BONUS - Tennis Reform!

45:56So it's a best of five or a best of three and a doubles and they're the same price. I'm afraid that's just... Oh, well, I mean, to me, that's part of the problem then, isn't it? I mean, we're saying that... Yeah, but the problem is the differing formats and nights.

46:22I'm a bit sort of like, there's kind of no point in debating the night session thing because it would be so much sacrifice of revenue for tournaments that, I mean, it's just not going to happen. but I do think the creation of additional sessions has an unintended consequence of that. There have been a lot of really negative unintended consequences of that, including increased lateness of matches and including the attitude towards lateness of matches, the sort of acceptance of it, if not sort of veneration of it. Yes, I agree. Look what great money you got for your ticket. But also the exacerbation of situations that you have at the French Open where with the formats of the sport as it is, it's basically impossible for them to have a night session product that isn't...

47:22They've created a product that is unable to be equitable towards men and women. like that's unacceptable and that's quite often the case with with night sessions and i i do think that has been generally an unintended consequences of of increasing sessions but it's it's it's more tickets and it's more money isn't it but if we're not worrying about you know what tournaments director what tournament directors would vote then i'm i'm voting i'm voting with matt I like the staging of night sessions the hour it takes for them to, minimum hour it takes for them to empty a stadium and then get the new crowd in and it causes log jams outside where you've got two sessions worth of people Yeah I mean the flow at the moment a lot of people that are enjoying tennis as a result of night sessions that wouldn't if they were just on a single ticket that's a another 24 000 people's worth that you're just denying access so you're up for just expanding capacity where there's demand it should be satisfied regardless but i think i think that there's a way no i think there's a way to keep night sessions um and finish at a reasonable time that might be what i disagree with nowhere has proved to be able to do night centers night session satisfactorily and finish at a reasonable time i suppose because they don't believe in women's tennis they don't believe in three set tennis that's why but i but i even insist on having five set tennis in there but the u.s open believes in women's tennis and they have the and it's a great night women's semi-final night but i'll give you that example again of a sarko i mean that's one example i'm sure there are many well what about samuelenka keys like Sabalenka Keys a few years before was the same.

49:28There are loads of results. You could easily start earlier. You could start that day earlier, 6 o 'clock. No trouble at all. Still be a nice session. 6 is better. 6 is a lot better. 6 is, you know, you'd need two matches then to be finished. Yeah, I'd support that. But it's not really the semis. it's more like earlier on in the tournament really as well where you get the issues right like i don't know i just love the idea of a full day's play on on the main show courts going into that golden hour of 7 to 10 p.m wimbledon does it you know and that's what your mom's saying in the chat matt if wimbledon can do it there's no reason the others couldn't do it they just want the additional it's such a good blueprint and the difference is they've got they've got a massive tv deal they've got tv deals that the only the others could only dream of and it's not absolutely of the of that those sessions and so they have to make the money somewhere but one of the reasons they've got a massive tv deal is because they're a absolutely brilliant products and they make good decisions yeah yeah partially you know they're they're yeah i'm just saying the main difference is that there is that they have a national deal and then they have espn on top the us open just doesn't have anything except espn that's of any great value to them um sure but they're also not like struggling for money like they're okay they'd be okay they would they would lose they would lose money but that's a big picture thing that the sport needs to reckon with sometimes like just chasing the money is not right no question there's definitely a financial point there but i also would reiterate that over 15 days 24 000 people per day at the u.s open you're talking about a quarter of a million people or more that are additionally able to watch live tennis in person because of night sessions that you ain't going to get those in otherwise unless you separate sessions and yes i know it's a faff i know it's a time waster but it's also an opportunity to sell your sport to more people and get them involved not to be all an end all but it's definitely has to be a consideration to my mind it's a factor yeah it's a factor again it's you know what how much weight do you give to the various i'm voting for it though and i think your mum is too matt unclear on pam she might have gone for a workout but you've you've got your mom in my rant you've got pat you might have lost pam um david's voting against i think not sure what my dad is in favor of the midnight curfew oh i definitely yeah the curfew i agree with okay it's how it's the we're voting it's the finer detail that needs to be that still needs to be worked through david anything from go on first and foremost oh good good question that's all that oh i've got a voice now i'm not playing that without um so my my proposal is to make every single mixed men's and women's tournament have to alternate its finals great from here and forevermore that means that one year the madrid open has to play its men's final on saturday and its women's on sunday if that's kind of how they're doing things i know i know indian wells for instance does the two on the same day and again they'd have to alternate it in terms of which one which one ends the tournament um yeah and that would just have to be a rule across the board where Wimbledon, US Open, French Open, Australian Open, Indian Wales, Miami, you name it, they all have to, one year have finished the tournament with a women's match and one year finished the tournament with a men's match.

54:02It's the easiest win I can possibly think of. Yeah. I mean, the only, I'm totally with you, The only issue I can see with this is separate broadcast deals for men's and women's that it would be an issue for those broadcasters. Not always to know, but I mean, I don't care about this. I'm just saying that I bet that will be cited as a reason not to do it. But who cares? Because we're doing it right. this is going through yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think the i think the sort of you can't really quantify the impact of every tournament every mix tournament always ending with the men right i just know that there is a big impact there in like the impression it's in the atmosphere isn't it and Even the way the whole two weeks is building to the men's final.

55:15And it's putting the men above the women always. I've never had a satisfactory answer to it. The unintended consequences of the scheduling of the women having to play back-to-back quarters and semifinals, and then that being used as a justification for not putting any of the women's quarterfinals at night because they have to come back and play the next day. it's just a domino effect of misogyny i'm always taken aback built on and i'm sure because of that catherine you would you would think i was incredibly naive for saying this because i'm always taken aback by how nobody thinks of this like when you raise it they just look at you as though that has never occurred to them and that it's a really you know big and and invariably people go well yeah yeah that seems a good idea fine that's a good idea i mean it's so institutionalized yeah and i mean coco goff was she she very quickly jumped on it as something she thought should should be happening um because it was kind of like a move on from the night session conversation at the the french open that doesn't have all the sort of how it affects me stuff you know this was a this was a sort of just well yeah i mean she said you'd have to do something with the structure of the tournament because again we're so embedded in that this is how it is and therefore you know but if we did that it'd mess up this okay well bloody change the structure so that it can happen happen okay and the moment she kind of just i mean it took her about four seconds to suddenly think well yeah why aren't we doing that um but okay well who's going to pick that up and run with it then nobody ever does no but why why isn't the wta making a massive fuss about that i i mean that's the easiest win in the world for them to me if they if they push i don't know whether they've never ever pushed it i want to know i'm gonna i'm gonna ask them have you ever pushed this have you ever raised it

57:30Yeah. People pointing out that Cincinnati last year was the other way around. Was it? Yes, it was, wasn't it? I forgot. Because we watched Cine Alcaraz five games in the sky. We were so excited and pumped for it. And then there was a retirement. But then, thankfully, we had the good Chiantic-Paolini match to follow. So, you know, maybe there's, well, and as Hannah said, and as I'm always saying, like, go to the Wimbledon Library and you'll tell that it used to be different, you know? It didn't, Wimbledon used to not have the men's final as the last match. Like, these things can be changed. They just require some, you know, a bit of effort to do it.

58:20Just imagine what it, imagine if the two tours and the Grand Slams all got together and said, you know what, this would be a really good idea. And then they just announced it. But David, they don't think that. The sport is run mostly by misogynistic men and some misogynistic women. I know, I'm just thinking, you know, what would the message that be? It would be amazing. Like, it would cost you nothing, I think, in terms of there'd be nothing negative about it and you would just get this massive win that everybody would suddenly be forced to think. we don't think there'd be a cost to it but i bet you there'd be some a lot of people in men's tennis that would i don't even know what the market forces are that would be annoyed about it they'd be annoyed about it they'd see they'd think they were losing something but yeah totally co-sign i'm in my proposal is get rid of the knock-up who's with me it is an absolute nonsense yeah i'm with you yeah i'm with you can we keep it for amateurs i enjoy i i like having a warm-up can we keep it for amateurs you do what you like matt i don't have to watch that well sometimes i'm not a captive tv audience for that at the professional level no warm-ups i mean i'd be interested to know what pam would think about this but i've i have heard players in the past say okay if i if we get rid of the knock-up i'm my i'm gonna blow my shoulder out the moment i said it would just play differently in the first few games like the first few games would look a bit different it'd be tentative it would be you would they're not doing the knock-up because they're not physically warmed up the knock they come onto the court physically they're doing all their physical work backstage it's about maybe but you can do you can do stuff, David.

1:00:13You can mimic that movement. The thing is, how far away is the bloody practice court? It's about finding the feel on the ball. It's over there. Just go and bloody warm up and then come in the locker room and get out on the court. And if it diminishes the quality of the first two games of the match where they haven't quite found the feel of the ball that they would have found in the knock-up, okay, fine. That's an interesting added dimension. Yeah. Yeah. It is an absolute nonsense. Why are all the people saying no they don't want to get rid of the knock-up i want to know i want to know the reasons i'm fascinated needed to learn conditions well just learn them while you're playing what do you mean like why not have a half an hour knock-up then to really learn the conditions if that's so important nonsense we're moving on um okay yeah i think i think it's one those ones where like the players are definitely going to want the warm-up to to remain yeah absolutely but this is where you shouldn't like the players shouldn't be the final say on these things like they're just they're only thinking in terms of what will better or worse my level of tennis today and we're here to think about what will better or worse the sport rebecca's made this argument in the chat and i've heard this before that the tv uses it as a way to introduce players but there are different ways to do that there's different ways you do it in the build-up to the match when you're when you're in the stadium and the and and tennis got so much better at the staging of of big matches in particular but you know any match on a main court the Australian Open did this massive they hired Lady Gaga's set designer to design this big stagey performance art walk-on with a water tunnel and all this other jazz like great lovely and so you do all of that you you build everyone up in the stadium and then it all just gets sucked out by five minutes of piddling around it's quite good the way cam nori did the knock-up against hodar the other day when he was trying to smash the ball that was fun i did enjoy that and then And he got duffed up 6-3, 6-2.

1:02:33Yeah. He did the thing of trying to hit winners in the warm-up and Hodder just saved them for the match. I am absolutely horrified by the poll results on this. I thought this... I'm quite shocked, I must say. Who are these monsters? What did your mum vote? Friends of the tennis podcast. No. Dad, what did you vote? Pam's gone. Back me up, Pam. My dad's gone quiet. Can't believe your mum's not with me on this, Matt. We're learning a lot about my mum tonight. Oh, my God, it's going even more. It's the no lines getting longer. I don't understand at all. Because you just called them monsters, Catherine.

1:03:20Yeah, you might have lost everyone now. Everybody but the sensible people. I don't understand at all. My dad has said, I'm with you, Catherine, which is very odd because he's never called me Catherine in his life. He did say no to curfews earlier on, though. He did. Yeah, I saw that. I didn't read it out. Never insult your audience. It was in jest, mostly, Sylvan. Just goes to show, doesn't it? that like obviously everybody here is very sensible people that cares about the sport and what might seem completely obvious to me isn't something that everybody agrees on, sadly. But I am going to pass it through despite my opinion.

1:04:12Because I'm in charge. I'm in charge. I've wasted too much of my life watching knock-ups. I think you are particularly sensitive to faff. I do accept that about themselves. It's like the thing that pushes your buttons the most. I think some people are probably just sitting there, you know, just happy to be watching the players having arrived on court. They're getting their snacks ready. They're talking to the people next to them. people are coming in you know like we're having different experiences but you do that because you know there's a knock-up it's not like if there wasn't a knock-up you suddenly wouldn't have snacks you just structure your you just plan things differently so that the snack stuff was done before do you know what I mean yeah yeah no I do know what you mean yeah i agree it turns out democracy doesn't work i'm now being accused of being maga in the chat it's all gone so wrong

1:05:23anything else from gore and david i don't know until i play it in private uh right um what we have now we're already an hour and eight minutes into this show and we still have like a whole proposal from Diana, a kind of big picture, what she would like the sport to look like. So basically I think what I'm going to do here is I'm going to read through it all and we're just going to throw this out on the table and bat it around. How does that sound? Sure. It's good. Great. Okay. so I've tried to distill this Diana's proposal was so thoughtful and detailed and brilliant I've tried to distill it into kind of headline bullet points here so what Diana proposes is one combined tour for men and women where all matches are best of three a maximum draw size of 64 and a maximum tournament length of nine days um diana also proposes the idea of there being more tour tiers like the english football league like the you've got the is it the corn ferry tour in golf the one below the the pga tour and if you do well at that you get a card to play on the the pga tour something like that um she says slams should all be best of three unless tennis speeds the fuck up but everybody voted against the getting rid of the knock-ups and nobody's with us on that, Diana.

1:07:06She says free market for prize money, but otherwise conditions for players should be standardised as negotiated by the union. And she says the players union should be entirely separate from the tour and from other governing bodies. And she said players should be independent and play as much or as little as they like. Nothing should be mandatory. um one ball for all tournaments so no individual ball sponsorships for events it would eliminate a lot of fun daniel medvedev content from our world but i think we can all agree that from a sort of sporting he'll find something else right that would be a good thing um and she says team tennis should be condensed into one world cup held every four years in the even years in between Olympic cycles.

1:07:58It should have a best of five format for men and women. Dana is open to a tiebreak fifth set though or no ad scoring. It should be an indoor event no matter the host and qualifying should take place over the two years prior. I open this manifesto to the floor, David. um i'm i'm a little bit concerned about the additional layers of the tour um i i actually really want there to be well basically two layers to to the tour um i want there to be a premium tour and then everything else below that qualifies you for that oh do you know what was really winding me up recently was when when we were looking at federico correa's activity the other night and this is a player this is how we have fun guys for those of you who don't know he's the player that i've developed a bit of a problem with um because he got him and listen he's obviously of an incredibly he's the brother of guillemocoria uh who's brilliant talent and federico correa is incredibly hard-working player who managed to get to 49 in the world basically by playing playing the challenger tour and if ever you want to sort of expect somebody not to win a match the grand slam it's going to be him because he's not good enough um and i don't want the ranking system to to be able to enable people like him to go to 49 in the world if they can't go on the main tour and win tennis matches right um so i'm a bit concerned about how many tiers we're having here uh i i want to have i want to have a separation of the of the sort of challenger tour i want to expand the challenger tour um effectively and incorporate the 250s probably into that um and and should it be like in golf where you're sort of you are confined to that tour unless you get a tour card to play the main tour rather than sort of you know dipping it dipping in and out good question yeah i i think so i although i do quite like qualifying um you know that's a little wrinkle that i'm not sure about but yeah i i just i think so i think people should be playing a year on the challenger tour before they can go on and there should be like promotion and relegation poor old federico corioree well you you brought him up yeah i know i feel a bit bad about it i thought that was a private bit it's out in the open now not anymore they've been slagging off Federico Correa any chance he gets in our chat.

1:11:05I feel like the issue is like, you know, for every Federico Correa, there's a Valentin Vachero, right? Okay, maybe not to that extreme of proving that you can win a thousand and get to a semi, but like you can make it, you can get out of the lower rungs and you can make it on the tour. And I know you're saying like there would be a system for you to be able to do that here but i just i don't know i just think tennis is so sort of random in that in that way that like there isn't that big a difference i don't think i don't know where you draw the line i don't know like i know golf does it but i'm not necessarily not necessarily sure that is a reason for tennis to do it um i think if this is sort of descending or ascending to a debate about a premium tour.

1:12:01There's a lot of people expressing sort of unease or discomfort with the concept of a premium tour, which I share, but it would solve a lot of the other issues that have been identified. I think it would go some way to solve the appearance fee issue. It would solve a lot of the sort of narrative issues that tennis has, I think. you know, 1 ,500s, 250s, mandatories, you know, I think sort of like the story of the tennis season isn't well packaged or thought out. You can tell it's the sort of thing that's just been thrown together by lots of competing agendas. It would solve a lot of those other problems.

1:12:49Now, is it the best means of solving it? I don't know, but maybe it would be a case of the means justifying the ends. Just putting that out there. Yeah. No, I know what you're saying. I suppose what I don't like is... You know what I mean? I suppose what I don't like the idea of is like 64 players, if that's the maximum draw size, if they're in every draw because they're in tier one. Do you know what I mean? like I think I do quite like there's relegation you earn your place but but so would that be how often does that happen annually yeah yeah see I would be against that I think it's I think same with doubles you've got to keep your doubles partner you can't keep faffing around changing your doubles partner mid-season you've got one chance to have a partner and that's your partner I do I do agree with that although I should say that I'm quite conscious that we have kind of like doubles is a big part of this picture and we kind of made the decision because there's so much to get into and you know we're already an hour and 16 in here we're going to do a show on doubles there's a similar kind of reform show on doubles later in the year so we're ignoring it for a reason because it's kind of too much to to throw at the wall all in all in one night but i do i like that idea david i like the combined tour for men and women that's a great idea

1:14:23yeah yeah again like in a utopian world where that is an entirely equitable thing right but i i think the issue is in the actual in the actual world that we live in you know they've been trying over the past year or more so to be to move towards a union, hashtag Tennis United. They've been trying to, they've merged their marketing departments, I think. There's this Tennis Ventures thing, which has been proposed as a stepping stone towards uniting the tours. And it was, you know, the whole thing had been negotiated and, you know, the WTA were bringing a lot less weight to that negotiating table than the ATP were.

1:15:13It earns a lot less money. They have a lot less clout, sadly, because of, well, in short, because of the patriarchy. But there we go. And now the Mercedes deal has come along for the WTA. They're in a far stronger financial and negotiating position than they were. And suddenly, tennis ventures, that whole, it's kind of off. like the WTA are like still up for this but only if you kind of recognize what we're bringing to the party now and the ATP are like oh well we're not up for it if if it's not like our status here and your status here like we're not up for that so everybody's been making noises I remember interviewing Gaudenzi at the O2 my final year in Turin with Amazon we had Gaudenzi on the show I do believe that sort of in principle, in this very abstract way, he thinks hashtag Tennis United is a good thing.

1:16:15But what that picture actually looks like in terms of equality and recognising women and not actually fundamentally believing that the ATP is a superior product and men's tennis and men's sports is a superior product fundamentally to men. and not viewing any pie given to women being a sort of subtracting of pie from men rather than a big picture overall growing of pie. Like, he doesn't believe in all of that. He doesn't believe in what it actually looks like to achieve that unity. So... Imagine all the mixed doubles you could have. You could have a mixed doubles tour. I feel like we're getting quite a lot of mixed doubles, David.

1:17:01Maybe you could have a ranking. again you've got to play with the same partner every week it'd be great yeah I mean I think what it always what this always circles back to is a message that Hannah put in the chat a few minutes ago like you can't solve tennis's problems without solving capitalism, misogyny and climate change but here we are trying that's basically it

1:17:34What do we think of the World Cup proposal?

1:17:43Quite like it.

1:17:48I don't think we quite know sort of what form it's taking in terms of, I assume it's singles and mixed doubles, which I would be in favour of. I think I quite like the idea of, you know, sort of team tennis happening every couple of years, whether it be the Olympics or this sort of thing.

1:18:15That makes some sense to me. I think, again, if we look at the current structure of tennis, that would be very hard because I think the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup sort of are important for the lower rank, you know, the sort of smaller tennis nations instead of bringing a lot of income into them. And this is really a sort of top level of the sport solution. But I do like it as an idea. I think that scarcity helps some events, you know, like the World Cups in other sports and the Ryder Cup in golf. Again, it sort of goes back to the answer isn't always more to everything. and and surely you could make it bigger by doing that and better and create proper space for it like by stopping tours at the end of september and saying right october it's the world cup exactly yeah it would it would undeniably elevate the event undeniably sure but it would be play world cup qualifiers to get into it net less revenue so it will never happen net significantly less revenue i mean whether that is true certainly in the short term nobody is prepared to take a short or medium term revenue or profit hit in order to grow the product such that it might actually make longer term to just compare that world cup of football argument why aren't they having it every year don't put ideas in their heads David

1:19:55probably because it works yeah yeah

1:20:04no notes yeah I really like Diana's proposal I mean I wouldn't have it indoor because I don't like indoor tennis not sure about best of five because i'm just not sure about best of five yeah i don't think it needs to be in general um but i really like the the cadence of what she's put put forward and kind of linking it to the olympics in that way um yeah i i really really like that i it just won't happen because of because of money because of capitalism climate change and misogyny um but uh but i but i love it yeah i'd really really be up for for that um and you know calling it the world cup of tennis i know it's only the davis cup that brands itself at that is that but calling it that and it really being that would just be i mean the billy jing cup calls itself does it but honestly they adopted that absolutely yeah but but you you make the point by by having not really realized that fact because it's it's when people say you just kind of think sure you know and i love the billy jenking cup and i love the davis cup but come on imagine how good this could be if it was done differently yeah I should say there's also I know broadcasting of the sport and the packaging of it for a TV audience is also something that came up a lot from Diana and on the barge in particular as well and I feel like maybe we should do a whole show on that at some point because it deserves proper oxygen and we have got things to say about that um so maybe we should maybe we should put that on the short list of friend shows to do because I do want to end today's show with a question from Brian that came in on the barge.

1:22:06And it feels right because this is what we keep coming back to, right? Like here we all are always investing so much time and energy and despair in sort of what could tennis look like? What should tennis look like? And ultimately always coming back to the feeling of like, oh this is all pointless energy we're spending on this because will anything ever change so brian says i wholeheartedly agree with most of the changes you have proposed and keep proposing for the sport but i fear that we will all just be permanently shouting into the void if things stay as they are realistically do you think meaningful change will come from a an incredibly slow and frustrating progression that probably takes decades as it has in the past b some kind of seismic event that holds us towards a tipping point c leaders like craig tyley who just decide to change things with others then following suit d nowhere it's never going to happen David what do you think slow and frustrating things have changed over the years it's just they're so slow you can kind of think that nothing changes but actually things do change little bits here and there what about the fact that you know what Matt was saying about the um wimbledon finals used to be used to alternate or have the women's finally that's gone backwards yeah i mean i don't i don't know why they changed that and why it was like that in in in originally um i'm not quite sure how how those things came to be um i i mean i'm i'm hopeful that um i mean i'd like i mean somebody needs to make a stink about that that's the thing somebody needs to get a bit arsy about it and go and do something about it rather than just sort of not even thinking about it um but and i think yeah i mean i like i i think that um if i think you know 20 20 years ago hawkeye didn't exist people talked about electronic line calling and people thought it was something that should be able to be possible well well before that and here we are now using Hawkeye Live right and there's no line judges on the court apart from at Roland Garros um when I think of when the next gen finals first came in and this the number of things that have actually been brought into tennis as a result of that of that event this I think it's quite a lot if you actually went through them all.

1:24:51It's just that they've happened relatively gradually, but they amount to something. Nowhere near as much as I think they should, or I'm not just talking about that event, I'm talking general change. But yeah, unfortunately, you don't have a commissioner of the sport. You don't have somebody who doesn't just think of the bottom line, who just thinks, hold on. You know, at the moment, in golf, they've got a new leader of the PGA who's basically said, what does the fan want? Let's forget what the sponsor wants. Let's forget what the TV station wants. What does the fan want? Let's find that out. And then we can't go too far wrong.

1:25:40And listen, the stuff he suggested happening hasn't happened yet, but he's basically trying to say, look everything should be on the table right now and we actually want to do something about it um but i mean i'm afraid i think in tennis it'll carry on at its current snail's pace

1:26:05yeah i think generally i agree with you what i just picking up on what you said about why isn't why people need someone to kick up a stink about this. I would say a figurehead, a lead. If there were a, let's say, let's say there were the world number one right now was a Billie Jean King type figure that got it. Like the players have even more power now, way more power now than they had in Billie Jean King's day. And Billie Jean King changed the world.

1:26:40which is why I find it so hard not to be frustrated with the majority of top women's tennis players at the moment that just don't get it and aren't wanting to burn their bras and march in the street and boycott and march and all the rest of it can't you see how you're being fucked over on a weekly basis but I try and tell myself not to hate the player hate the game you know and I do understand I do understand why a they're really young I I didn't get it when I was when I was their age and and be you know they're in this incredibly demanding tunnel vision sport where having any kind of perspective on the world is almost detrimental to their to their individual success so you know I try and remind myself all of that but imagine imagine if the world number one right now was a Billie Jean King type figure that could change things if there was somebody coming into coming into press conferences saying why on earth is the women's final always on the Saturday and and the men's always on the Sunday why on earth am I playing this tournament that is exactly the same status and stature as the men that I'm in a locker room alongside and I'm being paid significantly less than what they're being paid.

1:28:10Why are we playing best of three while the men are playing best of five? That's an absolute nonsense. It would be so powerful and it could change things and it could start a movement. If Billie Jean King did it in 19, well, she did it over a long period of time but in the 70s like what could be achieved now with that kind of a person would be massive but um yeah it would it would it would take an extraordinary person like like Billie Jean King um and and they're not there right now but it would be cool like I think generally the progress I agree with you, David, but you could have a massive spike if someone like that came along.

1:29:02Matt? Yeah, the same. Incredibly slow and frustrating. And, you know, like I think we'll, you know, could get worse before it gets better. Right. There'll be period. There'll be things here that we want to happen and the sport will go the other way. because we're fighting against those those fronts that we know are in place right um tennis is so fragmented and it's hard to it's hard to see a world where it happens quickly and where it happens um sort of easily i think it is i think those words are right slow and frustrating i i think um is what we're going to have to which is which annoys me so much more since 2020 now that i know that tournaments can do whatever the they like if seismic events happen sure but But there wasn't like emergency legislation put in place as a result of the pandemic that enabled Roland Garros to pick itself up and move to October.

1:30:23Like that was what made them want to do that. But it proved that if you want to do something, you can just do it. I didn't quite realise that. I thought, I don't know, I thought maybe there was some sort of like, you know, legal structure in place that stated that men have to play best of five and women have to play best of three. And you have to get the approval of the tours and the other slams to pick yourself up and move to October. They did have to, but they just ignored all that. Right. You can't just do you on. There was that statement put out with all the logos on it, except Roland Garros, where they just expressed their dissatisfaction.

1:31:10If you want to enough, you can just do it. That's what I learned in 2020, among other things. things.

1:31:20So yeah, and it makes me sort of when you hear mealy-mouthed bollocks about holistic approaches and oh, we'll think about that, you know, we'll speak to it. Like, if you want to, you can just do it, but you're not.

1:31:41and yeah they're not gonna but so you you're with barack obama david you think the arc of history tends towards justice have i just butchered that quote that's what he says isn't it some a version of that let's end on david's optimism was i optimistic i think broadly yeah in the context of a sort of slightly depressing picture i think there's broad optimism in there um yes it was my it is it's brack obama quoting martin luther king yes and so i've butchered both barack obama and martin luther king that's a great note to end on brilliant um this has been well i think it's been a great show and and yet i still feel like we haven't really done down his manifesto justice because there's there's so much in it and look all i'll say is that um this isn't this isn't the end of it there's going to be there's going to be other shows.

1:32:51Maybe we'll one day play you Goran's voice note. We'll find out what's in it first and then... Will we? I hope so. But this has been so great, really has. So thank you to everybody in the chat that has contributed so much to this show. To Vicky, who's been doing impromptu polls. I mean, it's just a dreamland for you, David. Yeah, just like I didn't even know polls were possible no Vicky's doing them left right and center delighted to have influenced Vicky so thank you Vicky thank you uh Hannah for pointing out that ultimately the problem is capitalism misogyny and climate change and we cannot solve those things in a 90 minute podcast but um we can certainly we can certainly get depressed about them um so thank you Vicky thank you Hannah thank you everybody in the chat and thank you Diana for your time and care and thought and energy that you've put into making this show quite frankly we're yeah we're very grateful for it and it doesn't end here yeah maybe yeah we'll be back we'll be back to pick this up um so thank you everybody i'm going to get this show off the road so david can listen to goran's voice note and tell him tell us what he says we will let you know everybody on the barge whether goran got his appearance fee how about that well i don't know what he's going to say yet if we find out we'll let you know on the barge there's an incentive to get on the barge if you're not already thank you all uh for being friends of the pod and making all of this possible we are back with our next show on monday do check out our most recent tennis free lived if you haven't already on the history of the rankings another one that sounds unsexy but was actually really fun um and uh yeah thank you again and we will speak to you on monday