to get vaccinated and has issues getting back into Australia. Would be so good if he could play Queens - but do you know if his ranking will still be high enough to get into Wimbledon? I have been so interested to see many other players actually admitting to depression/weariness such as Thiem and Zverev, at last which makes it look as if Layhani's attempt to assist Nick through a bad patch a few years ago (for which he was disciplined) was not so bad? These guys are human and subject to huge pressure. I think Djokovic seems to be in a similar state right now. Any players who get defaulted must find it really hard to walk back on court and Kyrgios has had more than most thrown at him.
Yeah his travel is a bit more difficult getting out and then back into Australia, but he should be partially given an exemption given his job. If he can come to Europe for the grass season and stay through June and July playing tournaments (although grass season is being cut slightly short this year) then that would probably make the trip more worthwhile rather than just going for one event and then having to quarantine back in Oz. RE getting into wimbledon, he probably won't be able to get seeded unless he performs incredibly well in the grass warmups but he'll get general entry for sure as he's well inside the top 100 (currently 50 ish). RE weariness yeah, I think the ATP are basically giving players pretty much a free pass for most behaviour right now (Paire hasn't been fined for lack of best effort once as far as I know despite barely caring in multiple recent matches). It's a weird time and good to see the tours recognise that. Hopefully brighter days to come soon and already so nice to see some crowds back at tennis this and last week.
Kyrgios will almost certainly play the grass as long as he's not injured. He should be back in Mallorca in June. RE Paire I think he'll be ok once crowds return again, and he's probably helped by COVID rankings, with partially frozen points, pretty significantly as his poor patch of form atm won't hurt him as much as it usually would rankings-wise (for now at least). But yeah, given his notoriously lacking work ethic and diet it would be a pretty impressive feat if he manages to stay a top ranked player for much longer as a 31 year old. Interesting, if worrying, question about long term covid effects on players. We probably won't know for a while what the true ramifications could be for some of them
Great question Hugh. Medvedev occasionally does depending on the matchup. Zverev is probably the biggest example of someone who's results seem to improve significantly when he's hitting two 1st serves or close to it. @Vestige_du_jour on twitter actually did a great analysis on this here: https://twitter.com/Vestige_du_jour/status/1162392902628270086?s=20
Kyrgios, Querrey, Zverev all e.g's on the men's tour. As for the WTA I'll need to think more about that one, as slightly less obvious and usually a bit less difference between 1st and 2nd speeds anyway.
So much attention paid to GOATs and NextGen... So I'll mix it up with a slightly trollish question. Which player is your favourite to win their first slam over the age of 30?
(To be clear, player does not have to be >30 now; Dimitrov winning RG21 would count.)
On the men's side, probably someone like Raonic at Wimbledon. Wouldn't be that surprised if Wimbledon has a few interesting slam winners in coming years as big 3 continue decline with increased inconsistency. On WTA side that's a much harder question, will come back to it after giving it some thought!
didn't think about the WTA! 30 is a bigger hurdle for the ladies. I see Jo Konta and Pliskobot are the biggest slamless+aging names. But I don't know enough about women's tennis to say.
Probably yes. Extremely normal for him to have a let up in motivation after winning his first slam, especially given how long he was blocked from winning one by an ageing big 3. Very interesting to see how he bounces back in the next 6 months. My hunch is that Thiem is a bit unlucky career timing wise, not quite young enough to have his whole prime be post-big 3 dominance, but old enough where he'll have, soon to be prime-age, next gen yapping at his heels for years to come
Regarding the debate as to the greatest of all time, I’ve long held the opinion that the greatest of today’s players are superior to those of generations ago. I feel the game has evolved and one of the main advantages of today’s player is the fitness and training (players have teams of trainers and physio coaches). The game is a lot faster and harder and the equipment is definitely superior. However, even if you give past players the same racquet, etc. I would think Djok, Fed or Nadal would prevail over a Laver, Borg or McEnroe. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think this is an impossible question to answer well unfortunately. Comparing players across different eras and technology is always going to result in too many 'what if's'. That said, there is always going to be a bit of recency bias that goes along with the newest players and the newest technology, largely just because the sport has gotten faster and more dynamic and will appear 'better' in many ways to older versions of it. One of the problems with picking up Borg, McEnroe or Laver and putting them in the current era, even if they had developed with modern string and racquet tech, is that they'd probably be bit small relative to the field. I still think they would all still be great players, and each were transformational for the game in multiple ways, but I personally prefer looking at them within the context of their own eras rather than comparing them with modern players
Oh so many. If I had to pick one, mainly just access. Tennis is rather binary atm in how it approaches its fans and streaming/viewing. You're either a fan and you pay for (ok) access. Or you're not and you get pretty much nothing. That isn't how modern fans and communities work, nor how mondern platforms work. Tennis needs to do a better job at catering to more of the demand curve when it comes to tennis fans. It needs reasonably priced viewing options and sport exposure for newer or more casual fans and it also needs more, deeper access for its most hardcore fans willing to pay more. At the moment it's either on or off and its failing both the extreme ends (new and hardcore) of its fans.
What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of Alcarez's game? I've watched a couple of his matches and worry that he might be a bit like Coric, also fantastic at 18, extremely solid in all respects but lacking a weapon that can hurt elite players.
I think, mostly thanks to not having Coric's forehand grip and technique, he has more offensive potential. In Andalucia a few weeks ago he demolished Casper Ruud 6-2, 6-4 where 31 of total 63 points won by Alcaraz were winners, or approx 50%. That is an extraordinary offensive performance so I'm not necessarily worried about his weapon potential when it comes to baselining. His serve is probably going to be the main area of development, especially on quicker courts.
Hi Matt, this might seem a bit of a weird question since we’re right in the middle of clay season, but since Wimbledon didn’t happen last year, the upcoming SW19 tournament feels particularly big. Who would you say stands to gain the most from a win there this year? Thanks!
Hey Owen, not a weird question at all. 'Gain' is always going to be relative in this context, for eg a Big 3 win would be a big gain re their legacies, but for eg Tsistipas or Sinner winning would be a greater overall gain RE career development and momentum. On the ATP side I'd say Nadal (three slams of his weakest surface would be huge) and Djokovic (closer to fed's Wimbledon haul) for legacy reasons, and Tsitsipas or Medvedev for career momentum reasons. On WTA side, obviously Serena for legacy reasons, and broadly fascinated to see whether Świątek game (and forehand in particular) can transfer to grass, and Osaka, for career momentum gains.
Where do you manage to find the images that you put at the start of the emails, the one with the effects? Or what kind of Photoshop filters are you using to create them? Some of the player ones have been great, have been thinking about getting them printed out and framed.
Thanks Martyn. I luckily now have access to getty images so the unfiltered ones come straight from there with credit. The filtered ones are just put through an ios app called Prisma
how can the formats of the Challenger/ITF tours be modified to help prospect development? Tournaments are a sensible option when the top players are competing, but I think a European football league-style format could work for younger players. Something like a 20-player, double round-robin format would ensure each prospect plays a set number of matches. Not sure if this would positively or negatively impact viewership, but it would be a welcome change of pace from the ATP/WTA
Great question. I think the challenger & ITF tours are the areas where this sport can afford to experiment a bit with format, but they need to tread the line carefully as departing too far from ATP/WTA tour formats would mean bad preparation for the jump to top levels. Most of my thoughts around this topic revolve around increasing viewership and access to these lower rung events, to try and make sure they're run as an attraction in their own regard rather than just being a necessary and mostly ignored step to the top level tours. But as far as modifications goes I think there's definitely room for experimentation at ITF level in particular. Mostly though, it would be good to see some of the countries who have enormous amounts of funding via their top level tournaments *cough wimbledon and the UK* take a leaf out of Italy's book when it comes to grass roots and lower level tournament investment.
Great question. I think the biggest problem for Medvedev on clay, and to be clear I rate him higher on this surface than most seem to, is the difference in impact of his serve and serve+1 shot compared to quicker surfaces. From mid 2019 onwards, ie his breakout period, both his serve and serve +1 forehand and backhand were revelatory in their aggression. He essentially transitioned from a very defensive baseliner to a defensive baseline who could also rattle through service games with just a few swings of his racquet (he was winning 81% of his service points in 4 or less shots, which beat Djokovic 77%, Federer 76% and Nadal 75% handily). Clay takes quite a bit of that newer aggression, that saw him be one of the players of the season in 2019, 2020 and already in 2021, and blunts it a bit. As for a solution there isn't an easy answer really. Likely needs to let his serve do whatever it can on the slower surface, be as aggressive as possible on the serve+1 shots, but also be prepared to outgrind his opponents. Unfortunately the bounce on clay is just never going to be as conducive to his game as the quicker courts
Hey Matt! Do you plan on continuing to do tournament/match predictions in your newsletter? I've really enjoyed your insight on these in the past. Thanks!
Hi Matthew, This is probably not the place to ask this question, but I would really request some insights on how to get into Tennis writing for a beginner like me. I've only been into cricket writing thus far and would like to start with Tennis now. A little direction would be amazing.
Travel probably makes that tough. If given the option between playing queens/halle/stuttgart et al in similar time zone to Wimbledon or playing newport as a warm up, most players would choose the former. Also the clay season is already in Europe at that point which means some players would in theory need to go US (IW and Miami) - Europe (clay) - US (newport) - Europe (grass/Wimbledon). I agree it comes at a bit of an unfortunate time given the prestige of the event.
I would think that logistically it can't be before Wimbledon just because players would need to go from US (Sunshine Double) > Europe for Clay Swing > US for Newport > Back to UK for the rest of grass.
I always figured Newport was grass more just as a nostalgia factor with it being located at US Tennis hall of fame.
This is a bit of an experiment, but if you like these threads I'll do them once a month. Probably after some of the bigger tournaments
Hi Matt
Do you, from a neutral perspective, consider the surface distribution on the ATP tour to be optimal or does it need adjustment? The news of a potential new Grass masters could shake things up, do you think this is necessary?
Who are your faves for Wimbledon?
Also, weird scenario I know, but...: if you could take one player to win one return game without being given preparation or warmup against Milos Raonic on... Indian Wells hardcourt, who would you pick?
No, if I could choose it would be 33% grass, 33% clay and 33% hard court approx. But this isn't going to happen unfortunately. At the top end of the sport right now the split is about 63-5% hard courts, 30% clay and 5-7% grass. This was a slow but conscious decision over many years, to move most of the tour on to hard courts and move away from the natural surfaces dominating the calendar like large parts of tennis history. But given maintenance for Berlin, Stuttgart & Mallorca (grass events) costs about 600k collectively per year, and the bigger tournaments like Masters 1000's make an avg net profit of $6m per year, cost shouldn't be a good justification for not having more grass for the bigger events (masters and up).
RE Milos vs anyone, Indian Wells is an interesting caveat because of how slow and high bouncing it is, but probably still Djokovic given he absolutely smoked Raonic there in 2016 (Raonic only won 2 games).
Do you think increased availability of advanced analytics on either tour would increase fan engagement with the sport? Do you think hawkeye data would ever become public?
Great question Noah. Yes, absolutely. I'm writing a longer piece on this that should be out in the next few weeks, but I think this sport should do everything it can to make its fans as smart and engaged as possible. Tennis is still largely stuck in the dark ages when it comes to data and analysis (mostly thanks to its fragmentation), a bit like where basketball was in the 90's. Tennis at the moment doesn't do enough for either its casual fans or its hardcore fans, and access to, and explanation of, its analytics is one of the ways its hardcore fans are currently underserved. The deeper this sport allows its fans to fall down the rabbit hole of interest, the more they will probably end up spending on the sport. It should be a win win for everyone concerned.
RE hawkeye data, more of it will become available steadily (in my head the deeper stuff should be available to those fans who are already paying 100$+ a year to stream the sport), but a lot of the spatial stuff it captures is slightly harder to present in the moment on live broadcast. I'm confident this will get better in coming years but perhaps slower than we'd like.
Hi Matt,
I think the main issue of tennis is the small sellable quantity of faces, in the sense that for example we have a number 30 in the world that has been called a journeyman and would not be known by tennis "half passionates", while a top 30 player in football would be a huge star. In my opinion this generates imbalances in prize money and many more recent discussions on the treatment of players.
Do you think team competitions could be a thing to improve the popularity of not-top-10 players? Or maybe just more emphasis on Challengers, 250 etc?
Great question Matteo. I think there are many solutions to that problem. Some of it has to do with media access and exposure for players outside the top 30 (players should be given basic PR training by the ATP/WTA, encouraged to livestream practice sessions, talk to their fans from early on in their career etc), and some of it has to do with the structure of the tour. Yes I'd like to see more team competitions, the Laver Cup is excellent, if a bit elitist, at highlighting how fun these can be for both fans and players. But given the calendar is already incredibly congested I'm not sure how much more room there is for this atm. On the first point, I think tennis needs to do a far better job at letting fans of players create content around those players rather than relying on official channels to do all the marketing. The copyright strikes anytime fans upload gifs or videos of players is a great example of counterintuitive behaviour from tennis orgs when it comes to the growth of the game, both for top 30 and lower ranked players.
Hi Matt do you disagree with the attempt to remove line judges from Tennis when so many use it as a pathway to chair umpire jobs, as a hobby, side job and also a social thing. I don't think a lot of tournaments can afford hawkeye live either.
I disagree for the reason that linesmen/women are a common part of the career path of some umpires, so replacing them completely puts a hole in some umpires career development which will need to be replaced. I agree with it because it seems like an inevitable technological progression, and the costs of hawkeye/foxtenn will come down the more it's used on the tour. It's a complicated problem but I expect most linesmen/women to be obsolete within 5 years.
Hi Matt, great initiative! Couple of questions:
1. What areas do you reckon does Musetti need to improve, especially if he is to compete outside clay? Physicality will probably come with age, but his second serve looked like a liability vs Felix
2. As a Romanian, I've watched with envy recent Sofia, Budapest and now Belgrade success, reminiscing when I used to see the likes of Simon & Djokovic in Bucharest; any idea what will happen to Țiriac's tournament license ownership (think it's Madrid & Budapest now) if he dies before managing to establish something back home?
3. Which next gen would you put money on retiring with the most accomplished grass career?
Great question Mark. Musetti is a tough one because his upside on clay is very, very high, and yet he has the potential to hit a lower ceiling on faster courts partially because of his western forehand. He looks so much more comfortable with time on the ball. I'm extremely interested to see how he mitigates that in the next few years. And yeah serve needs (and will get) work.
Great Q about Tiriac, I'll have to do some digging for a proper answer for that.
Medvedev (maybe Tsitsipas if he can find a few more ways to protect his backhand defence on quicker surfaces)
Who should we keep an eye on if we want to be a smug tennis hipster next year in terms of young talent? (i.e. people like Sinner, Musetti, Korda, even Ruud to an extent that have made big rankings gains over the last year or so).
Feel like we might see more players like this given that points are starting to be dropped vs last year with Rankings being a little more static given COVID freezes.
Alcaraz, Rune, Stricker are the three most exciting 17/18 year olds for me. Mochizuki & Medjedovic also really interesting
Hi Matt, thanks for the work you put in. Very much enjoy what you do. If I could be selfish and offer a suggestion of what I would like to see added…. A hot/cold section. Maybe 3 /5 players, Hot and why they are hot and on the upswing. And same for cold player. Something like a look ahead section. The review and summary material is awesome. I’m not looking for predictions. More of who is in good form. Who is in bad form.
Thanks Samuel! And good idea. Will think about adding at the end of some issues
I'm new to your writing. Really enjoying the substack so far. Just wondering how often you play nowadays, and if so at what level, and if your own game brings insights to your analysis.
Thanks Shaun, great to hear. Lockdown in the UK lifted a few weeks ago and courts & clubs are now open again thank god. I play 2-3 times a week usually, occasionally more, but at a more relaxed level these days compared to university. Playing to a certain level of competition probably has helped me understand some of the more basic elements of strategy and at least gives me some idea of what players are feeling on court during matchplay, but to be honest most of my recent analysis probably comes more from having watched, and thought about, the top level of the sport more closely over the past 10 ish years. Although tbh it's quite hard for me to separate what is learned by doing or by watching
Thanks! Glad you can play again!
Oh I didn't answer your Q about level. I played 1st team at university (UCL in london), but mostly just for fun nowadays.
Hey Matt! Do you consider playing tennis a privileged or elitist sport? If so, what are some methods one can help spread this sport to the less privileged so they can access it as well (thinking especially in colder climates like Canada).
Great question Akbar. In some countries it is, and others less so. Usually depends on number of courts, club membership fees etc. In cities with plenty of public courts there's not much reason it should be elitist, although learning tennis is likely going to be expensive regardless of where you are. For colder climates the national tennis orgs need to be clever about investing in year round tennis facilities at both grass roots and more serious development level. Like creating courts that can be 'bubbled' for eg in the winter to make outdoor courts indoor courts during colder months. There are really two parts of making tennis less elitist though. 1. Access to participation and 2. Access to watch it. Both help the other significantly (ie if you're a fan of watching tennis you're more likely to play it and vice versa) but are two mostly distinct problems. I'm writing a proper piece on the latter which should be out in the next few weeks
Looking forward to it. Thanks for your reply!
What is the oldest someone started leaning tennis and still made it to world-class level?
Younes El Aynaoui and Cedric Pioline both started properly as teenagers, which is very late for pro tennis players.
Why isn’t doubles promoted more? All over Europe the sport of ”padel” is growing a lot in popularity and its always 2 x 2. This seems to indicate that tennis doubles could also be more popular if the major tennis organizations gave it more promotion.
Quite a few reasons unfortunately. The prize money structure of pro tennis (ie significantly more for singles over doubles) incentivises tennis' best athletes and competitors to choose singles. And there are a bunch of self perpetuating loops when it comes to lacking promotion, for eg bad court assignments due to lesser prioritizations of doubles vs singles and reality of scheduling difficulties for all big events. I love padel but it's a doubles sport almost by default compared to tennis which is mostly singles by default.
What your thoughts on the future of:
1. line judges
2. court coaching overall (WTA and ATP). Do you like the format used by WTA? If not, what to change. How the men's game would be impacted by these changes.
1. I actually like the traditional approach of line judges and calls, but they will be totally gone in the next 5 years.
2. I don't like on court coaching. I like the fact that tennis players have to rely on themselves to problem solve in the moment.
Hi Matt, can you talk a little bit about your insights into the tennis analytics (software) industry? How are metrics collected on the court (shot placement, speed, distance covered, etc.) and how are infographics created/who chooses what is shown? Who are the big players in providing real-time scoring/analytics services to tournaments and broadcasters? And how do you think tennis compares to other sports in this area? Thanks for doing The Racquet!
Great question Lukas. Tennis is very fragmented in this regard. You have hawkeye at pretty much every big tournament, which simulates everything from spatial stuff, ball flight, player movement, shot speeds and spins etc. And then you also have different data providers and analysis for different tournaments like Infosys for Roland Garros, Australian Open & ATP events, IBM for Wimbledon and US Open, Stats Perform and Sports Radar for WTA etc etc. Then you have smaller private firms who work with individual players to improve performance, which have either developed proprietary match tracking software or use a hybrid of their own methods alongside paid tennis data platforms like SAP's or the ones listed above. The summary is that it's a bit of a mess of vaguely connected nodes, some sharing stuff, some not. I think tennis needs to do a much better job at making its most hardcore fans smarter and letting them go down the rabbit hole of tennis knowledge and analysis (tennis is currently a bit like where basketball was in the 90's in this regard). But it can also be difficult to present some of the more interesting data, especially spatial stuff, concisely and coherently in real time to viewers, so there's a battle there as well. Any follow up Q's let me know as this is a fairly deep topic
Thanks, that's a good overview. Where I'm coming from is basically that I work in tech and I'm also a tennis fan/player and I want to get a starting point to research if there are any "cool" companies to work for that do tennis analytics (to achieve some form of "hobby as job" setup). Dream setup would be AWS Sports to partner with ATP and WTA. Amazon already broadcasts those so the connection is there. It probably depends mostly on ATP/WTA/Slam willingness to choose a new partner.
An AWS for sports would be the dream, but incredibly unlikely in current landscape unfortunately. As for specific companies, have a look at golden set analytics, they've built some interesting stuff: https://www.goldensetanalytics.com/
GSA looks promising, thanks. Their (not very active) Twitter links to a three-part series on tennis analytics, that's a good start.
AWS Sports already exists (https://aws.amazon.com/sports/) they're "just" not partnering with tennis. I'm also not sure how close the AWS teams are to the actual sport vs doing consulting. Although consulting players, tournaments, etc. would already be awesome :).
Not that I have a horse in this race, but don't you believe that the claim that Federer's early slams came against "inferior" competition is simply a myth and that one could argue the game was even deeper at the top with respect to talent? Davydenko, Nalbandian, Safin, Haas, Roddick, Hewitt, Blake, Robredo, Kuerten, Agassi...quite the list there methinks.
I think conversations about the competitive strengths of different eras are fine generally but the idea of punishing players for who they compete against, and had no choice to compete against, is mostly a silly debate. One of the biggest problems for tennis historians looking back at the Big 3 era is that they are just *so* much better than anyone else playing in this period. The competition against each other has been the defining competition strength rather than anyone else. That said, Federer's age relative to the other two was always going to be unkind to him when looking at surface level record, H2H, and competition.
What do you see as the biggest physical changes in tennis over the last 3 decades? Teens used to be able to compete and late 20s was considered old. Is it that speed is less of an issue? Do players need to be better skilled now to compete, which takes time to develop? Is it entirely improved training tactics? In other sports like soccer (football), we've seen careers lengthen but teens have still emerged. That seems less so in tennis nowadays. In baseball, we've seen the average age decrease (mainly due to cost control though).
Great question Phil. I think there are a few different factors at play. Firstly sports medicine, conditioning and injury management and treatment have come a long way in the last 30 years. I think if you picked up the 80/90's players and dropped them in this, or Fed, Nadal, Djokovic's, era you'd see similar longevity. But I'm also not sure the current crop of players are necessarily *that* much healthier than previous generations. Federer, one of the best movers ever, has now had three surgeries on his knees, two of which were to remove small parts of his meniscus as far as I understand. He is essentially trading continuing playing the sport he loves at a high level for what will probably be unhealthy knees, and an increased risk of arthritis, as he ages. None of these guys are immune to the toll of what most demanding sports careers mean for the body, we may just not have seen the ramifications yet. It'll be interesting to see how the Big 3 hold up as they age. There is also an interesting discussion to be had whether the improvement of sports medicine and conditioning may have been offset by the fact we now have 60%+ of the top end of the tour played on hard courts, which are almost certainly the hardest on the body. And yes I do think development age has shifted a bit in tennis, as the expectation of teenage phenoms has perhaps decreased in favour of the early-mid 20's period of rapid development. There are many reasons for this but would need a longer post I think. As for playstyle/physical changes, the increase of player speed along with height is the most interesting to me (along with high margin offence and defence facilitated by modern string & racquet tech). The emergence of fast giants, Medvedev, Tsistipas, Zverev, Hurkacz etc, all over 6ft 5 would have been confusing to anyone watching similarly tall players move in the 80's and 90's.
Would court homogenization also offset the medicine/conditioning aspect to an extent just because rally length (with grass being biggest example, but hardcourts as well slowing) has extended since S&V was a more regular weapon.
Probably yeah, but the avg rally length is actually still very short these days, and not much different across all three surfaces. The 70's and 80's saw longer clay rallies as the norm, but string and racquet tech has made clay much faster and more offensive these days. And while grass isn't the same 1-2 shot servefest of the 90's, it's still not a grind by any means. I think you're right in that the game, partially via homogenization, has undoubtably become more physical thanks to movement techniques, string tech enabling high margin offence and defence etc. And this likely offsets, or perhaps just maximizes the need for, modern sports medicine and conditioning
Tsitsipas has a great chance of winning his 1st slam this year! I've been following him since he was 18, through thick and thin, and I just knew he'd be big one day!
WAIT FOR IT!
Agree! I'm very bullish on Tsitsipas in general
Do you feel like Djokovic's serve is one of the most underrated parts of his game? It seems to me that his resurgence from 2018-present, especially in the last year or two, has as much to do with his serve as it does with anything else. Clutch serving especially.
Yes, especially and mostly on hard courts. I'll put out a proper piece on this soon hopefully.
Question: I tend to try out new racquets frequently and have noticed that some racquets give me access to shots that are not consistently possible on my standard racquet due to string pattern, stiffness and overall racquet physics. On occasion, I will hit a shot with a newer racquet and wonder where it came from, it most likely wasn't me, my swing/mechanics didn't change so I give more credit to the racquet. I know top players change for a smidge extra power/control/stability, but I wonder if new access to a particular difficult shot ever comes into play for them? Or are they so good, that it just doesn't matter and they can hit anything they want with any racquet with some practice.
Any pro can essentially hit any shot with most modern racquets as long as they're strung up with modern strings, either full poly or a hybrid of poly and gut. It's usually the strings which make more of a difference compared to the racquet, although if you go back 20 years + then the changes in racquet composition tend to start making more of a difference.
Hey Matt, great to have you back!
I wanted to hear your opinion on player development in the UK and what's wrong with it? As a Croatian it always baffled me that the UK had the same number (or less) of top 100 players as Croatia, despite having Wimbledon, tradition, infrastructure and money (unlike the Croatian LTA). Even Andy Murray seems to be an exception rather than a product of the LTA.
What do you think could the LTA do to create more too level professionals?
Thanks Zvonko, great question. I'll write something about this soon as it needs a bigger answer really. The short answer appears to be mismanagement when it comes to development programs, facilities (shockingly low number of indoor courts in some areas of the UK), lack of low level tournament investment not enabling UK juniors to train and compete at a consistently high level locally, to the degree with which you see other strong tennis nations thriving. Some of this has changed in the past few years for the better, but it's a slow road.
Thanks Matt, that already gives me a better perspective on the matter. Looking forward to a more in depth piece if you get to it!
On a separate and more private note - I wondered if you watch tennis as part of your day to day job? I can imagine just writing for The Racquet takes a lot of time, let alone watching all the matches you base the writing on.
I currently have about three different jobs at the moment, 2 of which involve tennis. So I get to watch a fair amount still, but life is fairly busy atm!
What do you think of Thiem's chances at RG v. Tsitsipas's chances ? Oddly, Tsitsipas is a contender to have a strong run and Thiem is becoming a bit of a dark horse competitor in the draw given that he hasn't played a single competitive match since Dubai ? Still on the topic of Thiem, comparing him with Tsitsipas, who according to you is the better clay-courter?
Completely depends how fit Thiem is in the next few weeks. I'd give him a relatively low chance if he's still struggling in Madrid and Rome. Tsitsipas should feel good about his chances at RG unless he has to play Nadal. As for clay court favourite right now? Tsitsipas over Thiem until Thiem shows some signs of form in the next couple of clay events.
Scenario: Let's say you've become a big fan of a dynamic player shooting up the rankings and shaking up the tennis world, but they seem to have come out of nowhere. They bring a lot of excitement to tennis; you and many other fans enjoy watching their game/rooting them on, and you're now invested. But people are asking how they could be playing at such a high level after toiling in obscurity so long.
Then you start seeing rumors here and there on Twitter: the reason no one has seen them/this level of play from them before is that they allegedly engaged in match fixing in challengers or futures. Outside of Twitter, you can't find anything beyond some allegations in a tennis forum thread. How would you process that? If you were reasonably certain the rumors were true, would that be a heartbreaker (or a deal-breaker) for you as a fan?
Ah the struggles of being a Karatsev fan. Unfortunately this question will probably never be answered properly. Unless something concrete somehow comes out on this topic (a paper trail of communication or blackmail), and I see little reason why it would given when the last set of relatively quiet accusations happened and where he is now, I think it's fine to just presume innocence. Tennis' lower rungs are also partially broken, which presents the argument that perhaps players that do make mistakes in said broken system deserve second chances. But it would be up to you as a fan to weigh all that.
I have no idea who this "Karatsev" character is that you speak of but he sounds pretty cool
Haha, I came here to ask a similar question :)
How many more Grand Slam titles do you think Nadal can win vs Federer/Djokovic? The way he's going, I think he's a lock for 4-5 more at Roland Garros just given how easily he wins there, which will be hard to beat among the Big 3 given that Federer seems to be slowing down and Djokovic is starting to face stiff competition from the youngsters on other surfaces. What do you think?
liked = agree completely? :)
Would personally be surprised by 4-5 more RG's as a 'lock', but Nadal's surprised me plenty over the course of his career! The competition on clay is getting increasingly stiff with Thiem & Tsitsipas both counting it as their best surface, & it likely being Zverev's joint-best surface. It's not going to get easier for Nadal, but it all just depends on how quickly he declines, as whether or not he wins RG is always on his own racquet as he's proven. I think Nadal and Djokovic will look dominant at the slams until they suddenly aren't any longer, could be this year, could be in 2-3 years, which will mean that any predictions past a year or so will almost always end up looking bad. I also think Wimbledon could be more up for grabs than usual in next few years given Federer's age and the grass weakness (or really just lack of experience) of most of the younger players. In my mind Nadal almost has a better chance at another Wimbledon title than he does in Australia.
Top 5 matches since 2005 you recommend for a new tennis fan?
Will come back to this
Future of tennis? Medvedev/Nadal style hitting rallies from 20 ft behind the baseline with sharp angles and drop shots to maximize physical attrition? Any technological developments that could change this?
The game is extremely offensive with a focus on short points at the moment, a trend which has been increasing over the last decade. The long rallies tend to be the exceptions rather than the rule (although more common on clay). Future of ATP tennis, probably in the immediate term less variation than the prime big 3 era, as next gen don't have quite as many tools as those three did. Although perhaps that will change as they develop in their 20's.
What are your thoughts on UTR versus ATP rank?
I really like UTR for the lower rungs, or developmental rungs, of tennis. Tennis is in a weird spot at the moments with ITF, ATP, UTR rankings and ratings. Its fragmentation is hurting it again.
Why do you think players from Europe has been dominating for so many years.. what will it take for asian countries like India to start dominating on tour.. like is the basic structure is lacking or what?
Great question Siddharth. This probably needs a much longer answer but the short version is infrastructure, funding, the size of the young player pools thanks to rich history and development programs, access to steadily improving levels of tournaments (ie opportunities to able to play relatively locally from juniors into itf seniors, into challengers, into main tour etc). As well as an expectation by enough of that population that becoming a pro tennis player is a viable option, which can take quite a long time to achieve and has lots of levers like facilities, the wider economy, government sports funding, inspiration in the form of national tennis heroes etc. I think there is an extraordinary amount of potential coming out of India, and hopefully this sport can continue helping nurture that potential wherever possible (would love to see some more events played in India). I'll try and write something on this properly soon.
Meant to add at the beginning, the competitive talent pool in some of the european nations is extremely high from a very young age. For eg all the spanish, French, Italian, Russian etc men and women playing now were all competiting against each other from a young age. That depth of training level is invaluable and hard to recreate in nations where the development programs aren't quite as far along. With enough work and time though this will change.
How do you see progress & potential of Clara Tauson? Getting little advantage with WC, unlike Rune, Ruud, Korda etc because of their management contacts. Is she the real deal?
I'm very excited about Tauson. Absolutely the real deal and was blown away by her Lyon run. Huge fan of her backhand, and her willingness to stand in and crush some of the softer WTA serves on return, in particular. Serve needs (and will get) work tho
Ditto. Truly impressive development so far and fun to watch. Tauson indeed needs to work on both her serves, but fairly convinced that a year from now, she will have reached a totally different level at serving.
Yep - another 12 months serving /core/body adjusts !
Hi Matt, why couldn't Halep neutralize Sabalenka in Stuttgart and does she have a better chance if she meets her (or somebody that plays similarly to the Belarusian) at RG? Why?
P.S. Awesome picture of the Royal Kona Tennis Center. I have that as background for my laptop and a matching vinyl decal for my touchpad.
Great question Marius. Firstly I don't think Halep played particularly well, and Sabalenka put in a great performance so there was probably a bit of a mismatch in form/level on the day. When Sabalenka is crushing the ball like that, there's often a let up of some sort or she starts missing. But she managed to hit her serve and serve+1 shots huge and accurately all match, and was teeing off on Halep's slightly underpowered serve. Stuttgart is a bit of an odd clay event because it's indoors. My guess is that if they were to meet in Paris or Rome or Madrid the result would probably be quite different. Sabalenka's best is up there with anyone's right now, but that best can also be quite inconsistent if she's forced to play a few more balls outside her preferred baseline hitting zones. I'm guessing Halep would be able to frustrate Sabalenka more consistently should they meet again on clay.
I was going to ask about Kyrgios but someone else has posted first. He is down for Mallorca but apparently he needs to get vaccinated and has issues getting back into Australia. Would be so good if he could play Queens - but do you know if his ranking will still be high enough to get into Wimbledon? I have been so interested to see many other players actually admitting to depression/weariness such as Thiem and Zverev, at last which makes it look as if Layhani's attempt to assist Nick through a bad patch a few years ago (for which he was disciplined) was not so bad? These guys are human and subject to huge pressure. I think Djokovic seems to be in a similar state right now. Any players who get defaulted must find it really hard to walk back on court and Kyrgios has had more than most thrown at him.
Yeah his travel is a bit more difficult getting out and then back into Australia, but he should be partially given an exemption given his job. If he can come to Europe for the grass season and stay through June and July playing tournaments (although grass season is being cut slightly short this year) then that would probably make the trip more worthwhile rather than just going for one event and then having to quarantine back in Oz. RE getting into wimbledon, he probably won't be able to get seeded unless he performs incredibly well in the grass warmups but he'll get general entry for sure as he's well inside the top 100 (currently 50 ish). RE weariness yeah, I think the ATP are basically giving players pretty much a free pass for most behaviour right now (Paire hasn't been fined for lack of best effort once as far as I know despite barely caring in multiple recent matches). It's a weird time and good to see the tours recognise that. Hopefully brighter days to come soon and already so nice to see some crowds back at tennis this and last week.
Is Nick Kyrgios ever going to play again? How close is Paire to retirement? It seems covid has really taken its toll on some of these players.
Kyrgios will almost certainly play the grass as long as he's not injured. He should be back in Mallorca in June. RE Paire I think he'll be ok once crowds return again, and he's probably helped by COVID rankings, with partially frozen points, pretty significantly as his poor patch of form atm won't hurt him as much as it usually would rankings-wise (for now at least). But yeah, given his notoriously lacking work ethic and diet it would be a pretty impressive feat if he manages to stay a top ranked player for much longer as a 31 year old. Interesting, if worrying, question about long term covid effects on players. We probably won't know for a while what the true ramifications could be for some of them
Thanks for the response Matt! Always thoughtful and well-written
Does anyone on ATP or WTA tour essentially have a "two first serves" strategy?
Great question Hugh. Medvedev occasionally does depending on the matchup. Zverev is probably the biggest example of someone who's results seem to improve significantly when he's hitting two 1st serves or close to it. @Vestige_du_jour on twitter actually did a great analysis on this here: https://twitter.com/Vestige_du_jour/status/1162392902628270086?s=20
Kyrgios, Querrey, Zverev all e.g's on the men's tour. As for the WTA I'll need to think more about that one, as slightly less obvious and usually a bit less difference between 1st and 2nd speeds anyway.
Maxime Cressy! (well, if you count him as a tour player but he did play the last two slams and a few other ATP events)
Good shout, definitely
So much attention paid to GOATs and NextGen... So I'll mix it up with a slightly trollish question. Which player is your favourite to win their first slam over the age of 30?
(To be clear, player does not have to be >30 now; Dimitrov winning RG21 would count.)
On the men's side, probably someone like Raonic at Wimbledon. Wouldn't be that surprised if Wimbledon has a few interesting slam winners in coming years as big 3 continue decline with increased inconsistency. On WTA side that's a much harder question, will come back to it after giving it some thought!
didn't think about the WTA! 30 is a bigger hurdle for the ladies. I see Jo Konta and Pliskobot are the biggest slamless+aging names. But I don't know enough about women's tennis to say.
Do you think too much (or too little) is being made of Dominic Thiem's current troubles (physical and psychological)? Media love to hype everything.
Probably yes. Extremely normal for him to have a let up in motivation after winning his first slam, especially given how long he was blocked from winning one by an ageing big 3. Very interesting to see how he bounces back in the next 6 months. My hunch is that Thiem is a bit unlucky career timing wise, not quite young enough to have his whole prime be post-big 3 dominance, but old enough where he'll have, soon to be prime-age, next gen yapping at his heels for years to come
Regarding the debate as to the greatest of all time, I’ve long held the opinion that the greatest of today’s players are superior to those of generations ago. I feel the game has evolved and one of the main advantages of today’s player is the fitness and training (players have teams of trainers and physio coaches). The game is a lot faster and harder and the equipment is definitely superior. However, even if you give past players the same racquet, etc. I would think Djok, Fed or Nadal would prevail over a Laver, Borg or McEnroe. Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think this is an impossible question to answer well unfortunately. Comparing players across different eras and technology is always going to result in too many 'what if's'. That said, there is always going to be a bit of recency bias that goes along with the newest players and the newest technology, largely just because the sport has gotten faster and more dynamic and will appear 'better' in many ways to older versions of it. One of the problems with picking up Borg, McEnroe or Laver and putting them in the current era, even if they had developed with modern string and racquet tech, is that they'd probably be bit small relative to the field. I still think they would all still be great players, and each were transformational for the game in multiple ways, but I personally prefer looking at them within the context of their own eras rather than comparing them with modern players
The biggest change or implementation to the streaming component of live tennis is or needs to be what?
Oh so many. If I had to pick one, mainly just access. Tennis is rather binary atm in how it approaches its fans and streaming/viewing. You're either a fan and you pay for (ok) access. Or you're not and you get pretty much nothing. That isn't how modern fans and communities work, nor how mondern platforms work. Tennis needs to do a better job at catering to more of the demand curve when it comes to tennis fans. It needs reasonably priced viewing options and sport exposure for newer or more casual fans and it also needs more, deeper access for its most hardcore fans willing to pay more. At the moment it's either on or off and its failing both the extreme ends (new and hardcore) of its fans.
What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of Alcarez's game? I've watched a couple of his matches and worry that he might be a bit like Coric, also fantastic at 18, extremely solid in all respects but lacking a weapon that can hurt elite players.
I think, mostly thanks to not having Coric's forehand grip and technique, he has more offensive potential. In Andalucia a few weeks ago he demolished Casper Ruud 6-2, 6-4 where 31 of total 63 points won by Alcaraz were winners, or approx 50%. That is an extraordinary offensive performance so I'm not necessarily worried about his weapon potential when it comes to baselining. His serve is probably going to be the main area of development, especially on quicker courts.
Hi Matt, this might seem a bit of a weird question since we’re right in the middle of clay season, but since Wimbledon didn’t happen last year, the upcoming SW19 tournament feels particularly big. Who would you say stands to gain the most from a win there this year? Thanks!
Hey Owen, not a weird question at all. 'Gain' is always going to be relative in this context, for eg a Big 3 win would be a big gain re their legacies, but for eg Tsistipas or Sinner winning would be a greater overall gain RE career development and momentum. On the ATP side I'd say Nadal (three slams of his weakest surface would be huge) and Djokovic (closer to fed's Wimbledon haul) for legacy reasons, and Tsitsipas or Medvedev for career momentum reasons. On WTA side, obviously Serena for legacy reasons, and broadly fascinated to see whether Świątek game (and forehand in particular) can transfer to grass, and Osaka, for career momentum gains.
Where do you manage to find the images that you put at the start of the emails, the one with the effects? Or what kind of Photoshop filters are you using to create them? Some of the player ones have been great, have been thinking about getting them printed out and framed.
Thanks Martyn. I luckily now have access to getty images so the unfiltered ones come straight from there with credit. The filtered ones are just put through an ios app called Prisma
how can the formats of the Challenger/ITF tours be modified to help prospect development? Tournaments are a sensible option when the top players are competing, but I think a European football league-style format could work for younger players. Something like a 20-player, double round-robin format would ensure each prospect plays a set number of matches. Not sure if this would positively or negatively impact viewership, but it would be a welcome change of pace from the ATP/WTA
Great question. I think the challenger & ITF tours are the areas where this sport can afford to experiment a bit with format, but they need to tread the line carefully as departing too far from ATP/WTA tour formats would mean bad preparation for the jump to top levels. Most of my thoughts around this topic revolve around increasing viewership and access to these lower rung events, to try and make sure they're run as an attraction in their own regard rather than just being a necessary and mostly ignored step to the top level tours. But as far as modifications goes I think there's definitely room for experimentation at ITF level in particular. Mostly though, it would be good to see some of the countries who have enormous amounts of funding via their top level tournaments *cough wimbledon and the UK* take a leaf out of Italy's book when it comes to grass roots and lower level tournament investment.
WTA top 5 Roland Garros favourites.
Will do top 6 in buckets: Świątek & Halep, Barty & Osaka, Svitolina & Muguruza (Andreescu and Serena harder to place)
What do you think Medvedev needs to do to improve on clay?
Great question. I think the biggest problem for Medvedev on clay, and to be clear I rate him higher on this surface than most seem to, is the difference in impact of his serve and serve+1 shot compared to quicker surfaces. From mid 2019 onwards, ie his breakout period, both his serve and serve +1 forehand and backhand were revelatory in their aggression. He essentially transitioned from a very defensive baseliner to a defensive baseline who could also rattle through service games with just a few swings of his racquet (he was winning 81% of his service points in 4 or less shots, which beat Djokovic 77%, Federer 76% and Nadal 75% handily). Clay takes quite a bit of that newer aggression, that saw him be one of the players of the season in 2019, 2020 and already in 2021, and blunts it a bit. As for a solution there isn't an easy answer really. Likely needs to let his serve do whatever it can on the slower surface, be as aggressive as possible on the serve+1 shots, but also be prepared to outgrind his opponents. Unfortunately the bounce on clay is just never going to be as conducive to his game as the quicker courts
Hey Matt! Do you plan on continuing to do tournament/match predictions in your newsletter? I've really enjoyed your insight on these in the past. Thanks!
Hi Matthew, This is probably not the place to ask this question, but I would really request some insights on how to get into Tennis writing for a beginner like me. I've only been into cricket writing thus far and would like to start with Tennis now. A little direction would be amazing.
Is the Boris-Becker-tongue-service-direction thing true?
Hi Matt, great to read you again. Is tennis your day job too? What do you do?
Who are your favorite players to watch and why?
Travel probably makes that tough. If given the option between playing queens/halle/stuttgart et al in similar time zone to Wimbledon or playing newport as a warm up, most players would choose the former. Also the clay season is already in Europe at that point which means some players would in theory need to go US (IW and Miami) - Europe (clay) - US (newport) - Europe (grass/Wimbledon). I agree it comes at a bit of an unfortunate time given the prestige of the event.
I would think that logistically it can't be before Wimbledon just because players would need to go from US (Sunshine Double) > Europe for Clay Swing > US for Newport > Back to UK for the rest of grass.
I always figured Newport was grass more just as a nostalgia factor with it being located at US Tennis hall of fame.
Too Long. Didn’t Read
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Someone deleted their comment but they asked what TL:DR meant
Ah! Thanks for telling them