Scientists find weird kinds of life all the time. And normally they can run experiments. If I hypothesize, life can live in bleach. Well, I can get bleach and see if life lives in it. But what if the weird thing about the life they find is that it lives for millions of years? Time. I don't have any control over that. I can literally do nothing with time. This week on Unexplainable, intraterrestrials. Aliens on Earth, deep beneath the seafloor.
Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday. Buying a house has long been considered the best way to build wealth and move into true adulting. Isn't it? I mean, at least that's what society wants us to think. Got to get a Birkin, got to get a home, you know. Okay, the handbag you can probably manage without. But what about a house? Surely that's actually good, right? We're going to find out.
this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes every Sunday morning, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, welcome to Served. We've been trying to get around to this Q&A show and we just haven't quite gotten there, right? I always preface next week's a Q&A show unless something crazy happens. Well, crazy's happened. But here we are. We're going to make it. We're going to do it. I listen back. Kim, Clijsters, and Sophie.
Released the first episode of Love All last week. Yeah, Love All, baby. With Belinda Bencic, who is just a joy. I don't know that I had listened to an extended interview from her before. She's awesome. She's fantastic. Oh, my God. She's great. But I do have kind of a, can I permission to be petty? Yeah. Normally I just do it. Their music is way better than our intro music. No, I disagree. Look at that.
You think? It's way better. Wasn't ours taken by like LaTroy vegetables? We lost ours to HelloFresh, fuckers. Hey, which my friend, people were angry about that. I'm angry about it. People were upset, but my good friend, DeWitt, It made us a track that was close. It was similar, but didn't copy. It didn't copyright it. So it was brand new original.
I'm sure your friend is great. I also like their intro music better. I apologize. Did you guys hear the lyricist? What do you call it? The guy who writes a score for White Lotus is not coming back for season four. Presumably he's a free agent.
Can we contact the White Lotus music guy and maybe get him to do our theme? White Lotus. Write that down. Yeah, but they changed this year's White Lotus theme, and it bombed. It's not as hot. That's good. Let's spend all the money on that, and like the rest of us, we'll just go bankrupt. How's that? Is that good? Is a theme song really that important? No, it's not that important. I liked our original one. Hello, fresh.
screwed us god they're just getting so much free slash just probably did with like we're pretty like there was no way they knew that we had we exist uh i don't know maybe really i don't know Danny Elfman, listen to this podcast. All right. Anyways, if you have not listened to last week's episode and you want to weigh in on whether their intro music is better than ours,
And since you're there, listen to a great conversation between Kim Kleister, Sophie and Belinda Betjic. Go check it out. It is on our YouTube channel. Is it on all the things? It's on all the things. It's in all the things. It's in our feeds. Love all. And let us know what you think about the intro music. I'm a little social media. I love all podcast. I'm a gosh. It's so professional, man. It's really not. That's great. Okay. So Q and a shows the way they work is John and Mike just.
Text back and forth. You send in all your questions. I have no idea. I'm sitting in the studio. I'd normally come out here and write my notes and prepare the show and do all the thing. I came out at the same time, but then I literally had nothing to do. I called Kim just to say hi.
That was kind of it. That was my prep for this show. I don't know what's coming. I guess it's similar to the draw show. That's the way it should be. And the fans send a lot of these in, and we always appreciate it. We have a big spreadsheet going. We're always... humbled by the amount of interaction. Yeah. Great. Well, let it rip, Tater Chip. Well, so then the first one is from J-O-B, not job, just J-O-B.
Isn't Yannick Sinner the big winner from the spring? He gets a few months off, doesn't miss a major, and everyone else except for Mensik seems to be taking on damage. I don't know that you're ever a winner when you get suspended for three months. How I would counter that would be, do you think Yannick Sinner would say it's ideal to not be playing tennis?
Retrospect is easy. You can easily say, look at what happened in Indian Wells in Miami, no harm done. You don't know that when you're moving forward. You kind of have to... make the best decision for the moment in time. Now, will he look back in a year and a half and say, you know what, that was decent. I played a pretty heavy schedule, two majors. Was there a benefit to it? Yeah, possibly. Maybe. I don't hate the premise of the question.
But even with what's happened last month, if you would have told Yannick Sinner right now, hey, you can go back in time, get in your time machine, no suspension. play those tournaments and he would say you know what that's probably better now what's going to happen is it's one of two things he's not going to play as well In Rome, the French Open, which by the way, it's not his best surface. So we're going to overreact to whatever the result is for Yannick's center when he comes back.
We're going to say, oh, that really hurt him if he loses in the quarters of Rome. No, that kind of could have happened if he makes the semis of Roland Garros. Now that probably could have happened. Or if he somehow wins Rome, it's like, see? It was great for him. No, he's just, he's just the best player in the world. So any result is, is on the table. What do you think JW? Yeah, I think that's well said. I mean, look, if given the circumstances, if you said you could go to 2025, not win a match.
Or you can have a three-month doping suspension and all these questions call to bend your credibility and your sort of status in the locker room. This is not an ideal situation. Let's not gloss over that. I do think the points... You know, the point taken by the questioner, you read that PTPA lawsuit, and what is it all about? It's all about finding rests in the schedule, and it's all about the players are overworked, and the calendar's a mess.
Here's a guy who's gotten 90 days off and can come in fresh and doesn't miss a major. I think what you said is a really good point, too. I mean, let's answer that question after we see how he fares in a few of these events back. I mean, it's a lot of pressure. You come back from... a suspension like this, and you're eager to perceive that doping had nothing to do with it. I want to win Roland Garros and extinguish any doubt.
It's not the easiest circumstances to come back from. But no, I mean, yes, the truth is his ranking has not gone down in part because the rest of the field is not necessarily capitalized on his absence. I think if you gave him a choice between a doping suspension and not...
The doping suspension and taking on a lot of defeats, he would choose the defeats. But it is interesting that the guy who's out for 90 days is getting some rest and his ranking is not suffering for it. That's not for equivocating. Yeah, the counter is. Like, I mean, people are going to be like, oh, I don't care what people are going to be like. The locker room is going to be like this. This is what I mean.
Yeah. Because last week's show, we talked a little bit and I made the point that if, you know, this is the best time to have been 15 or 20 in the world in the last 25 years. People are like, and then, but we followed it up with. A massive part of that, this little moment in time going into Roland Garros is center suspension.
And in the comments, people are like, well, it's because of center suspension. Yeah, yeah, no, we got there. Yeah, we got there. So it is a huge thing. I think it's nice that he's coming back for him. It's nice that he's coming back in Rome. There is some space between when you're going back to Roland Garros, but I don't know that I can say he's going to be more prepared or more rested for Roland Garros.
on the heels of not having played two tournaments that are on his best surface. Now, what we'll be curious is moving forward with this three-month gap, to your point, JW, Maybe he takes parts of this three months, right? Maybe it's, I play Indian Wells Miami. I don't play Monte Carlo. I get a later start. I buy myself. a month during the clay court season to like refresh. So I actually think this experience might be a good learning tool and maybe you take the good parts of it with the rest.
And maybe you create a hybrid with what you would normally do, which is playing a full schedule. But we'll see. So not only, I mean, he's banned. He can't show up at these events, right? I mean, he's not like hitting on a practice court and then just not entering the draw. I mean, he's completely in some sort of isolation.
What do you think this does, if anything, in terms of his ability to practice? I mean, it's not like he's having hits with any other player. And I don't think anyone's sort of leaving their schedule and going to the Italian Alps to go hit with him. Does it matter that there's not a top 200 guy on the other side of the net from him for 90 days? Yes.
when i was in austin texas obviously there weren't a ton of pro players when i was playing so You'd have to fly people in just so you could hit a similar ball. And I would practice with some people who were you know, top 200, but I always use the term, maybe they're top 200 because they don't, maybe they're not top 50 because they don't move well. But I was obsessed with getting that ball, right? That heavy ball. You can't replace that.
you know, someone that hits the ball like their top 50, but maybe they got the yips on the serve or something else. But I wanted that pace of shot. Weirdly, if I was center and... And I'm looking at kind of the layout of what you're talking about, JW. The perfect person to maybe... have brought in for two weeks at a time, four weeks at a time during this suspension.
Someone that can still play at a top 50, 60 level would have been someone like an Andy Murray. Fresh off tour, can hit a big ball, can play extended points. You know, I got to think as soon as this comes down.
my mind would have automatically gone. And we don't know what he's doing. It's very private. He's not the person that's going to post a bunch of stuff about his process during this. But I would have gone instantly to find people that were borderline top 100 that had retired in the last six months.
And that's who I would have, would have tried to train with. I would have tried to find someone just off tour. All right. Next question is from Andrew. In Miami, Mensik defeated Draper, Felix, Fritz, and Djokovic. and remarkably winning all seven tie breaks against them. So whose tennis future would you rather have? Mensik, Fonseca, or Draper?
Oh, that's a good question. Were you just trying to see how many names you could fuck up in one question? Yes, I could fucking butcher all of them. I love reading the comments. You know what I got, right, by the way? I got Draper. Feast. Phils? Party Phils? Dude, I mean, we can't say anything right. No, but again, I beat this horse to death. As soon as, like if I would have ever gone to Paris one time. The Parisian commentator and or umpire and or anyone watching.
I literally am so fearful of the comment section only for the Minsk. I don't know why we have the expectation that no one else has. Like you added an A at the end. I'm going to use the website bots. It's as if the R in my name doesn't exist, but yet here we are Minsk and Phil. All right. Okay. So Draper, it was Draper, fees. No, no, no. It's Mensik, Fonseca, or Draper. Whose future was that? Mensik, Fonseca, or Draper.
I want the caveat to be, I want to know how nasty Fonseca is going to be on clay. Because I don't think clay is going to be the best service for Menchik. Menchik. Mensic? Mensic? Laver? Lobber? I don't know. I don't think it's going to be the best service for Draper. And I want to know if Fonseca is the guy.
already won a title on clay like is he the guy that's gonna win two french opens just level set is someone going to take that next generation i think we're not going to be again we're not going to be used to parody at the french open where it used to be kind of you got the most outlier results at the French Open, Gaudio winning and different players having success there.
Are we going to return to that? That's a great one. It's not Menchique yet. It's not. It's going to be Draper or Fonseca for me. I don't know that you can just assume that... Mensik's going to win every breaker he plays for the rest of time. I think that... specific surface was great for him i think he can improve second serve i still think
You know, can he just take pot shots and and land them on other surfaces? I don't think so. I want to see him on grass. I don't know what that looks like. You would think that it would be good, but grass is kind of a weird. a weird specific surface. A lot of it has to do with movement. Draper's come a long way. If it's Fonseca versus Draper, just based on like sample size, what we've seen in the clay of things.
I'll probably take the guy that's five years younger. I'll probably take Fonseca, which You know, we haven't talked about enough because every week in the comments is like, talk about him. He's a star. He's already drawing. And by the way, whatever we talk about, there's always someone who wants us to talk more about the thing that you don't want to hear about. Just so we're... completely clear i think there's going to be a lot of opportunity he doesn't seem to mind the pressure he already has
thousands of people showing up for his matches in whatever city he's in. It seems like he likes it. He's not shying away from it. He's going to have to, like every 18-year-old. Carlos was the same. I had that first match where it's like, oh, I can't play five sets yet without cramping. Like, he's going to have to find that physicality against Demon in Miami. That was like a huge stress test because Demon's there physically. He's going, okay.
apples to apples matching up tennis wise. I might be behind this kid, but I'm going to make it painful and I'm going to figure it out. Those are those learning lessons. I think Fonseca. right now, but I have so much respect for what Jack Draper's done. He has improved. so much in the areas where he has needed improvement over the last year. You can't teach lefty. Gun to my head, I guess Fonseca. JW? Can we stop back? I mean, how cool is it that there is a British lefty?
There's this, you know, the 19-year-old from the Czech Republic. Yes. And then we have this Brazilian phenom. I mean, these are three different parts of the world, different backgrounds, different routes to get there. Their games are different. I don't know if we talk about that enough. You know, it's tough because on the one hand, we have so much more to go by with Draper, right? I mean, he's four years older. He's been to a semifinalist and a major. Fonseca's played one major.
We have much more to go with on Draper. The flip side is, yeah, I mean, the younger the player, the more draws we have. I don't know. I mean, I just, I mean, you know, whatever. But I've never, I haven't seen Fonseca play live. I remember at the U.S. Open a few years ago, he played, I think he played Lerner Tien in the Juniors. And there was this huge crowd of people. So the real, real tennis hardcores that follow the junior tennis knew that this kid was something special.
I just go by what other players react to him. And other players respond. And other players, especially back channels, they're kind of quick to douse. I don't know if you were like, I mean, they're kind of quick to douse hype. I mean, sometimes someone said to me about Perry card. They're like, I know you're half kidding about this kid. And it's nice to have him around. And he's a lovely kid. easy there. I mean, this guy's a long way from being a top 10 player.
I have not heard that about Monseca. I mean, other players really, whether they've hit with him or whether they've seen him or whether they've played against him, there is a sense that in a Nadal 20 years ago, Alcaraz five years ago kind of way, this guy is really special. I put a lot of stock into what the players who have felt this guy's ball, who have been on the other side of the net, what they react to him. I don't know. It's a great question. And I love that we sort of...
can have this discussion and not arrive anywhere. But God, Fonseca has really impressed me in a lot of ways, not least the... quick, the little time it's taken gotten the respect of peers. I feel like also that winning that next gen indoors on a fast court and then two months later winning outdoors. on red clay, that matters to me in a big way. Draper, I think Draper...
is really good on grass, I think we're going to see him make a serious dent at Wimbledon. So inevitably, I think the net-net ends at... outdoor hard, physicality, all of those things. extended format, I guess, Fonseca, but that's no disrespect. I think Draper has improved as much as he could possibly improve in the areas where he needed improvement, and that deserves a lot of respect.
I just want to acknowledge that the next question was Um, depending on where you guys went with that was from somebody named Marcelo and they were asking if Fonseca was over buzzed, but it was, they were writing it as somebody from Brazil because they said that there's 200 million plus people that are easily impressed.
So they wanted to make sure it wasn't over buzz. It sounds like you guys are saying it's not. No. And a couple of things to look for is you hear the feedback on weight of shot from to JW's point to from players. And it's like, oh, this thing, it's not just, and I hate, I caution letting the hype train get out of control. So to Marcello's point, but.
You feel like he's learning in real time. The Rublev match in Aussie Open to finish the match, he switched directions line like three times in a row and pulled it off. That's a big, big deal for me because then that opens up Pandora's box of options. For a layman, can you explain what you mean by that? Yeah. So basically being able to hit all four corners at any moment with pace.
I talk about it all the time with Novak. You talk about it with Rafa. He can hook that forehand cross, fire a line to where you don't know where you're going. And all of a sudden, if you can switch directions, you can access the weak parts of... your opponent's game kind of at will. Whereas to give an example, my backhand, I, I wasn't good at hitting it line.
Right. So I had to chip at line to switch directions most of the time, which you chip a ball and you miss it against a Del Potro or a Rafa. It's a problem. When I'm playing the top players, they know that. So all of a sudden, there's a pressure release valve because I can't switch directions line. They don't really have to cover that. They can shade and anticipate. And all of a sudden, they're getting...
six more forehands a set, which is a problem for me, right? This kid already can switch directions forehand, backhand, find the soft spots. I don't even know if he knows how to apply it yet. Cause he's 18. It's just natural strategically, but he will, he knows how to switch it. He can, he's comfortable cross back inside, cross a forehand side down the line on both sides, which. will open up a lot of strategic options where he's not trying to avoid certain things like I had to.
he can actually kind of lean into them depending on matchup. Not next to the nose. I like the premise of that question, though, because there's a real self-awareness there that, you know, sometimes hype is not just a function of... who is hitting a tennis ball, the cleanest and the hardest. And you come from a country of 200 plus million people and you're at the Latin American Masters 1000 event, which is the Miami Open. We were talking about Ayala last week.
I mean, she's from a country of 100 million plus people. If, you know, if Mensik were from Brazil and had that kind of success in Miami and all of his matches had to be moved to the big court because there were so many rowdy. checks with drums that had flown up specifically to see him, would we be framing him differently? So I don't think the hype with Monseca is outdone, but I like the question because it does.
sort of imply that it's not always strictly a function of tennis and there are other factors. And it's weird because you go with, there are a lot of kind of phenoms. I think of like the JW, do you remember the first time you saw Philippousis? He's like 18 and you're going, oh, no one's ever hit the ball this hard. He's six foot four.
He serves good looking guy in Australia. Totally. But, but there's also the next thing. It's like, can you stay healthy? Do you have a program in place to stay healthy? Which flip would tell you. And maybe Flip now is in better shape than all of us. You almost went reversal, whereas before it was like, if I didn't feel like doing it that day, I wouldn't. You know, he would tell you all about that kind of moment in time. But there are other hurdles outside of what we're just seeing with tennis.
Alcaraz dealing with expectation now where he's going, I'm three in the world and people are going, what's wrong? That's an absurd thing to deal with. But it's going to be reality for these players if they become good enough. So a lot of these things weren't we I don't know Fonseca at all. I don't you know, I know as much as you do from watching and seeing and digesting. But.
Those little things when you have, I think expectations, the hardest thing in sports and he's certainly going to have it. I have a question to follow up with, with Draper. Um, what is the energy like at Wimbledon when there's, you know, a UK player that is. has hope and expectation. Yeah. So I live, I live that, that, that, that part of it. Murray mania all the time. So to give you a sense of how nuts it is there. I make the semis in 09. And...
He goes to like, you go to a Rangi park, you go wherever to hit. His practice court is surrounded. surrounded, like can't go get a 40 minute hit in without some picture being taken. If he has an energy bar, it's like, what is this? And that they actually treat that as news. It's, it's, it's absurd. And I remember I woke up in, in 09. And at this point I had, I had one Queens. four times. I was really good. I was second best player in the world on grass for a moment in time. Right.
I had made the finals of Wimbledon twice, the semis again. It wasn't like I was a dud. So I find myself in the semis, beat Hewitt in five. in the quarters. And I wake up to a preview. We haven't played the semis yet. I wake up to a preview of the final Murray versus Federer. And so like, I'm seeing that I'm like, this is ridiculous. I can't only imagine what Murray's life looked like for a moment in time when he wins. Like I always equate it to.
We make a big deal about, you know, the Red Sox not having one since whenever the Cubs not having one since ever for, you know, there were tens of millions of people. And if I'm hyperbolic by saying a hundred million people. It's not by much. Around the UK, they had screening parties. Imagine like when a team wins a game at the World Cup. That was when Murray won. That's insane. Individual sport. One person. So I'm sure some of that is probably mitigated by Murray's successes.
You're not trying to break Fred Perry's record from the 20s. So I'm sure him having done it probably softens. the uh the first time of since x of things a little bit but yeah it's mania it's mania jd what how does it look from where from where you cover the tournament because for a fellow player it was it was insane It's insane. And I think one key point is that this is not something that's dispersed among a team. I mean, this is one guy. Literally like...
The church in Wimbledon Village has on its marquee, like, rooting for Andy. This is the year. And it's also, you know, we talk about sometimes the ratings bump. And, hey, John Isner's on. ESPN's going to be happy. There's an America. You don't understand the difference in, I think when Murray won, like half the TVs in the UK were watching the match. I think you're right. Andy Murray, A, that's to me one of the most underrated sort of feats of mental strength.
But also, I think you have a good—he kind of softened the beach a little bit. I mean, I think whoever follows him. But, you know, I mean, Jack Drake, a nice-looking kid. He's also— No, he certainly has like an air, you know, he's got a landed gentry. He's got sort of an aristocratic look as his father came from the LTA. So there's a tennis bag. He's kind of not unlike Tim Henman. He sort of fits the model as well. There will be a lot of pressure on Jack Draper come Wimbledon.
Aristocratic look. That's a new description of an athlete for me. I like that one. That's a good one. That's why you're a writer. Hey, by the way, in all these conversations, and it used to kind of... I wouldn't say bother me, but it's worth mentioning. Every time you say, hasn't won since Fred Perry, we do not ignore Virginia Wade winning. in 1977. Just level set.
you know, she did it before, before Murray, we like to, you know, compartmentalize, you know, male, female, whatever. And also whenever the question gets asked about, we haven't had a, you know, slam winner since in this country. So I'm like, no, no, the women win all the time. Like it's so just let's level set their props to Virginia Wade She cannot be ignored in any conversation that we have that is on this topic
Next question from Will Hupp. I often see players wearing new shoes every tournament or even within the same tournament. How do players break them in? How many pairs of shoes do you go through in a year? Oh, I can't even. Well, so there's, there's, okay, this is. Yeah, it has some factors. So... One, your companies want certain styles of shoes to be worn at different parts of the year. Nike opens or Adidas opens with a certain set of clothing, some.
Some clothing manufacturers want it to be like a four or six month timeline for sales. Nike just wants flash and marketing basically. The tennis athletes are basically marketing vehicles. for nike anything that's crazy anything that's new creates buzz you know rinse rinse repeat you you could barely buy some of the outfits that serena wore for nike like you you i don't know that you could buy a cat suit
It was buzzy. Nike was front and center. It wasn't as if you were trying to sell the exact product. So they're all a little bit different. You wear them in during practice sessions and you're not playing sets in them right away. You would be wearing them and you'd probably walk around them for a day.
Um, and then you would probably get in like a 20, 30 minute hit and, or you wear them for the first 20 minutes of warmup and then switch to something that's worn in for, for actual sets. So you, you might be like, you know, you actually have to take the time to think about doing it. But if you're traveling from Palm Springs, you get on a hopper flight.
To Miami, you're probably wearing them in the airport that day just to kind of get some steps in them and to break them in softly. You wouldn't be going and playing a match in brand new shoes, I don't think. I mean, I wouldn't have. I mean, I'm sure. Someone's going to be like, this person does it. Well, maybe they shouldn't. But the other thing that we're not discussing is bottoms on shoes. So you go to the clay court season, every pair of hard court shoes that you wear in March,
your company will have changed by the time you get back to that surface in July or August. So those are all gone. Even if you have six new pairs that you haven't worn, see ya. Clay core bottoms, completely different. You got to be able to knock the clay out of them. You can't have like a smooth bottom to the shoe. You need ridges so the clay, you know, you're not sliding and you need to be able to like actually have some grit. After the clay court season, see ya.
grass core bottom the little dimples so it's constantly this kind of churn i don't know what the total number for shoes for the year i'm guessing it's based on certain players, certain things, you know, if you're winning, is it practice? I don't know. But the churn is.
is intense for many different reasons past the way that I view it now. Just if I wear them out during dingles, I switch to the next pair when they're absolutely falling apart and you can't wear them anymore. So for hardcore though, are you ripping through more shoes? Hardcourt? I mean, service dependent? Probably.
Probably. And also it's dependent on like Indian Wells because it's gritty rips shoes like those things get bald quickly, like gone. Whereas other hardcore services like Australia is not as gritty, so it's not as bad. So it's. There's a lot that goes into it. This is probably a very boring answer, but the churn is constant. And the amount of kind of slightly used and or new shoes that just get chucked would make listeners vomit.
like i took this picture a couple years ago at the u.s open so at the end of the tournament you know you'll have someone leave and the us open kits gone they'll probably throw you something for the fall if you if you have a contract with a manufacturer and this isn't talking about people that are you know maybe playing doubles or qualifying for the event this is the people that are you know largely playing singles the last week of a slam, but they'll just leave their shoes.
they'll leave them for the attendance and the locker room attendance can do whatever they want. So you walk in the last day of the U S open and where my locker is, No one else is really there. It's at the end of the locker room and no one's there anymore. And they have on the bench, all of the shoes that have been left laid out. Some are brand new. You're talking like Nike's Adidas on like.
It's a shoe junkie dream. And they're going through the sizes. Someone's got an uncle in Queens who's going to get a new pair of Rafa. Yeah. you see the guys looking like, you know, in the thing, he's like, I'm size 10, I'm size 10, size 10. So it's like, it's this fun kind of mini tradition that no one would ever see.
but they have them all laid out the last day of the U.S. Open. And it's kind of like everyone's just rummaging through it. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. Let me ask you an adjacent question of that.
That I don't know the answer to. You know how like some, I don't think they do it anymore. I mean, there used to be this whole thing with stenciled rackets, right? Where you'd switch rackets, but you wouldn't get the right feel of it. And sometimes you'd be able to use your old racket, but you do a paint job. and stencil it, right? Have you ever, have you heard of a situation where someone has a shoe deal and they just can't make it work?
Remember like Zion Williams shoe broke or wasn't there a player? I feel like there's a story this. Was there a player who had a new shoe contract and they just couldn't get it to work in those shoes? Have you ever heard of a player like putting a swoosh on something? Probably the two things that I would tell every young player, you can't.
You have to have the racket solution before you sign a new racket deal. I think Safin got caught in this purgatory when he went from head to Dunlop back in the day and he just couldn't quite find. The thing I know James went from Dunlop to Prince.
And it took forever. And he had a stipulation where he has to find the racket before he actually switches over. So he was carrying a Prince bag with his old rackets in it forever. Like that's all he could do contractually. I'll tell you a story. I switched from Reebok. when they dropped me and I signed with Lacoste.
uh, great, fine, no problem. But then I had to find a shoe situation because at that time, Lacoste wasn't making a tennis shoes, which they do now and Medvedev wears them. And, but, uh, Babelot didn't really make shoes or the shoe they made wasn't really there, but they said, hey, could we enter this market for shoes? I was like, great. And it ended up being the best-selling shoe in the States for tennis.
But I had that stipulation, I'm going to wear, because I had a certain last in Reeboks where they would make it specifically custom for, you know, I have a wide flat foot, which you don't see in sports that often, right? Not exactly the prototype for athleticism, but- You see that like counting a lot. Yeah, exactly. Reebok had the last, and so-
Babelot ended up, I think, purchasing that last, exactly, because I didn't want to mess with the shoe and I had a stipulation in the contract. I'm only switching over to the Babelot shoes when I'm good and ready. And then the contract basically starts. on my call. So you would have to be...
I would think if you have decent management and an IQ larger than your waist size, you would put that stipulation into any contract. By the way, can I point out that you can get a Babelot and Erotic Pro Pulse? on eBay. There's a mixture of a never worn for a thousand dollars or worn for 30 bucks. So these ones are sick. These are American flag. I have those print.
Don't bring them back. I have the Stars and Stripes. I wore them for the Olympics and then my last tournament. They're probably the coolest shoes I ever had. I have a pair. We'll do, are we doing the subscriber thing? Are we doing, do we have like about, I'll give a pair away. We'll do a raffle. Okay. All right. I have, I have a pair that's still has a plastic on them. Yeah. Go find our Chuckers club on, on YouTube and hit join and we'll.
feed that out to the truckers club and we'll figure out what that is. They're sick. I think I have like two or three pairs left that are new and it's the only shoe I've ever kept. Like I don't, I'm not, did you put these on eBay? Was it you?
No. Times are tough. They're not that tough yet. But we'll give a pair away to Chuckers Club. I'll either sign them or if you don't want them signed, we'll do something else or write a note or whatever. We'll authenticate them. How's that? These are sick, by the way. Yeah, but they dropped me like a bad habit.
All right, what's the next one? All right, last one from Drew Manning. This is for both of you guys. It's a two-parter, but we'll see where the first part goes. If you had a magic tennis wand and could change a rule about the game, what would it be? Gosh, it's like the type of thing I want to, I know I'm going to answer. And then later today, I'm going to be like, I wish it would have been that thing. Yeah, exactly. A rule. A rule.
So can I take labor? We're not talking about like during a match. It just says a rule about the game of tennis. That gives us access to schedule. The next part is about the business of professional tennis, which I would think schedule maybe would be business, but rule would be appearances and like... Like what you would be required to play. I would say actually make it. And this maybe goes one and two, but I'll think of something from the business side also.
I actually have something from the business side also. One and two would basically just be if you're an independent contractor, then you have free markets to play whatever events. There is an incentive already. to play in as many ATP and slams as possible because of points. Points, every rank, every endorsement is structured off of rankings that you get from those tournaments. Right. So you are incentivized to participate in them as much as possible now.
If you want to go, you know, if you're Chris Eubanks mentioned it a couple of years ago, a couple of weeks ago. If he gets some outlier offer to go play in something crazy or a corporate event or a pro-am before the US Open or something where he can make a third round slam money in a day.
I think he should be able to do that. And PTPA mentioned that for as many issues as I have that they get wrong. They pointed that out very clearly. And I think that that was something that I would co-sign for sure. You don't think our questioner was thinking more along the lines of like, you can't catch a Aaron toss. Aaron toss. Yes. Yes. Aaron toss and play. Let's like, let's just save us the time.
But I got one for you. This is more of a thought exercise than anything else. But I've been here in Europe for a few weeks and I've had a couple of tennis questions. And what seems to be... However much hooking, you know, bad line calls. It's a blight to junior tennis in the U.S. It seems like that's something here, too. It sounds like that's a real turnoff to junior players and it's kind of run rampant.
What can we do as a rule to stop this sort of, whether it's a collective action issue or we want to shame the cheater? What can we do to, I'm just thinking out loud here, but as long as we're talking about new rules and policies. What can we do to confront this epidemic of junior hooking? Swing vision. What do you think? Swing vision. There you go. Put a, put a, for a hundred, I don't know, not much money at all. literally have the threat of video.
That can be posted, and I guarantee you cheating gets cut by 90%. I mean, the USTA could easily afford activating that in some of these tournaments. pool, whatever those entry fees, you know, whatever it is, but even just the threat of Access like and don't just don't shame with 12 year olds with specific things. But if you're a tournament, you can put the matches up. You can post them.
pretty simply and you can you can actually track the shots and see what it is and there is a margin of error so don't beat anyone up if it's like a razor's edge or whatever that could be right, could be wrong. Uh, but it's as good as we have, you know, it's, it's especially at scale. It's, it's I think even just the threat of eyeballs.
makes people not do things that they would do if no one's looking? I mean, there's plenty of companies doing it. I mean, there's a company out of Canada, I think, that called Home Team that does a bunch of stuff in youth sports.
where like my buddy can go on and watch all of his sons at bats like remotely when he's on the road and it like does it by jersey number and it has analytics so i mean there's there's plenty of options including swing vision that seem pretty cost effective it seems silly this day and age cost effective is the thing it's like
like a big screen tv in the 90s versus now like as as technology grows like things become cheap that used to be expensive and i think we're kind of at that inflection point where you can make a big difference for pretty low capital costs. I do want to throw out something from the US, like a business question. And I think while all the players It's like the only thing they look at is prize money.
percentage of prize money, which is insane. It's laughably low. I hope the rumors of the top 20 on the men's and women's side actually writing a letter directly representing themselves. to the to the slams uh is true it's it's you know been reported uh hopefully we'll know more about it and we'll we'll talk about it as soon as that actually is confirmed i hope that's the case
The fact that you never hear anything about a rev share of sales. If you sell a honey deuce for $80, that's an exaggeration, but slightly. Not by much. Yeah. If you sell it for that, if you're selling t-shirts, like the fact that players don't say rev share on merchandise is, is criminal. And the fact that that's not mentioned in a whole in 162 pages of.
you know, where some of it is ridiculous. And I'm going to beat this drum as much as I can. What am I going to say? What am I going to say, Mike? Health care. Oh, yeah. Contributions from slams. From the slams. Pensions, health care, 0% from the slams. two business things, get to know the term rev share on merchandise and healthcare and pensions. Think about yourself, not three weeks from now, but
30 years from now, think about the people that are trying to be coaches. Think about the people that are carving out a living. Think about what your body's going to feel like. I feel a lot different at 42, having gone through 15 years of professional tennis. than probably most 42 year olds. So think about what the future might look like. Ask those questions now so you can reap the benefits later.
Oh, that's good. Did you guys catch that story? I want to point everyone to this because I thought it was really well done. Charlie Eccleshare in The Athletic wrote about the splintered, fractured, balkanized tennis media space. And one thing that really jumped out at me is... how little access...
all of us on social media, but the players in particular have two clips. There's a great quote from Daria Kazekina, who gets a lot of love, rightly so, on this podcast. But Kazekina has a great, you know, she has this vlog and she basically said, I'm the one out there working, you know, I'm the one sweating. How come I can't put one clip of me hitting a tennis ball in a match on my own vlog? Tennis is missing the boat here.
I mean, no one watches NBA games anymore, but the NBA is wildly popular internationally. Why? Because if something crazy happens in a game, the three of us can inevitably will end up in our feed. Tennis is missing the boat there. So if we're talking about structural changes, this article, which I encourage everyone to read, sort of, you want to bang your head against a wall. And if tennis can do a better job circulating clips of actual athletes.
competing and not just dancing on TikTok or saying crazy things on podcasts. No offense to the three of us. I think that would be welcome. Okay, so we're talking about a business idea and what else can be put in this? lawsuit and where we're exposing problems. I don't see the downside.
Why shouldn't you be able to post your own clips? Like I understand rights holders. I understand, you know, ATP and tennis TV, like they front money, they put infrastructure, they do a lot of things throughout the year, but. What is the downside? And Mike, you're a good independent voice on this. What's the downside?
to cause it Kina having access to post her own clips. Like that's inevitably going to drive traffic. To the actual broadcast. She'll drive money to the rights holders, right? It's not as if she's taking away. a large market share, if Carlos posts bananas clip, that's driving traffic back to the thing. Like, I don't understand the players. Maybe that's if there is like some sort of.
Uh, yeah. Can we have access to our clips to help you? That'd be great. Yeah. And I think, I think ultimately that's the challenge and there is a good part of that article, which John sent. It's great. Can we put it in the show notes? Yeah. I'll put it in the show notes from the athletic. where they talked about the Premier League and a couple other groups writing the letter to the EU, basically being like, hey, there's a $23 billion piracy.
issue with our rights, but that has nothing to do with clips. They're worried about people pirating full matches in full broadcasts. Somebody posting their own video of them playing in an event. That is maybe 60 seconds worth of content is only a benefit in the long run. And to your point, the NBA started not caring about this and they blew up and their ratings blew up and became more popular. And even the NFL followed suit.
I mean, when I was with the NFL, I mean, they blocked everything when I worked there just 15 years ago. And now they follow the NBA model where I think all press is good for us. All their prices have skyrocketed because more people want to watch it. If you click a link that's from Kazakina, it drives traffic back to the point of origin. Just very simply. And honestly, this show...
We can't post stuff from slams. Like we can't, there's so many things that we can't do that I would love nothing more than to get on and go through X's and O's nerd session of. past grand slam matches until i can't we can't do that we just simply can't do it and people have bought the the right to to not have schmucks like us do it but it's not as simple as people you should do a match i'm like no because we
work out of a garage. We don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase rights with. That's not our operation. And we're a lean operation. It's great. I'm so thankful that... this kind of new media space where you can put stuff out for free. and have access to ears and eyeballs for free is absolutely amazing. But we also can't really do highlights and we can't really do a lot of the stuff that I personally would love to do.
I mean, a couple of times we've actually dropped a clip in to explain something. It's been flagged on YouTube almost immediately. Yeah. And of all the sports I've ever worked in, I've never seen it that fast. So it's a concerted effort. Like it's not like they're just like, oh, if it gets flagged, it gets flagged. Like they're making a effort.
to do this do you remember the uh remember the australian open this year when they they didn't i mean to show you how perverse and how perverted this all is they didn't have the rights to one of their own matches so they as the broadcaster none of the rights They showed a match with avatars. So it's, you know, whatever it was. Wait, what? Yeah, the cartoons. Yeah. They literally had cartoon characters. What are you talking about? You know, a rhinoceros played a hippopotamus.
Because they couldn't use the image of the players. What the fuck are you talking about right now? So the Australian Open to put the matches on YouTube, which is great. And it was under the guise of like the Nickelodeon cartoon things where they're like, oh, we're going to do these. these characters these animated characters and so they put it on youtube and i think it did like 700 000 views and then in 2000 it like doubled in views it did over like a million and a half views of like
Two animated characters playing. Yeah, yeah. But this wasn't like some creative content creator in Serbia doing this. This was the host event. during a live match broadcasting on YouTube, but without the likeness of the players with like the hippopotamus against the rhinoceros or whatever it was. I mean, it sounds like it's genius. I mean, honestly, I'm scribbling notes right now. Yeah. Dude.
We could be hippopotami. Is it hippopotamuses? Is it hippopotami? Wait, I want to go back to what you said because I think you had a really good point that we shouldn't gloss over. The players should not be negotiating this as a give.
Tennis as a collective body should want nothing more than Carlos Alcaraz said, hey, everyone, did you see the crazy tweener I hit? Here it is. The players are the ones who have the leverage here. The players should be giving away nothing for the rights to post their own. highlights if you are a league, a tournament, even a rights holder.
I want nothing more than Coco and Carlos Alcarez using their own content to drive engagement with tennis. The players should give up nothing. They should be the ones getting something for this. I want, I want. representing the players to think of stuff like this. I mean, Cocoa Golf has 2 million followers on Instagram. Like. You know how much it would cost to get her to post about your brand on Instagram and like they're in WTA and they're like, eh.
We don't really want you to. Hundreds of thousands of dollars is the answer to your question. Yes. It's six figures and up. And they're like, hey, we'll do it for free. Like it kind of seems counterintuitive. I mean, I guess there's, they would point to, you know, not everyone is Cocoa golf and not everyone has the value out of Cocoa golf. I'm, I'm fully with you. I'm saying I would disagree with their explanation, but that's what it would be.
That's absolutely right. Well, we paid whatever it was, $160 million for the U.S. Open. One of the things we're getting for that is exclusivity. We can't have... all of our highlights being posted on everyone's social media's account. But ask the NBA if they're happy with the way they've handled their social media policy. It didn't seem to hurt them in their last rights negotiation. No, I mean they revolutionized the way it was perceived. quite honestly if you do that are you is it is
If you do that, are you inviting the players to have a voice? And are you protecting the other 15 or 20% of prize money by virtue of like, we're viewing this in a silo where it's like more views for highlights equals more dollars. But then if you get into that back and forth, as far as conversation, are you going to end up giving up 15 or 20% more money in prize money, therefore being counterproductive financially in the end?
Bring in the consultants. Fair play. Bueller. I mean, there's an answer, right? Bueller. Anyway. All right. Let's move on, shall we? Let's come back from our smoke break, shall we? Is there any moving on or is it? No, I think that was such an exciting way to end the show. Yeah. I mean, honestly, we've been circling around this. conversation, we are in the works of schedule and reviewing and doing some specials with that.
Really, I think, interested to hear the comments as we kind of wrap this up. But I think what we want to do on our end is on the production side is really explain who are kind of the top eight players in terms of organized bodies. in tennis and how do they influence and control the way the schedule's made? Because I think we all agree.
schedule is probably the biggest thing that should probably change. It's the most agreed, it's the most agreed upon thing. Yeah. And it's the, it's actually the thing that can probably be organized and. pulled together to where you can maximize revenue for everyone across all.
form. So I think we want to analyze that and figure out what that looks like. And we had a bunch of questions actually about that exact thing. Yeah. So basically like what, what is a masters 1000? How do those licenses work when it gets sold? How much is the value of each?
Uh, what is the business of a two 50? Like what does the ITF control? What is, what are the slams control? What does the tours control? What are the cost mechanisms of all that stuff? We got into all these questions. Uh, it's easy to just throw like a random weeks of schedule. We want to actually. to the best of our understanding, tell you how all of that works and what the challenges are with the schedule. I get on here like a dummy and say, we got to change it. We got to do this.
We need to tell you all the challenges that are in place because of... all the fragmented pieces of the tour that have contracts in place that you have to unwind. That's the real challenge now, right? Is unwinding 250 contracts. You might have to buy them back.
The slams will not move. Like there's no chance the U.S. They're the pillars. And the U.S. Open shouldn't move from Labor Day weekend. I mean, it's the most valued entity in the sport. There was talk about Australia. So there are basically a bunch of these. challenges and not even roadblocks, but just things that are concrete that can't move.
Right. To create space. So we'll dive into that at some point, but it's going to take a level of preparation for that show that I didn't have to do for this one, but I still had a great time. Yeah. This was great. You're great. We love your questions, guys. You did great. JW, where are you again? You're in Paris. Where are you eating dinner tonight? Ooh, good question. Paris, France.
I'm not into fine dining. I like to go where the locals go. It's a good noodle place. I'm in the Marais this year. Anyone have suggestions, feel free to fire away, but I don't do... If I never have another $60 piece of fish again, I'll be perfectly happy. Down and dirty. Mike and I like fine dining. I love fine dining. I love it. I'm such a white tablecloth guy.
I don't want to like, I want to vibe. No, I'm not. I want to vibe, but I, I, but the one, the one trade off that I can't do is like a lot of times fine dining means you leave hungry. Not into that. Yeah, exactly. You know, like seafoam with... I like that stuff. I like that every once in a while. Only because our listeners probably turned us off a minute ago. Thank you for listening and watching Served. We'll see you next week. you