This week we outsourced the agenda-building to you, our listeners, and you provided a set of fascinating and tough questions. Come take a break from the weekly grind of current tennis events. We’ve got a modest proposal for how to choose new tennis TV commentators, plus we talk about areas of the game we might consider changing and why the age eligibility rule is important. By popular demand, we open with the momentous Williams-Sharapova reunion at the Met Gala and the photos that broke the tenn...
Sep 22, 2021•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 241
Will history see this US Open as a watershed moment? On the women's side, is this just the most extreme example of a years-long trend of youngsters managing the moment and storming to victory? On the men's side, many felt Novak Djokovic was inevitably marching to a Calendar Year Grand Slam. But, whether it was due to fatigue from his long matches, the unfathomable weight of the moment, or Daniil Medvedev's mental and physical fortitude, the Grand Slam remains unfulfilled since 1988 (or 1969). Re...
Sep 13, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 240
It was a first week for the US Open history books, full of entertaining matches and high-profile breakthroughs. Youngsters Fernandez, Raducanu, and Alcaraz notch huge wins, qualifier van de Zandschulp reaches the quarterfinals, and the undeniable stars Tiafoe & Auger-Aliassime face off in a blockbuster fourth round. BathroomGate threatened to overshadow the entire week, as fans and mainstream reporters became gamesmanship detectives and amateur clock-watchers. Oh yeah, and Djokovic is still ...
Sep 07, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 239
The year's final Grand Slam is upon us, and for the first time since the 90s, we won't see a Williams sister, Nadal, or Federer at the US Open. In two weeks, we'll know if Djokovic has completed the historic Calendar Year Grand Slam against a group of young challengers (Novak and the Seven Trees?). We also discuss the recent publication of part two of the Olya Sharypova story and why the ATP and tennis broadcasters will have a harder time ignoring it this time around. Plus: Barty surging in time...
Aug 27, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 238
Tennis’ second pandemic summer gets us a bit closer to “normal,” but the absence of many of the biggest stars leaves room for other players to create compelling narratives. Danielle Collins runs off 12 matches in a row, Reilly Opelka transcends servebotism and outfoxes Tsitsipas in Toronto, and Karolina Pliskova resuscitates a career that many (us?) were calling over the hill. We also talk about some egregious stunts (ciao, Fabio & Mo), the WTA Race to [somewhere?], and the post-Big 3 landsc...
Aug 15, 2021•50 min•Ep. 237
Just to get it out of the way: we're not the biggest fans of Olympic tennis. Nevertheless, the Games brought up some interesting stories, old and new -- the fairy-tale endings that failed to happen for Novak and Naomi, the "mental health" conversation (or the seeing-athletes-as-human-beings conversation) that is changing sports discourse around the world, and the men's gold medal that wasn't. We've also got some thoughts on Naomi's Netflix docuseries, the extremely busy post-Wimbledon non-Olympi...
Aug 02, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 236
The first Wimbledon since 2019 ends with Ash Barty and Novak Djokovic leaving London victorious, both clear #1s at very different stages of their careers. Pliskova should be mighty proud of her tournament, and Berrettini reaches a new height in a very promising career. So how long will Djokovic dominate? What will the next generation have to say about it? All that plus doubles, PTPA stuff, Olympics conjecture, and how the ATP can hold onto those eyeballs Berrettini brought in. 1:25 Introducing o...
Jul 13, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 235
It was a wet, wild, and slipp(er)y first week at Wimbledon, which felled a 7-time champion within minutes and saw some electrifying home country heroes show out for their local fans. The faves in the men's draw have sauntered into week two, while a few top clay performers have continued their good form on the women's side. Special shout-outs to Ons Jabeur's stannable barfing moment, the more-fun-than-is-reasonable Venus Williams-Nick Kyrgios mixed doubles pairing, and great stuff from Shapo, Gau...
Jul 04, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 234
Before we get to the Wimbledon preview, we're proud to debut our first line of Body Serve merch: t-shirts, magnets, stickers, mugs, hoodies and more, all adorned with Tom Humberstone's exclusive Body Serve artwork. Back to tennis -- Wimbledon is upon us, as we move back to the traditional two-week gap between Roland Garros and the grass major. We'll walk you through the draws and the grass results, highlighting top recent performances from Jabeur, Berrettini, and Kerber, plus Sonego's musical an...
Jun 26, 2021•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 233
Are your clay sensations nourished? Ours certainly are NOT, but we hope to summon the requisite energies to bring you this French Open recap. Barbora Krejčíková and Novak Djokovic are your 2021 Roland Garros singles champions, both surprise winners in their own rights, but also two champions that make varying degrees of sense. Krejčíková became the fourth active WTA player to win Slams in all three disciplines (Venus, Serena, and Stosur), while Djokovic captured his 19th Slam title, a stone’s th...
Jun 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 232
Has the 2021 French Open felt a bit . . . strange? Clouded? Cursed, even? (Yes) But aside from the weirdness floating above the tennis, we've actually got a fascinating lineup of quarterfinals in both the men's and women's draws. The men have more familiar faces, but the women's side sees the success of a bunch of great performers during this clay season, including several first-time Slam quarterfinalists and the defending champion. In the interest of efficiency, in this episode we wrap week one...
Jun 08, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 231
Since our last episode, the conversation around Naomi Osaka's withdrawal from press conferences grew so loud that it led to an actual withdrawal: her decision to pull out of Roland Garros completely to preserve her mental well being. The past few days have presented so many important questions -- especially around mental health, mental strength and the "bootstraps" mentality, race, gender, and the role of the press in tennis -- that we felt it warranted another stand-alone episode. Let's leave t...
Jun 03, 2021•59 min•Ep. 230
Naomi Osaka is a paradigm shifter, regardless of whether you agree with her decisions. We spend a good chunk of our Roland Garros preview thinking through Naomi's decision to skip press and how it affords the sport an opportunity to rethink how it conducts journalism and creates news. Why did it inflame such impassioned responses? What does the press conference accomplish? What are the alternatives? Amidst all this, we have the year's second Grand Slam to preview, which will happen among the mos...
May 29, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 229
Nadal logged another decima, at Rome this time, which turned out to be one of the most exciting Masters tournaments in recent memory. While Nadal-Djokovic went the distance, Iga Swiatek dropped not even a game against Karolina Pliskova, The Unbothered. We chat about questions surrounding Sabalenka's views; Roger Federer's comments on the Zverev case and why it's emblematic of a much larger problem, or the system working as intended; and the latest intrigue from the ongoing Yastremska doping circ...
May 19, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 228
We're haters, fine, but Madrid is just not the tournament for us. We get an unappealing winner on the men's side but a first-time clay titlist in Aryna Sabalenka, peaking just in time for Roland Garros. Elsewhere, the ATP loosens -- nay, practically obliterates -- its bubble restrictions ahead of RG. In major coaching news, Sofia Kenin parts ways with her dad. And finally, James takes another quiz. Does he redeem his putrid performance from last week? You be the judge. 1:55 Madrid. It happens ev...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 227
Struggling to keep up with all the tennis? So are we. Join us on this struggle bus episode where we go over the results since our last episode, leading up to Ash Barty and Rafa Nadal's wins this past week. If you haven't seen the Kasatkina interview/doc with sports.ru, it's truly a must-see tennis event. After we flog Fabio and Benoit, James takes a quiz where we end up flogging the U.S. men too. Hurrah. 2:30 Nadal wins 12th Barcelona crown, but it was far from guaranteed 5:30 Is Tsitsipas the ‘...
Apr 28, 2021•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 226
This episode is really two separate shows put together, but we trust there is something in it for everyone. In the first part, we recap the results of last week, again imploring more kindness towards tennis players who are going through it, while in the next breath calling for the heads of those who act a fool. We also touch on the news coming out of Monte Carlo and again question the Covid protocols under which tennis is currently being played, and what can be done about it. The second part of ...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 225
On court, tennis welcomed its first Polish Masters 1000 champ, Hubi Hurkacz; and the reigning #1 Ash Barty knocked down a slew of hardcourt contenders to defend her Miami crown. Off court (or on court if you're Pospisil), the contentious debate on player representation and tennis governance reared its head. What does the PTPA want? How is tennis' current governance structure an impediment to real change? Plus, we were treated to something we've all been waiting for, tennis players' misinformed o...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 224
Mari Osaka gives us our title this week, with her wonderfully straightforward retirement post that reminds us that we're allowed to stop doing things we don't enjoy. We're covering the tennis results strewn across four continents: Muguruza capitalizing on her huge momentum in 2021, Medvedev rising to #2, Fed's return, and some great runs by players considered to be doubles specialists. The odds and ends segment lets James go on about some of his favorite topics: tennis governance, the ATP's arca...
Mar 17, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 223
Covid be damned, tennis has been around the world in February and March. We saw youngsters Clara Tauson and Juan Manuel Cerúndolo make unlikely title runs, Petra win her 28th, and Andrey Rublev snatch every ATP500 in sight. Come for the tennis, stay for our thoughts on rankings math, wild cards, the Kodak kit, and spitting during a pandemic. 1:45 Petra wins 28th(!) title, beating Garbiñe at Doha 7:55 Rotterdam: Ruby d. Fucsovics to win 4th consecutive 500 title; Kei (Sir Penguin) on the come-up;...
Mar 08, 2021•58 min•Ep. 222
The 2021 Australian Open is in the books! After months of speculation over whether the tournament would even happen, Naomi Osaka and Novak Djokovic are the last two players standing, holding old friends Daphne and Norman. We take you through the latter rounds of both singles draws before tackling a couple of the bigger issues for us this tournament: gambling taking over the tennis coverage and Hawkeye Live being force fed to us. If you’re still with us by this point, we run through a few odds an...
Feb 22, 2021•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 221
It's the midpoint of the 2021 Australian Open, and we're cooking with gas now. The early rounds were rough on the hard quarantiners, with Azarenka, Andreescu, Kerber, Stephens, and Sakkari all going out. Defending champ Sonia Kenin followed. But we've gotten some electrifying tennis along the way. We'll take you through the Thiem-Kyrgios classic and the nonstop Kyrgios discourse, Félix winning the battle of Canadians, Novak and Rafa's injury issues, and the boatload of riveting matchups on the w...
Feb 14, 2021•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 220
Alright, y’all ready? After so much drama leading into the 2021 Australian Open -- from questions surrounding whether it should happen in the first place to the complaints from players about the conditions under which it was happening -- we’ve finally made it to St. Melbourne’s gate, ready for play to begin on Monday. This past week saw SIX tournaments strewn across Melbourne Park as players sought to get as much preparation as possible after breaking out of quarantine. We cover what’s happened ...
Feb 06, 2021•1 hr 28 min•Ep. 219
The 14-day quarantine has lifted . . . tennis players in Melbourne and Adelaide are leaving their rooms and playing in maskless stadiums, thanks to months of sacrifice by Australians and much politicking by Tennis Australia. Throughout the 2-week quarantine, the tone and level of complaining softened (for the most part), but it was not without intrigue. We chat about Novak Djokovic's list of requests to TA on behalf of quarantined players and why the universal roasting he received was, well -- m...
Jan 31, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 218
It remains to be seen if Tennis Australia's logistical balancing act to host the Australian Open will be worth it, but here we are. Amidst the tightest safety protocols yet, a nation grudgingly welcomes hundreds of tennis personnel into its borders, who promptly kvetch about the (free) food, the (free) accommodations, and the quarantine rules. Not all has changed, though: top players get special treatment and American men continue to embarrass us at home and across the globe. Buckle up: pandemic...
Jan 17, 2021•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 217
To open our 7th season, we dive into the career of Stefanie Maria Graf, one of the game's most decorated champions and still, somehow, one of its most elusive. Graf's staggering achievements -- beyond the iconic Golden Slam -- are in some ways poorly understood and lost to recent history, likely because she has so determinedly removed herself from the tennis world. Instead of seeing her just as Monica's rival or the goalpost to pass for Grand Slam glory, we look to understand Graf's career as it...
Jan 09, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Ep. 216
Episode 215 is our season 6 finale and the ATP companion piece to our WTA Wrap. In this episode, we spend some time discussing the on-court highlights, like Djokovic's stellar start, Nadal's 20th Slam, and Thiem's US Open crowning. But, the pandemic threw tennis for a loop; while women players went mostly quiet, several men engaged in bizarre and selfish behavior, peddling conspiracy theories, spreading pseudoscience, and flouting safety protocols and plain common sense. This year, the off-court...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 215
It's now a cliché to say that the events of 2020 are unprecedented, and that we feel unstuck from time itself, but early 2020 does seem of a different era. After a packed January and February, which saw a new Slam winner and two high-profile retirements, the COVID-19 pandemic threw our lives (and the tennis season) into disarray. How tennis responded tells us a lot about the sport: at times remarkably agile and resilient, and at other times inequitable, clunky, and slow. Some players shone on th...
Dec 06, 2020•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 214
Since we last came to you, Daniil Medvedev continued his impressive end-of-season run to capture the ATP Finals in London. We take you through the paces of the final hosting of that event at the O2 Arena. After recapping the actual tennis on court, we pick up where we left off last episode with Alexander Zverev and the domestic assault allegations made against him. This time we’ve got an actual response (or lack thereof) from the ATP, a further statement from Zverev himself, and another misstep ...
Nov 27, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 213
We're delving into the serious allegations of domestic abuse against Alexander Zverev. Many in tennis -- including Sascha himself -- are invested in painting this as Zverev "overcoming adversity" on his way to growing up, diminishing and erasing Olya Sharypova's story. The ATP has failed to send a clear message; indeed, they have not sent any message at all. We ask: why is tennis so inept at handling situations like this? Why hasn't the ATP followed the NFL and developed a robust domestic violen...
Nov 13, 2020•53 min•Ep. 212
