Aus Open Day 3 - Keys, Sinner start title defences well

0:10Well, hello and welcome to the tennis podcast coming to you at the end of day three of the Australian Open, the final day of round one action, which is still ongoing. We think the editorially important matches are done for the day, but if Maddie Inglis or James Duckworth go on to win either title in a couple of weeks' time, then rest assured we will issue full-hearted apologies. You find us tonight on Court 5, which is Shut Up Shop for the day, sandwiched between Court 6, The Bar Court, and the artist formerly known as Court 3, I think now known as The Banking Court. so right in the thick of it at Melbourne Park on a really beautiful summer's evening it's been a really fun day today but not much of the fun has come from the runners and riders for the titles so it feels like we should start with Yannick Sinner but actually I want to start with Giovanni Mpeshi Perikar and Sebastian Baez or maybe even with James Duckworth who I think is currently serving at Matchpoint over on court six uh that is where the noise that you're hearing is coming from that sounded like the subdued sound of Dino Prismic saving match point actually and now the sound of Croatian fans getting just a a little bit of belief David yes yeah it's it's a wonderful time of day to be at a Grand Slam tournament I think generally we're sitting under floodlights dark sky up above Melbourne skyline in the distance with with the the big towers and illuminating lights coming at us and to our left is Rod Laver arena and in the distance we have the final dregs of a knockdown drag-out affair between a Croatian player with a huge backing full of red and white checked shirts and obviously the the local sensation who's who's doing the locals proud.

2:17Well, TBC, David, on that. Whether he's in the running for sensation of the day, he's making a good fist of it. Yes. I'll tell you that much. But he is love 15 down serving for the match. Yeah, but it's kind of, we've all, Matt's put his jumper on. I've got my Seahawks sweater hoodie on because it is a little bit cooler, but it's not cold. It's just beautiful. And also, it's probably the first time I've walked around the grounds and actually gone and watched tennis where it hasn't been so full that you're struggling to get into a court or you're, you know, as wonderful as the atmospheres are. I mean, I had a lovely 15 minutes on the third row watching Laura Siegmund mount a fight back earlier on, and that was brilliant fun, you know, and people all around me jumping out of the seats and punching the air and making a noise.

3:06It's just great stuff. Well, I think it's safe to say we're not starting with Yannick Sinner then, so pick a fun match that you would like to start with. Matt Roberts, the floor is yours. I think the most fun I had all day was Madison Keyes' match. Yeah, that was so fun. Madison Keyes beating Oleksandra Olenikova 7-6, 6-1 with serious drama and genuine jeopardy in the first set. Olenikova served for the first set. She had set points in the ensuing tie break. it was right on a knife edge it resembled Tatiana Maria against insert big hitting opponent at Queens 2025 here except Olenikova has an even weirder game than Tatiana Maria like the serve it's in the running for weirdest serve on tour if I hadn't commentated on uh what's her name the name that i nailed yesterday yes anastasia zacharova if i hadn't commentated on her yesterday i'd be giving it to olenikova as a slam dunk but i do have that present in my mind but i sort of fell in love with olenikova a bit today me too she bewitched me yeah i mean like she came out onto the Rod Laver arena and I'd never seen her before and she makes quite an impression just when you look at her she's amazing, she's got a neck tattoo she's got a lot more tattoos she had sort of synchronised swimmer style marker stuff on her face I'm not quite sure what that was but were those not tattoos?

5:04were they not face tattoos? I don't know potentially I think they were face tattoos they might have been temporary henna ones I don't know and look I don't want to make sweeping generalisations about people that have those kind of tattoos but the sort of instinctive reaction is wow here's a person with real confidence because like I heard some of the things that people were saying today about her tattoos like you're not trying to fit in with the expectation that people have of women are you if you've got those kind of tattoos it takes somebody with a real sense of self to do that and I thought okay okay Alexandra you have my attention.

5:44Totally and then her game is kind of a form of self-expression as well and a bold game because you've got to commit to that game style to be able to pull it off you know like slicing and dicing and moon balling i mean the moon balling was we're talking proper moon balling here sometimes we call things moon balls these days that are just heavy top spin yeah and like fine we're all looking for fun but this this was proper moon balling like where the ball sometimes went out of shot yeah it goes as high as it goes sort of far into the distance down the other end of the court like its first movement is up off the racket especially off the forehand side and she was causing Madison Keyes so many problems in that first set she raced into I think a four love lead and was just putting the ball in all the awkward spots making life so difficult for Madison Keyes who of course was you know stepping onto the World Labour Arena as the defending champion this was her title defense and immediately she was just tied up in knots in a nightmare match it was an incredible scenario just to start the day and Ony Nakova was enthralling really like so many defensive digs and I really thought she was going to win the first set and Madison Keys full credit to her because she not only got back into the set but then looked like she was going to lose the tie bread it eventually was and then she just found 2025 Madison Madison Keys, Australian Open tennis and ripped winners to win the set.

7:26Four of them. Four of them in a row from two set points down. Just such a brilliant surge and yeah you kind of got to see the best of this new player that we're all discovering. It was her first main draw match at WTA level. She hadn't even played a tour level WTA match. She had a lot of winning on the sort of ITX and 125 level but not on the tour and then it was the best of Madison Keys in in some big moments today so oh I had I had so much fun watching that and I feel like both players came out with a lot of credit and there was fun scenes at the end as Madison Keys was giving her interview and Olenokova was signing autographs in the background of that interview like she she was popular on the Rod Laver arena people realized she had style and she was cool and yeah more of her please yeah absolutely real chutzpah and i do think madison keys could have panicked in that opening set i think maybe an old version of madison keys would have panicked in that opening set and there were moments where she was clearly really torn between torn about what to do with that game sometimes she was hitting slice four hands of her own you And that is what those kind of players do, isn't it?

8:45They draw you into their web. See, again, Tatiana Maria, Queen's 2025. But then it was like, at the end, she went, no, no, no, hang on a second, I'm Madison Keyes. Boom. Yeah, it was like she gathered herself just in the nick of time. And as basically the entirety of Court Six is filing past us, that was the noise of James Dutworth and his campaign for sensation of the day and also getting through to the second round of the Australian Open. But that first set was, to my mind, imagine if you had told Madison Keyes a week ago that the first time you ever play a tennis match as the defending champion of a Grand Slam, it is going to be against Tatiana Maria times three because that's what she was up against really in that first set.

9:41You described those moon balls perfectly. I mean, she really made Tatiana Maria look fairly straightforward and normal. And I mean, she was asked in her press conference afterwards, Keys, when did your last player play a player who is doing that sort of thing, just throwing the ball up to the sky and chopping down on short balls and just generally kind of trying to irritate you into missing? And she said 12 and under. 12 and unders was the last time that happened and she did some kind of weird stuff that i've never really seen before like basically applaud every good shot yes in madison keys and i haven't seen enough of it to know if that's just her vibe or whether that was like uh i'm on rod labor arena i'm playing the defending champion why don't i just do something weird and see if that works yes and if i mean if laura seaman did that you'd think oh this is you're a wind-up match and Because the way she was playing, I'm thinking, you're on a wind-up here.

10:37But you're right, Keyes would clean the line. She's the defending champion. Yes, she's going to hit lots of good shots. You don't have to applaud them all. But it was actually a lovely thing, really, to watch it and to watch how much she embraced the occasion. And also the fact that Keyes, having admitted in the post-match press conference that I was in, that she got caught between the two stalls. she didn't know whether to just try and hit the living daylights out of the ball or whether to be patient she just didn't really know what was the best thing so she ended up kind of veering between the two and neither one of them was working i mean she was four left down you know and and she was six four down in that tie break and then boom boom boom boom it's over and and i mean i think at that point i went for a quick cup of tea and i came back and she was four one up in the second set so that I think ultimately is a big win for keys like mentally that that was just about her worst nightmare I think for a first round opponent and I think it was just about the perfect top player for Olinikova to use her style against because I don't think that that would have got to Svantec or got to Sabalenka in the same way and and I don't know how far that can take you but but it does remind me of being a little kid and playing tennis with my granddad and saying, am I allowed to just hit it as high as I want, granddad?

12:02Is that something you're allowed to do in tennis? Because I used to think that would be impossible for an opponent to play against and that's basically what Olinokova was doing at times. And it was quite funny but look, a great start to the schedule today and kind of a win for both players in a way. Yeah, and once you know Olenikova's story, like her attitude to that match and being out there on one of the four biggest stages in the sport makes a lot of sense. Ben Rothenberg and his sub-stack bounces had done a big feature, a big interview with Olenikova in advance of this match and told the most kind of gasp-inducing story about how she still lives in trains in Kiev, in Ukraine.

12:48lots of the Ukrainian players return to Ukraine often but she thinks she's the only one that is still living and training full time in Kyiv she said I don't need a big arena to enjoy my game I can play on any court and I will love it absolutely the same but I do need a big arena to represent my country to represent Ukrainians and to tell people that the war is still going on and we need their support and their help and she had some very strong things to say about seeing Russian players in the drawer, in the locker room alongside her. She said, when I see them here, Russian players, if we talk about WTA players, girls playing tennis, it all looks like fun, nice dresses, they're filming TikToks, making posts on Instagram and they look like normal girls and people don't feel like these people are dangerous.

13:41But actually, if you research, you will find that many of them are supporting Putin or Lukashenko and this is something which is super easy to find that's that's what she says and she said I was trying to speak about this a lot the opinions and the things they're doing they're dangerous these players are one of the reasons why my apartment was shaking before I came here and now I'm here and I see the same kind of treatment for me and for them and we're absolutely not in the same condition yeah look people will have their views on what she has to say but she's she's using this platform she's grateful for this platform and she she made the most of it today and it was it was pretty incredible to see yeah more of olenikova please but i also am super impressed by the way madison keys found a way through what looked like an absolute nightmare it's one of those matches where i just in her shoes i would have just melted and stormed off court like this isn't tennis yeah absolutely i i thought that's where we were coming for for love you know that i thought that's where we were going i thought she was going to be coming off and we were going to have a horribly upsetting press conference she said she was very nervous beforehand understandably but she actually said that the point before the four winners is the one where she realized ah okay i'm i may have missed that shot but that's how I should be playing quite ominous that actually yeah the rest of the draw okay um seeing as we're doing things an unorthodox way tonight what what fun story would we like to go to next Matt you chose well the first time oh surely it should be someone else's go I don't want to steal all the fun David was swallowing so oh right okay well I've done enough stalling What about Janice Chen?

15:29Go for it. Tell us about Janice Chen. Janice Chen beat Leila Fernandes. This was happening at the same time as the Madison Keys match that we've just discussed. Yeah, 6-2, 7-6 over Leila Fernandes. And look, that feels a little bit like one of these upsets that isn't an upset. You know, like I think a lot of people might have picked that or certainly thought that Chen could push Fernandes, who has not started the year particularly strongly. But again, it's another one of those stories with Chen from Southeast Asia and a lot of support here. And she played great in this match, really good. What I feel like is Fernandes is someone who likes to use opponents' power and redirect it and turn it back on them and actually Chen therefore was a bit of a nightmare because she has a lot of slice off the backhand, the heavy topspin on the forehand, it was tough to Fernandes kind of get the rallies that she wanted.

16:35She ended up resulting into quite a lot of drop shots, Fernandes, which was a nice tactical shift, but Chen kind of got wise to it and it ended up in a second set tie break and then Chen just strung so many brilliant points together to win it, 6-2, 7-6 and yeah, like just a fun result. from a player who is coming, you know, and had a bit of a breakout at the US Open last year and now is showing up at another slam. This is what we like to see, you know, players performing well at the slams. And, yeah, just a really uplifting story, I think, Janice Chen. Particularly for people with her in their fantasy team who are otherwise having an absolute catastrophe.

17:20I cannot say who I might be referring to. next story David you choose I am actually going to go to the match I saw which was the final match of Guillaume Monfils' Australian Open career which sounds sad doesn't it but actually it wasn't sad I mean obviously you know anytime you get him winning a match it's an exciting and inspiring moment and people are emotional and love it But, you know, he was on his last legs, really, in terms of this tournament for really the last two sets of it. He was exhausted. But he put up a great fight. He showed the Gaumont feast that we have known for, as he put it, 23 years since he first came here in 2003.

18:13You know, it's a long, long time when he was playing the juniors here. and the guy that beat him, a local called Dane Sweeney, is somebody who's had a lot of struggles in his career. You know, he's 24 years of age, I think, now. He's had injuries, he's had financial challenges to try to make it as a pro and, I mean, I think those continue. You know, he's not at a sort of ranking that is going to make him a wealthy man at this point even though at this tournament now, having got to the third round, he's really made some money that will make a huge difference to him. But, you know, this is a guy who sort of half a dozen years ago was running a GoFundMe in order to try to travel and be a player.

19:01You know, it's tough. He was a heralded junior, you know, with lots of local sort of media comparisons because of his style of play. People were comparing him to Rafael Nadal when he was how old, Catherine? about 10 years old? Eight years old. Eight years old. Eight years old. The Courier Mail had a headline about him. Matt, what was the headline? Plays like Nadal. Yeah. Dane Sweeney plays like Nadal. Eight years old and making his second appearance on Centre Court. Dane Sweeney has the tennis world at his feet. That was January the 8th, 2010. Yeah. also comparisons made to Leighton Hewitt because of how he looks he's got the blonde hair and the cap and today we saw him perhaps in shirt off he's got a similar sort of build he may be a bit stronger looking than you may remember a very young Leighton Hewitt looking but he's not a big guy he's short, he's fast but he's not at that level and yet today he went toe-to-do with Monfils on the Kia Arena which is what maybe the fourth biggest court here and you had two sections of fans singing these two players names all the French fans they always travel well or they come out and force to support the French players obviously Monfils is the the emotional spiritual leader of it all really isn't he in France and hugely popular as well and then you had the the yellow and green clad Aussies singing the name of Dane Sweeney.

20:42And it was just good vibes all round, I thought. Nice ends, really warm words from Monfils to Sweeney. He was aware of the stuff he's gone through and it hasn't been easy for him. And he gave him all the credit. And then he was presented with something by the tournament afterwards and got to speak to the crowd. And, yeah, very emotional. Do we know what he was presented with by the tournament? Craig Tiley was standing there with sort of a, it looked like he'd arrived at a birthday party. You know, you've got a Liberty's bag, but you don't know what's in it. Could be a notebook, could be a silk scarf, could be something from the AO shop.

21:29It was in an AO shop bag. Right, yeah. Very nice bag, but sort of, yeah. It wasn't a cross-section of the Philippe Châtrier clay. No, it wasn't that. Absolutely not. No. But it was nice. It was. And I got to see, I was there for the first set tie-break that Monfils won. And when he won the point-to-go set point up, several set points up, he did it with a slam dunk forehand at the net and he turned around and raised his arms to the crowd, to the biggest French contingent in the crowd and they went absolutely bananas and it really made me feel things. So I'm glad I was there for that and a bit sad that it went so far south afterwards.

22:17But pleased to have contenders for Sensation of the Day. Stay tuned for part three. Next bit of fun. Can we go to Giovanni Pesci-Perikar and Sebastian Baez? Just seeing them stood next to each other was fun. One of them is 5 '6", the other one is 6 '7". 6 '8", I think, David. Sorry, but he is taller than you. He is taller than me and he's a big lad as well. He's enormous. Pesci-Perikar. And to see Baez just making mincemeat out of his serve in the first two sets and passing him and broke him twice, was incredible. And then absolute credit to the Frenchman for coming back and levelling it up at two sets all.

23:02Again, sections of fans. There was some Argentine football shirt-wearing fans with Messi on the back, who, when he went two sets to love up, were dancing right in front of me and jumping up and down. Two sets in which he didn't have his serve broken. I know he did eventually break the buyer's serve, Pesci Pericard, but I do wonder the last time that Sebastian Baez went two sets without having a serve broken. Yeah, probably not that often. Yes, I think today stopped Mpeshi Perica's run at the Hardcourt and Grass Majors where he went 23 sets without breaking serve. He needed Baez, didn't he? He did.

23:50I mean, he did lose, but he at least has broken that run. Yeah, like in one sense, a step forward from Pesci Perry Carl. This was described as Danny DeVito beating Arnold Schwarzenegger on Australian TV, which is right in my millennial reference sweet spot. Twins? Twins, yeah. What a film. Probably problematic if we watch it back now. I'm sure of it. But happy memories of watching it in a simpler time. And Baez, by the way. continues his hot start to 2026. Yeah, maybe he is consequential, editorially consequential. We'll let you know in a couple of weeks' time. OK, that's it for the really fun stuff.

24:33We still have moderately fun stuff to come in part two. What a tease. Don't go anywhere, folks. We'll be back. But first, a word from our sponsors. It is, of course, Steve Ogle's International Tennis Tours, the premium hospitality and experience provider and also as i'm sure you know by now an official ticket and travel package provider for roland garros 2026 and as you've been hearing steve fergles are offering 10 discount for tennis podcast listeners to buy ticket and travel packages for roland garros 2026 this is a big deal folks it is a limited time opportunity exclusively for tennis podcast listeners to secure those official Roll-On-Garros tickets.

25:22It includes official access, optional premium hospitality, whatever kind of trip you want to have to Roll-On-Garros in Paris in the springtime. See Fergals can do it for you with a 10 % discount. The offer expires February 28th, 2026. So just go to toursfortennis.com forward slash podcast before February 28th and use the code PARIS10 to book your trip of a lifetime. Welcome back to part two of today's tennis podcast on day three of the Australian Open, where we're going to cover the moderately fun stuff now, folks. Where would we like to start? I think Matt had moderate amounts of fun watching Thomas Mahatch be, quite frankly, excellent against Grig or Dimitrov.

26:06I'm imagining it was only moderate amounts because I'm hoping there's some humanity in you somewhere, Matt, and your enjoyment was tempered by sad Grigor Dimitrov. Yeah, you might even have overstated it at Modra. Oh, more humanity than I gave you credit for. It was sad, wasn't it? It was. And it was one of those that took me a little while to figure out, you know, like what's going on in this match because the match was comfortable throughout, like really comfortable. and I couldn't figure out whether he was playing brilliantly or Dimitrov was way short. It took me a couple of sets really to actually fully realise what was happening and it became more and more obvious that Dimitrov was way short.

26:58By the end he was barely moving, he was rolling his serve in, he'd essentially sort of given up on the match which was a very sad thing to see. but even before then I think what ended up happening was that he wasn't able to be explosive you know and he needed to be because the Mahatch game can actually deal with quite a lot of what Dimitrov typically throws at opponents, slice, movement you know these are these are kind of Mahatch's plays as well and he's good in those sorts of crafty exchanges so what I felt like Dimitrov needed to do was stamp authority on the match and take over try and get his big forehand into play but he just didn't have a big forehand today.

27:40He was playing at half pace it seemed for much of it. So Mahaksh was very focused, he played a very disciplined, very contained match. I thought he was good and picked up where he left off with his title last week. but unfortunately the main story here is sad Grigor Dimitrov scenes for sure. And I wasn't necessarily expecting him to win today but I was pretty caught up in how optimistic he was a few days ago when I spoke to him for tennis podcast meets. I was so invested in this match and okay him not necessarily winning it. This was a tough draw but him recapturing something and finding a foundation to build upon.

28:32And I don't feel like that's what we saw tonight, David. I feel like I was watching the beginning of the end. Yeah, I mean, it's possible in the future we may look back on his career and realise that's what it was. And frankly, even maybe before that, if you consider the sheer number of times over the last 12 months, he has retired from Grand Slam tournaments during matches, through walkovers, etc. Was it four in a row that he retired from, Matt? Including the one that was obviously so devastating at Wimbledon when he was two sets to love up against Yannick Sinner. Yeah, I think, we looked this up the other day, I think it might be the French Open 2024.

29:19Yeah, it's coming up for two years since he last completed a Grand Slam match. Yeah, that was the last time he completed a match at a Grand Slam before. Well, no, it was the last time he lost at a Grand Slam not being retirement. He has completed some matches in that time because he won rounds. He exited a Grand Slam. He won those matches at Wilmer than a course. But, I mean, this time I was watching him on the screen. I was going to go out and join you, actually, Matt. But then very quickly it just became a non-competitive match because Dimitrov, well, he couldn't keep up for a start. But then it was a question of, now, what's the problem here?

29:57Is there a problem? Because we're looking at Grigor, and he's sitting there at the change of ends, and his head is down, his face is sad, and he's shaking his head. And you knew something was wrong. Now, then it was a question of, well, what is it? And we actually, at that point, requested from the tournament to speak to Grigor afterwards because we wanted to find that out. we subsequently received a message from his agent saying is there any chance you could give him a pass because you are the only ones who have asked for him and he's down because he's hurt his wrist and well look we don't want to put him through any more any more sadness so I said look if you could ask him what happened that would be appreciated so we could let our listeners know and we've been sent a quote from Grigor which says I unfortunately jammed my wrist during the match and the intensity of the pain limited my ability as it went on.

30:58I apologize for not being able to give the fight I wanted to. Thanks to the fans, the Australian Open, for the incredible support. I'm looking forward to coming back again. But, I mean, you know, that's another body part that has caused him trouble. You know, he's... I'm sort of on the border of thinking how unlucky he is, but then I'm thinking maybe he's just feeling his age now and the body is not standing up to the rigours of what he's asking of it. I hope it's not that. I hope he's just been a bit unlucky on this occasion and that there's a really good future for him because, I mean, you heard in Tennis Podcast Meets, if you listen to that, Friends of the Tennis Podcast, just what a great sort of presence he still is in the tennis world and how good it would be if he could find something again and make another run and build on what he showed against Sinner that day.

31:55But I'm not convinced that that is going to happen. I can only be hopeful for him because I think he's a good guy. OK, staying with the sad stuff then. Let's just get it all out of the way. Joel Fonseca not able to be all that competitive, certainly not for the duration of his full set loss to Elliot Spitzeri, the American qualifier, I think, Spitzeri. I was watching this match thinking, it doesn't look to me like you should have played this, Joel. We know he's had this chronic injury that he's been rehabbing and probably will intermittently be rehabbing at various points of his career. And you just think, what is the point when you're that young?

32:41surely the the medium and long term has to take priority over the short term but look we're not in his body he says my back is 100 i'm healthy i just need time he kept on talking about preparation and not having the preparation to be able to play a best of five set match today i still kind of think well then why um but i'm very relieved to hear him say that his his back felt fine today and look he said he had no regrets about playing so that's somewhat reassuring but generally speaking just this constant onslaught of news about the most exciting young players in the sport particularly well very much so in in the men's version of the sport suffering from chronic injury that feels like is going to prevent them to a greater or lesser degree from fulfilling the potential that the whole sport wants them to.

33:47I find extremely sad and extremely worrying and I find it incredibly frustrating that tennis just buries its head in the sand about it. It just feels so increasingly clear to me that five-set tennis does not work. It doesn't work. It's not fit for purpose in the modern day. I loved the Roland Garros final. I don't want to be watching every 18-year-old and 19-year-old play and wincing all the time and worrying about them all the time. and... I suppose the only thing is, is there evidence to say that it is because of five-set tennis? It's happening a lot more in men's tennis than in women's tennis and, you know, Jack Draper said he was ready to play, he's just not ready to play best of five-set tennis.

34:38Like, the bar for these sorts of injuries is higher I think and of course the more match time you have, the more likely you are to sustain injury or to re-injure yourself like it just makes logical logical sense and I was thinking like imagine a world where best of five set tennis had never existed and we'd only ever had best of three set tennis across both formats no nobody would be going do you know what we need we need a longer format for the men it would it just wouldn't be happening we're only doing it because we've always been doing it and we know what we'd be missing by not doing it like i'm sure best of seven set tennis would have its moments give it long enough and i'm sure we'd have a roll on garros 2025 men's final on steroids but like nobody thinks that that's a good idea because of the obvious downsides like just the sport is so institutionalized everybody within the sport is so institutionalized we've got to zoom out is my view anyway yeah and no i think i think to david's point i would i would say like i don't necessarily think that five set tennis is causing these injuries but i do think if you if you look at the general picture of tennis and the calendar like five set tennis does seem to be exacerbating them or making it harder for the men to then come here and play five sets like as you said it's it's a whole picture I wouldn't go quite as far and say five set tennis is not I can't remember the exact expression you use sort of fit for purpose kind of thing I wouldn't go quite that far but I would I am getting that way in terms of the way that tennis is set up generally, if you then include five-set tennis in it.

36:45I think there's a world where there's less tennis on tour, there's a longer off-season, there's more breaks through the year, and the bodies can withstand and hold up to five-set tennis. I do think that's possible, but what we're seeing, because that's kind of the game and the system that Yannick Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz are playing, right? I still think we are going to have periods in the game where one or both of those are injured and men's tennis will feel pretty crap pretty quickly. No, I absolutely take that point. But yeah, to me it goes back to bigger picture tennis scheduling issues. and five set tennis makes it even worse.

37:37I agree. There's definitely a world in which you could structure the sport so that five set tennis does work, but so many more things and competing agendas need to change and align in order for that to happen that it feels like fantasy land in a way that this feels unlikely to happen because tennis. but yeah and I mean I would say like I do think just getting rid of five set tennis wouldn't at the slams wouldn't necessarily make all the difference like you know like we have seen injuries on the WTA tour as well like you know yeah and and the big three played till 40 but I but they're not normal no this is the problem I do think the big three are they they were fucking exceptional in every way.

38:30Let's not cite them as an example of normal and structure entire sport around that expectation. And also Nadal was injured a lot, you know, and if he hadn't had two other guys, we could have been in a situation where it felt like we were, you know, we were constantly missing Nadal. I know a lot of people would have felt like they were constantly missing Nadal, but there were enough other guys in that era that it sort of made up for it. Whereas if Alcaraz was injured as often as Nadal was, I think we would really, really feel that. There are far more examples of greats that have retired from the sport prematurely because their bodies or their minds or their emotions couldn't sustain it.

39:16On both the men's and the women's side, to be fair. but I think Federer, Nadal and Djokovic are so exceptional. Does anyone think Carlos Alcruz is going to be playing at 38? But I don't think that's normal anyway, really, to be playing at 38. Right, but they all did. Yeah, but I don't think that should be the goal. I think trying to figure out whether there is an actual issue with the sport that is contributing to these specific injuries that we are seeing currently with Draper and Feast, etc. I mean, I definitely think there should be... I hope there's being thought given to that. I don't know if there is.

40:04Other stuff that happened today. We had a lot of five-set matches that just kind of didn't thrill us. They weren't bad matches. They had huge crowds. People were really into them. but there was just a lot going on today and they didn't kind of, they didn't grab us by the gills. You know, there was Jakub Mensik beating Pablo Karenja Busta in five sets. There was Nishesh Basavredi taking down a sensation. Christopher O 'Connell in five sets. There was Karen Hashanov beating Alex Mikkelsen in the most inevitable five-set match you can imagine. Look, all of these were great and they're the sort of, you know, They are the sort of matches that week one at slams are kind of built on, aren't they?