BONUS - French Open 2026 Review

0:11Hello friends and welcome to the tennis podcast and our 2026 Roland Garros review episode. We have been back from Paris, Matt, David and I, a total of about 28 hours. has that been enough time David to have profound reflective thoughts about the last fortnight yeah yeah I've got new thoughts new thought well I don't know we'll find out won't we in about an hour and a half's time when this is all over whether I've had any or not but I'm gonna have a go that's the beauty of the voice notes David they yes sort of they guide us down down a road of profound thought that our our sleep deprived brains might not be able to take us down down on their own.

0:55The reason we're recording this on Tuesday, we would usually give ourselves one or two extra days for profound thought. But where's Matt going, David? He's going to Chicago. How are you feeling, Matt? I've unpacked one suitcase. I've packed another. I am ready. The Amtrak ticks are coming in on Instagram. I've downloaded the app. I am so ready to go to Bloomington. What's the weather like? Warm. My friend who's already there sent me photos from his trip up a skyscraper today and picked a bad day because he's basically just in the clouds and can't really see anything. Does Bloomington have skyscrapers?

1:47I should say he's doing some days in Chicago. Yes, my dad did this. They've got one of the tallest buildings in the world or something, haven't they? Yes. I assume every major city in America has tall buildings. Catherine's probably dangled off some of them. I've never been to Chicago. I would like to. Definitely wouldn't like to between Roland Garros and Wimbledon. But one day at a more convenient time, I would like to go. No, we're making the most of Matt while we've still got him. David and I will be back with our next main feed show on Sunday. We'll be talking about Queen. Serena Williams just made her comeback.

2:29Came home today. Serena Williams is on my TV. Partying like it's, I don't know, pick your year from the last 25. So lots to talk about already. The tennis world keeps on turning, but we're going to turn it backwards for the next hour and a half or so. And we have some absolutely brilliant voice notes to help us do that. and tell the story of one of the wildest rides in recent Grand Slam history. We're going to hear from Pam Shriver, Matt Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare from The Athletic, from Hannah Wilkes, a Simon Briggs cameo. And we're also going to hear from Mary Carrillo at the end of the show, of course, because nobody should have to follow Mary Carrillo.

3:13So we're going to start by hearing from our brilliant writer and barge captain, Hannah Wilkes, who, when asked how she would remember Roland Garros 2026, gave just a brilliant response. Here it is. I may remember Roland Garros 2026 as the tournament where I was wrong not just wrong once or twice and not just wrong when I was making predictions in the build-up but wrong with a degree of relentless consistency and with a sort of reckless audacity that I didn't really know I was even capable of. I was so wrong so often that it's genuinely made me re-evaluate my relationship with needing to be right.

4:03I was wrong before the tournament about Yannick Sinner definitely winning it. I was wrong during the tournament about Sinner definitely coming back to win against Juan Manuel Cerundulo. And then I think from that point on, I was wrong at least once per day about who was going to win the title. But I think the time when I was most strong was around lunchtime on day two, when Catherine texted the group chat and asked for a summary of Maya Huelinska's victory over Zheng Chenwen. And I said, dismissively, yeah, she played pretty standard clay court tennis. I mean, to be fair to myself, I had only seen like the last three games, and those three games were mainly unforced errors from Jung.

4:47But what was I talking about? And why am I even allowed to talk at all, frankly, if that's what I come up with? There's a song from the 80s that I only heard for the first time a couple of months ago called Rainbow in the Dark by someone called Dio. and around the time of the third round when Kvalinska beat Maria Sakri and was crying in her chair with clay all over her knees I started associating this song with this player who I was slowly starting to realize was not playing standard clay court tennis and by the end of the tournament I had listened to that song so many times that I think it permanently altered like my neural circuitry you know the lyrics are the lyrics are just 80s nonsense about crying out for magic and battling demons and you know a lot of stuff that you can absolutely apply to Kowalinska's trajectory and the experience of watching her but to be honest it's about that central image of the rainbow in the dark you know this player who's been around a while but who I could not have picked out of a lineup to save my life whose name I was at best vaguely familiar with and who I assumed could not be doing anything special when I glanced in at her upsetting a big name and yet when we're kind of forced by an extraordinary sequence of victories to actually watch her it turns out that she's playing some of the most non-standard most creative most skillful most mischievous tennis imaginable and doing it with a kind of nonchalance that borders on psychological warfare like I am not saying that I've become a Maya Kowalinska guy um and I'm not going to say that she's a future Wimbledon champion um it's not about that it just made me think about how sure we are of who in the game is worthy of our full attention and it made me wonder about how many weird players are out there who are fully capable of properly lighting up this stadium and getting thousands of people to fall in love with them but who never get the chance how many rainbows in the dark are out there and I know it's not the most important thing to take from this French Open but it's definitely something I want to remember is it's how fun it can be to be so sure that you know what you're seeing and to be completely wrong.

7:45a brilliant contribution to start off today's show and extraordinary that hannah managed to get through that whole thing david without saying you never know i know she wanted to yeah because that's what she was saying really and um i'm delighted to see that people are coming around to my way of thinking that's what roland garros 2026 has done it's achieved the goal of getting people on my wavelength and I'm delighted about it I am very much a Felinska guy I will be happy to say and I don't know what she's going to do in the future success wise but I know that I love watching her tennis and I think she's really cool I think I love the kind of manner she has.

8:39I only went to the one press conference that I think the last one. Maybe if I'd have gone to the earlier ones I'd have maybe seen somebody a little more tense and guarded because it was still going on. But I just thought, gosh, she's just normal. She's just cool and just doesn't, she's not buying into all the normal stuff. It's just like a real human being that I'm talking to and listening to here um and then you stick her on a tennis court and watch her just tying people up in knots with stuff they've just not seen before or encountered before and I loved it have you seen the footage of her getting a hero's welcome returning home to to Poland arriving at the airport no I've not seen that oh that's nice good stuff and and And unless she's wearing it unpaid for free, which, you know, us regular folk do with all our clothes, she seemed to be in Lacoste.

9:38So maybe a clothing sponsorship has been forthcoming off the back of this run. Or maybe she just likes Lacoste. Maybe she could just afford it finally because it's not cheap, is it? Yeah. and yeah i had that same feeling that hannah had about being wrong and also just i did feel a little bit inadequate do you know what i mean like we'd come off the back of it and going into the tournament i had never seen the eventual finalist play before and i watched tennis all the time so that was a weird feeling that's the first time it's happened to me i would say um but that was kind of the joy of it as well and i think particularly for me i remember talking to itama our friend and colleague after she beat jungshin when and we were texting and i'd said i'd seen valenska's scores in qualifying and been like quite impressed that she was winning so easily and Itamar was at the Jung Shin Wen match and said, yeah, she really does have a heavy topspin forehand.

10:48That was the thing that he picked out. So then later in the tournament, when she got to the final, it was nice to look back on those texts and be like, oh, Itamar was there in round one and saw that she was playing well. But I think for me, it was the semifinal win because I think all the way up to the semifinals, there was still enough else happening in the tournament that I'm not sure I watched the Walenska match from start to finish until the semis. You know, I think I watched a lot of the quarterfinal win over Kaninskaya, but it was the semifinal where I properly zoomed in on her game and it was such an uplifting moment when she delivered that tennis after the dad of Andreeva Kostiuk.

11:33She just brought the place alive again and you realised, wow, this is how she's been beating absolutely everyone through this tournament. And it was such a joy that day. In a tournament of many, many memorable matches, I do think that one, that semi-final, really does stand out to me. So I'm glad that Hannah's got us off on that note by mentioning this run. And just on the subject of being wrong, um you know how yesterday morning i before you guys got up i was doing my mad tidy because i was leaving for the airport a little bit earlier and i was packing my room up and all this i found the two scraps of paper that i scribbled my third round and onwards picks on remember that at the start of the tournament i do it was comical to look at the end of that i mean i was i didn't have one player i don't think in in the right like in the quarter finals but just about zverev maybe but i mean i was nowhere near i mean and i'm look i really get it bang on but i mean it just made me realize i'd gone for all the top four seeds for the women's draw to reach the semis um it was a wild ride this tournament the problem is now i'm never going to be able to laugh at anybody's predictions again am i i'm not going to be able to say well that's nonsense because you'll say well french open 2026 yeah yeah i know but 2021 radicano only lasted so long for me didn't it so you know on that subject on the subject of um rainbows in the dark which is a brilliant expression i can i can see us adopting that i see how hannah's trying to phase out future Wimbledon champion is her bit and phase in rainbows in the dark I see you Hannah maybe Nehmeyer is not taken off as she had hoped and she's evolving to a new bit well Hannah obviously doesn't think so David it made me think of a proposition that you have always put forward David When we do our Q &A shows and we're asked about things we'd love to see in tennis or changes that we'd make, I know one of them is the wooden rackets tournament.

14:05But another one that you always propose is a tournament without seeding, a chaos tournament. Yes, please. because Hannah's rainbows in the dark thing made me think about how being at the top makes you brings you the privileges and the benefits that help you stay at the top now I'm not minimising how hard it is to stay at or near the top because it it comes with pressures as well intense pressures and and more demands you're playing more matches you've got more sponsor demands etc etc etc i'm not minimizing that but you are seeded so you're protected until the later rounds yes there are dangerous floaters but generally speaking you are guaranteed a better draw better match court assignments you're given more say over your schedule okay that might only be the very top players but we know the very top players are getting a lot of say over over when they would like to play.

15:12And all of this disadvantages low-ranked players further from being able to have a breakthrough like Maja Chvalinska. And it's extraordinary that it ever happens, really. And that we've seen this and Emma Raducanu in such a short space of time. But it does make me yearn every now and then, not always, but every now and then for a chaos tournament where you just got to see just got to see what would happen if you took if you stripped all of that away and made it kind of purely random even even the court assignments you know i'd love to see it good everybody's coming never gonna happen it's never gonna happen but i would love to see it cosign yes please okay let's hear from our next two contributors now an athletic duo of matt futterman and charlie eccleshare both of whom have focused on the men's event in terms of what they will most remember from the 2026 french open let's hear their takes now starting with charlie hello everyone it's charlie eccleshare here uh this was a hard one to narrow down to one thing because it was such a theme and subplot heavy Grand Slam.

16:31But I'll start with the match and kind of zoom out. And I think the match that will most stay with me was Fonseca beating Djokovic in the third round, bringing back as it did memories of another match where a much-talked-about 19-year-old beat the male Grand Slam record holder. That was, of course, Roger Federer beating Pete Sampras at Wimbledon in 2001. And I've no idea if this match will end up being anything like or even at all historically significant in the scheme of things, but it definitely felt like the moment Fonseca announced himself to the wider tennis world. Those three straight aces from break point down when serving for the match felt like a pretty major statement.

17:08And I was lucky enough to watch this match from start to finish, writing about, I don't know, a million different drafts on it. I can't remember seeing many more spectacular endings. And all that came just the day after the 17-year-old Moise Kwame had beaten Adolfo Vallejo on a frenzied court Suzanne Longland. The scenes on that court when Kwame won the first set and asked for more noise and did that kind of Leighton Hewitt, Rafael Nadal lawnmower celebration would always stay with me. Again, who knows where Kwame will end up, but I did feel watching that match on Longland that I would always remember it being the first time I'd seen him play live and boring people about that in years to come.

17:46Throwing Rafael Hadar's run to the quarters and Men's sick getting to the semis. and this felt like a good one for the emerging players on the men's side like a volley in the final as well and that all felt like welcome good news when so many of the potential challengers are injured and Alcaraz is out which has kind of shaken my confidence in or maybe you could say complacency about the state of the very top of the men's game anyway we'll see where those runs take these players but they were definitely energising in the moment alongside all the shocks and the heat of the first week that will also be among my defining memories from this tournament.

18:21Anyway, thanks for everything tennis podcast team and listeners and I'll see you and speak to you at Wimbledon. Hi friends, this is Matt Futterman coming to you from the Democratic Republic of the New York Knickerbockers, a city awash in orange and blue, just as it should be. Somehow Roland Garros 2026 already feels like it was ages ago. Maybe because the great ones left us so early. It was kind of rude, wasn't it? Like those people who walk in the door of your holiday party and start looking at their watches as soon as you take their coats. They try to acclimate for a bit, or seem to, but they never really get comfortable, and then they're just gone.

18:59I suppose the metaphor doesn't totally work. Yannick and Novak really did want to stick around longer, I think. But they didn't, and after they left, I kept thinking about them and wondering what might have been. Look, I'd like to believe that the ascendants of Maja Cholinska and Mira Andreeva and Flavio Caboli really will stay with me from this French Open. I just don't know that it will. I mean, a little, sure. Trelinska's filleting of Diana Schneider was a work of art. The forehand down the line from Koboli to win the four-set tiebreaker in the final was pure joy. I'd been mostly charmed by Andreeva since I first sat with her at Roland Garros three years ago when she was 16 years old.

19:40She told me how much she hated chemistry homework. Yeah, me too, I said. It's the worst. But for more than a week now, my brain keeps going back to those two days when the tournament really went off the rails It's still hard for me to fathom how Sinner's cramps were so bad that he couldn't manage to win one more game from the lesser Serondolo Or maybe I should say this Imagine how painful and sickening they must have been that he couldn't manage one more game He's an all-time great, and there he was, limping around like an old man Bruce is helpful here In the quick of the knife, Yannick Sinner tried to make an honest stand, but he wound up wounded, not even dead, in the sweaty jungle land that Chatrier had become.

20:23I know, that's a little much. But it kind of works, doesn't it? I think everyone there that afternoon, especially Sinner, knew there was no coming back from those cramps. I think he knew it when it seemed like he was half-heartedly trying to convince the trainer that the pain in his upper leg might be something other than cramps, so he could get a medical timeout. I think he knew it when he walked back onto the court after the break in the air conditioning That the reprieve would be very temporary Whatever visions he had of how these two weeks would go were gone A little while later he was sitting once again on that dais in the press conference room A broken man once more, sad and dazed He'll be okay, except when it's seriously fucking hot out Then all bets are off We all have our weaknesses That night I got filmed giving my take on who was going to win the French Open I think I did a national TV spot, too.

21:15Both times it was emphatic. Novak Djokovic had a clear runway to a 25th Grand Slam title. Just watch. That aged well. I spent a long time the next afternoon watching Rafael Hodar and Alex Mickelson tussle. I kept an eye on the Novak-Fonseca match, but it was going as I expected. I got to Chartier late in the second set, then quickly bailed because Novak had his two sets to love lead. That had been safe for 17 years in more than 300 matches. As a player, Fonseca still had a ways to go. Playing Novak for the first time at Grand Slam is usually miserable for teenagers. But then the kid started to grow up on us.

21:54His comeback is mostly a blur of lashing inside-out forehands. One came at Novak so hard and fast while he was at the net, he didn't even bother trying to get his racket on the ball, even though it passed right next to him. I think he just wanted to get out of the way. I was back in the stadium by then. Yikes. Here's what isn't blurry. A couple of shots Novak pulled off that I've never seen before, and I'm never going to forget. That backhand Novak slithered down the line in the fifth set. I don't know how many backhands I've seen Novak hit over the years. I'm not even sure how to begin to do the math.

22:30It has to be in the tens of thousands. I don't think I've ever seen him hit one like that, so straight and precise. His racket followed an arc that was so different than its usual pass. He froze for a moment and framed the follow through as the ball whizzed past Fonseca and darted down at the line. Then came that Novak grin. He knew he'd done something wild and wonderful, improvising as only he can. He also did it that set on a crazy half volley. I think the ball actually was past him when his racket made contact with it. Again, that wizard's grin. He's still so good. He knows it. I still think he was the better tennis player on the court that day in so many ways I'm sure he thinks he was too On any given day, he can still be better than everyone for stretches But he also knows that alone isn't going to be enough anymore Being the best tennis player and winning tennis matches at Grand Slams are two very different things This was the first time I was very aware that Novak was racing to win matches too quickly, as though he had a certain number of minutes he could spend on the court during the tournament.

23:38Like those early mobile phone plans that allowed like 500 minutes a month and then charged you up the wazoo for anything over it? It's a big problem. It's hard enough to win tennis matches without being on a clock. Winning a tennis match while racing against time feels damn near impossible, even for Novak Djokovic. He always preaches about the necessity of staying present He's long been the guy who's there for all of it Whatever comes, however long it takes That's how it has to be Maybe things will be different on the grass But this won't Ultimately, time's going to run out on Novak As it does for all of us Two days, two wild upsets Each of them wild in its own way Maybe all of them will make sense in hindsight But I don't think so For me, the world feels a little off its access lately.

24:28It certainly did during those two weeks at Roland Garros. Maybe the grass will help restore some water. They like that sort of thing around the All England Club, don't they? I'll see you all before too long. I can't wait in a few years to be in a discussion with you two and whoever else might be there, reminiscing about the 2026 French Open and someone going, Those two things can't have happened on consecutive days. No, no, that can't have been in a 30-hour period. Surely not. How did we survive that? But they did. Those two extraordinary events happened on back-to-back days. It was like Men's Semifinals Day at the Australian Open.

25:14If after the first one, you'd been told that something arguably more extraordinary was about to happen, you'd go, do one. You're talking nonsense.

25:28But it did. It really did. I mean, totally, totally different types of moments and shock and upset. but equally big, I think, and equally impactful on how the tournament ended up playing out, I think. Yeah, I found the first one quite sad, really. There was no joy in that at all, really. Even for Sarundla, there wasn't really any joy. He was happy to be through, but it was just... but it kind of summed up the weather. I feel like it was half soporific and, you know, draining and sleepy and then half delirious. You know, you slightly felt like you're losing your mind and that's what it felt like during the Djokovic match because I can't really believe what I'm seeing, that he can't close this out.

26:29And then you get this surge from Fonseca. Fonseca, I really like that point that Charlie was making, the comparison with Sampras and Federer, because my initial reaction is, oh, hold on a minute. Let's not forget that Federer went on to win all this stuff. Oh, I thought that was going to be a Sampras defence. Well, no, I think Djokovic and Sampras is a very fair comparison, really, particularly given their age and so forth. but you know i think actually it is it is right because federer didn't win his next round he played incredibly well against tim henman and he was like more sort of flashing winners and just audacious shot making but he didn't win he lost i think in four sets um and it did take him another two years to win wimbledon to win any grand slam it's hard to to believe that really you know he He kind of thought, it felt like he'd arrived, but actually he hadn't yet.

27:32He'd shown you a glimpse. And I think Fonseca showed us a big glimpse in this match, and particularly because he followed it up with the win against Rude. I don't know how good he can be. That's the problem. And I feel like I did know how good Federer could be, even though he wasn't producing. So I don't know, what do you two think? Do you feel like what you saw from Fonseca is something we'll remember because it was a defining moment in something that would become this massive career? Possibly. I think for me, the difference is Djokovic, actually. I'm not as convinced, and I said this at the time, I'm not as convinced that it's a changing of the guard type moment because I don't think Djokovic is the guard anymore.

28:26you know like he's all he's already passed that on to sinner and alcaraz sinner and alcaraz are the guard now and i remember feeling like this when sinner was banned last year and we had draper winning stuff and we had menship winning stuff and it felt like wow okay these guys are coming what's it going to be like when sinner's back sinner's back and he's winning everything again or Alcaraz is winning everything again. I don't feel like we're getting a true changing of the guard, even with this tournament. As amazing as all those players did, the young guys, again, Mensik and Fonseca and Kwame, you know, all these guys, it was fantastic.

29:09I agree with Charlie. It felt like a good tournament for the young crop of men's tennis. But until someone comes through and actually beats Sinu and Alcaraz, in conditions that are more normal and it isn't because of the weather. I don't feel like it's... You're not arguing that Wanamal Sarundalo is the new guard. The guard has changed. It's a Sarundalo on watch. I guess I don't see these moments and these wins and these tournaments as sort of changing of the guard in a way that Federer and Sampras was viewed back then. But I do think it can be important for Fonseca's career. and I don't know what he's going to go on to achieve but I sure as hell know that I will remember this match and I do think the fact of beating Djokovic is still incredibly relevant and gives a moment more weight and gravitas.

30:04You know, like it's still the match which sticks out to me the most and I think that is because it's Djokovic and the myth around him and how you still have to take him down and how he still is like the main character in a tournament, even if he's not the men's tennis guard anymore. Like shots he hits and winners you hit past him stick in my mind more than anything because Djokovic is this bigger presence in my mind than anyone else, if that makes sense. And then the evolution we saw from Fonseca backing it up against Ruud and the smart tennis he played in both matches, finding this drop shot like there were so many things and reasons to think that this is great news for Fonseca I just don't really view it as change of the guard if that makes sense I think in terms of the tennis that Fonseca produced how he produced it in the setting he produced it and who he did it against yes I was convinced of something by Joel Fonseca this this tournament I saw something that I didn't definitely know he had two weeks ago quite frankly and I'm very glad he had I'm very very convinced by by what I've seen in terms of his capabilities at the top level and on the biggest stages.

31:36What holds me back from then extrapolating that to feeling confident about his eventual career is the state of Jack Draper and Art of Feast and others. Like, I think that men's tennis is not fit for purpose at the moment and it is ruining its players, quite frankly. and Jo Fonseca has had a chronic back injury quite similar to art of feces. Now, he seems to have been in good shape for a while, but it was at the start of the year when he was one that put his comeback back a few weeks, and he'd already been out for quite a long time with it, and he put out that statement confirming it was something that he'd struggled with on and off throughout his career already.

32:26That's alarm bells for me. That worries me. and the explosiveness of his game, the explosiveness of the game you have to have to be able to have these results and do these things. It really, really worries me. I think we have such a large-scale, widespread, deeply entrenched problem that is proliferating, that it holds me back from feeling at all positive that we can feel confident in any of these young guys reliably being able to build a career. I mean, we've just had the news that Jack Draper is out of Queens and he's put back his comeback another week. I mean, that's a desperate situation. It's desperate.

33:13Like, he might not be able to make a viable tennis career. That's how it looks at the moment for Jack Draper. Goodness knows when we're next going to see Art of Feast. I'm sorry to be a bummer, but that is, that is, I just have this, I almost have a guilt watching these incredible men's matches at the moment because I feel like we're paying a price for this. They're paying a price for this. We are going to, the debt collector is going to come later down the line And it's a big anxiety for me and something that kind of looms over the fun that I have. And I do have the fun. I know I sound like I don't have the fun, but I do have the fun.

34:04But it almost feels like a guilty pleasure. the only thing is i i don't think there's evidence that there's cause and effect for length of matches injuring those two players um i mean i don't think it's as binary as that like i played this many hours of tennis last year there i have this therefore i have this problem but the general volume and physicality of tennis in 2026 is absolutely contributing it is causing it has to be what else would it be if they were lying in bed all day they wouldn't have stress fractures and bone bruising no but but i mean i'm i mean they're not going to play the game differently are they so i'm not quite sure what you can do about it well exactly the the game has evolved to a point where to be successful about it you have to ruin your body and there are there are a couple of exceptions maybe even only one exception at the moment because carlos algaraz is on the sidelines yeah it does feel like you know there's so often the discussion is about best of five and i'm sure that's part of it and i'm sure the schedule is part of it but it also feels like maybe string technology needs to be looked at and racket technology and the balls they're using just because like people are hitting hitting the ball bigger than they used to and you you didn't used to put so much strain on your wrist or you didn't used to have to train in this way to be able to keep up with the pace of the sport i i don't really know i don't really have the answers but it does feel like everything coming together is is contributing maybe not causing but contributing to yeah the injuries we're seeing this isn't just that that's a good point this isn't just about my best of five set agenda, like that there are other accommodations and changes that the sport could make if it insists on continuing with best of five to make itself fit for purpose.

36:26But again, it's never going to happen. I'm just, I don't see anybody sort of acknowledging that there even is a problem, let alone taking steps to solve it. But I think there is a really, really big problem. I do. who wants a Briggs voice note for for a more upbeat tone David definitely does the way he's looking at me is it because I brought up Art of Feast yeah it's a bit of a downer for me that sorry it's Simon Briggs folks so regular listeners might remember that last year I managed to actually impress Catherine with my pop culture reference when I suggested that Novak Djokovic was similar to Logan Roy from Succession in that he remained the main character at Australian Open 2025 even once he had actually died or in Djokovic's case gone out of the tournament.

37:24So in an attempt to recapture past glories I'm going to compare this French Open to the Game of Thrones, a series in which you'll remember that a lot of the big name characters die unexpectedly early. And we had in the series, Ned Stark, spoiler alert, but Game of Thrones did come out about 15 years ago. Ned Stark died at the end of series one, beheaded by Juan Manuel Chirindolo. And then Robert Baratheon, who is now my Djokovic comparison, gets gored to death by a wild boar, represented by Juan Fonseca. I'm not quite sure who stands in for Sabalenka in this analogy. But anyway, the other thing about Game of Thrones, as anyone who watched it will remember, was that the ending was crap, which is kind of true of this French Open as well.

38:10You know, we kind of hoped for a electric young lad to win it, one of the Fonsekkers or perhaps Hodah. And we ended up with Alexander Zverev. And while the women's was better, you know, we had a Russian winner, which can be tricky, even though we love Mira Andreeva for who she is. it is a little hard to sell somebody playing under a empty flag right now so not perhaps the conclusion we were looking for but overall an excellent tournament a massive improvement on the dud slam down under this was more the the wow slam the upside down slam and i feel like it's given teneth a kind of rebirth just at the time when it was a little bit of a doldrums so looking forward to the grass and hoping we continue to see some thrills and spills the ending was crap i was just drifting off to sleep last night and i took one last look at my phone and i saw that the briggs voice note was in and i thought yeah go on i'll have a listen before i drift off and i chuckled so much at the ending was crap that i probably cost myself a little bit of sleep But it was worth it, Simon.